“All this until that boy’s conduct threatened to pull down the house about my ears! The King and all his court were there, too, lavishing compliments upon me which I felt to be extravagant, though I was sensible that I had probably saved his kingdom for him. The whole room buzzed with my name. ‘H. N.’ or ‘Nelson and Victory,’ met my eye everywhere, and the room was full of the heroes who had won my victory for me, and yet offered me its whole honour. It was a marvellous night, and if it had been in London and not in Naples, with my own nation round me, surely no mortal man could have known a more intoxicating moment.
“All this until that boy!... And yet I can confess to you, Pen, that in the midst of all this justifiable elation, I did not forget what had happened in the morning when that glorious beauty had been held up for the moment for my kiss of friendship. I could not help reminding myself that a new friendship had begun for me of an intoxicating sweetness, not known to me in my earlier friendships: a friendship in which sympathy of the mind and tastes was accompanied by the light touch which I had previously associated with the beginnings of first love, and not with the more solid sympathies of friendship. All this until that boy....
“I found myself on my knees before Lady H., endeavouring to persuade her from her tears, and I was startled to find that the sense of elation which I had ascribed to the unparalleled honour showered on me through the evening, and now abruptly broken off by the unfortunate incident, continued hardly diminished. And then the mad spirit of temptation entered into me to try and kiss the lovely, tearful face, willingly surrendered to me for that moment in the morning, into forgetfulness of the humiliation. I kissed the eyes and cheeks, and then the unresisting lips, and made I don’t know what hot protestations of sympathy to win her from her shame. And at the last I succeeded; for, kissing me back, she rose from her tears radiant like Venus rising from the foam of the sea, and said, ‘Let us forget it, Admiral: to-morrow he will be all penitence.’
“This is to-morrow, and I am all penitence. I wonder if I am very wicked? I know that I am intoxicated with the companionship of Lady H., but I know too that I have no feelings which are not of the purest. Is it wrong, under these circumstances, to appreciate the affectionate companionship of such a woman among women? Or were we intended to be happy, and in a world in which so much of happiness depends upon the affectionate companionship of women, to enjoy whatever such companionships come in our way without impurity?
“To-day or to-morrow I shall sail away to Malta. It needs my presence, and I shall be away from this miserable court, which is still more distasteful to me now that I no longer feel myself to have the right of despising my neighbours for their views.
“I do not feel that I can stay in this house longer.”
I remember the emotion with which I first read this portion of the Admiral’s Journal: it cleared things up for me a little. For I had often wondered how such a man as the Admiral with his lofty soul had first become entangled with My Lady. I have often spoken with her, and she was uniformly kind to me as a boy. She called me her good Tubby, and I liked her so well as to like it. She was indeed the best-hearted woman in the world, infinitely good to us midshipmen and the younger lieutenants, or I don’t know how we could have stood the spectacle of our beloved Admiral at the feet of a woman, however distractingly lovely.
She was at this time distractingly lovely. She was indeed no longer quite slender; but being of a good height, and her throat and arms being of an exquisite colour and form, her embonpoint had only the effect of superb softness and roundness—though her movements were said to be a little stiff when she was off her guard. She had such an unwearying spirit, such a fine actress’s gift for remembering the part she was playing, that I never at this period of her life remember seeing her off her guard in this matter, though I have seen her at balls and revelling suppers, and in the most awful storm at sea which it was ever my lot to witness in all my years of service. That any woman in all the long reign of his late Majesty, the longest in our English history, had a face of such intoxicating beauty I hardly believe; its shape and moulding were perfect. In particular the arching of the brows and the way her lips parted as she smiled were miracles, and such teeth I never saw both for their colour and the way they were set. And when she was smiling, with these teeth glittering like snow, and soft dimples in her lovely cheeks, and kindness rising from her eyes like the fragrant smoke of incense, she was the most graciously beautiful piece of womanhood in the wide world. She had, too, the habit of lightly laying her hand on you as she spoke, or if you were walking, slipping it a little way through your arm and taking a few paces with you. And she had a fascinating sense of delight in her own beauty, without any trace of the arrogance and spoiled child’s pettishness which so frequently accompany it. Indeed, she craved to have the warm liking of all who came into contact with her. Knowing now the temptations to which she had been exposed in her bringing up, and her habit of blindly obeying merely her own instincts in the matter of right and wrong, I cannot but give her the highest credit for the constancy and exclusiveness with which she bestowed her heart. Though she was gracious and had a manner to all, she never loved—she never showed herself in love with but three men: Mr. Greville (whom I never saw—but I hear that she gave him all the best of her heart), Sir William, and the Admiral.
While he was on shore now, she was courier as well as hostess to the still ailing Admiral. With that immense establishment of the British Embassy on her hands, no matter what the time of day, or what the function was that required to be attended, all he had to do was to take his place beside the smiling beauty, and find himself at the point where his duties began. She was the centre of life, the ear and tongue of royal favour at Naples.