Chapter XVI.—What the Admiral wrote in his Journal about Love.
WHILE these two were acting in this strange love scene, the three personages upon whom they were nominally in attendance were planning measures which were to overturn, in a few days, all that the halting diplomacy of the Emperor had built up in many months. The Queen, who had contrived to make of our Admiral her faithful Minister, urged the matter forward to force the head of her house, the Emperor, to make a decided movement and march his armies down into the Peninsula against the French. By his sending her a general she took it for granted that he meant to support her with his soldiers as soon as she began fighting, which seems to have been very far from his thoughts—a fact, of course, known to General Mack. But the latter had neither the honesty nor the capacity to give such a message to the beautiful and eager Queen, and allowed her to deceive herself. He trusted (now that Buonaparte was away in Egypt and without a fleet) to a French scuttle before the numbers of the Neapolitans, and the English ships, which threatened their land communications by the Riviera Road.
Sir William might have taken a severer view, if indeed he was capable of taking any view at this time. Sir William was not a strong man. Having the good fortune to be the foster-brother of King George III., he was appointed to the Court of Naples, probably as a kind of sinecure, when the prospect of Naples becoming the key to the European situation seemed as remote as any earthly contingency. Possibly he had qualifications then; but, at all events, as he grew older, they disappeared, and he became, by the agency of his able and ambitious wife, a mere appendage to the Court of Naples. And now he was having one of his periodical visitations of the bilious fever, which had kept him from the Pompeian expedition (where his antiquarian knowledge would have been highly interesting to the Admiral) and the Queen’s banquet. Being somewhat recovered, and the air of Caserta having so often proved beneficial during similar attacks, he had driven up in the morning, and, indeed, was so far recovered by night that he determined with the Queen and the Admiral to return to Naples on the following day.
His improvement was maintained there. But as he grew older his attacks became longer and more difficult to shake off, and he was both averse to work and incapable of energy at the moment when opposition would have counted.
By eight o’clock on the morning of the 12th the Court and all the guests had flitted, and they were in Naples in time for a very early midday meal, ordered by a courier sent overnight. For what follows I am indebted to the Admiral’s own Journal, which is again borne out by facts within the personal knowledge and perfect memory of Will.
“Oct. 12th.—Sir William has borne the journey pretty well, but knowing how anxious Emma must be about him, I determined to accept the Queen’s very pressing invitation to luncheon at the Palace, and immediately afterwards to excuse myself and go down to the dockyard. It has been my invariable custom, when ships under my command have been refitting, to go down and inspect them personally, although I have never found the ships’ officers less careful than myself, or less capable of judging efficiency.
“Indeed, I attribute the successes, with which the Lord has been pleased to grace my battles, to the efficiency of of my officers and men, coupled with my unalterable principle to seek my enemy as fast and as near as ever I can get to him.
“I did not lunch at the Queen’s table after all, for I found that the very early lunch resolved itself into light refreshment directly we arrived, and the usual interminable meal an hour or two afterwards, which is Her Majesty’s foundation for the siesta. So I determined to go off to the dockyard on a biscuit and a glass of lachrime Christi, which was served to us as a fillip.
“But one of the Queen’s ladies, a certain Princess of Favara, to whom I once had the honour of doing a small service in a delicate matter, insisting that it was the height of imprudence for a man but lately recovered from the fever to spend a long day in the sun on no better preparation, with her own hands brought me the breast of a fowl and some champagne, which she obtained from one of the servants. She is a lady of marked beauty, and has, if I mistake not, a feeling for my scapegrace Will. Her deference to me, as an elderly man and the commander of the good Allies of her Sovereign, is very graceful, and does her good taste great credit; for it is not necessary for a maid of honour, especially of her high birth, to take any notice of one whom only the accident of politics has introduced at the Court.
“Oct. 12th. At night.—Matters at the dockyard on the whole satisfactory, though for war-ships to take three weeks to re-fit—oh Lord! But then their appliances are miserable, and there are hardly any stores to speak of, and in this country nothing is ever ready or well done, except a bal masqué.