It came in 1793; when in place of capturing birds’ nests, Nelson, in the Agamemnon, was with the fleet at the capture of Toulon, its forts, and its navy. But other things came in 1793, too. Nelson was sent to Naples with despatches for our Minister, Sir William Hamilton. He was much on shore, and mischief came of it, of course. Sir William told his wife, the too famous, too erring, and yet much sinned-against Lady Hamilton, that a little man was coming to dine with him who was infirm and ill-looking, but who had in him the stuff of a hero, and who was undoubtedly destined to be the man for the difficulties coming. If Emma Hamilton loved a virtue it was that of courage and ability in man: she loved heroes, and her ardent feelings were soon interested in Nelson.
From this period we must speak more generally of Nelson’s great deeds that we may have fuller space to treat of matters less known, and in the revealing of which lie the chief merit and the chief recommendation of Dr. Pettigrew’s excellent volumes. Lord Howe appointed him (over five senior captains) to blockade Genoa. In 1794 he was active against the French in Corsica, and his men so entered into his own spirit that, as he said himself, they minded shot no more than peas. But for him, Bastia would not have been taken, nor perhaps Calvi, where he received the injury to his right eye which ultimately deprived it of sight. His labour was incessant and his health most wretched; but he was too busy to be invalided. ‘The plan I pursue (said he) is never to employ a doctor;’ and, consequently, though he was ill, he kept himself from the peril of growing worse. In 1795 he had his first ‘brush’ with the French fleet. He thus modestly calls a battle, in which he laid the Agamemnon between the Ça Ira and the Censeur and forced both to yield. The former was large enough to put the Agamemnon in her hold. He was now fully in that vein of conquest which never left him when a French vessel was before him as an antagonist. He now dared to disobey orders when he judged that circumstances authorised him, and he was no bad judge. He had by this time been engaged one hundred times—he was literally the hero of a hundred fights. His ship when docked, in order to be refitted, had neither mast, yard, sail, or rigging, that did not need repair in consequence of the shot she had received: her hull had long been secured by cables sewed around her. Nelson exhibited such discretion in disobeying orders, and success so invariably followed action that resulted from judgment of his own, that at length his admirals ceased to give him any close orders at all. Sir John Jervis left him to act as he thought best: the result was that, in two years, Nelson captured fifty French vessels; and the navy itself, under Jervis and his pale captain, became perfectly invincible. Up to 1797 victory followed victory: there was abundance of honour and salt-beef; but neither prize-money nor even notice in the ‘Gazette.’ He consoled himself by saying that he would one day have a ‘Gazette’ of his own and all to himself. He had well-nigh deserved it for the crowning fight at St. Vincent: he was in the thickest of the struggle where the odds against us were twenty-seven to fifteen. It made Jervis an earl and Nelson a knight, and it opened a new era in naval strategy; for never from that day has British captain bent upon victory paused to count his enemy, or deferred his triumph in calculating the disparity of power except Lord Gambier at Aix.
Honours were both lavished on, and conferred by, the frail conqueror of the San Josef and the San Nicolas. Corporations flung their municipal freedoms at his feet, and gave him endless invitations to dinner. The only thing that he ever designated as dreadful was meeting a provincial mayor and alderman! They voted him more swords than he could ever hope to employ; but they were all outweighed by that which he himself presented to the Corporation of Norwich—the sword which had been surrendered to him by his gallant but vanquished foe on board the San Josef. Norwich will be proud of her trophy when no memory remains of her crapes and bombazeens or of the fair forms that wore them. The Government, too, made him rear-admiral of the blue. He was not an idle one: he went to sea in the Theseus surrounded by men whose hearts, though turbulent, beat in unison with the pulsations of his own: he twice bombarded Cadiz—lost his right arm before Teneriffe—reposed awhile at Bath to recruit his strength—received some pecuniary reward for the loss of it; and, after publicly thanking the Almighty for all His mercies and acknowledging the lightness of His visitations, was again entrusted to save his country by destroying the then enemies of all mankind. With a squadron of observation he scoured the Mediterranean, and after a search unparalleled in its nature, and carrying despair to every heart but his own, he came upon the French at Aboukir and made 1798 for ever memorable in England by the well-won victory which he achieved at the Nile. If honours poured on him after the affair at St. Vincent, they descended now in an avalanche. His king made him a peer who among men was peerless. Parliament thanked him: the nation adored him. Russia endowed him with coloured ribbands—the Sultana stuffed his mouth with sugar-candy—public companies enrolled him among their members. ‘Nelson-squares,’ and ‘streets,’ and ‘terraces,’ arose without number; and curates were weary of christening an endless succession of Horatios. As for Naples, which country he had saved from the very jaws of the French, the people there when he landed nearly killed him with kindness, and did all but devour him. The king, queen, and the entire court, kissed his very feet. He turned with something like disgust from all their homage, and his honest tongue confessed that he despised those whom it was his duty to save, and that he loathed in his very soul the entire court, if not the universal people. He designated the men as scoundrels: the women were what the author of the old ballad of ‘Nancy Dawson’ says that well-known lady was, and they cared as little to keep it from their neighbours; and he brushed away the imprecation on his lips, launched against the Neapolitan ladies, to kiss the hand of Emma Hamilton! But there was a distinction, though we are not going to show where it lay.
From the same year to that which closed the century, 1800, his presence was all but ubiquitous in the Mediterranean, and his name was uttered with awe and reverence all over the world. Within this period he became rear-admiral of the red, and Naples made him Duke of Bronté, in return for his having saved the nation from entire destruction. Within the same period is on record that dark event connected with the name of Carracciolo, to which we will hereafter allude: let it suffice to say here that after sweeping the Mediterranean of the enemies of England, and doing a world of good to those who were not worthy of being reckoned her friends—after executing all entrusted to him to accomplish, and rendering the name of England a tower of strength and pride throughout the world—Nelson returned home across Europe. He did not set out without first writing a sensible letter to the Pope, whom he had restored to Rome, in better fashion than Oudinot lately followed in behalf of Pio Nono. According to the prophecy of honest old Father M’Cormick, Nelson may be said to have taken Rome with his ships—a feat of which he reminds the Pope and remains his ‘very obedient servant.’ That his progress from Leghorn to Hamburgh was one of such triumph as the world had never seen may be readily believed; for no human being had ever deserved such ovation. When he landed at Yarmouth the earth seemed to heave to salute him. Myriads of men blessed him, wept over him, hailed him with shouts—in the warmth of their welcome they did all but pay him divine honours. And his wife—how did she spring forward in exultation and enduring love, impatient to meet the boat that bore her heroic husband? Alas! Lady Nelson was quietly awaiting his arrival at Nerot’s hotel in town, and so cold and unsatisfactory was her greeting when the idol of the nation stepped into her presence that the incense of London adulation must have proved savoury by comparison.
Ere he had leisure to sun his laurels he was again afloat, and in the first year of the present century he passed the wild and stormy steep of Elsinore. The battle was a Titanic struggle, and giants of the same blood grappled with each other. Equal was the valour, and if our compelled rather than willing foes had the advantage in means of assault the better wisdom was ours, without which prowess is but a flail apt to wound the skull of him who wields it. The battle of the Baltic, so gigantically fought and inimitably won, placed on Nelson’s brow the coronet of a viscount; but he did not quit the Baltic until he had fluttered the Russian fleet at Revel, and, when he returned to give a report of his mission accomplished, England already needed him for the fulfilment of another. Napoleon was at Boulogne, and, with a French army, threatening invasion. What the feeling of the times was in the parsonages on the Sussex coast—is it not written in the letters of Peter Plimley? What Nelson’s feelings were may be divined from that saying of his, that the French might come any way they pleased, but that they should not come by sea! England trusted him, and he kept his word as far as in him lay. If he did not destroy the Boulogne flotilla, he at least demonstrated that it could not issue from harbour without his permission nor put out to sea without being destroyed. Boulogne has, in some degree, benefited by the rough messengers which he flung into the port as visiting cards to intimate that he and his followers were outside. Some hundred weights of good English iron were projected into the town, and out of them are the gaspipes constructed which are now laid down in the Bassa Ville and the suburb of Capecure!
While thus giving peace to innumerable homes in England, he was ever, amidst war’s loudest thunder, endeavouring to found a home of peace for himself: that home was at Merton, in Surrey, where it was vouchsafed to him for a very brief season. The name of Merton is more closely connected with great men and great acts than many of our readers may be aware, and it was the fitting resting-place for a man who desired to gain breathing time between his heroic deeds. It was the birthplace of that Walter de Merton to whose liberality some of our readers may possibly be indebted for the instruction they may have received at Oxford—not that Merton College has been very famous for turning out good, at least great, scholars. According to a witty master of that College, it ought to have possessed more learning than any other in the University; for, said he, ‘many scholars brought much knowledge there and left it all behind them.’ Their founder, however, possessed both legal learning and religious wisdom. The law boasts of him as one of the great Chancellors, and the Church approvingly points to him as an exemplary Bishop of Rochester. For much of his learning, and something of his wisdom, he is indebted to the accomplished Augustine canons who cultivated both in the old convent founded by Gilbert Norman in 1115, and the prior of which sat in Parliament as a mitred abbot. It was at Merton that the early French invasion under Louis the Dauphin, made with the intent of driving Henry III. from his inheritance, was compensated for in 1217, by the treaty of peace forced upon the French prince. It was at Merton that the able De Burgh found refuge from his insatiable enemies; above all, it was here that were enacted the famous statutes of Merton. The Parliament of Henry III., which enacted those statutes, will be further ever-memorable for the unshakable firmness with which the barons—those reformers before the Reformation—withstood the insidious overtures of the ambitious prelates for the introduction of the imperial and canon laws. It was at Merton that was uttered a cry as famous, as significant, and as important in its result as the battle signal of Trafalgar. It was there that the barons shouted that famous shout—‘Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari!’
Of all these things which have conferred undying celebrity on the banks of the little river Wandle, Nelson probably knew nothing, and, if possible, cared less. But, notwithstanding this, we repeat that the locality which had been illustrated by humanity, by patriotism, by liberality, and by love of freedom, was a becoming spot whereon to spread the carpet of repose for him whose humanity was as great as his courage—whose patriotism was without a stain—whose liberality was ever extended without selfishness, and whose love of freedom made him the invincible foe of the nation that was endeavouring to enslave the world.
Had he been less liberal and more considerate for himself than for others he might have preserved Merton for his daughter—he would not have been compelled to sell his diamonds—and Merton itself need not have passed to those inheritors of other men’s patrimony—the money-lending Israelites.
For the fearful fight at Copenhagen, in which never were greater perils of navigation overcome, nor had there ever been in sea-fight more of English blood profusely shed—for this fight and victory Nelson received a token of honour from the Sultan; but his own Government granted no medals to the victors. They were permitted to wear the orders sent them by foreign princes, but no such honours awaited them at the hands of those who interpreted, and, perhaps, influenced, the will of King George. The people gave what the Ministry denied; and when the father of Nelson calmly closed his eyes on this world, in the year 1802, almost the last sounds that fell upon his ear were sounds of praise for his noble son. Nelson’s brother, the Rev. Dr. William Nelson, thought Lord Walpole cared little for his connection with the Nelson family, or he would have conferred Burnham Thorpe on the son of the late incumbent—that is to say, on himself. This reverend gentleman certainly does little credit to his profession, even taking him by his own description. When there was a report of his becoming successor to the yet living, but indisposed, Dean of Exeter, he wrote to his brother—‘I wish it may be so. If you see Mr. Addington soon, you may offer my vote for the University of Cambridge for members of Parliament, and for the county of Norfolk to any candidate he may wish.’ ‘The dean’ (adds Dr. Pettigrew) ‘died on July 15, and Nelson applied to Mr. Addington, but Dr. Nelson was not appointed. Exeter failing, in a short time he directed his views to Durham,’ and he hinted his wishes in a letter to Lady Hamilton. After reminding her that he is a Doctor of Divinity of the University of Cambridge, and that such a dignified personage is as much superior to a mere Scottish M.D. ‘as an arch-angel is to an arch-fiend,’ this man, who had little in him of the angelic and still less of the arch-angelic, offers the lady a bribe of Norfolk beafins; and, having thus impressed her with his dignity, and purchased as he thought her good will for ‘half-a-dozen apple-trees,’ thus concludes his very undignified epistle:—‘I see by the papers that there is a stall vacant at Durham—I suppose worth a thousand a year—in the gift of the Bishop (Barrington). I remember some years ago, when the Duke of Portland was Prime Minister, he secured one for Dr. Poyntz, at Durham. There is another vacant at York (if not filled up), in the gift of the archbishop; but I don’t know the value—no very great sum, I believe.’ So very illogical a person was as unsuccessful as he deserved to be. Lord Nelson’s chaplain on board the Vanguard at the Nile fared better, and merited so to fare. On Nelson’s application, Lord Eldon thought himself bound in public duty to pass over his own personal wishes and also the strong claims which individuals had upon him to be attentive to their welfare. Nelson’s chaplain at the Nile had a prior claim: and the Rev. Mr. Comyn received his appointment accordingly to the living asked for—that of Bridgham. While treating of the clerical connections of Nelson, we cannot omit noticing another trait in the brother who so little resembled him. He thus writes to Lady Hamilton:—‘The election for the University took place yesterday (July 5, 1802): the whole was over in five minutes: Mr. Pitt and Lord Euston are re-elected. I had a bow this morning from Billy in the Senate-house—so I made up to him and said a word or two to him.’