They were assailing Corsica now—that stronghold of French power in the Mediterranean—and their needs, in the cruel distance from England, were insistent. It seemed absurd to suppose a woman could help them, yet Nelson, his right hand, thought it worth the trial, and Sir John Jervis wrote, full of apologies and suppressed eagerness, direct to the lady herself. Letters to the Ambassador were certainly supervised in the King’s interest. To her they would be empty compliment and pass safely enough. It may give some notion of their straits if we glimpse into Nelson’s letter to my Lord Hood, a little before.
“We are really without firing, wine, beef, pork, flour, and almost without water. Not a rope, canvas, nail or twine in the ship. The ship is so light she cannot hold her side to the wind. We are certainly in a bad plight at present.”
And yet with all these shortcomings, the stronghold of Corsica, Bastia, must be attacked—the more desperately needful because Toulon was again in French hands through the machinations of a little Corsican artillery officer to be known in future as Buonaparte. Strange that two such stars as Nelson and Buonaparte should rush so swiftly to the same zenith in the same years.
Often enough Nelson wished, pacing the quarterdeck in those days, that he could see, instead of the highlands of Corsica, Uovo and Nuovo rounding softly from blue seas, and hear the ringing cordial welcome of the Lady of the Embassy.
“She’s more man than any of them,” he brooded. “I warrant we should not lack for stores if she had her word in it!”
He remembered the promptitude that had supplied the troops for Toulon. She seemed a fair guardian spirit, but alas, too far away. He would have liked her sympathy also in all his new honours, bought by the loss of an eye—yet not too dearly.
Still, he wrote; Sir John Jervis wrote; and she responded eagerly. Ships came tossing down to Corsica, safeguarded by English frigates, loaded gunwale deep with necessities. She bought with extraordinary acumen. One would say she had a seaman’s instinct. They had but to hint and it was done. Amazing part for Emma of Edgware Row! She spent her own money when the Queen’s ran short. The two women had a Neapolitan agent secret as death, who bought for them, chartered the little coasting vessels, and while the two played cards and laughed at the ceremonious Courts and the idle Neapolitan women, sent their bounty Corsica-way and made his own comfortable commission. It was exceedingly well managed.
As for Nelson, beef and pork, rope and flour, were more to him than diamonds to a court beauty, and in his soul he loved her with a generous comrade-love for the help she gave them. Never a light story of her in the Fleet now, if he were present.
“That woman,” he would cry, his face flashing with energy, “is an honour to the name of Englishwoman. She has the Fleet on her heart night and day, and the wit of a man to carry out the needful. Here’s a health to the Patroness of the Fleet!”
And they would drink it standing, in the wine of the country she sent them and with the “Hip, hip, hurra!” Nelson had taught her at Naples.