Urging the horses on, the men brought Alistair down from the rise and onto the handsome stone bridge with its two arches and the stone aqueduct forming one of the parapets, then across it and up a slight rise toward the imposing great house: ‘Golden Hall we calls it. Thass where the Pembrokes lives.’ As they approached, the driver held the reins between his knees, brought his hands to his mouth, and uttered a powerful ‘Halloo!’ and to the front door came not one of the older Pembrokes but the most ravishingly beautiful young woman Alistair had ever seen, blond hair neatly braided, very white skin, flashing dark eyes, a hint of dimples at the chin and mysterious hollows in the cheeks. She wore, that day when he first saw her, a simple white dress, gathered high above her waist and held in place by a pink ribbon whose carefully tied bow streamed in front. He even noticed her shoes, delicate slippers with no heels, but then he noticed something disheartening: she seemed, in that first glance, strangely older than he, perhaps even nineteen or twenty, and he supposed, with a sense almost of terror, that she was either married or engaged to some young man of the district.
‘My name’s Prudence,’ she said lightly as she came forward to extend her hand as he dropped off the carriage, and when he took it he felt quivering shocks run up his arm.
The five days he spent at Golden Hall with Prudence Pembroke and her family were an awakening to young Alistair, for even though his family, the Wrenthams of All Saints, was affiliated in some way with the Earls of Gore back in England, they had no sugar plantation nor the tremendous wealth that stemmed from the astute sale of muscovado and rum to hungry factors in London. He had never seen such a well-run plantation, nor a mansion like Golden Hall, nor a family like the Pembrokes: great tables of highly polished wood, framed oil paintings on the wall, portraits of both Sir Hugh and his powerful friend in Parliament, William Pitt, servants in military-type uniforms, and signs of luxury everywhere. The conversation, too, was what he called ‘elegant,’ for it dealt half with Jamaican problems, half with those in London, and he learned with dismay that fairly soon the Pembrokes, including Prudence, would be returning to their London home.
On that first full day at Golden Hall his embarrassment began, because, as he had anticipated, Prudence did turn out to be nineteen, more than three years older than he, but eight or nine years older in sophistication and her interest in the opposite sex. She was a kind girl and not boastful about her reception by men, but she could not help dropping intimations that in both Jamaica and London young men had found her attractive, or that they had taken her to this ball and that, and the more she said, the more clear it became that he at a callow sixteen would have no chance at all to engage her attention.
But as a well-bred young lady she knew it was her responsibility to help entertain this friend of her family, so she took him on an exploration of the plantation, an inspection of the building from which the dark rum of Trevelyan issued, and even an excursion back to Croome Plantation, where he met one of the owner’s sons, a young man in his late twenties. Is he the one she’s engaged to? he wondered in a flush of jealousy, but he was relieved later when she whispered: ‘He’s such a bore. All he thinks of are horses and hunting.’
On the third day, when he was helping her over a stile that bridged a fence, she stumbled on one of the descending steps and fell inescapably into his arms, and he felt an enormous urge to hold her there and embrace her and even kiss her, but he could do none of these things. Instead, to his astonishment, she kissed him, crying: ‘You’re a perfect gentleman, Midshipman Wrentham, and the girl who gets you will be mighty lucky.’ And off they went to watch the slaves tending the still-unharvested canes.
It was that kiss which set his mind to thinking seriously about her, and although he realized that she could never be interested in him, he was increasingly interested in her, and late that night he was projected bolt upright in bed: My God! I do believe she’s the kind of young woman Captain Nelson’s been looking for. And he ticked off the requirements he had heard Nelson expound so often: Loyal she would be, of that I’m convinced. Her parents have brought her up right. And she comes from an important family. They’d help him gain promotions. She’d look good, too, as an officer’s wife. Know what to do ashore. But then he thought: Is she rich? Obviously the family has money, but will any of it come to her?
He could not return to sleep, so convinced was he that if Prudence Pembroke was assured of funds, she was the ideal wife for his captain, and when day broke he was down early, awaiting her. In her absence he tried, with awkwardly self-revealing silences, to question his hosts regarding their plans for their daughter: ‘What happens to a huge place like this when …?’ He could not say the phrase you die?
Mr. Pembroke had obviously contemplated this problem, for he said easily: ‘That’s always been a problem with us sugar planters, all of us. How to pass the plantation along without allowing it to be broken up.’
‘How do you do that?’
‘We always hand it on to the oldest son. That’s the English way, the safe way.’
‘But if you have no son?’
‘Then the family can fall into difficulties. Avaricious sons-in-law and all that. But fortunately, we do have a fine son—in England now, working in the office of our factors to learn how the sugar trade is controlled.’
‘You are fortunate,’ and the conversation ended as Prudence came in, wearing bright red ribbons in her hair and about her waist. She announced that she was taking Alistair out to the far field to see cattle recently imported from England, and when they stood together, leaning on the rails that fenced the small holding pen in which the imported animals were being kept till they acclimatized, Alistair asked, audaciously: ‘Prudence, are you rich?’
‘What a silly question, Alistair. That’s impudent!’
‘I mean it. Would your parents allow you enough funds to pave the way for a naval officer … that is, if you married one?’
She turned to face him, and said gently, almost tenderly: ‘Alistair, you’re a dear boy. Really you are. Handsome and well-mannered. But you are just a boy and I couldn’t possibly …’
‘I don’t mean me!’ he blurted out, astonished rather than hurt.
‘Who then?’
‘Captain Nelson!’ And in the agitated moments that followed he painted such a magnificent word portrait of Horatio Nelson, twenty-two years old, able, good family, brave beyond imagination, destined for high command, and seriously seeking a wife if she met his requirements, that she had to listen. Encouraged by her willingness to follow what he was saying, he told her of Nelson’s heroic fight with the polar bear, of his leaping down into the small boat to take the surrender of the American pirate, and of how his men adored him as the finest young officer of his time.
They spent all that morning talking of nothing but Nelson and of what life with him would be like. ‘He would,’ said Alistair, ‘be faithful unto death.’ He spoke so persuasively that she finally said, very quietly: ‘I have many young men, here and in London, but never one young man. Your Captain Nelson sounds like … I mean, you make him out to be a hero.’
‘He is.’ And then a clever idea exploded between them, each entertaining it at the same moment, but he voiced it first: ‘Ride back with me to Port Royal and let me introduce …’
‘Yes. Yes, I should like to meet your Captain Nelson.’
‘We mustn’t tarry, you know. He’s due to be shipped out and we could miss him.’
Of course, when they proposed such a trip to the older Pembrokes, the latter were amused: ‘Young women do not go traipsing off to meet young men to whom they’ve not been introduced.’
‘But I would introduce them,’ Alistair cried. ‘Nelson’s a fine man. You’d like him.’
‘I’m sure we would,’ Mr. Pembroke said. ‘England exists because of her navy, none better in the world.’
‘It would be unthinkable for you to go to Port Royal, Prudence,’ her mother said firmly, and Alistair replied: ‘But if I hurry back and tell Nels
on what a marvelous daughter you have …’
‘Alistair!’ Mrs. Pembroke said. ‘We’re not trying to get rid of Prudence. We’re very happy with her, and in due course … She knows scores of eligible young men.’
‘But not Horatio Nelson.’ He said this with such force that the three Pembrokes had to pay attention, and each thought: This boy is no fool. And if he says that Nelson is such a catch, perhaps we should listen.
Mrs. Pembroke said quietly: ‘Every planter in Jamaica owes the Royal Navy a substantial debt. They keep us free. Protect our lifeline to London. We would be honored to have your Captain Nelson spend a week with us, providing he can break away from his duties,’ and forthwith Mrs. Pembroke went to her desk and wrote out a courteous and encouraging note to Horatio Nelson, inviting him to visit Trevelyan Plantation as the guest of a family who appreciated the fine services provided by the navy.
‘Please deliver this to your captain,’ she told Alistair as she handed it to him, and he said enthusiastically as he accepted: ‘We will all remember this day.’
But when Alistair Wrentham reached the end of the road and took the skiff over to Port Royal and hurried back to the fort, he was shattered by a fierce disappointment: ‘Captain Nelson received orders yesterday and sailed for his new assignment this morning.’ Numbed, young Wrentham moved along the familiar corridors of the fort, bemoaning the fact that he had arranged the fateful meeting between Nelson and Prudence Pembroke one day too late, for he believed that such a marriage had been ordained by the gods of history. And when the final irony reached him he shuddered with regret, for the last task Nelson performed before sailing was to leave a note for Wrentham: ‘As of this date, I have officially recommended, in recognition of your exemplary record, that you be promoted to the rank of master’s mate in the Royal Navy. Horatio Nelson, Captain.’
Tears came to Wrentham’s eyes as he held the paper, of special value not only because the promotion was a stepping stone to full lieutenancy but because it contained Nelson’s signature. ‘Too late,’ he muttered, fighting back dismay. ‘Too late. She was the wife he sought, I know it.’
At that moment, Nelson, aboard the ship that was taking him from Jamaica forever, had reached the point in the Caribbean at which the ramparts of the fort he had commanded so ably began to sink below the horizon. Saluting the rugged old building as it disappeared, he reflected on his continuing bad luck: Here I am at twenty-two years old heading home without a wife and without a command of my own. A mere passenger on this tedious boat, carrying bags of sugar and casks of rum instead of guns. His final judgment on Port Royal as it faded from view was a bitter one: That famous earthquake they keep talking about, better it had submerged the entire town.
The next four years were not the most disappointing that Nelson would know—we’ll shortly see him in worse—but they were agonizing. He had no occupation but sailor, and here he was ashore with no ship and no promise of any. He was on half-pay of only a hundred pounds a year—charwoman’s wages he called it—which he knew was inadequate to support a wife and the children he wanted.
It was during this spell of idleness that he crystallized his vision of himself. ‘I am a seaman,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘I was born to command some great ship in battle. There is no man in England, or France either, who has a better knowledge of seamanship and naval tactics. I must find me a ship, or my life is cut in half, useless and to no purpose.’
At twenty-four, pledging that the rest of his life would be spent in conflict with the French, he decided to spend his idle hours learning that language, so on his meager allowance he hied himself to France to study both the language and French customs against the day when he would profit from both. But alas! When he reached the house in the small provincial town where he had decided to settle, he found it occupied by an extraordinary English gentleman, a preacher with a hospitable wife and many children, including two remarkable daughters in their early twenties. They dressed well, spoke French without an accent, played the piano like virtuosos, and talked intelligently on any subject thrown before them.
In addition, they were beautiful, flirtatious and amusing, but best of all, to Nelson’s thinking, it was rumored that they would have substantial dowries, so it was not long before he abandoned his French lessons—he would try four times later to master that difficult language, and fail—and started a serious courtship. To a friend he wrote: ‘I am at last in love with a young woman admirably suited to be a naval officer’s wife,’ but curiously, he never in any of his letters identified which of the sisters he had settled upon. And then the love-stricken letters ceased; he had learned that whereas his Miss Andrews did have a dowry, it was a modest one, not nearly so large as he felt entitled to. He broke off his courtship and left France in a pout.
On 14 January 1784 he began a series of extraordinary letters to older acquaintances who might conceivably help him, and one summarizes the rest: ‘There arrives a time in a man’s life when his influential friends must either find him a situation in which he can rest secure for the rest of his life, or give him outright enough money to secure his position in society and the world. For me that critical moment has now arrived.’
With appalling frankness he informed a friend that he had lately found in England a young woman worthy in every respect of marriage to an officer, except that she had no fortune. Since he, Nelson, was now receiving no more than a hundred and fifty from his navy half-pay, would his friend please assure him a yearly gift of another hundred? Furthermore, he hoped the friend would do everything possible, knock on all doors, to find him an appointment to a ship or at least ‘some public office, where I would not have to work? There must be many such jobs if you can but find them.’
Since his friend could not promise an annuity or find him a sinecure, the man who was destined to become the greatest naval genius in history considered his career ended at twenty-five, and in early 1784 he decided to abandon the sea and run for Parliament! For several hectic months he threw his considerable energies in that direction, but his slight figure and unruly hair, which he wore in a huge, unkempt pigtail, and his unimpressive voice charmed few, and his try at public office was a miserable failure.
At this low point, one of his friends, responding to his cries for help, prevailed upon the Lords of the Admiralty to give Nelson command of a small 24-gun frigate, the Boreas, headed for the West India Station.
Weak with joy at this unexpected reprieve, he informed his naval friends: ‘A ship again. Aprowl in a sea I know well! Defending islands I love against the French! Never before have I known such exaltation!’
His new assignment, an important one, was not without its temporary drawbacks, because when he reported to the Boreas, his first lieutenant, former Midshipman Alistair Wrentham, promoted from watch duty at Port Royal, informed him: ‘Admiralty has arranged for you to carry with you a dozen young midshipmen from good families, oldest fourteen …’
‘Youngest?’
‘Eleven, my nephew, destined to be the next Earl of Gore.’ Nelson coughed, and Wrentham continued: ‘You’re also to deliver to Barbados a rather difficult woman, Lady Hughes and her unlovely daughter Rosy.’
‘What do you mean, unlovely?’
‘A big blob of a girl, high giggle, pitiful complexion, and desperate for a husband.’
As soon as Nelson saw the unpalatable pair coming down the dock accompanied by three servants, he exercised his captain’s prerogatives and snapped: ‘I will not take them aboard my ship. Tell them scat!’
Lieutenant Wrentham smiled, nodded as if he were about to order the women away, then said: ‘I think you should know, sir, Lady Hughes is the wife of Sir Edward Hughes, admiral in charge of the West Indies Station, and it was his suggestion that she come out with you.’
Nelson rocked back and forth, studied the sky, and said quietly: ‘Wrentham, bring Lady Hughes and her entourage aboard,’ and Alistair hurried off to do so.
That night, after the women had retired to their quarter
s, Wrentham asked Nelson: ‘What did you think of the daughter, sir?’
‘Repulsive.’
‘Begging your pardon, sir, but isn’t it obvious that she’s being taken out to the West Indies Station so she can find a husband? All those young officers and no English women.’
‘What are you saying, Wrentham?’
‘Mind your step, Captain, if I may be so bold as to suggest.’
‘How?’
‘Lady Hughes will want you for her son-in-law, of that I’m sure.’
It was as painful a cruise as Nelson would ever make, for Lady Hughes was obnoxious, sticking her nose into everything on her husband’s behalf, while daughter Rosy grew more impossible each time he saw her. Between the mother’s blatant attempts to match Rosy and Nelson, and the girl’s porcine behavior—she made noises when she ate, her fat lips slobbering over liquids—Nelson would gladly have surrendered the command he had sought for so long.
‘They’re horrid,’ he told Wrentham during one night watch, and that was before he heard the worst. The incredible news was delivered by Wrentham: ‘Sir, are you aware that according to naval rules, since Lady Hughes, her daughter and her three servants are technically your guests aboard the Boreas, you’re responsible for their passage?’
‘What do you mean by responsible?’
‘I mean, as the host, you must pay their fare—a hundred and ten pounds, I believe.’
‘Good God, Wrentham! That’s more than half my pay.’
‘Navy rules, sir.’ And now whenever Nelson looked at his two ungainly passengers he saw not only the boorishness of the mother and the grossness of the daughter, but also the flight of his pay. Since they were related to Admiral Hughes, he was obliged to be exceptionally polite, so one evening as they dined while the Boreas neared Barbados, he feigned courtesy and attention when Lady Hughes asked archly: ‘Captain Nelson, am I correct in believing that you are not married?’