No place for regrets, now, he told himself one day as he watched Nelson launch his tempestuous courtship of Mrs. Nisbet. Frustrated so many times before, and needing money now more than ever, Nelson also felt that he must not allow this dazzling opportunity to escape, and since Fanny Nisbet apparently felt the same way, a love match was under way. But there was one small cloud threatening this dreamy landscape: Mr. Herbert pointed out that his niece had contracted to serve as his housekeeper, and he could not see his way clear to releasing her from those duties for another eighteen months. So the love-smitten couple had to waste all of 1785 and much of the next year in courtship rather than marriage, but since this occurred on the lovely little island of Nevis, the long months acquired a fairy-tale aspect, and that kept Nelson content.
Only one weakness in the marriage plan kept intruding, that Herbert’s natural daughter might move back into his affections and thus imperil Mrs. Nisbet’s fortune. But Wrentham made discreet inquiries and brought Nelson news that was both reassuring and scandalous: ‘Martha is stubbornly going ahead with the marriage her father refuses to approve—and who do you think the man is?’
‘I’ve no interest.’
‘You will. It’s a Mr. Hamilton, and he’s related to that other Hamilton from Nevis, the famous Alexander who played such a despicable role in America’s revolution against us and who now parades as one of the leaders of the new nation.’
‘I refuse to associate with traitors or friends of traitors,’ Nelson said angrily, but Alistair soothed him: ‘No need to see the American scoundrel or the Nevis one, either. Remember, father and daughter don’t speak. The fortune is secured to Fanny.’
So on 11 March 1787, in a lavish ceremony at Mr. Herbert’s Nevis mansion, Nelson, attended by no less a person than Prince William, son of George III and later to be crowned as King William IV, marched beneath a festooned bower to where Fanny Nisbet and her young son waited. It was a gala affair, this wedding of the promising young naval officer and an heiress whose huge fortune would spur his career. But the future king, known to his friends as Silly Billy, took a more cautious view, for in a letter to a friend he made four statements: ‘I gave the bride away. She is pretty. She has a great deal of money. Nelson is in love with her. But he needs a nurse more than he does a wife.’ Ominously, he added: ‘I wish that he may not repent the step he has taken.’
Wrentham, suppressing his apprehensions about the marriage, joined the other junior officers that evening at a banquet, and they congratulated themselves on having, in a small way, helped their gifted friend achieve the financial security he had so long and heretofore so fruitlessly pursued. As Wrentham, thinking of his own improved chances for promotion if Nelson prospered in the service, reminded his fellows: ‘A rising tide lifts all ships in the harbor. When Nelson climbs the ladder of preferment, we climb with him.’
Then everything seemed to fall apart. With a shock that threatened to unnerve him, Nelson discovered that his wife was not five years younger than he, but five months older. He then learned that Mr. Herbert, owner of this immense sugar fortune, was by no means disposed to settle upon his niece any sum ensuring her £2,000 a year; he was willing to provide an annuity of £100, which, with the hundred that Nelson had in his own right, meant that the newlyweds could count upon a meager £200 a year until such time as Mr. Herbert died, when the whole fortune would presumably pass to Mrs. Nelson.
But now Lieutenant Wrentham brought appalling news: ‘Martha Hamilton, Herbert’s recently married daughter, has effected a reconciliation with her father, and it’s she who will inherit the entire fortune.’ When Nelson, in a state of trembling agitation, asked Mr. Herbert about this, he was told that ‘blood is thicker than water,’ and that furthermore, Nelson would be wise to tend to his own affairs, since the merchants of the Caribbean were about to bring legal charges against him for interfering with their trade with Boston and New York.
Nelson’s enemies laid a devious trap. Knowing him to be rigorously honest and an officer devoted to any printed instructions, they used decoys to let him know that two land-based officials of the English navy yards in the Caribbean were stealing governmental funds, and although Wrentham warned against precipitate action, Nelson came out raging like a bull, publicly charged the men with theft, and then recoiled in stunned amazement when they fought back, bringing their own charges against him and suing him for the frightening sum of £40,000.
His last days in the Caribbean, a sea he had grown to love for its opulence, its marvelous islands and their safe harbors, were miserable. Tied to a near-penniless wife five years older than he had been led to believe, saddled with the care of a boy he had not fathered, scorned by the powerful men on the sugar estates, and hounded by lawyers pursuing their lawsuits against him, he felt so badgered from all sides that he cried aloud like Job: ‘Why did I ever sail into this accursed sea?’ In his despair he overlooked the fact that it was in these waters that he identified his true merits—his courage, his fortitude, his inventiveness, his ability to command men—those attributes so essential to military leadership and so often left undeveloped by would-be commanders. It was in the Caribbean that he forged his character, almost terrifying in its single-mindedness, shameful in its willingness to beg and kowtow to authority if one command of a ship could be obtained. He was a product of the Caribbean, as he may have foreseen when as a beginning officer he had rejected that glamorous assignment in the New York fleet in order to take a command in the Caribbean ‘because that’s the station for gaining honour.’ In his dark days he may have rejected the Caribbean, but when he sailed away from it, he was one of the most resolute men in the world at that time. Great sea battles are often won on shore, where future captains are hardening themselves for the day of test.
But, as always, he felt that others owed him funds for his career and recommendations for promotion to better assignment. ‘Why,’ he asked Wrentham plaintively, ‘doesn’t Admiral Hughes over in Barbados do anything to defend me against my enemies or promote me among my friends?’ Alistair laughed: ‘You must know that Hughes is a ninny. Spent all his time doing nothing but trying to find a husband for Rosy.’
‘What’s happened to the little pudding?’
‘Didn’t you hear? He offered young Lieutenant Kelly who sailed with us five thousand pounds if he’d marry Rosy. But Kelly was no fool. Married that lively cousin of your wife’s.’
‘And Rosy?’
Wrentham laughed, and said with great warmth: ‘It made me feel good when it happened. Lady Hughes and the admiral combed the entire fleet but could press-gang no one. However, an impecunious major in the 67th Infantry Regiment, a nobody named John Browne, finally took the bait, picked up the whole five thousand and Rosy as well. I attended the wedding, and you never saw a happier pair—Rosy, who never expected to find a husband, and good old Browne, grinning with upper teeth not meeting the lower, because he’d never expected to have a fortune. And off to one side Admiral Hughes, looking as if he’d just won a battle against the French.’
Nelson was forgiving: ‘Hughes can’t be as bad as everyone says. After all, he did lose his eye in combat and I respect him for it.’
‘Have you never heard how he really lost it?’
‘In battle with Rodney against the French, I presumed.’
‘No. He was in his kitchen in Barbados trying to kill a giant cockroach with a fork. Missed the dirty beast but stabbed himself in the eye.’
Now came the terrible years which would have destroyed a lesser man. Most men did not realize how terrible they were, because they were accompanied by no hurricanes, no exploding fires at night, no sudden deaths, no incarceration, no dismemberment, no imbecility. What the years did bring were fierce storms that did not ruffle the surface of a country lake but that tore at a human soul, and left it so ravaged that the visible outer shell might have disintegrated had not the owner firmed his courage and his will and cried: ‘No! It cannot be so! I will not let this happen!’
When
Nelson brought H.M.S. Boreas home to the Thames in England he was handed the instructions he feared: ‘Your ship is to be decommissioned and your crew paid off.’ The words paid off had a sinister ring, for they meant that the ordinary sailors who had served long and faithfully would be thrown ashore with a few pounds—in some cases, only four or five—and no promise of employment or money for medical bills in case they had lost an arm or a leg. Midshipmen received nothing, and even the officers left the ship they had tended so faithfully without enough pay to enable them to live decently in the empty years ahead.
Of course, if France kicked up her heels, and ominous rumors kept coming out of that unfortunate country, the Boreas would be expected to sail staffed by a group of Englishmen like the ones who were now being tossed aside. So Horatio Nelson left his first senior command with only half-pay and some assurance that he would be recalled to active service ‘if and when the need arises.’
What was he to do at age twenty-nine—with a new wife, a young son, no fortune, and not even a house into which he might move? He did what other officers like himself did in peacetime: he moved back into his father’s home at Norfolk. There he tended the garden, planting vegetables in the spring, flowers in the summer, and ‘neating up the place’ throughout the year.
Nelson’s neighbors, watching him occupied with rural tasks and seeing him in attendance at fairs where vegetables were judged and loaves of bread compared, accepted him as one of themselves, and when this happened a curious shift occurred: everyone began calling him familiarly by his boyhood name, Horace. Weeks would go by without his ever hearing his real name, and before long he started thinking of himself as Farmer Horace.
But he never lost that other side of his nature, for often after attending some rural festival, he would return to his father’s rectory and sit at a desk long into the night, writing innumerable long and pleading letters to his wealthy friends, imploring them to find him an assignment with the navy, and in a shocking number of cases, beseeching them not to lend him money but to ‘settle upon me that degree of money you can well afford and which I need so desperately if I am to maintain my position as one of the king’s naval captains.’
His pleas, and there were scores of them each year, went unanswered; he was given no ship; he was the recipient of a miserable amount of half-pay; and for five desperate years he continued to live by begging from his father’s meager largesse, all the while depriving his faithful but tedious wife of new dresses and the other small enjoyments to which she was entitled. The Horace Nelsons were living in genteel poverty, for their £200 a year allowed them no frivolities and not too many essentials.
However, the couple did scrimp so that Horace could, at intervals, make the journey to London, where he trudged from one government office to another, begging for a ship. He told the Lords of the Admiralty: ‘I’m trained to be a naval officer. I know how to command a ship, ensure the courage of my crew, and fight the enemy as he has never been fought before. Sirs, I must have a ship.’ Never given a logical reason, he was consistently rebuffed.
And then late one afternoon in 1792, after he had dragged himself from one insulting interview to another, he chanced upon an old naval friend coming out of one of the Admiralty offices. It was his former first lieutenant, Alistair Wrentham, very handsome in the braid of a navy captain. Greeting each other with embraces, they repaired to a coffeehouse, where Wrentham reported with obvious pleasure that he had recently been given command of a 64-gun vessel headed for a patrol of the French coast, but as soon as he said these words he saw Nelson stiffen, and from this he deduced that his friend, six years older than himself and with a vastly superior understanding of ships, was ‘on the beach,’ with scant prospects of getting off.
‘I’m so sorry, Nelson. It’s so dashed unfair.’
‘What has caused this embargo against me? If you know, tell me.’
Wrentham drew back, studied his old captain, and asked: ‘Do you really want to know?’
‘I do, I do!’
Before speaking, Wrentham leaned forward and placed his two hands on those of his friend, as if to prevent him from taking violent action when he learned the explanation: ‘Nelson, you must know that word has circulated through the Admiralty condemning you as a very difficult man.’
Withdrawing his hands with a fierce tug, Nelson cried in great pain: ‘Difficult? I run my ship in proper style. I bring dignity and efficiency to the navy.’
Having launched this unpleasant discussion, Wrentham did not propose halting in midflight, and in firm tones he ticked off the accumulated complaints: ‘On your first day in Antigua, remember, you made that other fellow lower his broad pendant, forcibly, as the situation demanded.’
‘He had no right to it, Alistair. It was totally against the rules.’
‘You also provoked the French at Guadeloupe … could have been an international incident.’
‘No Frenchman fails to pay proper respect to a ship I command.’
‘Then you continued your warfare against the American smugglers.’
‘The Navigation Acts demanded that I chastise them.’
‘And chastise you did. Their captains are bringing suit against you in the London courts.’
‘Who circulated these charges against me at Admiralty?’
‘Admiral Hughes of the Barbados Station. He tells everyone that you are headstrong and difficult.’
‘You mean Ninny Hughes? Father of Rosy that he peddled through the fleet? The one who knocked out his own eye while trying to kill a cockroach?’
‘The same. I was informed by a friend in high office, Nelson, that you’re never to be given a ship unless the revolutionaries in France stir up trouble.’
Nelson heard this cynical strategy in silence, then, to Wrentham’s surprise, he lifted his coffee cup and held it delicately in the fingers of his right hand, twisting it this way and that. Only then did he control his anger sufficiently to permit speech: ‘Alistair, it’s been the same in all the navies of the world. In peacetime, what the high command wants is the polished gentleman who can manage a teacup in a lady’s salon, one who can meet the Turkish ambassador, who can keep his decks trim and whitestoned. And never, never do they want a true sailor like me who can command a ship and fight her with the total loyalty of my men. To hell with teacups,’ and he dashed the one he held to the floor with a great clatter that brought one of the serving maids running.
‘I am so sorry, my girl,’ he apologized. ‘It slipped.’
After the girl returned with another cup, he resumed: ‘But when the guns begin to roar and the coastline is endangered by some Spanish armada or French expeditionary force, then the navies of the world shout for men like me: “Come, save us … Drake, or Hawkins, or Rodney!” And always we respond, for we have no other occupation but to save the homeland.’
Afraid that he had revealed far more of himself than he intended, he looked rather sheepishly at Wrentham, then placed his hands on those of the young captain: ‘Alistair, it’s obvious that I envy you your command. I wish it were mine … to have a ship again …’ He hesitated, then pressed his hands more tightly: ‘But you must understand, dear friend, although I envy you, I do not resent you. You have your own career to make, and you’re off to a fine start.’ He was quiet for a moment before he concluded: ‘When France strikes and they call me back to command … maybe the entire battle fleet, I shall want you in charge of my starboard line. I can trust you, because I know you are not concerned only with teacups.’
If Nelson had said generously in London that he did not resent young Wrentham’s good fortune in getting a ship of sixty-four guns, on the lonely ride back to Norfolk he could not prevent a terrible indignation from overwhelming him: Boys! They’re placing boys in command, and we men in our thirties rust in idleness. While the coach bumped along, he reviewed his miserable situation: Saddled with a wife who grows more complaining each day, responsible for the education of a son not my own, defrauded by her uncle of a legacy I had e
very right to expect, and deprived of a ship by rumors … Grinding his fist into his knees, he concluded: My life’s in tatters and there’s no hope.
He was therefore in dismal condition when he reached home to find his wife distraught: ‘Oh, Horace! Two of the most dreadful men banged their way through our front door, demanded to know if I was the wife of the naval officer Nelson, and when I said yes, they thrust these papers at me.’
‘What papers?’
‘That lawsuit in Antigua. They’ve moved it to London and are demanding forty thousand pounds. Said that if you didn’t pay, you’d rot in prison for the rest of your life.’
In the rage that followed, Nelson did so many seemingly irrational things that his wife and father conspired to send a messenger to London to Captain Alistair Wrentham, whom Nelson had spoken of as the only friend he could trust, and when they learned that the young officer was a lineal member of the Earl of Gore’s family, they had hopes that he might help clear away the confusion that possessed Horace. With a promptness that surprised them, young Wrentham arrived in Norfolk to find that his old commander had packed his belongings and was preparing for a hasty flight to France.
‘My God, Horatio! What are you doing?’
To his surprise, Nelson fell upon him with an ardent embrace: ‘It’s so good to hear that name again, Alistair. Up here they call me Horace. And I really began to think of myself as Horace. But dammit, I’m a sea captain named Horatio, and a good one!’
‘But why the packing?’
‘Flight.’
‘To where?’
‘I don’t know. Those scoundrels in Antigua have moved their lawsuit against me to London … forty thousand pounds … prison for life if I don’t pay up.’ In a gesture of despair and futility, he cried in his high-pitched voice: ‘Where would I get forty thousand pounds?’