CHAPTER XVIII
THE NEAPOLITAN COURT
CAPTAIN HORATIO NELSON was at this time thirty-four years old, and far from despicable in person. He was slender almost to a fault and so small-boned that most observers classed him as a little man, which was far from true, since he touched middle height, and bore himself well and serenely except when suddenly agitated; and then his nervous temperament sparkled in his eyes and twitched his mobile lips. His brows were arched and gave a clear lift to the penetrating eye beneath; his forehead lofty and commanding. Yet it is possible these characteristics might be read into the face by later knowledge rather than by present observation, and to Emma, not so quick to read character as to feel and humour it insensibly, he appeared at first sight an ordinary sea captain in the ordinary plain uniform (devoid even of epaulettes) of the time. His consequence lay in the news he brought, and his interest to her personally in the fact that he had a petition from his Admiral, my Lord Hood, to be preferred at the Neapolitan Court, which she might raise her own consequence by aiding.
When they were alone, Sir William gave her the necessary outlines.
“I am impressed with the air of this young man, my love. He met the King with the utmost composure and appeared so full of business as to have room for nothing else. Important business indeed. Toulon is in our hands, but troops, troops are of all things needful and Lord Hood has sent the Agamemnon to beg for them. I know what the Queen’s mind will be, but the King’s jaw dropped. He is willing enough to take his subsidy from England, but not to spend a penny of it but on his own fancies. Work for my Emma!”
She opened the subject again with Nelson, whom she found in the reception room, turning over the ornaments on the tables with fingers curiously delicate for a man and of his profession. He had a tall, good-looking boy in attendance in midshipman’s uniform, dirk and all complete, whom he presented as his stepson Josiah Nisbet, and to whom Lady Hamilton overflowed with cordiality. Boys were her delight, she protested. No, of course he should not live aboard. The poor little fellow (who blushed to be so named) must need a change after that cruel cruising for weeks and months! Sir William’s Italian secretary should take him to see the sights, and she would talk with Captain Nelson.
Nisbet despatched, there was much to tell and hear. The long and weary blockade of Toulon.
“We got honour and salt beef, madam, not much else!” says he, leaning back on the fine silk of the settee as if a little wearied. “My good fellows have not had a morsel of fresh meat or vegetables for nineteen weeks and though I did my best to keep them amused and distracted, Your Ladyship will judge there was much sickness aboard. I have been luckier than some captains, but—”
“Hold! Not a word more.”
Up goes a fair commanding hand, loaded with sparkling rings, and the other touches the silver bell at her elbow. The lacquey outside comes hurrying at the quick tinkle.
“Tell Ferrari to have six boatloads of fruit and vegetables sent off to the Agamemnon in my name. The best in the market. And let it be done now.”
“Indeed, madam, words fail me to express my sense of your consideration!” the young Captain cries with warmth. “Your Ladyship shows a sensibility I can never forget. The world that hankers for victories ignores the poor fellows that win it for them. I thank you in their name. That fruit will be the sweeter to them coming from our Ambassadress.”
Indeed, it won his heart, which was at that time centred in his men. Never a commander more zealous for their good with all in his power. She touched the right string there.
“Indeed, sir, you have but to speak and have in Naples,” says she earnestly. “If you could but guess the terror and agony of the Queen’s mind with her sister in the hands of those French monsters, and Jacobinism rolling like the lava from Vesuvius ever nearer and nearer, you would comprehend your consequence here. Her only hope is England.”
“You don’t mention the King, madam?” says Nelson in some surprise.
“I don’t mention him because he has not even the merit of being neutral to his wise Queen’s English policy, but is forever angling after his brother on the throne of Spain, who is in the pay of the French Jacobins, so sure as I sit here.”
“Then, Your Ladyship, was I amiss in mentioning first to the King my Admiral’s need of troops? Good God, how is a plain sailor-man to see his way through such a maze! Surely the Ambassador would have checked me if I mistook.”
“No, sir. It is true it would be well if the King could be dropped out of any negotiations, but being King ’tis not possible. I shall see Her Majesty this afternoon after the King and she have received you, and will lay before her any private particulars you may have reserved for Sir William. He will give you my character for good sense and secrecy. Confer with him and let me know the result. And leaving you to this I will put on my hat and take your little Nisbet for a drive along the sea-road from Naples to Posilippo. I see him in the loggia. You can rely on my taking care of him.”
Captain Nelson sat alone in the cool and beautiful room considering the events of the morning with that swift mind of his, and of these his beautiful hostess came last in interest. Could he have made a mistake in opening the Admiral’s request for troops to the King? That was a vital matter for the Fleet and, not only that, but would affect his own professional reputation according to success or failure. But then, if so, Sir William should have given him a check somehow. He rose and took a turn about the room, considering, and touched the bell and with what many young captains would have considered consummate impudence requested he might have the honour of a few words with His Excellency before starting for the Royal audience. “Certainly,” was the answer, “if Captain Nelson would kindly follow the messenger.”
He rose at once, seeing Lady Hamilton through one of the windows, standing with Nisbet in the loggia. Her hand was on his shoulder, near as high as her own, and she was pointing to the sea, her face in the shadow of a great straw hat. He lingered an imperceptible moment, for the attitude, her womanly figure in its flowing white, and the sweet laughing face brought his home so tenderly and touchingly before him after the weary storm-tossed months before Toulon, the solitary years at sea, that his throat constricted and in his quick emotional way a moisture clouded his eyes. He saw his wife, his Fanny, fluttering her handkerchief as he drove off to join his ship at Portsmouth, his old father standing at her shoulder. For a moment, this stranger woman was Home to him, after all the sea loneliness.
What had he heard of her? He tried to remember, as he followed to Sir William’s study. Of course the Fleet gossiped on all the Mediterranean doings when the captains assembled at one another’s or the Admiral’s table for business as much as for pleasure. He remembered Lord Hood’s speaking of Sir William Hamilton.
“A gentleman, if ever there was one, grandson of the Duke of Hamilton, but should be attending to the Jacobins in Naples sooner than collecting old vases. A hobby well enough for a man in Pall Mall, but, by the Lord, sir, Naples is a perfect hotbed of vice; the very soil for the seeds of Jacobinism to fester in! The King of the Two Sicilies will be a broken reed to lean on when we come to close grips with the Mounseers.”
And then one of the captains, laughing, “A man of taste other ways than in vases, my Lord. He married his mistress, the famous Mrs. Hart. They say he fell in love with her because there wasn’t one of his ancient statues she could not represent with a white cloth about her.”
And another: “I saw her in London, my Lord, at the opera when we were refitting at Portsmouth. A wonder—a regular blue-eyed English beauty. For my part, I can’t blame His Excellency. ’Tis the only way to secure a mistress’s fidelity.”
And Lord Hood with his long, lean face, summing up: “Why, sir, ’tis the worst of all ways for a man for it gives a bad woman security to befool him. And I would have you all to warn your officers if duty should call them to Naples that it has the name of being a sink of iniquity—every woman a wanton” (but His Lordship used a Biblical term) “and every man a fiddler or a fool, and act accordingly in the giving of leave in the ward-room and gun-room. All the same, be she what she will, Lady Hamilton is Ambassadress and said to be as thick as thieves with the Queen of Naples—a bird of the same feather if all tales be true. And now, gentlemen, to business!”
And then the thing passed from his mind like breath from a looking glass. He had no reason to expect a visit to Naples for himself. But, with the surrender of Toulon, it came, for the Agamemnon was a fast sailer and speed the essential. No thought of the story revived in him, thronged with great events and anxieties, until that moment.
Sir William was sitting at his bureau with a list before him which looked much more like a catalogue of objets d’art than a summary of the Neapolitan forces—but let that pass. Captain Nelson knew quite as little of the former as Sir William of the latter, and might be mistaken. He was as formal as his youth and subordination demanded.
“Your Excellency, I have made bold to ask a private word, for I understand we go to the Palace shortly.”
“Certainly, sir. I was about to send for you. Her Excellency came in a moment since to say she had warned you that all real business is transacted with the Queen. I would have given you that hint this morning but ’twas impossible.”
“I thank Your Excellency. But surely there could be no movement of troops without His Majesty’s sanction?”
“Naturally, sir, but you shall understand in strict privacy that His Majesty is much under the influence of his brother, the King of Spain, who is in league with the French Jacobins. Consequently all news is obliged to go first, as it were, to the Queen and General Acton (a right-hand man of ours) who then do what they can with His Majesty.”
Captain Nelson considered a swift instant. Thought might be seen quivering over his plain nervous face and in his keen eyes, so much were the inward and outward man at one. He was got into the land of intrigue, for certain, and what was a sailor-man to do with it? No laying his ship broadside on to the King, and seeing his flag come slowly down the mast in answer to the guns. No cutlass out and boarding with women and their petty intrigues and tempers and secrets. Better be plain with the Ambassador at the start. He misliked his job.
“Your Excellency, I am no diplomatist, but a sailor. My errand is to get the troops for my Admiral, else the last state of Toulon will be the worst. What then is my shortest road to this end?”
Sir William took a pinch of snuff and surveyed the eager war-worn young man with good-humour.
“Sir, your shortest way is the Queen, and your shortest road to her through my Lady Hamilton.”
“I guessed as much from Her Excellency’s condescension but—”
“There is really no ‘but,’ Captain Nelson. I might have said it is the only way. The Queen herself will be anxious, even jealous, about despatching troops in the present state of Sicily. My Lady Hamilton, however, has unbounded influence with her and deserves it.”
“Does Your Excellency convey that I am to discuss the matter with Her Ladyship?”
Captain Nelson looked grave, disturbed. For such counsels of war the Fleet was no training.
Sir William saw the look and smiled in his easy heart-hiding way.
“My dear sir, in diplomacy we fire no broadsides, we utter no defiances. We glide, insinuate, compliment, and thwart—all with delicacy. And you will thus find the ladies invaluable in my profession. Her Excellency, though I say it of my wife, has the brain and energy of a man; coupled with the finesse and patience of a woman. You and I will now go and pay our formal visit at the Palace. If you follow my advice you will confine yourself to presenting the Admiral’s letter with compliments alike to King and Queen—more especially the former. At two o’clock Her Ladyship will meet you with me, and if you will then be plain with us as to the situation of the Fleet, I will engage for it that she shall see the Queen. The matter of the transport of the troops you will arrange later with General Acton.”
To say that Captain Nelson was astonished is to say little. Yet what to do but submit to the man on the spot—the British Ambassador? He bowed and signified obedience and the two set off, properly attended, amid the cheers of the crowding populace, for the news of Toulon had fled through the city, and rainbows of bunting were a-flutter from every stick and height.
The Agamemnon lay ringed about by the bringers of Her Excellency’s bounty. He mentioned this with gratitude to Sir William.
“She has a passion for the glory of England, and therefore for the Fleet that is its instrument,” says the Ambassador, “and an excellent heart behind it. I have seen her so worked up in these French horrors, and our action against them, that ’tis not too much to say I believe she would sell the gown off her back to provide for the meanest Jack ashore if he came to her.”
It sank in, but on the whole Captain Nelson was occupied with his presentations to Royalty of the foreign order, and how best to carry himself in honour of the Flag. True he had a Royal friend of his own, His Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence, but he was a sailor like himself, a rough and tough take-it-or-leave-it Jack afloat—by no means a guide to Queens and their fripperies.
Yet she was not affrighting after all. The presentation to the pantaloon King was brief. He shook the Captain by the hand, introduced him himself to Acton, and commended the Toulon work and the speed of the Agamemnon for the benefit of the quick-eyed Neapolitan grandees who stood about him. They affected Captain Nelson unpleasantly—grimacing, gesticulating foreigners. Was this the stuff the Admiral counted on for Toulon? Give him a thousand bull-headed big-lunged Norfolk men for choice to take his chance with, sooner than a million like these monkeys. And then the King himself conducted him to the Queen, with her ladies in waiting.
Here, too, he was unfavourably impressed. Handsome, no doubt, but lined, haggard, with too-bright eyes, worn to fiddle-strings with her political and private anxieties. He noted the fine diamonds about her throat and swinging beside her sallow cheeks—that brooch would buy half Norfolk. He must tell his Fanny these fine doings; she would like to hear. But her grimace was surface, he believed—what was in her shifty foreign heart?
The Austrian Hen, as her husband politely called her behind her elegant back, was formally gracious, no more. It was unfortunate that she could not express herself in English, and to use French, the language of the Ghouls, was impossible in present circumstances, not to mention that Captain Nelson’s French was the last of his achievements. Therefore Sir William interpreted in mellifluous Italian.
“I congratulate our noble ally His Majesty the King of England and our fortunate selves on this great and auspicious victory!” said the Queen. “It may be hoped it will be a mortal blow to these scourges of humanity. And the King through me begs Captain Nelson to understand that no mark of gratitude will be lacking to him and to his gallant officers and men. A gala performance at San Carlo has to-day been ordered in their honour and a banquet will be given to-night by the King and myself to the distinguished Captain and officers—” and so forth—Nelson bowing and bowing, and listening with all his ignorant ears to catch the word troops. When would the flummery stop and these people get to business?
She presented him with a snuff-box, a pretty sparkler enough, her own flattered face set in small brilliants; and so they got out into the cheering streets again.
“And now for food and Her Ladyship!” says the Ambassador.
All his life long, Nelson was to remember that charming meal in the large cool room with the assiduous lacqueys, and the splendours, for so they seemed to his simple taste, of silver and glass and delicious foods most delicately served; for Sir William, like Greville and all his clan, would have things handsome about him, and Emma was something of a Sybarite. Almost it seemed a dream and that he must awake to the tumbling of billows outside, the grey leagues of sea, and the swaying tables galleried to catch the sliding china. It was a family party, himself and Nisbet the only guests, and Nisbet sat beside the lovely lady in white and looked up to her in a kind of cubbish awe, for already Nelson had had reason to note that Josiah lacked manners. Beautiful indeed, he thought, but even less so in features, could that be possible, than in expression. Life, eagerness, quick-thoughted graciousness, all sparkled in her face and winged every swift gesture. Nothing could be done by halves. She heaped Nisbet’s plate with dolci—“Boys worth their weight in mud like a good tuck-in with sweets!” says she, laughing kindly. “Don’t I love them myself too?”
And then Josiah must needs have two plates of fruit overflowed with cream by the same fair hand, and two glasses of Sir William’s champagne, and then another, till his very eyes bulged and Nelson put out a restraining hand. It was the same with himself. All her best she gave and only grieved it was not more. Never so cordial a welcome! It was like a cheering Christmas fire, spreading its warmth and gladding flame through the great Norfolk manor-houses at home. It dimmed the languid Neapolitan sunshine.
But all this despatched, and the three of them closeted in Sir William’s study, what a different woman she became! Indeed, she bewildered him with the changeableness of her. It was a grave earnest face beside Sir William’s, he himself facing the pair.
Sir William briefly recounted the events of the morning and invited her opinion of the Queen’s action.
“You, my love, know her as none else.”
Indeed, Nelson thought it the strangest council at which he had ever assisted—a tale for the Admiral when he got back.
“Why, she will fear the troops going, no doubt of that. She is one that likes to hold the power in her own hand; and the King will of course be averse, because he has a notion, which God knows he has no brains to carry out, to assist the Spanish interest some day with them. He would be well with England and with France too and balance betwixt them like a merry-andrew. The Queen must be convinced and then ’tis done. Will Captain Nelson allow us to see his private instructions from the Admiral?”
Thus this astonishing young woman. It all but petrified him. He hesitated coldly.
“Madam, I can mean no discourtesy, but they are for the eye of the Ambassador.”
“And the Ambassador,” replies Sir William gravely, “can do nothing with the Queen but through the Ambassadress. You must find Her Ladyship in arguments, Captain Nelson, though she has plenty of her own.”
He obeyed on Sir William’s assurance and the bright quick eye of the lady. She appeared to master all he said with precision, wasted not a moment, rehearsed his points, and rising, looked at the watch at her girdle and prepared to depart for her fixed audience with the Queen.
“It takes the form of a friendly visit with talk and refreshments,” says she, “but I shall bring back news for all that. Will you not take Captain Nelson for a drive, Sir William? The more the people see and applaud him the better for our ends.”
She left the room, with his astonished eyes following her.
“Her Ladyship is the key of the situation in Naples,” says Sir William easily. “Shall we drive?”
They found her waiting in the reception room when they returned, entertaining a party of the Agamemnons with the most delicious singing, not a care on her bright brow as she warbled. She enticed the first lieutenant into attempting a duo with her, and the astonished Nelson, who had never heard his voice uplifted but in an order or to outshout the storm, discovered that he possessed a tenor of excellence in his third in command. Lord, how she drew them out! The young men were standing about her, talking, laughing, telling Her Ladyship confidentially of adventures Nelson had never heard of though he kept his subordinates at no awful distance and believed he knew their hearts.
“And since I am certain you are all in rags after this long cruising, for what are men’s fingers!” says she with a fine scorn, “I insist that all you gentlemen send your wardrobes ashore and I and my women will send you back refitted—is not that the sea word?—to the Admiral. We won’t beat the French with a ragged regiment, so we won’t!”
They thanked her cordially—who could refuse such a warm heart? She constituted herself their she-admiral and commanded that the little sick midshipman Bowen should be sent ashore for her own and her mother’s nursing—for good Mrs. Cadogan was enthroned on a settee in purple and fine linen, listening to the Ambassadress’s sallies. And then, when she had them all laughing and talking, she glided up against Captain Nelson with lowered secret eyes.
“ ’Tis all right about the troops. The thing is done. Acton will call to-night on the King’s behalf and offer you six thousand. And now, dismiss care, and hail pleasure and a much needed rest!”
Sir William told him later that she had conquered the Queen completely, had had Acton in, and between them the three concerted the measures and convinced the King he dare no more offend Great Britain than spit in the face of the Pope.
“A wonderful woman!” said Nelson, musing.
And Sir William: “You say very right, sir.”
But her wonders grew on him during that week of sore-needed rest. The beauty of her, the kindness, the flaming womanly one-sided, one-ideal patriotism that could see never a share of so much as grey in a foe’s midnight blackness. He had thought himself keen against the French, but—Lord save us!—my lady was burning ahead while he laboured after. So he thought, but the truth was he kindled her as much as she him. Sir William was old and cool-blooded. He had seen these national feuds come and go and knew a people might be your deadly enemy to-day, and the sword in your hand to-morrow. Not so, these two. It was God’s cause as well as man’s they plotted and worked in, and black was black and white was white and a Frenchman the devil, and an Englishman, especially a sailor, St. Michael and St. George sent for his ruin. They talked the night out and the day in on this, and the Agamemnons hailed her as the Patroness of the Navy—a name she was to earn more greatly in days to come.
Furthermore, he had Romney’s taste for her sweetness. She would talk with lowered voice of his old father, and the wife who must suffer such agonies and he at sea in storms of shot and shell. He caught himself describing his Fanny; her quiet grace—“Not beautiful like you, your Ladyship, but restful to a tossed-about sailor, like the twilight settling down over the Norfolk Broads. I could wish you knew her—a good woman.”
How could he know that Emma’s gentle acquiescent sigh was modelled on her dear dead Duchess—studied from the life of her gracious sympathy? For him it was all nature. Indeed it was—at the moment.
And so the week went by in triumph almost as wearying as toils, but for the quiet hour he got with her now and again and those twilight talks. She warmed Sir William into cordiality also. He knew well enough what the Fleet must mean to the world now and onward, and liked this worn young sailor with his lined face and sensitive mouth. And so the troops were embarked and the last day came, and my lady had played her part gallantly.
It was the 24th September, and in the cloudless heat the Agamemnon had sloped awnings for a gala of her own to return the plenteous royal hospitalities. She lay swinging at her anchor, formidable but good-humoured, a drowsy giant rocking on blue waters of peace. All the gay folk were bidden for luncheon aboard and the lovely Ambassadress would do the honours of His Britannic Majesty’s ship. The flags were flying in rainbow strings, the guns dispossessed—security and gaiety fluttered in the light voices from the ports, and all were waiting the royalties, Emma beside the Captain.
Good God! Word from the Prime Minister! For Nelson! What, what had happened! The crowding, the silence to hear, and the boatswain just piping the King up the side!
A French man of war with three attendant vessels off Sardinia. Agamemnon to give chase!
Away with the guests, the awnings, the King, the Ambassador, the frippery!
The giant is awake—awake in earnest. The pipe whistled another tune indeed.
Like frightened birds the guests dispersed, boats crowding about to receive their huddling fineries. Down with the awnings—away with every sign of peace. It is war.
The Captain is at his post, but steps aside for one word with the departing Ambassador and his lady.
“A thousand, thousand thanks, my dear friends. What words have I for so much goodness? None, none! But I will return some day with trophies that pay you in the only way to stir your patriotic hearts. Good-bye, your dear Ladyship, you have bound me to the service of your Queen. You have served our country indeed and the Admiral shall know to whom he owes it.”
Hands are wrung. She looks in his face with her own peculiar glow.
“I would give this hand to be sailing with you if but as a powder-monkey, to fight these devils! I envy you—I envy you, Captain!”
The white teeth grit on the words. She means them. What a woman! he thinks, with a last wave of his hand as he sees her kiss young Nisbet and promise to write of him to his mother. Yes, her kindly heart forgets nothing—nothing!
But good-bye to the image of her, he has other thoughts and cares. The great anchor is hauled up from depths where the Roman galleys have anchored, the Greek triremes. Slowly it comes to the catheads, dripping its diamonds. Slowly the sails fill to a soft breeze—would to God it were a gale!—and the Agamemnon, awake and wary, glides along the bay, saluting the royalty of the Two Sicilies with the finality of her sea courtesies as she goes and sinks at last, a sea-wraith faint and far into the distance.
Emma goes back to the room of the mirrors, almost collapsed with evaporated excitement. She has strung herself high these days and pays for it now in a kind of nervous exhaustion.
But she and the Queen agree that Captain Nelson is a fit representative of England’s sea honour. They hope if need be that he may be the messenger again, Sir William nodding assent, as he goes quietly back to his vases.
And Nelson writes to his calm sweet wife in the Norfolk parsonage that in her is all his joy, none separated from her. And she, his other self, must hear of the Neapolitan glories. And the astonishing ambassadress is not forgotten.
“Lady Hamilton has been wonderfully good and kind to Josiah. She is a young woman of amiable manners and who does honour to the station to which she is raised.”
He paused as he wrote it, reflecting how little that cool sentence conveyed all the emotions through which she had drawn him. But what matter? They might never meet again.
A true courageous Englishwoman. That was his last thought. But Fanny represented better the passive sweetness of ideal wifehood.
The ship ploughed through moonlit seas, with a faint star or two over sleeping Naples.