his superior to be fond of good living he caused a turbot to be
caught for him on the Dogger Bank, and sent it to him with
a complimentary message. Sir Hyde was not insensible to the
attention, and thawed notably. We have the good fortune to
possess the notes taken during the campaign by Colonel Stewart
(1774–1827), a military officer who did duty with Nelson as a
marine. Colonel Stewart has put on record many stories of
Nelson which have a high biographical value. He saw the hero
when his character was displayed in all its strength and its weakness.
Nelson was at once burning for honour, ardently desirous
to serve his country at a great crisis, and yet longing for rest and
for the company of Emma Hamilton. His passion had, if possible,
been increased by the birth of the child Horatia, whom he
believed to be his own, and his jealousy was excited by fears that
Emma would become an object of attention to the prince of
Wales (afterwards George IV.). His health, as Colonel Stewart
justly observed, was always affected by anxiety, and during the
Baltic campaign he complained incessantly of his sufferings.
Nervous irritation provoked him into odd explosions of excitement,
as when, for instance, he suddenly interfered with the working
of his flagship while the officer of the watch was tacking
her on the south coast of England, and so threw her into disorder.
When he saw the consequences of his untimely intrusion he
sharply appealed to the officer to tell him what was to be done
next, and when the embarrassed lieutenant hesitated to reply,
burst out with, “If you do not know, I am sure I don’t,” and
then went into his cabin. His subordinates learnt to take these
manifestations as matters of course, knowing that they were
wholly without malignity. To them he was always kind, even
when they were at fault, taking, as his own phrase has it, a
penknife where Lord St Vincent would have taken a hatchet.
Colonel Stewart tells how he was wont to invite the midshipmen
of the middle watch to breakfast, and romp with them as if
he had been the youngest of the party. The playfulness of his
nature came out, in combination with his heroism, when he
adorned his refusal to obey Sir Hyde’s weak signal of recall in the
middle of the battle, which would have been disastrous if it had
been acted on, by putting his telescope to his blind eye and
declaring that he could not see the order to retire. At such
moments all could see his agitation; but, as the surgeon of the
“Elephant,” which bore his flag at Copenhagen, says, they could
also see that “it was not the agitation of indecision, but of
ardent animated patriotism panting for glory.” When Sir Hyde
Parker was recalled in May, Nelson assumed the command in
the Baltic; but the dissolution of the Northern Confederation
left him little to do. His health really suffered in the cold air
of high latitudes, and in June he obtained leave to come home.
His services were grudgingly recognized by the title of viscount.
During the brief interval before the peace he was put in command
of a flotilla to combat Napoleon’s futile threat of invasion.
In the hope of quieting public anxiety rather than in any serious
expectation of success, an attack was made on a French flotilla
strongly protected by its position, at Boulogne, which was
disastrously repulsed. Nelson was not in command on the spot,
and if he had been would in all probability have renewed his
experience at Santa Cruz. He could not do the impossible more
than other men. He was only more ready to try.
While the brief peace made at Amiens lasted, he remained on shore. His home was with the Hamiltons in the strange household in which Sir William showed that his 18th-century training had taught him to accept a domestic division with a good grace, and had not left him too squeamish to profit by the pecuniary advantages which may attend the relation of complacent husband. His death on the 6th of April 1803 made no change in the life of the admiral. He lived almost wholly at Merton, where he had purchased a small house, which Emma filled with memorials of his glory and of her now passing beauty. She fed him profusely with the flattery which he, in Lord Minto’s words, swallowed as a child does pap; and she was in turn adored by him, and treated with profound deference by his family, with the exception of his father.
When the ambition of Napoleon made it impossible to keep up the fiction of peace, Nelson was at once called from retirement, and this time there could be no question of putting him under the authority of any other admiral. He was appointed to the Mediterranean command, and hoisted his flag in May 1803. Between this date and his death in the hour of full triumph on the 21st of October 1805, he was in the centre and was one of the controlling spirits of the vast military and naval drama which after filling for more than two years the immense stage bounded by Europe and the West Indies, found its closing scene in Trafalgar Bay (see Trafalgar). In spite of the anxieties of an arduous command Nelson was serene and at his best in this last period of his life. Once only did the ill-advised boasting of Latouche Treville provoke him into a scolding mood. The French officer spoke of him as having fled before his French ships, and the vaunt, which had no better foundation than that Nelson had retired before superior numbers when reconnoitring, exasperated him into threatening to make the Frenchman eat his letter if ever they met. Nelson could boast, but his loudest words are not ridiculously out of proportion to his deeds.
The last hours at Trafalgar will never be forgotten by Englishmen. There is no figure in English history at once so magnificent in battle, and so penetrating in its appeal to the emotions, as was Nelson on that last day when under his leadership the fleet annihilated the last lingering fear that Napoleon would ever carry his desolating arms into the British Islands. It matters little that the woman of whom he thought to the last was utterly unworthy of him, had perhaps never rendered the services he supposed her to have done for their country, and was about to dishonour his memory by mercenary immorality. He must be worse than censorious who can think unmoved of Nelson kneeling in prayer by his cabin table as the “Victory” rolled slowly down on the enemy on the 21st of October, appealing to God for help, and writing the codicil in which he left his mistress and his child to the gratitude of his country.
It is said that his famous signal was to have been worded “Nelson confides that every man will do his duty,” and that his own name was replaced by that of England on the suggestion of one of his officers. The use of his name as an inspiration and an appeal would have been perfectly consistent with his tone at all times, but he agreed to the alteration with the indifference of a man to whom self and country were one at that hour. “Expects” replaced “confides that” because the signal lieutenant Pascoe pointed out to him that the verb originally chosen must be spelt out letter by letter in a long string of flags. He parted with Captain Blackwood of the “Euryalus” with a prophecy of his approaching fate. The sight of Collingwood, the friend of his youth, leading the lee line into action in the “Royal Sovereign” drew from him a cry of admiration at the noble example his comrade was showing. When the “Victory” had passed astern of the French “Bucentaure,” and was engaged with her and the “Redoubtable,” he walked up and down the quarter deck of his flagship by the side of his flag-captain, T. M. Hardy, with the brisk short step customary with him. As they turned, a musket shot from the top of the “Redoubtable” struck him on the upper breast, and, plunging down, broke the spine. “They have done for me at last!” were the words in which he acknowledged the fatal stroke. He lingered for a very few hours of anguish in the fetid cockpit of the “Victory,” amid the horrors of darkness relieved only by the dim light of lanterns, and surrounded by men groaning, or raving with unbearable pain. The shock of the broadsides made the whole frame of the “Victory” tremble, and extorted a moan from the dying admiral. When Captain Hardy came down to report the progress of the battle, his inherent love for full triumph drew from him the declaration that less than twenty prizes would not satisfy him. He clung to his authority to the end. The suggestion that Collingwood would have to decide on the course to be taken was answered with the eager claim, “Not while I live.” But the last recorded words were of affection and of duty. He begged Hardy for a kiss, and he ended with the proud and yet humble claim, “I have done my duty, thank God for that.”
