Breaking the Line (28 page)

Nepean represented the same Admiralty that had refused to pay for Parker’s lodgings, his treatment or his funeral. In a rare public outburst, Nelson claimed that the young man could have stunk above ground or been thrown into a ditch for all they cared. The father had nothing, so Nelson paid for the interment and gave the fellow enough money to get back to his home.

It gave him no pleasure to find out that Parker
pére
had touched
half his officers for money, before proceeding to call upon a debt of Langford’s that had still time to run, adding a premium that was not due. ‘What to say, Hardy,’ he sighed to the Ghost, fingering a silver gilt cup that he had had Emma buy as a gift to the surgeon who had looked after his Boulogne wounded. ‘The man shames Merry Ed, but how can I complain when everyone knows Viscount Nelson is so very rich?’

Peace preliminaries were signed at Amiens at the beginning of October and, effectively, Nelson’s service in the Channel was over, though it was weeks before he could take any leave since both St Vincent and Troubridge urged that his continued presence in Deal was necessary. Nelson had to suffer colds, seasickness and being tossed about in rough seas just to satisfy the fears of his superiors that the peace might not hold.

Nelson, himself, did not believe in this peace: it was too advantageous to Bonaparte, giving the Corsican menace time to regroup. And it had meant handing back to France and the Dutch many possessions that had been taken from them at some cost in British blood: the West Indian sugar islands, Ceylon, the Cape of Good Hope. Even Malta was returned to the Knights of St John.

The day he struck his flag was one of necessary visits: to William Pitt at Walmer Castle, his because he held the sinecure post of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, to old Admiral Lutwidge and his wife, and, most demanding of all, to the wounded sailors in Deal hospital. His pennant was lowered in the gloom of a late October evening and Nelson set off for Merton, a home he had never seen, travelling through the night with the intention of being there for breakfast.

Merton had been his for a month, and improvements had started, so the house and grounds were all ahoo with builders and gardeners when the master made his first entrance. Stopping his coach, Nelson got out at the gate and walked slowly up the drive, savouring the appearance of a residence that looked very fine in the early dawn light.

A stronger sun would show many things requiring attention, but in this light the place looked perfect: large but not awesome with a fine central block fronted by a classical porch, a perfect array of ten windows, the whole surmounted by a pediment roof that mirrored that of the porch. To one side the wing was square with a large window lighting what he assumed to be the main reception room. The other octagonal wing with windows on each face would no doubt hold the library on the ground floor and a withdrawing room on the
upper, so shaped as to allow the windows on each face to catch whatever light there was at any time of day.

The front door, already painted navy blue, was open and the servants were about, raking and laying fires, lighting stoves, cleaning and polishing while their betters lay abed. Admiral Viscount Nelson, who knew none of them, was obliged to introduce himself. Behind him Tom Allen was unloading his sea chest, with his master having to ask where it should go.

His bedroom located, it was good to wander round the place while Emma was still asleep, touching the furniture he now owned, fingering books in the library that peace might give him time to read. He entered rooms in which shafts of sunlight were filled with motes of dust, others in which sat the decorator’s trestles and pots of paint. He recalled how many times he had gone on board a ship that was still being readied, his cabin unpainted, his few pieces of furniture not yet arranged. Merton brought that to mind, and the thought was pleasing for being so familiar.

Then, as the clock in the hallway struck nine, he went to find Fatima, Emma’s maid, so that she could tell her mistress Nelson was here, and that he intended to call. Fatima grinned, her full cheeks pushed out and her white teeth lighting up her face. Her eyes held the knowing look that said she was well aware of why Nelson would be calling.

Half an hour later, he and Emma were breakfasting together in her bedroom.

Having dreamed for so long of owning a comfortable residence Nelson was prepared to be disappointed. At one time, speculating with Fanny, he had hankered after a small cottage with roses round the door and children gambolling in the garden. Merton was much more than that, but it felt intimate. Over the following weeks rooms were put to rights, the roof repairs completed, and Emma put in her plate glass doors so that light was brought to the previously dim hallway. Plumbers plumbed, painters painted and carpenters sawed while a steady stream of visitors came and went.

James Perry, owner of the
Morning
Chronicle,
and still a partisan of Emma, was a neighbour and welcome guest with whom both Sir William, who resided in the house at weekends, and Nelson, could happily converse. The adjoining property was owned by Mr Goldshmid, a banker, who was a mine of good cheer and information regarding the progress of international affairs. The folk of the parish, under the pastoral care of the vicar, Mr Lancaster, were delighted to
have the nation’s hero in their midst and took pains to ensure that Nelson knew it.

Naturally the William Nelsons were early visitors. The Viscount was pleased to learn that his brother had been made a Prebendary at Canterbury. It pleased William less: he had sought higher ecclesiastical preferment using the Nelson name, and reckoned that with his bloodline he should be a bishop.

Christmas was celebrated in a house still full of dust and noise, but it fulfilled Nelson’s hopes by being a place to which his family could come. The Boltons and the Matchams arrived with their large and noisy broods, all of whom were eager to play with and hold ten-month old Horatia.

The younger members of the family might be unaware of her parentage but the adults were not, and even if they had not suspected before they could be in no doubt now, seeing father and daughter together, of the blood connection. Horatia even looked like him and no man spent so much time playing with and talking about a foundling. And if Emma could carry off the lie of the connection, Nelson could not.

If they disapproved, no one hinted that it was so. Fanny Nelson, whom they had all related to in their own way in the past, was forgotten now and never mentioned. Indeed, if Nelson’s father had not still been a supporter she might have been cut out of the family altogether. Emma headed Nelson’s table, created the entertainments, oversaw the running of the house, ordered and supervised the improvements, and sat as the centre of attention in the evening when the family played cards or performed their party pieces.

Sir William, more frail than ever, but still with a sharp mind, was like an adopted grandfather. Like most men who had never had to suffer the behaviour of his own children he saw nothing but good in the breed. He was patient with them all, by the river teaching them to fish, in the library assisting them with their reading and their languages, or joining in with their noisy parlour games.

The person he was not patient with was Emma: since she was living here, and he used Merton as a weekend retreat, he felt a bounden duty to share in the expense of the upkeep. The strain that that put on his finances was considerable: he still had the rent in Piccadilly to pay, plus all the other costs, for carriages and the like, that were necessary to get him and his wife up to town and back again. And on top of that there was Emma’s extravagance.

She could not be brought to see that the life they had lived in Naples could not be replicated in England: he did not have the
means. She spent Nelson’s money with the same prodigality, and Sir William had it on good authority from Alexander Davidson that the admiral was not wealthy. Successful warrior he might be, but when it came to prize money every other admiral outstripped him. Davidson was of the opinion that Nelson did the hard graft, while others, more assiduous in the stroking of their connections and the Admiralty, got the plums.

And Emma had made this very much Nelson’s house. Portraits and trophies lined the walls, everything that Nelson had ever been given, won or sat for, even framed songs that had been composed in his honour. That was as it should be but Sir William felt that he was ever more set on the margin of Emma’s life, for at Merton she never bothered to pretend that they were still a married couple. All he ever got was Nelson this and Nelson that, with no compensation in the article of consideration when they were together. As to Nelson himself, he was the same social misfit he had always been, never noticing, Sir William was sure, the way Emma treated him, so he was left out of any strictures Sir William felt he had to raise. Not that he got very far. Every time he taxed Emma with some slight it ended with his writing to make the peace.

Naval acquaintances called at the house they had named as Circe’s Cave, especially the members of the Crocodile Club. There, his Nile captains, while often deprecating the way the place was a shrine to their hero, toasted the success of one of their number. Sir James Saumarez, just before the peace, had dished the Spaniards in Algeciras Bay. That occasioned bumper after bumper, but only after they had refought the battle on the dining room table. If many of them still held in doubt the whole association of Emma and their admiral, then they said nothing, for they were too attached to him to sour the atmosphere.

Winter turned to spring, and for a short time there were no builders present. Outside, those improvements he had discussed with Cribb, the gardener, began to show themselves; shrubs and plants budded nicely, early daffodils and tulips bloomed, the lawn was a mass of daisies, while bluebells spread like a carpet under the trees.

For the first time in nearly ten years, Nelson was not in uniform but in civilian clothes. He went to church on Sundays to occupy his own pew, and conversed outside with his fellow parishioners about the needs of the locality: improvements to roads, the provision of a canal, the next local Member of Parliament. He would walk home as Emma and Sir William coached, nodding to acquaintances, every
inch the country squire, returning usually to a scene of domestic tranquillity.

The tributary of the river Wandle that cut through his property had been cleared and renamed the Nile by Emma. It had also been stocked with fish so that Sir William could while away his time with the rod. To Nelson, especially when Horatia was present, the weekends were bliss. There was always a guest and always a good dinner, and usually, in the evening, a performance of an attitude or two by Emma.

Walks would be taken on what Nelson liked to call his quarterdeck, the strip of gravel that fronted the house. There, with a friend or relative alongside, he liked to pace, converse and ruminate on the world beyond his front gate. His residence was no longer ‘The Farm’. It was ‘Paradise Merton’ now, the place in which everything was contained that Nelson loved.

On Monday mornings, Viscount Nelson and Sir William Hamilton would take coach to join the throng of gentlemen heading for London to banks and law chambers, insurance brokerages and government offices. Or like Sir William, to Sotheby’s or Christies for an auction. Nelson went to the Admiralty to discuss naval matters, often to the House of Lords, to listen to the debates and to work hard at the thing that he wished for most; that Lady Emma Hamilton should be accepted at court.

23

‘Your Highness,’ said Nelson, with a nod to a very round and
bulbous-eyed
Duke of Clarence.

Prince William Henry had been plump even as a boy when Nelson had first met him, although height had offset the worst effects. It was a family trait that had shown itself to a greater extent when he had made his cruise around the Caribbean. As a post captain the Prince had embarked on a voyage designed to bring closer to the House of Hanover the subjects of the sugar islands, and to show them that their royal family were employed and useful, not the rakish and idle spendthrifts of rumour. Thanks to him, it had done the opposite, reinforcing an image of boorish superiority. In the process it had put a blight on Nelson’s career.

They had remained friendly, corresponding frequently. Clarence provided Nelson with a conduit to his father, however little it was appreciated, and the man who liked to be known as the ‘Sailor Prince’ had basked in his association with Nelson. At court, he could claim to know Nelson’s mind, and had, at the time of the Nile, been a rock of optimism when all around him people had begun to despair.

‘Damn good to see you Nelson,’ he boomed, ‘and looking so damned well. Life ashore surely suits you. Mind you, sir, no man’s health was ever improved by being tossed about on the ocean.’

‘I have Lady Hamilton to thank for that, sir. She has made for me a home at Merton that would restore the most jaded sailor.’

‘Quite,’ the duke replied, warily, ‘and I know I have an invitation to visit you which I assure you I will take up soon.’

‘I would be most obliged if you would, Your Highness.’

There was a pause, Nelson hoping that Clarence might name a day, his host wondering if he could change the subject. He had no
intention of visiting Merton under present circumstances, for to do so would anger his father. Upsetting the man who held the family purse strings was not wise for a man whose debts always exceeded his income. One day he would go, but not yet.

‘Saw Hardy the other day, Nelson. Ain’t changed much, still the same dull fellow he ever was.’

‘A capital seaman, though,’ Nelson replied.

Clarence looked at him hard then, since he had heard from more than one source that Nelson had no high opinion of his abilities as a seaman. Fellow was wrong, of course. It was just one of the crosses he had to bear for being a member of the royal family. Nothing done was ever seen in a fair light. Why, not once on his quarterdeck had a single officer questioned his skill. Clarence checked himself then. There had been one in the Caribbean, a Lieutenant Schomberg, and from what the Prince recalled, Nelson had declined to remove the fellow. More than that, with Schomberg insisting on a court martial to clear his name, Nelson had obliged the fellow with a praiseworthy deposition.

Nelson interrupted these less than pleasant thoughts. ‘We have known each other for a long time, Your Highness.’

‘God, haven’t we? Since the American war, Nelson, and that’s, what, twenty-five years past.’

‘I have always supposed you to be one of my partisans, sir.’

‘Oh, that, Nelson, definitely that. From our days under Lord Hood. Every chance I got before the late war I would tell the Admiralty that you must be employed. I hope it helped you get
Agamemnon
,
without which there would have been no Nile. Had a hand in the Baltic decision and your Channel service. Ever your partisan, Nelson.’

‘Thank you for that,’ Nelson replied, although he found it hard to believe. From what he knew of Clarence’s relations with the Admiralty any suggestions he made tended to diminish opportunity rather than raise it. Prince he might be, but no great faith was reposed in his judgement.

‘But I am, at present, looking for your support on a non-service matter.’

‘Non-service?’

William Henry tried hard to make it sound as though such a notion was impossible, because he could guess what Nelson was seeking. He hoped it was on the subject of the Copenhagen battle, for which, much to Nelson’s chagrin, no medals had been issued, but he feared otherwise.

‘You know of my attachment to Lady Hamilton.’

‘A fine woman,’ replied Clarence, with a sinking heart.

‘And a brave one, sir. I could list for you services that she has carried out for her country that would astound you.’

‘I have heard of them,’ Clarence said quickly, for fear that Nelson would indeed tell him.

‘Then it seems to me that your father, the King, has not.’

‘My father?’

Nelson was off, despite Clarence’s best efforts, listing Emma’s achievements in Naples on behalf of the fleet, her relations with the Neapolitan royal family, all with such conviction that the Prince was forced to listen. This was unusual; the protocol, brought over from Hanover by his great-grandfather, was that one only spoke to royalty when one was spoken to. They were never to be interrupted and certainly never lectured. Trouble was, Viscount Lord Nelson had known him as a boy and had taught him a great deal about how to handle a ship. Much as he would have liked to tell Nelson to shut up, he could not bring himself to do so.

‘I feel that if these facts could be brought to your father by someone to whom he would listen, then he might soften his attitude to Lady Hamilton. She does not ask to be a court intimate, only to be received.’

‘My father is a hard man to budge,’ said Prince William. When it came to persons of questionable backgrounds, his mother was even worse.

‘It seems to me, sir, given your own circumstances and the regard you say you have for me, that you would be well placed to advance her case.’

Clarence’s eyes popped at the mention of his circumstances, the cause of much dispute with his father. He was living quite openly with a married woman who had borne him several children, yet he could not see how his visitor could possibly assume that his ‘circumstances’ had any bearing on the case. He was a Prince! What to say? To raise the man’s hopes by agreeing then doing nothing? That might expose him to constant supplication, but an outright refusal would be too harsh. Obfuscation looked to be the best policy.

‘You may have the right of it, Nelson, and you may not. But such things, if they are to happen must be thought out, not rushed at. Don’t want to make matters worse, what! There are people I must talk to with wiser heads than mine. Should they advise that I should proceed we will talk again, and lay a plan of action.’

Long ago, watching his father and his brothers, Prince William Henry had perfected the meaningless smile – meaningless to
him
that is. To those upon whom he chose to bestow it, it was meant to convey that they were no less than the person closest to his heart. That was the smile he employed now as he made a mental note to tell his servants that, should Viscount Nelson call in the next month or so, he would not be at home.

It was a red-letter day when Nelson’s father finally consented to come to Merton. The old man had always liked Emma and even if he harboured doubts about her character he was a great man for forgiveness. His attachment to Fanny was strong and it was only the knowledge of his own failing health that forced him into a decision he would rather have avoided. He had attended too many deathbeds not to know his own was near, but he worked hard to hide this knowledge from his son.

Nelson saw a new gentleness in his father, a willingness to listen and communicate. It was as if he had finally acknowledged that his boy Horace had grown to manhood and could be treated as an equal. Over the weeks he stayed, Emma charmed him, and they spent many happy hours together, with Fanny never mentioned. Yet Nelson knew, for all his father’s circumspection, that his wife had not given up hope of reconciliation.

He was right. Fanny knew, from hints and asides from her friends at the Admiralty, that had they still been together, had there been no risk of scandal, they would both have been out of London by now. Nelson would have been given a profitable command, one of the West Indian stations or the Far East. Should the war be renewed, as everyone expected it would, then Viscount Nelson, on such a station, could amass the same kind of fortune as the likes of Sir Hyde Parker, the kind of wealth that would allow him to live as his fame demanded. Surely, even as besotted as he seemed to be, Nelson could see the harm he was doing to his prospects with this adulterous liaison.

The Reverend Edmund Nelson being at Merton gave her a chance to communicate once more, so she wrote to him, repeating all the arguments for a reconciliation, and pointing out that she had, and was still behaving with dignified reticence. She had never traduced Emma Hamilton in public or in private, because to do so would be common.

The return of the letter, with the subscription added, ‘opened but not read by Viscount Nelson’ was a cruel blow to her hopes. In that, and a great deal of his previous behaviour, she could not recognise the man she had married. Where was the gentle kindness, the nature
that saw good men where others saw base? That woman had changed him, stolen him away from her and the nation, the real Horatio Nelson.

She never knew how Nelson had felt as he wrote those words across her letter. He had been unable to read it from a fear that he might weaken. The same fear stopped him travelling to his father’s funeral – Edmund Nelson passed away peacefully in Bath only weeks after his visit to Merton. The old man’s suspicions about his health, never voiced in his son’s house, had been correct. Although his relatives had warned Nelson that his father was fading, his death still came as a shock. It was purgatory not to attend the funeral, but if Fanny was there, Nelson would not be able ignore her. His greatest fear in meeting her face to face was that his resolve to separate from her totally might be tested.

Emma worked just as hard for her social acceptance as Nelson, using both the Piccadilly house and Merton to apply pressure on the well-connected guests she entertained. There was a long list of elderly sea officers, those who admired Nelson as numerous as those who did not, her husband’s relatives and diplomatic contacts. The Marquis of Queensberry, who had the King’s ear, came. He was one of the richest men in the Kingdom, a cousin of her husband, and eccentric enough to match King George himself. The Duke of Hamilton, one of England’s premier peers and Sir William’s brother, had visited Merton. There was Lord Minto, who had been Nelson’s friend and adviser in Corsica. There were dukes, duchesses, former and serving ambassadors, bankers and courtiers aplenty, but all foundered on the rock of Hanoverian intransigence. As time went by, hope faded, and when she listened to Nelson insisting that all would be well, it was with a sinking heart, not a hopeful one.

Her faith was much restored when she, Nelson and Sir William, the
tria
uno
in
juncto,
decided on a three-week journey to visit Sir William’s estates near Milford Haven, stopping on the way so that Sir William and the admiral-hero could collect degrees from Oxford. Not for them the flight to Paris, which was, since the peace, the destination of most of British society. Nelson could not bring himself to love or visit a country that had been so recently an enemy, and one he suspected would soon be again.

Setting out from Merton, it was as if runners had been sent ahead to say they were coming. Just as when he had visited Windsor after the Nile, Nelson’s name brought out the populace, leaving Sir William to reflect on the fact that King George, who disliked Nelson
and would not receive Emma, often travelled in darkness for fear that his coach might be stoned.

The newspapers, and their dissemination throughout the country, had made something of Nelson the like of which he had never seen. Sir William Hamilton had grown up with royalty and had known many famous men, but not one had ever got more than polite admiration. The names of Drake, Anson, Boscawen and Blake paled beside Nelson’s, and he was received wherever he went with adulation almost religious in its fervour.

The bridges at Maidenhead and Henley were so crowded it took an age to cross the Thames. Oxford turned out in vast numbers, and the hotel in which the party stayed was surrounded throughout the night while the most famous man in Britain played host to an endless stream of visitors. At Blenheim they looked at the palace the monarchy had built for John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough. Emma stated that Nelson deserved one of twice the size, but he told her that Paradise Merton would suffice. No duke or duchess appeared to greet them: instead they sent out some cold food, which was rejected as smacking of condescension.

Continuing adoration soon displaced the cloud of that insult. A journey through the heart of England designed to take three weeks took six, with the freedoms of various towns offered wholesale and dozens of inns renamed along the route. Emma made sure that their reception should come to the royal ears. Let the King and Queen of England know that Nelson, the conqueror of the French, could probably, if he so chose, master them too. John Bull loved the Hero of the Nile and Copenhagen more than he loved Farmer George.

And everywhere there were seamen, officers and men who had sailed in a fleet or ship that Nelson had commanded. For him these were the happiest meetings, a chance to talk over old exploits and actions, to touch the heads of their offspring, the most recent of whom were often named Horatio.