Cochrane (59 page)

Nowhere was the popular feeling for Cochrane more cogently summarised than in the epitaph on his tomb, ornamented by the arms of Greece, Brazil, Chile and Peru. The words were those of Sir Lyon Playfair, who was then Professor of Chemistry at Edinburgh. Cochrane is described as Earl of Dundonald, Baron Cochrane, Marquess of Maranham, Knight Commander of the Bath, and Admiral of the Fleet:

Who by the confidence which his genius, his science, and extraordinary daring inspired, By his heroic exertions in the cause of Freedom, and his splendid services alike to his own country, Greece, Brazil, Chili, and Peru, Achieved a name illustrious throughout the world for courage, patriotism, and chivalry.

It might be expected that the controversies of Cochrane's life would not be ended merely by his death. In the first place, of course, there was the confusion which he had caused by marrying Kitty three times. From
1861
until
1863,
the House of Lords Committee of Privileges met intermittently to determine the claim of Thomas Cochrane to his father's title. There were four sons, as well as a daughter, and Thomas, the infant Tom Cochrane of the South American wars, succeeded by proving the validity of the first marriage in
1812
and, hence, his own legitimacy. In the course of investigating the claim, the committee took evidence from Kitty herself, who was now living in France for her health. For some years Cochrane himself had been convinced that France was healthier for her than England. It certainly agreed with her looks
and temperament. "Met Lady Dun
donald," wrote Henry Greville from Paris in
1841,
"who has the remains of beauty, and a joyous laugh which begets merriment in others."
⁵⁵

Thomas Cochrane's claim to the title was duly established, but that was only the
first of the battles which the 11
th Earl of Dundonald had to fight. The question of whether his father had been entitled to a repayment of the
1814
fine, and half-pay as a naval officer for the period
1814-1832,
was still not settled. By the will of his father, the son was bequeathed "all the monies due to me from the British Government", except for
10
per cent of the money recovered which was to be paid to Earp who had collaborated in writing Cochrane's
Narrative
and
Autobiography.
In
1864,
his son applied to the Admiralty and the Home Office for the money, but the application was rejected. In
1876,
Cochrane's grandson petitioned the Queen, the petition being referred to the Treasury, but without any further success. It was on
10
April
1877
that Sir Robert Anstruther and Spencer Walpole moved for a select committee to inquire into the merits of the petition. Their motion was carried and a committee set up under the Solicitor-General, Sir Hardinge Giffard, who was later to be a distinguished Lord Chancellor, as Lord Halsbury.

The select committee considered the evidence and concluded that no governments which believed Cochrane to have been guilty in
1814
would have restored his rank and honours in the manner which they had done. This was entirely logical, since he had not served the British crown between
1814
and
1832
and so could hardly have earned forgiveness for a crime which it was then believed he must have committed. In June
1876,
the select committee recommended that an award of
£5000
should be paid to his grandson. Cochrane himself had put his legal expenses and loss of pay at
£9000,
but even this recognition vindicated him by his own criteria. The Brazilian government, too, recognised that at least some of Cochrane's claims against it were justified. Of his demand for
£100,000,
a settlement of
£40,000
was duly made.
⁵⁶

Unfortunately, the satisfaction among Cochrane's descendants was matched by outrage among those of Lord Ellenborough, who now regarded their famous ancestor as having been slandered in the basest manner, libelled by Cochrane in the
Autobiography
and by Lord Campbell in his
Lives
of
the
Chief
Justices,
and unfairly dealt with by the House of Commons and its select committee. Accordingly, Ellenborough's grandson, Edward Downes Law, employed a barrister, J. B. Atlay, to write
The
Trial
of
Lord
Cochrane
before
Lord Ellenborough.
The book, which appeared in
1897,
confirmed that the truth of the Stock Exchange case was, ultimately, beyond proof or disproof. However, in view of the way in which Atlay was employed to write the entire book, there is a certain irony in the dismissal of Cochrane's autobiography on the grounds that he wrote it with Earp's assistance. The squabble continued until
1914,
when Ellen
borough's grandson himself wrote and published
The
Guilt
of
Lord Cochrane
in
1814
to celebrate the centenary of the Stock Exchange trial.

Of Cochrane's immediate family, Kitty died five years after him, in Boulogne in
1865,
at the age of sixty-nine. His heir, Thomas Barnes Cochrane, lived to see payment made by order of parliament in
1876,
in recognition of his father's unrequited services. The nth Earl of Dundonald had chosen the army as his career and took part in the China wars. The grandson, Douglas Cochrane, earned considerable military fame as
12th
Earl of Dundonald, reaching the rank of Major-General after the South African war of
1899-1901,
in which he was mentioned in despatches six times. After being promoted to Lieutenant-General, he emerged from retirement to command the
2nd
Life Guards in the First World War. He was the last of his line who overlapped Cochrane's own life, having been born in
1852
and succeeded to
the title on the death of the 11
th Earl in
1885.

Shortly before his death, the
Athenaeum
summarised Cochrane's attraction for the Victorians by remarking, "Everything about Lord Dundonald's career is strange and romantic.
...
He inherited an earldom - and a gold watch.
...
He was liker Nelson than any other officer of his generation." The world at large was familiar with the imposing figure of the old sailor, "a broad-built Scotchman, rather seared than conquered by age, with hairs of snowy white, and a face in which intellect still beams through sorrow and struggle, and the marks of eighty years of active life". His great height, somewhat reduced by a pronounced stoop, was still "commanding". The Victorians found in him the manners of a more elegant age, "good old-fashioned courtesy colouring the whole man, his gestures, and speech".
⁵⁷

As Cochrane himself had remarked, without having "a particle of romance" in his character, he was destined to become one of the most romantic warriors of his day. It was perhaps inevitable that he should be so described in a period later summed up by the literary catch-phrase of "the Romantic Revival". In the heroics of warfare, as well as in his attachment to a new ideal of democracy, he was as much a part of that culture as Byron or Scott. He mirrored the qualities of action and drama which Scott portrayed in fiction, while sharing the Philhellenism and democratic enthusiasm which moved both Byron and Shelley. His admiration for the greatest romantic hero, Napoleon, and his particular distaste for the Wellesleys and all then-works reflects a sympathy with the prevailing intellectual fashion. Indeed, there seems an almost Byronic grandeur in the plan to free the famous prisoner of St Helena and set him on the throne of a great South American Empire.

The extremes of Cochrane's character embraced the contraries of amiability and pertinacity, generosity and extreme touchiness. He was master of surprise in naval warfare, yet victim of an
extraordinary degree of naivete
in dealing with governments of every complexion. With a handful of ships, he could liberate half a continent, but his attempts to win a degree of political freedom for his own countrymen led to his repeated humiliation in the House of Commons. In his financial dealings, conditioned by the long memory of the "res angusta domi", he speculated unhesitatingly to increase his fortune and hounded British and foreign governments for every penny which he considered they might owe him. But while he seemed unremittingly mercenary, he was unpredictably generous. He gave or returned money, as in the case of the Greek government, with the appearance of caring nothing for it. In many of his campaigns on behalf of nations fighting for their independence, he gave more than he received.

"He is such a fine fellow," wrote Charles Greville in
1830,
"and so shrewd and good humoured." Since Greville also believed him guilty of the Stock Exchange fraud, there is no reason to regard the judgement as mere flattery. A quarter of a century before, Mary Russell Mitford, observing the young captain of the
Speedy
had found him, most of all, "gentle, quiet, mild". As a matter of disposition, he seems indeed to belong to the eighteenth century rather than to its successor and to display those qualities of courtesy and benevolence which were recognised by it in the phenomenon of "the Good-Natured Man".
⁵⁸

But if this was the countenance which Cochrane presented to those with whom he had no quarrel, he was an implacable enemy to his opponents. Even in his old age, there was no mellowing and no sense in which past antagonisms were forgotten. In his eighties, he fought with embittered resolve to clear his name and to destroy the reputations of men like Ellenborough for the injury they had done him almost half a century before. It mattered little that most men by this time believed him innocent, or that those who remained in doubt none the less regarded any suspicion against him as insignificant by comparison with the numerous deeds of honour and gallantry which stood to his credit. As Cardinal Manning once remarked of Cardinal Newman, Cochrane was "a good hater". It mattered nothing, for example, that St Vincent had been one of the best naval commanders of his day, nor that he was a vigorous opponent of the same naval corruption which Cochrane attacked. He had put himself beyond the pale by his treatment of the brash commander of the
Speedy.
Even fifty-eight years later there was no forgiveness for this.
⁵⁹

Whether in personal conflict or general battle, Cochrane was interested in nothing but absolute victory. In naval politics or legal quarrels this was notoriously difficult to achieve. He was an artist in war, whether in the split-second annihilation of French cavalry at Port Vendre by a turning broadside from the
Imperieuse,
or in the concept of instant and total triumph offered to the Prince Regent in
1812,
by virtue of the famous secret weapons. Yet in English public life, complete and demonstrable victories, of the sort represented by the
Gamo
or the
Esmeralda
in war, eluded him.

Underlying his skill in war, and even his private amiability, was an embarrassing quickness to resent injury either to his reputation or his purse. He found the servants of the Admiralty, and those of the Greek or South American governments, difficult to deal with. However Cochrane's own prickliness could make him one of the most awkward partners. He might be an artist in war, but his repeated threats to resign his command and leave the stage of combat suggested, more specifically, a prima donna. Nor did he show great tolerance of the Brazilian or Greek crews who found themselves manning a vessel which was unfamiliar to them. It happened that the best Royal Navy crews had long experience of the sea, in peace and war, while those of many other nations had not. Cochrane made too few allowances for this, perhaps, but he was never guilty of mere chauvinism. As he wrote to Lord Haddington at the Admiralty: "I am not one of those, my lord, who deem it advantageous to act on the belief that one Englishman can beat two Frenchmen." In his own case, it happened that he had beaten the French, or beaten them off, on every occasion but one, when the
Speedy
was trapped by three battleships off Alicante in
1802.
But that occasion remained in his mind, combining with wider experience to safeguard him from the comfortable nationalistic myths generated by legends of Trafalgar or Waterloo.
⁶⁰

The day to day chores of commanding a larger fleet seem to have been uncongenial to him and to have brought out his less admirable traits. In battle, as his tactics against the Portuguese off Bahia established, he could lead such formations with a flair worthy of his single-ship actions. As the commander of a single ship, he was supreme. Since Drake and the Elizabethans, no man could rival the successive achievements of the
Speedy,
the
Pallas,
the
Imperieuse,
the
O'Higgins,
and the
Pedro
Primiero.
His plans for gas attacks on the enemy coast or saturation bombardment from his "temporary mortar" vessels might have altered the course of the Napoleonic and Crimean wars dramatically, or might have ended in fiasco. None the less, England had a weapon of equal potential in Cochrane himself. Armed with the conventional force of two or three frigates and a regiment or two of troops, his destruction of French commerce, communications, and supplies might have given England a decisive initiative in the most important theatre of the earlier war.