Nelson's Lady Hamilton by Meynell, Esther (surface ebook reader txt) 📕

But the true Nelson shines out when in chasing four French sail he wrote to her, " I feel anxious to get up with these ships, and shall

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be unhappy not to take them myself, for first my greatest happiness is to serve my gracious King and Country, and I am envious only of glory ; for if it be sin to covet glory, I am the most offending soul alive." And on this occasion he had the immense satisfaction of capturing Le Gdndreux, one of the ships that escaped from the French rout in Aboukir Bay. " Thank God!" Nelson cries, "12 out of 13, onely the Guillaume Tell remaining.'* But between the grudge he bore Keith—his attitude is plainly shown in his bitter remark to Troubridge, " We of the Nile are not equal to Lord Keith in his estimation, and we ought to think it an honour to serve under such a clever man"—and his evident desire to get back to Palermo, Nelson's actions after this became distinctly warped. He told Sir William Hamilton that Lord Keith received him and his account with stiffness: " It did not, that I could perceive, cause a pleasing muscle in his face/ 1 as he somewhat oddly expresses it. To Lady Hamilton he wrote, " Had you seen the Peer receive me, I know not what you would have done ; but I can guess. But never mind. I told him that I had made a vow, if I took the Gdn6reux by myself, it was my intention to strike my flag. To which he made no answer." Probably Lord Keith was too much surprised that Nelson could talk of striking his flag when the tale of the Nile

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trophies was still incomplete, when the Guillaume Tell was still uncaptured, to be able to make any answer. The same surprise affected Trou-bridge and Ball when they found that Nelson had, on the score of his health, requested permission from his commander-in-chief "to go to my friends, at Palermo, for a few weeks." Trou-bridge tried to tempt him with the prospect of French ships and of the long-expected fall of Malta: " I beseech you hear the entreaties of a sincere friend, and do not go to Sicily for the present/' Both he and Ball were " extremely anxious " that their beloved admiral should have the " honour and happiness" of receiving the surrender of the French ships and garrison. And more than this, they wished to keep him from Lady Hamilton. But Nelson was not to be led or persuaded: for the first and only time in his life he found Emma Hamilton a stronger attraction than his duty. He wrote to her on the 4th of March, "My health is in such a state, and to say the truth, an uneasy mind at being taught my lesson like a schoolboy, that my DETERMINATION is made to leave Malta on the 15th morning of this month, on the first moment after the wind comes favourable ; unless I am SURE that I shall get hold of the French ships." So he went back to Palermo, and a few days later the Guillaume Tell was captured by Berry and Blackwood.

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Nelson never ceased contrasting Lord Keith with Lord St. Vincent. Even when forwarding to Keith letters regarding the capture of the Guillaume Tell, and saying, with his usual generous ardour, how he gloried in the success of his officers, who were his "darling children, served in his school," he could not refrain from the little sting of adding that " all of us caught our professional zeal and fire from the great and good Earl St. Vincent/'

But at this time his own professional zeal and fire burned somewhat low: his conduct was not approved by the Admiralty at home, and in May Lord Spencer wrote Nelson a letter that must have been painful reading to the admiral's sore and impatient spirit.

" Having observed that you have been under the necessity of quitting your station off Malta," he says, " on account of your health, which I am persuaded you could not have thought of doing without such necessity, it appeared to me much more advisible for you to come home at once, than to be obliged to remain inactive at Palermo, while active service was going on in other parts of the station. ... I am joined in the opinion by all your friends here, that you will be more likely to recover your health and strength in England than in an inactive situation at a Foreign Court, however pleasing the respect and gratitude shown to you for your services may be, and no

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testimonies of respect and gratitude from that Court to you can be, I am convinced, too great for the very essential services you have rendered it."

Such was official opinion in England; while about this time Lord Minto wrote—

" I have letters from Nelson and Lady Hamilton. It does not seem clear whether he will go home. I hope he will not for his own sake, and he will at least, I hope, take Malta first. He does not seem at all conscious of the sort of discredit he has fallen into, or the cause of it, for he still writes, not wisely, about Lady H., and all that. But it is hard to condemn and use ill a hero, as he is in his own element, for being foolish about a woman who has art enough to make fools of many wiser than an admiral."

Had Nelson shown sufficient moral strength to put himself out of