Nelson (42 page)

On 2 November, as she lay ill at her lodgings in New King Street, ‘being weak in body but of sound [and] disposing mind, memory and understanding’, Ann made a will before a surgeon and a lawyer. She had a special regard for her naval brother, and received occasional letters from him, though none has survived. Now she named him a joint executor of her will with her father, despite the fact that he was far away and older brothers lived close at hand. Her money was to remain in government stocks to supply an annuity to her father for the term of his natural life, and when he died it was to be divided between Horatio and Ann’s sisters and younger brothers. Catherine, the baby of the family, received the largest portion, and, if the Reverend Nelson died before she was twenty-one, Horatio was to invest her legacy in government stocks until she came of age. Ann left a modest collection of possessions, including a locket with a design in hair and mother of pearl, and they all went to her father. She died at her lodgings on 15 November 1783, and was buried out of town, in the simple little church of St Swithun in Bathford, with her father and youngest sister among the mourners. The old man plunged into a grief so great and enduring that one suspects that Ann had been his favourite daughter.
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Uncle William Suckling’s account of the reverend’s suffering distracted Nelson for several days, keeping him to his room and away from the elegant ball attended by Mac on the evening of 25 November. Horatio not only mourned his ‘dear’ sister, but worried for his father’s
life and for the consequent threat to the youngest sister, ‘Kate’, the only sibling left in the parental nest. He contemplated leaving for England, and on 4 December told his brother William that ‘my surprise and grief upon the occasion are, you will suppose, more to be felt than described. What is to become of poor Kate? Although I am very fond of Mrs Bolton [Susanna], yet I own I should not like to see Kate fixed in a Wells society. For God’s sake write what you have heard of our father.’ If he died, ‘I shall immediately come to England, and most probably fix in some place that might be most for poor Kitty’s advantage. My small income shall always be at her service, and she shall never want a protector and a sincere friend while I exist.’
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No sooner did his worries about home subside than Miss Bess Andrews returned to haunt him. No doubt she was sympathetic to his plight, and as the cold, dark weather blended with the wine, lights and conviviality of his first French Christmas, his infatuation with her grew. Some primitive verse, into which he lapsed, aptly summed up the situation: ‘and when a lady’s in the case, all other things they must give place’. Among matters giving ‘place’ was an unexpected invitation from Maximilian Joseph, Comte de Deux Ponts, whom he had captured and entertained off Puerto Cabello earlier in the year. Somehow the count heard about Nelson’s travels, and offered him hospitality in Paris. Horatio was flabbergasted to learn that his prisoner had been ‘a prince of the Empire, a general of the French army, knight of the grand order of St Louis, and was second in command at the capture of Yorktown’. Furthermore, he was in line to become Elector of Bavaria, and as King Maximilian I of Bavaria would one day be counted an ally of Napoleon. Nevertheless, interesting as the invitation was, Nelson decided to defer visiting Paris until the spring. His head was still full of Elizabeth.
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On the morning of Thursday 4 December, before leaving his lodgings in his finest clothes, Nelson broached an idea to his brother. ‘My heart is quite secured against the French beauties,’ he allowed. ‘I almost wish I could say as much for an English young lady, the daughter of a clergyman, with whom I am just going to dine and spend the day. She has such accomplishments that had I a million of money, I am sure I should at this moment make her an offer of them. My income at present is by far too small to think of marriage, and she has no fortune.’

That idea only deepened, especially when the impulsive young captain realised that he could not remain in St-Omer indefinitely and
might soon be parting from Elizabeth. He was afraid the bad weather would destroy his health, and considered consulting a good London physician, and he also wanted to remind the Board of Admiralty of his existence and to steal a visit to his father in Bath. But there was no snow in St-Omer, the frost gave way at the turn of the year, and on 3 January Horatio was still hurrying out to share tea and an evening with ‘the most accomplished woman my eyes ever beheld’.
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At twenty-five Horatio might have married with sobriety, but it was still a big step for him to contemplate. He was a post-captain and a gentleman, but had no money and needed to pursue his career to accumulate reserves. Not only his own future, but also those of the less advantaged members of his family – in fact most of them – to some extent looked towards that career. A marriage was not, of course, necessarily a handicap to a career. In fact, in a society in which advancement depended so much upon ‘interest’, a ‘good marriage’ was an obvious way of uniting the finances and connections of one family to another. And in that sense, Bess was hardly a bad catch. True, she had little money of her own, but like him, she had useful connections. Money or not, Elizabeth was a ‘gentlewoman’, from the professional classes and socially a suitable partner for a captain in the navy.

Yet without money Nelson felt himself a weak suitor. He had neither property nor fortune, nor even, at the moment, a satisfactory income, and it was to be doubted whether he could support a wife let alone raise a family. Wrestling with the problem, Nelson thought the unthinkable. He might be able to wheedle an allowance from Uncle William, who had always supported him, but if not . . . Just as he had been prepared to ‘ruin’ himself for Mary Simpson, so now he wondered whether some career change might place more regular sums in his hands. Suppose he abandoned that ‘dream of glory’ and settled for a more sedentary, shore-based or civilian appointment? Momentarily his entire naval career hung in the balance, as he hinted to his ‘dear uncle’ on 14 January 1784:

The critical moment of my life is now arrived, that either I am to be happy or miserable – it depends solely on you.

You may possibly think I am going to ask too much. I have led myself up with hopes you will not – till this trying moment. There is a lady I have seen, of a good family and connections, but with a small fortune, £1000 I understand. The whole of my income does not exceed £130 per annum. Now I must come to the point. Will you, if I should marry, allow me yearly £100
until my income is increased to that sum, either by employment, or in any other way? . . .

If you will not give me the above sum, will you exert yourself with either Lord North or Mr Jenkinson to get me a guard-ship or some employment in a public office, where the attendance of the principal [incumbent] is not necessary, and of which they must have such numbers to dispose of [in government]? In the [East] India Service, I understand, if it remains under the directors, their marine force is to be under the command of a captain in the Royal Navy. That is a station I should like.

You must excuse the freedom with which this letter is dictated. Not to have been plain and explicit in my distress had been cruel to myself. If nothing can be done for me, I know what I have to trust to. Life is not worth preserving without happiness, and I care not where I may linger out a miserable existence. I am prepared to hear your refusal, and have fixed my resolution if that should happen, but in every situation I shall be a well-wisher to you and your family, and pray they or you may never know the pangs which at this instant tear my heart.
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Nelson wanted to marry Elizabeth, but the problem was
how
. In the event the embarrassment was short-lived. His uncle immediately complied with his request, Horatio proposed to Elizabeth and she refused him point-blank. Suddenly, life became prosaic again, and France, to which he had been warming, was restored to its prominent place in his pantheon of bigotries. Leaving Mac in St-Omer, he hurried back to London. ‘I return to many charming women,’ he told his brother, ‘but no charming woman will return with me. I want to be proficient in the language, which is my only reason for [my] returning [to France]. I hate their country and their manners.’
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But his disappointment soon evaporated and Horatio never allowed it to destroy his friendship for the Andrews family. He took George aboard his next ship, as he had promised. As for Elizabeth, we are left to wonder how much she felt for Nelson, or whether she ever regretted rejecting the first suit he had ever made. Certainly, he cannot have been the only young man she refused, and whose hopes she dashed, for despite her attractiveness she remained single until she was in her forties, an uncommonly late age. Then, in 1804, Bess married the Reverend Richard Farror at Walcott, Somerset, and after his early death chose a final husband in Roger Warne, a lieutenant colonel in the East India Company’s private regiment. Warne was four years or so Nelson’s senior, and had been at the taking of Tipu of Mysore’s
capital, Seringapatam, in 1799. She probably met him in the east, where she seems to have spent some time, and he gave her a diamond ring, which she bequeathed to him before her death. Warne’s will suggests a religious and compassionate man, but their marriage was childless, and Elizabeth’s life was tainted with misfortune. Three of her brothers died young. Henry and Hugh, both army officers, died of disease in San Domingo in the West Indies during the 1790s, while George’s promising career was destroyed by accident, sickness and alcohol.

Elizabeth herself spent her final years with her husband in Bath, at 3 St James’s Square. In 1836 she willed most of her possessions to her ‘dearest husband’, and left remembrances to nephews, nieces, cousins, sisters and other relations and friends, including her ‘faithful affectionate friend and servant’, Elizabeth Kirby. She died at her home, perhaps of cholera. Curiously it was the afternoon of 21 October 1837, the thirty-second anniversary of Nelson’s own death at the battle of Trafalgar.
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On Saturday 17 January Nelson arrived back in London, still suffering from a severe cold contracted during the midwinter journey from St-Omer. Some financial and professional matters delayed him in the capital, and in the course of dealing with them he ran ‘the ring of pleasure’ in a city he had come to realise contained ‘so many charms’. What these pleasures were he did not say, but the pursuits of the day were well known. Taverns, clubs and coffee houses; walks along the Mall or between the tree-lined avenues of St James’s Park, where milk could be had fresh from the cow; theatres in the Haymarket or Drury Lane; sampling the orchestras and supping in the kiosks at Vauxhall; exploring the huge glass-chandeliered rotunda at Ranelagh; and eyeing the fashionable but painted and feathered ladies gossiping in the Pantheon dome on Oxford Street. Certainly he dined with such friends as Ross, Kingsmill and Hood, and it was probably Nelson’s visits to the latter that drew him towards the political arena.
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Nelson ‘danced attendance’ at St James’s Palace on 19 January, most probably under Hood’s auspices, and politics increasingly permeated his correspondence. The previous month the government had fallen, an unholy coalition between two old enemies, Lord North, a king’s man, and the Whig leader Charles James Fox, a critic of the crown,
under the nominal leadership of the Duke of Portland. As the extreme political wings in Parliament floundered, the way opened for any weighty politician capable of winning both the support of the king and sufficient Members of Parliament to form a government. William Pitt was young, but enjoyed the confidence of some of North’s old followers as well as Whigs, and although a mild reformer he was a friend of the king. His Majesty invited him to become the first lord of the Treasury, the then prime minister, but for a while his position remained shaky and a general election was in the offing.

The Portland administration had tainted itself as self-seeking and factious. In particular, its ill-starred attempts to reform the corrupt and inefficient East India Company by bringing it under greater state control only suggested a grubby attempt to increase the extent of government patronage. People were increasingly suspicious of the misuse of patronage. The king and his government, it was widely claimed, used their powers of patronage to reward supporters and silence opposition. It thereby became a means to undermine the English constitution, in which power was supposed to be shared and balanced between king, lords and people.

These criticisms of the Portland–Fox–North coalition sat especially badly with Fox, a Whig and therefore ostensibly a defender of the rights of the people against the encroaching power of the king and his government. Fox had not only looked hypocritical and corrupt, opposing excessive government patronage out of office and extending it when in power, but he also appeared decidedly unpatriotic. His coalition had been willing to accept what many believed to be humiliating peace terms during the negotiations that had ended the American War of Independence and the associated conflicts with France, Spain and Holland. More, Fox had reinforced the impression by his obvious sympathy for the rebellious colonists and his sharp criticism of Britain’s military and naval commanders.

Pitt, by contrast, was unsullied. He presented himself as an independent patriot, free of faction and self-interest, and neither a Whig nor an outright king’s man. He said he would weigh policies purely according to their value to the country. The king, who hated Fox, supported Pitt, as did Hood, who eventually partnered Sir Cecil Wray in an attempt to oust the Whig leader from his own constituency of Westminster.
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These simple ideals of independence, patriotism, selfless service and public good over private gain, appealed to young Nelson, particularly
as filtered through Hood and his entourage. Hood spoke of unity, an end to ‘party’ and the need for independent men to pack the Commons. ‘I shall ever most carefully and studiously steer clear, as far as I am able, of all suspicion of being a
party
man . . . whether for or against a minister,’ he declared. He supported Pitt by principle as well as blood. Nelson uncritically reproduced these ideas. He wanted to ‘unkennel’ Fox ‘and all that party’, and prayed for an election, ‘that the people may have an opportunity of sending men that will support
their
interests, and get rid of a turbulent faction who are striving to ruin their country’.
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