Nelson the Commander by Bennett Geoffrey

Author:Bennett, Geoffrey [Bennett, Geoffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2013-12-22T23:00:00+00:00

VIII To the Baltic 1800-1801

The First Lord might so far disapprove of Nelson's conduct as to I recall him from his command; but to Britain's allies he was the victor of the Nile, the admiral who compelled the French fleet to relinquish its grip on the Mediterranean, the man who dispelled Bonaparte's Oriental dream, and helped to clear the Jacobins from Italy. His journey home across Europe with the Hamiltons was akin to a triumphal progress. They stayed for a month in Vienna where, wrote Lady Minto, 'the door of his house is always crowded with people, and even the street when his carriage is at the door; and when he went to the play he was applauded, a thing which rarely happens here'. The paeans of praise included a performance of 'Papa' Hadyn's D minor Mass, written two years before, with its flourish of trumpets and timpani accompanying the Benedictus inspired by the news from Aboukir Bay (now known as the Nelson Mass); and his forgotten cantata The Battle of the Nile, which Emma insisted on singing with the sixty-eight-year-old composer at the keyboard.

Lady Minto, who had known Nelson in Corsica, did not 'think him altered in the least. He has . . . the same honest simple manners; but he is devoted to Emma, he thinks her quite an angel . . . and she leads him about like a keeper with a bear.' Lord Fitzharris feared the consequences of this infatuation: 'Nelson . . . is not changed; open and honest, not the least vanity about him . . . [but he] told me he had no thoughts of serving again.' He had already said as much to others: 'Lord Nelson is not yet arrived in England,' wrote Troubridge in September, 'and between ourselves I do not think he will serve again.'

The trio followed the course of the Elbe by way of Prague and Dresden. But for all its pleasures, their dilatory journey was not without worries. Fitzharris might admire Nelson, but 'Lady Hamilton is without exception the most coarse, ill-mannered, disagreeable woman I ever met', and the Electress of Saxony refused to receive her, which raised the spectre of whether she would be persona grata at the Court of St James. (She was not, in the event, received by any of the royal family, except for the Prince of Wales and Prince Augustus.) Eventually, on 31 October 1800, they reached Hamburg to embark for a stormy passage across the North Sea. Six days later, two years and eight months after sailing from Spithead, Nelson landed at Yarmouth for the hero's welcome that popular opinion believed he deserved: on 10 November he attended the Lord Mayor's Banquet in Guildhall to receive an elegant sword from the Corporation of London.

But he had also to face the moment of truth. Fanny had come from Roundwood to join her husband at Nerot's Hotel in King Street, St James's. (He had advised her not to meet him at Yarmouth.) For the

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