CHAPTER IX.--How the Admiral began his friendship with Lady Hamilton.

A LETTER FROM LADY HAMILTON TO THE ADMIRAL.

"_Naples, September 8th, 1798._

"_My dear, dear Sir,--How shall I begin? What shall I say to you? 'Tis impossible I can write, for since last Monday I am delirious with joy, and assure you I have a fever caused by agitation and pleasure! Good God! what a victory! Never, never has there been anything half so glorious, so complete! I fainted when I heard the news, and fell on my side, and am hurt. But what of that? I should feel it a glory to die in such a cause. No, I would not like to die till I see and embrace _the victor of the NILE_. How shall I describe to you the transports of Maria Caroline? 'Tis not possible. She fainted, and cried, kissed her husband, her children, walked frantic with pleasure about the room, cried, kissed and embraced every person near her, exclaiming--'Oh, brave Nelson! Oh, God bless and protect our brave deliverer! Oh! Nelson! Nelson! what do we owe to you! Oh, victor, saviour of Italy! Oh, that my swollen heart could now tell him personally what we owe to him!'_

"_You may judge, my dear sir, of the rest; but my head will not permit me to tell you half of the rejoicing. The Neapolitans are mad, and if you was here now you would be killed with kindness. Sonnets on sonnets, illuminations, rejoicing. Not a French dog dare show his face. How I glory in the honour of my country _and my countryman_! I walk and tread in the air with pride, feeling that I was born on the same land with the victor Nelson and his gallant band. But no more. I cannot, dare not, trust myself, for I am not well._

"_Little dear Captain Hoste will tell you the rest. He lives with us in the day, for he will not sleep out of his ship, and we love him dearly._

"_He is a fine good lad. Sir William is delighted with him, and says he will be a second Nelson. If he is only half a Nelson he will be superior to all others._

"_I send you two letters from my adorable Queen. One was written to me the day we received this glorious news; the other yesterday. Keep them, as they are her own handwriting. I have kept copies only; but I feel that you ought to have them. If you had seen our meeting after the battle--but I will keep it all for your arrival; I could not do justice to her feelings or my own, with writing it. We are preparing your apartment against you come. I hope it will not be long, for Sir William and I are so impatient to see and embrace you._

"_I wish you could have seen our house the three nights of the illuminations: it was covered with your glorious name; there were three thousand lamps, and there should have been three millions if we had had time. All the English vied with each other in celebrating this most gallant and ever-remarkable victory. Sir William is ten years younger since the happy news, and he now only wishes to see his friend to be completely happy. How he glories in you when your name is mentioned! He cannot contain his joy. For God's sake come to Naples soon!_

"_We receive so many sonnets and letters of congratulations. I send you some of them, to show you how your success is felt here. How I felt for poor Troubridge! He must have been so angry on the sandbank--so brave an officer! In short, I pity all those who were not in the battle. I would have been rather an English powder-monkey or a swab in that great victory than an emperor out of it. But you will be tired of all this. Write or come soon, to rejoice your ever sincere and obliged friend,_"

[Handwriting: Emma Hamilton]

The man we brought up from the albergo near the Castel Nuovo to the Ambassador's palace in an Embassy coach, softened with a mountain of cushions, did not, to the ordinary onlooker, give much idea of the man who, as darkness was falling, hesitated not a moment to sail without a pilot or a chart between the French line of battle and a shoaling shore. But we, who were privileged to see that extraordinary man during every hour of his daily life, were well accustomed to the spectacle of him prostrated with sickness--from which, however, the chance of a battle would rouse him, like the sound of a trumpet, into the martial, alert little figure that seemed to the men who were to follow his orders to death, like the angel who came down to smite the hosts of Sennacherib.

In spite of his prostration from fever and wounds, he had insisted on donning his full Admiral's uniform--he was going to visit the Representative of his Sovereign, and to the day of his death he never spoke of King George III. save as Our Good and Great King.

Will and I were of his party--Will was in his own coach: his touch soothed the Admiral more than any in the ship, though it was not to be in requisition so much thereafter. I was to do kind of orderly's work, which would in ordinary cases be performed by some one before the mast; but the Admiral, with the kindness which never failed, judged that Will, being away from the ship, would like to have a mate, and that I should serve best.

The palace was hardly like the generality of palaces of that date, for the great state staircase of red marble which conducted to the principal rooms--they, as is the wont in Italy, being on the first floor and not level with the ground as in England--was inside the palace instead of winding round the courtyard outside the inner face of the quadrangle. Perhaps I should hardly call the palace a quadrangle, for on the bottom, or sea-side, the buildings were only the height of a garden wall, and used, I think, for horses. The stables were certainly under the palace on this and the adjoining side towards the town.

The Ambassador's palace, I should have said, was on the outskirts of the town, at the bottom end of the Strada S. Caterina and just against the King's Villa, which was not a house as it would sound to our English ears, but a garden with palm trees, and avenues of the ilex, and with many statues of white marble, running along the sea-shore between the city and Mergellina.

We were on a little hill, which I could see pleased the Admiral greatly, for a faint smile came over his face. This was one of his worst days.

No sooner had the carriage pulled up at the great door, than there flew out the most beautiful woman I ever saw, gracefully dressed in a cool muslin robe of the Turkish fashion, and with a jewelled chaplet bearing the inscription "Nelson and Victory" in the curly hair, so full of auburn lights that at times it looked of the gold colour Mr. Romney was so fond of painting. I needed not to remark the perfect oval of the dimpled face, nor its fairness and rosiness, so marvellously blent that people refused to believe it genuine till her fondness for sea-bathing parties set it beyond doubt, nor the most exquisite smile ever preserved on canvas, to know that it was My Lady Hamilton; for no sooner had she seen the Admiral than her laughing eyes grew moist and tender, and the corners of her mouth began to droop pitifully, and in a moment she had her arm round the Admiral's back and under his right shoulder, with such a gentle, sympathetic touch that he moved from the carriage into the door almost without pain. Behind My Lady was a tall, somewhat bent, elderly gentleman, wearing his Order of the Bath and sundry Neapolitan decorations, like the Admiral, in full Court dress. This was, of course, Sir William Hamilton, K.C.B., his Britannic Majesty's Ambassador and Plenipotentiary at the Court of the Two Sicilies. It has often seemed to me, since, mighty significant that the reception of the Admiral into the palace of the Hamiltons should have been conducted with so much ceremony. You can hardly imagine the procession of coaches and servants sent to bring us up from the albergo, and the army of servants drawn up by the gate and courtyard and grand staircase of the palace; for seldom has the entry of a conqueror into a fallen city been attended with results that have led to more writing. I must say that, as she supported the Admiral from his coach to the suite prepared for him on that day she might have been a goddess: she was so far beyond any woman that I had seen in beauty and graciousness and tenderness, and soft, floating movement.

As he moved down from his coach, I saw the spirit of action coming over the Admiral. He had caught sight of his hostess, and was straightening himself up--there never was a body so dominated by its spirit. But before he could finish My Lady had flown to him, and quelled him with a woman's tender solicitude for sickness. She saw in an instant through his little artifice of leaving his hair unbrushed off his forehead. It was there the plaster yet lay on the wound which had struck him down in the battle. But though he yielded to her tenderness, and moved up the broad, low stairs with the imperceptible advance of the sick unto death--he took two or more steps on each stair--his spirit was perceptibly rising, and to us who knew him this was eloquent. She would have him not to talk; but he said thrice, "Thank God! thank God! thank God!" And the spirit of woman's curiosity overcoming her, she said, "Tell me for what, Admiral, and talk no more." He said, "As I lay in my albergo, in that cursed low ground round the port, with its air like the breath of human beings, I lifted up mine eyes to the hills, and I know that from this little hill cometh my help."

I pondered on these words, for they had a ring about them that was not natural to the Admiral's simple and direct way of speaking. It was not extraordinary for him to wax sentimental, or to embellish his speech with allusions to classics, such as I have recorded about the Fountain of Arethusa; but "cometh" and "mine" were not in his style. But recalling that the Admiral was a parson's son and deeply religious after his own fashion, I made inquiry of the chaplain, Mr. Comyn, who told me that it came from a favourite Psalm of the Admiral's--the cxxi., I think--which he was in the habit of calling "the Traveller's Psalm."

Sir William had made all preparations, with a sedan and specially chosen bearers, for having him carried from his coach to his chamber; but Lady Hamilton, with finer tact, perceived that if he could mount on her arm, though it might take an hour, it would be good to give him the feeling of recovery. And so it proved, for I do not think that he received injury from this fatigue.

The palace was so vast that it took us many minutes passing down the west wing to the chamber chosen for his sleeping-room, which lay at the very end of the suite set apart for him. When we were arrived, he insisted on moving up to his bed, which lay only a yard or two in from the far or south-west corner. He steadied himself against one of the left-hand posts at the foot of the bed, exclaiming, "I shall get well here--I shall get well here."

And, indeed, if aspect affects the health, he might get well, for the prospect from the bed was one which beggars my poor powers of description; though I suppose that the view from the hill of Pausilippo is even finer, for from it one can see the rifted hill, the great fire-mountain Vesuvius, whose eruptions form one of our links of sympathy with the ancient world. It was slumbering that day peacefully amid the lately-dug-out ruins of Forum Pompeji, and the flat-topped hillocks which yet cover two other ancient cities, and half a dozen thriving modern towns swarming with people, as well as the magnificent castle of St. Elmo, which completely dominates the city. These, and the Castle of Nuovo, were shut off by the towering rock which was the Acropolis of the ancient Parthenope, round which the new city--Neapolis--grew up.

But the windows of the Admiral's chamber commanded view enough for any mortal man to desire. In the distance were the long line of mountains culminating in the snow-topped St. Angelo, twice as high as Vesuvius, which divides the Bay of Naples from the Gulf of Salerno, and, in the jaws of the Bay, Capri; while nearer in were the Castel dell' Uovo rising up sheer from the drawbridge running out from Santa Lucia; the hill of Pausilippo, with its white villas peeping out from dark trees; and between them the royal garden with its feathery palms and ilex avenues.

Above all there was the Bay of Naples, surely the bluest piece of water under heaven, with its calm clear waters almost reflecting, far out as they were, the stately ships which had just anchored, after winning the greatest sea victory the world ever saw. The tall spars and black and white hulls were thrown into relief by the swarm of Mediterranean craft with their high-peaked noses, tall lateen sails of glowing reds and yellows, and red-capped crews. From his very bed the Admiral had his fleet, and every atmospheric change in the Bay, under his own eye. I could see how he appreciated the thought which prompted his being put where he need have no worry about what was happening to his beloved fleet. And when he had feasted his eyes for a minute or two on the glassy blue water under the shining sky, he cried, "Thank you, dear friend--a thousand times, thank you!" And he repeated, "I shall get well here."

I must tell you that the whole ship's company had been most seriously concerned about the health of the Admiral. The wound he had in the head in the battle, though it was only from a heavy splinter, produced a sort of concussion of the brain; and this, with the business of so great an affair, even after our glorious victory was gained, combined with his natural proneness to sickness, produced a most dangerous fever, which was like to have carried him off in any one of the fifteen hours immediately before we cast anchor in the Bay of Naples, though in the two or three weeks we were sailing up the Mediterranean by way of Candia he was more than once seemingly full recovered.

After we had brought him to the Ambassador's palace I felt confident that he would mend. A spell on shore always did much for his general health, and we could see that under Lady Hamilton's direction he was like to have the best of attention. As it turned out it was marvellous what she did for him. The very next day he was fit to crack a jest about the diet of asses' milk, which was judged to be the only nourishment light enough for a digestion so disordered by fever. "What would the French say?" he cried: "I can picture the Paris lampooner drawing me with asses' ears in a lion's skin, imagining myself to be the nobler animal. Yes, to the French I shall always be the ass nourished on asses' milk who thought himself a lion!" And then he went off into one of his peals of laughter--rather a shaky peal it must be confessed--but then a straw will serve to show which way the wind blows.

What set him up above all (and set us up too, you may be sure--the Admiral's secretary, Will and myself, and generally one or two of the captains) was the pains My Lady took to keep his mind from troubling about his condition. The ship surgeon, had he been a landsman, might have been expected to be flat against it, after the manner of most doctors, and to have prescribed rest, complete rest, seeing no one, darkened rooms, and so on; but Michael Jefferson was a man of a different stamp. It was his business to make men fit for duty again with as little rest as possible. And then he knew the Admiral. What would that eager, never-resting, planning mind have done in a darkened room, where he could see nothing, cut off from all friends who could give him any news of his fleet? He would have imagined, to say the least of it, a French fleet entering the Bay, and he not being on his ship to have the honour of beating them. In short, he would have harassed himself into his grave.

My Lady went to the root of the matter at once: "It is not rest he wants," she maintained; "it is not physic he needs, but dieting carefully and treating like a spoiled child. I must do the spoiling," she said, with that smile which lit up her whole face and made her eyes so soft; and I could vow that when she used those words she had not a thought of their ever being any more than friends.

I have read somewhere a fairy tale in which people were waited on by invisible servants, so that the dishes took and left their places on the table as it were of their own accord, and in perfect silence. It was, in a sort, after this manner that the Admiral's wants and pleasures were supplied.

The room being at the end of a wing had windows upon three sides--west and south and east; and each window, of course, had heavy close lattices of a dark green colour, as well as projecting awnings of a striped canvas, which could be raised or lowered at pleasure. By aid of these the Admiral could have as much tempered sun as he desired almost from sunrise to sunset; and it seemed as if he never could have his fill of sun. He often said in after years with regret, that _living_ meant living on the Mediterranean.

The windows opening on three sides, and the nearness of the sea also, gave always a pleasant current of air; and in this great airy chamber, always kept cool, and always full of gracious sunshine, with noiseless hands and feet a succession of diversions were provided in the same unobtrusive way by the hostess herself. For though it was the Admiral's bed-chamber, after he had had his light breakfast served in the morning, it was really more of a reception-room, where, as he felt well enough, he transacted the business which was so near his heart, where a great man and son of Anak like Captain Troubridge might be seen waiting and watching with the affection of a woman.

My Lady was famous for her deep, soft voice. She would be singing and singing a room or two away for the Admiral to hear her, as it were by accident; and he would lie and listen, and she would sing until the dream was broken by some mischance. At another time she floated into the room unobserved, carrying in her hands a long Indian scarf or shawl, and went through the "Attitudes," a species of tableaux vivants for which she was so celebrated.

The Admiral was resting, and did not see her for some time after she had begun; and we, not feeling sure that he did not sleep, though I think she had made sure, stood trying to express by dumb show our astonishment and applause. The Admiral gave no sign beyond opening his eyes dreamily; but he told her afterwards that he had never seen illusions so perfect, grace so absolute, beauty so divine. But I think he was most moved when she stole in to his side to bring him flowers or grapes, or a healing ptisane, and stayed smoothing his pillow, laying cool bandages on his wounded head, taking his hands in those magnetic hands, which were so smooth and yet so strong, and in a rich, low voice--not asking how he _felt_, but telling him of all the pleasant things prepared for him to do in a day or two, when the surgeon had pronounced that he should be ready--telling him what king and people alike were saying about their liberator, telling him this good jest, and that, with a woman's reverence for a hero.

It pleased him to have her sit by him, for her "magnetism" was marvellous; and she would sit by the hour as patiently as though she had been his mother--amusing him if he would be amused, listening to him if he would talk, or writing his letters, if he desired it, to his wife; and I, who witnessed it all, think that at that time there was nothing in her mind but pure woman's hero-worship, and I could not help crying to myself, "What a man, and what a woman!" This man had re-writ the history of Europe with his famous sea-fight, in which he had taken risks such as no man ever took before in the world, and was withal as sympathetic as a woman; and this woman led even the chaplain to exclaim that she had, what the ancients prized above all things, that mysterious quality of VENUSTAS, which he endeavoured to explain to us as sheer loveliness--the possession of all the graces which went to form their conception of Venus, the goddess of love and beauty.

And so within a few days the Admiral was about and able to attend, in some fashion, the _fêtes_ given day and night in his honour (and much to his inconvenience), the principal of which were the grand ball given by Count Esterhazy, and the ball of the British Ambassador on the 29th, which was the Admiral's birthday, and of which more anon.