CHAPTER XI.--How the Admiral entered the maze of Neapolitan Politics.

Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples, was more of a man than her husband, though he was of great stature and much addicted to the chase. The daughter of Maria Theresa, the sister of Marie Antoinette, it was not surprising that she should have beauty and capacity in no common degree. History has it that she was of coarser fibre than her mother and sister; it was perhaps necessary for the part she had to play. Marie Antoinette could be reckless, Maria Carolina is said to have stopped at nothing which stood in the way of her desires, except that she was loyal in her friendships and her hatreds.

After a lengthy period of a kind of social purgatory, Lady Hamilton had been admitted into the truly Oriental paradise of the Neapolitan Court. The Queen did not do things by halves. When once her Ladyship had been admitted to the court, she was rapidly admitted to the Queen's intimacy. My Lady's beauty and high spirits, her usefulness in the _al fresco_ entertainments in which the King and Queen delighted, and for which she had a perfect genius, and her extreme popularity, made her desirable to a dissolute court which lived in the frankest way for pleasure. And every one knows now that she served the Queen in another capacity, unsuspected by any except those in her confidence and that of the British leaders at Naples.

The kingdom of Naples, or the Two Sicilies, was on the point of being swallowed up by France. The British fleet apart, it was practically at the mercy of the French, for though it had a certain number of men capable of offering a bloody resistance in guerilla warfare or street fighting, we now know that it had no army or navy capable of contending with the veteran and splendidly-led forces of France. The nobles and the wealthier portion of the population, to a large extent, believed in the honesty of the French intentions, and, as I have said, had a good deal of sympathy with the new ideas spread on the air by the French Revolution. The King did not see the danger in which his kingdom lay from the French. But the Queen's wits were sharpened by her hatred: she never forgot for an instant the murder of her sister or the sympathies of her family--the Imperial House of Austria. Being on the _qui vive_, she saw the sword which was hanging over the kingdom, and with characteristic energy determined to dash it away.

But there were difficulties, and she saw that she must lean upon the English and their brilliant naval commander. The island part of her kingdom could hardly be seriously invaded until the British sea power in the Mediterranean was broken; but the Continental part was in a very different position. There were French forces no farther off than Rome, and until our sweeping victory at the Nile had shut the great French expeditionary force under General Buonaparte up in Egypt it was more than half likely that it would have been employed for a descent on Naples. The English, on the other hand, had no land forces in Italy, and we had not indeed shown that we had either commanders or regiments of a character to maintain the prestige won under the great Duke of Marlborough. Any formal defiance of the French, therefore, involved a grave risk of losing the Continental part of the Neapolitan kingdom, until an Austrian army marched down the Peninsula. And to bring about a French invasion it was only necessary for the Queen to show herself in open alliance with the English. No one doubted her wishes in this direction. She was simply overborne by the sympathy or fear for the French entertained by those who had the power to override her.

Maria Carolina had more than ordinary courage; but she had cunning also, and quietly developed her plans in connection with the English, and contrived to do so, as history has proved, and certain of us knew all along, through her intimacy with Lady Hamilton.

Lady Hamilton, it is true, was the wife of the British Ambassador; but, partly from her antecedents, no doubt, people did not regard her as capable of having any political weight, and she was much identified with the frivolities which took up the time of the Royal Family to such an extent as to be a scandal.

Maria Carolina was supposed to be concealing her chagrin and drowning her cares in a turmoil of pleasure, with a questionable entourage made more questionable by the prominence of My Lady. But all this elaborate frivolity, besides serving the immediate purpose of passing the time agreeably, left My Lady in constant attendance on the Queen. They might be for hours together on a water picnic to eat the fine oysters fattened in the Lucrine Lake of the ancients, and the making up of the party might involve My Lady driving up to the Palace twice or thrice in the course of a few hours to consult with the Queen for a few minutes.

Never for an instant did the French party suspect that My Lady was the go-between from the Queen to the British Ambassador or British naval officers; but we know now that this was in progress for many months. And the assumed intimacy led to a real and deep friendship, for the Queen was astonished with My Lady's masculine capacity and still more masculine courage in this difficult business, and touched by her devotion to the Royal House of Naples. Accordingly she lost no opportunity of showing her attachment to her friend by lending her presence to My Lady's entertainments, especially when the Admiral's victory allowed her to throw off the mask and display openly her sympathies for the English against the French.

At this birthday ball given in honour of the Admiral, she was present for the greater part of the evening, surrounded by a glittering bevy of courtiers; and her presence gave My Lady the opportunity of showing her brilliant courage and resourcefulness. I learn from the Journals, in a passage full of admiration for the well-bred serenity with which she met such a terrible ordeal, that no sooner had she left the Admiral after she had recovered from her emotion at the outrageous accusations of Lieutenant Nisbet, than he received a summons from the Queen graciously commanding his attendance.

Not having any sufficient excuse to decline, he went, and found My Lady tattling with Her Majesty as if nothing had happened.

"Shall I interpret for your Majesty and his Excellency?" she inquired in the most ordinary way; and when the Queen replied in the affirmative, informed the Admiral that this was Her Majesty's wish, and added that she had prompted Her Majesty to send for him, and that it would not be usual for him to take his leave until Her Majesty gave the signal, thus securing him from doing anything hastily in connection with the incident. At the door the Admiral found Will waiting for orders, and, with characteristic command, showing a face devoid of any expression but the smiling respect with which he invariably greeted his chief when he met him or was sent for. Telling him to attend, the Admiral waited on Her Majesty, when, finding that they were to converse privately, My Lady interpreting, Will fell back among the less important members of the royal party, and seeing at a glance that there were no English among them to whom courtesy demanded that he should pass a few remarks, he retired within his shell, as it were, and stood with unseeing eyes. He was glad to keep silence, for the events which had just happened had shocked him even more than the Admiral himself. Impressionable and emotional as the Admiral was, an attack was in itself calculated to make his spirits rise, though the nature of this attack, from the fact that it was levelled chiefly against a lady for whom he felt such an attachment and respect, stood in the way of his natural tendency on this occasion. Neither had Will the Admiral's philosophy, deeply tinged with a religiousness on the one hand and lightened with an intermittent gaiety on the other. Will, except in action, had a slow-moving mind, which many things failed to reach, but when they did reach it, or were of a serious nature, he could not easily shake them off. As he stood giving the rein to his thoughts, he took little note of those among whom he was standing until he heard himself addressed, and found that he was next the Prince of Favara and his sister. There was a genuine ring in the Prince's voice, as if bygones were really bygones, and the salutations were not merely a piece of duellists' etiquette when the combatants happened to meet again. Donna Rusidda, too, greeted him as if she were glad to see him.

Under ordinary circumstances Will would, as likely as not, have found some well-bred way of escaping from a position which threatened to be awkward for both of them; but he was so agitated about the affair with Lieutenant Nisbet that he had not his usual collectedness, nor was it easy for him, being in attendance upon the Admiral, to place a distance between himself and the Favaras who were in attendance upon the Queen.

The topic of conversation started by the Prince was, naturally, the battle, in which it was already bruited about Naples how Will had distinguished himself. After repeated congratulations, in which Donna Rusidda joined very prettily, they talked to him for a long time about the battle, Donna Rusidda asking most particularly about the Admiral, and how he was now, and about his wound, and how he looked in the action, and so on, in infinite detail. The topic was a fortunate one; for Will so warmed up on the subject of his beloved Admiral that they left off quite kindled into friendship.

It was against Will's notions of good breeding to question them very particularly about themselves; but in reply to his query whether they would be in Naples long, the Prince volunteered the information that a certain number of the Queen's ladies had always to be from the island, and that his sister had lately been chosen to fill a vacancy. He himself had long been attached to Ferdinand I.'s household. He further showed his disposition to be friendly by making a jest of his poverty. "If one cannot afford to live in one's own palace, the next best thing is to live in the King's."

A FURTHER EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL.

[_Note._--The letter herein referred to as having been written by the Admiral to her Ladyship on October 3rd, 1798, was duly sent, and is preserved in autograph among the Nelson papers.]

"Our time here is actively employed, and between business and what is called pleasure I am not my own master for five minutes.

"Fortunately a good deal of the business of the last few days has been transacted with her charming Ladyship, who came to me from the Queen to put me in possession of a mass of information, which Her Majesty did not consider it safe to entrust to paper. The spies of the French party are so many and so active, even in the Queen's own apartments.

"I am easier in my mind now about Emma. I am convinced that when a man and a woman of an age to be mutually attractive to one another are fast friends and frequently in each other's company, as those French would say, _tête-à-tête_, that it is opposed to the laws of human nature--I would almost go further, and say that it is opposed to the laws of gravitation--that they should not drift into close proximity with each other. And being in close proximity, it is as much a law of nature that they should from time to time lay sympathetic hands the one upon the other. Whether they also kiss is upon a different footing; for kissing has so long been employed as the formula to express a certain state of things, though I believe its particularisation to this to be purely arbitrary. But the formula having been accepted will deter many, especially women, from what would naturally seem a harmless and proper mode of expressing the completeness of their companionship and understanding of each other, though now it seems a dreadful fault and sort of crime. I am thankful that Lady Hamilton and I are not hidebound by any such superstitions. This is not to say that I have not had grave misgivings with my conscience, for it does not seem right that any man should enjoy such perfect happiness as I feel in the companionship of dear Lady H. It is the happiness that I mistrust, not the holding of friendly hands and meeting of friendly lips. And yet why should one mistrust happiness? The patriarch Jacob, at the end of his long life and reign as chief of his household, exclaimed, 'Few and evil have been the days of my pilgrimage,' and he had lived then a hundred and forty years. I have lived but forty, crowned at the end by the goodness of God with a victory than which no mortal man could pray for greater. But if the patriarch could describe his hundred and forty years in which he had founded a prosperous family and, as God promised him, a great nation, may I not rather apply these words to my forty years, spent, three parts of them, on the sea, which I cannot, in spite of so long a time, face without constant sickness? I have fought in a hundred pitched battles, been wounded--I know not how often--and lost an eye and an arm in the service of my country. I have spent months together out at sea, in a battered ship, badly provisioned. Have I not earned whatever happiness Providence suffers to be put in my way?

"But there is Lady Nelson. She is a good wife: would she not be glad that I should have the kindness--I put the plain truth to myself--the caressingness of a good woman, to coax back for me that coy and uncertain goddess of health? Of course she would. Why do I not write to her, then? Because, not being in the full possession of the facts, she might misunderstand, and I might raise the very suspicions which I should be writing to allay.

"Beautiful Emma! how diffident and girlish she was when she came to me to-day, dreading lest she should be disturbing me, dreading lest she should be intruding, dreading lest she was trespassing on my friendship! And the woman, who came to me with a frank kiss, brought with her the secrets of a nation, which she set forth better than Acton would have done, or her husband the Ambassador.

"I have now, I think, before me the whole history leading up to the present situation in the Neapolitan kingdom. I have the attitude and treacherous designs of the French, the policy of the Emperor, the state of the kingdom. I think the presence of these French at Castellana in the Roman state--thirteen thousand of them, better troops, I should judge, than any the Queen can put in the field--a most serious menace, not only for their power in the field, which she ought to be able to balance if she gets a good general: there is one, I hear, to come from Austria--Neapolitan commanders cannot be relied on. But the principal danger lies not so much in their power in the field as in the danger of their pernicious ideas, spreading among the disaffected in the Neapolitan kingdom with a knowledge of there being such a strong basis to rally on.

"It seems that their Majesties can put into the field an army of thirty or forty thousand fine troops, who will follow their leaders anywhere, and not only out of the battle-field, as they would certainly have to, if led by their own commanders. With these one might dispose of the French thirteen thousand in the Roman state, especially if one could land a few thousand men at Leghorn to cut them off from their base, and get the Emperor to march his armies. But this is exactly what the Emperor is determined not to do unless we force him, because he says that we must wait for the French attack. Now this is what I never have done in any of my principal actions. It has ever been my custom to seek the enemy and deliver my attack at the earliest possible moment, and I have found this answer above expectation with the French, who always credit the attacker with having the superior force.

"I should like to write to the Queen or the Ambassador, but am restrained by the fact that they have not asked me formally to give any opinion, and it would be like pushing myself into the command of their forces. But there is no corresponding reason why I should not place a summary of my views in the hands of Lady H., to be by her communicated to the Ambassador and Her Majesty. I shall write to her as follows:--

"'Naples, Oct. 3rd, 1798.

"'My dear Madam,--

"'The anxiety which you and Sir William Hamilton have always had for the happiness of their Sicilian Majesties, was also planted in me five years past, and I can truly say, that on every occasion which has offered (which have been numerous) I have never failed to manifest my sincere regard for the felicity of these kingdoms. Under this attachment, I cannot be an indifferent spectator to what has (been) and is passing in the Two Sicilies, nor to the misery (without being a politician), which I cannot but see plainly is ready to fall on those kingdoms, now so loyal, by the worst of all policy--that of procrastination. Since my arrival in these seas in June last, I have seen in the Sicilians the most loyal people to their Sovereign, with the utmost detestation of the French and their principles. Since my arrival at Naples I have found all ranks, from the very highest to the lowest, eager for war with the French, who, all know, are preparing an army of robbers to plunder these kingdoms and destroy the Monarchy. I have seen the Minister of the insolent French pass over in silence the manifest breach of the third article of the treaty between his Sicilian Majesty and the French Republic. Ought not this extraordinary conduct to be seriously noticed? Has not the uniform conduct of the French been to lull governments into a false security, and then to destroy them? As I have before stated, is it not known to every person that Naples is the next marked object for plunder? With this knowledge, and that his Sicilian Majesty has an army ready (I am told) to march into a country anxious to receive them, with the advantage of carrying the war from, instead of waiting for it at home, I am all astonished that the army has not marched a month ago.

"'I trust that the arrival of General Mack will induce the Government not to lose any more of the favourable time which Providence has put in their hands; for if they do, and wait for an attack in this country, instead of carrying the war out of it, it requires no gift of prophecy to pronounce that these kingdoms will be ruined and the monarchy destroyed. But should, unfortunately, this miserable ruinous system of procrastination be persisted in, I would recommend that all your property and persons are ready to embark at a very short notice. It will be my duty to look and provide for your safety, and with it (I am sorry to think it will be necessary) that of the amiable Queen of these kingdoms and her family. I have read with admiration her dignified and incomparable letters of September 1796. May the councils of these kingdoms ever be guided by such sentiments of dignity, honour, and justice; and may the words of the great William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, be instilled into the ministry of this country--"_The boldest measures are the safest_"--is the sincere wish of your Ladyship's, etc.,

"'Horatio Nelson.

"'P.S.--Your Ladyship will, I beg, receive this letter as a preparative for Sir William Hamilton, to whom I am writing, with all respect, the firm and unalterable opinion of a British Admiral, anxious to approve himself a faithful servant to his Sovereign by doing everything in his power for the happiness and security of their Sicilian Majesties and their kingdoms.'

"I have just made a copy of the letter to Lady H., sealed it, and sent it to her by Will's hands."

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[This is really most extraordinary if the journals be not genuine, for Will well remembers taking a letter to her Ladyship on the date mentioned, which was afterwards made public, and from the nature of its contents fits in exactly with the extract from the Journal. And if one says that the Journal may have been written up from the published letter, how is one to account for Will's being mentioned with the circumstances correct? For Will was of no consequence then, being one of the younger lieutenants only. This certainly is a most extraordinary coincidence.--T. T.]

* * * * *

"I am not sure that I have made matters clear to a woman, though of masculine intelligence. I trust that she will come to me before she acts upon it; indeed, I shall send for her. But shall I? I must ask myself, is it for this that I desire her presence, or is it for the overpowering joy of having her with me again? To be honest to myself, I fear it is but an excuse, and yet the salvation of Naples lies in the communications she carries between the Palace and my fleet. I wish I knew....

"I only know that in this last week the whole tenor of my life seems to have changed. I am tasting for the first time of the larger, fuller life in which men and women enjoy perfect companionship of each other. I hope there is nothing wicked in it! I hope there is nothing wicked in it! God knows I do it with a pure heart. He has said that 'to the pure all things are pure.'"