Nelson, Horatio

Nelson, Horatio (1758–1805). Emphasis should always be placed on Nelson's East Anglian background. Through both his parents (via his mother Catherine née Suckling he was a great-great-nephew of Sir Robert Walpole) his roots were regional, and his father's pastoral duties in his living at Burnham Thorpe, where Nelson was born on 29 September 1758, brought Edmund Nelson's eight surviving children into daily contact with parishioners whose livelihood was wrung from field, marsh, and coast. All his life Nelson was profoundly aware of the drudgery of toil, whether on the furrow or the lower deck, and humanely responsive to the concerns of the least privileged. The influence of his strong-minded mother, who died when he was only 9, always remained with him. By 1801 only two of her six sons survived, and this year, probably the most testing of his life, when he parted from a blameless wife, became the father of two daughters by Emma Hamilton, and, after Copenhagen, assumed against his will a most challenging anti-invasion command reaching from Harwich down to Dover, stretched his highly strung temperament to its limits. A natural recklessness, which had underlain past feats and past censure, was snuffed out before the defences of Boulogne in August 1801, and fame itself was tasting sour for Nelson: a plan to quit England with Emma for the Sicilian dukedom of Brontë, given to him by a grateful king of the Two Sicilies in August 1799, had not been abandoned. But within eighteen months, by the time Nelson assumed the Mediterranean command in May 1803, he had found composure, and for this Emma Hamilton (then widowed) may claim some credit. The devotion shown him by the fleet also helped the serenity of the last three years, a potent contribution to Nelson's ‘legend’ in its ultimate form; and in May 1804 late proof of his mother's benign legacy breaks through in one of his innumerable letters: ‘the thought of former days brings all my mother into my heart, which shows itself in my eyes.’

Nothing is known for certain about Nelson's earliest acquaintance with the sea, but he took so readily to navigation in Thames and Medway, and later through tropical shoals and rivers, to the grand moments at the Nile and Copenhagen that there may have been childhood experiences of north Norfolk's creeks, even if only by punt when angling. His entry to the navy in 1770 was through patronage, that of his uncle Maurice Suckling, comptroller of the navy 1775–8. For all his natural intolerance of regulation, Nelson was unfeignedly sincere in sustaining lifelong friendships with his seniors: Captains Lutwidge, no discourager of initiative, and Locker, a profoundly educative influence; Sir Peter Parker, who in June 1779 eased Nelson's promotion to a post-captaincy and so placed his feet on the ladder to becoming an admiral; Sir Samuel ( Lord) Hood, and Sir John Jervis ( earl of St Vincent). Through ‘pull’ in the right quarters Nelson made early voyages to the West Indies and the Arctic, followed by a spell in the East Indies during which he escaped death by malaria only through the care of Captain James Pigot. Examined for lieutenant in April 1777, Nelson immediately returned to the West Indies, and his years there, to July 1788 when he was within four months of being placed on half-pay back in England, formed him as a naval officer. A ten-month break at home and in France, June 1783 to the following spring, caused him briefly to consider standing for Parliament.

Before Maurice Suckling died he had predicted admiralship for his nephew (attained February 1797), while Hood, a friend of Suckling's, noted the young captain's exceptional dedication. Prince William Henry, the future William IV, to whom Nelson became a trusted councillor in the Leeward Islands, thought him ‘no common being’, and many from other walks of life were struck by his flair and address: we can yet recover something of Nelson's flavour through reading even a random sample of his 5,000 surviving letters, incisively lucid, often humorous, and with insights unexpected in a man apparently prone to self-absorption. His grasp of the essentials in commanding men was allied to administrative exactitude; and the latter quality prompted him to take issue with illicit American trade in the West Indies which, though a justifiable policy, placed his professional future at risk. The attraction he felt towards women suggests strong emotional cravings. Perhaps it was some self-knowledge which brought him to a marriage, grounded only in ‘esteem’, with Frances Nisbet (née Woolward) in March 1787. The match involved a serious misjudgement of Frances's likely capacities as a naval officer's wife: dutifully loyal to the navy, the maintenance of the same quality towards his spouse became a burden for Nelson, before ever he met Emma Hamilton.

If Frances Nelson could not comprehend her husband's professional zeal, neither could she share in his attachment to north Norfolk during his years of unemployment until, in January 1793, he was at length appointed to the 64-gun Agamemnon at Chatham. Nelson assured his wife he would ‘come laughing back one day’, and although no finality was intended, a marriage which had proved childless was even less likely to bring him back involuntarily. The seven years which ensued in the Mediterranean, broken only by sick leave September 1797 to March 1798, under the commands of Hood, Hotham, Jervis, and, least happily, Keith, saw Nelson become a surpassing commander for those who served under him, and a hero to his countrymen and -women. But they were costly, his wounds, as he drily commented, being ‘tolerable for one war’: a right eye lost at Calvi (Corsica) July 1794, an internal rupture at St Vincent February 1797, loss of his right arm in a foolhardy assault on Tenerife the following July, a head wound at the Nile in August 1798, which almost certainly affected his mental balance and increased his fear of blindness. This may be a charitable explanation, but it is a not unconvincing one, for the intensity of his passion for Emma Hamilton, his intoxication with the honours which fell to him from George III, Naples, Constantinople, Malta, his maladroit and insensate involvement in Neapolitan politics 1799–1800, and his flagrant disregard of a superior's orders at Copenhagen. A national hero, yet a flawed one, the last three years 1803–5, which included a further spell in the Mediterranean and the untiring, frustrating chase after Villeneuve to the West Indies and back in the summer before Trafalgar, confirmed Nelson's renown as a leader of men with an almost spiritual power to articulate the national will to resist Napoleon. He was given a barony after his victory of the Nile and advanced to viscount after the battle of Copenhagen.

David Denis Aldridge

Bibliography

Nicholas, N. H. (ed.), The Letters and Despatches of Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson (7 vols., 1844–6);
Oman, C. , Nelson (1947);
Pocock, T. , Horatio Nelson (1987).