by Jan Needle
Life for Nelson and his fellow officers became a round of pleasure, all in the way of duty to the King. They flew the flag, they demonstrated smartness and sobriety to one and all, they bespoke the quiet superiority of the white man.
We required deference of all social orders but the highest, and the highest treated the best of us as equals. We sailed from place to place, we showed the colours, we organized foot and rowing races, we even rode their horses into the hills. At one time, I must needs confess to my sisters that I was almost getting fat. Not true, exactly, but I can imagine how much they revelled at the thought!
One duty of a navy officer was decorum, and all the young gentlemen were schooled in manners and protocol of the highest water.
‘You in the army have it simple,’ he laughed at Timothy. ‘You come from Welsh Wales and I wager you don’t know a spoon from a fork, and bully for you for it! I was schooled in what to wear with what and when, what to say or not to whom and how, and the order of each course of meat and wine. I could speak to a maiden without a blush from her or me, I could bow and scrape to any dowager as if I courted her. Truth to tell, if it had not been for that heady whiff of gunpowder when we taught the Hyder Ali ketch a lesson I might have had more and deeper cravings. But it was enough, Tim. We swam, we even swam! We fished, and danced, and flirted in the dark.’
Nelson even gambled. And at one evening’s play – his first, he claimed – he took three hundred pounds off a group of merchants ‘so rich they bore the pain as easy as a sucking from a baby’s gums.’
Not so Horatio, he told Hastie in seriousness.
‘Tom Troubridge thought it wondrous sport, but I could not help but think of my poor father, and his meagre living as a Norfolk parson. What if I had lost, instead of won? How would I have ever paid it back? I was too young to think of taking prizes yet, and without prize money I must needs to live to ninety-nine to clear my debt. I will never bet again, Tim, you have my word on it.’
His squadron sailed to every part of India, and he got to know them all. Anjengo, Trincomalee (‘the finest harbour in the world’), Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, he sailed as far as Basra on the gulf of Persia.
‘I learned the language, too,’ he said one evening, incoherently. ‘Turkat gavi doll, a fore topmast. Larner, to fight. Hussi – not a sort of woman but a joke! Memsarb was a lady, but a native woman was just bibbi. A little drink was chota peg, and the thieves were churi walla boys. Ah God, Tim, I wish I found the French tongue half as easy.’
When he was in mild fever, Nelson would go on like this for hours – or what seemed like them to Hastie. He did not believe the half of it, but he was pleased at the picture of a hero’s life it built. For Tim was certain Nelson was a hero, and not just from what he’d seen him doing on the Spanish Main. And Nelson was recovering, there could be no doubt of that.
The basis of his ill health, though, could possibly be blamed at first on India, and the climate that he thought so fine. For after a fair good time in Bombay, ‘strong and healthy as a horse,’ he began to show symptoms that not all was well. At first they came on slowly, during the first few months of ’76 – lassitude, lack of interest, general disability – then switched to galloping.
The two men talked quite freely these days about sickness, medicine, and cures, with not a little joking about the efficacy of warm female flesh in a sick man’s bed – all on the understanding that it would never be disseminated, whatever Hastie later came to write.
‘You Welshmen like to take a sheep or two to bed for creature comfort, so I understand,’ he said, ‘You may trust me Tim that I would not confirm that to a soul. Likewise you and my special medicine in Mrs Cuba’s house. Although I must say I prefer mine to yours!’
But he did confess that his first attack, in India, had been as bad as anything he had ever suffered since.
‘It was the air, the soft dissembling air. It felt so sweet, so beneficent, so beneficial. And all the time it was preparing me, breaking down defences, softening me up like a castle in a siege. Until my first collapse I felt quite fine.’
He noted Hastie’s face.
‘I did!’ he said. ‘I felt…’ He laughed ruefully. ‘Well, you will have full truth I see, so let me get away with “not too bad”. I felt a long way short of dreadful, Tim, and there’s the truth of it. The surgeon on the Seahorse, too. He said to pull myself together, to play the man. And he was not without experience, believe me.’
Fact was, though, that Nelson was running soon downhill ‘like a cartload of stone beyond control.’ By early March he had contracted a massive fever of ‘unfettered malignancy.’
‘This disorder baffled medicine,’ he said. ‘I lost my muscle power, then my muscle weight, then the fat that had so neatly rounded me. My skin, that had finally taken on a healthy brownish hue from the carefully shaded sun went white again, white and red and raw and blotched, as if I had been flayed. My hair lost its brown, and red, and everything, it was almost white, a dirty yellow straggle-thing.’
Hastie nodded.
‘As up the San Juan river, sir,’ he said. ‘Indeed, until—’
‘Much worse than that. The surgeon on the Seahorse confessed that he was beyond his soundings, drowning in ignorance of the disease, and as soon as we returned to Madras he called in Mr Parry, the senior man in the squadron, they brought him off the flagship, Salisbury. It was, they told me, not a second too soon.’
The examination happened on March the twelfth, and Parry immediately recommended that Nelson be shipped back to England in the hope of saving his life. Had the frigate Dolphin not luckily been under orders to sail for home he would have died, but within two days Dolphin had slipped her cable, with the sick midshipman half-delirious below.
As on his voyage out, Nelson suffered not only the ravages of his unnamed sickness (Hastie thought privately it was malaria, caused by mosquitoes) but weather of unremitting violence. Storm after storm swept the Indian Ocean, and Dolphin staggered under bare poles for days on end. Nor was he the only sick man on board. The boatswain sadly died, to be slipped overside with all due ceremony when the weather moderated for long enough.
‘I must have died also,’ Horatio said one evening, ‘but we stopped off Simonstown on the Cape to make good our damages. They were extensive, much rigging destroyed or worn to pieces, and the whole upper deck needed recaulking, the ship was leaking like a sieve. The shipwrights and riggers worked on her near a month.’
Here he stopped, and the silence extended mightily, save for the lazy buzzing of the flies and the noises from the streets outside. When Hastie prompted him, he sighed.
‘It was the worst days of my life,’ he said, at last. ‘Worse than when poor mama died. Worse than when my sister…’ Here he broke off, with a choking noise that startled Hastie; indeed near frightened him.
‘Sir?’ But Nelson flapped a hand to silence him. Another silence, broken by a panting, juddering breath or so. Then a long drawing-in of air, through teeth or lips, a hissing, melancholy sound.
‘Sir?’ he said again. And Nelson smiled.
‘Courage, Tim. Just ghosts walking on my grave, they will soon pass. To tell the truth of it, I felt at times that I was indeed dead, and when I came out of the reveries I often wished I was, God forgive me. I was as worn out as the frigate. I hardly slept, I vomited blood and bile, my cot was a morass of filthiness, however frequently they cleaned it up. Had I been strong enough, I think sometimes I would have made my way topside and slipped my body overboard, like the poor boatswain’s corpse. My mind was staggered, in its entirety.’
As Hastie told it later, in the private letters home, Nelson became convinced that his career in the navy had no point, no prospect. He had ambition, great ambition, but it seemed all dust and ashes.
‘There were too many troubles to surmount, too many difficulties,’ he confessed in one Jamaica night, ‘and what little interest I possessed would never be enough for my advancement. I lay in my fever-cot and thought, mid shit
and sweating, of the fact that I would never rise to greatness, I would just one day fade away, I would be nothing. I was rotting on the point of Africa, too far south for northern souls to thrive. The gentle rocking made it almost comfortable.’
But the ship set sail once more, heading west then north, past Cape Town and so on up the coast. And somewhere, unspecified as to latitude, the fever-ridden Nelson had his transformation, experienced the phenomenon of his ‘golden orb.’
He was barely making sense to Tim at this stage, but he wrote it down, and later made it read much more like some sort of rationality.
I was taken by a sudden fire of patriotic fervour. It was still warm but cooling as we steadily climbed north. One afternoon I saw this golden glow, this orb, this disc of shimmering light. I thought upon my king and country, and all that I must do for them, all that I was pledged to, whether others helped or no. I was on the after deck, and the sky was blue, the sun was blazing in my eyes. I thought: ‘I know it now; I will be a hero. I will have confidence in Providence, I will brave every danger. And I never will forget these words.’ I had no interest, but I had fight within my soul and belly. I was going to be my England’s greatest hero.
Nelson was still far from recovered as he recounted this, weak and very sick. But bathing his forehead, as he lapsed into unconsciousness or sleep, Tim was almost moved to tears.
‘I know you will, dear friend,’ he mumbled. Then hurriedly wiped his eyes as Mrs Cuba came into the room. She smiled, and seemed to understand, and gently left once more. She had not said a word.
Chapter Nine
Mrs Cuba Cornwallis, it transpired, had come into the room to say a word, but it had to wait for later. And in the event, the news came first from Nelson’s favourite nurses. They came in twenty minutes later, and were all in tears.
Nelson was asleep, and Hastie did not want him wakened up. But the maids were distressed, and they were insistent. They twittered, in his austere eyes, like a flock of birds, but there was no gainsaying them.
‘Mr Hastie! Mr Hastie! Lord! They are taking him away! They are taking dear Horatio away from us!’
This hit Tim like a bolt, although he had no inkling that it could be true. But the three young women bore down in a phalanx, and enveloped him, and flowed past him to the bed. They bore against it, jumped and sank into the feather bolsters, touched and tugged at the captain till he woke.
And smiled.
‘Ho, maids,’ he said.
‘No, maids!’ Tim Hastie snapped. ‘Leave the captain be, for pity’s sake! He must not be disturbed!’
Nelson’s smile got broader. Sometimes in female company he seemed to radiate.
‘Oh let them come, Tim, I feel much better now. I told you it would pass, friend, and it has. Maids, what ails thee? Why the waterworks?’
Before they had a chance to make all clear, the door banged open and Mrs Cuba swept in, like a galleon under sail. She accepted no such nonsense from the girls.
‘Out, whores!’ she said. ‘Out hussies, go away and get about some duties! How dare you frighten this dear man!’
Hastie had to laugh. The only thing upsetting Nelson was the thought that they would go. Two were on the bed already, his head was tangled in their strong and aromatic arms.
‘No, Cuba,’ he exhorted. ‘No, send them not away! Hey, ’Mintha, Hessie, stay!’
A few sharp slaps and they were gone, though, crying to a different note. The stately Mrs C was flustered.
‘I’m sorry, lord,’ she said, ‘I will dismiss the lot of them. They are but cheeky thoughtless doxies.’
Nelson had pulled himself up to rest against the bedhead. Hastie was fascinated at the change. He seemed fitter, vigorous. He’d turned another corner.
‘Nay,’ he said, ‘you must do no such thing, dear Cuba. They are excited, they had news for me.’ His face altered, as he remembered.
‘Ah, bad news was it not? Hhm. Well, what would that be? Has the doctor signed my death note?’
Mrs Cuba was herself once more. She shook her feathers like a mother hen. She smiled, and sucked her lips and teeth.
‘Away with you, Sir Trouble! The day you die is the day I lose my faith in our dear Lord. The problem is just the other. You are considered cured. You are considered far too well to rest here so humble. You are bound for Admiral’s Pen. Her ladyship herself is to look after you. Ma Cuba’s voodoo is no longer fit to save you from the evil spirits.’
Suddenly it was Cuba who was crying, and her tears were real, and bitter. She did not know where to put herself, she was overcome.
‘What?’ said Nelson. ‘What, leave here? No, Cuba, no no no! I wish to stay with you and all your cheeky doxies! How will I keep my body from the duppies through the night?’
He was attempting for light-heartedness – duppies, Tim knew, were the ghosts the locals paid so much heed and honour to – but his humour was misplaced. Mrs Cuba, in overwhelming floods, threw her apron over her head and blundered from the room. Tim and Horatio, for long moments, sat and watched each other, without another word.
The truth of the matter, when it emerged, was worse than either of them thought. That afternoon Captain Cornwallis came visiting, all jollity and bluster, and told them what had been decided.
‘Your fate,’ he said to Nelson, ‘is to be cared for by Admiral Lord Parker’s wife. Lady Parker has found out what old Cuba’s been doing to your body – I mean the medicines, dear boy, not nothing manlier! – and has decided you must be rescued instantly. I tried to tell her what Cuba achieved for me, and pointed to the locals she has saved with her spells and potions, and was pooh-poohed all around the house and gardens. You need a good Christian to save your body and your soul, my boy. Milady’s coach is on the way.’
‘A coach? For Admiral’s Pen? But it’s not—’
‘Not far indeed, but you go not to Admiral’s Pen, or anywhere else nearby. You go to Admiral’s Mountain, on Cooper’s Hill. Far from the fleshpots, laddie. Far from the temptations of hoodoo and the flesh.’
‘But my nurses! I need my nurses, Billy! Will Lady Parker mop my brow and change my linen? Good God, man, there are certain fingers I don’t want so near about my person!’
‘Lady Parker has nursed many men to health, you ungrateful dog – she has told me so herself! And Admiral Parker says he promised when your Uncle Suckling died that he would watch over your career as carefully as that good man had done. Suckling was the Comptroller, mark. Heaven forfend that that might be the reason you so quickly got promotion from Sir Peter.’
Nelson harrumphed, weakly. Common knowledge that Parker had needed allies after his failures against the Americans at Charleston.
‘Anyway,’ said Billy Blue, ‘there is no point to arguing, you have not the power to achieve it. Mrs Cuba has been told, her hussies will no doubt have another young man to…tend…and you will return to civilization. You have no say in it.’
He laughed.
‘There will be young maidens there as well, though. They always flock to a man they deem is suffering, perhaps it is the mother instinct, who knows? But if you feel yourself neglected, just play your dying spectre card again. They will fall all over you, I warrant it!’
‘You cynic,’ Nelson said. ‘I do not want to go, Cornwallis. I am happy here. I am recovering. I will not be the plaything of a dried out old plum.’
‘Ah, but you will,’ laughed Coachee. ‘You have neither clout nor interest to deny it. I will be here with your conveyances at four o’clock. Be ready, or her Ladyship will rage!’
Chapter Ten
In this instance, Cornwallis had been right about Nelson’s lack of power. What comforted Tim Hastie, though, was how his friend – despite his constant feeling he was hard done by – fell always on his feet.
The ride to Cooper’s Hill was not uncomfortable, and the position they found themselves in when they got there was nothing short of excellent. Nelson was ensconced on a day bed on a terrace that was green and sheltered, so far ab
ove the town that the only sound was that of breeze and birds.
They could see ships, though, always a balm to a seaman’s soul, tracking their way across the rolling Caribbean. Food and sweetmeats prepared in milady’s kitchens were brought to tempt the invalid, and he was allowed to choose his helpmates from a gaggle of demure slave girls. Freshly squeezed lime juice was their tempter of choice, flavoured with gin, or rum and sugar.
There was one slight setback, when Hastie seemed not to be of sufficient standing for Lady Parker to invite him to lodge with Nelson at the house. The young captain did ‘pull rank’ on this occasion, although politely.
‘He made it clear I was there in my capacity as his scribe and chronicler,’ Hastie wrote to Sarah. ‘It was the first time the subject had been mentioned, and her ladyship was very tickled. God forbid she ever sees some of his opinions about her and her house. God forbid that I should commit them into ink!’
But after that, Tim was given a small room off Nelson’s, and allowed to spend whatever time he wanted with him, and direct his care.
‘He made me out to be some sort of surgeon rather than apothecary in ordinary, cariad, you would have blushed to hear how eminent I am! It is not only about himself that my friend feels the need to boast, I think. Approval is like meat and drink to him.’
One consequence was that the two of them could sit and talk and write without dissembling. And in general they were left alone.
The ‘falling on his feet’ that struck Hastie as most significant (for a man who claimed he had no ‘interest’) had probably been the first - and had happened hard on his return from India as an invalid. While he was away, he learned, his Uncle Suckling had been appointed Comptroller of the Navy, and instantly promoted Horatio to acting lieutenant on the Worcester sixty-four, Captain Robinson.