by John Sugden
Another link might have been Freemason’s Hall, later known as the Chien d’Or, a small hostelry near the top of Mountain Hill in the more fashionable Upper Town. It had once been used for Loyalist balls, attended among others by Mary’s father, but it was widely frequented by officers of the armed services, partly because of its location opposite the government quarters. Mary may also have visited the place because she was related to the Prentice family who ran it. Old Miles Prentice had been provost marshal of Quebec before clearing out for New York under a cloud, leaving his beleaguered wife to maintain the hostelry with the help of two British nieces, the ‘Mesdemoiselles Prentice’. The older of the girls was the previously mentioned Frances Cooper, who became Mrs James Thompson in 1780. Mary looked upon Thompson as something of a benevolent uncle and may have visited him or his in-laws at Freemason’s Hall.
Possibly even then Captain Horatio Nelson had a rival for Miss Mary’s attentions. Robert Mathews was a captain in the 8th Regiment of Foot as well as military secretary to the Governor of Canada, Frederick Haldimand. The two met and Mathews liked Nelson, as most people did. Mathews was considerably the older (he had been an ensign in 1761), but he was no wealthier and actually junior in rank, a military captain being inferior to the naval post-captain. Nevertheless, in America, where he had been serving his king for several years, he was known to be an efficient officer of good character. At the time of his death the year before Waterloo it would be said that ‘a man of more universal and active benevolence of mind, and greater urbanity of manners never existed’.36
Mathews had time on his side, but Horatio’s suit came to a head when he had to leave. Suddenly he faced a future without the girl with whom he was besotted. On 12 October he wrote to Haldimand, requesting a pilot for the trip downstream, and reclaimed as many of his men from the hospital as possible. The ship shifted its berth to Point Levi on the morning of the 13th and the next day to St Patrick’s Hole. Nelson spent part of the 14th winding up his affairs in the town, mailing pay books to London and taking leave of friends, and it was not until seven-thirty in the morning of 15 October that the Albemarle weighed anchor and headed for the open sea.
Somewhere in this bald chronology there had been a difficult parting with Mary. Whether she knew the extent of his passion is questionable, but she certainly liked Horatio, and a quarter of a century later remembered him with affection. Davison also saw his companion away, and returned to preparing his own trip to England, sure that he at least would meet Nelson again in London.37
Those farewells probably took place on 14 October, a cloudy day of rain and growing gales, but the following morning Davison was taking a stroll along the beach when he saw a boat pulling towards the shore with the slight but familiar figure of Captain Nelson sitting anxiously inside. Hurrying to the landing place, Davison met Nelson as he alighted, and they walked ‘up’ to Davison’s house together. Horatio explained that he had become ‘violently attached’ to Miss Simpson and could not leave Quebec without her. He had decided to see her, propose, and lay ‘myself and my fortunes’ at her feet.
Davison was a bachelor and a career man to boot. He was appalled and told Horatio that his course was rash indeed. No doubt he pointed out that neither party then had the means for a successful union. Nelson was still a junior captain without a fortune and bound for who knew where. Mary was desperately needed at home, where she was helping her mother keep a precarious business afloat. Davison told Nelson that if he persisted ‘utter ruin . . . must inevitably follow’.
‘Then let it follow!’ stormed Nelson impetuously. ‘For I am resolved to do it.’
‘And I also positively declare that you shall not,’ proclaimed Davison, resuming his argument with such force that Nelson eventually returned grumpily to his ship. He sailed the same day and Mary left his life forever.38
Mathews persisted, however. Reportedly Mary rejected his first proposal of marriage on the grounds that he held too junior a rank, but their relationship continued to flourish. Mathews went to England, where he was appointed to the Horse Guards, Mary followed, and they married at St George’s Church, Hanover Square, in London, on 22 November 1798. Mary was described in the record as a resident of Clapham in Surrey. It was a hugely successful marriage, for the two were devoted. He said his ‘dearest Mary’ was ‘amiable as ever, and every day renders herself more dear to me’ and she spoke of him as ‘my warm-hearted Mathews’. About the end of 1799 they had a son, Frederick, who became a captain of the 21st Royal North British Fusiliers before retiring through ill health. Age did not diminish their natural generosity. In 1803 they used their influence with Lord Chatham to get George Thompson, a son of James, in an academy at Woolwich, paying for the boy’s passage from Canada, taking him into their home, and putting him through additional schooling. ‘Mrs Mathews is really [truly] a very amiable lady,’ George wrote home.39
The family remained in London, and Mathews became a lieutenant colonel of the 53rd Regiment, inspector of army clothing, the non-resident lieutenant governor of Antigua, and in October 1801 major of Chelsea Hospital. There is no record that Robert and Mary met Nelson in London, but both remembered him with affection and admiration. We know that the admiral’s funeral put them ‘in very low spirits’. Young George Thompson would watch the sombre procession from a Charing Cross window, but Mary owned that ‘such a scene would be too much for my feelings’, for she mourned not only ‘an irreparable national loss’ but also ‘a friend of my early life’. Neither Mathews, ‘who was also well acquainted with him’, nor she ‘had fortitude enough to witness the melancholy sight – the most awful and dismal that ever caused the British heart to ache or tears to flow . . .’.40
Those memories survived many years. Robert Mathews died in his apartments in Chelsea Hospital in 1814, bequeathing some two thousand pounds to provide an annuity for his ‘beloved wife’, among a small number of other bequests. Mary herself spent her later years at 57 Sloane Street in a five-storey terraced house overlooking Cadogan Square, a site now occupied by the Danish Embassy. There she continued to receive such British and Canadian friends as General William Twiss, Sir Alexander and Lady Bryce and the Duke of Kent, and to correspond with James Thompson until his death in 1830. Mary lived to see at least two grandsons, the ‘horrors’ of the cholera and the Reform Bill, and died in her house of ‘gout of the stomach’ on 26 October 1840 at the venerable age of eighty.41
When Nelson met Mary Simpson he was reaching an age and disposition to marry, and though he studiously avoided mentioning her in his letters home, the theme of feminine attraction would repeat itself over the next few years. In 1782 it was perhaps fortunate that he was kept busy after leaving Quebec. At the Isle of Bic ‘old Worth’ dashed his hopes of returning to England by detailing the Albemarle and Pandora to convoy twenty-three transports to New York, one of the American cities still in British hands. ‘A very pretty job at this late season of the year,’ complained Nelson, still worried about his health, ‘for our sails are at this moment frozen to the yards.’ However, he sailed dutifully on 19 October, with his first fleeting vision of marriage and lasting romance slipping gently by with the green skirts of the great St Lawrence.42
7
On 11 November Horatio Nelson was taking the Albemarle through a tricky channel winding through sandbars and leading towards the large anchorage at New York. The navy was here in force. In addition to the fleet of Rear Admiral Robert Digby, commander-in-chief of the station to which Nelson had been consigned, there were twelve sail of the line under Rear Admiral Samuel, Lord Hood. Hood had come from the West Indies in pursuit of Vaudreuil, who was still skulking in Boston, and was planning to return shortly. It was believed that Vaudreuil would embark soldiers at Boston and sail for the West Indies to threaten Jamaica or other British possessions, and Hood hoped to intercept him.
Nelson met Hood when he reported to Digby aboard his flagship anchored off Sandy Hook. He saw a thin, Punch-like figure, with a pointed chin and hooked nose, but
had no doubt he was speaking to a commander of the first order. He did not see, at this stage, that Digby and Hood were on poor terms. Their difficulties seem to have begun with prize money, but a ‘paper war’ was accumulating other bones of contention. Digby resented Hood’s efforts to gather ships for the West Indies voyage at his expense, and Hood blamed Digby for interfering in the internal affairs of the force he had brought from the Leeward Islands. Unaware of the dissension, Nelson soon became embroiled.43
On 13 November the Albemarle put into New York, passing Staten Island where Hood’s huge Barfleur lay at anchor with his fleet, and to a berth in the East River. When Horatio visited the admiral he found an unusual midshipman on the flagship – no less a person than Prince William Henry, the third son of the king, establishing a tradition of naval royalty. He had joined the service three years before as a stocky thirteen-year-old. Urged to obedience by his father and chaperoned by tutors, William Henry had acquired the makings of a naval officer; he had seen more action than Nelson and participated in Rodney’s victory over the Spaniards at Cape St Vincent in 1780. However, the royal midshipman was not personally prepossessing. He was aggressive, boorish and bawdy, and the fair hair, blue eyes and round, red blubbery face pierced by a babyish mouth belied the elements of a severe disciplinarian.
Nevertheless, Nelson, a confirmed royalist, probably took to him at once. The prince himself was perhaps less enamoured with Nelson, undistinguished as he then was by appearance or deed. In an account he gave Clarke and McArthur many years later he remembered thinking Horatio ‘the merest boy of a captain he ever saw, a long stiff Hessian tail hair hanging lank – hanging on his shoulders without powder’. Somehow, the admiral’s biographers expanded this into an amusing word portrait of Nelson as a young officer:
I was then a midshipman on board the Barfleur [the prince is quoted], lying in the narrows off Staten Island, and had the watch on deck, when Captain Nelson of the Albemarle came in his barge alongside, who appeared to be the merest boy of a captain I ever beheld, and his dress was worthy of attention. He had on a full-laced uniform. His lank unpowdered hair was tied in a stiff Hessian tail of an extraordinary length. The old-fashioned flaps of his waistcoat added to the general quaintness of his figure, and produced an appearance which particularly attracted my notice, for I had never seen any thing like it before, nor could I imagine who he was, nor what he came about. My doubts were, however, removed when Lord Hood introduced me to him. There was something irresistibly pleasing in his address and conversation, and an enthusiasm when speaking on professional subjects that showed he was no common being . . . I found him warmly attached to my father, and singularly humane . . .44
As interesting as meeting the future King William IV may have been, it was Hood that Nelson had come to see. He pressed the admiral to take him to the West Indies, where Horatio supposed there were still hopes of meeting the French in a major battle, and discovered that Hood had known his uncle, Maurice Suckling, and was disposed to be of service. Possibly, Hood had met Suckling in Portsmouth, where both men had cut significant figures. Hood’s father-in-law, Edward Linzee, had been nine times mayor of Portsmouth, and held that office when Suckling was the borough’s Member of Parliament. In fact the Linzees, a prominent local family, probably had a hand in choosing Suckling for the position. Admiral Hood himself had served Portsmouth, as naval commissioner and the governor of its naval academy. However they arose, Hood’s feelings for Suckling were warm ones, and he invited Nelson to dine with him the following day, giving him a letter, promising his goodwill and hinting that the command of a ship of the line might be in the offing.
Hood’s knowledge of Nelson was scant, but he saw he knew something of the Caribbean and was short of frigates, so he spoke to Digby about transferring the Albemarle from the North American to the West Indian fleet. The switch was made, though not without difficulty. Digby was tired of Hood poaching resources, and when the Albemarle tried to join Hood’s ships on 16 November the senior admiral intervened and sent Nelson ashore. Nelson, ignorant of the sour exchanges between the admirals, protested to Hood, who persuaded the disgruntled Digby to give way. Thus, Horatio got his wish. The Albemarle joined Hood’s squadron at Sandy Hook on 20 November, carrying one hundred and fifty boxes of essence of spruce, from which beer could be made, as a peace offering from Digby. Well might the young captain be pleased, for Nelson not only anticipated the active service he craved but fancied he had also found a new patron and protector.45
If Nelson courted Hood, he was himself a most generous friend and provider. While in New York he was much in the company of Captain William Peacock, a former comrade of Locker’s, and Acting Lieutenant Pilford. Peacock had been a commissioned officer for six years and a post-captain for two, and was widely admired on the station, even by Digby himself, who had just shifted him from the Carysfort to a spanking new prize, the L’Aigle frigate. Horatio followed Peacock around the ship, listening to a proud exposition of its virtues, but was horrified when his companion was suddenly ‘seized with a fit of apoplexy’. A doctor was summoned and efforts made to revive the stricken officer by bleeding. Peacock temporarily recovered, but it appeared that this had not been his first attack. ‘I wish he may have health,’ Nelson told Locker, ‘or I am sorry to say, life to enjoy her [L’Aigle] . . . He is very much beloved by everybody here, and I think, from my little personal acquaintance, he is a very genteel man.’ But, shortly after Nelson left New York, Peacock died, on 13 December 1782. 46
As for Lieutenant Pilford, he had been a young captain’s servant on the Lowestoffe, but had since outstripped Nelson in height and strength. ‘He is a charming character,’ Nelson told Locker, ‘beloved by his captain, and all [of] his acquaintance . . . He has the same gentle disposition and modesty as when a youngster. You must remember the little fellow well.’ Horatio wanted to help him, but the possibility of finding him a place on L’Aigle foundered with poor Peacock’s illness.47
Nelson himself was bound for the West Indies. He was glory-hunting, at least according to Bromwich, who recalled the first time Nelson met Hood and Digby off Sandy Hook. ‘You are come on a fine station for making prize money,’ Digby encouragingly told the young man with the long Hessian tail. ‘Yes sir,’ Nelson allegedly replied, ‘but the West Indies is the station for honour!’ There are reasons for believing that Bromwich’s memory did not fail him. Prince William Henry also noted that Nelson’s priorities lay in glory rather than money, and that he longed to command a ship of the line. And Nelson himself complained disapprovingly of the New York station to Locker. ‘Money is the great object here,’ he said disapprovingly. ‘Nothing else is attended to.’ Above all things, the captain of the Albemarle still wanted an opportunity to distinguish himself before the war came to an end. He had still never seen a fleet action, and if there was to be a final clash of arms he desperately wanted to be in it.48
No one seemed more likely to supply that battle than Lord Hood. The son of a clergyman, like Nelson himself, he was almost sixty but at the peak of his powers. Some thought him England’s ablest admiral, and he was certainly incisive, passionate, outspoken, supremely confident and dedicated to the service, all qualities designed to bowl over an impressionable young captain burning for battle. Hood talked as if he knew what he was doing, and spared no admiral who failed to meet his standards. ‘His pen was acid and constantly to hand’, it was justly said of him. Rodney was a child who needed a minder, Thomas Graves a mere ignoramus and Sir Charles Douglas as fit to be an admiral as Hood an archbishop. Stinging as this sort of criticism was, it invested Hood with a superficial authority and increased his inspirational power.49
Nelson learned a great deal from Hood. Several of the admiral’s operations presaged much that made Nelson famous. At St Kitts in January 1782, for example, Hood prepared to attack a superior French fleet anchored in the Basseterre roadstead by concentrating his ships upon part of the enemy line, a plan similar to that Nelson executed so brilliantly in Aboukir Bay si
xteen years later. And during the same campaign Hood used meetings with his officers to inculcate his ideas and intentions and reduce his dependence on inefficient signalling systems, just as Nelson would do.
Most significantly of all, Hood’s aggression and belief in total victory suggested the same striving for perfection in the naval art that would distinguish Nelson. He had been Rodney’s second-in-command in the battle of the Saintes near Dominica in April 1782, when the British broke with tradition, abandoned the customary line-ahead formation, and passed through the French line of battle to double on the enemy ships and inflict a sharp defeat. Although the battle was remembered for Rodney’s cutting of the French line, that manoeuvre had apparently been more accidental than premeditated, and the engagement was at least as notable for the views of Hood. For Hood the victory, however famous, was not enough. He was furious that Rodney’s failure to pursue the defeated and disoriented French fleet yielded only five prizes. Even the two additional sail of the line Hood added to the bag six days later did not console him. He wanted a decisive victory, and no half measures would do. His reaction to Rodney’s ‘Come, we have done very handsomely’ attitude was an exact precedent of Nelson’s criticism of Admiral Hotham in 1795. Had Rodney signalled a general chase, raged Hood, ‘I am confident that we should have had twenty sail of the enemy’s ships of the line before dark. Instead of that he pursued only under his topsails . . . the greatest part of the afternoon, though the flying enemy had all the sail set their shattered state would allow. Had I . . . had the honour of commanding His Majesty’s noble fleet on the 12th, I may . . . say the flag of England should now have graced the sterns of upwards of twenty sail of the enemy’s sail-of-the-line.’50