by John Sugden
William Garrow, the defence counsel, asked Nelson if Carse was ‘likely to commit a deliberate foul murder?’.
‘I should as soon suspect myself,’ came the reply, ‘because I am hasty; he is not.’
Nelson even posited an explanation of the cooper’s strange behaviour: a brain-damaging fever induced by sunstroke. ‘At the island of Antigua, I think it was, he was struck with the sun, after which time he appeared melancholy. I have been affected with it [myself]. I have been out of my senses. It hurts the brain.’ He had hospitalised Carse and would have sent him home had the ship itself not been recalled. The cooper was said to have been cured, but Nelson doubted it, and speculated that the fever might have returned under the influence of drink. The testimony was decisive. Carse was convicted but referred for further consideration rather than sentenced to the gallows. He was eventually pardoned, but the discharge was conditional upon his being taken on another ship and in the meantime he went to Newgate prison. There the unfortunate fellow languished until April 1795, but at least he lived.
While Horatio wound up naval affairs, Fanny coughed her way through a cold, wintry Christmas wreathed in London smoke. The couple abandoned the idea of keeping a house in the city, and in January 1788 Nelson bundled his wife onto a coach for Bath. There he established her in relative comfort before proceeding to Plymouth at the invitation of William Henry, who was holding outrageous court in the town. Nelson confessed himself ‘sorry’ that the prince remained bitter towards Schomberg, but still found much to admire. The old Pegasus appeared in good order, while William Henry not only remained independent of mind (‘the great folks above now see he will not be a cipher’) but also ‘respected by all. Those who knew him formerly say he is a most altered young man, and those who were prejudiced against him acknowledge their error.’5
On 24 January he was back in Bath to share its fabled recuperative processes with Fanny. In March they were fit enough for an extended foray into the milder West Country, taking the coach to Bristol to stay at Redlands with the Tobins, some of Fanny’s in-laws. The Tobins had made their fortune in Nevis, and for Fanny there was also a delightful reunion with their mutual friends the Pinneys, who had settled in Bristol four years before. Then the couple proceeded to Exmouth by way of Plymouth, with Horatio feeling his strength returning. ‘As usual my health is got up again, after the doctors telling me they could do nothing for me,’ he told Hercules Ross. ‘Dame Nature never has failed curing me.’6
Older concerns still lapped around, however, rolling from the Caribbean on the warm westerly currents. Some appeals were still pending against the sentences condemning American ships he had taken, and suits for damages could not be ruled out. Nelson referred these disturbing correspondents to the Admiralty, trusting the Treasury would defend him, but he took greater pains when letters from Messrs Wilkinson and Higgins reached him, asking what progress he was making on the issue of the West Indian frauds. By threatening to expose rampant corruption, Wilkinson and Higgins had ruined themselves in the islands, where every trader’s hand was now against them. Even John Burke, the solicitor general of Antigua, in whom Nelson had inadvertently confided, was obstructing the investigation and encouraging creditors to drive the informants to the wall. Receiving nothing from London but a letter from the Navy Board, the whistle-blowers were desperate to know that Nelson was still behind them. New frauds were emerging all the time, they wrote to him in January: ‘The amount is immense beyond even our expectations . . . Would to God we had you now here, with fit powers to complete the good work you have begun!’7
Apart from his interest in rooting out corruption, Nelson felt responsible for Wilkinson and Higgins, for more than any one else he had encouraged them. He felt honour-bound to back them, even if it transpired that people he had respected, such as Dr Young of the hospital in Antigua, were implicated in the frauds. It was obvious from their letters that Wilkinson and Higgins presumed he had approached the Sick and Hurt and Victualling boards, though in fact Nelson’s overtures had been to the Admiralty, Navy, Ordnance and Treasury boards. Perhaps he felt remiss, although he had been far from idle. The Admiralty had waived their interest in favour of the Navy Board, where Middleton was still showing interest, while the Treasury, Nelson thought, had been kicked into action by his visit to Rose. Nevertheless, from the Ordnance Board the captain had heard nothing. They had mislaid the letter he had written from Antigua, and did not take the matter up until Wilkinson and Higgins themselves wrote to them in January 1788. 8
Nelson sent his collaborators an inspiring reply. He had not forgotten them, nor lost his determination to expose malpractices. His ‘interest’ was ‘very small’ but he relied upon his known ‘integrity and public spirit’ to gain his points, and believed the boards he had canvassed would respond. Nelson suggested Wilkinson and Higgins write to the Sick and Hurt Board, which managed the naval hospitals and supplied surgeons and medical supplies to the fleet, and promised to follow the matter up personally when he reached London. If appropriate, he would also try to interest the Victualling Board in Wilkinson and Higgins’s proposals.9
Letters from the two merchants were already stirring the Sick and Hurt, Victualling and Ordnance boards, however, and Nelson became their referee. He understood the frustration they felt as their futures lingered in piles of papers in dusty government offices, and wrote to London again, characterising the informants as ‘men of strong natural parts’, and recommending that their allegations be heard.10
In May the Nelsons returned to London and were installed in one of Herbert’s rooms. Nelson tackled the fraud issue again, haunting Middleton at the Navy Office, but his own cause, the search for a ship, was buried by the complete inaccessibility of Lord Howe. William Henry had said that Howe was persecuting Nelson because of his friendship for the prince, and Horatio was beginning to believe it. He was also reflecting upon his dwindling finances. His new London agents and bankers, Marsh and Creed, paid him £250 for his service in the Boreas, but something more permanent was needed to support a wife, a stepson and continuing expenses. His half-pay amounted to a mere 8s. a day, hardly enough to cover the costs of board, lodgings and travel. He asked the Admiralty to recompense him for trips made in Antigua to investigate the frauds, and appealed for an additional allowance covering the period he had acted as commander-in-chief in the Leeward Islands. In June desperation drove him to the only straw of ‘interest’ that still stood in a stony and barren field – the prince himself, now rather more satisfactorily assigned to the squadron at Spithead. First he begged William Henry to buttonhole Herbert and urge him to serve his niece more substantially, only to find the rich uncle unmovable. Then, swallowing his pride, Horatio tried, and failed, to use the prince to get Fanny appointed to the household of the Princess Royal.11
Talking their doubtful situation over with his wife, Nelson considered removing to France, where fallen aristocrats and middling folk alike might still eke out a shabby gentility. With Fanny’s help he might even acquire that elusive facility with the French tongue. But first, he realised, it was necessary to introduce his wife to the people in Norfolk. It was time to take Fanny home.12
2
It was not something everyone anticipated with pleasure. The Reverend Edmund Nelson was now in his sixty-seventh year, and his retiring disposition, ill health and want of money had given him a preference for seclusion.
According to Nelson’s first significant biographer the reverend suffered from ‘paralytic and asthmatic’ conditions and was sometimes speechless early in the mornings. Indeed, he ‘had actually been given over by the physicians almost forty years prior to his decease [in 1801]’. The verdict was not unanimous, since another contemporary maintained that Edmund took long walks before dinner, occasionally accompanied by his naval son. The old man did not fool himself though. He knew his ‘every power’ was ‘in decay’ and that he was ‘very unfitt for society’ and ‘not likely to revive by practice’.13
Retirement was also decreed
by the old man’s purse. In addition to his modest gleanings as a parson, Edmund had three small annuities: one from his late wife invested in South Seas speculations; another the legacy of their daughter Ann; and a third the return on £700 his son William had invested as a condition of succeeding to the patronage of Hilborough in 1785. Nevertheless, he was apt to reach into his pockets for deserving causes, and had joined Lord Walpole in supplying the church at Burnham Thorpe with a new pulpit. More, he maintained the parsonage and a small staff, including Peter Black (‘poor, forlorn, tho’ as wise as ever’), the Browns and Kents, and a maid or two, and intermittently supported two feckless sons, Maurice and Suckling. To economise, the ageing minister had largely abandoned his visits to Bath and London, ‘where every man pays by the inch and must shorten his own train’. An inherently gentle man who worried about sick and struggling parishioners, he disdained the ‘dogs, guns, great dinners, claret and champagne’ set, regarded the hunting fraternity as ‘the class licensed to destroy’, politics as a ‘noisy nonsense’ and writers as mealy-mouth self-promoters driven by ‘pride and ambition’ rather than ‘a desire to inform others’. He was happy writing to his family and a few friends in solitude, or enjoying a ‘chat’ with visitors and members of the flock.
Fanny had written to the old gentleman when Nelson was at the Nore, but the prospect of welcoming a ‘lady’ to his cold, cheerless parsonage filled Edmund with dread. ‘I am not now anxious to see them,’ he wrote to Kate. ‘Him for a day or two I should be glad of, but to introduce a stranger to an infirm and whimsical old man, who can neither eat nor drink, nor talk, nor see, is as well let alone.’ Consequently Captain Nelson received a letter from his father, beseeching him to trail Fanny round the other relations before risking Burnham Thorpe.14
Accordingly, in July and August 1788 Nelson and his bride were in Norfolk, moving from one set of relatives to the next. They were all new to Fanny, but Horatio also met a brother-in-law and nephews and nieces previously known to him only through letters and word of mouth. Back from Ostend the Boltons were found at Thorpe, just east of Norwich, breeding a tribe sufficient to infatuate any naval uncle. Horatio’s love of children enabled him to fuss over the six-year-old twins Jemima-Susanna and Catherine, and the latest additions, Thomas and George. Elizabeth and Anne would follow in 1789 and 1791. Nelson had met Thomas Bolton before. In 1780 he and William had also signed their sister’s marriage settlement, casting a protective eye over her fortune of £2,000, but it had become clear that Susanna had made a good match. Six years older than Nelson, Bolton was a distinguished looking fellow of a respectable family. The elder brother had inherited the family home, another had become a rector and one of two sisters was a musician. Thomas himself was prospering as a merchant, and like Horatio had become a patron of the family, employing Edmund Nelson junior, who occupied rooms in the Bolton house and shared their ownership of a trading vessel.15
Nearby at Barton Hall, on the wild, flat wetlands known as the Broads, Nelson introduced his wife to his youngest sibling, Kate, a dainty, slim and sparkling young lady with a shock of wavy hair. Horatio had always been protective of Kate, especially after sister Ann’s death, but he was not disappointed when he met her new husband, George Matcham, a handsome, enterprising, well-spoken man with a firm, open face. George was in his mid-thirties, but his insatiable wanderlust had given him experiences beyond those of most men. He had followed his father into the East India Company and been their man in Baroche, in India, before his discharge in 1783. Coming home overland, George accomplished a remarkable horseback ride from Baghdad to Pera in Turkey with Arab guides, storing the details for an account he would publish when he reached England. Among many bizarre people with whom he was acquainted was the unfortunate emperor of Austria, Joseph II, the very exemplification of enlightened despotism.16
Further east Nelson took Fanny to the small village of Hilborough, where her son was spending his holidays. There also she met Nelson’s surviving grandmother, and the family of the Reverend William Nelson. William had succeeded to the rectory upon the death of his uncle, Robert Rolfe, and was cutting a larger figure in local affairs. We find him, for example, preaching at St George’s, Tombland, in Norwich, seeking support for charity schools. Perhaps an infant daughter was increasing his interest in the young. Born on 20 September 1787, Charlotte Mary Nelson would grow into by far the most striking of the family, if we may judge from a portrait Isaac Pocock later painted of a slim, dark-haired beauty. Her brother, Horatio, would arrive in October 1788 in time for the uncle whose name he took to stand as godparent.17
The captain and his wife may also have called upon Nelson’s youngest brother at North Elmham. Suckling also had a bride, the daughter of Theodore Smith of Bungay, and had used his legacy from Captain Suckling and a donation from Uncle William Suckling to open a grocery store in the village.
These travels were punctuated by sudden errands. Nelson went ahead to Burnham to prepare his father for Fanny’s appearance, and found the reverend (as he said himself) in respectable health, ‘happy, and as usual replete with the most affectionate love and good wishes towards his friends’. And twice the captain was drawn to London, first to rescue Maurice from a ‘galling chain’ of debt he had accumulated, and then to see a new first lord of the Admiralty. Howe was gone, replaced by Pitt’s brother, the Earl of Chatham, and Hood was a member of the board, but Nelson made no progress. Even Hood held out no hope for a ship.18
Fanny was probably relieved for she was tired of wandering without the luxury of organising a home. She craved permanence, whether in France or England mattered not, and waited in Norfolk until her husband returned. Then at last Nelson took her along the quiet country lanes that led to Burnham Thorpe and a crumbling old parson with long white hair falling about a lugubrious face. From the beginning the creaking philospher and the petite belle from the islands liked each other. As she remembered it, the rector’s ‘joy at seeing this best and most affectionate of sons was so great that he told us that we had given him new life . . . this good old man seemed to suffer much at the thought of our leaving him, saying his age and infirmities were increasing, and that he could not last long, which made us give up entirely our former plan.’ Nelson abandoned his vision of a French retreat and opted to remain in Burnham Thorpe.19
The reverend never regretted the decision, for Horatio was dutiful, reliable and ready to share the burdens of caring for the wider family, and Fanny proved an enduring friend. Towards the end of 1790 the rector moved out of the parsonage to give the newly-weds more room, and with the aid of a housekeeper, respectable furnishings and the caddy of tea he considered an essential element of civilisation, comfortably established himself in a cottage in Burnham Ulph, where he also preached. He rode to Burnham Thorpe fairly regularly, but when at home received almost daily visits from Horatio, particularly during spells of bad weather. ‘My good, very good son,’ the old man wrote gratefully. ‘He is in the superlative, believe me.’ Nor was this testimony mere parental loyalty, for Edmund was no sparing critic of undeserving children, and outsiders echoed his sentiments. Indeed, it was Nelson’s ‘filial duty to his infirm father’ that particularly recommended him to the local landowner, Sir Mordaunt Martin of Westgate Hall in Burnham Westgate. The rector valued the utility of an able son’s watchful eye, and perhaps more so his company, which he described as ‘not the least’ of his ‘many blessings’ and a ‘felicity’ he could scarcely bear to be without. Horatio’s brief absences he thought ‘an age’.20
Nelson had put a roof over Fanny’s head but his lingering hopes of employment were crushed at the end of the year. In October 1788 he grovelled to one of the few friends left in a position to help. William Cornwallis, he heard, was to sail to the East Indies as commodore. Nelson had enjoyed his time in the east, and would have been happy to return, so he wrote obsequiously that he had long wanted to serve under Cornwallis. But either every ship was spoken for or Cornwallis had more valuable friends. More chastening still, ea
rly the next year Nelson’s application for the command of a guard ship was rejected in a single sentence by the Admiralty.21
He retired from the service wounded, grieving for the loss of a career he had loved and in which he still burned to succeed. ‘Not being a man of fortune is a crime which I cannot get over, and therefore none of the great care about me,’ he sulked. ‘I am now commencing farmer. Not a very large one, you will conceive, but enough for amusement. Shoot I cannot. Therefore, I have not taken out a licence. But notwithstanding the neglect I have met with, I am happy, and now I see the propriety of not having built my hopes [entirely] on such sandy foundations as the friendships of the great.’22
3
Grudgingly, Horatio Nelson took his place among those loosely known as the ‘gentle’ classes. They were not all members of the titled aristocracy refurbishing and landscaping their country seats to advertise their elite staus, among the substantial landowners who badged themselves ‘gents’ or ‘esquires’, or from the thrusting commercial middle classes whose assets were of a more liquid kind. But for all that they formed a recognisable elite socially superior to the small owner-occupiers, tenant farmers and shopkeepers, and a world apart from the ‘common’ people who made up the bulk of the working population. Typically they were men and women of some education, status, wealth and power, and mixed at dinners, balls, concerts, fairs and sporting meets. They supported the church and constitution, exercised local patronage, dispensed a little philanthropy and served as parish officers or justices of the peace. They intermarried, strengthening their interest if they could, often entailed their homes and almost always maintained servants.