Nelson

by John Sugden

  Attempts have been made to locate copyright owners. In addition to acknowledgements made elsewhere, I must thank the Society of Authors as the literary representatives of the estate of Alfred Noyes; PFD, on behalf of the Estate of Hilaire Belloc, for use of the ‘Ballade of Unsuccessful Men’; and Carcanet Press Ltd for permission to quote from ‘1805’ from the Complete Poems of Robert Graves.

  All authors need, but rarely get, sympathetic editors and publishers. I had the good fortune to meet Will Sulkin of Jonathan Cape and Pimlico. His vision and understanding have been exceptional, and it was his faith in the project that ultimately turned it into a reality. Throughout long years of toil his support has never wavered. I have also benefited from the valuable observations of Jörg Hensgen and Richard Collins, who read the entire manuscript, and from the assistance of Rosalind Porter. Once again it has been a pleasure to work with Jack Macrae of Henry Holt and Company, New York, who safely piloted two of my previous projects into port. The maps were drawn by Malcolm Ward.

  Finally, my debts to two individuals are incalculable. Without the unfailing support and enthusiasm of my partner, Terri Egginton, who has lived cheerfully with the spirit of Nelson, and the advice of my brother, Philip Sugden, whose knowledge of some aspects of the eighteenth century is second to none, the book would have been impossible to complete.

  Serious biographical and historical research is a punishing business, especially when the subject is an internationally public figure about whom a mass of documentation survives. In Nelson’s case the mythological dimension is another complication, and it is unreasonable to believe that there will ever be one standard view of the man, no matter how dispassionately the evidence is weighed. The views of scholars will vary according to the information they read and the interests, dispositions and purposes of the student. Since writing about Nelson is rather like wading in deep water, I have tried to avoid being sent one way or another by preconceived notions of what I wanted to find. Instead I have tried to keep an open mind, allowing conclusions to form and evolve in the light of the growing body of material, whether fashionable or not. I hope readers are served that way. But while the opinions expressed are my own, they rest upon findings uncovered only with the help and encouragement of many who have made this a rewarding social as well as an intellectual journey.

  John Sugden

  Cumbria, 2003

  NOTES AND CITATIONS

  Introduction (pp. 1–13)

  1. John Barrow, Auto-Biographical Memoir, p. 285.

  2. Wedgwood to Tyler, 6/12/1805, in William Henry Wyndham-Quin, Sir Charles Tyler, p. 154.

  3. Lamb to Hazlitt, 10/11/1805, E. V. Lucas, ed., Letters of Charles Lamb, 1, p. 409; Juliet Barker, Wordsworth, pp. 337–8.

  4. Barbara E. Rooke, ed., The Friend, 2, p. 365; Robert Southey, Life of Nelson, p. 337.

  5. Details of Nelson monuments are scattered throughout the pages of ND, but convenient accounts are given by John Knox Laughton, Nelson Memorial, pp. 319–23; Rodney Mace, Tragalgar Square; Alison Yarrington, Commemoration of the Hero, and ‘Nelson the Citizen Hero’; Flora Fraser, ‘If You Seek His Monument’; and Leo Marriott, What’s Left of Nelson, pp. 125–37.

  6. Matthew H. Barker (‘The Old Sailor’), Life of Nelson, p. 4; James Harrison, Life, 1, p. viii; Fanny Nelson to McArthur, 28/2/1807, Monmouth MSS, E678.

  7. Nelson’s sketch, sent to McArthur in October 1799 and published in volume 3 of The Naval Chronicle (1800), was reprinted in D&L, 1, p. 1. It is now with other McArthur papers in the Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia. The same denial of nepotism was evident in the first biographical notice of Nelson, which appeared in 1798, apparently based upon information from the family. ‘That he has risen to his present eminence without the cooperation of powerful friends is perfectly unnecessary to remark’ (Public Characters, p. 8) ungratefully erases several senior officers from Nelson’s early career. See also James Stanier Clarke and John McArthur, Life and Services, 1, advertisement, and 2, p. 381. John McArthur, the senior of the authors of The Life of Admiral Lord Nelson, had written signal books for Admirals Robert Digby and Lord Hood, and later served as secretary and prize-agent to Hood, Man and Parker in the Mediterranean, in which last capacities he became associated with Nelson.

  8. For the biographer see Warren R. Dawson, Thomas Joseph Pettigrew.

  9. Joseph Allen, Life of Lord Viscount Nelson, pp. v–vi.

  10. Mark Storey, Robert Southey, p. 219.

  11. Southey, Life of Nelson, p. 43; Carola Oman in ND, 7 (2001), pp. 327–32; and David Eastwood, ‘Patriotism Personified’. These issues may become clearer with the completion of the work of Marianne Czisnik. See her ‘Nelson and the Nile’.

  12. The influence of Nelson upon some of these commanders is well known. For Perry see David C. Skaggs and Gerald T. Althoff, A Signal Victory, p. 115, while Cochrane’s indebtedness is described in his Autobiography, 1, pp. 88–9, and John Sugden, ‘Lord Cochrane’, pp. 145–6, 308–10. Cochrane modelled his only fleet encounter off Brazil in 1823 upon Nelson’s tactics at Trafalgar: ch. 5 of Brian Vale, Independence or Death!

  13. Material on this period can be found in William D. Puleston, Mahan; William E. Livezey, Mahan on Sea Power; C. G. Reynolds, Command of the Sea; and Paul M. Kennedy, Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery.

  14. Mahan to Laughton, 14/8/1895, in Andrew Lambert, ed., Letters and Papers of Professor Sir John Knox Laughton, p. 111, and Andrew Lambert, Foundations of Naval History. Laughton added some documents to the published stock in his edition of The Letters and Despatches of Horatio, Viscount Nelson, and among many secondary contributions produced two short biographies, Nelson and The Nelson Memorial.

  15. For an overview of the film industry’s handling of Nelson, reflecting changing popular taste, see John Sugden, ‘Nelson and the Film Industry’.

  16. A revised but abridged edition of Nelson, published in 1967, embodied further new material. Carola Oman (1897–1978), a pioneer of historical biography, described some of her early literary and scholarly advantages in An Oxford Childhood. An overdue entry in the New Dictionary of National Biography is scheduled.

  17. Nelson to Churchey, 20/10/1802, MM, 28 (1942), p. 319.

  18. The latest biography, Edgar Vincent’s Nelson, Love and Fame (2003), which appeared as the present work was being prepared for the press, though not without considerable merits exemplifies the excessive reliance upon familiar published sources, most of which are now more than one and a half centuries old. Though few lives of Nelson advanced the subject academically, a number were well written and informed introductions. Personal favourites are Clennell Wilkinson’s Nelson; Russell Grenfell’s Horatio Nelson; and Oliver Warner’s Portrait of Lord Nelson. No comprehensive review of the literature of Nelson has been published, but some four hundred book-length accounts, fact and fiction, have been published in different languages. There are original works in Danish, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, Japanese, Chinese and Thai (the last by a grandson of the King of Siam). The number of pamphlets, booklets, articles and ephemera runs to many thousands. Annotated lists of some items were provided by Laughton, Nelson Memorial; Charles J. Britton, New Chronicles; Oliver Warner, Lord Nelson; and Leonard W. Cowie, Lord Nelson.

  19. The New York Times, 25/10/1998. Coleman appreciated the dangers of judging people by the standards of times other than their own, and made an attempt at even-handedness, but the search for mud to throw remains transparent. The approach is far from new: see, for example, George A. Edinger and E. J. C. Neep, Horatio Nelson.

  20. For the history and scope of Nelson’s papers see K. F. Lindsay-MacDougall, ‘Nelson Manuscripts’, and P. K. Crimmin, ‘Letters and Documents’. Miss Lindsay-MacDougall was the conscientious workhorse behind G. P. B. Naish’s Nelson’s Letters to His Wife, to date the most important supplement to Nicholas Harris Nicolas, ed., The Dispatches and Letters of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson. The 1805 Club has published several discussions of Nelson papers in their yearb
ook, TC, and the lots recently sold at Sotheby’s are described in Nelson, the Alexander Davison Collection. A fresh collection of hitherto unpublished Nelson letters in being prepared by Colin White.

  21. Louis J. Jennings, ed., Correspondence and Diaries, 2, pp. 233–4. The authenticity of this famous anecdote has been questioned. On the authority of Henry Graves, who knew Wellington, Robert Rawlinson claimed that the Duke once said that he had only met Nelson on one occasion, as they passed on a staircase in Downing Street: Notes and Queries, 2nd series, 9 (1860), p. 141. The provenance of the more famous version seems stronger. Oliver Warner, ‘Admiral Page’s Comments’, p. 377, establishes 12 September 1805 as the only date on which this meeting could have occurred.

  I Prologue: Duel at Midnight (pp. 14–27)

  1. Jervis’s instructions, 10/12/1796, Add. MSS 34938.

  2. Jervis to Hamilton, 10/12/1796, in Edward P. Brenton, John, Earl of St Vincent, 1, p. 278; Jervis to Elliot, 10/12/1796, NMM: ELL/141.

  3. La Minerve muster book, ADM 36/13135.

  4. Basic sources for the voyage are the log books of La Minerve (ADM 51/1204 and 52/3223, and NMM: ADM/L/M292) and Blanche (ADM 51/1168 and NMM: ADM/L/B97). The dates of events in ships’ logs are sometimes at variance with calendar dates, because the daily entries ran from noon to noon. Usually the entries are sufficiently detailed to allow the correct calendar dates to be determined, and throughout this book I have given these when possible.

  5. Thomas Cochrane [and George Butler Earp], Autobiography, 1, p. 88.

  6. The Santa Sabina was armed with twenty-eight eighteens and twelve eights, giving her a hitting power of 600 Spanish pounds, equal to about 608 English pounds. The armament of La Minerve is uncertain. She was a captured French prize, and, according to the contemporary historian William James (Naval History, 1, pp. 54, 291, 365), who is usually particular about such things, she still possessed her French armament of twenty-eight eighteens, twelve eights and two thirty-six pound carronades. If so, she carried forty-two guns with a combined discharge of 672 French pounds equal to over 725 English pounds, and had a 20 per cent advantage over her opponent in firepower. However, it is possible that the British had rearmed La Minerve with their own guns in Portsmouth in 1795. Peter Goodwin, Nelson’s Ships, p. 141, has her armament as twenty-eight eighteen-pounders, twelve nine-pounders and two eighteen-pound carronades. The total weight of metal would have been 648 English pounds, a more marginal advantage over the Santa Sabina. For details of British ships I have generally relied upon J. J. Colledge, Ships of the Royal Navy, and D. Lyon, Sailing Navy List.

  7. The entry in the captain’s log of La Minerve, evidently written by Nelson himself, says that he hailed the Spanish frigate but received no answer. Later he gave a more colourful version (Nelson to William, 13/1/1797, Add. MSS 34988), stating that Stuart replied, ‘This is a Spanish frigate, and you may begin as soon as you please’ By this account Nelson called upon his adversary to surrender several times during the engagement, only to receive the reply, ‘No, sir, not whilst I have the means of fighting left.’

  8. Account from Cartagena enclosed in ADM 1/396: no. 5.

  9. John C. Dann, ed., Nagle Journal, pp. 206–7; Augusto Conte y Lacave, Ataque de Cadiz, p. 36. The dispatches for the battle are Nelson to Jervis, 20/12/1796 (two letters) and Preston to Nelson, 20/12/1796, filed in ADM 1/395. For an account possibly derived partly from Cockburn see Edward P. Brenton, Naval History, 1, p. 338.

  10. Pitcairn Jones, ‘Sea Officers’ Lists, 1660–1815’, PRO and NMM, and David Syrett and R. L. DiNardo, Commissioned Sea Officers, give basic details of officers. For Culverhouse see also his statement of 18/4/1797 in HCA 32/845 and Richard Vesey Hamilton and John Knox Laughton, eds, Above and Under Hatches, pp. 66, 84. The standard work on Hardy is A. M. Broadley and R. G. Bartelot, Nelson’s Hardy, John Gore’s Nelson’s Hardy and His Wife largely concerning itself with the latter.

  11. Nelson to his father, 1/1/1797, Monmouth MSS, E599.

  12. The quotation is from Act IV, scene iii. See also Colin White, ‘Nelson and Shakespeare’.

  13. Dann, Nagle Journal, p. 207; Nelson to Marino, 24/12/1796, and Nelson to Jervis, 29/12/1796, both in Monmouth MSS, E988.

  14. Nelson to Jervis, 24/12/1796, D&L, 2, p. 317.

  15. Nelson to Spencer, 4/1/1797, 28/3/1797, Add. MSS 75795, 75808. The former letter is erroneously dated 1796 and filed accordingly.

  16. Culverhouse to Nelson, 23/3/1797, Add. MSS 34905; Jervis to Spencer, 2/3/1797, Add. MSS 75912; Jervis to Nepean, 13/7/1797, ADM 1/396; William O’Byrne, Naval Biographical Dictionary, pp. 384–5.

  II The Small World of Burnham Thorpe (pp. 31–47)

  1. The best source of information for the Nelson family is Reverend Edmund Nelson’s manuscript, ‘A Family Historicall Register’, which appears to have been finished in 1789. A MS copy can be found in NMM: NWD/34, but the whole appears in Ron C. Fiske, Notices of Nelson, pp. 5–9. See also D&L, 1, pp. 17–18, and several useful secondary works: Thomas Foley [actually Florence Horatia Suckling], Nelson Centenary; Thomas Nelson, Genealogical History of the Nelson Family; and M. Eyre Matcham, Nelsons of Burnham Thorpe.

  2. James Harrison, Life, 1, p. 11.

  3. See also Frank and Jean Pond, ‘The Rolfe Tombs’, and George A. Goulty, ‘Lord Nelson and the Goulty Connection’.

  4. Esther Hallam Moorhouse, Nelson in England, pp. 7–8; Ben Burgess, ‘Who First Painted the Parsonage?’; Faculty Book, Norfolk Record Office, Norwich, DN/FCB/1, p. 588.

  5. Nelson to William, 29/3/1784, Add. MSS 34988; Matcham, Nelsons of Burnham Thorpe, p. 27; census returns, 1801, Norfolk Heritage Centre, Norwich; The Poll for the Knights of the Shire for the County of Norfolk, p. 203.

  6. Parish registers, Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk Record Office. Stories that Nelson was born at Barsham or in his grandmother’s cottage at Burnham Thorpe (Notes and Queries, 11th series, 1 [1910], pp. 483–4, and 2 [1910], pp. 36, 91) are poorly supported. In his autobiographical sketch (see introduction, above, n. 7) Nelson categorically says he was born in the parsonage. This sketch, like another autobiographical fragment written about 1796 (NMM: STW/2, published in NLTHW, p. 52) and a biographical memoir by Nelson’s brother, William, in February 1799 (NMM: PHB/15), has little about Horatio’s first years.

  7. Matcham, Nelsons of Burnham Thorpe, p. 118. Sir Mordaunt Martin, who died in September 1815 at the age of seventy-five, remained a lifelong associate of Nelson.

  8. William Faden, Map of Norfolk, surveyed in 1790–94, marks Burnham Thorpe as the seat of ‘Capt. Nelson’. See also Francis Blomefield and Charles Parkin, Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, vol. 7; Samuel Lewis, Topographical Dictionary, vol. 1; and Michael Stammers, ‘The Hand-Maiden and Victim of Agriculture’.

  9. This story seems to have first been published in NC, 3 (1800), p. 195. Several later stories on the theme of Nelson getting lost illustrate the potency of these local legends. See, for example, Hilda Gamlin, Nelson’s Friendships, 2, p. 278, and the ‘Nurse’ Blackett story alluded to in my text. The earliest example of Horatio’s use of ‘Horace’ appears in the Burnham Thorpe marriage register for 13 March 1769, when the child signed ‘Horace Nelson’ as a witness to the union of Thomas Massingham and Elizabeth Spurgeon. His signature was corrected to ‘Horatio’, possibly by his father. The boy made no such mistake attesting to the marriage of Peter Dennis and Hannah Pinner on 13 November 1769. On each occasion an additional witness was required, and Nelson was respectively joined by Robert Jacomb and Ann Scott. The latter, like the newlyweds, signed with a mark.

  10. Oliver Warner, Portrait of Lord Nelson, found that villagers still spoke of Nurse Blackett in the mid-twentieth century, but wrongly inferred that the memory depended upon unbroken ‘local lore’ (p. 9). In fact the stories came from her grandson’s wife, Mrs ‘Valiant’ High of North Creake, as published in Francis J. Cross, The Birthplace of Nelson, pp. 8, 10, 12, and James Hooper, Nelson’s Homeland, pp. 46–51. Mrs High said that she often heard her
father-in-law (James High, the son of John and Mary Blackett High) talk about Nelson.

  I have not discovered Mary’s birth date. At the time of her marriage to John ‘Hie’ on 13 February 1783, a ceremony conducted at Burnham Thorpe by Nelson’s brother, the Reverend William Nelson, she was described as a member of the parish of Burnham Norton. However, she makes her last appearance in census records in 1851, when, living in Brancaster, she was described as Mary High, a ‘pauper’ from Burnham Thorpe, aged ninety-six. Mary died at Brancaster on 7 August 1852, and her death certificate gives her age as ninety-eight. I deduce the year of her birth from these records, but have been unable to find a baptism at Burnham Thorpe or Burnham Norton. See the parish records in the Norfolk Record Office; the Brancaster census, 1851, Norfolk Heritage Centre; and the death certificate, 9/8/1852, General Register Office, London.

  The other specific Nelson anecdote told by Mrs ‘Valiant’ High, though repeated by some biographers, is also probably erroneous. By Mrs High’s account, Miss Blackett married a man named High, and their son was nicknamed ‘Valiant’ after Captain Nelson commended his ‘right valiant fight’ during a scuffle at Burnham Thorpe in 1793. Subsequently the name ‘Valiant’ passed from this son to his, the husband of the informant. Unfortunately, parish registers show that Mary (Blackett) and John ‘Hie’ had two boys, John (born on 12 January 1784) and James (born 2 March 1789). It was the latter to whom Mrs High alluded, but he was barely four years old at the time of the alleged street brawl!

  Having said all this, there are some convincing details in Mrs High’s interviews. After her husband’s death, the former Miss Blackett lived with the family of the said son, James, then landlord of the Jolly Sailors inn in Brancaster. According to Mrs ‘Valiant’ High the old ‘nurse’ became confused in her last years, but remained devoted to Lord Nelson. A few days before her death, she rose from her bed, dressed and packed sheets and blankets in a bundle. ‘His Lordship has come home,’ she said upon being discovered, ‘and he sent for me to stay at the rectory.’ The old lady was persuaded to return to her bed and died soon afterwards. This anecdote, which the informant may have witnessed first-hand, suggests that Mary Blackett High may have worked as a domestic at the rectory at some time, probably during the period 1788 to 1793, when Nelson made his home there. James Hooper (p. 25) records that the last local believed to have known Nelson personally was Mrs Ann Melton, who died at Docking, Norfolk, on 9 August 1879 at the reputed age of 101.