Read Nelson: Britannia's God of War Online
Authors: Andrew Lambert
Lord Nelson was an admiral every inch of him. He looked at everything, not merely in its possible relations to the naval service in general, but in its immediate bearings on his own squadron; to his officers, his men, to the particular ships themselves, his affections were as strong and ardent as those of a lover. Hence, though his temper was constitutionally irritable and uneven, yet never was a commander so enthusiastically loved by men of all ranks, from the captain of the fleet to the youngest ship-boy. Hence too the unexampled harmony which reigned in his fleet, year after year, under circumstances that might well have undermined the patience of the best-balanced dispositions.
23
Coleridge’s absence from the host of Nelson biographers remains a matter of profound regret: his breadth of learning, intellectual sympathy and acute penetration, allied to his experience of public office and friendship with Ball, would have provided the ideal perspective from which to understand Nelson’s life and work.
Even before Nelson’s body had returned to England, it was clear that an official life would be required. The Bishop of Exeter warned the new Earl that many ill-informed books would appear, making it wise to have an authoritative account. William Nelson agreed, and soon after the funeral he advertised in the newspapers for an author to undertake the task, thereby antagonising John McArthur, who had already spoken to the Earl on this subject and whose work had already been announced. McArthur’s object was to pre-empt the ‘numerous,
uninteresting and clashing accounts’ by providing ‘one full, genuine, authentic detail of the most interesting parts of his life, illustrated by correspondence, properly selected’, and he was not impressed by the qualifications of the potential author, a Reverend Mr Nott, that the Earl had suggested. At this point the Prince of Wales intervened, calling in the Earl on 16 February 1806 and insisting that the Reverend James Stanier Clarke, his librarian and chaplain, be involved.
24
Clarke, who had served as a naval chaplain, was a prolix author on maritime subjects, and the first editor of the
Naval
Chronicle.
With the Prince and Clarence leaning on him, the Earl gave way, although he stubbornly refused ‘to suffer the least scrap to go out of his own possession’.
25
Clarke and Me Arthur, old colleagues on the
Naval
Chronicle,
agreed to work together, with McArthur as the lead author, as he had already assembled materials for the project, and commissioned 1,500 guineas’ worth of paintings and illustrations. He had also secured two hundred advance orders.
McArthur had begun the work with Nelson’s sanction, but despite his qualifications the Earl decided that Clarke should stand first on the title page.
26
The Prince’s librarian quickly assumed the directorship of the project, and wrote to the Earl to ask for ‘such recollections as illustrated your brother’s character when a boy and a young man’.
27
He had also asked Dr Beatty for an account of Nelson’s last hours, and was horrified when he heard that the good doctor intended to publish this under his own name, with the Prince’s blessing. His efforts to prevent this were in vain: the
Authentic
Narrative
of
the
Death
of
Lord
Nelson
was published by Cadell and Davies in 1807, long before the official
Life
would be ready. Undeterred, however, Clarke worked his way through the small sections of the archive of correspondence that Earl Nelson was gracious enough to loan, and secured fresh material from many who had known the hero.
28
McArthur, too, borrowed letters from many sources, notably the Hood family, whom he had served for many years – though unlike Clarke, he did not return them once he had made use of them.
The book was ready to publish in the middle of 1809, but was held back because London was deserted. It would cost nine guineas, and the two volumes weighed in at over twenty-one pounds.
29
Much of the cost of the book had gone on art works commissioned to embellish the product: West’s third ‘death’, the
Apotheosis
of
Nelson,
was a frontispiece
30
while Nicholas Pocock’s pictures of the great battles and
ships and Richard Westall’s bland action scenes illustrated the text. With the Prince at their elbow, the authors had gone for size and presentation, hoping to impress their audience by production values. However, the book’s price and format restricted its readership, while shorter and cheaper rival works arrived sooner and swept the market clean. Moreover, despite its monumental length, it was unworthy of its subject: as a contemporary review pointed out, it was neither a biography, nor a collection of correspondence, but a blundering attempt to combine the two. A key part of the problem was the lack of a strong editorial grip on the project. Clarke was a weak man, and allowed others to impose their own agendas on the project – not just the Prince, the Earl and even the resurgent Fanny, but also hostile witnesses like Captain Edward Foote. It was also discovered later that Clarke had ‘improved’ the syntax of Nelson’s letters, making his wonderfully direct English read like the work of a pretentious literary parson.
The initial print run cannot have been large, and many copies were pre-sold, but sales were so moderate that the publishers saw ‘little hope of it ever repaying your and our advances, or anything like’. By late 1812 there were still 320 sets of the two-volume edition in stock: the publishers were still some
£
1,500 out of pocket, but were now anxious to close the account.
31
In 1814 some copies were offloaded to the book trade, although McArthur was still trying to drum up business in the West Indies.
32
By 1818 it was time to ‘remainder’. In truth the book had been a sorry production, uninspired, unremarkable, weakly compiled and produced in an absurd fashion that deprived it of its natural readership. Few men have been so unfortunate in their ‘official’ biographies – and it is even more unfortunate that the text, despite having long been discredited, continues to influence writing on Nelson.
*
By late 1809 there was a substantial body of literature on Nelson, and Robert Southey – poet, historian and critic, as well as Coleridge’s long-suffering friend, brother in law, and supporter – was busy surveying it for John Murray’s
Quarterly
Review,
the leading intellectual journal of the Tory establishment. The importance of the commission was reflected by the fee:
£
20 per page, rather than the usual
£
10. Southey bore his own grudge towards Clarke, who had been given the post of Historiographer Royal which Southey had sought. For Southey, the fact that ‘a most extraordinary blockhead’ should have been allowed to work on this subject was an insult to the memory of
the hero, and the literary world.
33
Southey poured all his art and venom into a notice that emphasised the faults of the official life and Clarke’s proven incapacity to undertake it.
34
At Murray’s bidding, Southey began to prepare a book of his own, and he was soon dining at the Admiralty with John Wilson Croker, Admiralty Secretary and another regular
Quarterly
reviewer. Croker persuaded the First Lord of the Admiralty to subsidise the project by drawing the maps in-house.
35
The book appeared in 1813 and was dedicated to Croker. Although his creative spark was radical, Southey was well on his way to becoming a Tory establishment figure when he addressed this national subject. His object was to complete the process begun at St Paul’s: to reclaim Nelson for the establishment, who needed to be reminded of his transcendent achievements, and their singular failure to follow up the funeral with any other appropriate monuments. For Southey, their lukewarm response contrasted markedly and unfavourably with the celebration of Nelson’s achievements among ordinary people. Southey was anxious to show the country that its leaders were men of character; however, he also used Nelson to show that the aristocracy had no monopoly on leadership, or virtue.
36
His book would inspire young officers, teaching them command, leadership, humanity and the care of their men. He also highlighted the political courage that illuminated Nelson’s entire career: that implicit reliance on his own judgement that made him the greatest of all commanders.
Southey’s book, despite its flaws, set a standard that none has matched. Its power and eloquence derive from the literary skill of the author, and the simple, powerful style of Nelson’s own writing. Moreover, Southey wrote at a time of pressing national need, in the darkest hours of the struggle with Napoleon, which added urgency and purpose to his narrative. The tone is uplifting, but carefully balanced: this is Nelson warts and all, and the book includes a stinging indictment of Nelson’s handling of the Neapolitan counter-revolution, and his relationship with Emma.
37
The initial print run of three thousand copies sold out immediately, and a second edition was in hand by September.
38
Despite (or perhaps because of) the objections of Emma,
39
who had but a few months to live, the book remained in print, running to a fourth edition in 1830. At a very reasonable five shillings it found a ready market among the increasingly literate populace, establishing itself as the standard life.
Coleridge and Southey were not the only poets to subscribe to the cult of Nelson. The hero found a still more passionate devotee in Lord Byron, who used Nelson to define the heroic in his masterpiece,
Don
Juan
:
Nelson was Britannia’s god of war;
And still should be so, but the tide is turn’d;
There’s no more to be said of Trafalgar,
‘Tis with our hero quietly inurn’d;
Because the army’s grown more popular,
At which the naval people are concern’d[.]
Early drafts of the first line use ‘the popular’, or ‘the people’s’ in place of ‘Britannia’s’.
40
All three are effective, while the second gives a particular twist to the line concerning ‘the naval people’. In contrast to Southey, Byron was setting Nelson against the post-war Tory establishment, dominated by two men he hated: Castlereagh and Wellington.
No writer was more influenced by Nelson than Byron; the beautiful but flawed poet had even self-consciously imitated Nelson in his first portrait, commissioned from a naval painter in 1807. As the grandson of an admiral, Byron had a familial disposition towards the naval model of heroism, and this was only strengthened by his personal love of ships and the sea. References to Nelson litter Byron’s work, from
Childe
Harold
to
Don
Juan,
and also his more private thoughts. Evenhis death – in the midst of war, seeking an engagement with the enemy, before he could grow old and lose his looks – knowingly followed Nelson’s model. What Byron found in Nelson was the model for his pose, another man prepared to defy convention in following his own genius. From this image Byron created the romantic hero, and worked hard to match the ideal, in art, artifice and action. The idea of ‘erotic obsession’, which became, through Byron, a central trope of European Romanticism
41
quickly came to cast a backward reflection on Nelson. Nelson’s relationship with Emma was refashioned as Byronic, and his eighteenth-century morality converted into romantic rebellion. In truth Nelson was the original Romantic hero and Byron the imitator: after all, what glory is there in the poet’s art?
In
Manfred
Byron was preoccupied by the concept of a superman, a ‘Titanic figure half way between the mortals and the gods’. The conection with Nelson, the immortal memory, is obvious. The connection grew with time. Byron returned from the Mediterranean in 1811 on board HMS
Volage,
in company with HMS
Amphion.
The two
ships were returning in triumph from the battle of Lissa. As the enemy closed in Nelson’s brilliant protégée William Hoste had flown the signal, ‘Remember Nelson’ from
Amphion’s
masthead to inspire his men.
42
Byron took the opportunity to discuss the battle, along with their adored admiral, with Hoste and his officers,
43
Once ashore the connections continued to pile up. Among the wealth of Byron portraits the defining ‘romantic icon’ was painted by Richard Westall in 1813.
44
Westall had created the ‘romantic hero’ pictures of Nelson for Clarke and Me Arthur’s book only four years before. He went on to fulfil other Byron commissions
45
his illustrations for the largely autobiographical
Don
Juan
only reinforced the connection. So highly did Byron regard the subject that he forgave Southey his politics and his poetry to praise the famous 1811 review.
46
For Byron death was a frequent companion: friends and school-fellows were struck down by war and disease, making mortality a constant feature of his life. He would die trying to be a ‘Nelsonic’ hero, not a poet. Nelson is the real-life hero at the heart of his oeuvre.