609. Nelson: The Gathering Storm (Part 2)

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When Nelson's carriage drew up outside Nerritz Hotel in one of central London's most elegant streets, the pavement was packed with well-wishers.

He was dressed in full uniform with three stars on his breast and two gold medals, reported the Naval Chronicle, and was welcomed by repeated huzzahs from the crowd, which he returned with a low bow.

He looked extremely well, but in person very thin.

In the hotel lobby, Fanny and Edmund were waiting, nervously wringing their hands.

When they saw him, relief and joy flashed across their faces.

Then

two more figures came in behind him.

an older man long-faced and beaky-nosed, and a younger woman, with an enormous mass of chestnut hair,

and almost bursting out of her dress.

And although Fanny tried to smile, it was as if somebody had snuffed out all the lights.

So, that, of course, is from Adventures in Time, Nelson Hero of the Seas.

by our very own Dominic Sandbrook out in paperback today.

And it gives you a sense of the incredible stylistic range of this book.

In the previous one, we had some vivid and highly original travel writing.

Naples is a city of contrasts.

And now, with this scene, we are launched into something redolent of, well, of kind of some sites might say melodrama, others more kindly might say reminiscent of Jane Austen, perhaps.

So the scene, it's on the 8th of November, 1800.

Nelson has been away for more than two years from his wife, Fanny, and his father, the vicar, Edmund Nelson.

And they realise, to their horror, that he has brought with him to their meeting his mistress, Emma Hamilton, who is pregnant by Nelson.

So hence Dominic's very diplomatic description of her bursting out of her dress, and her husband, Sir William, her elderly husband, Sir William.

And, you know, this is either the rankest melodrama or reminiscent of Mansfield Park.

Take your pick, but it's high, high drama, isn't it, Dominic?

It is indeed, Tom.

We shall be getting into more soap opera style shenanigans later in this episode.

But maybe first we should remind ourselves where we've got to.

So this is the first time Nelson has been in England since April 1798.

Listeners will recall.

that he chased Napoleon's fleet across the Mediterranean, destroyed them at the Battle of the Nile, then went north to Naples and was embroiled in the poisonous politics of the kingdom of the two Sicilies.

And there he slightly let himself down, I think we agreed, by

shooting prisoners that he said he wouldn't shoot.

And then he started, or about the same time, he started an affair with the wife of the British Minister in Naples, Emma Hamilton, who we met earlier on.

So shall we pick up the story in the late summer of 1799?

Let's.

So this republic that was set up in Naples, the Parthenopian Republic, has been crushed.

King Ferdinand and Oath, Queen Maria Carolina, you ventriloquized her as Bill Sykes.

They are back on their thrones.

Nelson is the temporary commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, but he's keeping the seat warm until Casting Agents' favourite Scotsman, Admiral Lord Keith, returns from leave.

He is very much not a man who would look favourably on a former prostitute doing attitudes.

Correct.

So the priority really is the Admiralty want to retake Malta, where there is a French garrison, because of course Napoleon took Malta on his way to Egypt.

And historians disagree about this, and indeed Nelson's own contemporaries disagreed about it, whether Nelson's heart was really in retaking Malta or whether he was distracted.

And I'm sure we will come to this later on.

He has based himself not in Naples, but back in Palermo, where he is joined with the Hamiltons.

And again, there are criticisms at the time, aren't there, that he has perhaps lost sight of his duty and that he has preferred, he prefers to moon around with Emma in Palermo than going off and attacking Naples.

But Tom, you think that's a little bit harsh?

I do, because the pitch is that Nelson is Antony.

frolicking with Cleopatra in the flesh pots of Alexandria.

That's the parallel that people endlessly, endlessly draw.

But the thing is, Palermo is not at all a a mad base from which to prosecute what Nelson, as acting commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, sees as his responsibilities, which are chiefly to keep an eye on the endangered kingdom of Naples and, if possible, to roll the French backwards up through Italy.

And secondly, to maintain and coordinate the blockade

of Malta, because the fall of Malta will give...

Britain an absolute strategic naval prize.

And the thing is that although Britain is funding some of the blockade, the other key person who is contributing towards this blockade is Ferdinand.

And the reason he's doing that is because he basically thinks that he's going to end up with Malta.

I mean, whether he does, we will see.

But I think that there are lots of people who don't understand what Nelson is facing at this time, the threads that he's holding in his hand.

And so they assume, well, the only reason he could possibly have for lying in Palermo is because he's...

Canoodling is the word.

Yes.

But I mean, both of those things can be true at once can't they because it it's possible that the the word good grounds to be in palermo and yet at the same time there's undoubtedly an awful lot of canoodling even nelson's probably one of his most admiring biographers john sugden has this um stuff he describes as a repugnant cell of self-congratulation flattery and manipulation uh in the court in palermo and he talks about the sort of the intoxicating sultriness about the palazzo palagonia fatally attractive like a delicious sin.

Now, a lot of this, you could say, is artistic projection, and a lot of this is describing the court rather than Nelson himself.

But there is sense at the time among some of Nelson's comrades that he has succumbed to the allure.

And this is the only time in his career when people make that claim, right?

They never make it at any other point.

That he's succumbed to the allure of the exoticism and the sensuality and all of this.

I think that this is a tradition that goes back.

Obviously, people are saying this at the time.

It feeds into biographies of Nelson throughout the 19th and 20th century who are generally written by kind of bluff navel types.

And I just don't think that they approve of Italians, of showgirls.

I think there's a kind of weird obsession with the idea that everything Nelson is doing is because he's been seduced by A, Emma Hamilton.

and B, the flesh pots of Italy, Palermo, Naples, take your pick.

And the two get elided.

You know, I think undoubtedly he is having this affair, probably hasn't gone beyond the canoodling stage by this point.

But I think equally, it does, you know, he can have this affair, but it doesn't stop him from being as effective and efficient and dynamic as he has ever been.

And yet, there are, there are complaints from very early on from people who have gone to visit him, people who might be expected to be sympathetic to him, who feel that something has gone wrong.

I'll just give you a couple of examples.

So one of them is Lord and Lady Elgin.

Lord and Lady Elgin are going through Palermo on their way to Constantinople.

Lady Elgin writes of Nelson and the Hamiltons and their relationship with the royal family.

I never saw three people made such thorough dupes of as Lady Hamilton, Sir William and Lord Nelson.

It's really humiliating to see Lord Nelson as if he had no other thought than her.

This is actually Maria Carolina.

Is it not a pity that a man who had gained so much credit should fling himself away in this shameful manner?

Now, that's not an uncommon thing to say.

So another the other example I was going to give you was Nelson's old friend Thomas Trubridge, with whom he later falls out.

Trubridge wrote to him and said, please, I'm hearing really disturbing reports about you.

If you knew what your friends feel for you, I'm sure you would cut out all the nocturnal parties.

The gambling of the people in Palermo is publicly talked about everywhere.

I beseech your lordship, leave off.

Lady Hamilton's character will suffer.

Nothing can prevent people from talking.

A gambling woman in the eye of an Englishman is lost.

Now, putting that last bit on one side, this sort of sense that is clearly current, not just among later sort of Victorian biographers or whatever, but among some of Nelson's friends that his focus isn't quite what it was, that he's keeping late hours, that, you know, maybe you can say some of this is projection and some of this is Anthony and Cleopatra, but surely not all of it, Tom.

No, I mean, clearly it causes gossip.

It causes scandal.

The two most, you know, the most famous men, the most famous women in Britain having an affair.

I mean, of course, I mean, it's absolute catnip for anyone who loves a scandal.

And bear in mind that that thing you read about, you know, it's shameful, what's going on here.

This is about Nelson's relationship to the Queen of Naples.

And I think that the feeling is that a British admiral should not be behaving like a flunky.

to rulers of some kind of tinpot Italian kingdom.

I mean, I think that's that's the vibe, basically.

And you could argue that perhaps Nelson is clinging to them too closely.

But bear in mind, those are the orders he's been given.

He has been told, you know, look after them carefully.

And I think you can absolutely make the case in terms of military strategy that maintaining the integrity of Britain's only real ally of significance in the Mediterranean at a time when Nelson is responsible for establishing the supremacy of the Royal Navy in the face of French threats, I think that is a reasonable strategic position to take.

Now, when Keith arrives, you know, he's very disapproving of Nelson's relationship with Emma Hamilton.

I mean, of course, I mean, that's his kind of moral position.

But I think the much more deep-seated reason for the disagreements between the two men is that Keith isn't as convinced as Nelson is that the Italian theatre is important.

His focus is much more on Menorca, on Spain, on Gibraltar, and that is a strategic disagreement.

And the fact that Keith is coming to replace Nelson and that Keith is not good at handling Nelson.

You know, he's not afraid to insult him, to be rude to him, to inflict what Nelson sees as snubs, only adds to the mix.

And I think that Keith's criticism of Nelson for having a relationship with Lady Hamilton, and the more general gossip is veiling deeper-seated disagreements between Nelson and his peers and immediate superiors in the Navy about the course basically of strategy.

Well, there are a number of different things here.

So one of them,

amid the general swirl, is that there's a backlash more generally against the Hamiltons, and that includes Sir William as well as Emma.

So Sir William Hamilton, there is definitely a sense after the failure of the Neapolitan expedition to Rome and then the huge fiasco of the revolution and the recapture of Naples.

There is definitely a sense, I think, that Sir William has become much too close to the royal family and that he's slightly lost the plot.

So he is replaced as ambassador effectively at the beginning of 1800.

A new ambassador is sent out to replace him.

And when he gets back to England, a big theme will be he doesn't get the pension he expects and he doesn't get the peerage he expects.

And there's a sense in which people are like, well, the Hamiltons are useless.

I mean, I hear what you're saying, but from Lord Keith's perspective,

he would say, I have this subordinate who is behaving like a diva, who does not follow my orders, who is now thinks himself above the chain of command, the code of behavior that governs the Royal Navy, because yes, he's a great star and all the rest of it, but he is sometimes flagrantly disobeying my orders.

when I tell him, go here.

Nelson has always done that.

I mean, that's his modus operandi.

That's fine, but that's very annoying if you're his commanding officer.

Of course it is.

But I think Keith's style of leadership is completely antithetical to the Nelson touch.

He doesn't have room for it.

And so they're constantly rubbing up against each other.

Nelson is also, I mean, Nelson is not the, he's not brilliant at his own PR, is he?

Because he is begging Keith the whole time to let him go home.

So it's not surprising that Keith thinks this guy is not fully committed.

Nelson's constantly complaining about his health, about his mental health.

He says he's got a pain, I've got a pain in my heart, all of this kind of stuff.

And Keith looks at him, and don't forget, Keith has heard a lot of the rumors.

So before Keith even arrived in January 1800, another admiral wrote to him and said, you know, watch out for this infatuation that Nelson has with Emma Hamilton.

I think it's very sad that Nelson should have so sadly exposed himself to ridicule and censure.

Now, you could say, well,

you know, this is just sort of moral Puritanism and whatnot.

And then Keith then arrives in Palermo and says, I found it a scene of fulsome vanity and absurdity.

And I know what you'll say, that this is Keith kind of cosplaying a critic in Antony and Cleopatra or something, but that doesn't mean there's not an element of truth in it.

No, I don't think he's doing that.

I think he's trying to impose his authority, which is obviously what he should be doing because he's the commander-in-chief.

But the problem is, is that Nelson, you know, Nelson wins victories by disobeying orders.

That's also always been what he does.

So there's a classic example of this in the early months of 1800, and it relates to the blockade of Malta.

So Keith orders Nelson to abandon Palermo and come to Menorca.

Nelson predictably ignores this.

He sails out and on the 18th of February, he wins the single most decisive engagement of the entire blockade of Malta, which is the key strategic objective.

for Britain.

He meets a French relief force headed by a ship Les Generaux, which is one of the two ships that had escaped destruction at the Battle of the Nile.

Nelson captures it, and he does this by ignoring Keith's orders and trusting to his own instincts, which is what he always does.

And I think you can see there exactly the tensions that have shadowed Nelson's entire career.

resentment that his commanding officers don't respect him.

His commanding officers don't respect him because he's always prone to going off and doing his own thing.

Then he goes and does his own thing and it turns out brilliantly.

And this is a kind of an abiding theme.

So he falls out, for instance, also with Sir John Jervis, his great patron, the Earl of St.

Vincent, who likewise thinks he's insufferable.

Yeah, but that does not necessarily, that doesn't mean that they're all wrong and Nelson is always right.

You know, Lord Keith is trying to put the interests of the entire operation, the Royal Navy, first.

So John Sugden, who's the great Nelson biographer, I remember describing his books as the kind of war and peace of kind of this gigantic epic.

I mean,

he is really critical of Nelson Nelson in this point.

For all Nelson's self-righteousness, he must have known he was disappointing members of his profession, the brothers who had begged him to stay off Malta, as well as his superiors in London.

He, who had once been the fleet's greatest asset, was now underperforming and becoming a hindrance to his commander-in-chief, a prima donna turning into a passenger.

Nelson's heart was ruling his head, but for the first time in his life, he'd become an impediment rather than an asset to the service he'd loved.

Now, Tom, I totally accept that you can take a contrary view of this.

Well, you can quote Sugden to a contrary view because he also says no one fought harder for Malta than Nelson.

And that's clearly the case throughout this spell.

But often he's disobeyed orders in doing so, which is...

There is an example of this shortly after he has seen off the French relief force.

And Keith explicitly orders him, you know, don't go to Palermo.

But Nelson does, pleading ill health.

Now, I think that that is probably genuine.

Nelson does seem to have been incredibly ill at this point.

To quote on this occasion, Andrew Lambert, another great biographer of Nelson, on the 18th of March, while on passage to Palermo, Nelson experienced chest pains that convinced him he was close to death.

Now, it may be hypochondria.

I mean, that's a massive hypochondriac.

But he genuinely seems to have thought he was close to death.

And I think he's exhausted, he's ill.

People say he suggests he might have had a hernia, he might have had gout.

I mean, I think he is genuinely ill.

And thrown into the mix is the fact that Keith has not congratulated him on his victory in capturing Le Genero.

And more than that, he has given it as a prize to his own lieutenants so that they will claim the prize money.

And you can see why this would generate bad blood between the two men.

I mean, I think

these are complicated waters, shall we say.

And

the upshot is

Keith and Nelson, you know, Keith has arrived, what, the beginning of 1800?

They don't get on at all well.

There's constant arguments.

Nelson,

a lot of officers say Nelson's dallying with Adie Hamilton, she doesn't care.

Other people say, no, that's fine.

He's great.

It's all going well.

But

Nelson, by about the middle of the year, is constantly saying, I've had enough.

I want to go home.

Please let me go home.

And eventually, Keith says, yeah, fine.

You know, I'm sick of you.

Good riddance to you.

And actually, even how the question of getting home.

There's a sort of an argument about that.

So Keith says to Nelson, I'll give you a frigate.

You can go home in a frigate.

Now, Nelson says, oh, well, a frigate?

You know, I is a great star.

The Hamiltons, these tremendous people, should be going home in splendor.

Now, actually, as it turns out, Emma doesn't want to go by sea at all, does she?

Partly because she knows that Maria Carolina, her great friend, is planning a trip to Vienna.

great Habsburg capital, and she would really like to go on land with Maria Carolina.

Now, as we will discover, Emma is also pregnant.

So that is another issue.

Anyway, Nelson says, fine, you know, we'll go over land, we'll go via Austria, we'll go via Germany, and then, you know, cross the North Sea to England.

And I think there's a, do you not agree that this is seen as generally undignified?

Undignified.

Yes, I do.

It's not fitting for the naval, the guy who won the Battle of the Nile.

should come home, you know, land at Portsmouth, all of that stuff.

But actually, you know, there is a sense, I think, what Emma and Maria Carolina want, Emma and Maria Carolina get with this.

And I think also there's a sense that

he's been led into bad habits by foreigners bedecking him with baubles and comical medals and things.

He looks like a character from Gilbert and Sullivan, I think, at this point.

Yeah, and this is felt to be kind of undignified.

And I think this undoubtedly poisons

the otherwise kind of complete mood of approbation that would be greeting him.

I think there is a kind of undertow of anxiety that he is making himself look ridiculous, that he's letting himself down.

And it obscures the fact that actually his term as commander-in-chief has not remotely been a disaster.

So he's actually he has kept Sicily and in the fight.

He's got Naples back and he's prosecuted the blockade of Malta with extreme efficiency and with such effectiveness that actually shortly after he's departed, so on the 5th of September 1800 malta will surrender and rather than hand it over to king ferdinand the british keep it much to everyone's surprise and basically they will keep it for um you know for a century and more it will play its part in the second world war but actually the the even bigger thing surely is that nelson is returning to england as the victor of the nile the winner of the greatest naval victory in Britain's history, the victory that effectively punctured Napoleon's dreams of empire and Egypt.

And the tragedy, I think, and this is even for his critics within the Navy, for Lord Keith and all these other people, that as they see it, the tragedy is that the victor of the Nile has tarnished his own record and is going back.

You know, whether he's tarnished it, whether he really has tarnished it, I'm sure we can debate.

But the sadness is that he's not going back as the victor of the Nile.

He's going back as a scandal-plagued, you know, controversy-haunted figure.

From Nelson's point of view, there is positive to traveling over land, which is that obviously he will have to go via Austria and other parts of Germany that are allied to Britain, all of whom are very excited by his achievement in defeating the French at the Battle of the Nile.

And so yet again, it promises opportunities for being praised by foreigners, which I think by this point Nelson's very keen on.

By the time they get to, well, you know, we don't need to go through every single place they stopped at, but they go through italy tuscany they end up in um austrian vienna he goes to the theater he has his portrait painted he meets joseph haydn who names a mass after him he's a big celebrity and everyone's very excited and they're wearing kind of nelson fashions and stuff like that aren't they and emma hamilton fashions as well so she too is a big star um you know she people women in vienna are copying her look as well they are being treated as stars and i think both of them absolutely adore it i mean i worked out how much this trip cost them this trip cost them three thousand pounds and if you compare that in income terms that's about five million pounds today that's a very expensive trip and that's money that they don't really have so there's that issue second issue emma heavily pregnant as you mentioned and people are already gossiping that nelson may be the father he is the father their their child was conceived while they were cruising, I think, off Malta in the Mediterranean.

And I think it's in Vienna, you get the senses in Vienna that he first notices Nelson is not a man who enjoys being laughed at.

And it's clear that it's about now that people do start to laugh at him.

There are reports of him at balls, at banquets and things.

Emma's chattering away as she always does.

And he's standing there, sort of silent.

And I think I have a sort of sense of him, you know, glancing over his shoulder and noticing people laughing behind their hands.

And he doesn't like it.

well i think also in particularly in vienna he's meeting with very high-born um british aristocrats who of course are contemptuous of emma basically for being a barmaid nelson has this friend lord minto who's there who who says you know unbelievably coarse appalling vulgar woman yes and

while emma was was in italy you know her lancastrian accent

had no cut through with with the Italians.

I mean, it meant nothing to them.

But now he's being reintegrated into high society, English high society.

All those reserves of snobbery are kind of waiting to come out again.

Well, the issue of manners and showiness starts to become a real issue the further north they go.

So, for example, when they get to Prague or to Dresden, there are British visitors, British aristocrats or diplomats who then start writing back to London and saying, God, they're absolutely ghastly.

So here's an example.

Lady Hamilton declared she was passionately fond of champagne, took such a portion of it as astonished me.

Lord Nelson was not behindhand, calling more vociferously than usual for songs in his own praise.

Now, that to me does actually ring true because Nelson does like a lot of praise.

And Lady Hamilton, you feel, is not a woman who's going to stop drinking champagne just because she's pregnant or so.

Right, exactly.

And I think, I mean, even now in England, there is a sense that you shouldn't be the first to call for a song in your own praise.

Tom, if you did that at a rest is history dinner, I would be dominant.

I would never do that.

I mean, the one thing actually this podcast is not known for is self-congratulation.

People often criticize us for too much humility.

I think on this one level, we have behaved better than Nelson.

However, we must always bear in mind that he did defeat the French at the Battle of the Nile and he did secure Malta for the Royal Navy.

You're desperate to hammer home this Malta point on you, I can tell.

Well, it's so important and it's overlooked.

Anyway, they travel through Europe, they get to Germany, and they catch a boat back to Yarmouth.

It's a packet boat, It's not, you know, a great ship of the Royal Navy.

However, when Nelson lands, it doesn't matter.

He's greeted, you know, the returning hero, right?

Yes, there are huge crowds.

It's brilliant.

It's brilliant.

But at the back of his mind, surely, he's got his heavily pregnant mistress and her elderly husband.

And that's a slightly odd ménage with which to return to.

Just to explain for people who aren't familiar with the geography of East Anglia, Yarmouth is the nearest port to the vicarage where both Fanny and Nelson's father are waiting for him.

Or are they Dominic?

Because there's kind of a mix up, isn't there?

There's a massive mix up because actually Fanny has also got him a country house called Roundwood, which is in Suffolk, which she's been preparing.

They never live at it, as it turns out.

And there's a great confusion.

Are they going to meet there?

Are they going to meet in London?

Fanny's down in London.

Nelson goes to the house.

There's nobody there.

He's very offended.

You can imagine Nelson.

He's used to flattery.

He's used to being the center of attention.

He arrives at the house and there's no one there to greet him.

Anyway, Fanny has been waiting all this time.

And to remind people about Fanny, Fanny is very shy, kind of quiet.

If you had to criticize Fanny, which I hate to do, but I will force myself

for the good of the podcast, she's perhaps a little bit boring.

He married her in the Caribbean, they came home to England, he nursed her when he was injured, she's become a second daughter to his father.

And Fanny has become increasingly anxious in recent months.

Nelson's letters have A started to dry up, but B, when they do come, they are very short and they are very cold.

And she says to her friends, I'm actually quite worried about these Hamiltons.

There's a clear sense of kind of growing dread in Fanny's mind about the influence of the Hamiltons.

Now,

we're not going to degenerate into Team Emma and Team Fanny, are we, Tom?

I hope.

I've always, I mentioned Mansville Park at the start of this episode, Jane Austen's novel.

Jane Austen, of course, had a brother who served in the Royal Navy, kept very abreast of Nelsoniana.

And I've always wondered whether Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, who is the, you know, the slightly mousy,

slightly, you know, the poor relation, not showy at all, and she's counterpointed to a much more glamorous woman in the form of Mary Crawford.

And I've always wondered if there's a little hint there, perhaps, of the dynamic between Fanny Nelson's wife and Emma Nelson's mistress.

Well, it feels like a very Jane Austen dynamic, generally, doesn't it?

The, you know, the two women, the one who is kind of quieter and more retiring, the one who is louder and, you know, is a little bit more Emma Woodville or whatever.

Yeah, Emma, again.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, finally, they all meet up.

The scene you described at the beginning.

So little of this is private because even at that first meeting, there are loads of well-wishers there.

There are great crowds outside.

It's actually almost impossible for Fanny and Horatio to find a moment to talk together, you know, just the two of of them, because he's got his father there, because the Hamiltons are there.

You know, Nelson, when he arrives in London, he's so famous at this point.

There's Nelson crockery, there are Nelson hats, there's Nelson earrings, there's Nelson prints.

He can't walk down the street without people mobbing him.

And of course, he doesn't want to because he's wearing his full dress uniform.

He's quite...

Oh, I hate the way I keep being noticed.

Exactly.

Because he's a big star and because he's Britain's great military asset, he's politically important now in a way that he wasn't before.

So he gets to meet the Prime Minister, William Pitt, and the guy who's going to become Prime Minister Henry Addington.

My sense of it at this point is Nelson's greeting the crowds and he's greeting politicians, but hanging over him the whole time is this hideous dilemma, this issue of the mistress and the wife and the fact that they're all together.

I mean, that's what's so strange about it, isn't it?

Yeah, and the agony of it for Nelson, I mean, setting Fanny aside, is that he knows his responsibility and his duty.

He should clearly, you know, stay true to his wedding vows, but he feels such a passion for Emma.

And so he's torn in two.

And it's a nightmare situation for him.

It is, however, even more, I think, of a nightmare situation for Fanny.

Oh, I mean, the fact that it's public, I think that's the thing that they're forced to go to all these dinner parties where, I mean, there's dinner parties where she's seen in tears.

There's this awful story about going to see a musical at the Drury Lane Theatre, Tom, where we've performed.

And she faints halfway through and had to be carried out.

And people said afterwards, oh, the line at which she fainted was an exchange about an injured woman's fury.

You know, this sort of idea that, and the sense I think that Fanny clearly has, a very retiring person, that everybody is staring at her and laughing at her.

And that all the time, of course, Nelson is treating her more and more coldly because he's resentful of the whole situation.

And he's not a naturally cruel man, so he then feels bad about it.

And because he feels bad about it, he blames Fanny.

And so it's a kind of vicious cycle.

It's a classic pattern.

And of course, this is setting up for the time of year where

families love to get together and have massive rows, which is Christmas.

And Nelson hasn't spent Christmas with, you know, with Fanny, with his father for, what, three years now?

But...

20th of December comes and he tells Fanny, I'm not having Christmas with you.

Do you know where he's off to?

He's off to Wiltshire and the Salisbury area.

It's great to have Wiltshire and Salisbury area back on the show.

It is.

So he goes off to Salisbury with the Hamiltons and he gets given the freedom of the city of Salisbury.

So that reflects very well on Salisbury.

And then he goes off to a place where I once took five wickets, Font Hill, where William Beckford, who is going to be exposed as the Geoffrey Epstein.

of the of the Regency period.

He's a very, very sinister figure who will end up going into exile in Portugal.

But at this point, he's used all the money he's made from sugar, so exploiting slaves in the Caribbean, to build this enormous folly, Font Hill Abbey.

And he lays on an absolute extravaganza for Nelson and the Hamiltons.

And it's a very, very spectacular Christmas.

And it's very, very not fanny.

It's very Peter the Great, isn't it?

There's a lot of dwarves.

There's people with torches.

There's sort of strange scenes and sort of Emma does her attitudes.

She is eight months pregnant.

She does Agrippina bringing the ashes of Germanicus.

So tremendous scenes.

Now you can imagine Fanny's, where's Fanny?

I mean she's sort of hanging around with Edmund at age 78 at Christmas, really miserable Christmas, knowing that Nelson is away sort of with the Hamiltons at this party.

And I think there's this sort of sense that the end is coming.

And then the

the denouement comes.

So on the 9th of January, Fanny and Nelson agreed to sell this house called Roundwood that they'd never actually lived in.

And a few days later, they're having breakfast with their lawyer.

Nelson mentions at breakfast something about dear Lady Hamilton.

And it's clear that basically for the only time in her life,

something snapped in Fanny.

And she said, you know, it's like the sort of the mouse that roared.

She said, I'm sick of hearing of dear Lady Hamilton, and I'm resolved you shall give up either her or me.

This is the lawyer reporting this.

And Nelson stared at her very coldly, and he said, take care, Fanny, what you say.

I love you sincerely, but I cannot forget my obligations to Lady Hamilton, or speak of her otherwise than with affection or admiration.

And Fanny, at that, just gets up and walks out of the room.

At that point, they'd been married for 15 years.

and probably neither of them really knew it, but that was the end of their life together.

So incredible kind of of emotional storms raging there.

But Dominic, out across the continent of Europe, storm clouds are gathering.

And these are, of course, the storm clouds of war.

And they are gathering in particular over the freezing waters of the Baltic.

So after the break, we will join Nelson as he turns his back.

on all the emotional complications of his relationship with Fanny and with Emma and sails east towards towards Denmark and the Battle of Copenhagen.

This episode is brought to you by Vanguard.

Now, thrillingly, this name, Vanguard, was inspired by HMS Vanguard, the flagship of none other than Admiral Nelson.

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Hello, welcome back to the rest is history.

We ended the first half with, of course, the storm clouds of war gathering and they're gathering over the Baltic.

And Dominic, people may be slightly puzzled about that because we've been talking a lot about the Channel, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean.

What on earth is going on in the Baltic that

would cause storm clouds to gather?

Would you like some political context?

I'd like you to

pull the camera back.

Oh, very good.

Very good.

Okay, so...

The French Revolutionary Wars have broken out in 1792 and they've been going on forever.

This latest phase, which began began in 1798, is called the War of the Second Coalition.

But despite all Nelson's heroics at the NAR, the Second Coalition has begun to break up.

Because the coalition is between France's enemies, including Britain and Russia and Austria and so on.

Britain's main partners, the Austrians and the Russians, are both basically about to pull out of the war and sign treaties with the French.

So that means that not for the last time, Tom.

Britain stands alone.

Stand alone for all that's good in this world.

So, now the seas are massively important, of course, to Britain.

And they're even more important if you basically have no land allies, because the sea is all you have.

The Royal Navy has been blockading the French coast to try and starve the French of trade and supplies.

And in the long run, in the very, very long run, that's how we win the war.

Because we control the seas.

We suffocate Napoleon, suffocate his economy, and we force him into mad gambles like invading Russia.

Sad to say, not all of our European friends have respected this blockade.

And a very good example is Denmark.

Denmark has been flirting with a policy of armed neutrality, meaning they send warships to help their merchant ships break the blockade.

And then in late 1800, while Nelson is in the middle of the sort of Fanny Emma Imbroglio, there is a shocking new development.

So one of our key, Britain's key second coalition allies, was Tsar Paul I of Russia.

He is a very strange and disagreeable man.

We like a strange and disagreeable Tsar, don't we?

Yeah, well, we specialise in them, as does Russia.

And he has, I think,

he's sort of got all the worst aspects of Peter the Great and none of the good ones.

So he loves massive military parades.

He loves flogging people.

He's obsessed with...

So Peter the Great, people may remember, was obsessed with beards and cutting people's, you know,

stopping them wearing caftans and they had to wear trousers.

This guy, he doesn't approve of modern liberal clothing.

He, in fact, bans round hats, trousers, and lace-up shoes.

And he also believes that waistcoats contributed to the outbreak of the French Revolution.

Because he thinks all of these things are kind of liberal, it's liberal coded dress.

And it speaks of Republican sympathies.

And he just doesn't like republicanism.

He doesn't like new ideas, all of this stuff.

Right.

So, which is why, obviously, why he would be fighting against France, because France is a hotbed of waistcoats and ludicrous hats.

But there's another side to him.

He's obsessed with becoming, I mean, this is your Malta thing again, Tommy.

He's like you.

He's obsessed with becoming the grand master of the Knights of St.

John.

So when Britain did capture Malta in September 1800 and kept Malta for themselves, Tsar Paul I said, what?

You know, what's this?

You can't have Malta.

And switch his sides.

So you see, i'm right malta is key you see i think it's sad that we had to fight the danes and we had to crush we had to teach the danes a lesson and this would not have happened if uh if we hadn't taken malta anyway basically paul switches sides he opens talks with bonaparte and bonaparte by this point is first consul isn't he so he's he's overthrown the directory he's clearly basically the dictator now so In December 1800, Paul signed a deal with the other Baltic powers.

That's Denmark, Sweden, and Prussia.

And they set up a league of armed armed neutrality.

They will break the blockade of the Royal Navy and they will trade with the French.

Now, clearly, this is a massive threat to Britain's war effort.

First of all, it would mean that Russia controls the Baltic, but also it would give the French enough timber, enough hemp, enough iron to restock their navy, build loads of new ships.

win back control of the seas potentially.

And of course, if they did that, it's curtains for Britain and game over in the war.

So to quote Andrew Lambert, great historian if britain accepted she would abandon her great power status and accept french hegemony over europe these issues were fundamental to britain's very survival so by december 1800 to the point at which nelson is going off to william beckford's slightly sordid party

you know george ii is telling the house of commons our honor and independence our maritime interests our security all depend on not letting this happen.

And this is upsetting for him, isn't it?

Because he's got kind of, you know, he's related to the Danish royal family.

He loves the Danes.

So Denmark, since 1784, has been run not by its king, because he's mad, but by his son, Crown Prince Frederick.

And Crown Prince Frederick is George III's nephew.

And George likes him.

He likes the Danes.

Everybody likes the Danes.

So Nelson,

he sees them as basically the best thing any foreigner can be, the brothers of Englishmen.

Exactly.

High praise.

That was the highest praise.

So they try to negotiate, but while that's happening, the Admiralty says, look, we're going to have to send a fleet into the Baltic to show that we mean business.

And your orders are capture or destroy the Danish fleet first.

Because obviously, if we're sailing up the Baltic, Denmark comes first, then you go past Sweden, and then finally you get to Russia.

And, you know, the orders are very clear.

The Secretary of War, Henry Dundas, writes, we must show the Royal Navy is, and I quote, a match for the whole naval force of the world combined.

We have to rule the waves because we're so inconsequential on land that, you know, that's the only way we'll stay in this war.

Now, this is made for Nelson, isn't it?

I mean, this has got his name all over it.

And he has been itching to get to sea.

The weird thing is, he begged to be sent back to England, begged and begged, made a nuisance of himself to Admiral Lord Keith.

Then he got back to England and said, I can't wait to get back to sea again.

Because, of course,

he's adrift on land, isn't he?

He's not at ease and he's got this terrible love triangle.

Well, I think also going and having a crack at the Danes,

it's simpler than having to arse around with Balta and, you know, Queens and all that.

It's much more complicated.

But I think the fact that Nelson is not appointed to the command, he's only given a role as deputy, does reflect the fact that back in London, his reputation has been tarnished.

I think otherwise he would have been given command of it.

I think it has.

Whether he would be capable actually of wielding sole command is an interesting question because he's, I mean, not for the first or the last time, he's in a bit of a terrible state, isn't he?

He's had an attack of malarial fever.

I always think when Nelson, so much of this physical stuff is psychosomatic to some degree.

You know, he went to see his old patron, Sir John Jervis, who's now the Earl of St.

Vincent.

And Jervis was really shocked by Nelson's appearance.

Poor man, he is devoured with vanity, weakness, and folly.

Well, that's what you want from your

the patron and father figure that you most most admire in the Navy.

From there, Nelson travels down to the dockyard at Plymouth, and there he has news at the end of January, beginning of February, that changes his life.

Because probably on the 29th of January, we can't be sure, Emma has finally given birth to a daughter.

Do they acknowledge it?

They don't.

Well, they can't.

How can you?

Do they,

are they so subtle that they give no hint as to whose daughter it might have been?

They call her Horatia.

Horatia, yeah.

And he sends Emma all these coded letters.

They call themselves Mr.

and Mrs.

Thompson.

And I mean, this is the best thing.

Nelson wrote to her and he said, I think, you know, it would be really nice if you, when you do the birth certificates, the name of the parents should be Johem and Maratha Etnorb.

Etnorb Bronte.

This is a quote.

If you read the surname backwards and take the letters of the other names, it gives the names of Horatio and Emma Bronte.

This is him showing off about his dukedom.

And that's classic Nelson.

It's the sort of he thinks he's being really subtle, but he obviously is just, it's laughable, but he's also boasting.

Yeah, he wants to draw attention to it.

Yeah.

So for the time being, this little girl is given to a woman called Mrs.

Gibson.

And Mrs.

Gibson basically acts as her guardian, doesn't she?

And obviously, this massively intensifies the bond between Nelson and Emma because Fanny hadn't been able to give him a child.

And Nelson loves children.

So he'd be very besotted with Horatia.

Completely.

And actually, I think it's the fact that he's had the child and he can't see her contributes to his misery.

Because in these, these are some of the lowest weeks of his life.

He's stuck in this new ship, the St.

George, in Tor Bay.

The weather at the beginning of 1801 is absolutely terrible.

It's kind of howling gales, driving rain, there's snowstorms and stuff.

He's in this cabin on his own.

He's really low.

The newspapers are full of kind of gossip about him.

There are cartoons that basically show Emma drinking gin.

Massively pregnant.

So there's a famous one of Emma as Dido, the queen of Carthage, who gets abandoned by Aeneas, who sails off.

And it's grotesquely unfair.

And, of course, is

very much drawing attention to the fact that she's pregnant.

And so everybody knows what's going on.

She's very large in these cartoons.

And Sir William Hamilton often pops up in them, doesn't he?

Looking very beaky and weedy in the background.

Wizen.

Yeah.

Very pervy.

Now, the other thing about Nelson that is actually, I do find this both sad and comical, is he's absolutely tormented by jealousy.

So a terrible development.

A few days after Horatia's birth, Emma writes to him and says, I'm going to have dinner with the Prince of Wales, the future George IV.

And Nelson, this is the worst news he's ever heard.

Because the Prince Regent's a massive lech, isn't he?

Yeah,

he really is a terrible man, the Prince Regent.

And Nelson writes back, he says, I know his aim is to have you for a mistress.

The thought so agitates me that I cannot write.

I'm in tears.

I cannot bear it.

And there is so much like this, isn't there?

He just goes on and on and on like this.

This podcast could go on for hours.

They're comical, actually.

Do not let him touch you nor sit next to you.

If he comes, get up.

God, strike him blind if he looks at you.

And then this is so Nelsonian.

They're then lurched from this into mad self-pity.

Oh, God, that I was dead.

Oh, God, why do I live?

But the brilliant thing is that he's having to do the same with Emma because Emma's massively jealous of him.

So I think he goes to Portsmouth and he's had to swear to Emma that he will spend no time with other women.

And of course he finds that he does.

And so he writes back and confesses.

So he describes one woman as dressed old you lamb fashion, so mutton dressed as lamb.

Another looks like a cookmaid.

Another likes a drop.

Another is 55, deaf and pitted with smallpox.

Oh, such gallantry.

Yeah, exactly.

And kind of mutual jealousy, again, seems to be kind of part of the rocket fuel of the relationship.

Yeah, I think so.

I think so.

This is sort of a possessiveness and a paranoia

combined.

Now, meanwhile, what's happened to Fanny?

Well, Fanny has not given up hope entirely.

That's the sad thing.

So she's heard from her son, Josiah.

Listeners may remember, saving Nelson's life and the attack on Tenerife when he lost his arm.

Anyway, she's heard from Josiah that Nelson's eye infection has come back.

And Fanny writes and she says, I'd like to come and I would I'll be your affectionate nurse and look after you and Nelson replies you mean you said Nelson behaves quite cruelly I think this is very cruel actually from Nelson he replies to her with an extraordinarily savage letter at the end of February he says I'm going to pay you an allowance of £400 a quarter

And that is it and I'm going to cut you off from this point onwards.

I only wish people would never mention my name to you.

I want neither nursing nor attention.

Had you come here, I should not have gone on shore, nor would you have come afloat.

You know, even if you'd come, I wouldn't even see you.

I don't want to think about you anymore.

I just want you out of my life.

So you talked about Nelson being cruel.

Emma also, by this point, is behaving abominably to Fanny, kind of turning Nelson's family against her, calling her names, kind of...

gossiping about her behind her back.

And I think both of them

have kind of been driven mad by their mutual passion, but also by the social pressure that it has put both of them under.

And I think this is the kind of the lowest point in their mutual story.

They behave so badly to her.

I completely agree with you, Tom.

This is, up to this point, Emma Hamilton, deep down, I'm going to confess, and I hope the listeners will not judge me for this, I find her quite annoying.

But this is the one point where I think she's genuinely vicious.

Fanny is a beaten woman.

Well, so Nelson, Nelson has this awful phrase.

It is very easy to find a stick if you are inclined to beat your dog.

Yeah, I mean, that's hard to defend.

That's very hard to defend, I think.

Now, I think in Nelson's case, I'm not saying this makes him better than Emma, by the way, but I think in Nelson's case, this is clearly driven, do you not think, by guilt?

He hates feeling bad about himself.

You know, he's been brought up by a vicar in a vicarage.

He's been told how to behave.

And he knows he's letting his father and his moral code down.

There's a slight sense of viciousness and anger to the way he treats Fanny because he feels that she has driven him to behave badly and he doesn't like it.

But what's interesting is he doesn't blame Emma for this.

I mean, he could easily have done that, but actually it seems to have forced them into an even greater kind of codependency, although it does not in any way inhibit his capacity to feel jealous, as we will see.

Yeah, exactly.

And now I think one actually, one other aspect actually, and we could get bogged down in this.

So one thing that is worth people remembering is Emma and Nelson can move on from this they can still have the relationship and the sad thing for Fanny is she can't ever move on and she never ever does because an abandoned wife can't take on a new partner so she's effectively condemned to live as a kind of widow as I think John Sugden says an object of pity and innuendo for the remainder of her days and that is that is a really sad story I mean I suppose I'd say the one the one advantage she has over Emma is that you know we talked about Nelson making a financial settlement on her.

She will get his pension in due course when he dies.

You know, she's the one who will receive his prize money and so forth.

And this, as we will see for Emma, is going to be a catastrophe because she does lack.

I mean, Emma gets Nelson, but she doesn't get the financial stability that Nelson gives to Fanny.

And that's quite a Jane Austen perspective on things.

Yeah, it is.

All right.

That's the end of that.

A very sad story.

Let's get back to the action.

The 5th of March, after Nelson has written his final sort of letter of dismissal to Fanny, he goes off to Yarmouth, which is on the Norfolk coast on the east of England.

And there, Admiral Hyde Parker's fleet is waiting.

Nelson cannot wait to get into action, to leave all this emotional drama behind.

But in a sort of weird mirror image of what's been going on.

Admiral Parker has an interesting love life of his own.

He is 61 years old.

He's a very kind of cautious, pedantic, meticulous admiral.

But he's just married a new bride, and her age is variously given at 24, remember he's 61, or by some sources as 18.

There's a bit of a gap.

Now, Admiral Hyde Parker loves, he's delighted.

He's having a tremendous time, and he's in no hurry to go sailing off to the Baltic when he's got this teenage bride.

So while

Nelson is chafing, Admiral Hyde Parker is organising balls and parties and all this kind of thing.

And so they don't set off for another week.

But Dominic, the thing is that even when they do set off,

and you'd think that Nelson's focus now would be all about the campaign to come, he's still obsessing about Emma.

And he's still obsessing about the Prince of Wales and kind of writing letters to her all the time.

And I always think when I read about this campaign, and you read all the letters that he's sending to Emma, it's unbelievable that he has the focus and capacity to achieve what he achieves on this campaign.

I mean, it's astonishing.

Copenhagen is an amazing story, which we'll come to.

The incredible thing is that basically the build-up to it, he's writing a letter saying, Sir William Hamilton's pimping you out.

What are you doing?

How are you associating with a set of whores, boards, and unprincipled liars, all of this kind of thing?

He writes to her about his dreams, doesn't he?

He says, there's a dream in which I hit you over the head with a stick and then threw a tub of boiling hot water over you.

Because of the prince.

Yeah, that's a a strange letter to get from your lover.

I think Emma would roll with it.

You reckon.

Well, she clearly does.

Well, it's the kind of, you know, the kind of the drama of it all, the melodrama.

Now, meanwhile, as they sail northeast through the North Sea, the pace of events is quickening.

On the 14th of March, the Admiralty sends them their final instructions.

We want you to force the strait between Denmark and Sweden, annihilate the Danish fleet.

and the dockyards at Copenhagen.

And if this isn't enough to intimidate the other Baltic powers, we're wanting to head on towards the Russian naval base at Kronstadt.

And hurry, hurry, you know, time is of the essence.

So they sail on through this kind of driving rain and snowstorms.

And on the 19th of March, they reach the northern tip of Jutland, which is called the Skore.

And here, they hear news that Britain's negotiating team has been expelled from.

Denmark.

So there's no doubt now, it is war.

So Admiral Parker sends a message home.

He says, we will head around the tip of Jutland right away and I will put the orders into execution.

So round they go and three days later, by the 22nd of March, they are approaching the town of Helsingur, better known as Elsinore,

which is in the shadow of this great castle.

One of the best gift shops I've ever been to in a castle.

Yeah, it's a brilliant castle.

and a great gift shop.

And of course, this is famous in England as the setting for Shakespeare's play Hamlet.

And the salient thing about Hamlet, Dominic, is that he delays.

And is there anyone in this story who delays, much to the impatience of Nelson?

That's a very nice Shakespearean segue.

I applaud that.

I applaud that.

That's top quality podcasting.

Because right here, Admiral Parker stops.

He hesitates.

And the wind is with them.

So why is he stopped?

The answer is he's received terrifying new intelligence about the Danish defences.

Copenhagen is already going to be a very tough nut to crack.

The water is very shallow and to get in an attacking fleet to get into the harbour will have to go around this great shoal or sandbank called the Middle Ground.

But Parker hears that the harbour entrance is guarded by these huge citadel batteries.

There's two enormous forts that are built on wooden piles above the sea.

They've got 100 guns each.

And the Danes have lined the inner channel because they know the British are coming with warships and hulks and floating sort of gun platforms which means that basically as you sail into the harbour there's a wall of guns pointing right at you.

I mean to sail into that would be madness.

It would effectively be suicide.

What lunatic would conceive of doing that?

Exactly.

Who indeed?

Parker thinks no

just stop.

And Nelson can't believe it.

And for two days he smolders in his cabin aboard the St.

George, his ship.

And he's still writing letters to Emma.

Yeah, exactly.

He's thinking about the Prince of Wales and thinking about throwing boiling water over people's heads and stuff.

And then he writes Parker this extraordinary letter.

He says, don't worry about the defences.

You know, time is of the essence.

It's now or never.

We have to strike at the Danes.

Not a moment should be lost.

This is a quote in attacking the enemy.

They will every day and every hour be stronger.

And then he says to Parker, The honour of England is in your hands.

On your decision depends whether our country shall be degraded in the eyes of Europe or whether she shall rear her head higher than ever.

Never did our country depend so much on the success of any fleet as on this.

And he sends the letter across to Parker's flagship and he waits and waits for the reply.

And finally it comes.

And Parker says, very well, we will attack.

But you, Horatio Nelson, will lead that assault personally.

We're not going to stop now, are we?

We are, Tom.

That's the nature of podcasting.

Unbelievable.

Britain's survival is at stake.

The Danish guns are bristling.

Nelson's preparing to go into the strait.

Oh, such excitement.

And if you are a club member of The Restis History, then of course you can hear that episode right now, as well as the next four episodes in this series.

And if you are not a club member, but you would like to become one, then you can go to therestishistory.com and sign up there.

Unbelievable excitement.

The Battle of Copenhagen is ready to begin.

We will see you next time.

Goodbye.

Bye-bye.