Losing Nelson Read Online Free PDF

left Monty and me quite comfortably off. And I considered the money well spent. After such torments of indecision about engaging her, I did not want to lose her services now. Wewould continue together, or so I thought. With her help I would extricate Horatio with honour from the languors and horrors of Naples, I would accompany him through the final years to his splendid death and sumptuous funeral. My book would be the best account of Horatio ever to appear in print, a profound study of the man and a lasting tribute to the hero.
    This evening, however, I could not begin. I made no move to get my papers from the drawer in the desk where I kept them. The restlessness that had been possessing me, the sense of displacement, of tracks obliterated and time somehow running out of control, kept me moving about the room. I found myself speaking in an unaccustomed way to Miss Lily, more freely and directly than I had ever done before. More personally too—talking about Horatio was like talking about myself.
    I talked about the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, which I had just been enacting, and its aftermath and in particular about the exchange of letters between Horatio and his wife, Fanny, after the news of the victory had reached her. “Fame had come to him at last,” I said. “At the age of thirty-eight he was a national hero, the whole country was ringing with his praises. Difficult to imagine now, but people were really afraid of French invasion. There was intense rejoicing when the news came, but Fanny didn’t find much to say. His father wrote to him, full of pride—he was wintering in Bath when he heard the news, he had to go back to his lodgings to hide his tears.”
    Quite unexpectedly, at this mention of the old man, my voice broke a little and I felt a faint prickling behind the eyes. I have always been easily touched to tears and I have always been ashamed of it—it goes counter to my upbringing and the precepts of my father—but the assault always comes before the defences can be assembled. Was he ever seen to weep? Horatio, yes, on occasion; my father, naturally, never.
    I had turned away from Miss Lily’s gaze and now fell silent for some moments, trying to think of instances. I hoped she had noticed nothing. It was weakness on my part, yes, but I had found it moving, that pride in his son, those private tears.
    “Why was he wintering in Bath?” Miss Lily said.
    “His Norfolk parsonage would have been freezing in winter. Anyway, the main point is that everyone was singing Horatio’s praises, everyone but her. All she could do was express her own fear and anxiety. That was not the note to strike with a man like him.”
    “You call him by his first name.”
    “Yes, yes, I do. An old habit.”
    Miss Lily permitted herself a smile. She has a wide mouth, rather pale, sharp at the edges, with a general tendency to curve upwards. “It seems funny,” she said, “when you think that he is long gone.”
    “Gone?” I said. “Horatio Nelson is not gone—what an idea. He lives in the memory and gratitude of the whole nation.”
    “Well, I am British enough,” Miss Lily said, this being the first of many cryptic remarks she was to make during our various conversations. I was still not sure what she intended by it when she spoke again. “But if her fear was for him, for her husband?”
    “What use was her fear to him?” I was beginning now to regret having opened my mind to Miss Lily; it was obvious that she understood nothing about the nature of heroism. “He told her what he expected of her in a letter after the battle,” I said.
    “What he expected of her?”
    “Yes,” I said, and I quoted from the letter—much of Horatio’s correspondence I know by heart:
All do me the justice I feel I deserve. You will receive pleasure from the share I had in making it a most brilliant day, the most so of any that I know of in the annals of England
.
    I allowed a short silence for this to sink in. Then I said,