609. Nelson: The Gathering Storm (Part 2)

29:07And I've always wondered, 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 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.

29:41It's actually almost impossible for Fanny and Horatio to find a moment to talk together, you know, just the two 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 oh i hate the way i keep being noticed exactly because he's a big star and because he's britain's great military assets 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.

30:24My 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.

31:05Oh, 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. 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.

31:40and 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 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 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?

32:17he's off to Wiltshire and the Salisbury area it's great to have Wiltshire and the 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 Fonthill where William Beckford who is going to be exposed as the Jeffrey Epstein 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, Fonthill Abbey.

32:57And 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 Hamilsons at this party.

33:36and I think there's this sort of sense that the end is coming. And then the denouement comes. 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.

34:17This 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 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 denmark and the Battle of Copenhagen.

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36:35Hello, 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 um the channel uh the atlantic the mediterranean what on earth is going on in the baltic that would um that would cause storm clouds to gather would you like some political context i'd like you to i'd like you to pull the camera back oh very good very good okay so the french Interevolutionary wars have broken out in 1792, and they've been going on forever.

37:07This latest phase, which began in 1798, is called the War of the Second Coalition. But despite all Nelson's heroics at the Nile, 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, for Britain. And they're even more important if you basically have no land allies because the sea is all you have.

37:46The 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.

38:34So 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 specialize 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 – stopping them wearing caftans and they had to wear trousers. This guy, he doesn't approve of modern liberal clothing.

39:17He, 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 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, Tom. He's like you.

39:51He'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. We had to teach the Danes a lesson. And this would not have happened 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 overthrown the directory. He's clearly basically the dictator now.

40:31So 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 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. Of course, if they did that, it's curtains for Britain and game over in the war.

41:07So 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, George III is telling the House of Commons, our honour 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.

41:57And 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. It was the highest praise. So they tried 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.

42:33And 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 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 and 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.

43:07Because, 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 Malta and, you know, Queen's 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 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?

43:44He's had an attack of malarial fever. I always think with 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 your the patron and father figure that you most admire in the navy from there nelson travels down to the dockyard at plymouth and there he has news um 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.

44:26Do they acknowledge it? They don't. Well, they can't. How can you? 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 it would be really nice When you do the birth certificate, 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.

45:05This 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.

45:45Because these are some of the lowest weeks of his life. he's stuck in this new ship the uh saint george in torbay 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 um so there's famous one of emma as dido uh the queen of carthage who gets abandoned by aeneas who sails off um and it's grotesquely unfair um and of course is is um very much drawing attention to the fact that 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.

46:40Yeah. 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 Horatio'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.

47:21And 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 then lurch 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.

47:50And of course he finds that he does. And so he writes back and confesses. So he describes one woman as dressed old ewe lamb fashion. So mutton dressed as lamb. Another looks like a cook maid. 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 in the attack on Tenerife when he lost his arm.

48:33Anyway, 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'll be your affectionate nurse and look after you. And Nelson replies, 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.

49:13Even 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 kind of the lowest point in their mutual story. They behave so badly to her. I completely agree with you, Tom.

49:52This is, up to this point, Emma Hamilton, deep down, I am 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 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?

50:24to some, 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 um inhibit his capacity to feel jealous as we all see yeah exactly and now i think one actually one other aspect actually i mean we 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 suggdance 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 and so forth um and this as we will see for Emma is going to be a catastrophe because she does lack.

51:54I 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.

52:37He 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, 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.

53:29And 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 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.

54:09Yeah, that's 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 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 straits 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 want you to head on towards the Russian naval base at Kronstadt.

54:43And hurry, hurry, 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 Score. 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're 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.

55:31Yeah, 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 has 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 harbor we'll have to go around this great shoal or sandbank called the middle ground but parker hears that the harbor entrance is guarded by this huge citadel batteries there's two enormous forts that are built on wooden piles above the sea they've got 100 guns each.

56:35And 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 Harward, 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, we'll just stop. And Nelson can't believe it. And for two days, he smoulders in his cabin aboard the St. George's 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.

57:14And 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 Attack in 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?

58:10we 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 rest of 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 the rest is history dot com and sign up there. Unbelievable excitement. The Battle of Copenhagen is ready to begin. We will see you next time. Goodbye. Bye bye.