HORATIO NELSON
A Bibliographical Survey
By MICHAEL LEWIS*
A complete list of all Nelson sources has never been compiled. It would not be possible, and the reason is interesting. Nelson always had in high degree the gift of making friends and admirers: and at the age of 39 he became a national hero. Already many were cherishing his letters, but thereafter every possessor of every scrap of paper in his handwriting preserved it jealously, just as we should all, no doubt, preserve any communication from Winston Churchill or the President of the United States that we were fortunate enough to possess. Further, everyone who met him, and who subsequently wrote memoirs or autobiographies, or even only private letters, would almost certainly leave some account of the meeting and some record of his doings and sayings. Lastly “Lives” of all sizes, of all degrees of merit, and of all dates since (and some even before) 1805, have been appearing with almost frightening regularity. The present author was once told—and by no less a person than an ex-president of the Publishers’ Association—that MS “Lives of Nelson” submitted to British publishers average, year in year out, one per month! He did not, however, give the average figure of rejections which, perhaps fortunately, is also very high.
All then that will be attempted here is to describe (A) the main manuscript sources, (B) the main contemporary (or near-contemporary) printed sources, and (C) the main non-contemporary literature—biographies and other relevant works.
A. Manuscript Sources
When Nelson was killed on October 21, 1805, his own papers were distributed in three principal localities. They thus fall for consideration into three large groups. But there must also be a fourth group, which may be labelled “The Rest.”
I. Earl Nelson Papers: With him on board his flagship, H.M.S. Victory, were papers which included the immediately official ones which one would expect to find there: in-letters from the Admiralty, etc., and his own letter-books with copies of his out-letters; also volumes of other papers ranging from semi-official to quite private—his private diary, for instance, covering the years 1803-5, and one volume of Nelson-Hamilton letters. All these went to the head of the family, his elder brother the Rev. William Nelson, later created First Earl. On the latter’s death without surviving male heirs, they passed to his daughter’s husband’s family, the Bridports, who ultimately sold most of them in 1895 to the British Museum, where, of course, they remain intact (Nelson Papers: Additional MSS. 34902−34992). The originals of the official correspondence (of which Nelson had kept copies in his letter-books) went naturally to their addresses, mainly the Admiralty, but also other government departments. These have never been reassembled, but exist, awkwardly for the student, under their respective headings at the Public Record Office, London, whither, after a scheduled number of years, all departmental papers find their way (c.f. below, B. X.).
II. Lady Nelson Papers: The Admiral’s wife, though separated from him since 1801, was still living, and in October, 1805, was in possession of many papers of all sorts, but especially his letters to her, and others dealing mostly with periods prior to the separation. She had no child by Nelson but by her first husband she had a son named Nisbett, and on her death this group of papers passed to that family. In 1914 they were sold to Lady Llangattock who, having founded a museum in Monmouth, near the Welsh border, deposited them there, where they still remain (ref. Llangattock MSS. Nelson Papers).
III. Lady Hamilton Papers: In 1805, when not at sea, Nelson was living with Emma, widow of Sir William Hamilton, in his own house at Merton, a few miles south of London. Here were many more papers, mainly but by no means exclusively private. Lady Hamilton, who was a wildly extravagant person living constantly beyond her means, disposed of this group during her own lifetime. It is not, therefore, easy to trace the various hands through which they passed. But some owners of the larger “splinters” may be named. An unknown number she gave away. Most of the rest she sold to a certain Alderman Joshua Smith, who helped her financially in her later years. Some of these passed next to the Third Earl Nelson, who had received them from Smith’s servant, one Kinsey, in settlement of a debt. These have recently been presented to the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Another original recipient was a certain Thomas Lovewell, a publisher from whose house a selection appeared later (see below, B. VI). When Lovewell went bankrupt, this lot was bought by John Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty. Later it found its way into the great Phillipps collection, and when this was recently dispersed, it, too, came to the National Maritime Museum. Last, in the 1840’s another batch of the “Merton” papers, probably bought from Smith’s widow, came into the hands of Dr. Thomas Pettigrew (see below, B. VIII). These, too, moved on, going via a Liverpool collector named Mayer to Alfred Morrison (see below, B. IX) in 1887. Many of them were next bought by the Nelson Wards, descendants of Nelson’s only surviving child, his illegitimate daughter Horatia; and by her grandson, the Rev. Hugh Nelson Ward, given to the National Maritime Museum. Thus the latter institution has been able, to a great extent, to reassemble the Merton group, scattered by Lady Hamilton’s extravagance.
IV. The Rest: Of this group little need—or indeed can—be said. Its existence merely proves the point already made—that no one ever dreamt of destroying a Nelson letter. It is probably very large, but irredeemably dispersed. To this day, and not infrequently, evidences of its existence come to light when small lots of holograph letters, often only one strong, appear in salesrooms and elsewhere. Some are originals of letters already printed in one or another of the collections now to be described, showing that they once belonged to one of the major groups, usually Lady Hamilton’s. But many have not hitherto been printed or known at all. Some are forgeries, but again some are not. So, for completeness’ sake, such a group is necessary.
B. Contemporary or Near-Contemporary Printed Sources
I. The Naval Chronicle, a monthly publication, bound up in six-monthly parts, was started in 1799. Vol. III (Jan-Jun, 1800) contains a Memoir of Nelson’s life to that date, particularly interesting because it is based upon his own Sketch of My Life, written expressly for the Naval Chronicle. Thereafter, especially in the first twenty numbers, there is a great deal of contemporary information and comment on his career.
II. James Harrison’s Life of the Right Honourable Horatio, Lord Viscount Nelson (2 vols., 1806). Its author has been much vilified right up to the present day, his critics accusing him of invention and of detracting Lady Nelson. Yet his credentials cannot possibly be overlooked, if only because he almost certainly had access to all the Merton papers before their dispersal and perhaps to some of the Victory ones as well. For the book was written probably at Merton and certainly under the eye of Lady Hamilton: and no one can deny that lady’s claim to firsthand knowledge—nor Earl Nelson’s, who in those early days was still a habitué of Merton and very likely responsible for many of the anecdotes in which the book is rich. The whole may be somewhat tinged with Lady Hamilton’s flamboyance; but then, one would hardly expect her strong points to be selectivity and taste, and this does not deprive the work of its peculiar value. The very latest tendency, in fact, is to vindicate Harrison and to attach considerable importance to his book as setting out the earlier and fresher recollections of Lady Hamilton, and, to some extent, of the First Earl, too.
III. John Charnock’s Biographical Memoir of Lord Viscount Nelson, (8 vols., 1806) is entirely independent of the above, being the work of a writer who specialized on naval matters, already well known as the author of Biographia Navalis and The History of Marine Architecture. He is factual and accurate on Nelson’s public services, though secondhand in that he had access to none of the MS. sources already discussed. Yet he prints a new source—Nelson’s letters to his old captain and friend, William Locker, Lieutenant Governor of Greenwich Hospital. The book, in fact, may be considered largely as presenting the view of this officer, to whom Nelson himself always admitted a great debt.
IV. John Stanier Clarke and John McArthur produced in 1809 their Life of Admiral Lord Nelson (2 vols., 4to: 2nd ed., 3 vols., 1840). This might be termed the first “official” Life, as it was compiled at the instance, and under the direction, of “the Family”—the First Earl and Nelson’s widow. They, and the authors, regarded it as “definitive” (which it certainly was not), and tended to look upon Harrison as the “pirate” who was trying to corner the market. It is based mainly on Earl Nelson’s papers and also uses Lady Nelson’s freely. It prints Nelson’s own MS. Sketch, too. It is therefore unquestionably authoritative. Unfortunately, however, many of the originals are overedited, cut, elided, and otherwise mutilated.
V. By far the most widely-read biography has always been Robert Southey’s Life of Horatio, Lord Nelson (8 vols., 1813). But this was because Southey was a writer of an altogether higher class than any of the others. The book instantly became, and has remained, a “classic.” It is not, however, based on originals, being in fact an enlargement of a review on the Lives already published. Its history is sometimes unsound, and its judgments frequently so. Its material comes chiefly from Clarke and McArthur and Harrison. The best critical modern edition is Geoffrey Callender’s (Dent, 1922).
VI. In 1814 the publisher Lovewell (see above, A. III) produced Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton (2 vols.). No editor was named, and his identity remains unknown. The book appeared just before Lovewell went bankrupt and may well constitute a despairing effort to save the firm by big and quick sales. Some are frankly love-letters, and all are so disconnected as to point to careless haste in selection or even to the possibility that they are the “discards” from a collection already used, or to be used. Whichever they are, the principal parties condemned them in toto, but for very different reasons. The Family said that they were mere scandal-mongering, washing of dirty linen in public, and forgeries at that: Lady Hamilton, now near her end and deep in debt, accused Harrison of being the editor and of having stolen them from her. Clearly both could not be right; but neither is particularly trustworthy as evidence. It has since been widely assumed that Harrison was the editor, but there is no proof beyond Lady Hamilton’s statement. On the other hand, the Family’s forgery accusation has been disproved. The originals, lost to sight for a while, were rediscovered in the Croker section of the Phillipps Papers when they reached the National Maritime Museum.
VII. By far the most comprehensive of all the printed collections is The Dispatches and Letters of Admiral Lord Nelson (7 volumes, 1844-6), the thorough and painstaking work of Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas. He had access to all the Earl Nelson Papers; also to many of those in the Lady Hamilton collection which Lovewell had once owned, and which Croker then owned: but not those in the volume discussed at VI above; nor the originals of Lady Nelson’s papers, though he could, and did, draw what he liked from the unreliable Clarke and McArthur copies of them.
VIII. In 1849 Dr. Thomas Pettigrew published Memoirs of the Life of Vice-Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson (2 vols., 8 vols.). He could draw upon all the printed works already named, but he had his own original contribution, having acquired (see above, A. III) many hitherto unpublished Merton papers. Like the anonymously-edited work attributed to Harrison, his book and especially his taste, were severely criticised in his day, perhaps because the “tone” of the times was now eminently Victorian and super-respectable.
IX. The last publication to include any considerable proportion of new material is The Nelson and Hamilton Papers, privately printed in 1893-4 by Alfred Morrison (see above, A. III). They were rich, containing many letters from Pettigrew’s collection which that author had quoted but not printed in full. Some of these, very private ones, were the first to prove beyond doubt that Lady Hamilton was the mother of Horatia. In addition, Morrison had acquired the hitherto unpublished papers of Sir William Hamilton, whose relations with Nelson, both public and private, had been very close for some years preceding his death in 1803.
X. There is nothing more on this scale. Yet small groups still continue to find their way into print. One recent example gives a hint that there are almost certainly more to come, even strictly official ones. Nelson’s Letters from the Leeward Islands and Other Original Documents (Golden Cockerel Press, 1953), edited by Geoffrey Rawson, covers part of Nelson’s stormy commission as Captain of the Boreas and throws interesting new light on the youthful officer. The editor found his material in a locality hitherto unsearched—the Colonial Office archives at the Public Record Office. (See above, A. I. The “addressee” in this case was the Home Secretary then in charge of the Colonies, that same Lord Sydney whose name is perpetuated in Sydney, New South Wales.)
XI. There remains an entirely different class of record—that of contemporaries, either eyewitnesses of the events they describe or collectors of eyewitnesses’ evidence. These people do not necessarily deal with Nelson alone, but they naturally have much to write about him. As this category includes practically all contemporary naval memoirs and histories, it cannot be set out here in full. The following are merely samples:
Eyewitness Evidence
a. John Drinkwater, Narrative of the Battle of St. Vincent, 1797, and fuller edition (1840).
b. Sir Edward Berry, Authoritative Narrative of. . . the glorious Battle of the Nile (1798).
c. Sir William Beatty (Surgeon of H.M.S. Victory), Narrative of the Death of Nelson (1807).
d. Public and Private Correspondence of Vice- Admiral Collingwood (2nd in command at Trafalgar) (1828).
Naval Histories by Contemporaries
e. William James, Naval History of Great Britain, 1793−1820 (The best and most detailed), (1822−4).
f. Capt. Edward Brenton, R.N., Naval History of Great Britain, 1783−1822 (1823).
g. Rear-Admiral Charles Ekins, Naval Battles, 1744−1814 (1824).
C. Modern Biographies and other Relevant Works
The author’s task here is invidious, for again selection is essential. It is easy enough to reject the bad Lives, of which there are a number which he has read, and doubtless more of which he has not even heard. But it is harder to choose fairly among the good ones. Inevitably some worthy books must be omitted.
I. Mainly for the Professional Side
a. Life of Nelson—The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain (Sampson Low, 1897), by the great American historian, Capt. A. T. Mahan. This, the first of the modern Lives, remains, in this author’s opinion, quite the best estimate of Nelson the professional sailor, though not so good of Nelson the Man.
b. Nelson the Sailor (Faber, 1949), by Capt. Russell Grenfell, has much the same strengths.
c. The Durable Monument (Longman, 1948), by Admiral Sir William James, catches most understandingly the professional side:-and for a good reason. Admiral James is the only Nelson biographer who himself held high executive command in war, and so can view, as it were, Nelson’s command-problems through his own eyes. Further, while he was C-in-C. Portsmouth during the late war, his official residence was hit by bombs: he moved into H.M.S. Victory herself, and in Nelson’s own cabin wrote this book.
d. Nelson and his Companions in Arms (Geo. Allen, 1905), by the eminent British historian Sir John Knox Laughton, correlates Nelson well with his famous “band of brothers.”
II. Mainly for the Personal Side
a. Nelson (Hodder & Stoughton, 1947), by Carola Oman, is unrivalled on the personal side, though, perhaps, inevitably, rather less authoritative as an appraisal of the Officer: yet, all round, a fine and scholarly work.
b. The Nelsons of Burnham Thorpe (Bodley Head, 1911), by M. Eyre Matcham. A family history, admirable for background; hardly attempting, however, to tackle the professional side.
c. Nelson’s Wife (Cassell, 1939), by E. M. Keate. A view from one particular angle.
d. Patriotic Lady (Lady Hamilton) (Bodley Head, 1935), by Marjorie Bowen. A view from another angle.
III. All-Round Interest
a. Nelson (Harrap, c. 1930), by Clennell Wilkinson. As well-balanced as any.
b. Nelson, (Bodley Head, 1929), by the well-known novelist, C. S. Forester. Very readable, if not particularly profound.
IV. Trafalgar
To catalogue non-contemporary historians’ views on Nelson would involve a complete bibliography of General Naval History, since every such work is bound to devote many pages to him. All to be attempted here is to name a few modern works on his last and greatest campaign, Trafalgar.
a. The Campaign of Trafalgar, (Longman, 1910), by Julian Corbett. Much the best British account of the naval events of 1803-5.
b. The Trafalgar Campaign, (Oxford Univ, Press, 1933), by Capitaine Edouard Desbrières (ed., C. Eastwick). 2 vols.—the first, the definitive French account; the second, documents. A most important book.
c. The Trafalgar Report, (H. M. Stationery Office, Blue-Book, Cd. 7120, 1913.) The exhaustive findings of a Royal Commission appointed to investigate the preliminaries of the battle.
d. Logs of the Great Sea Fights, (Navy Records Society, Vol. XVIII, 1900). Prints the logs of all British ships engaged.
e. Fighting Instructions, (Navy Records Society, Vol. 29, 1905). For an analysis of Nelson’s tactics.
f. The Battle of Trafalgar, (Mariner’s Mirror, Journal of the Society for Nautical Research, Vol. 36, No. 4), by Rear-Admiral A. H. Taylor. A brief but excellent summary of all the modern evidence.