“. . . You may judge of our weather at Stoke when I tell you that, with all their courage and contempt of rain, we were on horseback only once, and for less than one hour, and then were wet thro’. But if the body was not regaled, the mind was—at least by me—for I pitched my tent daily in the greenhouse, read Lord Collingwood and his life and letters thro’, and was delighted with him. You must excuse me if I am rather pompous and boring upon this subject. You see, my dear, that altho’ the poor man was the bravest and best and most amiable of men, this personal character of his is nothing compared with the part he acts in history for the four or five years intervening between Nelson’s death and his. At that time the Army was nothing, compared with what it became immediately after, and Collingwood alone by his sagacity and decision—his prudence and moderation—sustained the interests of England and eternally defeated the projects of France. He was, in truth, the prime and sole minister of England, acting upon the seas, corresponding himself with all surrounding States, and ordering and executing everything upon his own responsibility. . . . One has scarcely patience to think that, whilst our Government had the sense to see, and to tell him again and again, that his value to them and the country was such as could never be replaced, and to implore him actually to continue his services at the known and certain sacrifice of his life, still the villains were base enough to refuse every recommendation of his in favor of meritorious officers, as he justly observes, when parliamentary pretensions were to be put in competition.
“The agreeableness of the work is greatly added to by the constant proof it affords of the early, long and intimate union between Nelson and Collingwood. Even in the novel line, I have found nothing so calculated to lumpify one’s throat as when one of these great men of war, poor Nelson, in his dying moments desires his captain to give his love to Collingwood.
| 162 | THE CREEVEY PAPERS | [Ch. VI. |
“. . . A delightful drive to Arundel, the outside of which, grounds, &c., have been made perfect by our Barny* (who was not there); but the devil himself could make nothing of the interior. Anything so horrid and dark and frightful in all things I never beheld.”
