Nelson's Lady Hamilton by Meynell, Esther (surface ebook reader txt) 📕

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LADY HAMILTON DANCING

FROM A OKAWINC BY LOCK

Nelson's meeting with his wife did not take place till November, 1800, and then it was far from "happy," but shadowed by reproaches, doubts, and many fears. It is a strange circumstance that he should have written to his wife in this strain of somewhat special tenderness just after he had met Lady Hamilton again.

At first Nelson was anxious not to be dependent on the generous hospitality of the Hamiltons; but his scruples were overruled, and he went to the British Embassy, where Emma cared for him with great tenderness and pride. He was much changed and worn since she had seen him five years before; at the Nile he had received a severe wound in the head, as well as losing his right eye and arm in earlier engagements. The strain of his agonizing chase after the French was still visibly upon him, and he was shaken with fever. All her essentially womanly heart went out to him in his weakness and his heroism, and she tended him with that genius for nursing and that motherly kindness which were native and natural to her. Nelson was grateful, he was all his life susceptible to the gentleness of women ; but through it all there was a certain fret and fever on his spirit, he did not like Naples, he did not like the Neapolitans. His first instincts were his true ones, and though later they were drowned under floods of flattery and his growing passion for Lady Hamilton, yet

the simple Englishman and sailor that he was at heart could at first find little satisfaction in frothy popularity and the unstable conduct of the Neapolitans. Only eight days after his arrival at Naples he was writing to his friend and Com-mander-in-Chief, St. Vincent : " I trust, my Lord, in a week we shall all be at sea. I am very unwell, and the miserable conduct of this Court is not likely to cool my irritable temper. It is a country of fiddlers and poets and scoundrels."

To his wife a day later he wrote that " between business and what is called pleasure, I am not my own master for five minutes. 1 ' But though he was already sick of Naples he began to feel much attachment to the Hamiltons ; to his wife he goes on, "The continued kind attention of Sir William and Lady Hamilton, must ever make you and I love them, and they are deserving the love and admiration of all the world. . . . My pride is being your husband, the son of my dear father, and in having Sir William and Lady Hamilton for my friends."

But it must be admitted that Lady Hamilton's "kind attentions" sometimes took an alarming form for a man weakened by wounds and fever. On Nelson's birthday, the 2Qth of September, she gave a great ball at the Palazzo Sessa, to which one thousand seven hundred and forty people came, preceded by a dinner for eighty,

and followed by a supper for eight hundred guests ! But Emma did wiser things for the Hero of the Nile than giving tremendous birthday parties, and when he left Naples to take up the blockade before Malta he was greatly restored in health. St. Vincent, who loved Nelson like his own son, wrote to her towards the end of October—

" Ten thousand most grateful thanks are due to your Ladyship, for restoring the health of our invaluable friend Nelson, on whose life the fate of the remaining governments in Europe, whose system has not been deranged by these devils, depends. Pray, do not let your fascinating Neapolitan dames approach too near him; for he is made of flesh and blood, and cannot resist their temptations. Lady St. Vincent will be transported with your attention to her. I have sent the fan mounts for Lady Nelson and her, by Sir James Saumarez. . . . Continue to love me ; and rest assured of the most unfeigned and affectionate regard of, my dear Lady Hamilton, your faithful and devoted Knight.

"ST. VINCENT "

Writing himself to Earl St. Vincent before he left Naples, Nelson says playfully—

" I am writing opposite Lady Hamilton, therefore you will not be surprised at the glorious

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162 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON

jumble of this letter. Were your Lordship in my place, I much doubt if you could write so well; our hearts and our hands must be all in a flutter: Naples is a dangerous place, and we must keep clear of it."

After Nelson's departure, Lady Hamilton wrote at some length to his wife. This letter is dated October 2, 1798, but internal evidence goes to prove that this must be a slip of the pen, for November or (as Sir Harris Nicolas gives it) more probably December. Nelson did not reach Naples till the 22nd of September, and did not leave till the middle of October, so that on the second of that month Emma could not refer to his departure, nor could she have " wrote a month back" of events which were not then a fortnight old, not to speak of the still more definite dating of the letter by the references to the war with France, and to Nelson's barony, which was not officially granted till the I7th of November. The letter runs as follows :—

" I hope your Ladyship received my former letter with an account of Lord Nelson's arrival, and his reception by their Sicilian Majesties; and allso the congratulations and compliments from this amiable Queen to your Ladyship which I was charged with and wrote