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

were to go home, Nelson had made up his mind that he would go too. " I go with our dear friends Sir William and Lady Hamilton/' he wrote to Minto, " but whether by water or land depends on the will of Lord Keith." He hoped that he might be allowed to go home in his flagship, in which case he would have taken his " dear friends " with him. The Queen of Naples at this time decided for diplomatic as well as family reasons to visit Vienna, and she was to travel with Nelson and the Hamiltons. So, without referring to his commander-in-chief, Nelson withdrew the Foudroyant and Alexander from the blockade of Malta to convey himself, his royal

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guest, and the Hamiltons to Leghorn. Keith was naturally amazed by this act, which was not only injurious to the discipline but also to the actual needs of the navy. On the 24th of June he went himself to Leghorn, where he expected, as he wrote scornfully, "to be bored by Lord Nelson for permission to take the Queen to Palermo, and princes and princesses to all parts of the globe." Lady Minto heard some gossip about the Nelson party from Mr. Wyndham, British Minister to Tuscany, who had just arrived in Vienna.

" He left the Queen of Naples, Sir William and Lady Hamilton, and Nelson, at Leghorn," she wrote to her sister on the 6th of July. " The Queen has given up all thoughts of coming here. She asked Lord Keith in her own proper person for the Foudroyant to take her back. He refused positively giving her such a ship. The Queen wept, concluding that royal tears were irresistible ; but he remained unmoved, and would grant nothing but a frigate to convoy her own frigates to Trieste. He told her Lady Hamilton had had command of the fleet long enough. The Queen is very ill with a sort of convulsive fit, and Nelson is staying there to nurse her ; he does not intend going home till he has escorted her back to Palermo. His zeal for the public service seems entirely lost in his love and vanity, and they all sit and flatter each other all day long."

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The Queen finally decided to go on to Vienna instead of back to Palermo; but her hesitations kept the party hanging on for a month at Leghorn. The idea of going by sea was abandoned, owing to Keith's refusal of ships. So Nelson struck his flag, said farewell to the Foudroyant — whose Barge's crew wrote him a very touching little letter, saying, "It is with extreme grief that we find that you are about to leave us," and begging him to " pardon the rude style of seamen, who are but little acquainted with writing,"—and set out through Europe with the Queen of Naples and the Hamiltons. It was not a way of returning to his native land calculated to conciliate English public opinion, which was already somewhat disturbed over his behaviour. During the journey that assumed something of the nature of a triumphal progress, Emma conducted herself in a manner which left every one of breeding and good feeling gazing after her with raised hands and eyebrows. It was as though she would flaunt before the eyes of Europe the way in which she had led Nelson captive, and the admiral, who, as Minto said, was "in many points a really great man, in others a baby," lent himself passively to her extravagant exhibition of bad taste. At no time of her life does Emma appear so little attractive as during this journey homewards to the England she had not seen for fourteen years. It is impossible not to resent

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the way she trailed Nelson about, and there is something quite distressing in Lady Minto's picture of him when they all reached Vienna.

" I don't think him altered in the least," she said, and she had known him during his early operations in Corsica. " He has the same shock head and the same honest simple manners; but he is devoted to Emma, he thinks her quite an angel, and talks of her as such to her face and behind her back, and she leads him about like a keeper with a bear. She must sit by him at dinner to cut his meat, and he carries her pocket-handkerchief. He is a gig from ribands, orders and stars, but he is just the same with us as ever he was."

Nelson and the Hamiltons stopped a month at Vienna, and there Emma parted from the Queen she had really loved and served so well. Maria Carolina felt the parting sincerely, and in a farewell letter addressed her as "My dear Lady and tender friend," telling her, " I repeat what I have already said, that at all times and places, and under all circumstances, Emma, dear Emma, shall be my friend and sister, and this sentiment will remain unchanged. Receive my thanks once more for all you have done, and for the sincere friendship you have shown me."

From Vienna they went to Prague, Dresden, and Hamburg. At Dresden they met Mrs. St. George, afterwards Mrs. Trench, whose

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comments on the whole party, as written in her Journal, are so unflattering and—perhaps by reason of their sharpness—so well known. The day after they arrived, she wrote—

" Dined at Mr. Elliot's, with only the Nelson party. It is plain that Lord Nelson thinks of nothing but Lady Hamilton, who is totally occupied