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

that your anxious mind will be relieved by receiving all that you hold sacred and valuable." But however Lady Nelson's anxious mind may have doubted and feared, she had refrained from reproaches and written patiently and kindly to her wandering husband. In one of her last letters to him, before he left Palermo, she said—

" I can with safety put my hand on my heart and say it has been my study to please and make you happy, and I still flatter myself we shall meet before very long. I feel most sensibly all your kindnesses to my dear son, and I hope he will add much to our comfort. Our good father has been in good spirits ever since we heard from you; indeed, my spirits were quite worn out, the time had been so long. I thank God for the preservation of my dear husband, and your recent success off Malta. The taking of the GMreux seems to give great spirits to all. God bless you, my dear husband, and grant us a happy meeting."

That is a simple and rather touching letter; not the letter of a selfish, cold-hearted woman, or one who had ceased to care. She could not

throw herself into the passionate raptures over the taking of the G6ndreux that would have been natural to Emma Hamilton. She had not a passionate nature; but, such as she was, Nelson had met and won and married her. It is a noticeable fact that even at the time of his engagement, when he might naturally be expected to see everything through the glamour of love and youth, he never lavished on Fanny Nisbet the extravagant passion he, as a much older man, spent on a much older woman. There was a calmness about his declarations of affection for his wife that, in view of later events, is very significant. The first letter he wrote her after their engagement is typical: " My greatest wish," he said, " is to be united to you ; and the foundation of all conjugal happiness, real love and esteem r is, I trust, what you believe I possess in the strongest degree towards you." He is contented, but certainly not rapturous, and he harps unduly on " esteem " as the only foundation for a happy marriage. Esteem was as powerless as chaff before the wind when he knew the meaning of a consuming passion. Shortly before the wedding he wrote to her :—

" His Royal Highness often tells me, he believes I am married ; for he never saw a lover so easy, or say so little of the object he has a regard for. When I tell him I certainly am not, he says, * Then he is sure I must have a

274 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON

great esteem for you, and that it is not what is (vulgarly), I do not much like the use of that word, called love.' He is right: my love is founded on esteem, the only foundation that can make the passion last."

It is not recorded how his Frances liked this letter: she was of a calm and unexcitable temperament ; but, even so, most women would wish a little more ardour in a lover. Nelson himself had ardour and passion in plenty when he met the woman who could stir him to the heart. But Frances Nisbet never roused in him that perturbation of spirit, that gladness and idealizing glamour which go with love—the word he did " not much like " in 1787 ! When he praised her, it was without a lover's extravagance, as when he wrote to his brother : " The dear object you must like. Her sense, polite manners, and, to you I may say, beauty, you will much admire. She possesses sense far superior to half the people of our acquaintance."

Such were his feelings towards the woman he made his wife. That she stirred nothing deeper in him, that he whose heart was so warm and ardent, and whose sensibilities were so keen, was content to marry on a basis of " esteem," made up their double misfortune, their double tragedy. Frances Nelson could not say, as his wife, " I am as a spirit who has dwelt within his heart of hearts." Judging from her letters, she never fully

realized the nature of the man she had married; never realized the need of so making herself a part of his life that neither years, nor absence, nor the bewitchments of any other woman, could have drawn him away from her. But later Nelson himself realized this need; realized with fatal surety when he met Emma that " esteem" was not a sufficient basis for a lifelong fidelity.

It is not right to blame Lady Nelson, as has been too often done, for failing to hold Nelson's affections. According to the light that was given her she was a good and patient wife. As Sir Harris Nicolas says: "The exemplary character of that amiable woman is little known to the world; and it is only justice to her to state that her letters, which in their style are perfectly simple and unaffected, are filled with expressions of warm attachment to her husband, great anxiety for his safety, lively interest in his fame, and entire submission to his wishes." A lady who was the widow of one of Nelson's officers, and the personal friend of both Lord and Lady Nelson, wrote to Sir Harris Nicolas as follows:—

" I will only say on this sad subject, that Lord Nelson always bore testimony to the merits of Lady Nelson, and declared, in parting from her, that he had not one single complaint to make—that in temper, person, and in mind, she was everything he could wish. They had never had a quarrel; but the Syren had sung, and