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

276 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON

her spell about him, and he was too guileless in his nature, and too unsuspecting, to be aware of his danger until it was too late. I am aware of your intention not to touch upon this delicate subject : I only allude to it, in order to assure you, from my personal knowledge, in a long and intimate acquaintance, that Lady Nelson's conduct was not only affectionate, wise, and prudent, but admirable, throughout her married life, and that she had not a single reproach to make herself. The affections of her Lord were alienated, not when they were together, but at a distance, and beyond the reach of her mild and feminine virtues. I say not this to cast unnecessary blame on one whose memory I delight to honour, but only in justice to that truly good and amiable woman, the residue of whose life was rendered so unhappy by circumstances over which she had no control. If mildness, forbearance, and indulgence to the weaknesses of human nature could have availed, her fate would have been very different. No reproach ever passed her lips; and when she parted from her Lord, on his hoisting his Flag again, it was without the most distant suspicion that he meant it to be final, and that in this life they were never to meet again. Excuse my troubling you with these observations, as I am desirous that you should know the worth of her who has so often been misrepresented, from the wish of many to cast the blame

anywhere, but on him who was so deservedly dear to the Nation. There never was a kinder heart than Lord Nelson's ; but he was a child in the hands of a very designing person, and few, perhaps, could have resisted the various artifices employed to enslave the mind of the Hero, when combined with great beauty, extraordinary talents, and the semblance of an enthusiastic attachment."

On Saturday the 8th of November Nelson reached London and met his wife, who was waiting for him at Nerot's Hotel in St. James's Street. No record of what took place at this meeting is in existence—neither the husband nor the wife would be likely to put their feelings on paper; but the meeting can hardly have been otherwise than constrained and painful. On the one side was reproachful distress, on the other a distracted heart and a burdened conscience. And yet Nelson displayed either extraordinary callousness or extraordinary simplicity—even those who most love and admire him will be puzzled to say which—for apparently he expected his wife to receive Lady Hamilton with open arms. It is true that Lady Nelson did not know the lengths to which his passion for Emma had gone, but he knew, and he must have been wandering in a fog of moral blindness when he conceived it possible that the two women could meet and accept each other.

At first an attempt was made to draw a veil of decency, convention, or hypocrisy—any word may be chosen — over a sufficiently intolerable state of things. Lady Nelson had written to Yarmouth before the Nelson party set out for London, inviting the Hamiltons to stay with herself and her husband at Round Wood, their country home. When Emma reached London she wrote to Lady Nelson, shortly after her arrival—

"I would have done myself the honour of calling on you and Lord Nelson this day, but I am not well nor in spirits. . . . Permit me in the morning to have the pleasure of seeing you, and hoping, my dear Lady Nelson, the continuance of your friendship, which will be in Sir William and myself for ever lasting to you and your family."

But words were a frail bridge to throw across such a gap as yawned between the two women. Lady Nelson and Lady Hamilton met a fe 1 times, dined together, went to the play. It is sai< that in the box of a theatre Lady Nelson was overcome by seeing her husband's public devotion to Emma that she fainted; while another form of the story is that Emma was the one who fainted, and that Lady Nelson going to her aid discovered the secret which gave her sick fears their fullest justification. Be that as it may, the situation was impossible, the explosion inevitable.

At first Nelson endeavoured to mould things to his will, to believe that somehow the relationship might be adjusted. But it was beyond even his powers—London was not Naples, or even Dresden ; the Mediterranean glamour no longer hid the ugly outlines of wrong-doing. He felt the difference in the two atmospheres acutely, and shortly after his return said bitterly, "This place of London but ill-suits my disposition." It was a miserable time for them all; in their different ways they all three suffered, and Emma once more proved the truth of the old saying, that it is the wrong-doer who never can forgive the wronged, for in all her later references to Lady Nelson there is more than a touch of malice. Emma had not a small or feline nature, but she frequently displays these characteristics towards the woman she had ousted from her place at Nelson's side. The general disapproval and censure which Nelson's infatuation for Lady Hamilton aroused in London society acted ill upon the admiral; it aroused his opposition and defiance, he was not to be wrested from his unhappy love by sneers or cold looks, whether from Court or commons. Lady Nelson, in his distempered eyes, began to appear