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

House of Lords the previous winter. " I, my Lords, have in different countries, seen much of the miseries of war/' said the great admiral; " I am, therefore, in my inmost soul, a man of peace. Yet I would not, for the sake of any peace, however fortunate, consent to sacrifice one jot of England's honour. Our honour is inseparably combined with our genuine interest. Hitherto there has been nothing greater known on the Continent than the faith, the untainted honour, the generous public sympathies, the high diplomatic influence, the commerce, the grandeur, the resistless power, the unconquerable valour of the British nation."

And to maintain these honours of his country, he left the English home which had grown so dear to him, and the woman who was more to him than anything on earth, and went to sea, hoisting his flag for the first time in the fatal and glorious Victory. He could not now fully practise what Codrington says he used to preach, "that every man became a bachelor after passing the Rock of Gibraltar"; for his heart was ever turning homewards to the England and the Emma, which in his thoughts had become

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inextricably one. But in act he was as instant as though he had no horizon but the sea-rim, and no hope in life save to destroy the French. " That dear domestic happiness," as Codrington said, " never abstracted his attention." For two years he never set foot outside his ship, thus triumphantly proclaiming to Lady Hamilton and to the world his entire devotion to the two objects on which his heart was set—the woman he loved and the French fleet. If he met either, he declared, he would embrace them so closely that no power on earth should part them. " I have not a thought except on you and the French fleet," he told Emma ; " all my thoughts, plans, and toils tend to those two objects. Don't laugh at my putting you and the French fleet together, but you cannot be separated."

But though these two different yet consuming passions were inseparable in his thoughts, the pursuit of the one severed him completely from the presence of the other. Emma Hamilton fretted and rebelled at the prolonged separation, though she had far more to distract her in her life on shore than had the lonely, harassed admiral at sea. But when she suggested coming out to him, Nelson was stern in refusal. The Victory was no place for her. " Imagine what a cruize off Toulon is; even in summer time we have a hard gale every week, and two days' heavy swell. It would kill you ; and myself to see you.

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Much less possible to have Charlotte, Horatia, etc., on board ship! And I, that have given orders to carry no women to sea in the Victory r , to be the first to break them ! I know, my own dear Emma, if she will let her reason have fair play, will say I am right; but she is like Horatia, very angry if she cannot have her own way." He appeals to the motives which were always so potent to him. " Your Nelson," he tells her, " is called upon, in the most honourable manner, to defend his country. Absence to us is equally painful: but, if I had either stayed at home, or neglected my duty abroad, would not my Emma have blushed for me ? She could never have heard any praises, and how the country looks up."

But though separated from her by stern duty and leagues of ocean, his thoughts were continually with her. Each little happening at Merton was of a vital interest to him, and he kept regretting that the isolation of his sea-life prevented him from sending the gifts his generous temper prompted. " I go nowhere to get anything pretty; therefore do not think me neglectful." Emma was somewhat over-fond of gifts, and probably she was little pleased with Nelson's fine and jealous care when he told her that Mr. Scott, his secretary, had received from Venice "two very handsome Venetian chains," which would have been presented to her had he not

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forbidden it. " I allow no one to make my own Emma presents, but her Nelson." Emma would certainly fail to appreciate this sentiment. But f all her life she lacked delicacy in accepting "avours, she herself gave in return good measure, pressed down and running over. " Your purse, ny dear Emma," Nelson told her on one occasion, will always be empty; your heart is generous Beyond your means." Beggars, children, and inimals always clustered round her, with the nstinctive recognition they have for the open-landed and open-hearted. And the beautiful, latural ardour which vivifies her early letters to jreville, and the excitable epistle she wrote Melson after the Nile, was still hers in maturer fears. On the first anniversary of the Battle of :he Baltic she wrote to the hero—

" Immortal and great Nelson, what shall I say :o you on this day ? My heart and feeling are to overpowered that I cannot give vent to my ull soul to tell you, as an Englishwoman gratefull :o her country's saviour, what I feel towards you. d as a much loved friend that has the happi-s of being beloved, esteemed, and admired by good and virtues Nelson, what must be my de, my glory, to say this day, have I the happi-of being with him, one of his select, and how tefull to God Almighty do I feel in having erved you through such glorious dangers that er man before got through them with such

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