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

Honner and Success. Nelson, I want Eloquence to tell you what I fell, to avow the sentiments of respect and adoration with which you have inspired me. Admiration and delight you must ever raise in all who behold you, looking on you only as the guardian of England. But how far short are those sensations to what I as a much loved friend feil! And I confess to you the predominant sentiments of my heart will ever be, till it ceases to beat, the most unfeigned anxiety for your happiness, and the sincerest and most disinterested determination to promote your felicity, even at the hasard of my life. Excuse this scrawl, my dearest friend, but next to talking with you is writing to you. . . . God bless you, my ever dear Nelson. Long may you live to be the admiration of Europe, the delight of your country, and the idol of your constant, attached Emma."

And while Emma thus sang the praises of her hero, Nelson himself was not behindhand in the generous contest. In one of his letters he assures her, " In short, in every point of view, from Ambassatrice to the duties of domestic life, I never saw your equal! That Elegance of manners, accomplishments, and, above all, your goodness of heart, is unparalleled/ 1 He had told her, a year or two earlier, during Sir William Hamilton's lifetime, and alluding to the fact that Queen Charlotte never would receive her, " You

TO THE LAST BATTLE 333

<now that I would not, in Sir William's case, lave gone to Court without my wife, and such wife, never to be matched. It is true you grace a Court better as a Queen than a /stor."

Thus she shone for him until the end. It is he only happy thing about the story. Dis-llusion would have broken his heart.

In the spring of 1804, while Nelson was at ea, his second child, again a girl, was born. The :hild only lived a short time—she came and lisappeared again, a wandering baby ghost, caving not even a birth or death certificate Behind her.

Perhaps it was the loss of this child that made Nelson and Emma Hamilton feel it impossible to leave Horatia any longer in other hands. She must come under their own roof at Merton —the only difficulty was that she could not be openly acknowledged as their own daughter. A fresh fiction had to replace the " Thompson" one, to account for her presence. The " tangled web " of deceit had enmeshed even the feet of Nelson, and he wrote to Lady Hamilton, on the 13th of August, 1804, a letter, which was evidently intended for the public eye :—

" I am now going to state a thing to you and to request your kind assistance, which, from my dear Emma's goodness of heart, I am sure of her acquiescence in. Before we left Italy I told you

3{>4 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON

of the extraordinary circumstance of a child being left to my care and protection. On your first coming to England I presented you the child, dear Horatia. You became, to my comfort, attached to it, so did Sir William, thinking her the finest child he had ever seen. She is become of that age when it is necessary to remove her from a mere nurse and to think of educating her. . . . I am now anxious for the child's being placed under your protecting wing."

This was for the world to see; but on an enclosure was written for Emma alone, " My beloved, how I feel for your situation and that of our dear Horatia, our dear child,"

Once the little Horatia was established at Merton, Nelson at sea was full of the most anxious care and thought for her well-being. " Everything you tell me about my dear Horatia charms me," he writes to Lady Hamilton. " I think I see her, hear her, and admire her." He wishes he could be at Merton to assist in making the alterations that were being carried out. He speaks of the stream and the pond and their danger for the child, "Only take care that my darling does not fall in, and get drowned. I begged you to get the little netting along the edge, and, particularly, on the bridges." In another letter he writes, " I would not have Horatia think of a dog. I shall not bring her one; and, I am sure, she is better without a pet

TO THE LAST BATTLE 335

of that sort. But she is like her mother, would get all the old dogs in the place about her." To Horatia herself he wrote, a few days later—

<{ MY DEAR HORATIA, —I send you twelve books of Spanish dresses, which you will let your guardian angel, Lady Hamilton, keep for you, when you are tired of looking at them. I am very glad to hear, that you are perfectly recovered ; and, that you are a very good child. I beg, my dear Horatia, that you will always continue so; which will be a great comfort to your most affectionate NELSON AND BRONTE"

In writing to a child so young, Nelson could not express anything of his passionate feeling for her; but in a letter of this time to his niece, Charlotte Nelson, there is a little outburst, strangely out of keeping with his professed mild interest in the " orphan." " I feel truly sensible," he tells her, " of your kind regard for that dear little orphan, Horatia. Although her parents are lost, yet she is not without a fortune: and, I shall cherish her to the last moment of my life;