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

and curse them who curse her, and Heaven bless them who bless her ! Dear innocent! she can have injured no one."

And if his child Horatia meant all this to Nelson, Emma, the mother, meant more. There

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was not an anniversary or an episode that did not remind his exiled heart of the one woman in whom his devotion centred. On his last birthday but one he wrote to her—

" This day, my dearest Emma, which gave me birth, I consider as more fortunate than common days; as by my coming into this world, it has brought me so intimately acquainted with you, who my soul holds most dear.I well know that you will keep it, and have my dear Horati; to drink my health.Forty-six years of toil an< trouble!How few more, the common lot mankind leads us to expect; and, therefore, it is almost time to think of spending the few 1; years in peace and quietness."

At home Emma celebrated the hero's birthday and the anniversaries of his victories with champagne and songs and all the gaiety, which she loved to the end of her days. To sit in solitude and remember the absent was not her way. To her, lights, plaudits, many faces were a necessity; the world was too much with her all her life, and the " still small voice " was drowned as completely in the crash of her falling fortunes as in the thunder and applause of her most brilliant days. She would laugh with the world so long as all went well, and when the world turned against her and deserted her she would still fight—with a certain violent courage. Neither love, nor grief, nor success, nor the bitter edge

LADY HAMILTON

BY ANGELICA KAUFFMAN (Ry kind permission of J. T. Herbert Raily, Ksq.)

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of poverty and debt and disgrace changed the essential Emma.

At this time, even while Nelson was living, her extravagance and lavish methods were plunging her more and more deeply into debt. Sir William Hamilton had failed to get the pension he expected from the Government, and his widow was still urging and protesting her rights and her needs. When she could not get what she wanted she adopted a somewhat thin attitude of noble magnanimity. To the Honourable George Rose, Nelson's friend, she wrote, in 1804—

" Lord Nelson has the greatest reliance on your friendship for him, which makes me take the liberty of now writing to you. I hope you will call on me when you come to town, and I promise you not to bore you with my own claims; for if those that have power will not do me justice, I must be quiet; and, in revenge to them, I can say,—if ever I am a minister's wife again, with the power I had then, why I will again do the same for my country as I did before; and I did more than any ambassador ever did, though their pockets were filled with secret-service money, and poor Sir William and myself aever got even a pat on the back. But, indeed, the cold-hearted Grenville was in then. I know if I could tell my story to Mr. Pitt he would do me justice ; but I never am to be so happy as to

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be in company with that great man :—I call him the Nelson of Ministers. But I will not tire you with my sad story."

Emma had a real appreciation of greatness, and she always admired Pitt; but the Minister died so soon after Nelson that no guess can be made as to whether he would have done anything to satisfy her claims and to honour Nelson's las-request to his country.

Nelson himself while living had no though of making such a request. He still believec Emma capable of economy; he foresaw (o thought he did) a frugal and happy future—"w< shall not want with prudence."In one letter h< declares, " I have often said, and with hones pride, what I have is my own; it never cost th j widow a tear, or the nation a farthing.I go ? what I have with my pure blood, from the enemie of my Country.Our house, my own Emma, i . built upon a solid foundation ; and will last to us.

Yet that was written within a month or tw . of the opening of the year of Trafalgar, the yes which was to see Nelson's death and the endiri of all his dreams of domestic happiness. Th, long waiting and watching in the Gulf of Lyon the long separation from home and all that horr meant to him, wore heavily upon his spirit.Tb call to action, as always, found him ready ; bi: it was so long in coming." This is an odd war he said once in disgust, " not a battle ! "But ci

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[jthe i Qth of January, 1805, the weary watching bff Toulon was ended. Two of Nelson's look-fDut frigates came in sight in a heavy gale, bringing the news that the French fleet had at last put T.o sea. And so the final act in the great sea-jurama began: the fate-fraught months moved J: ;teadily onwards to Trafalgar.

The situation, as it stood in the opening nonths of this momentous year, was a com-)licated and threatening one for England. Upon he French side of the Channel was encamped Napoleon's mighty army