Chapter 5 No.5

Nelson was little known to his countrymen before the St. Vincent battle. But after the victory of the Nile his name became immortal, and he could take any liberty he liked with our national conventionalisms. Even his love affairs were regarded as heroics. He refused occasionally to carry out instructions when he thought his own plans were better, and it was winked at; but had any of them miscarried, the memory of St. Vincent and the Nile would not have lived long.

When he arrived with the Hamiltons in London after his long absence and victorious record, the mob, as usual, took the horses from the carriage and dragged him along Cheapside amid tumultuous cheers. Whenever he appeared in public the same thing happened. At Court, things were different. His reception was offensively cold, and George III ran some risk when he affronted his most popular subject by turning his back on him. Whatever private indiscretions Nelson may have been guilty of, nothing could justify so ungrateful an act of ill-mannered snobbery. The King should have known how to distinguish between private weakness, however unconventional, and matchless public service. But for the fine genius and patriotism of this noble fellow, he might have lost his crown. The temper of a capricious public in an era of revolution should not be tested by freaks of royal self-righteousness, while its imagination is being stirred by the deeds of a national hero. His action might have brought the dignity of George's kingliness into the gutter of ridicule, which would have been a public misfortune.

The King's treatment of Nelson was worse than tactless; it was an impertinence. King Edward VII, whose wisdom and tact could always be trusted, might have disapproved, as strongly as did George III, Nelson's disregard of social conventions, but he would have received him on grounds of high public service, and have let his private faults, if he knew of them, pass unnoticed, instead of giving him an inarticulate snub. Still, a genius of naval distinction, or any other, has no right to claim exemption from a law that governs a large section of society, or to suppose that he may not be criticized or even ostracized if he defiantly offends the susceptibilities of our moral national life. And it is rather a big tax on one's patience for a man, because of his exalted position and distinguished deeds of valour and high services rendered to the State, to expect that he may be granted licence to parade his gallantries with women in boastful indifference to the moral law that governs the lives of a large section of the community. There are undoubtedly cases of ill-assorted unions, but it does not lie within our province to judge such cases. They may be victims of a hard fate far beyond the knowledge of the serene critics, whose habit of life is to sneak into the sacred affairs of others, while their own may be in need of vigilant enquiry and adjustment.

It would hardly be possible, with the facts before us, to say a word in mitigation of Nelson's ostentatious infatuation for Lady Hamilton, were it not that he can never be judged from the same standpoint as ordinary mortals. That is not to say that a man, mentally constituted as he was, should not be amenable to established social laws.

Nelson was a compound of peculiarities, like most men who are put into the world to do something great. He was amusingly vain, while his dainty vanity so obscured his judgment that he could not see through the most fulsome flattery, especially that of women. At the same time he was professionally keen, with a clear-seeing intellect, dashing, flawless courage, and a mind that quickly grasped the weak points of the enemy's position or formation. He fought the old form of sea warfare by methods that were exclusively his, and sent his opponents staggering into confusion. Once a plan of battle had been arranged, he never faltered in his judgment, and only manoeuvred as circumstances arose, but always with that unexpected rush and resource which carried with it certain victory.

Nelson's great talents and his victories caused society outwardly to overlook his connection with the notorious Lady Hamilton. But the gossips were always at work. On this point he does not seem to have realized that he was playing pranks with society, though there were abundant evidences of it. He was offended because at Dresden, on their way to England, the Electress refused to receive his mistress on account of her antecedents, and no Court was held during their stay. Of course Emma was given the cold shoulder in England by the Court and by society. Nelson told his friend Collingwood of his own treatment, and added that, either as a public or private man, he wished nothing undone which he had done. He told Collingwood of his cold reception by the King, but it seems quite obvious that he maintained his belief that his connection with Emma had no right to be questioned by His Majesty or any of his subjects, and he held this view to the last. He would have none of the moralists' cant lavished on him, and by his consistent attitude seemed to say, "Hands off my private life! If I did introduce Lady Hamilton to my wife at her apartments on my arrival in England after two and a half years' absence, when she was on the point of becoming the mother of Horatia, what business is that of yours? I will have none of your abstract morality. Get away, and clean up your own morals before you talk to me of mine." The above is what I think a man of Nelson's temperament might say to the people who wished to warn him against the dangerous course he was pursuing. Lady Nelson does not seem to have been a woman who could appeal to a man like Nelson. The fact is she may have been one of those unamiable, sexless females who was either coldly ignoring her husband or storing up in her heart any excuse for hurling at him the most bitter invective with which she might humiliate him. She does not appear to have been a vulgar shrieker, but she may have been a silent stabber, which is worse. In any case, Nelson seems to have made a bad choice, as by his actions he openly avowed that he preferred to live with the former mistress of Featherstonehaugh, Greville, and Hamilton, rather than with his lawful wife; and he, without a doubt, was the best judge as to which of them suited him best. The truth remains that Emma was attractive and talented, and although lowly born, she became the bosom companion of kings, queens, princesses, princes, and of many men and women of distinction.

Nelson must have been extraordinarily simple to imagine that his wife, knowing, as all the world knew, that Lady Hamilton was his mistress and a bold, unscrupulous rival, would receive her with rapturous friendliness. The amazing puzzle to most people, then and now, is why she received her at all, unless she wished to worm out of her the precise nature of the intimacy. That may have been her definite purpose in allowing the visits for two or three months; then one day she flew into a rage, which conjures up a vision of hooks and eyes bursting like crackers from her person, and after a theatrical display of temper she disappears like a whirling tempest from the presence of her faithless husband, never again to meet him. This manner of showing resentment to the gallant sailor's fondness for the wife of Sir William Hamilton was the last straw. There was nothing dignified in Lady Nelson's tornado farewell to her husband; rather, if the records may be relied on, it was accompanied by a flow of abuse which could only emanate from an enraged termagant.

Nelson now had a free hand. His wife was to have a generous allowance on condition that she left him alone freely to bestow his affections on the seductive Emma, whose story, retold by Mr. Harrison, shows Lady Nelson to have been an impossible woman to live with. She made home hell to him, so he said. And making liberal allowance for Emma's fibbing propensities, there are positive evidences that her story of Nelson's home life was crammed with pathetic truths of domestic misery. Nelson corroborates this by a letter to Emma almost immediately after his wife's ludicrous exit. The letter is the outpouring of an embittered soul that had been freed from purgatory and was entering into a new joy. It is a sickening effusion of unrestrained love-making that would put any personage of penny-novel fame to the blush. I may as well give the full dose. Here it is:-

Now, my own dear wife: for such you are in the sight of Heaven, I can give full scope to my feelings, for I dare say Oliver will faithfully deliver this letter. You know, my dearest Emma, that there is nothing in this world that I would not do for us to live together, and to have our dear little child with us. I firmly believe that this campaign will give us peace, and then we will set off for Bronte. In twelve hours we shall be across the water, and freed from all the nonsense of his friends, or rather pretended ones. Nothing but an event happening to him could prevent my going; and I am sure you will think so, for, unless all matters accord, it would bring a hundred of tongues and slanderous reports if I separated from her, which I would do with pleasure the moment we can be united. I want to see her no more; therefore we must manage till we can quit this country, or your uncle dies. I love you: I never did love any one else. I never had a dear pledge of love till you gave me one; and you, thank my God, never gave one to anybody else. I think before March is out, you will either see us back, or so victorious that we shall ensure a glorious issue to our toils. Think what my Emma will feel at seeing return safe, perhaps with a little more fame, her own dear Nelson. Never, if I can help it, will I dine out of my ship or go on shore, except duty calls me. Let Sir Hyde have any glory he can catch, I envy him not. You, my beloved Emma, and my country, are the two dearest objects of my fond heart. A heart susceptible and true. Only place confidence in me, and you shall never be disappointed. I burn all your dear letters, because it is right for your sake; and I wish you would burn all mine-they can do no good, and will do us both harm if any seizure of them; or the dropping even one of them would fill the mouths of the world sooner than we intend. My longing for you, both person and conversation, you may readily imagine (especially the person). No, my heart, person, and mind are in perfect union of love towards my own dear, beloved Emma, the real bosom friend of her, all hers, all Emma's.

NELSON AND BRONTE.

The Prince of Wales had dined with and paid suspicious attentions to Emma, and her fond lover, knowing this, advised her to warn him off. He probably had an instinct that his "beloved Emma," who is "the dearest object of his fond heart," was not quite strong enough to resist temptation. Especially would she be likely to fall under the fascinating influence of this little princely scamp. Nelson's mind turned to his wife, and he emphasized the desire that he might never see his aversion again. Nor did he.

Some of his contemporaries doubted the paternity of Horatia; Nelson never did, and it would be hard to find a more beautiful outpouring of love than that which he unfailingly gave to his little daughter. Every thought of his soul was divided between her and the audacious flirt of a mother whom Nelson, always lavish, calls "his love"; "his darling angel"; "his heaven-given wife"; "the dearest, only true wife of his own till death." The "till death" finish is quite sailorly!

No one will doubt his amazing faculty for love-making and love-writing, and it must always be a puzzle how he managed to mix it so successfully with war. His guilty love-making was an occasional embarrassment to him, and though he was the greatest naval tactician of his time, his domestic methods were hopelessly clumsy and transparent. For instance, in pouring out his grievances to his mistress he refers to himself by the name of Thompson, and to Lady Nelson as Aunt. Here are a few examples:-"Thompson desires me to say he has never wrote his Aunt since he sailed." "In twelve hours we shall be across the water, and freed from all the nonsense of his friends, or rather, pretended ones." "His" means Hamilton, and "friends" means the Prince of Wales, whom he looked upon as a rival for Emma's accommodating affections. Again, he says, "If I separated from her, which I would do with pleasure the moment we can be united." "Her" is Lady Nelson, but in discussing delicate matters of domestic policy he thinks it desirable to conceal that he would not weep were he to hear of Sir William's death, or be broken with grief to separate entirely from Lady Nelson, so that he might become "united to his heaven-given wife," "our darling angel, Emma."