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.