When the Vanguard arrived at Naples, Nelson invited Lady Hamilton on board and she was no sooner on the deck than she made one dramatic plunge at him, and proceeded to faint on the poor shattered man's breast. Nelson, whose besetting weakness was love of approbation, became intoxicated with the lady's method of making love. Poor gallant fellow! He was, like many another, the victim of human weakness. He immediately believed that he and Emma had "found each other," and allowed himself to be flattered with refined delicacy into a liaison which became a fierce passion, and tested the loyalty of his closest friends to breaking-point. How infinitely pathetic is this piteous story from beginning to end!
Like most sailors, Nelson had a fervent, religious belief in the Eternal, and never went to battle without casting himself on the mercy of the Infinite Pity which alone can give solace. He was fearless and strong in the affairs of his profession, and it may be safely assumed that, even if it went no deeper, he had a mystic fear of God, and was lost to all other fear.
I think it was Carlyle who said, "God save us from the madness of popularity. It invariably injures those who get it." There never was a truer thing said, and it is sadly true of our great national hero. Not many months had passed before the dispenser of his praises had become his proprietor. It is doubtful whether Emma ever loved him, but that does not concern any one. What does concern us is the imperious domination she exercised over him. No flighty absurdities of fiction can equal the extravagance of his devotion to her, and his unchecked desire to let every one know it. He even informs Lady Nelson that Lady Hamilton is the very best woman in the world and an honour to her sex, and that he had a pride in having her as a friend. He writes to Lord St. Vincent that she is "an angel," and has honoured him in being his Ambassadress to the Queen and is worthy of his confidence. Again he writes, "Our dear Lady Hamilton, whom to see is to admire, but to know are to be added honour and respect; her head and heart surpass her beauty, which cannot be equalled by anything I have seen."
It is impossible to suppose that a man could fall so violently in love with this extraordinary creature and permit her to come so intimately into his life without injury to his judgment and to those keen mental qualities which were needed at that time in the service of his country. Such loss of control must surely have been followed by mental and intellectual deterioration. This lady of varied antecedents was the intermediary between the Court of Naples and himself, and it is now an authentic fact that it was on the advice of the Queen and Emma that Naples entered into a war, the result of which was the complete defeat of the Neapolitans; the Court and the Hamiltons had to fly to Palermo and Nelson again lived with the Minister and his wife. He again pours out the virtues and charms of Lady Hamilton, to whom he gives the credit of engineering the embarkation of the Royal Family and two and a half million sterling aboard the Vanguard. After giving St. Vincent another dose of Emma, he goes on to say, "It is my duty to tell your Lordship the obligations which the whole Royal Family, as well as myself, are under on this trying occasion to her Ladyship." Her Ladyship, still hankering after her old friend Greville, writes him, "My dear adorable queen and I weep together, and now that is our only comfort." It is no concern of ours, but it looks uncommonly as though Greville still held the field, and the opinion of many that Nelson would not have had much chance against her former lover is borne out by many facts.
Amongst the saddest stories that raged about the Hamiltons, their friends, and Nelson was the scandal of gambling for large stakes. Some are persistent in the assertion that the report was well founded, and others that it was not so bad as it was made out to be. Lady Hamilton asserted that the stories were all falsehoods invented by the Jacobinical party, but her Ladyship's veracity was never to be relied upon. Perhaps a foundation of truth and a large amount of exaggeration sums up the reports, so we must let it go at that. Troubridge seems to have been convinced that his Admiral was in the midst of a fast set, for he sends a most imploring remonstrance to him to get out of it and have no more incense puffed in his face. This was fine advice, but the victor of the Nile made no response.
IV
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.