“Our time here is actively employed, and between business and what is called pleasure I am not my own master for five minutes.
“Fortunately a good deal of the business of the last few days has been transacted with her charming Ladyship, who came to me from the Queen to put me in possession of a mass of information, which Her Majesty did not consider it safe to entrust to paper. The spies of the French party are so many and so active, even in the Queen’s own apartments.
“I am easier in my mind now about Emma. I am convinced that when a man and a woman of an age to be mutually attractive to one another are fast friends and frequently in each other’s company, as those French would say, tête-à-tête, that it is opposed to the laws of human nature—I would almost go further, and say that it is opposed to the laws of gravitation—that they should not drift into close proximity with each other. And being in close proximity, it is as much a law of nature that they should from time to time lay sympathetic hands the one upon the other. Whether they also kiss is upon a different footing; for kissing has so long been employed as the formula to express a certain state of things, though I believe its particularisation to this to be purely arbitrary. But the formula having been accepted will deter many, especially women, from what would naturally seem a harmless and proper mode of expressing the completeness of their companionship and understanding of each other, though now it seems a dreadful fault and sort of crime. I am thankful that Lady Hamilton and I are not hidebound by any such superstitions. This is not to say that I have not had grave misgivings with my conscience, for it does not seem right that any man should enjoy such perfect happiness as I feel in the companionship of dear Lady H. It is the happiness that I mistrust, not the holding of friendly hands and meeting of friendly lips. And yet why should one mistrust happiness? The patriarch Jacob, at the end of his long life and reign as chief of his household, exclaimed, ‘Few and evil have been the days of my pilgrimage,’ and he had lived then a hundred and forty years. I have lived but forty, crowned at the end by the goodness of God with a victory than which no mortal man could pray for greater. But if the patriarch could describe his hundred and forty years in which he had founded a prosperous family and, as God promised him, a great nation, may I not rather apply these words to my forty years, spent, three parts of them, on the sea, which I cannot, in spite of so long a time, face without constant sickness? I have fought in a hundred pitched battles, been wounded—I know not how often—and lost an eye and an arm in the service of my country. I have spent months together out at sea, in a battered ship, badly provisioned. Have I not earned whatever happiness Providence suffers to be put in my way?
“But there is Lady Nelson. She is a good wife: would she not be glad that I should have the kindness—I put the plain truth to myself—the caressingness of a good woman, to coax back for me that coy and uncertain goddess of health? Of course she would. Why do I not write to her, then? Because, not being in the full possession of the facts, she might misunderstand, and I might raise the very suspicions which I should be writing to allay.
“Beautiful Emma! how diffident and girlish she was when she came to me to-day, dreading lest she should be disturbing me, dreading lest she should be intruding, dreading lest she was trespassing on my friendship! And the woman, who came to me with a frank kiss, brought with her the secrets of a nation, which she set forth better than Acton would have done, or her husband the Ambassador.
“I have now, I think, before me the whole history leading up to the present situation in the Neapolitan kingdom. I have the attitude and treacherous designs of the French, the policy of the Emperor, the state of the kingdom. I think the presence of these French at Castellana in the Roman state—thirteen thousand of them, better troops, I should judge, than any the Queen can put in the field—a most serious menace, not only for their power in the field, which she ought to be able to balance if she gets a good general: there is one, I hear, to come from Austria—Neapolitan commanders cannot be relied on. But the principal danger lies not so much in their power in the field as in the danger of their pernicious ideas, spreading among the disaffected in the Neapolitan kingdom with a knowledge of there being such a strong basis to rally on.
“It seems that their Majesties can put into the field an army of thirty or forty thousand fine troops, who will follow their leaders anywhere, and not only out of the battle-field, as they would certainly have to, if led by their own commanders. With these one might dispose of the French thirteen thousand in the Roman state, especially if one could land a few thousand men at Leghorn to cut them off from their base, and get the Emperor to march his armies. But this is exactly what the Emperor is determined not to do unless we force him, because he says that we must wait for the French attack. Now this is what I never have done in any of my principal actions. It has ever been my custom to seek the enemy and deliver my attack at the earliest possible moment, and I have found this answer above expectation with the French, who always credit the attacker with having the superior force.
“I should like to write to the Queen or the Ambassador, but am restrained by the fact that they have not asked me formally to give any opinion, and it would be like pushing myself into the command of their forces. But there is no corresponding reason why I should not place a summary of my views in the hands of Lady H., to be by her communicated to the Ambassador and Her Majesty. I shall write to her as follows:—
“‘Naples, Oct. 3rd, 1798.
“‘My dear Madam,—
“‘The anxiety which you and Sir William Hamilton have always had for the happiness of their Sicilian Majesties, was also planted in me five years past, and I can truly say, that on every occasion which has offered (which have been numerous) I have never failed to manifest my sincere regard for the felicity of these kingdoms. Under this attachment, I cannot be an indifferent spectator to what has (been) and is passing in the Two Sicilies, nor to the misery (without being a politician), which I cannot but see plainly is ready to fall on those kingdoms, now so loyal, by the worst of all policy—that of procrastination. Since my arrival in these seas in June last, I have seen in the Sicilians the most loyal people to their Sovereign, with the utmost detestation of the French and their principles. Since my arrival at Naples I have found all ranks, from the very highest to the lowest, eager for war with the French, who, all know, are preparing an army of robbers to plunder these kingdoms and destroy the Monarchy. I have seen the Minister of the insolent French pass over in silence the manifest breach of the third article of the treaty between his Sicilian Majesty and the French Republic. Ought not this extraordinary conduct to be seriously noticed? Has not the uniform conduct of the French been to lull governments into a false security, and then to destroy them? As I have before stated, is it not known to every person that Naples is the next marked object for plunder? With this knowledge, and that his Sicilian Majesty has an army ready (I am told) to march into a country anxious to receive them, with the advantage of carrying the war from, instead of waiting for it at home, I am all astonished that the army has not marched a month ago.
“‘I trust that the arrival of General Mack will induce the Government not to lose any more of the favourable time which Providence has put in their hands; for if they do, and wait for an attack in this country, instead of carrying the war out of it, it requires no gift of prophecy to pronounce that these kingdoms will be ruined and the monarchy destroyed. But should, unfortunately, this miserable ruinous system of procrastination be persisted in, I would recommend that all your property and persons are ready to embark at a very short notice. It will be my duty to look and provide for your safety, and with it (I am sorry to think it will be necessary) that of the amiable Queen of these kingdoms and her family. I have read with admiration her dignified and incomparable letters of September 1796. May the councils of these kingdoms ever be guided by such sentiments of dignity, honour, and justice; and may the words of the great William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, be instilled into the ministry of this country—“The boldest measures are the safest”—is the sincere wish of your Ladyship’s, etc.,
“‘Horatio Nelson.
“‘P.S.—Your Ladyship will, I beg, receive this letter as a preparative for Sir William Hamilton, to whom I am writing, with all respect, the firm and unalterable opinion of a British Admiral, anxious to approve himself a faithful servant to his Sovereign by doing everything in his power for the happiness and security of their Sicilian Majesties and their kingdoms.’
“I have just made a copy of the letter to Lady H., sealed it, and sent it to her by Will’s hands.”