Time disillusioned him; and he settled down into the firm belief that a woman was only a child—whimsical, selfish, idle, intent on gauds, jewels and chucks under the chin from specimens of the genus homo—any man—but to be tolerated and gently looked after for the good of the race. He took his wife to England and left her at his father's parsonage and sailed away for the Mediterranean to fight his country's battles.
Among other errands he had dispatches to Sir William Hamilton, British Envoy at the Court of Naples. Sir William had never met Nelson; but he was so impressed at his first meeting with the little man, that he told his wife afterwards that if she had no objection he was going to invite Captain Nelson to their home. Lady Hamilton had no objection, although a sea-captain was hardly in their class. "But," argued Sir William, "this captain is different; on talking to him and noting his sober, silent, earnest way, I concluded that the world would yet ring with the name of Nelson. He fights his enemy for laying his ship alongside and grappling him to the death."
So a room was set apart in the Hamilton household for Captain Nelson. The next day the captain wrote home to his wife that Lady Hamilton was young, amiable, witty and took an active part in the diplomatic business of the court. Nelson at this time was thirty-five years old; Lady Hamilton was three years younger.
Nelson remained only a few days in Naples, but long enough to impress himself upon the King and all the court as a man of extraordinary quality.
Sorrow and disappointment had made him a fatalist—he looked the part. Admiral Hood at this time said: "Nelson is the only absolutely invincible fighter in the navy. I only fear his recklessness, because he never counts the cost."
It was to be five years before Nelson met the Hamiltons again.
The man who writes the life of Lady Hamilton and tells the simple facts places his reputation for truth in jeopardy.
Emma Lyon was the daughter of a day-laborer. In her babyhood her home was Hawarden, "the luster of fame of which town is equally divided between a man and a woman," once said Disraeli, with a solemn sidelong glance at William Ewart Gladstone.
At Hawarden, Lyon the obscure, known to us for but one thing, died, and if his body was buried in the Hawarden churchyard, Destiny failed to mark the spot. The widow worked at menial tasks in the homes of the local gentry, and the child was fed with scraps that fell from the rich man's table—a condition that grew into a habit.