Mrs. Ward wrote a life of her mother, but a publisher was never found for the book, and the manuscript was lost or destroyed. Some extracts from it, however, were published in the London "Athenæum" in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-seven, and the picture of Lady Hamilton there presented was that of a woman of great natural endowments: a welling heart of love; great motherly qualities, high intellect and aspiration, caught in the web of unkind condition in her youth, but growing out of this and developing a character which made her the rightful mate of Nelson, the invincible, Nelson, the incorruptible, against whose loyalty and honesty not even his enemies ever said a word, save that he fell a victim to his love, his love for one woman.
Loveless, unloved and unlovable Tammas the Titan, from Ecclefechan, writing in spleen says: "Nelson's unhappy affair with a saucy jade of a wench has supplied the world more gabble than all his victories." And possibly the affair in question was quite as important for good as the battles won. The world might do without war, but I make the hazard it could not long survive if men and women ceased to love and mate. However, I may be wrong.
People whose souls are made of dawnstuff and starshine may make mistakes, but God will not judge them by these alone. But for the love of Lady Hamilton Nelson would probably never have lived to fight Trafalgar—one of the pivotal battles of the world.
Nelson saved England from the fell clutch of the Corsican, and Lady Hamilton saved Nelson from insanity and death. Nelson knew how to do three great things—how to fight, how to love, how to die.
SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF GREAT LOVERS," BEING VOLUME THIRTEEN OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD: EDITED AND ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS, AND PRODUCED BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR SHOPS, WHICH ARE IN EAST AURORA, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, MCMXXII.