The party arrived at Vienna in the third week of August 1800. Nelson became the hero of the hour. He was entertained in the most sumptuous way. The composer Haydn played to him while the Admiral—played at cards! Nelson was surfeited by attentions for a month, before proceeding to Prague and Dresden. The beautiful and clever Mrs St George, who afterwards changed her name a second time and became Mrs Trench, and the mother of a celebrated Archbishop of Dublin, happened to be at the latter Court during the visit, and she confides to her Diary many interesting little happenings connected with Nelson and Lady Hamilton. The picture she paints of Sir William’s wife is by no means so prepossessing as others, but at a certain dinner she was vis-a-vis “with only the Nelson party,” which gives her a right to speak.
“It is plain,” she writes, “that Lord Nelson thinks of nothing but Lady Hamilton, who is totally occupied by the same object. She is bold, forward, coarse, assuming, and vain. Her figure is colossal, but, excepting her feet, which are hideous, well-shaped. Her bones are large, and she is exceedingly embonpoint. She resembles the bust of Ariadne; the shape of all her features is fine, as is the form of her head, and particularly her ears; her teeth are a little irregular, but tolerably white; her eyes light blue, with a brown spot in one, which, though a defect, takes nothing away from her beauty or expression. Her eyebrows and her hair are dark, and her complexion coarse. Her expression is strongly marked, variable, and interesting; her movements in common life ungraceful; her voice loud, yet not disagreeable. Lord Nelson is a little man, without any dignity, who, I suppose, must resemble what Suwarrow was in his youth, as he is like all the pictures I have seen of that General. Lady Hamilton takes possession of him, and he is a willing captive, the most submissive and devoted I have seen. Sir William is old, infirm, and all admiration of his wife, and never spoke to-day but to applaud her. Miss Cornelia Knight seems the decided flatterer of the two, and never opens her mouth but to show forth their praise; and Mrs Cadogan, Lady Hamilton’s mother, is—what one might expect. After dinner we had several songs in honour of Nelson, written by Miss Knight, and sung by Lady Hamilton. She puffs the incense full in his face, but he receives it with pleasure, and snuffs it up very cordially.”
In another passage Mrs Trench refers to Lady Hamilton’s representations of statues and paintings which Romney painted so delightfully. “She assumes their attitude, expression, and drapery with great facility, swiftness, and accuracy.” When she sang she was frequently out of tune, and her voice had “no sweetness.” Mrs Trench sums up the character of her subject as “bold, daring, vain even to folly, and stamped with the manners of her first situation[51] much more strongly than one would suppose, after having represented Majesty, and lived in good company fifteen years. Her ruling passions seem to me vanity, avarice, and love for the pleasures of the table. She showed a great avidity for presents, and has actually obtained some at Dresden by the common artifice of admiring and longing.”
Nelson landing at Yarmouth
Stephen Reid
It is not a pleasant picture, and is perhaps a little overdrawn, but even allowing a certain amount of latitude for the severity of a woman criticising a member of her sex with whom she has little in common, it must be confessed that contemporary opinion is very largely on the side of the young and beautiful widow who thus confided her opinion so emphatically in the pages of her private journal.
Hamburg was reached on the 21st of October. Here Nelson met Dumouriez, the veteran hero of the battle of Jemappes, and according to Miss Cornelia Knight, “the two distinguished men took a great fancy to one another.... Dumouriez at that time maintained himself by his writings, and Lord Nelson forced him to accept a hundred pounds, telling him he had used his sword too well to live only by his pen.” Ten days after the arrival of the party at Hamburg they embarked for England. When Nelson stepped on shore at Yarmouth on the 6th November 1800, the crowd which had assembled greeted him with all the enthusiasm of such gatherings when a great and popular man is in their midst. Some of the more boisterous spirits unharnessed the horses of the carriage awaiting the Admiral and his friends and drew them to their destination, a certain well-known hostelry in the town.
Thus England welcomed back the hero of the Nile and a pillar of the Sicilian Kingdom after an absence of nearly three years, every day of which had been lived to the full.