Mr William Canton has written an exquisite poem[76] which well expresses the mingled feelings of elation and grief with which the nation received the great news. He imagines a “glittering autumn morning” in Chester, the Cathedral bells clashing a jubilant peal for the victory. But while yet the air is filled with the glad tongues of the joy-bells—
Hark, in pauses of the revel—sole and slow—
Old St Werburgh swung a heavy note of woe!
Hark, between the jocund peals a single toll,
Stern and muffled, marked the passing of a soul!
English hearts were sad that day as sad could be;
English eyes so filled with tears they scarce could see;
And all the joy was dashed with grief in ancient Chester on the Dee!
After Nelson’s remains had been embalmed at Gibraltar they were conveyed in the Victory to Portsmouth, which was reached on the 2nd December 1805. In the early days of the New Year there was a lying-in-state in the beautiful Painted Hall of Greenwich Hospital, but comparatively few of the many thousands of people who wished to pay a last tribute of respect to the Admiral’s memory were able to do so. The coffin, made out of the mainmast of the famous l’Orient which blew up at the Nile, enclosed in an outer case, was then removed to the Admiralty, where it remained until the 9th January 1806, the day of the public funeral. The Prince of Wales, Dukes of the realm, prelates, statesmen, admirals, aristocrats and plebeians crowded into St Paul’s Cathedral, a fitting shrine for the dust of the greatest sailor of the country—
Whose flag has braved a thousand years
The battle and the breeze.
An Earldom was conferred upon the Rev. William Nelson, a large sum of money was voted by Parliament for the purchase of an estate to be named after Trafalgar, and certain monies were given to the dead Admiral’s two sisters. By such means the country sought to discharge its heavy debt to the glorious memory of Nelson. Nothing was done for Lady Hamilton, and although, at the time of Nelson’s death, her income amounted to about £2000 a year she died in very reduced circumstances at Calais in the year of Waterloo. Her daughter, and in all probability Nelson’s, was married on the 24th February 1822 at Burnham, Norfolk, to the Rev. Phillip Ward, M.A. She is described as both witty and fascinating, and her portrait by Sir William Charles Ross makes one believe that she was so.
More than a century has passed since the great battle was fought “in Trafalgar’s Bay,” but the memory of the little, one-eyed, one-armed man is still treasured by those who believe, as he believed, that the strength of Great Britain rests upon her command of the sea.
For he is England’s admiral,
Till setting of her sun.