So, with this great fear at his heart, he sailed to fresh triumphs—the great victory of Copenhagen—and to what might very likely be death. He made a generous provision for Fanny and cut the bond between them, writing with cold precision:
“I have done all in my power for you, and if I died, you will find I have done the same. Therefore my only wish is to be left to myself and wishing you every happiness, believe that I am your affectionate Nelson and Bronte.”
She endorsed it:
“This is my Lord Nelson’s letter of dismissal which so astonished me that I immediately sent it to Mr. Maurice Nelson, who was sincerely attached to me, for his advice. He desired me not to take the least notice of it, as his brother seemed to have forgotten himself.”
Yet she still waited on in hope never to be fulfilled. To Emma he wrote passionately, in almost frenzied anxiety for her health, but in their secret code.
“Pray tell Mrs. Thomson her kind friend is very uneasy about her and prays most fervently for her safety, and he says he can only depend on your goodness. May the Heavens bless and protect my dearest friend and give her every comfort this world can afford is the sincerest prayer of your faithful and affectionate Nelson and Bronte.”
On the twenty-ninth of January his daughter Horatia was born, incredibly under the roof of Sir William in Piccadilly. With Mrs. Cadogan’s connivance all was kept secret, though it would be difficult to guess how far Sir William himself was blinded or preferred to be. Within a week the child was at nurse in a somewhat obscure London street and in another fortnight, Emma, “recovered from one of her old Neapolitan attacks,” was shining in society again—such society as accepted her.
As for Nelson; the family excitability combined with his own feelings drove him almost insane. “I believe,” he wrote to Emma, “that dear Mrs. Thomson’s friend will go mad with joy. He cries, prays, and performs all sorts of tricks, yet dare not show all or any of his feelings, but he has only me to consult with. He swears he will drink your health this day in a bumper, and damn me if I don’t join him. I cannot write, I am so agitated by this young man at my elbow. I believe he is foolish. He does nothing but rave about you and her. I own I participate in his joy and cannot write anything.”
Ah, what chance had Fanny against that new passion of fatherhood! None. If he could ever have forgotten Emma there was now this living bond between them, flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone. She must be christened Horatia. She must be provided for, loved, guarded. Nothing was too much for this treasure, and the greater treasure to whom he owed her. It is incredible—the passion of this man for such a woman. Not sensual passion only, though that had its share, but an idealization which almost makes one doubt between the woman as he saw her and the woman she really was. And yet—only the Power to whom the secrets of all hearts are known can say which is the right estimate, the lover’s or the world’s.
Not even the famous letters of his great antagonist—Napoleon’s to Josephine—can equal the outpourings of Nelson, held at sea by his equal devotion to England, but tortured by Emma’s beauty and the fear (which it is instructive to note) of her least infidelity.