Nelson's Lady Hamilton by Meynell, Esther (cheapest way to read ebooks .txt) 📗

all his life, which had inspired his final signal: " Thank God, I have done my duty."

So died Nelson. And Emma in England, writing to him on the 24th of October—all unknowing that he was already dead and immortal, gone far beyond her tears—had called him, in a touching and tender little phrase, her "all of good."

CHAPTER XV

AFTER TRAFALGAR

AFTER Trafalgar the sun had set, the glory had gone out of Emma Hamilton's life. Her uncertain position was no longer buttressed by the magic of Nelson's name, the might of his personality. But she had lost so much more than mere material advantage and protection: she had lost the heart that trusted and believed in her, that held her without flaw. In a truer and deeper sense than she herself half understood when she wrote it, Nelson was her "all of good." His faith in her had been the spur to her nobler nature, had enabled her to reach after qualities that were not innate. This aspect of her loss she probably never realized; when the blow fell, it was the bitter personal side that wounded her, the sense that Nelson himself would return no more. But she was an easy creature even in her grief, which, though passionate enough, had something of the facile quality of a child's outcries, and also something of a child's subcon-sciousness that she was making herself interesting and conspicuous. She took to her bed, and

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passed her days in reading over Nelson's letters, which she declared were " sacred, and shall remain so," and weeping over the past. But her prostration did not prevent her from seeing people, and she was anxious that her sufferings should be realized. Mrs. Cadogan, Emma's mother, wrote to George Rose, telling him that , Nelson's sister and her family " at this moment surround her ladyship's bed, bewailing their sad loss and miserable state." Emma's own condition, according to her affectionate mother, " is beyond description." The silent grief which eats inwards, so that—

" She nothing heeds And nothing needs— Only remembers,"

was totally alien to Emma's expansive nature.

She wrote herself to George Rose at the end of November from Clarges Street, " I write from my bed, where I have been ever since the fatal sixth of this month, and only rose to be removed from Merton here." She tells him, " My dear Sir, my heart is broken. Life to me now is not worth having; I lived but for him. His glory I gloried in ; it was my pride that he should go forth; and this fatal and last time he went I persuaded him to it. But I cannot go on;—my heart and head are gone; . . . My mind is not a common one; and having lived as a confidante and friend with such men as Sir William

Hamilton, and dearest, glorious Nelson, I feel myself superior to vain tattling woman."

In this same letter there are signs that she had already got a little across with the Reverend 'William Nelson, the admiral's place-hunting brother, who had been made an earl in honour of the name of the great dead seaman. She calls him " leaky " in regard to confidences. She says, !" The Earl you know ; but a man must have great ! courage to accept the honour of—calling himself by that name."

England conferred honours upon Nelson's brother ; but the woman whom he had loved, and left expressly to the care and the generosity of his country, was ignored. There is little need to go into all the familiar details. Pitt might have done something, but then Pitt died within a week or two of the day on which Nelson was laid to his last glorious rest under the dome of St. Paul's. Before the great State funeral Nelson's chaplain, Dr. Scott, kept devoted watch over the dead hero at Greenwich. From there he wrote to Lady Hamilton, speaking from the depth of his own grief to hers, " Every thought and word I have is about your dear Nelson. Here lies Bayard, but Bayard victorious. ... So help me God, I think he was a true knight and worthy the age of chivalry."

When Nelson was buried, and Pitt, "the Nelson of Ministers," was dead, Emma Hamilton

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was left to fight her case against the apathy and self-righteousness of officialdom as best she might. The case did not rest on her merits, but on Nelson's dying wish and pathetic confidence that his country would grant his last request. But that was something which the powers of the day entirely failed to realize. It is true that efforts were made on her behalf, particularly by the Honourable George Rose, who, as his biographer says, " considered that every one belonging to Lord Nelson was a legacy to himself;" though it is plain from the tone of his letters to her that Lady Hamilton did not please him personally. But he drew up petitions for her to present to successive Ministers, and took considerable trouble, all without avail. Her claims to a pension because of her services in the Mediterranean were not sufficiently authentic in the eyes of the Government, and, moreover, as Rose said to her in the midsummer of 1806, "the difficulty in affording you relief is increased to a great extent by the length of time that has elapsed since your claim arose, in which period there have been three administrations." He based some hope, however, on the codicil to Nelson's Will. But a year later he was writing to her—

"The reward recommended by Lord Nelson for yourself, on the score of public services, seems to be now quite desperate. The only hope