Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/209

 curious letter, complaining of the constant racket of society in which he was forced to live, and specifically objecting to the large company invited daily to dinner. ‘I well know,’ he said, ‘the purity of Lord Nelson's friendship for Emma and me,’ and how very uncomfortable a separation would make his lordship, ‘our best friend;’ but he was determined to be sometimes his own master, and to pass his time according to his own inclination; and, above all, to have no more of the silly altercations which ‘embitter the present moments exceedingly.’ The letter appears to have been written towards the end of 1802 or early in 1803, and a few months later Hamilton settled the little differences once for all. He died on 6 April 1803, his wife smoothing his pillow on one side, Nelson holding his hand on the other.

The death of Hamilton does not seem to have made any external difference in Nelson's mode of living. Emma remained at Merton, the ostensible mistress of the house, as she had been all along; and though there can no longer be any doubt as to the nature of her relations with Nelson, they were at the time kept strictly secret. Nelson's brother, with his wife and daughter, Nelson's sisters and their families, and numerous friends of both sexes were frequent visitors, staying often for several days, and not one seems to have suspected anything improper, anomalous as the position was. Among others, Lord Minto wrote (18 April 1803): ‘Lady Hamilton talked very freely of her situation with Nelson, and of the construction the world may have put upon it; but protested that their attachment had been perfectly pure, which I declare I can believe, though I am sure it is of no consequence whether it is so or not. The shocking injury done to Lady Nelson is not made less or greater by anything that may or not have occurred between him and Lady Hamilton’ (Life and Letters, iii. 284).

On the imminence of war it was from the first understood that Nelson was to go to the Mediterranean, and on 16 May 1803 he was formally appointed. He hoisted his flag on board the Victory at Portsmouth on the 18th, and sailed on the 20th. It was arranged, however, that as it might be important to strengthen Cornwallis off Brest, Nelson should leave the Victory with him and go out in the Amphion frigate, the Victory following as soon as possible. After touching at Naples and other ports of Italy, he joined the fleet off Toulon on 8 July, and for nearly two years the principal object of his command was to keep such a watch on the French fleet as to insure an engagement if it should attempt to put to sea. And this he did with a force never superior, generally inferior, in numbers to that of the enemy, with ships foul and crazy even when they put to sea, and with very limited supplies of stores. Under such circumstances it was only by the closest attention to details that the blockade could be continued; but, though the necessity of watering compelled him from time to time to relax his grip and withdraw the fleet to Maddalena, he was still able to maintain an efficient watch by means of frigates, to obtain timely knowledge of the enemy's movements, and, above all, to keep the fleet in the most perfect health during the many months of monotonous work and exposure in the heat of summer and the chilling gales of winter.

His own health, too, seems to have been better at this time than it had been while afloat since the battle of the Nile. It may be that the effects of the severe wound then received had worn off during the prolonged rest at Merton; it is perhaps more probable that his mind was now no longer racked by conflicting passions—jealousy, love, and a consciousness of wrongdoing—all of which seem to have torn him during his former command in the Mediterranean and in the Baltic. He was now commander-in-chief; his love for Emma was approximating to the calm devotion of married life; he had persuaded himself that his wife, after wilfully separating from him, had no longer anything to reproach him with, and he lived in hopes that either a divorce or her death would set him free to marry Lady Hamilton. His domestic relations ceased to trouble him. He was, therefore, able to give, and did give, his whole attention to the grim work before him.

During the summer of 1804 he was occasionally cheered by the hope that the French fleet was on the point of coming out. The French admiral La Touche Treville had commanded at Boulogne at the time of his unsuccessful attack on the flat-bottomed boats, a circumstance which possibly made Nelson the more anxious to meet him at sea, or intensified his anger when he found that La Touche had written to Bonaparte an account of his chasing the English fleet, which fled out of sight. ‘I keep his letter,’ he wrote to his brother, ‘and, by God, if I take him he shall eat it;’ and in many other letters about the same time he gave strong expression to his wrath. La Touche, however, died on 18 Aug., and, after some little delay, was succeeded by Villeneuve, superseding Dumanoir, who commanded in the second post.

In the following January Bonaparte resolved to make a gigantic effort to gain command of the Channel by bringing into