to be his own master and pass his time in his own way.[4] He continues:  “I am fully determined not to have any more silly altercations that too often arise between us, and embitter his present moments exceedingly.  If we cannot live comfortably together,” he continues, “a wise and well-concerted separation would be preferable.”  He says he knows and admires her talents and many excellent qualities, but he is not blind to her defects,[5] and confesses to having many himself, and pleads “for God’s sake to bear and forbear.”

Throughout this pathetic document we find evidences that his heart was torn with the consciousness of the mean advantage being taken of his friendship.  There is a droll, vacillating belief in the virtue of his wife and the purity of Nelson’s motives, but every sentence indicates that his instinct led him to believe that another had taken his place.  It may have been that he saw it dimly, and that he shrank from making any direct accusation, not wishing to break with the man with whom he had long been on close terms of friendship.  It is highly improbable that either his own or Emma’s past histories escaped his memory when he was penning his grievances.  Indeed, there are evidences gleaming through his memorandum that his reflections were harassed by the remembrance of his own conduct, which had plunged to epic depths of wrongdoing in other days.  These and other considerations would doubtless have a restraining effect on the action that might have been taken under different circumstances.  Sir William Hamilton must have pondered over the parentage of Horatia, who was born on the 29th January, 1801.  Is it possible that he knew that Nelson was her father, and believed in the purity of his friendship for Emma and himself?  I think everything goes to prove that he knew of his friend’s relations with his wife and condoned it.  Nelson, in his clumsy, transparent way, tried to conceal the origin of the child, so he proceeds to write a letter to Lady Hamilton, which I shall quote later on.  To say that Sir William Hamilton, a man of the world with vast experience of human deceptions and intrigues, could have been put off the scent, in view of all the circumstances, is too great a tax on credulity, but it is wholly characteristic of Nelson’s ideas of mystification.  But even if there were any further proof needed, Lady Hamilton has settled the matter by preserving the correspondence Nelson urged her to destroy.  This will be referred to later on.

Meanwhile, it is hardly thinkable that Nelson, who had such a high sense of honour in other affairs of life, and who had accepted the hospitality and been the honoured guest of Sir William Hamilton at Naples, should have made the occasion an opportunity of establishing illicit relations with his wife.  The whole matter must ever remain a blot on the great Admiral’s fame, even though his host appeared to, or really did, connive at it.  The price was too high to pay for both of them.