It was in the midst of this legal warfare, and of the preoccupations arising from it, that Nelson first met the lady who became his wife.  She was by birth a Miss Frances Woolward, her mother being a sister of the Mr. Herbert already mentioned as President of the Council in Nevis.  She was born in the first half of 1758,[12] and was therefore a few months older than Nelson.  In 1779 she had married Dr. Josiah Nisbet, of Nevis, and the next year was left a widow with one son, who bore his father’s full name.  After her husband’s death, being apparently portionless, she came to live with Herbert, who looked upon and treated her as his own child, although he also had an only daughter.  When Nelson first arrived at Nevis, in January, 1785,[13] she was absent, visiting friends in a neighboring island, so that they did not then meet,—­a circumstance somewhat fortunate for us, because it led to a description of him being sent to her in a letter from a lady of Herbert’s family, not improbably her cousin, Miss Herbert.  Nelson had then become a somewhat conspicuous factor in the contracted interests of the island society, owing to the stand he had already publicly assumed with reference to the contraband trade.  People were talking about him, although he had not as yet enforced the extreme measures which made him so unpopular.  “We have at last,” so ran the letter, “seen the little captain of the Boreas of whom so much has been said.  He came up just before dinner, much heated, and was very silent; but seemed, according to the old adage, to think the more.  He declined drinking any wine; but after dinner, when the president, as usual, gave the three following toasts, ‘the King,’ ’the Queen and Royal Family,’ and ‘Lord Hood,’ this strange man regularly filled his glass, and observed that those were always bumper toasts with him; which, having drank, he uniformly passed the bottle, and relapsed into his former taciturnity.  It was impossible, during this visit, for any of us to make out his real character; there was such a reserve and sternness in his behaviour, with occasional sallies, though very transient, of a superior mind.  Being placed by him, I endeavoured to rouse his attention by showing him all the civilities in my power; but I drew out little more than ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’  If you, Fanny, had been there, we think you would have made something of him, for you have been in the habit of attending to these odd sort of people.”

Mrs. Nisbet very quickly made something of him.  Little direct description has been transmitted to us concerning the looks or characteristics of the woman who now, at the time when marriage was possible to him, had the misfortune to appear in the line of succession of Nelson’s early fancies, and to attract the too easily aroused admiration and affection of a man whose attachment she had not the inborn power to bind.  That Nelson was naturally inconstant, beyond the volatility inherent in youth, is sufficiently disproved by the strength and endurance of his devotion