In September the Hamiltons came to Deal, off which the ship was lying, and remained for a fortnight, during which he was happy; but the reaction was all the more severe when they returned to town on the 20th.  “I came on board, but no Emma.  No, no, my heart will break.  I am in silent distraction....  My dearest wife, how can I bear our separation?  Good God, what a change!  I am so low that I cannot hold up my head.”  His depression was increased by the condition of Parker, the young commander, who had been wounded off Boulogne, and had since then hovered between life and death.  The thigh had been shattered too far up for amputation, and the only faint hope had been that the bones might reunite.  The day that the Hamiltons left, the great artery burst, and, after a brief deceitful rally, he died on the 27th of September.  Nelson, who was tenderly attached to him, followed him to the grave with emotion so deep as to be noticeable to the bystanders.  “Thank God,” he wrote that afternoon, “the dreadful scene is past.  I scarcely know how I got over it.  I could not suffer much more and be alive.”  “I own,” he had written to St. Vincent immediately after the repulse, “I shall never bring myself again to allow any attack to go forward, where I am not personally concerned; my mind suffers much more than if I had a leg shot off in this late business.”

The Admiralty refusing any allowances, much of the expense of Parker’s illness and of his funeral fell upon Nelson, who assumed all his debts.  It was but one instance among many of a liberality in money matters, which kept him constantly embarrassed.  To the surgeon who had attended the wounded, and to the captain of the “Medusa,” a much richer man than he was, but who had shown him kindness, he gave handsome remembrances of the favors which he was pleased to consider done to himself personally.  In a like spirit he wrote some months afterwards, concerning a proposed monument to Captain Ralph Willett Miller, who had fought under his flag.  “I much doubt if all the admirals and captains will subscribe to poor dear Miller’s monument; but I have told Davison, that whatever is wanted to make up the sum, I shall pay.  I thought of Lord St. Vincent and myself paying,L50 each; some other admirals may give something, and I thought about L12 each for the captains who had served with him in the actions off Cape St. Vincent and the Nile.  The spirit of liberality seems declining; but when I forget an old and dear friend, may I cease to be your affectionate Nelson and Bronte.”  Yet at this period he felt it advisable to sell the diamonds from the presents given him by foreign sovereigns.  He was during these weeks particularly pressed, because in treaty for a house which he bought at Merton in Surrey, and for which he had difficulty in raising funds.  In this his friend Davison helped him by a generous and unlimited offer of a loan.  “The Baltic expedition,” wrote Nelson in his letter of thanks, “cost me full L2,000.  Since I left London it has cost me, for Nelson cannot be like others, near L1,000 in six weeks.  If I am continued here, ruin to my finances must be the consequence.”