The latter years of Lady Nelson’s life were passed partly in Paris, where she lived with her son and his family.  Her eldest grandchild, a girl, was eight or ten years old at the time of her death.  She remembers the great sweetness of her grandmother’s temper, and tells that she often saw her take from a casket a miniature of Nelson, look at it affectionately, kiss it, and then replace it gently; after which she would turn to her and say, “When you are older, little Fan, you too may know what it is to have a broken heart.”  This trifling incident, transpiring as it now does for the first time, after nearly seventy years, from the intimate privacies of family life, bears its mute evidence to the truth of the last two witnesses, that Lady Nelson neither reproached her husband, nor was towards him unforgiving.[20] Nelson’s early friend, the Duke of Clarence, who had given her away at the wedding, maintained his kindly relations with her to the end, and continued his interest to her descendants after his accession to the throne.

Thus abruptly and sadly ended an attachment which, if never ardent, had for many years run undisturbed its tender course, and apparently had satisfied Nelson’s heart, until the wave of a great passion swept him off his feet.  “I remember,” writes Miss Knight, “that, shortly after the Battle of the Nile, when my mother said to him that no doubt he considered the day of that victory as the happiest in his life, he answered, ‘No; the happiest was that on which I married Lady Nelson.’” On the 13th of January, 1801, Nelson took formal and final leave of her before hoisting his flag at Torbay.  “I call God to witness,” he then said, “there is nothing in you, or your conduct, that I wish otherwise.”  His alienation from her was shared by most of his family, except his father, who said to him frankly, that gratitude required he should spend part of his time with Lady Nelson.  Two years before, he had written of her:  “During the whole war [since 1793] I have been with Lady Nelson, a good woman, and attentive to an infirm old man,” and they had continued to live together.  The old man persuaded himself that there was nothing criminal in relations, the result of which, as regarded his son and daughter-in-law, he could not but deplore; but his letters to Lady Hamilton go little beyond the civility that was necessary to avoid giving offence to Nelson.  Nelson’s two married sisters, Mrs. Bolton and Mrs. Matcham, evidently shared their father’s belief.  They and their children maintained with Lady Hamilton a friendly and even affectionate correspondence, long after Trafalgar, and until the death of the parties put an end to it.