'What must be my sensations at the idea
of sleeping with you!
It sets me on fire, even the thoughts,
much more would be the reality . . .
Would to God I had dined with you tonight.
What a dessert we would have had.'

Lord Nelson, captured in stained glass at the village hall in Burnham Thorpe

Charles Roberts tells the story of Nelson's affair with his "wife in the eyes of God".

His titles and orders rang like a clarion call of trumpets - and he revelled in it. He was, after all, the greatest naval tactician of his age and the most victorious in battle.

That he put aside his wife and became obsessed with a woman of less-than-respectable background is also true. In those two aspects one sums up the general view of the remarkable man who was Horatio Nelson.

But there was much, much more to him than this - a human dimension, wry, generous, warm, passionate, earthy, whose private life could well be said to have hinged upon his overwhelming wish to be father of his own child.

In his 20s, commanding the frigate Boreas in the West Indian station, he put into Antigua -- and promptly fell madly in love with the wife of the Commissioner of that island.

For eight months he followed her about like a mooning boy, until she returned to England. Truly a love-sick boy, he sighed to his journal: "Her equal I never saw in any country or in any situation. I really am an April day, happy on her account, but truly grieved if I only consider myself... When she had left, e'en the trees drooped their heads. All is melancholy. The road is covered with thistles. Let them grow, I shall never pull one of them up".

'Nelson has married a complexion
with an absence of intellectual endowment'

In that state he was set fair for any agreeable woman who should come along. And she did, at Charlestown, on the island of Nevis, in the shape of Mrs Fanny Nisbet, a young widow with a five-year-old son named Josiah. She was niece of the President of the Council of Nevis, with whom Nelson - already by now marked out in the navy and of formidable personality - was staying.

One morning the President came downstairs to a considerable surprise: "Good God! If I did not find that great little man of whom everyone is so afraid, playing in the next room, under the dining table, with Mrs Nisbet's child".

Nelson fell in love swiftly. He proposed, and was accepted. He wrote home to his brother, the Revd. William: "Her sense, polite manners, and to you I may say, beauty, you will much admire... Her heart is equal to her head... Her mental accomplishments are superior to most persons of either sex". They were married on March 11, 1787. Nelson was 28. A fellow officer observed: "Captain Nelson has married a complexion combined with a remarkable absence of intellectual endowment".

He brought her back to England and, at length, to North Norfolk in springtime. But when winter came round again, Mrs Nelson's idyllic view of Burnham Thorpe parsonage - "set down in a landscape two thirds of which seems to be occupied by sky" - rapidly changed.

"Horatio and I shivered and shook. I heaped more and more woollen garments upon me and finally retired to bed for days together".

When spring came around again, Nelson took her out - on bird nesting expeditions, displaying a knowledge of natural history which astonished her. It was some time before Nelson was given a new command, and the time was spent sociably enough around the county. He could not avoid reflection on the fact that other members of his family at this time were producing children at a rate of knots.

The ambassador's wife and
the famous admiral

But Fanny, ailing, emotional and nervous, showed no signs of doing the same.

Nelson's first job in 1793, as commander of the Agamemnon, was to take despatches to Naples to the British Envoy, Sir William Hamilton. Thus he met Lady Hamilton and, though they were not to meet for another five years, they clearly did not forget each other. His letters home to Fanny during that period show his increasing irritation with her, and the inevitable widening of the gap between them.

On to 1798 and the Battle of the Nile, when Nelson smashed Bonaparte's fleet and stranded the French Army in Egypt - followed by a return visit to Naples where Lady Hamilton came out to his ship and, shocked by his appearance, fell sobbing into his... arm.

For by then he had but one, having lost the other the previous year at Teneriffe.

Soon Neapolitan society was amusing itself with tittle tattle about the brave admiral and the attentions he was paying to the ambassadress. She it was who nursed him through illness. She acted as his interpreter in diplomatic discussions (Emma, despite her beginnings, had made herself proficient in seven languages). She was by his side at every ball and party.

When the time came for him to return to Britain, he came overland through Europe with the Hamiltons, and by mail-packet on the final leg to Yarmouth, where he was greeted like a conquering hero. From Yarmouth to London, where a strained meeting took place between Baron Nelson, as he now was, and his lady.

In the days ahead, and in the full glare of public interest, the tensions between them grew. A minor scene at an aristocratic dinner party; and Lady Nelson fainting at the opera, she being taken home while he stayed to see the end of the performance, fuelled the gossip. When he returned home from the opera there was a row.

'My own dear wife, for such you are
in my eyes and in the face of heaven . . .'

The next morning came the final goodbye, for he left her, never to return. Soon afterwards he had other things on his mind - Emma Hamilton was pregnant with his child. He was at sea when Horatia was born, and he was wild with joy - save that he could not let this show, as the relationship must remain a secret.

When at last he could write a letter to Emma, in the confidence that it would not be intercepted, he opened his heart to her. And what an opening. Here was the Nelson the public never knew of: a passionate lover with a touch of basic Norfolk earthiness...

"Now, my own dear wife, for such you are in my eyes and in the face of heaven, I can give full scope to my feelings. I love, I never did love, anyone else. I never had a dear pledge of love until you gave me one... My longing for you, both person and conversation, you may readily imagine. What must be my sensations at the idea of sleeping with you! It sets me on fire, even the thoughts, much more would be the reality... Would to God I had dined with you tonight. What a dessert we would have had".

And more of the same -- only much earthier.

When his ship touched port, he drove through the night to London. He had only three days there, but amongst all his pressing business with the Admiralty he made time to spend with Emma and the baby he had longed for.

Before he left for Yarmouth and a fleet bound for the Baltic, he sent his last, painful letter to Lady Nelson: "Living, I have done all in my power for you and if, dead, you will find I have done the same; therefore my only wish is to be left to myself".

'For ever I am yours, even
beyond this world'

Upon this, distraught, Fanny Nelson scribbled: "This is my Lord Nelson's letter of dismissal".

Little Horatia was placed with a foster mother. Months passed before Nelson returned (having turned the tide at the Battle of Copenhagen) to see her and Emma again -- and to give instructions to Emma to find him a country house. She and Sir William found it at Merton and had it all ready for Nelson's next return, Friday, October 23, 1801.

The Admiral was enchanted by the place, and loved the visits by his family and the social life which Emma created there. In the coming two years first his father died, then old Sir William, who breathed his last in Emma's arms with Nelson holding his hand.

Nelson's grief was very real and deep.

War again and June 1803 found Nelson off Gibraltar. In his cabin hung a picture of the woman he called "My Guardian Angel"; and below it, a crayon sketch of his Horatia, a stout two year-old with a finger in her mouth.

"My wife in the eyes of God", he wrote to Emma. "Think only of our happy meeting. Ever, for ever, I am yours, only yours, even beyond this world". Summer 1805 brought him back to England.

On August 20 he arrived at Merton where Emma and Horatia and close relatives were there to greet him, to begin those 25 idyllic days which were to be his last on English soil.

On the day before his departure, Nelson and Emma went to Merton Church and took Holy Communion together.

Before the altar a gold ring was solemnly put on the wedding finger of her whom he regarded as his wife. When the moment for departure came the partings were agonising. He went upstairs, knelt beside the sleeping Horatia and prayed that her life might be happy.

'I leave Emma Lady Hamilton
a legacy to my King and Country'

Four times he went back to Emma - finally, he knelt at her feet, raised his hand and asked God to bless her. At half past ten on the night of Friday, September 13, his carriage drew away into the darkness.

As the fateful day approached of October 21, Nelson in the Great Cabin of the Victory was penning a final codicil to his Will: "I leave Emma Lady Hamilton a Legacy to my King and Country, that they will give her an ample provision to maintain her rank in life. I also leave to the beneficence of my country my adopted daughter, Horatia Nelson Thomson; and I desire in future she will use the name of Nelson only. These are the only favours I ask of my King and Country at this moment when I am going to fight their battle".

So came nemesis, and Horatio Nelson's death. But not before he has whispered, in his final breaths, to his chaplain: "I have not been a great sinner, Doctor. Remember that I leave Lady Hamilton and my Daughter as a legacy to my country... never forget Horatia".

Neither his King, his country nor his closest friends lifted a finger thereafter to help Emma and Horatia, in an appalling example of English hypocrisy and self-interest at its worst. But that, as they say, is another story.

Charles Roberts condensed this story from his musical documentary, Hero's Daughter: Horatia and the Nelsons of Burnham, originally written in 1982 for the Burnham Market Summer Concert.

This article copyright Charles Roberts 2001