The messages lack the passionate fire of Napoleon’s notes to Josephine, and on occasion are apt to be rather too business-like for love letters. The romance did not end like the fairy stories, they did not live “happily ever after,” but there is no reason to doubt that Nelson cherished a fond affection for the young widow. “Her sense,” he informs his brother, “polite manners, and to you I may say, beauty, you will much admire: and although at present we may not be a rich couple, yet I have not the least doubt but we shall be a happy pair:--the fault must be mine if we are not.” Subsequent events proved the truth of the latter remark.
In due course Sir Richard Hughes was succeeded in the command of the Leeward Islands by Sir Richard Bickerton. Nelson complains towards the end of 1786 that “A total stop is put to our carrying on the Navigation Laws,” thereby showing that the old problem had by no means been solved so far as he was concerned.
On the 12th March 1787 Nelson and Mrs Nisbet were married at Nevis. Prince William Henry, then captain of the _Pegasus_ and under Nelson’s command, gave away the bride. Three months later the newly-wedded captain was at Spithead, the almost unseaworthy condition of the _Boreas_ making it impossible for her to stand another hurricane season in the West Indies.
Nelson was placed on half-pay, a state which he by no means liked. In May 1788 he had reason to believe that he would be employed again. “I have invariably laid down,” he tells a friend, “and followed close, a plan of what ought to be uppermost in the breast of an Officer: that it is much better to serve an ungrateful Country, than to give up his own fame. Posterity will do him justice: a uniform conduct of honour and integrity seldom fails of bringing a man to the goal of Fame at last.”
Nelson visited Plymouth, Bath, and London, and finally settled down at Burnham Thorpe. His letters reveal the keenness with which he desired to obtain employment. He applied to both Viscount Howe, First Lord of the Admiralty, and to Lord Hood, but all his overtures came to nought. In September 1789 he tells his old friend Locker that “I am now commencing Farmer, not a very large one, you will conceive, but enough for amusement. Shoot I cannot, therefore I have not taken out a license; but notwithstanding the neglect I have met with, I am happy, and now I see the propriety of not having built my hopes on such sandy foundations as the friendships of the Great.”