Enshrined once more at Naples, hailed as savior of the realm, acclaimed for her share in the Nile victory, the confidante of royalty--it would be pleasant to say good-by here to Emma Lyon, ex-nursemaid, ex-barmaid, ex-lady's maid, nameless offspring of a Lancashire inn slavey. It was the climax of a wonderful life. But there was anticlimax aplenty to follow.
Nelson went home to England to receive the plaudits of his fellow countrymen and to settle accounts with his wife. Home, too, came the Hamiltons, Sir William having been recalled.
Lady Nelson was not at the dock to meet her hero husband. Bad news traveled fast, even before we boosted it along by wire and then by wireless. Lady Nelson had heard. And Lady Nelson was waiting at home. Thither, blithely enough, fared the man in whose praise a million Englishmen were cheering themselves hoarse--and in whose silver-buckled shoes perhaps no married Englishman would just then have cared or dared to stand. But Nelson was a hero. He went home.
I once had a collie puppy that had never chanced to be at close quarters with a cat. I was privileged to see him when he made his first gleefully fearless attack upon one, ignorant of the potential anguish tucked away behind a feline's velvety paws. Somehow--with no disrespect to a great man--I always think of that poor, about-to-be-disillusioned puppy when I try to visualize the picture of Nelson's home-coming.
Just what happened no one knows. But whatever it was, it did not teach Nelson the wisdom of husbandly reticence. For, a few weeks later, he remarked at breakfast:
"I have just received another letter from dear Lady Hamilton."
"I am sick of hearing of 'dear' Lady Hamilton!" flared the long-suffering wife. "You can choose between us. You must give up her or me."
"Take care, Fanny!" warned Nelson. "I love you dearly. But I cannot forget all I owe to dear Lady Hamilton."
"This is the end, then," announced Lady Nelson, and she left the house.
Only once again did she and her husband meet.
Nelson cast off all pretense at concealment after his wife left him. His affair with Lady Hamilton became public property. Their daughter, Horatia, was openly acclaimed by him as his heiress. The English were in a quandary. They loved Nelson; they hated the woman who had dragged his name into the filth. They could not snub her without making him unhappy; they could not honor him without causing her to shine by reflected glory. It was unpleasant all around.