2»-» S. X. Nov. 17. '60.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



389 



Saturday night, to a certain place where they know a 

 price will be given, though not the price they would 

 prefer. Such places are called " slaughterhouses." The 



goods are bought, not taken in pawn. Shoemakers, 



who vamp up old shoes which are afterwards sold as new, 

 are called "translators."! 



3ar«iu^. 



LADY HAMILTON AND LORD NELSON. 



(2°^ S. X. 343.) 



Some remarks have recently appeared in your 

 periodical damnatory of a work entitled Memoirs 

 of Lady Hamilton, ivith illustrative Anecdotes of 

 many of lier most particular Friends and distin- 

 guished Contemporaries, London, Colburn, 1815. 

 It has been sometimes recommended to keep a 

 record of one's reading. I have long acted on 

 the recommendation ; and instead of conveying 

 an opinion of these Memoirs in any other form, 

 I will just copy the entry I made at the time of 

 their perusal : — 



" This work may well throw doubts on Nelson's recti- 

 tude, whether of policy or privacy. His conduct at 

 Naples as a commander is stated and estimated in the 

 eleventh chapter; the intrigue is developed in the thir- 

 teenth. In relation to the latter, except the hero's vene- 

 rable father and patient wife, every person is either 

 pitiable or culpable, from Sir William Hamilton down 

 to his lordship's clerical brother. Nelson contemplated 

 a divorce and marriage. See his letters to Lady Hamil- 

 ton. The narrative is circumstantial and consistent, the 

 style dignified and periodical, the morality just and 

 severe. I cannot find who was the author : he may seem 

 to have been the friend of Lady Nelson and her son 

 ' Josiah,' Captain Nisbet, unless simple solicitude for 

 truth and virtue, for right, justice, and libert3' might 

 instigate him. Lady Hamilton's best trait was her affec- 

 tion for her mother, whom she harboured to the last. 



" Of passages maj' be mentioned the importance of not 

 being blinded by name or genius to moral obliquity, pre- 

 face and chapter, p. i. ; on lascivious painting, p. 57., a 

 lesson to the nation, which at present prostitutes its funds 

 to the purpose; on devotion and liberality, apparent or. 

 partial, as extenuatorj' of positive guilt, pp. 374-5. ; and 

 on the distribution of national rewards and honours to 

 the representatives of those that have served well. In 

 this instance the suffering widow and daughter (though 

 illegitimate yet innocent) were neglected, while the less 

 direct members of the family were enriched, pp. 382 — 6. 

 It is here to be remarked that the testamentary words of 

 Nelson confiding ' Horatia ' to his country were sup- 

 pressed by his brother till after the parliamentary grants 

 were completed, pp. 370. 382. 



" One improbability attaches to the intrigue. Sir "Wil- 

 liam's blindness to his lady's pregnancy and parturition, 

 for both are asserted to have occurred in his house in 

 London. Possibly he might have been duped, being an 

 old man, and she capable of any amount of artifice and 

 evasion. So unconscious was he, as to express himself on 

 his deathbed in terms of the utmost friendship and affec- 

 tion to Nelson and Emma. 



"The present article would not be introduced into 

 these pages but for confirmation or correction of remark 

 or statement already contained in them on a subject of 

 some importance to patriotic puritv and national mo- 

 rality." 



The last paragraph may seem irrelevant, but 

 is copied as one mode of indicating that the writer 

 has long directed attention to the career and 

 character of Nelson, whom from his earliest 

 childhood he admired as a hero, and to whom, 

 under Providence, he still feels the deepest grati- 

 tude as a patriot. But praise, unless perhaps of a 

 few eminent saints, is never to be unqualified ; 

 and there is precedent for the observation of this 

 maxim of morality in inspired treatment of pro- 

 phets, patriarchs, and kings. E. A. 



Respect roR Lord Nelson's Memory. — ^Will 

 you allow me to ask whether it is not time for 

 Englishmen to cease harping on the one ques- 

 tionable point of private character in Lord Nelson 

 — "The greatest sailor since our world began" — 

 his infatuated attachment to Lady Hamilton ? 



Let it be remembered that his most intimate 

 friends and associates never believed in its crimi- 

 nality : and if the ransacking of letters, which 

 were never intended to be seen by more eyes than 

 those to which they were addressed, has appa- 

 rently proved that " Horatia" was the child of our 

 great hero and Lady H., surely we ought to be 

 as ashamed of knowledge obtained by such means, 

 as Nelson was of the subject which led to such 

 correspondence. Indeed, a more modest and hon- 

 ourable man never breathed, if T may believe 

 what the late Dr. Scott has often told me, and 

 what I have also heard from the lips of Dr. Este 

 of the Life Guards, who, I believe, still survives. 



Why, then, should England thus treat her 

 noblest naval hero ? 



" Proclaim the faults he would not show: 

 Break lock and seal : betray the trust : 

 Keep nothing sacred: 'tis but just 

 The many-headed beast should know." 



Could England have back from the grave at 

 this moment that mighty genius of the sea, his 

 inspired judgment would soon solve the great 

 practical and puzzling question of the day, — whe- 

 ther we are to protect our coast by the superiority 

 of our guns, or by the extra strength of our steel- 

 clad ships. 



There appears to me no more miserable scrutiny 

 than the private weaknesses of bygone public men, 

 — to whose'power we owed, in the hour of need, the 

 salvation of the country ; and I should be glad 

 that the pages of " N. & Q." were kept pure from 

 such wretched scandal. Alfred Gattt. 



In the list of Romney's pictures of this lady more 

 than one "Bacchante" is mentioned. The whei'e- 

 abouts of one maybe here stated, viz. the Vernon 

 Gallery. This lovely sketch has been very cle- 

 verly engraved by C. Holl, in I'he Art Journal 

 for March, 1854, where also will be found some 

 notice of Romney's pictures of Lady Hamilton, 



&C. CUTHBERT BeDB. 



