NOTE TO PAGE 451. 



Since the publication of this book my remarks about Lord Nelson 

 and Lady Hamilton have given rise to a considerable amount of con- 

 troversy which necessitates some short explanation. 



On August 10, 1905, on the occasion of the laying, by the present 

 Lord Nelson, of the foundation stone of a Memorial Hall which is to 

 be erected in honour of the great Admiral, in the parish of Woodton, 

 in Norfolk, I made a speech in the course of which I alluded to the 

 rinding, in 1881, at the Paston School at North Walsham, of the 

 Nelson brick spoken of in the text. In the Eastern Daily Press of 

 August 14, 1905, appeared an article in which it was stated that 'a 

 gentleman of excellent standing in the neighbourhood of North 

 Walsham called at these offices to assure us, on his own direct 

 testimony, that the initials (i.e. those carved on the brick) originated 

 in a boyish fraud, and that he and some other Pastonians still living 

 had been all along aware of it. For the present he wishes to remain 

 anonymous ; but he authorises us to disclose his name if his credit 

 should be seriously impugned.' 



Then follows the gentleman's story, in which he says that he 

 perfectly well remembers the publication of a letter from my late 

 father, Mr. Haggard, stating that somewhere or other there was a 

 brick in the school wall with Nelson's initials thereon. He adds that 

 it occurred to a boy from Oswestry ' to cut the initials just for a lark,' 

 and that ' I with others saw him do it.' 



In commenting upon this gentleman's evidence (as he has not re- 

 vealed his name I cannot give it) in a letter, or rather two letters to 

 the Eastern Daily Press, I pointed out that my father never published 

 any such communication as that of which he speaks, but that, in 1895, 

 many years after my visit with him to the school, I did publish a letter 

 in the Times on this and other matters, which is doubtless that which 

 he had in his mind. Further, I showed that whether or no the boy 

 from Oswestry cut Nelson's initials on a brick in preparation for a visit 

 from my father, which visit neither my father nor anyone else knew 

 would be made until within half an hour of its occurrence, certainly 

 such a brick with such initials was to be seen in the school wall over 

 eighty years ago, when my father was a little boy, as he well re- 

 membered its existence. 



