England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [106]
Horatio occupied himself with examining nautical charts, reading Dampier's Voyages and the newspapers, modeling ships, and writing to the Admiralty. Fanny tried and failed to embroider and paint, disappointing Edmund's wish for entertainment by declaring she was too miserable to sing or play. She had bravely borne her father's death and husband's insanity and illness, but as she reached thirty, she seemed to lose her spirit. Her hopes of genteel comfort as mistress of her own home had crumbled. Nelson, in turn, was dismayed by her sickliness and lost all hope of her becoming the wife he had hoped for: an efficient, wealthy mother of sons.
Girlish Frances Nisbet would have been the ideal wife for a quiet country vicar, but she was wrong for ambitious Nelson. She always counseled moderation, and he began to perceive such advice as disloyalty. Before they were married, she urged him not to pursue the issue of American trade with the Caribbean islands, but he wrote to her firmly that if he had done as she advised, "I should have neglected my duty." As their marriage wore on, he was irritated by Fanny's failure to praise him as he desired, and he was increasingly baffled by her lethargy and depression.
Five years dragged by and there was no sign of a baby. Fanny had conceived two months after her first marriage. Fertility problems were not uncommon, but what was rare was the Nelsons' refusal to investigate a cure. In the eighteenth century, since infertility was always deemed to be the fault of the woman, scores of desperate childless wives of the middle and upper classes took the waters in Bath, consulted doctors, submitted to peculiar regimes of diet and exercise, and even paid James Graham £50 for a night on the Celestial Bed. A woman who was not a mother was considered a failure, and so a baby was thought to be ample recompense for the indignity of being probed by doctors and quacks. But Fanny and Nelson appeared not to have tried any remedy. Their marriage was simply too fraught to embark on the stresses of treating infertility. Within a year of arriving in England, they were trapped in a bitter round of mutual blame.
When the revolution began in France in 1789, war with France seemed inevitable, but Nelson felt as if every man but him was called to sea. With inactivity and illness all around him, he sank into depression and no longer wrote to ask for places. Salvation came for him in 1793. Understaffed and in crisis, the navy could ignore him no longer (by 1795 naval demand was so great that the authorities had to open their jails and send in criminals as seamen). He received his orders and left Norfolk for Chatham, Kent, on England's southeast coast, to join the Agamemnon, jubilant to escape the slow drag of his marriage. While he was preparing the ship for sea, Fanny had devastating news: her uncle Herbert had died and left her only a token amount of money and £500 for Josiah. Nelson plunged himself into provisioning and staffing his ship, trying hard to quash his anger over the millions he had expected. He had to accept that his wife would always be poor and would never bear another child.
Nelson returned to sea in May determined to pursue glory. He was delighted to meet a woman who was Fanny's complete opposite: uncomplaining, vivacious, flattering, and obsessed with fame. As Nelson's success with King Ferdinand confirmed him back in favor with the Admiralty, he would have adored Lady Hamilton for her assistance in procuring him the promise of troops even if she had been a dumpy matron with ten grandchildren. When he set sail for Sardinia on September 15, after only