England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [113]
"I cannot describe to you my feelings on your being so near us," exulted Emma to the knight on his way. She enclosed a letter of the queen's in which "with her whole heart and soul she wishes you victory," and flirtatiously instructed him to "kiss it, and send it back."2 Coyly, Nelson replied that he hoped to be "kissing her hand" soon.3 Her request for British help coincided with Nelson's decision to fight Napoleon in the Mediterranean, and he was eager to reach Naples. On the way, however, he heard that Bonaparte was heading for Egypt, and he changed his plans to set off in hot pursuit. He sailed so fast that he arrived before his prey; rather than wait, a sitting target, he turned the ships around and headed back to Syracuse in Sicily to restock with food and water. When he attempted to enter, however, the governor refused him entry, believing that Ferdinand's kingdom was still keeping to the treaty with the French. Nelson wrote to Sir William for help, and Emma sent him a deeply sympathetic letter while encouraging Maria Carolina to press her husband to order the governor to allow Nelson to take the supplies he needed. The queen and Emma together were successful. Bulging with food and drink, Nelson's Vanguard and the ten other ships left Syracuse and sailed once more for Egypt.
On the night of July 28, Nelson and his company shattered the French fleet off the coast of Alexandria at Aboukir Bay. In what came to be known as the Battle of the Nile, nine ships were taken, two were sunk, and only two escaped. “Victory,” Nelson declared, “is not a strong enough name for such a scene as I have passed.” He instructed Sir William to “communicate this happy event to all the courts in Italy.” Emma immediately wrote to Maria Carolina, who declared herself “wild with joy.” “Gratitude is engraven on my heart,” she wrote, and begged Emma to find her a portrait of Nelson. Emma scrawled on the back of the letter that she received it on “the happy day we received the joyful news of the gret Victory over the infernal french by the brave gallant Nelson.” The city was illuminated for three days in honor of the amazing victory.
Nelson set sail for Naples, ready to be fêted. Emma made plans to celebrate him, struggling a little to imagine how he would look on his arrival. She knew he had been badly wounded in the battles against the French, but she had no idea of how ravaged his body had been. Since she had last seen him in 1793, he had lost what little good looks he had. At the Battle of Calvi in Corsica, in 1795, stone splinters from an enemy shot hit Nelson's right eye, and he was immediately blinded, although he could soon distinguish objects as well as light and dark. His eye was heavily scarred, the iris and pupil were so static as to seem dead, and it gave him terrible pain in times of stress. In July 1797, when leading a rash assault on the town of Santa Cruz on Tenerife by night, his right arm was destroyed by grapeshot. Josiah bound it with handkerchiefs and the surgeon amputated the arm in a dark, freezing, and flooded ship's cabin, where nothing would hold still under a weak, flickering light. Nelson returned home in agony from his infected wound, tormented by hallucinations caused by the laudanum he took for the pain. Fanny was a devoted nurse, and the period of Nelson's convalescence was the happiest in their marriage. To her misery, he recovered only to seize fame with doubled fervor.
Nelson trumpeted his triumph against the French at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, a Portuguese peninsula near Gibraltar, on February 14, 1797, by presenting himself as the champion of the hour, dramatically boarding the enemy ship and shooting his way to the quarterdeck until the crew surrendered. His