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By Root 1296 0

comprehend the certainty of her loss. ‘What shall I do?’ and ‘How can I exist?’ were her first words." Emma was eager for news about Nelson's death, and Lady Foster told her what she knew, extrapolating her information from reports in the newspapers. Emma burst into further floods of tears, and when she was calmer, Bess asked her if she thought he "had any presentiment of his fate." Emma replied, no, not until their parting. "He had come back four different times, and the last time he had kneeled down and holding up his hand had prayed God to bless her." Nelson, Emma told Bess, had requested her to take the sacrament with him at Merton, "for," he said, "we both stand before our God with pure hearts and affection."6

Emma lay in bed prostrate with grief for three weeks. She told anyone and everyone about her misery. A heartfelt lament landed on the desk of Alexander Davison:

I have been very ill all Day my Heart Broken & my Head Consequently weak from the agitations I Suffer—I tell you Truly—I am gone nor do I wish to Live—He that I loved more than Life He is gone Why then shou'd I Live or wish to Live I Lived but for Him all now is a Dreary prospect before me I never lamented the Loss of a Kingdom (for I was Queen of Naples) for seven years, nor one Sigh ever Escaped me for the Loss I Sustained When I fell from Such a height of grateness & Happiness of Naples to misery and wretchedness—But all I lov'd have sustained with firmness but the Loss of Nelson under this Dreadfull weight of Most wretched Misery that I suffer.7

She struggled out of bed to receive visits from Nelson's steward William Chevailler, and his secretary and chaplain Alexander Scott, as well as Dr. Beatty, his surgeon. Nelson had begged his good friend Captain Hardy to give Emma his personal effects, and he sent, via Chevailler, Nelson's "hair, lockets, rings, breast-pin, and all your Ladyship's pictures." Most sorrowfully of all, she received her letters to him about Horaria and Lord Douglas's tobacco. The letters above are the only ones from Emma to Nelson that he did not burn, for he never saw them.

Emma pieced together the events of the battle from the newspapers and accounts from her visitors. By twenty minutes before noon on October 21, the French ships were firing, but Victory, with Nelson standing on deck, broke through their line of ships, and attacked the French vessel Bucentaure. Then Victory met the French ship Redoubtable. The French captain armed his men with guns, sent them to scale the rigging, and told them to aim for the officers. Covered in stars, walking around the main deck of a flagship, Nelson blazed through the smoke. At quarter past one, a single musket ball fired from a gun on the French ship struck Nelson's left shoulder. He was carried down to the cockpit below the waterline, now the ship's hospital, and laid on a sheet on the bare wood, painted red to disguise the blood. Nelson realized the ball was lodged in his spine and said he "felt it break my back." He knew he was dying.

"My sufferings are great, but they will be soon over," he said, but he took until four o'clock to die. All around him, hundreds of men were dying while others screamed in agony as surgeons removed shrapnel, musket balls, and splinters and amputated mangled limbs. The only anesthetic was rum, and officers took laudanum. Fifteen minutes after Nelson was hit, the Redoubtable surrendered. Nelson ignored his purser's promise that he would take the news of the victory home. Stripped to his shirt, his head resting on the discarded coat of a midshipman, he felt gushing in his chest and was numb in the lower half of his body. His lungs filled with blood as he slowly drowned in his own fluids. By three o'clock, fourteen ships had surrendered. Nelson begged Captain Hardy not to throw him overboard and to "take care of my dear Lady Hamilton, Hardy, take care of poor Lady Hamilton." Although Hardy then heard him say "Kiss me, Hardy," it seems likely that Nelson, already on the subject of Emma, was trying to say, "Kiss Emma for me, Hardy."

Alexander Scott and William