1 - Family

Summary

On 6 November 1861, one of Nelson's nephews, George Matcham, ipublished a letter in The Times. A book had just been published containing derogatory remarks about his uncle, and he was anxious to set the record straight.

Lord Nelson in private life was remarkable for a demeanour quiet, sedate, and unobtrusive, anxious to give pleasure to every one about him, distinguishing each in turn by some act of kindness, and chiefly those who seemed to require it most.

During his few intervals of leisure, in a little knot of relations and friends, he delighted in quiet conversation, through which occasionally ran an undercurrent of pleasantry, not unmixed with caustic wit … in his plain suit of black, in which he alone recurs to my memory, he always looked what he was – a gentleman.

That picture of the happy family man, surrounded by ‘a little knot’ of relations, is a recurring theme in the reminiscences of those who knew Nelson best. Having grown up in a large and boisterous household, it would seem that he was happiest, and most at ease, when surrounded by his siblings and their offspring. He had a natural way with children, and it is clear from a number of stories that they warmed quickly to him. On one of his earliest visits to his future wife, Frances Nisbet, he was found playing under the table with her five-year-old son, Josiah. Over fifteen years later, the one-armed admiral and peer of the realm was found playing happily on the floor with his infant daughter, Horatia. References to his childhood in his adult letters are almost always happy ones: as he told Henry Crowe, in 1801, ‘I felt such pleasure in being remembered by an old Burnham friend that it is impossible to describe what thoughts rushed into my Mind.’ It is right, therefore, that any study of Nelson should look first at this important source of his inner strength and happiness – his family.

Born in the Norfolk village of Burnham Thorpe on 29 September 1758, Nelson was the fourth surviving child of Rev. Edmund Nelson, the village Rector, and his wife Catherine. He was thus the middle child of a large family: Edmund and Catherine had eleven children, of whom three died in infancy. And a number of the survivors were not very robust either, with three more dying in early adulthood.