Preface

Summary

Sadly, this volume cannot be called Correspondence of Horatio Nelson and Emma Hamilton. In order to justify such a title, more of her letters to him would need to have come down to us. Nevertheless, it is worth publishing what is left of this correspondence.

It is fortunate that nearly all of Nelson's letters to Lady Hamilton can be traced and read. The business of tracing them, however, is so difficult that this alone would have justified publishing them in one volume. The original manuscripts are spread over public and private collections across Britain and America. Those that have been published are distributed over several printed sources and have not always been transcribed reliably. Apart from changes in spelling, punctuation and the like, whole paragraphs have sometimes been omitted. The aim of this edition is therefore to render a complete and easily accessible collection of as much as there remains of this correspondence.

Nelson's part of the correspondence alone is worth publishing as a whole, because – even more than in his other letters – Nelson is outspoken in expressing his views and feelings. The story of his last and historically most interesting years is here told by himself. The value of this collection is enhanced by the authenticity of Nelson's compositions. He appears never to have composed a standard letter, but rather wrote in a stream-of-consciousness style and often in haste. As a result his rather curt style, trained by years of writing logbooks, often conveys the impression of listening to him talking. This immediacy of style is also reflected in the subjects covered. Nelson's letters deal with the great variety of matters that were on his mind at the time of writing, from political and strategic issues, through practical worries of the day-to-day running of a fleet at sea, to private and intimate matters. The lack of inhibition that some of the letters betray may be explained by strength of feeling towards the addressee or by the confidence (at least in 1801) that she would burn his letters. As a consequence the lack of much pondering is a value of Nelson's letters to Lady Hamilton rather than a weakness.

Lady Hamilton's letters are marked, if possible, by an even greater immediacy.