Footnotes

"Lord Nelson of the Nile" returns through Europe in triumph, following his victory over Bonaparte at Aboukir Bay. This letter was written at the end of the journey, which he had made overland in the company of the Hamiltons, his panegyricist Cornelia Knight, and Emma's mother Mrs Cadogan: "Their continental progress home was triumphal, Trieste to Laibach (now Ljubljana in Slovenia), then via Klagenfurt to Graz, via Bruck an der Mer to Wiener-Neustadt, via Baden to Vienna, then to Prague, capital of Bohemia, down the Elbe to Dresden, capital of Saxony, thence to Magdeburg in Prussia and finally to Hamburg, where, after four months, the party crossed the North Sea to Yarmouth. The hero's return Nelson had experienced in Naples in 1798 had been the delirious welcome of a court euphoric at deliverance from the guillotine at their gate. He now had his first experience of public fame" (Edgar Vincent, Nelson: Love and Fame, 2003, pp.373, 379). He set sail from Cuxhaven, Hamburg, on the King George mail packet, on Friday 31 October, reaching Yarmouth after a storming crossing on 6 November. Our letter would appear therefore to have been written on Thursday 23 October and the British Factory's reception dated Monday the 27th (a 'factory' in this sense being an association of factors, or trading agents).

Letters written during this tour are exceptionally rare: only four - all from Vienna - being printed by Nicolas, Dispatches and Letters (see the preceding lot). Few, if any, have come to light since (see White, New Letters, p.242). Another unusual feature is that Nelson here styles himself using his English title only (rather than "Bronte Nelson of the Nile" which he had been using hitherto), no doubt mindful that he was addressing a fellow countryman: "On his arrival [in England] in November 1800 he dropped his foreign title. First he tried signing himself 'Nelson of the Nile'. This must be accounted the rarest of his signatures, only two letters using it appearing in the Dispatches and Letters, both dated 18 November 1800 (another, dated 17 November, was in the Wolf Collection, sold at auction in 1990)" (Felix Pryor, 'Nelson the Letter-Writer', in The Nelson Companion, 1995, p.164); see also the autograph visiting card as "Lord Nelson of the Nile", sold in our Phillips rooms, 15 June 2001, lot 268. He thereafter favoured the simple form of "Nelson", before settling on the "Nelson & Bronte" form that he was to use for the rest of his life.