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Nelson and the Royal Navy 1750-1815

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Lot 280

"...that Immortal Man, the late Lord Viscount Nelson..."
Emma Lady Hamilton

5 July 2005, 11:00 BST

London, New Bond Street

Sold for £3,360 inc. premium

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"...that Immortal Man, the late Lord Viscount Nelson..."
Emma Lady Hamilton

"The Memorial of Dame Emma Hamilton, Widow of his Excellency, the late Sir William Hamilton, K.B. Your Majesty's most faithful Ambassador at the Court of Naples", reciting her services in persuading the Queen of Naples to allow the secret provisioning of Nelson's fleet before the Battle of the Nile ("...by which means, that Heroic Man, the pride and glory of his King and Country, was enabled to proceed the second time to Egypt, with a promptness and celerity which certainly hastened the glorious battle off the Nile, and occasioned his good and grateful heart to admit Your humble Memorialist, as well as the Queen of Naples, to a participation in the honour of that important victory..."), and asking that his 'Last Codicil' be honoured ("...That the solemn recognition of such services, by that Immortal Man, the late Lord Viscount Nelson, and his pathetic call for their kind remuneration, at the moment when he was about to commence his last and fatal conflict with the enemies of his King and Country, in whose battle, at the moment of victory, he so gloriously fell; bequeathing to the generosity of Your Majesty, and his Country, the future fortunes of Your humble Memorialist, must afford an everlasting proof that she is not altogether unworthy of being enabled, by the condescending bounty of Your Majesty, with the generous concurrence of her Country, to maintain that rank and dignity which she derived from the affections of a beloved husband..."), written throughout in a secretarial hand with one probable deletion by Lady Hamilton (see below), 4 pages, folio, paper watermarked 1804, traces of former binding, minor dust-staining, [March 1813]

Footnotes

Emma Hamilton petitions that Nelson's bequest to his King and Country be honoured: famously, the so-called 'Last Codicil' to Nelson's will, drawn up on the morning of the Battle of Trafalgar, had left her as "a Legacy to my King and Country"; and, notoriously, nothing was ever done about it, even though she and her friends made many appeals over the years. This seems to have been her final, desperate attempt: as is the convention with royal petitions, it is not in the hand of the petitioner, or signed. It was drafted by a Mr Russell from the Isle of Wight, together with a plea to the Prince Regent, although it clearly has much of Emma in it (see Flora Fraser, Beloved Emma, p.355). This particular copy of the memorial appears to have been handled by Emma herself: it contains a vigorous, almost manic, piece of crossing-out on page three which is characteristic of the treatment she gave in after years to passages in some of the letters Nelson wrote her; it also has off-setting from a typical piece of double underlining. The deletion brings our manuscript into line with the copy printed in the Morrison catalogue Nelson and Hamilton Papers, item 1045, so it could be said to be a draft. This petition having failed, Emma was imprisoned for debt. She fled the following year to Calais, where she died on 15 January 1815.

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