Footnotes

NELSON ON THE DEATH OF A BITTER ENEMY: Charles Lock, formerly British Consul at Naples, had been appointed Consul-General in Egypt, but died of plague at Malta while on his way to take up the appointment. He was faithfully attended in the lazaretto by the recipient of this letter, his doctor and private secretary – in this context it should be noted that the letter has had slits cut into it so that it could be fumigated against the plague.

If Nelson's expression of grief seems perfunctory, this is because during his tenure of office as British Consul at the Court of Naples Charles Lock had proved himself an implacable enemy. He sent home graphic descriptions of the atrocities that occurred during Nelson's suppression of the Neapolitan Revolution and was probably the principal informant of Charles James Fox, to whom he was connected by marriage, in his denunciation of Nelson in the House of Commons. Nor did it help that Lock loathed Emma Hamilton and thought Nelson's public infatuation made him the laughing stock of the whole fleet, a subject on which he wrote home with relish and at length. He also picked a quarrel with Nelson over supposed irregularities in victualling the fleet. Perhaps this history informs Nelson's remark on hearing of his death that "we want men fit for places and not places for men who are too often unfit".

However the man to who whom this letter was written, Lock's doctor and secretary, Michael Lambton Este, stood – by contrast – high in Nelson's esteem. Soon after writing this letter he was to join Nelson on the Victory in the hopes of getting a passage back to England and was admitted in the Admiral's intimate circle. Many years later he was to provide Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas, the editor of Nelson's letters, with an account of their conversations which provide details of Nelson's health and ambitions that do not appear to be recorded anywhere else (see The Despatches and Letters of Lord Nelson, 1844-6, vi, pp. 256-8; and the analysis by Edgar Vincent, Nelson: Love & Fame, 2003, pp. 525-527). He was later to become a distinguished physician in London. His father, whom Nelson writes of in familiar terms, was the Rev Charles Este (1753-1829), a stage-struck clergyman described by the drama critic John Taylor as 'not only the most extraordinary character whom I ever knew, but, perhaps, the most extraordinary of his time' (Records of My Time, 1832, ii, p. 289). Sir Alexander Ball, to whom Nelson also refers, was a close friend who had fought with him at the Nile. He was serving as Civil Commissioner and de factor Governor of Malta (with Samuel Taylor Coleridge for a secretary). Our letter is printed in Nicolas's Despatches and Letters, vi, pp. 215-6.