Nelson, Horatio, Lord.

This letter provides a glimpse of Nelson's life as a country gentleman in Burnham Thorpe, the village of his birth where his elderly father was rector. The drawing room anecdotes that fill the letter, for example the two ladies at a party who misunderstood the Matchams' name and situation (they were in Hampshire, not the East Indies), make it rather different from most of the letters that flowed from Nelson's pen. It was written just before a major turning-point in Nelson's life: for more than four years he had been living a quiet life of enforced inactivity in Norfolk, but less than a month later he was called to the admiralty to be given command of HMS Agamemnon, following which he was to be on active command almost continually until his death.