Horatio, Viscount Nelson | Autograph letter signed, to Emma Hamilton, on love and domestic affairs, 6 October 1801

Property from the Jean Hart Kislak Collection

Horatio, Viscount Nelson

Autograph letter signed, to Emma Hamilton,

assuring her that "your friendship is what I value before all the world", discussing purchases presumably for the furnishing of Merton Place ("...I did not pay Mr. B. for the drawing of the San Josef -- 10£ is the price...") and other domestic and family affairs ("...how the Lawyers torment you..."), 2 pages, 4to, integral autograph address leaf, postal stamp, "2 o'clock, just going on shore" [HMS Amazon in the Downs, 6 October 1801], postal marks, seal tear, slight toning, adhesive remains from former mount on final verso

NELSON TO LADY HAMILTON ANTICIPATING THEIR SHARED LIFE TOGETHER. This letter was written towards the end of Nelson's command of the Channel Squadron, just after a preliminary agreement had been agreed between Britain and France. Nelson knew that he was no longer required to protect the Channel, although it would be more than two weeks before he was given permission to strike his flag. In the meantime Emma Hamilton had recently secured Merton Place, which was to provide a home for herself, her husband, and Nelson. It suited the taste of both Nelson and Emma to furnish the house in part as a monument to Nelson's victories, for example by commissioning a drawing of the San Josef, the Spanish first rate ship of the line that Nelson had captured at the Battle of Cape St Vincent in 1797. "Mr B", who was commissioned to produce the drawing, may be identified with the painter Thomas Baxter (1782-1821), whose sketchbook of Merton Place is now at the National Maritime Museum. This letter was dated by Thomas Joseph Pettigrew in his Memoirs of ... Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson (1849).

LITERATURE:

Nelson's letters to Lady Hamilton and Related Documents, ed. M. Czisnik (2020), no. 235