LETTERS OF NELSON

Taranaki Daily News, 16 November 1935, Page 18 (Supplement)

LETTERS OF NELSON

MERCIFUL SAILOR MAN. SIDELIGHTS 6n CHARACTER. Greenwich Hospital’s Museum will be the richer for the new letters of Lord Nelson. For the most part these 33 letters, written while Admiral Nelson v/as in the Mediterranean between 1799 and 1803 to Sir John Acton, then Prime Minister at Naples, deal with the blockade at Malta. But they are remarkable for the disclosure that nothing ever leaps to light that is not to the great admiral’s honour. In them are some sidelights not altogether unexpected, on his character. He signs most of the letters Nelson, merely, but once permits himself the loftier signature of Bronte Nelson of the Nile.

He always took his own line, and one of the letters marks it when be writes: “I do not do all that Lord St. Vincent (his superior) desires, but he will approve my conduct I am confident.” In a letter written after the King of Naples had wished to reward his services by a sum of £60,000 he is clearly uneasy about accepting, .and makes some alternative suggestions which would not be nearly as profitable to himself.

But the merciful man that Nelson was is fully revealed in a letter he wrote on behalf of some persons unknown (signified in the letters now by initials) who had been condemned to severe punishment. He begs Sir John Acton to “stop this cruel process. Send away M, G, and P, but forgive a poor old man 75 years of age, blind, and who has lived 50 years in Palermo, and let him here die in peace.”

Peace with honour was Nelson’s watchword.