invective with which she might humiliate him. She does not appear to
have been a vulgar shrieker, but she may have been a silent stabber,
which is worse. In any case, Nelson seems to have made a bad choice,
as by his actions he openly avowed that he preferred to live with the
former mistress of Featherstonehaugh, Greville, and Hamilton, rather
than with his lawful wife; and he, without a doubt, was the best judge
as to which of them suited him best. The truth remains that Emma was
attractive and talented, and although lowly born, she became the bosom
companion of kings, queens, princesses, princes, and of many men and
women of distinction.

Nelson must have been extraordinarily simple to imagine that his wife,
knowing, as all the world knew, that Lady Hamilton was his mistress
and a bold, unscrupulous rival, would receive her with rapturous
friendliness. The amazing puzzle to most people, then and now, is why
she received her at all, unless she wished to worm out of her the
precise nature of the intimacy. That may have been her definite
purpose in allowing the visits for two or three months; then one day
she flew into a rage, which conjures up a vision of hooks and eyes
bursting like crackers from her person, and after a theatrical display
of temper she disappears like a whirling tempest from the presence of
her faithless husband, never again to meet him. This manner of showing
resentment to the gallant sailor's fondness for the wife of Sir
William Hamilton was the last straw. There was nothing dignified in
Lady Nelson's tornado farewell to her husband; rather, if the records
may be relied on, it was accompanied by a flow of abuse which could
only emanate from an enraged termagant.

Nelson now had a free hand. His wife was to have a generous allowance
on condition that she left him alone freely to bestow his affections