For Mrs. Moutray the latter had formed one of those strong idealizing
attachments which sprang up from time to time along his path. "You may
be certain," he writes to his brother at the very period the
discussion was pending, "I never passed English Harbour without a
call, but alas! I am not to have much comfort. My dear, sweet friend
is going home. I am really an April day; happy on her account, but
truly grieved were I only to consider myself. Her equal I never saw in
any country or in any situation. If my dear Kate [his sister] goes to
Bath next winter she will be known to her, for my dear friend promised
to make herself known. What an acquisition to any female to be
acquainted with, what an example to take pattern from." "My sweet,
amiable friend sails the 20th for England. I took my leave of her
three days ago with a heavy heart. What a treasure of a woman."
Returning to Antigua a few weeks later, he writes again in a
sentimental vein very rare in him: "This country appears now
intolerable, my dear friend being absent. It is barren indeed. English
Harbour I hate the sight of, and Windsor I detest. I went once up the
hill to look at the spot where I spent more happy days than in any one
spot in the world. E'en the trees drooped their heads, and the
tamarind tree died:--all was melancholy: the road is covered with
thistles; let them grow. I shall never pull one of them up." His
regard for this attractive woman seems to have lasted through his
life; for she survived him, and to her Collingwood addressed a letter
after Trafalgar, giving some particulars of Nelson's death. Her only
son also died under the latter's immediate command, ten years later,
when serving in Corsica.

The chief interest of the dispute over Moutray's position lies not in
the somewhat obscure point involved, but in the illustration it
affords of Nelson's singular independence and tenacity in a matter of