It was in the midst of this legal warfare, and of the preoccupations
arising from it, that Nelson first met the lady who became his wife.
She was by birth a Miss Frances Woolward, her mother being a sister of
the Mr. Herbert already mentioned as President of the Council in
Nevis. She was born in the first half of 1758,[12] and was therefore a
few months older than Nelson. In 1779 she had married Dr. Josiah
Nisbet, of Nevis, and the next year was left a widow with one son, who
bore his father's full name. After her husband's death, being
apparently portionless, she came to live with Herbert, who looked
upon and treated her as his own child, although he also had an only
daughter. When Nelson first arrived at Nevis, in January, 1785,[13]
she was absent, visiting friends in a neighboring island, so that they
did not then meet,--a circumstance somewhat fortunate for us, because
it led to a description of him being sent to her in a letter from a
lady of Herbert's family, not improbably her cousin, Miss Herbert.
Nelson had then become a somewhat conspicuous factor in the contracted
interests of the island society, owing to the stand he had already
publicly assumed with reference to the contraband trade. People were
talking about him, although he had not as yet enforced the extreme
measures which made him so unpopular. "We have at last," so ran the
letter, "seen the little captain of the Boreas of whom so much has
been said. He came up just before dinner, much heated, and was very
silent; but seemed, according to the old adage, to think the more. He
declined drinking any wine; but after dinner, when the president, as
usual, gave the three following toasts, 'the King,' 'the Queen and
Royal Family,' and 'Lord Hood,' this strange man regularly filled his
glass, and observed that those were always bumper toasts with him;
which, having drank, he uniformly passed the bottle, and relapsed into
his former taciturnity. It was impossible, during this visit, for any