and blinded him to the advantages of being respected in society....
His conduct to Lady Nelson was the very extreme of unjustifiable
weakness, for he should at least have attempted to conceal his
infirmities, without publicly wounding the feelings of a woman whose
own conduct he well knew was irreproachable."[16] On the other hand,
Nelson could not forget the kindnesses he had accepted from Lady
Hamilton, nor was he either able or willing to lessen an intimacy
which, unless diminished, left the scandal unabated. He was not able,
for a man of his temperament could not recede before opposition, or
slight a woman now compromised by his name; and he was not willing,
for he was madly in love. Being daily with her for seven months after
leaving Palermo, there occurs a break in their correspondence; but
when it was resumed in the latter part of January, 1801, every
particle of the reticence which a possible struggle with conscience
had imposed disappears. He has accepted the new situation, cast aside
all restraints, and his language at times falls little short of
frenzy, while belying the respect for her which he asserts continually
and aggressively, as though against his convictions.

The breach with Lady Nelson had in this short time become final. We
have not the means--happily--to trace through its successive stages a
rapid process of estrangement, of which Nelson said a few months
afterwards: "Sooner than live the unhappy life I did when last I came
to England, I would stay abroad forever." A highly colored account is
given in Harrison's Life of Nelson, emanating apparently from Lady
Hamilton, of the wretchedness the hero experienced from the temper of
his wife; while in the "Memoirs of Lady Hamilton," published shortly
after her death, another side of the case is brought forward, and Lady
Nelson appears as rebutting with quiet dignity the reproaches of her
husband for heartlessness, displayed in her unsympathetic attitude