Horatia Nelson

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Horatia Nelson, christened as Horatia Nelson Thompson^[1] (January 29, 1801, 23 Piccadilly, London - March 6, 1881, Beaufort Villa, Woodridings, Pinner) was the illegitimate daughter of Emma Hamilton and Horatio Nelson.

Contents 1 Life 1.1 Early life 1.2 Marriage and Children 1.3 Struggles 1.4 Later life and death 2 References 3 External links 4 Bibliography

[edit] Life

[edit] Early life

Born in a house of Sir William Hamilton (Emma's husband) at 23 Piccadilly, as Nelson was at anchor in Torbay preparing to sail to the Battle of Copenhagen (news reached him before he set sail), she was given to a wet nurse called Mrs Gibson, who was informed that the child, about a week old, was born six weeks earlier, at a time when Emma was in Vienna. Once Emma's husband had died on 6 April 1803, and before Nelson had to go board HMS Victory on 18 May that year, Horatia was christened aged two at St Marylebone Parish Church, with Emma and Horatio as the "godparents" and a cover-story naming her as the daughter of Vice-Admiral Charles Thompson of Portsmouth Dockyard (with his agreement). Her natural parents then later adopted her as an orphan.

Nelson was delighted at Horatia's birth (the more so as his second child with Emma, another girl, died a few weeks after her birth in early 1803), and spent as often as he could during his brief times onshore from 1803 to 1805 enjoying domestic life with her and Emma at Merton Place, more frequently and easily once Sir William was dead.

As the Battle of Trafalgar approached, Nelson wrote a letter to Horatia with his parental blessing:

Victory, October 19th, 1805. My dearest Angel,-- I was very happy by the pleasure of receiving your letter of September 19th, and I rejoice to hear that you are so very good a girl, and love my dear Lady Hamilton, who most dearly loves you. Give her a kiss for me. The Combined Fleets of the Enemy are now reported to be coming out of Cadiz; and therefore I answer your letter, my dearest Horatia, to mark to you that you are ever uppermost in my thoughts. I shall be sure of your prayers for my safety, conquest, and speedy return to dear Merton, and our dearest good Lady Hamilton. Be a good girl, mind what Miss Connor says to you. Receive, my dearest Horatia, the affectionate Parental Blessing of your Father, NELSON AND BRONTE.

One of Nelson's last wishes was that she should take the name Nelson, leaving her £200 a year in his will and adding :

"I leave to the beneficence of my country my adopted (sic) daughter Horatia Nelson Thompson, and I desire she will use in future the name of Nelson only."^[2]

Though Horatia soon learnt of her real father and agreed to his wish, she never accepted that Emma was her mother. This was due in part to their spending ten months in a prison cell, the result of Emma's financial difficulties soon after Horatio's death and partly due to Emma's insistence after Nelson's death that she was not her mother but her guardian. Before debt set in, Emma introduced Horatia to high society. Emma died in January 1815 and Horatia, who was still living with her, made the funeral arrangements with the British Consul and then returned to England disguised as a boy so as to escape arrest for the debts Emma had run up in France. On arrival in Dover, she was met by one of Nelson's brothers-in-law (Nelson's sisters doted on her) and from then until she married, Horatia stayed with Nelson's sister, Mrs Catherine Matcham in Sussex. Biographers describing her in her youth saw her as being tall, intelligent, able to speak her mind and surprisingly well read. She was good at languages (Emma had taught her Italian, French and German), music and needlework, with a lively temperament and an animal-lover.

[edit] Marriage and Children

On 19 February 1822 she married the Revd. Philip Ward (1795-1861) at Burnham Westgate Church, where he was then curate near her father’s home village in north Norfolk. Horatia's grandfather had also been a clergyman. A third generation Anglican clergyman, Philip was a poet and scholar, and the couple was described as handsome and intelligent at their wedding.^[3] Horatia's biographer described the marriage as "the one certain good that befell" Horatia.^[4] Their 10 children - seven boys and three girls, with the former educated by their father at home before going to university or the professions - were:

• Horatio or Horace Nelson Ward, born 8 December 1822 in Norfolk, christened in Norfolk on Horatia's 22nd birthday in January 1823, later gained a Cambridge degree and from 1847 to 1853 came back to Tenterden as his father’s curate, died 1888
• Eleanor Philippa Ward (born April 1824 in Norfolk)
• Marmaduke Philip Smyth Ward (born 27 May 1825 in Norfolk), later became a Royal Navy surgeon
• John James Stephen Ward (13 February 1827–1829 in Norfolk)
• Nelson Ward (born 8 May 1828 in Norfolk), articled for five years to a Tenterden solicitor, later becoming Registrar in the Court of Chancery and living in West Lodge, Pinner in Middlesex.
• William George Ward (born 8 April 1830 in Norfolk), later a Major in the Indian Army
• Edmund Nelson Ward (10 July 1832–1833), died aged 6 months
• Horatia Ward, born 24 November 1833 in Tenterden, recovered from cholera aged 13, married a solicitor from Lincoln’s Inn, William Johnson (a friend, colleague and fellow cricket-lover of Nelson Ward's), at Tenterden in 1858. Their descendents were still in Tenterden beyond the 1970s.
• Philip Ward (May 1834 - 12 September 1865), born in Tenterden, served in India as a lieutenant in the 25th Bengal Native Infantry
• Caroline Mary Ward, born January 1836 in Tenterden

[edit] Struggles

The living at Stanhoe in Norfolk was next granted to Philip, and it brought a better income in tithes and glebe lands, and then fairly shortly afterwards the family moved to another living at Bircham Newton, which had ?? play a major role in protracted negotiations to buy Nelson’s uniform coat and waistcoat (eventually bought by The Prince Consort for Greenwich Hospital in 1845, later passing from there to the National Maritime Museum). This growing public interest in Nelson (Nelson's Column and Trafalgar Square were erected in 1843, for example) brought her recompense for the perceived national neglect of her immediately after Nelson's death. An appeal committee of Lord Nelson's friends and naval colleagues, met frequently in London by Horatia herself, brought about a deputation to the Prime Minister and a national appeal (launched in 1850 and closed four years later; it only raised £1457). At Horatia's insistence, the money thus raised was divided between her three sons in military service (Marmaduke, Philip and William), and so that same year (1854) Queen Victoria stepped in and allocated public funds for a £100 annual pension for each Nelson-Ward daughter. nd to g Two of their nine children are buried with her (jght son and her eldest daughter), though the couple do have living descendants, including Anna Horatia Tribe, and the Nelson-Ward family branch.^[5] Philip died from a liver problem soon after returning to England from India (he is commemorated by a plaque near the altar in St Mildred's, on the south wall), and her eldest daughter Eleanor Philippa (whilst still unmarried) was knocked down by a horse bolting from an innyard - the Queen's Head in Pinner High Street, carried into a draper's shop near to where the accident occurred, and died there. Her husband also predeceased her, dying suddenly on 16th January 1859 and being buried at the east of St Mildred's Tenterden with his children Caroline Mary and Edmund Nelson (a memorial stained glass window was also put up to him in the church).

[edit] Later life and death

After her husband's death, she had to leave Tenterden, and lived for 22 years until her death at Elmdene, Pinner and later at Beaufort Villas, Woodridings, both near to her son Nelson. On her death, Horatia was buried in Pinner Parish old cemetery, in Paines Lane in Pinner. Her epitaph, after mentioning her husband and children, runs:

"...Here rests Horatia Nelson Ward, who died March 6th. 1881, aged 80, the beloved daughter of Vice Admiral Lord Nelson and widow of the above-named Revd. Philip Ward."

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Find-a-grave

[edit] Bibliography

• Winifred Gérin, Horatia Nelson, Clarendon, 1970
• Tom Pocock, Nelson’s Women, Andre Deutsch, 1999, chapters 10 and 11

Kate Williams, England's Mistress - The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton, Hutchinson, London, 2006