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Page 24
I have left my silver seal; at least, I cannot find it.
LETTER XXXII.
[July 1803.
MY DEAREST EMMA,
Although I have wrote letters from various places, merely to
say--"Here I am," and "There I am;"--yet, as I have no doubt but
that they would all be read, it was impossible for me to say more
than--"Here I am, and well:" and I see no prospect of any certain mode
of conveyance, but by sea; which, with the means the Admiralty has
given me, of small vessels, can be but seldom.
Our passages have been enormously long. From Gibraltar to Malta, we
were eleven days: arriving the fifteenth in the evening, and sailing
in the night of the sixteenth--that is, three in the morning of the
seventeenth--and it was the twenty-sixth before we got off Capri;
where I had ordered the frigate, which carried Mr. Elliot to Naples,
to join me.
I send you copies of the King and Queen's letters. I am vexed, that
she did not mention you! I can only account for it, by her's being a
political letter.
When I wrote to the Queen, I said--"I left Lady Hamilton, the
eighteenth of May; and so attached to your Majesty, that I am sure she
would lay down her life to preserve your's. Your Majesty never had a
more sincere, attached, and real friend, than your dear Emma. You
will be sorry to hear, that good Sir William did not leave her in such
comfortable circumstances as his fortune would have allowed. He has
given it amongst his relations. But she will do honour to his memory,
although every one else of his friends call loudly against him on that
account."
I trust, my dear Emma, she has wrote you. If she can forget Emma, I
hope, God will forget her! But, you think, that she never will, or
can. Now is her time to shew it.
You will only shew the King and Queen's letters to some few particular
friends.
The King is very low; lives, mostly, at Belvidere. Mr. Elliot had not
seen either him or the Queen, from the seventeenth, the day of his
arrival, to the twenty-first. On the next day, he was to be presented.
I have made up my mind, that it is part of the plan of that Corsican
Scoundrel, to conquer the kingdom of Naples. He has marched thirteen
thousand men into the kingdom, on the Adriatic side; and he will take
possession, with as much shadow of right, of Gaeta and Naples: and,
if the poor King remonstrates, or allows us to secure Sicily, he will
call it war, and declare a conquest.
I have cautioned General Acton, not to risk the Royal Family too
long; but Naples will be conquered, sooner or later, as it may suit
Buonaparte's convenience.
The Morea, and Egypt, are likewise in his eye. An army of full seventy
thousand men are assembling in Italy.
Gibbs and Noble are gone to Malta.
I am, you may believe, very anxious to get off Toulon, to join the
fleet.
Sir Richard Bickerton went from off Naples, the day I left Gibraltar.
We passed Monte Christo, Bastia, and Cape Corse, yesterday; and are
now moving, slowly, direct for Toulon.
What force they have, I know not; indeed, I am totally ignorant: some
say, nine sail of the line; some, seven; some, five. If the former,
they will come out; for we have only the same number, including
sixty-fours, and very shortly manned.
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