Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The Scandalous Love Life of Lord Nelson

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

Lord Nelson is remembered as one of history's greatest military commanders. His victories at the Battle of the Nile, the Battle of Copenhagen and the Battle of Trafalgar cemented his legendary status, as did his dramatic death mid-battle.But there's another side to Nelson's story: his extraordinary love affair with Emma Hamilton. Today, Kate explores the scandalous relationship between Britain's greatest naval hero and his famous mistress, and asks how their spouses reacted to their very open relationship.Kate is joined by History Hit's very own Dan Snow!This episode was edited by Natasha Hughes. The producer was Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX74ZgzrlyH29Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fantastic news, betwixters. Thanks to your votes, we are through to the final 20 of the Listeners' Choice Awards at this year's British Podcast Awards. We still need your help, though. Of course we do. We've got to keep those votes rolling in. And if you voted before, apparently, you have to vote again. It wasn't my idea.

But this time, follow the link in the show notes to the British Podcast Awards Spotify playlist on your mobile app, where you can cast up to three votes for betwixt the sheets. But only in the Spotify mobile app. I'm sorry, it is a bit. a pain, but your vote would mean the world to us. Thank you so much. Hello, my lovely betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister. Welcome back to Betwicks the Sheets. Hello, how fabulous it is to see you once again, you little historical pervert. Yeah, I know. I know what you really are. I know why you're here. It's why I'm here as well. But before we can go any further together,

I do have to tell you, this is an adult podcast book. My adults, to other adults, about adulty things in an adulty way, covering an range of adults, a bit of being adult too. Do you feel safer? I certainly feel safer. Right, let's crack on. Welcome to couples counselling. I am Dr. Lister here to be your counsellor. I'm not trained in any way for this whatsoever, but I'm going to have a go with it. And I have somebody on the line. What do you tell me what has been going on? Hmm, hmm, I see. Your wife has a new boyfriend. Well, that is a bit difficult. Oh, he's a national hero. Okay, that complicates things. And he has a wife too. Okay. Is everybody happy with this? Oh, his wife isn't happy. His wife is very upset

And your wife is having her boyfriend's baby Oh no But you're all going to live together And everybody's going to be okay with this And the press are going to know about it as well Well this all sounds very, I don't know Modern Sorry, what century is it?

It's the 19th century, early 19th century And her boyfriend is who? Oh Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets The History of Sex Scandal and Society With me, Kate Lister What I have for you to today is a love story. Two people who met and for the rest of their lives were true-ish to one another.

The problem is that they were both married to other people and this kind of thing was just very frowned upon in the early 1800s, even if you are a military hero. Today I'm joined by the one and only Dan Snow, a big naval history fanatic to chat about the hero that is Lord Nelson, the one who got the big pillar in London's Trafalgar Square and his lover, Lady Emma Hamilton. Well, I've got my bonnet on. Have you? Let's do this. Kate Lister, we're talking about one of the most talked about and fascinating Georgian women. Yes. But this is, I don't want to sound like woke dad, but it's a deeply problematic. Like, it's a difficult thing to talk about here. It has a lot of problematic elements to it, this story, absolutely.

She is a child sex worker who is regularly trafficked. That's the big one, yeah. There's no redeeming that at all. Emma Hamilton, as she became known, was very young when she became a professional mistress, which is a nice way of saying, well, she was, yeah, she was sex trafficked. It's a really, really ugly story. She had no choice. I mean, she was sent to kind of country houses and then was a sex worker in those places.

That period of her life is. kind of murky because she didn't write like a memoir saying this is exactly what happened, but we've got like whispers and rumours. So she was born in a little village called Ness, which is in Chester, which is actually in the Wirral. So if you can imagine that she's got a scouse accent, I think that's quite helpful. And she was born to, I think it's right, her dad was a blacksmith, but he died when she was four in slightly dubious circumstances. Our friend Kate Williams wrote a book about this and sort of suggests that maybe the dad was murdered by the mum.

Holy Moses. Baby. Okay. It's a weird thing that happens and then the mum's got to get out of town real, real quick. So Emma kind of grows up in this matriarchy. The mum figures throughout her life. There's a grandmother as well. But also, they're really poor.

Her mum's job is, she's down as like basically a removals person, but that means she has a horse and cart and just like moves things around. By the time Emma is 12, she's been sent out to work. She's not being sent out to sell sex. She's being sent out as a servant. But the suggestion as well. that within that came, the mother, the extent of selling sex was something

that was reasonably common at the time, you know, to survive, to get food, whatever. That's the culture. It was certainly very common. It always has been, is that selling sex is there as an option when you don't have anything else to do. So then she,

and then we all, it's like, wow, that we celebrate this extraordinary social climb that she performed. And she really did. She did. but it is and it is, I was about to say it's entirely dependent on her extraordinary good looks

and charisma but that's not fair because she's also super smart. She is, you know, I mean she's a hottie. So then how do we think of that that's, because that's a strange sort of thing like on the one, I guess look at it's the whole that's what it is and she is incredibly engaging and impressive but also smoking hot. She is and as

Joan Rivers once said no man's ever put his hand up a woman's blouse looking for a library card so yeah she's smart but that's not what actually gets her her foot along the way. It kept her there. So she's, she's extraordinarily beautiful. She's one of the most painted women, I think the most painted women of the, of the regency period. And it's hard. Romney falls, well, Romney, the artist falls in love with her, literally and also professionally. Yeah, like he's obsessive. He does over 60. Yeah, like various goddesses, in sort of classical

poses. I think he does over 60 portraits of us. So we have a very good idea of what she looked like. And I think, and I've heard her describes this before, and I've got a, agree with it. I think she looks like a young brook shields. She's got that like heavy eyebrow and that like thick hair and that kind of like soft pouty face. And no small box scars apparently, which was a thing. Yep, all her own teeth. All her own teeth. So she's has the most astonishing teenagers because the podcast isn't actually about her. We're going to talk about specifically the relationship for which she becomes famous, infamous, but just to quickly finish off her backstory, which is deserving of a separate podcast.

An extraordinary from the streets of London to great country houses, hobnobbing and having sex with aristocrats. And she's still in her teens. Yeah, she's 15 when she becomes a professional mistress. And is thrown away from that life because she gets pregnant and therefore is sent back to where she's come from. Well, let me get this right. So she's about 15. It looks like at some point she might have been selling sex in a brothel, possibly. The only illusion that we get to that is later on when she's writing,

letters to someone. She says that although she lost her virtue in body, she never lost it in spirit, which is like a kind of, yeah, you can sort of see what she's hinting at. And she's definitely working for this quack doctor at one point called Dr. Graham, who's got this clinic. It's called, um, of health and hymen. And that's, and it's, but it's full Instagram, isn't it? Yeah, basically. It's find an unbelievably beautiful person. Yeah. Stick them all over your socials and then extract money from other people in the desperate hope they might one day look like that. Well, it is, but what he's running is basically a fertility clinic.

He's promising people that he can cure impotence and that he can get everybody pregnant and be great. And he does that by basically hiring a load of very young beautiful women, Emma Hamilton is one of them. Well, to dance around and to like serve drinks and things like that as couples, you know, getting treatment. Okay. All right. Okay. If that's good, I miss answer that. You know, I was once talking to a bull insemination.

Of course. Yes. And the bulls, you have to collect sperm from these bulls. And the bulls, you know what the bulls? They've tried every, the bulls sleep on waterbeds and they get played classical music. And do you know what gets the bulls going? They tried young female cows. It's the young male cows that gets the bulls.

No. They go insane. No, I didn't know that. How is that linked to this story? Because, I think it is linked. Because, yes, that's why. Because there's all these guys who are struggling to, you know, get it up and produce the good. So rather than parading young women around, maybe they should have paraded.

They should have paraded bulls. No, young boys. Oh, sorry, right, yeah, young boys. Okay, yes. Well, they didn't think of that. They paraded teenage girls. Moving on. Around.

But she makes these connections. And because she's super smart as well as being so beautiful, she's writing to people and sort of claws her way. Having been sent home to have this baby, she claws her way back into this. Well, she becomes the professional mistress of a guy who has the most British sounding name ever. It's Sir Harry. and it looks like the last name is Featherington Ho,

but I think it's actually pronounced like fencer or it's like it's like 16 letters contracted to two syllables, right? And so she goes and she works at his house like it's prolonged stagdo and she's his mistress and she gets pregnant by him and then it would seem that he basically is going to turn her out where she catches the attention of a guy she's met a couple of times at his parties a guy called gravel, right? Sir, lord, hardy-dad-da-dravel.

And he says you can be my mistress but we have to be my mistress, but we have to send the child out to be fostered. So he installs her in a house in London. Yeah, she's about 16 at this point. And there's some education going out, super controlling. Well, he does. There's a bit of a my fair lady situation starts to develop here. He's like dressing her up and he's takers.

This is just a blacksmith's daughter from the Wirral so far. So he's trying to give her a sense of refinement and some education. And this is where, as you were saying, she is really, really smart. And she starts to learn really, really quick. And she learns social etiquette. learns how to use her good looks. And of course, she's being painted all the time. And actually, her portraits become quite a lucrative revenue stream for her and this guy,

Gravel, because they're selling for loads of money. And he is jealous because she becomes so famous. Well, she becomes very famous at this point. Just through the portraits alone, everybody is like losing their shit for this. And we should say, actually, we forgot to even tell you what her real name was. So she's down, goes down in history is Emma Hamilton, but her real name is Amy Lyon. That's what she was born as. And by this point she's going by, it's either Emily Hart or Emma Hart.

She's not Hamilton yet. So she changes her names quite a lot. And she's the mistress of gravel. He's doing this My Fair Lady, schick. But then eventually he starts to get cold feet and worried about this because he starts to think, well, I need a wife and I need a rich wife because he's terrible with money. And he's not going to marry her because she doesn't have any money. So it comes up with this scheme, this shitty scheme to palm her off onto his uncle,

who is Lord Hamilton, who is one of the ambassadors, the British ambassadors over in Naples. I think he's a Sir, isn't he? Is he Sir, Sir William? Highfalutin, right, yeah, one of them. A big wig, basically. And it's 60? Well, he's not 60 when they meet, but he's not far off.

Okay, and so he's decades old of that. Yeah, he is, yeah. I think she's about like 21 when they meet. They do marry. He's a widower. He's a widower. He's 60 when they marry and she's 26. So that should give you an idea of the age range.

And he's thrilled. He can't believe he's life. Oh, he does. But like, you know the really shitty thing is, is Emma didn't know this was the plan when she was sent over to Naples. Like he goes, gravel sends her over and goes, look, I'm just going to, I've got some stuff that I need to do. So like you and your mum go over to Naples and you can,

you can just have a lovely time. Meanwhile, he's written to Hamilton going, do you want a mistress? Do you want a mistress? She's quite a famous one. He's dead excited. Emma turns up and has no idea that this has actually been planned. And yet that is the, that's the remarkable thing about. her is she keeps sort of responding to these...

Adapt and overcome. She adapts and overcome. She does. We should talk about Nelson. Yeah, we should because he's about to enter the picture. He's about to enter the picture. He is Britain's most famous Admiral. What's his background story, by the way?

So he was not from a particularly wealthy family. So in the Navy, as I've said, a thousand times in this podcast, so I apologize to all you on listening. It was, it's one thing in the army to be, you give all the, lot of, you can, you can let the king's son command an army. you can let sions of various aristocratic families come out. You don't have much training, because all you've got to do when you're in charge of a group of men with muskets

is stand ramrod straight when bullets are whipping around your ear. And it's an old expression. Officers show men how to die. Sargent show men how to fight. Oh, right. So that's kind of their only requirement. So you can be an absolute Muppet. And many of them were.

And many of them weren't. And many them weren't. So you can be the second sign of the earl of so and so. and you just get told, mate, you're going to join the army. And you can sort of do that. And it's not super technical. It's just stand still. It's just, it's just do as, you know, give a good impression of yourself.

Yeah. Don't at the side down. Keep your shoes shiny. Keep your shoe shiny. The Navy, you're giving these people the most sophisticated and expensive objects ever created at that point of human history. Wow. Like, my H.man's victory in Portsmouth, think about these kind of ships.

This is vast amounts of capital expenditure of at the state. You cannot let one of those ships fall in. the hands of someone who's incompetent. So the Navy, it's not perfect. There's still a lot of patronage and there's nepotism. But the Navy, on the whole, they find people join. You often join family and friends of existing officers join, but they join as kids and they are trained.

And they're examined. They're emeritocratic. You've got to pass your lieutenant exam or you don't get it. Wow. So Nelson goes to sea with a relative, but he's from a kind of reasonably normal. You might call lower middle classist, you know, clergy, sort of moth,

like moth-eaten sort of country clergy. But not like Lord Admiral, high-to-do, sir,ness. No. And for many admirals, there are several who I will not bore you with, but the Navy becomes a massive, sort of a pathway into the elite.

Because in that period, there are lots of wars. Britain is usually at war in this period, talking to the 1750s, 60s. So Britain's at war in the 7050s, it's at war in the 1770s and early 80s. I'm doing a lot of war. A lot of war.

1790s. People call it the second 100 years war. We're fighting France. Always with the French. The French and Spanish large. He's huge big wars in Europe, but also in North America, India. So really, they're global wars. Winston Churchill calls one of them the first world war because you're fighting in Asia,

you're fighting in Africa, Caribbean, North America, Europe. Fair enough. Okay. He's in the right place at the right time. And so in these great big wars, by the way, also it's useful because by capturing, you capture enemy ships, and as a person who capture the ship, you get a percentage of the value of those ships. Oh, gee.

So you can make money. Oh, that's quite clever. And you can win hearts and minds and become knights and barons and even earls and whatever else. So there are lots and lots of reasonably normal people who join the Navy and become national heroes, the most famous people in the kingdom and are then accelerate, enjoy high status, entry into the elites and can marry into our stocks and stuff. That's very interesting. So Nelson is on that journey. And he's an astonishingly effective.

Is he really good? He is. So he's a good example of a guy. It's not like Genghis Khan who comes out of nowhere and like forges a military instrument and takes over the order. He enters the best, he enters the best Navy the world's ever seen. Yeah. And just does really well at it.

And just so it's like a virtuous circle. What is it that he's good at? He's got charisma. Right. But charisma doesn't steer a ship. No, but it keeps you on a cold night when you're beating. You're beating in the team. heath of a gale off share, or not shareboard actually.

It does. Well, the sailors are there going, look, oh, God, it's absolutely crap tonight. But at least the captain's got Riz. I'm so glad. Lieutenant, who doesn't, Lieutenant Nelson does, he gives his overcoat someone else. He's had the love of his country. He must have been better at, like, was he good at steering ships? You have to be good at navigating. You have to be incredibly brave.

You have to be tireless. You have to be healthy. A good leader. Don't you think that I just look at history and I think, actually, a lot of these people just have to, they just have to be fit and healthy and energetic. You know, like so many people are carrying, you know, debilitating injuries or wounds or, you know, whatever naturally occurring problem with their body. And actually, he's just sort of lively and engaged, energetic and brave and sort of awake and switched on. And I think so.

So, yeah, and does his exams. It's really good, really good student, does a little stuff. And he's lucky, like everyone, you know, he gets in the right place the right time. So he's attacked by a polar bear in the Arctic and he fights it with a musket. Is that a true story? It's true. And then he survives. And again, luck apart.

Like, you're got to be incredibly lucky just not to die. I'd be dead, appendicitis. I'd be dead. One of the great men of his generation stuffed out like, imagine that, Kate. What a loss to history that would be.

So anyway, so he is, he goes on the bloodiest exhibition in British history. He invades during the America War of Independence. He invades Central America. And of course, they march up a river into what is now Nicaragua. And everybody dies, apart from him.

It's like insane. I mean, not everyone. But it's like, Everyone, did I want to ask what he was doing there? Well, I think from memory, I forgot. I think he gets ill quite early on and gets invalided back. So you survive because you only get a minor dose of the tropical disease. So then on Valentine's Day, he captures two enemy ships in the Battle of Cape Simonson,

which has never been done before. So he disobeys orders. He's got skills then. By this stage, he's got, he's amazing. He's an amazing tactician. But he's also driving around the best ships and crew. cruise in the history of the world. Like, so he's, it's, it's skill and charisma on top of an amazing, he's, he's been given

this beautifully forged weapon and he's really good at using it. That's what I'm saying. Okay. So he disobeys orders, takes his ship alongside, yeah, takes his ship alongside that of an enemy, shouts, you know, glory or Westminster Abbey, i.e., you'll end up glorious and famous, you'll end up a celebrity or dead in Westminster Abbey, right? Charges on one ship That ship then crashed into another span of ship

So use that as a bridge to get to the other Spanaship and that's on Valentine's Day So I always say it's nice to see everyone out celebrating Nelson's big bit here on. All right, that is quite impressive And he takes the enemy, so then from that moment on his big celebrity, then he goes And he does absolutely annihilate

He's lost an arm I was about to say, like you said that you have to be healthy and upright But he is in bits Yes, he's in bits by the 1790s Yeah. What are we talking? He loses an arm arm in the canary on 1797.

One arm off. One arm off. And when they're soaring his arm off, he says, without an aesthetic, they say, is this right? He goes, the blade's a little cold. And then they saw his arm off and he says, just chuck it away. I don't want it. Get it. It's useless to me now.

Get rid of it. So he loses his right arm. What else? Well, he's about to, he goes to Egypt. So Napoleon hatched this absolutely bonkers scheme to sail to Egypt. because Napoleon wants to come out of Alexander the Great so go to Egypt, conquer Egypt, conquer the Middle East, conquer all the way to India, I mean really crazy stuff.

And he doesn't get very far because in Egypt, as he goes ashore and Napoleon goes ashore in Egypt and Nelson just sails into it and leaving his fleet behind, you know, full of supplies and that's his way of connecting with France. Nelson just sails into the harbour and doesn't even take two looks at the place, just goes in and annihilates this fleet, just destroys it to bits. And a superbly daring operation like, amazing leadership, working with the so-called Bander Brothers, his captains under his command.

And so he, and then, but he loses, he gets a splinter to the eye, above the eye, I think it was. Which I did he lose? I think it's the right eye, so far the right side of his body is suffering. Oh, right, so the arms off, the eyes off, and am I right and thinking he's lost some teeth? Catastrophic. Oh, God, yeah, it's lost teeth. Lost teeth. Right, okay.

And there was a serious head injury as well? The right eye injury was probably get some traumatic brain injury as well. Right, okay. It's a bit dangerous business. Okay. Very dangerous, by the way, being a captain or an admiral in a Royal Navy. Bloody yes. Again, your job is just to stand on the court deck, very, very visible to the enemy and just provide.

Is it true? I'm skipping way ahead here, but is it true that he got shot in the end? Spoiler alert, he did get shot, my friend. But he got shot because he wouldn't take his shiny metals. It isn't part true. Right. So he had a coat, which you can still go and see in the Maritime Museum in Greenwich. It was amazing thing, the greatest object in any British Museum.

And, yeah, there's a sort of version of, he's not like actually with the gold and silver, but there's sort of shiny embroidering and it shows all his medals. He's very proud. I mean, that was, that was a mistake. Not that I want to question the wisdom of this great man, but that was, standing on the bow of a ship with basically a sign.

It's part of his vibe is I'm going to just, everyone's going to know who I am. And he pays for it. But, you know, we, yeah, he pays for it with his life. Well, we'll skip's way ahead there. So my favorite thing at the moment is looking up how tall or short historical figures were because, well, some of them

really surprise you. Like, how told you... Napoleon wasn't sure. He wasn't sure. How tall did you think Michelangelo was? Tall or short? Oh, Michelangelo?

How tall or shot? Super small. Five foot three. Five foot three. What about John Keats, the poet? Tall. Five foot one. Oh, nice.

Mary Queen of Scott, five foot eleven. Really? Really tall, yeah. But that's the thing, because I think you, when we talk about giants were real in the olden times. Yeah. Because if you were my height,

Six foot five. I would have burnt you at the stake. One hundred and ninety-nine centimetres, sadly. Okay. That's a cross-eye bear. If you'd have been like really, really, really tall compared to what else. George Washington was six three. Yeah, he was tall.

Yeah, he was tall. Yeah, he was tall. Yeah, he was tall. That little jacket was telling me out in English. Very, very petite. Yeah. Do you know who wasn't petite? Emma Hamilton?

She's described as being quite tall. Oh, was she? Yeah. Yeah. Tall and, well, this healthy, it kind of comes through to the glowing, healthiness of the kind of robustness of her. Yes. She's got like really good looks. I'll be back with Dan after this short break.

Did they meet? So that's all a long way of the backstory is that they really meet when she's in Naples, which we should also say sounds like in a random Italian city. It's the heart of this really... It's the court. The forgotten kingdom of, is it called the two Sicily? Anyway, it's the kingdom of southern Italy and Sicily and Naples.

It's an important European player at the time. Yeah, and she's not only there like hobnobbing with the hobnobs, but she's actually becoming besties with Queen Carolina. Because as we've said, she turns a really terrible situation round. Yep. Her husband, her new husband is the British ambassador to this court. He is. So she goes wrong, I might as well make the best of her.

And she really does. Like, Queen Carolina is Marie Antoinette's sister. Amazing. And the French Revolution. is kind of in the background swirling around through all of this. And Emma is actually instrumental in doing a lot of things, which actually does meet Nelson, in sort of helping various revolutions that kick off in Naples.

And she helps the Queen and the Royal Family out. She helps look after children. All of this is forgotten, like completely late when she falls on hard times. She's a very, like, the closest advisor to the Queen, right? And sort of pulling the strings at the court. I mean, it's incredible. Yeah, a girl from the Whirl with like no formal education. But she learns a time.

Italian and French fluently at this point. So she's really smart. Amazing. Like in not very much time as well. But it's not all smooth sailing because there is quite a lot of stigma and snobbery because people know about her background. So she's constantly fighting that. But that's, so she's out in Naples, hobnobbing when, and that's how she meets Nelson. And it is really difficult to overstate. So she's one of the most famous women in Europe.

She is by this point. Yeah. And in to Port Sales, the bandaged hero. who has just obliterated the French fleet stopping this great big, mad invasion, effectively stopped bringing into this kind of crazy chat about conquering the whole Middle East and India. And he's already got a string of victories,

but now with the battle now, that is just... Oh, it's cemented it, right? Semented it. He's like Nicca wettingly heroic at this point. He is Nicker wettingly heroic. Yeah, blooms drop into the floor. Wow. And so, imagine, I always think that must have been a cool meeting

when the two of them meet. I read, and I don't know how. how true this is, we'd need Kate Williams to tell us because she did the biography. But I read that when Nelson turns up, it's not long after a battle, and he's got that head wound and he's kind of a bit knackered, and she nurses him back to health. Yes, apparently so. Do you know what we haven't actually said here? We haven't.

This is rather a crucial point in the story. He is buried. Who is buried? Do you remember her? Do you remember Fanny? Yeah, Fanny, his wife. Yeah. The long-suffering family.

The long-suffering family. I've nursed him back to health on previous occasions of various ailments. she is from she was from a planter family in the Caribbean yesterday so they were slave owners and grew sugar and things in the Caribbean and they'd met while he was out there I think yeah and he kind of did that thing that a lot of people do in well not just at this point all throughout history go I guess I'd better get married then

it's just the expected thing is that's what you do especially if you're on the make and it would seem that she was kind of sold to him not like sold literally but he thought that she had a lot of money and that she was going to come into a lot of money and sort of that wasn't as true as it had been set up. But she really loved him. She loved him.

They couldn't have kids. No, I don't think they... I always think they... Part of the reason, a lot of these naval guys can have kids because they're not in the same place. Well, they're also... Even more basic.

They're not in the same place very much. No, he's traveling a lot, isn't he? He's away from home a lot. He's on the king's business. He is. And then he meets Emma. Well, and as he said, I think he says, I quote this all the time, not in a bad way. He has every man as a bachelor beyond Gibraltar.

Oh, right. Okay. Okay, Horatio. That was his point of view. Well, he... Not condoned by this point of course. When he falls for Emma, he falls like hard. Yeah, no, it's crazy.

It's fizzy. It really, yeah, fizzy, that's a good... This isn't just, wow, she's a real hottie. Like, he is, he's so obsessed to there. That actually says quite a lot about his character. There are letters that survived that he wrote back to. his wife saying how brilliant Lady Hamilton is, like really outlined. Imagine being Fanny back home and reading that and just like, okay, okay.

He's actually right, but oh my God, she's so amazing, she's so fabulous. Just been thinking, I fucking bitch. Anyway, they fall in love and they fall in love hard. And of course, Emma Hamilton is also married to a 60-year-old volcanologist who... Who we came across in Pompeii, actually, didn't we? He's also a keen collector. He did. He did a lot of that.

He did. And he's still doing his ambassadering. But yeah, he's not in great health and he's sort of 60-ish. But the weirdest thing happens in this. It can only be described as a menagerie, because pretty soon they're lovers, pretty soon. And they don't seem that they are hiding this at all. In fact, it all seems to be happening with Hamilton's complete understanding knowledge.

I don't know what conversations were had, but he seems fine with this. He has Nelson in his house. There's no problem at all. Just that's my wife. Help yourself. And here's us thinking we're, you know, pioneering polyamorous society now. But this is going on. Maybe he was just a massive Nelson fan.

I think possibly. And he's just such a great man that he was like, yeah, you can have an affair in my wife. Well, for him, it's probably easy come, easy go. I mean, given it she was sent him by his nephew, just randomly turned up. But they're married now. I know, sure, but I mean... But anyway, so we should see before...

And just in this period of Naples, and we mentioned Lady Emma Hamilton as a super important political play. I mean, actually Nelson makes big interventions in the kind of internal politics of this kingdom, which we won't get a bit... It gets in as much trouble as he'll ever get in politically. And it's thought that because Lady Emma Hamilton

and the Queen are sort of manipulating Nelson, he's using... Entirely possible. ...the British naval might in ways that to suit not Britain, but the royal family of Naples. I mean, it's, it is, it's bonkers. At one point, there was a revolution. There's a revolution.

There's a revolution. Wasn't there? And Nelson, on Emma Hamilton's urging, seems to sort of override the sort of peace settlement, the political settlement was so hashed out. So it's sketchy as hell. But one thing I will say, and this, a lot of people don't know this,

is that during this revolution, Malta, which I believe you have just been to, was blockaded and the people were starving, and Emma Hamilton managed to use her influence to get food to those people. She was actually given an iron cross of Malta. Are you serious? Yeah, I'm certain.

She wore it for the rest of her life. And she became such a fashion icon that other people actually started wearing pretend crosses of Malta. She wore it for her entire life. She was so proud of that. It's amazing that you can have European celebrity. We think today with our globalised media and insight, but actually you could have kind of Europe-wide celebrity at this point. Yeah.

And she was. And the people wanted to know everything about her and what she was wearing and how she was doing her hair. There's one story about Nelson's wife Fanny. her brother actually sent her a copy of a multi-cross because they were so popular at the time not realizing that they were they were popular because the woman

that was banging her husband was wearing one. God. It's an awkward Christmas, that one. But yeah, she did. She got the Iron Cross all by herself. I'll be back with Dan after this short break. They are lovers. By 1800 she has fallen.

pregnant. Yes, yes. She has had another child, by the way. We didn't actually say that one when she was, we mentioned to it, the little girl that she had and was fostered out. Way back. That's, the baby's still around, but she kept that from Nelson for a very, very, very long time. So, this is actually her second baby. Called Horatia. Called it. So not subtle. But they do pretend that she's an orphan and they adopt her or something. It's so weird this time. There's like all of this, like everybody knows what's happening. Everybody knows what's happening. But they still have this pretense of,

Oh yeah, it's just an orphan. It's just a random orphan that we found that we've called Horatia for some reason. And people knew that she was pregnant. And one of the reasons they knew she was pregnant is because when she's back in London, maternity wear starts to become really fashionable because that's what she's wearing. So everybody knows she's pregnant, but we're going to pretend that this is just an orphan. So then he goes off and wins the second of his three great battles in which she commands. This time fighting the Danes.

Okay, okay. Copenhagen. Right, they got involved, did they? They got involved. Well, they, poor things. They, they, they didn't really know they're getting involved. But their fleet was too valuable to fall into French hands. And so the Brits just went and absolutely smashed up their fleet.

That sounds like us. Which is when Nelson, there's this, he didn't say, I see no ships, but he, he, he's... Did he ever say that? His senior commander, he said, I have a right to be blind sometime because he joked about his eye. And he said, his senior commander was saying, do not go into Copenhagen and risk, risk our fleet. And Nelson just sailed straight in and blasted the, Danish ships a bit. Oh, he's audacious, isn't he?

He's very audacious. He is. And he's bold. He's bold. So, and he ignores this, the, the, the, the senior commandant was picking all these flags up, getting return immediately. And he's like, I can't see the signals. I can't see the signals.

I've always like, a rebel, raised to the ranks, a working club. No, I'm not going, but I'm getting distracted now. Yes, you are. Let's come down a bit here, folks. Sorry. I did have quite, that's one of my key moments growing up was watching Sean Bean is sharp. Of course. Yeah, obviously.

Yeah. For everyone, I think. For everyone. for everybody. Particularly when Liz Hurley went on. I remember that episode. Yes. Right.

Moving on. So then he comes back. So he's even more famous now, even more celebrated. And he moves in to a polyamorous household. Basically, yeah. Where it's him and Emma, Emma's husband and their child. And Emma's mum. Except I think at one point is they were living in separate houses down the road from one another.

But then they decided it would all just be easier if they moved in together. And that's exactly what happens. And there's no way that Sir, Hamilton, the husband can't have known what was happening. It's impossible. He clearly knew. He was clearly okay with this. Yeah, I mean, he was treated as Nelson was like a house guest or something.

Yeah, everyone seems to have been getting on very well. But then the old fella dies. Yes, he does. He seems to have picked up some kind of illness when he was away. Yeah. I mean, it could have been anything. Could have been anything. Could have been anything.

Could have been a bit hemlock in his ribina in the morning. They didn't need to do that. No, no, exactly. They were happy. He was no obstacle at all. In fact, at one point, Emma's getting a lot of attention from the Prince of Wales, who was a philandering sex pest, right? Nelson is crazy jealous about this, and he's writing letters to Emilton, Emma going,

don't have moat to the house, don't know, it's terrible. And Hamilton is so concerned about this, he writes to Nelson to tell her that Emma is being faithful to him. Oh, yes, that's extraordinary, isn't it? Yeah. Don't worry. Don't worry, she's being, so he absolutely knew he was completely on board with everything. So he didn't need to be got rid of. Apparently Emma was reasonably upset when he died.

He sounds like he's, you know, quite a nice guy. But you know, the thing about him, maybe he's on the right side of history because we're still talking about him now. Otherwise, he'd be a forgotten footnote. Yes. Yes. This is my shot. So he dies.

He's my shot to be remembered. 1803 dies in his early 70s. So he's, yeah, he's... He's done all right. He's done all right. Emma gets loads of marriage offers at this point because she's super famous. And Nelson is still married. He cannot get divorced and married.

No. He wants to, though. He tries to, but she's not playing ball. And this doesn't go in Emma's favour, but she is vicious about Fanny Nelson. She says some awful things about her. In fact, in one of the letters, she writes to a friend, I'm paraphrasing, but she basically writes,

I'd love to say I'm signing off Mrs Nelson, but I just don't think that's going to happen because she just won't die. So the great tragedy at this moment is that Emma probably should have married one of these rich suitors, should she? There's lots of should have moments here for Emma. There's loads and loads of shoulders.

She should have married, but she's holding out thinking she's going to get to be Mrs Nelson. Well, late, yeah. And because when he dies, the husband dies, she doesn't get all the money. He's horrendously in debt because he's been spending loads as an ambassador thinking that he's basically got an expense account

and the British government will pay it all back and that's not how that works at all. So he's living on credit and then all of the estate passes to his nephew, Gravel, who we remembered. Not that guy. That guy. And he gives, Emma's basically got a pension that kind of amount, like not pension. annuity that amounts to about £100,000 a year in today's money. That's what she gets, but she's utterly dependent on gravel paying it to her.

So she's not in a great position here at all. Wow. I know. It's really crap, isn't it? That all the money just went to him. She's now very vulnerable, but convinced that she's going to end up as Mrs. Nelson, this is all going to have a happy ending. Yeah, and we should say Nelson's been elevated to the period, so she'd be Viscountess, Nelson.

She would. This is a weird thing. Nelson always signed his name. It's really annoying when you're looking at a Nelson letter, and you're often. often writes Bronte. And you're like, what are you talking about? And because he got an Italian dukedom.

And the dukedom's higher than being a Viscount. And he was like, the Brits were always like, you know, we're not going to meet you a Jew, right? And so he would go, I'm actually the Duke of Bronte. And everyone's like,

that's a stupid. That's not a thing. So he signs himself sometimes Nelson and Bronte, which is why the Brontes changed their name from Bronte to Bronte. I did not know that. But it was a silly thing. He was very vain.

And so she would have been the Dutch of Bronte. Right. And then so 1803, they exchange rings. He tells her that she's his wife. She's not, though. But that's right. It's legal. Remember that, kids.

Yeah. This is a very important lesson. Get the ink on a bit of paper. As a wise woman once said. In the eyes of God, you're my wife. Yeah. Yeah, but that's, as a wise woman once said, put a ring on it. Put a ring on it, man.

And we'll see why in a second. Yes. So there's this extraordinary few months, really, between 1803 and 1805. they are the most famous people in the country. Yeah. People are losing their crap trying to get to see. Astonishingly successful, Admiral, War Hero. Darkest hours of Britain.

Very, very dangerous time, Britain. And he just keeps winning these astonishing victories. Their house is like a sort of open house. Celebrities come royalty. It's amazing. Well, he buys this house. Are these called like Merton or something like that? And he leaves Emma to basically do it.

And she tries to turn it into, it's like Nelsonland, basically. Yeah, it's like, it's like, it's like, It's like, it's like, Graceland, but for Nelson, she's like got pictures of him everywhere, like people come in and see it. People turn up.

They're happy, yeah, people are happy to do that. It's like, and she re, she goes all in for this guy. Yeah. All in.

That's a mistake. That's a mistake. Never go all in. Diversify your income. And then he, this is not to do that year, Malton, but I love this moment.

This, I love this moment. He goes to, in 85, he goes to London to meet with the, sort of effect through the person who's foreign secretary. And he sits in his ante room. He meets a young general

just back from India called Sir Arthur Wellesley. Oh, I've heard of him. Wellington, the man who becomes Wellington, is the only time Wellington Nelson meet. To Britain's two greatest military commanders, one of the land, one of the sea. I thought they were besties.

No, they meet in about half an hour conversation. Initially, Nelson, it behaves like an idiot. And Wellesley, who hated everyone, basically. He's very snobbish and dismissive everyone. He thought, who is this man? He was sort of poncing about. Nelson leaves the room, finds out who Wells is. He comes back in.

He's like, okay, this guy's good value. done these amazing things. India, he's built name for himself and Nelson's like, and then they have a conversation and later Wellington says it was the most interesting conversation I ever had. And no one knows what was said in that room. Wow. That is very cool actually. And then Nelson gets, goes down to Portsmouth. Doesn't take his badges off. Yeah. Doesn't, doesn't, I suppose he has a tearful farewell. Yeah. The last bit of land that he sets foot on in Britain is a shingle beach in Pottsworth's where I've been and I've taken my kids there and he leaves goes out through the gate in the wall in the sort of harbor wall in Portsmouth. HMS Victory is anchored off and he gets on board

HMS Victory and he goes down to join the fleet off Cadiz where massive French and Spanish fleet are stuck in port and the Brits are blockading them and he says bring me my extra shiny jacket bring bring my jacket yeah and then he the Brits stupidly the Spanish and French sail out of said harbour for reasons that are rather confusing and strange and they should not have done that and present themselves for the complete demolition and Nelson just sails straight out of them and annihilates them and he shot really quite early on in the battle so for most of the battle of Trafalgar Nelson is mortally wounded. Does he not coughing up his own blood? Does it take a while for him to take one? He finds out he's won. He shot really quite early on right his secretary they're

sailing towards the French and Spanish fleet and his secretary is killed his brains and blood spattered over Nelson. His captain standing next to him gets the buckle of his shoe shot off. So Nelson's like, this is hot work, lads. And then they, HMS victory, he insists on it going first, a ship was overtaking HMS victory,

and he says, back your sails and fall back, I will break the line. So he insists that he's going to be the first guy to break the French-Smerge line. He does so, but, and he obliserates one French ship, and then he grapples another one, and someone in the rigging shoots him through the shoulder,

in that shoulder, and it goes through his spine and then he collapses and then he collapsed on the deck and he says they've done for me I'm done I know I'm done my spine shot through I'm done he goes they carry him downstairs the surgeon go someone says the admiral's here

the surgeon goes oh look after you and the surgeon and Nelson said look after everyone else there's no point look after me it's too late for me and he goes and he lies in a corner on the bottom deck of this ship in the darkness and the people bring in reports as he's dying he slungs to start filling up with blood but as he's dying people are saying

oh this this ship has surrendered that ship surrendered and it's clear at the end of the day that he's won. But his last, he says, please, please tell my country to look after Emma. Doesn't it? Not kiss me Hardy. No, it's not clear about asking Hardy to kiss him. What is that, by the way? He may have asked Hardy to kiss him. I think that they, I think, you know, masculinity was different back then. Hugging, kissing was all part of fun. Yeah, possibly? But also he, so he just, he was feeling cold and lonely and he was seeing, he was seeing the darkness coming for it. been delirious. Well, he also might

have wanted his great mate to give him a little kiss and say, you know, I'm here with you. Fair. But more reliably, he seems to have said, please look after Emma. But he's definitely said, he said, thank God I've done my duty yet, and he said, please look over him. He may have all said Kismet, which is Arabic for like fate. Oh, that's very poetic.

Yeah. But anyway, so yes, he does say, please love it, Emma, and Captain Hardy, his friend, and the British state, fundamentally fail to you know, to discharge Horatia's last request.

Not that I want to speak hello the dead, but he also kind of fucked that up because he didn't put it in his will. No. In his will he basically said of the British state

please look after Emma which means that like he put something in there about like, oh please look after it but didn't actually put please give her this money. Yeah, I know.

And it's a lesson for all of us particularly now that we live in lots of unmarried households. You've got to be very careful. You've got to be very careful. You've got big problems. Yeah. See those.

see those brothers-in-law and sister-in-law that you think we all get on really well? No. No. You've got to put a ring on it if you're being serious. The actual Vicantus Nelson, Fanny. Oh, yeah. What do you think that she was going to do? Because as soon as the legal mechanism kicks in, she's the wife. She's the one that we're going to go to. She's the one organising the funeral. Do you think she's going to say, yeah, we should get that Emma Hamilton over?

She, she, she, they're the most astonishing funeral. Boat Trip up the Thames, St. Paul's Theodore, Buried in the heart. of this cathedral still in the crypt today, you can see it. She's not allowed to go. She's not allowed to go. She's not allowed to go. In fact, she's pretty much out on her ear at this point. She doesn't get any money from Nelson's will.

She gets nothing. Nobody actually looks after her. And what we've got, she outlives in by 10 years. And those 10 years are basically a slow descent into more and more debt. Because the other thing, this is the, now this is where this is on her, she never stopped spending. Like she's trying to keep up this appearance of being, you know, the lady. She tries to keep the house going, for example.

Yeah. And then that becomes too much friends. And so she's living on credit. She's getting more and more and more money. She's like playing the name that she's got in the reputation. But it's not enough. And eventually she ends up in a debtor's prison. I know, right.

I mean, it wasn't like, you know, the worst debtor prison, but it's a debtor's prison. No, but it's all a bit little Dorrit, isn't it? Yeah. She's drinking very heavily. And she's got Horatia at her side. She does. She gets addicted to laudanum as well. Which is sort of opium.

Yeah, which is opium. in alcohol. It's not something that you want to be messing about with. And she's burning through what little money she has. She tries borrowing money. She tries getting credit. It doesn't work. And her reputation is really done for. Now, she didn't do this from what I understand, but her letters to Nelson or his letters to her were published because she lost track of them and somebody basically sold them to a publisher. So she didn't even make money out of that. And that was when the public really saw the nasty side of this. That's cheering her lifetime. That's during her lifetime.

But this was her letters going, why won't she just die? Like that, oh, God. So now the public have turned on them because that is a really, that's not very nice. Their reputation is in absolute tatters. And she eventually flees the debtors prison.

She escapes. She goes to France, where she's living in pretty much in poverty. Yeah, Halley. Dyes at 49. Yeah. Boom. And that's a very,

very sad end of Emma Hamilton. I do like the final thing, which is every English and British ship captain in Calais at the time did turn up to her funeral effect. You followed her coffee. I mean, it's a small thing, but they just, that was their last,

frankly, tardy. Yeah, quite frankly. And I think that it was unfair, because she was the mistress, and that's not, it's not great,

but they obviously really, really loved one another. Nelson was very clear, please look after her. People didn't do that. And she did have, like, people were in,

to her and when the time came for it. Yeah, all their friends abandoned. They all went. All these grand friends. She played a really strong part in this revolution in Naples, trying to support the monarchy. They didn't give us stuff. She was beloved by the Prince of Wales.

He couldn't give us stuff either. And they all turned the back on her, all of them. It's just what's so fascinating about it? And you see this in Jane Austen. There's a visceral terror. And frankly, I'm sure many, many in all periods, but particularly in Georgian England, the idea of cascading out of a sort of gentility,

because there is no safety net. No. If you haven't got siblings and you haven't got a wider family, a cousin that can take you in, and you haven't got diamonds, you haven't got, then there's no, there's no parachute. No.

You can hit, you can hit, you can go down, down, down, down. They did. And there's, you know, with vagrancy, whatever it might be. And it's just, it's terrifying, isn't it? That chasm is kind of yawning. even when you're at the heights

you know that unless you've got... She was at the heights as well. The daughter... Popnobbing with the Prince of Wales. I know, right? And he really fancied her as well. The daughter, she takes Nelson's surname but she never

acknowledges Emma Hamilton as a mother during her lifetime. So, yeah. Because she gets taken in by one of his family members, doesn't she? She goes back to England and a sister of Nelson, I think, takes her in. So she's forever the Scarlet woman to be blamed for this.

But I've got a great deal of sympathy for Emma Hamilton. An unspeakably traumatic and brutal life that she's And time and again She's kind of about just trying to make the best of it And using her wit and everything Everything she had out. It's extraordinary.

She is. And I do think that it was a real love story as well. Yeah, definitely. A messy one, but a love story. Yeah, and we don't ever talk about that is that she not only faces social and economic oblivion when Nelson dies. She has lost the love of her life. She has.

With whom she finally, finally, after being trafficked and abused, has met someone that she is consensually in love with. I mean, that's a terrible thing to happen. That is, isn't it? And I think the moral of the story, if we can take one from her point of view, is get a ring on it, don't be doing that,

and save your money. I know, it's very depressing, isn't it? You need that security. You need money. Do you know, I want to talk to someone who is of Russian origin, few generations back. And to this day,

into the 2020s, she advises family members to buy jewelry. And I was like, don't know, jewelry is a bit weird. It's so stupid. She goes, no. It's because you might have to leave in a hurry. And I thought, you know, isn't that amazing? Yeah. That sort of ancestral memory is like, you might have to leave in a hurry,

and you can stick it in a pocket and go. Exactly. If only Emma Hamilton, grab more jewelry, quite frankly. Kate Lister, as always, love that. That was so much fun. Thank you. I learned a lot about Lady Emma Hamilton. And I learned loads about Nelson.

I'm hoping you'd say that. See you next time, girl. Thank you. Thank you for listening, and thank you so much to Dan for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like review and follow along, whatever it is, you get your podcasts. And if you'd like to explore a subject, or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com.

This podcast was edited by Natasha Hughes. It was produced by Sophie G, and the senior producer was Freddie Chick. Join me again, Betwixt Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.