rom Naples at the
same time as the King did in Nelson's ship, and remained six months at
Palermo; so I had a great deal of intelligence concerning the Hero
and his Lady ... Nelson and the Hamiltons all lived together in a
house of which he bore the expense, which was enormous, and every sort
of gaming went on half the night. Nelson used to sit with large
parcels of gold before him, and generally go to sleep, Lady Hamilton
taking from the heap without counting, and playing with his money to
the amount of L500 a night. Her rage is play, and Sir William says
when he is dead she will be a beggar. However, she has about L30,000
worth of diamonds from the royal family in presents. She sits at the
Councils, and rules everything and everybody." Some of these
statements are probably beyond the personal knowledge of the narrator,
and can only be accepted as current talk; but others are within the
observation of an eye-witness, evidently thought credible by Lady
Minto, who was a friend to Nelson. Mr. Paget, who succeeded Hamilton
as British minister, mentions the same reports, in his private letter
to Lord Grenville, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
Hamilton had asked to see his instructions. "I decided at once not to
do so, for he would certainly have been obliged to show them to Lady
Hamilton, who would have conveyed them next moment to the queen ...
Lord Nelson's health is, I fear, sadly impaired, and I am assured that
his fortune is fallen into the same state, in consequence of great
losses which both his Lordship and Lady Hamilton have sustained at
Faro and other games of hazard."[77]

The impressions made upon Lord Elgin, who touched at Palermo on his
way to the embassy at Constantinople, are worth quoting; for there has
been much assertion and denial as to what did go on in that
out-of-the-way corner of the world, Lady Hamilton ascribing the
falsehoods, as she claimed they were, to the Jacobinical tendencies of
those who spread them. "During a week's stay at Palermo, on my
passage here," wrote Elgin, "the necessity of a change in our
representative, and in our conduct there, appeared to me most urgent.
You may perhaps know from Lord Grenville how strong my impression on
that subject was."[78] Troubridge, a pattern of that most faithful
friendship which dares to risk alienation, if it may but save, wrote
urgently to his chief: "Pardon me, my Lord, it is my sincere esteem
for you that makes me mention it. I know y