Orders, Decorations, Campaign Medals and Militaria
300
300 Letter from Lord Nelson to Emma Hamilton An Autograph letter from Lord Nelson written aboard H.M.S. Medusa, asking her to forward to him a letter from Prince Castelcicala, the Neapolitan envoy, reading: ‘My Dear Emma, Pray send good Castelcicala’s letter. My mind is not so perfectly at ease as I wish it, but I hope by your next letter that I shall be made better. To our friends say every thing which is kind and to our enemies damn them. Ever yours most truly and faithfully’, signed ‘Nelson & Bronte’, dated ‘Medusa, Augst. 7th 1801’, together with the postscript ‘Your letter of yesterday not yet arrived’; the accompanying envelope addressed to ‘Lady Hamilton, 23 Piccadilly, London’ and additionally dated and signed ‘Margate, August Seventh, Nelson & Bronte’, with red wax seal, mounted and framed £3,000-5,000 Following the Battle of Copenhagen, Nelson had returned to England in the summer of 1801 and, after a brief stay with the Hamiltons, was given the command of the Fleet defending the English Channel against a proposed French invasion. He hoisted his flag aboard the Medusa at Deal on the 2nd August, and spent the summer reconnoitring the French coast, in order to observe the French invasion fleet. Apart from an attack on the French fleet at Boulogne on the 15th August, when Medusa suffered 55 casualties, there was little action, and on the 22nd October the Treaty of Amiens was signed.
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