Nelson’s Hardy and His Wife

Some account of the lives and married life of Vice-Admiral Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy, G.C.B. (“Nelson’s Hardy”) and of his wife, Louisa, Lady Hardy
(afterwards Lady Seaford), derived from the hitherto unpublished journals and
correspondence of Lady Seaford, and from the Hardy papers

1769–1877

By John Gore

Chapter II: Nelson’s Hardy (Extract: Battle of Trafalgar)

With Blackwood, Hardy witnessed Nelson’s last testament [...] He was by his side on the quarter-deck when the fatal shot was fired. He was grazed himself during the day, as one of the shoebuckles he wore that day testifies. He attended Nelson in the murky cockpit whenever he could leave the deck and was with him almost to the end. His last report gave an estimate of fourteen or fifteen enemy ships struck. Nelson answered:

That is well, but I bargained for twenty.

And then:

Anchor, Hardy, anchor.

Hardy suggested that Collingwood should properly make the signal.

Not while I live, Hardy. No, do you anchor, Hardy; if I live, I’ll anchor.

And then:

Don’t throw me overboard, Hardy; take care of my dear Lady Hamilton, take care of poor Lady Hamilton. Kiss me, Hardy.

Hardy kissed him.

Now I am satisfied. Thank God, I have done my duty. God bless you, Hardy.

He groped his way out, and the romance of that hour cast a halo round the practical, unromantic sailor—which will not fade and has rather obscured the solid achievements of his subsequent career.

For the next six days Hardy’s hands were full. He had time neither for sorrow nor speculation. The fleet was in no state to ride at ease the great gale which sprang up as the gunfire of Trafalgar died away. The Victory, which had led into action, had suffered as severely as any in material damage and in casualties among the crew. The body of Nelson tossed on a hulk. The masts were shot clean away or riddled and she was making a foot of water an hour; and for five anxious days the gale blew directly into Cadiz. Meanwhile the Victory, which was taken in tow by the Polyphemus, on the 23rd, had no communication with the Fleet.

A letter written soon after the battle by a midshipman in the Victory, young Roberts from Burton Bradstock, gives some details about Hardy. He says:

I doubt not Captain Hardy will put me in another ship if he does not go to sea again which I do not think likely as he seems to wish to be on shore for a little time; I have no doubt that the action will make him Sir Thomas which he well deserves… He asked me if I intended writing a long letter home. I told him yes. He said I must ask you [the boy’s father] to go to Portisham and tell his friends that he was well, and that he shouldn’t write them; but I believe it was in joke… He was struck two or three times by splinters but nothing to hurt, thank God.

On the 27th he found time to give his family, through Manfield, a brief report of the battle and the fate of Possum and Dorset men.

The letter which follows was discovered by Mr. Bartelot in 1905. It was not in the possession of the Manfield family. He had a facsimile made of it for reproduction in his book on Hardy already referred to. The original is now appropriately in the Dorchester Museum, preserved with other Hardy relics.

Add: Mr. Manfield, Dorchester, Dorset

Endorsed: 27 Oct 1805, Capt. Hardy, after the action off Trafalgar.

Victory off Cadiz.

Oct. 27th 1805.

Dear Manfield,

We have on the 21st inst obtained a most glorious Victory over the Combined Fleets but it has cost the country a life that no Money can replace and for whose Death I shall for ever mourn. Our dear and ever to be lamented Lord fell in the action and as it fell to our lot to lead the Fleet into action our loss has been rather great—54 killed and 80 wounded. However I have come off unhurt. The weather ever since the action has been so bad, that we have had some difficulty to save our shattered ship and have had no communication with any of the Fleet. I really cannot say the exact number of ships taken but twelve we are certain of, tho’ I much fear that many of them are since lost and one or two taken into Cadiz as the gale for these last 5 Days has not ceased blowing directly on that shore.

Thos. Bartlett is well and has written by this conveyance and it will also be satisfactory for Sam Clark (of Possum) to know that his son is well. The Victory is in so rude a state that she must be ordered to England, at any rate you will soon see me and I am determined to remain on shore some months. You will suppose my mind is not very easy and I am sure you will excuse this hasty scrawl. We are this moment ordered to Gibraltar by Telegraph and I have only time to say that in the hopes of seeing you soon, I remain with good wishes for all, Dear Manfield,

Ever yr most affectionately

T. M. Hardy.

It was not until December 4th that the Victory at last put in to St. Helen’s, when arrangements were at once made to remove Nelson’s body in preparation for the state funeral at St. Paul’s.

Hardy’s honours and rewards were not long delayed. He was created a baronet; he was chosen to bear the “banner of emblems,” behind the Prince Regent as chief mourner, at the state funeral on January 9th. On the 28th he received his share of the thanks of both Houses, though his share of that thanks expressed in more practical form was not so punctually forthcoming. Of the £300,000 voted for distribution to the fleet by Parliament, T. M. Hardy, Esq., Captn., graded First Class (I) received £2,389 7s. 6d., with the addition of just under £1,000 representing prize money.

Chapter 3: Old Admirals and Young Wives (Extract: The Buckingham Duel)

[...]

Like all women of fashion in history and fiction (down to Mr. Maxwell’s Lady Maybury), Lady Hardy deplored the fact that “Society is not what it was.” Of the people she mentions in the above review, almost all are too well known to readers of the vast mass of contemporary memoirs to need a single note. They are all familiar to us from the ages of Creevey and Greville. One or two of them made rather interesting incursions into her life later on. One only, the first she names, need detain us now—Lord Buckingham.

Richard Grenville, Marquess and (after 1822) first Duke of Buckingham, was born in I776 and was thirty-eight years of age in 1814. He had married the heiress of Brydges, Duke of Chandos, de jure Lady Kinloss, and thereby added more surnames and properties to his already exalted family. There is peculiar significance in Lady Hardy’s pointed but guarded reference to him. A young woman in the middle twenties, lonely and attractive, cheerful, lively and courageous, with the keenest zest for life and experience, it was not surprising that she should have collected round her in all innocence a circle of men who felt that her deserted state cried out for their special protection, and that humanity (if not Destiny) marked them out as guide, philosopher and friend to so helpless, so lonely, so charming a young female.

Her journals tell us that a number of men of fashion felt the call and responded to it, and indeed throughout her life she was never lacking a cavalier, and not seldom the size of her retinue was an embarrassment rather than a help. Lord Buckingham had felt the call, and having read into the terms of reference of his mission more than in fact stood there, he had, in 1814, received a rebuff which put an end to a promising friendship.

Lord Abercorn, a much older man, responded to the call also. James John, first Marquess of Abercorn, was, in 1814, fifty-eight years of age and then married to his third wife, Lady Anne Jane Gore, a daughter of the second Earl of Arran. Lord Abercorn, eccentric as he was, acted the role of father to her. But Lord Buckingham was furiously, insanely jealous.

To what depths of infamy this jealousy led him, a man judged sane, and born at least a gentleman, no normal reader would guess. Though the charges against him were never brought to the proof in a court of law, none acquainted with the affair at the time and none who reads the still existing evidence, could have a shadow of doubt of their reality. Lord Buckingham started a regular campaign of calumny against Lady Hardy in reference to her “relations” with Lord Abercorn, by means of anonymous letters to friends and even police offices, and authoritative if oblique whispers to newspaper editors.

There is a document in Lady Hardy’s handwriting headed “Memorandum of Evidence as to the author of the anonymous letters.” In this she is able to show in three cases of these anonymous letters addressed respectively to Sir Thomas, to Lord Frederick Bentinck and to Lord Abercorn that facts stated in them (as opposed to the libellous charges) had been definitely communicated to Lord Buckingham and to none other outside the parties concerned.

In the letter to Lord Frederick Bentinck he charged Lord Abercorn with preparing a drug with which to overcome any resistance Lady Hardy might make to his overtures. Sir Thomas was charged in other letters with taking complacency money from Lord Abercorn. Indeed, the letters reached the depths of infamy or the borderline of insanity, and Sir Thomas was compelled to act.

Early in June, 1816, he obtained £1,000 damages in the Sheriff’s Court against the Morning Herald, which had published one of the libels, and later in the month he went out with Buckingham, who tried to escape by sending an anonymous warning of the impending duel to the police. Lord March acted as his second and William Fremantle acted for Buckingham. Abortive shots were exchanged, when the seconds stopped the duel. Thereafter the anonymous letters ceased, but the good offices of Lord Sefton were accepted by Hardy in making known in Society the case against Lord Buckingham.

It is an extraordinary story, the more so when one considers Buckingham’s subsequent career and progress at Court and as a Member of the Government. A letter written at this time by Hardy to his brother-in-law, George Seymour, sums up the affair.

3 Montague Square

June 24th 1816.

My Dear Seymour

I should have written to you sooner but I knew that Louisa would give a much better description of our late, unpleasant business than I could do. You was [sic] well acquainted with my opinion of the whole of it and you must have been a little surprised when you heard that I had gone out but I begin to hope that it has had the desired effect, as the Anonymous letters have not made their appearance since. I believe Louisa told Georgy [her sister] that some were sent to the different Police offices, three of which we got; I also saw the Hackney Coachman who delivered them and got from him a 1 pound note which he received for driving the Suspected Person to the different offices. We have not had the good luck to trace the note to the giver, therefore we still want positive Proof but the Anonymous letters are written in the same hand as one received by me some time ago, you might recollect it, as it was the only one written with the left hand.

Give my love to Georgy and tell her that she is not more surprised at my missing my mark than I was. However I hope all is for the best.

My dear George

Yours most affectionately

T. M. Hardy.

My rheumatism is as bad as ever and I am going to Moulsey, I should like to extend my visit to Exeter and I most certainly will do as soon as I can get Louisa to accompany me, but at this moment I think it would be wrong to leave her in town alone.

[...]