I bought a curious little document recently, a few pages disbound from a book or magazine, containing an article ‘Unpublished letters of Lord Nelson.’ I managed to establish that they are from an American magazine, ‘The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine’ for November 1888. There are 24 letters that ‘now belong to Sir Thomas Troubridge, fourth Baronet’, from Nelson to Sir Thomas Troubridge written during and immediately after the Baltic campaign, that date from the beginning of March to the end of May 1801.
I wondered if they had been left hidden in this obscure little magazine but a little more reading found quotations from them in Vincent’s biography where the source is given as ‘the Naval Miscellany, Vol. 1’, edited by Sir John Knox Laughton, published in 1901.
You can buy a copy of the miscellany or, you can read the letters as they were published in the ‘Century Illustrated Magazine’ which is available on line.
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/ ... 287-0037-4
The letters make interesting reading. They are intimate in tone, Nelson confiding his irritations with Sir Hyde Parker, expressing his views on the political situation with Denmark and teasing Troubridge, now ‘lording it’ at the Admiralty, that ‘we can have no desire for staying, for her Ladyship is gone and the Ball for Friday night knocked up by your and the Earl’s unpoliteness, to send gentlemen to sea instead of dancing in nice white gloves.’
He also assures Troubridge that ‘every letter of your is in the fire, and ever shall, for no good but much harm might arise from their falling into improper hands’ which hints at indiscretions by Troubridge also. And Troubridge is clearly still trusted with Nelson’s intimate correspondence: ‘Pray send my letters as directed’; and on several occasions, simply, ‘Pray forward the enclosed’.