re. She asked Lord Keith
in her own proper person for the Foudroyant to take her back. He
refused positively giving her such a ship. The Queen wept, concluding
that royal tears were irresistible; but he remained unmoved, and would
grant nothing but a frigate to convoy her own frigates[8] to Trieste.
He told her Lady Hamilton had had command of the fleet long enough.
The Queen is very ill with a sort of convulsive fit, and Nelson is
staying there to nurse her; he does not intend going home till he has
escorted her back to Palermo. His zeal for the public service seems
entirely lost in his love and vanity, and they all sit and flatter
each other all day long." It is only fair to say that there are
indications, in the correspondence, of bad terms between the Hamiltons
and Wyndham, who, therefore, was probably not a sympathetic observer.
He had also before this written unpleasantly to Nelson, insinuating,
apparently, a lack of attention to duty; for the latter in a letter to
Troubridge says, "I send you an extract of Mr. Wyndham's unhandsome
mode of expressing himself towards me." Towards Keith her Majesty
manifested her displeasure by omitting him in the public leave she
took of all the officials.

The Queen finally resolved to continue her journey, but the victories
of the French introduced into the political future an element of
uncertainty, which caused her to delay a month in Leghorn, undecided
whether to go by sea or land; and Nelson had vowed not to forsake her.
Keith, after some days, relented so far as to authorize the
"Alexander" taking the royal family to Trieste, but many of the party
were averse to the sea voyage. There had been for some time living
with the Hamiltons a Miss Knight, an English lady already in middle
life, whose journal gives the chief particulars that have been
preserved of this period. "The Queen," she wrote, "wishes, if
possible, to prosecute her journey. Lady Hamilton cannot bear the
thought of going by sea; and therefore nothing but impracticability
will prevent our going to Vienna." When it was at last fixed, after
many vacillations, that they should go to Ancona, and there take small
Austrian vessels for Trieste, she exclaims, "to avoid the danger of
being on board an English man-of-war, where everything is commodious,
and equally well arranged for defence and comfort! But the die is
cast, and go we must." She mentions that Lord Nelson was well, and
kept up his spirits amazingly, but Sir