the interests and policy of his own government, without entailing upon it serious cause of future reclamations and disputes.[34] Hotham’s very indifference and lethargy, while crippling his enterprise, increased his independence.  “I cannot get Hotham on the coast,” he said, “for he hates this co-operation;” but he owns to the fear that the admiral, if he came, might overrule his projects.  The necessity for exertion delighted him.  “My command here is so far pleasant,” he wrote to his friend Collingwood, “as it relieves me from the inactivity of our fleet, which is great indeed, as you will soon see.”  “At present,” he tells his wife, “I do not write less than from ten to twenty letters every day; which, with the Austrian general, and aide-de-camps, and my own little squadron, fully employ my time:  this I like; active service or none.”  As usual, when given room for the exercise of his powers, he was, for him, well.  He had a severe attack of illness very soon after assuming the duty—­“a complaint in the breast”—­the precursor perhaps of the similar trouble from which he suffered so much in later years; but it wore off after an acute attack of a fortnight, and he wrote later that, except being at home, he knew no country so pleasant to serve in, nor where his health was so good.  This well-grounded preference for the Mediterranean, as best suited to his naturally frail constitution, remained with him to the end.

Besides his official correspondence, he wrote freely and fully to those at home, unburdening to them the thoughts, cares, and disappointments of his career, as well as the commendations he received, so dear to himself as well as to them.  Mrs. Nelson and his father lived together, and to her most of his home letters were addressed.  “I have been very negligent,” he admits to her, “in writing to my father, but I rest assured he knows I would have done it long ago, had you not been under the same roof....  Pray draw on me,” he continues, “for L200, my father and myself can settle our accounts when we meet; at present, I believe I am the richer man, therefore I desire you will give my dear father that money.”  One wonders whether, in the slightly peremptory tone of the last sentence, is to be seen a trace of the feeling she is said, by one biographer, to have shown, that he was too liberal to his relatives; an indication of that lack of sympathy, which, manifested towards other traits of his, no less marked than openhandedness, struck a jarring note within him, and possibly paved the way to an indifference which ended so unfortunately for both.  An absent husband, however, very possibly failed to realize what his extreme generosity might mean, to one who had to meet household expenses with narrow means.