Sorry, Horatio, aristocrats have always had a taste for debauchery

Years ago, I dated a man, who’d dated a girl, who’d dated the Prince of Wales. She seemed like the last woman in the world who’d be seduced by royalty, but that only serves to illustrate a singular dilemma: it’s hard to say no to the heir to the throne.

Even Diana, Princess of Wales, who clearly would have been far happier with a member of Duran Duran, was dazzled into ignoring her natural inclinations.

Both Edward VII and his grandson, Edward VIII, cut a swathe through society belles when they were heirsin-waiting. So, even over a gulf of two centuries, it’s easy to understand why Horatio Nelson was traumatised when he discovered that his lover, Emma Hamilton, was being pursued by the Prince Regent and future George IV.

Even by royal standards, George Augustus Frederick was a worldbeating debauchee, who had a string of lovers and one ersatz wedding to his bow. Letters from Nelson to Hamilton, to be auctioned by Sotheby’s next month, reveal the admiral’s anxiety at the Prince of Wales’s attentions to his mistress. In one missive, dated October 10 1801, Nelson writes: “I am sorry that you cannot go to a public place without being tormented by that fellow who has not the smallest regard for Sir William [Emma Hamilton’s husband]. I hate and detest all the great and I would not associate with such company for the world.”

Nelson’s letter is fascinating on many levels. The self-made man’s disdain for the louche aristocratic classes is striking. And all the more so when you consider the admiral himself was, in the eyes of many, showing scant “regard” for Sir William Hamilton by publicly cuckolding him. Yet Nelson clearly observed whatever delicate protocol was necessary when borrowing another man’s wife and Sir William, who was twice his bride’s age, was sanguine about the arrangement.

The diplomat and distinguished antiquarian admired the naval hero and vice versa, and both men presented a stark contrast to the corpulent, hedonistic Prince of Wales. It wasn’t necessarily ignoble in itself to be a courtesan (Emma Hamilton’s beauty was widely celebrated), but submitting to the dissolute George was viewed by many as a tryst too far.

But what animates Nelson’s writing above all else is the acute top note of insecurity. If love is the most universal emotion, then the accompanying fear of loss comes a close, tortuous second. By 1801, Nelson was 43, had lost an arm and most of his teeth, and at the time of writing he’d been ordered to remain on his ship in the Thames Estuary, waiting for peace negotiations with France to be concluded. Just the moment an unscrupulous HRH might choose to make off with your mistress.

It seems nothing – not even victory at Trafalgar and a fleet at your disposal – can protect an anxious lover from the agonies of jealousy.