It is doubtful whether Nelson experienced the idyll at Merton that he had hoped for. Instead of being rowed about in a boat by Lady Hamilton, he suffered from exhaustion. Lady Hamilton wrote to his sister-inlaw, Sarah Nelson: ‘I am sorry to tell you I do not think our Dear Lord well. He has frequent sickness, and [is] Low, and he throws himself on the sofa tired and says, I am worn out, but yet he is better, and I hope we shall get him up.’ Considering that he had regarded himself ‘as useful in the cabinet as in the field’ [255], he did not show much political skill in the weeks to come. On 20 November he reminded the Lord Mayor that the City of London had not yet honoured those ‘who [had] fought and so profusely bled under my command’ at the battle of Copenhagen. On having informed the Prime Minister, Addington, about his attempt to gain honours for his subordinates, he was discouraged that a letter to the Lord Mayor ‘could be productive of no good, and might, and (I firmly believe) would, lead to serious embarrassments’. As a consequence Nelson wrote again to the Lord Mayor: ‘By the advice of a friend, I have now to request that your Lordship will consider my letter as withdrawn.’ Nelson's speech in the House of Lords, on 21 December 1801, was similarly lacking in political astuteness. Even if he might have been right in pointing out that Malta, Minorca and the Cape were ‘of no sort of consequence’ to Britain, it was exceedingly undiplomatic to advocate this view in a debate about peace negotiations with France, in which these assets were at issue. William Huskisson, former Under-Secretary for War, remarked in a private letter to the War Minister, Lord Dundas: ‘How can Ministers allow such a fool to speak in their defence?’

Things did not go smoothly in respect to family affairs, either. Nelson's father, Edmund, stayed in touch with Lady Nelson and came to Merton in November 1801, only after having visited his daughter-in-law at Somerset Street, her London residence. Family relations remained strained, even after the visit. Lady Nelson wrote a letter that would be her last attempt at reconciliation: