Although ‘Fanny’ was neither the efficient domestic manager that Nelson needed and too nervous to support his thirst for risky glory, their childless marriage was reasonably happy until Nelson became passionately involved with Lady Hamilton in 1799. He left Fanny in 1801 to live with the Hamiltons, paying her an allowance of about £1800 a year but rebuffing all her attempts at contact and reconciliation. The fact that she was not temperamentally suited to sustain the relationship with so complex and demanding a man was in no way Fanny’s fault. She continued to love him and remained more magnanimous towards him than he to her. Her whole life was one of quiet, unexceptional respectability, in which she was supported after Nelson’s death by an official pension of £2000 a year. Nelson promoted her son Josiah’s not very successful career as a naval officer until their separation. He subsequently became a more successful businessman and died suddenly in 1830, hastening her own death the following year: of his seven children all four sons predeceased their grandmother. This portrait is a copy, formerly attributed to Richard Cosway: the original version showed the Battle of Nile in the background.