Three months before their marriage he writes to her from Antigua, where he has Prince William Henry with him: "What is it to attend on princes! let me attend on you and I am satisfied. Some are born for attendants on great men; I rather think that is not my particular province. His Royal Highness often tells me he believes I am married, for he never saw a lover so easy or say so little of the object he has a regard for. When I tell him I certainly am not, then he is sure I must have a great esteem for you, and that it is not what is vulgarly--I do not much like the use of that word--called love. "He is right; my love is founded on esteem, the only foundation that can make the passion last. I need not tell you what you so well know, that I wish I had a fortune to settle on you; but I trust I have a good name, and that certain events will bring the other about; it is my misfortune, not my fault. You can marry me only from a sincere affection; therefore I ought to make you a good husband, and I hope it will turn out that I shall." Again he writes, "I daily thank God, who ordained that I should be attached to you. He has, I firmly believe, intended it as a blessing to me, and I am well convinced you will not disappoint his beneficent intentions." These are certainly very different letters from those which he wrote in after years to Lady Hamilton, whom he idolized. Undoubtedly Nelson mistook loneliness of heart for love; as he wrote to Lady Hamilton years after, "I never did love any one else.... I have been the world around, and in every corner of it, and never yet saw your equal, or even one who could be put in comparison with you." Nelson and Mrs. Nisbet were married March 12, 1787, Prince William giving away the bride. Many of his friends in the service regretted that he had married before his honors had been more fully won. "The Navy," said Captain Pringle, the day after the wedding, "yesterday lost one of its greatest ornaments by Nelson's marriage. It is a national loss that such an officer should marry; had it not been for that circumstance, I foresaw that Nelson would become the greatest man in the service." Nelson took his wife to England, arriving at Spithead July 4, about four months after their marriage. He had applied for a ship-of-the-line, but no notice was taken of the request. He retired with his wife to the parsonage at Burnham Thorpe, and at the request of his aged father remained there. He was in very poor health and living on half-pay. "From the 30th of November, 1787, to the 30th of January, 1793," says W. Clark Russell, in his life of the hero, "Nelson, whose delicate form enclosed the genius of the greatest sea-captain the world has ever produced, was compelled by departmental neglect to lie by in an almost poverty-stricken retirement."