“Kiss me, Hardy” or “Kismet, Hardy”? Both versions are in common use, the first being clearly more universal. The easy answer is that, regardless of the variation, these were not his last words (that’s a trick question!).
It is a common misconception that Nelson’s last words were “Kiss me, Hardy”, spoken to the captain of HMS Victory, Thomas Hardy. Nelson told Hardy this, but Hardy was not present for Nelson’s last words, as he was called on deck at the time. Contemporary sources report that his last words to Hardy were “God bless you, Hardy”, uttered after Hardy kissed him (which he did, so there is no doubt that Hardy thought he heard).
Nelson’s last words (as recounted in 3 written accounts by those who were with Nelson when he died) were “Thank God I have done my duty”, which he is said to have repeated until he could not speak. Although this is recorded by the surgeon Beatty, he was actually not present when Nelson was unable to speak, he was called and returned just before Nelson died. The chaplain, Scott, and the purser, Burke, appear to have been with Nelson throughout, with Scott supporting “Thank God I’ve done my duty” as the last words.
On a more human level, throughout the three hours of pain Nelson endured, his continual refrain is reported to have been “Rub, rub…fan, fan…drink, drink” as instructions to those around him. for him three things that gave him some comfort. There is a possibility that those were his last words, in fact, but there was no possibility that they had ever been recorded as such, certainly not by the chaplain.
The misconception that Nelson actually said “Kismet Hardy” (kismet comes from the Arabic word ‘qismah’, meaning fate or luck) seems like a Victorian invention, as the first recorded use in the English language of “kismet” was 1849.
It is probably no coincidence that the mid-Victorian era saw the rise of the great Public Schools that educated the children who would fight for and rule the Empire. This was the same era that embraced the works of Thomas Bowdler (whose familiar versions of Shakespeare were first published in 1818), and there’s no doubt that Victorian masters would have thought “Kiss Me, Hardy” unmanly and dangerous. to teach. impressionable boys in boarding schools.
Masters of the time would have tried to explain this away by saying that Nelson might have known the word from his tours of duty in the Mediterranean and that the others simply didn’t understand it because no other word apart from “kiss me” made sense to them.
However, for such an explanation to work, we must ignore all sources recording Nelson’s religious observance, because by introducing the strange word ‘Kismet’ at the time, along with the statements “God bless you, Hardy” and “Thank you to God I have done my duty” isn’t really credible to the extent that if he meant to imply that he was destined to die, then he would have said something like it’s just another part of God’s grand design.
So the answers are:
Last words to Hardy: “God bless you Hardy”
Last words recorded: “Thank God I have done my duty”