England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton (14 page)

Emma began to look forward to spending time with this shy, serious man whom the others shunned. In London he socialized with painters and art collectors, and after her work as a model Emma wanted to know more about art. As Sir Harry's interest in her began to wane a little, she welcomed Greville's attention and flirted terribly with him, singing for him, begging his opinion, and hanging on his every word. He called her Emily, a pet name, and when Sir Harry sent her away from the house for a particularly long period, she even traveled up to London to visit him. Soon, however, her thoughts about any kind of new relationship were superseded by a more serious worry. By the summer of 1781, Emma was beginning to suspect that she might be pregnant.

CHAPTER 13
Desperate Letters

E
mma's child with Sir Harry was conceived in late June or early July. She could have purchased contraceptives by post from Madam Kelly or when she and Harry visited London, but perhaps she had not used them. Men hated the uncomfortable, ill-fitting condoms and complained that contraceptive sponges felt as big as apples. They also found the ritual of douching unromantic. Emma was not in a position to make any demands of Sir Harry. But perhaps—since she was careful never to fall pregnant again until she met Nelson—Emma had, even if only subconsciously, hoped that a child might encourage Sir Harry to formalize their arrangement, perhaps even to marry her. More eminent men than he had wed demimondaines. Sir Harry's reactions, however, could be hard to predict. Initially, Emma kept her suspicions about her condition a secret. In the autumn of 1781, Sir Harry made plans to return to London for the season and to attend Parliament. Feeling vulnerable, Emma probably promised to be sweet and uncomplaining, and in return Harry decided to make her his permanent mistress and to set her up in lodgings in London, presumably after paying a large release fee to Madam Kelly. Emma's efforts had been rewarded. She would never have to return to St. James. The Uppark records show that Fetherstonhaugh's estate included a number of large houses in the Strand, which rented for between £20 and £60 per half year.
¹
He may well have allocated Emma an apartment in one of these. There she would have to wait, looking out onto the bustling street that had been her first sight of London only a few years ago. Emma yearned for the city, but now that she was a kept mistress, she was permitted to see it only with Sir Harry or an elderly female chaperone.

Harry threw himself into his parliamentary social life and London nightlife and gradually his visits to her dwindled. Instead he dallied away time at Kelly's and other brothels. Emma did not know it, but he was in deep financial trouble. His mother, Lady Fetherstonhaugh, and the Up-park steward had recorded his refusal to disclose the extent of his debts in the accounts, and they were now demanding that he confess what he owed. He had failed to pay back a £3,000 loan to his mother for so long that she was charging him interest and he had to stave her off with £90.
²
Emma, entirely unaware, waited for him every evening, dressed in the new outfits he had bought her, perfumed and carefully made up, despondent when he failed to appear. She relied on his visits to give her the money she needed for washing, food, clothes, and rent. Frustrated by her situation and in terrified denial about her pregnancy, she began to creep out to see Charles Greville and, it would seem from his letters, other old flames, too.

When Sir Harry did visit, Emma's clinginess lashed him to fury. Her pregnancy, now in its third month, made her tearful and panicky about his behavior. In September or October, she confessed the truth. Sir Harry was furious. It was not the first time he had been in trouble (it was rumored that he was sent on the grand tour after getting a village girl pregnant). He accused Emma of having affairs and trying to trap him, but the baby was his. Even if she had had other lovers, she would have used protection, and a woman tends to conceive with the man with whom she has intercourse most often. Refusing to listen to reason, Sir Harry reacted like a spoiled child. He saw her behavior as treachery: he'd paid out to release her from Kelly's and this was how she had rewarded him. Only sixteen, Emma was too frightened to pretend to be apologetic or humble, the only way to prompt his sympathy. Angrily, he told her that their relationship was over. She was to leave the lodgings, and he never wanted to see her again.

After she had sold the trinkets and some of the dresses Sir Harry had given her, Emma was once more nearly destitute. She knew that Kelly would not take her back, for Fetherstonhaugh was a valued customer. She could have returned to Dr. Graham in 1781 in his new Temple at Pall Mall, where he was promoting the therapeutic benefits of mud bathing. However, she needed more money than Graham could pay her, and it seems more likely that she set up as an independent companion for men, contacting old friends and visiting parties. She hoped that Sir Harry might change his mind. The money required to keep her child for a year was a trifle for a man of his wealth, no more than the cost of an evening's gambling.
Eighteenth-century society looked forgivingly on the offspring of aristocratic men. Many supported their children or persuaded their wives to bring them up along with the legitimate offspring. Sir Harry was less amenable. He was horrified at the thought of a baby and disgusted at Emma for becoming pregnant.

Sir Harry ignored Emma all winter and left London to join a hunting party in Leicestershire. Once there, he refused to answer any of her letters. She begged Charles Greville for help, but he encouraged her to keep writing to Sir Harry. Many girls in her position used an abortionist, such as the Fleet Street doctor advertising as a "gentleman of eminence in the profession whose honour and secrecy may be depended on," able to ensure that "every vestige of pregnancy is obliterated."
³
But Emma wanted to keep her child.

By early January, she was six months pregnant and very afraid. Sir Harry was showing no sign of relenting. She traveled to Chester to stay with some friends of her grandmother. All the while, she corresponded with Greville, who was considering taking her as a mistress. He had asked to see her birth certificate in December (Kelly had presumably instructed her to knock a few years off her age and pretend she was under sixteen). Few men arranged to take on a mistress when she was swollen with another man's child, and Greville exploited his powerful position. Emma, he knew, would have to make all the promises. He did not have to make the contract typical in such negotiations, in which the man offered to supply the woman he chose as a mistress with money, accommodation, clothes, and a carriage. Rather than offer his protection immediately, he waited. In January, she wrote him a desperate, begging letter.

O G what Shall I Dow, what Shall I Dow… O G that I was in your Possession, as I was in Sir H. What a happy Girl would I have been, girl in-dead, or what else am I but a Girl in Distress, in Reall Distress, for God's sake G. write the Minet you get this and only tell me what I ham to Dow, derect me some way, I am almost Mad. O for Gods sake tell me what is to become of me.
⁴

Emma's letter expresses her heartfelt distress, but it is not entirely naive. She borrows her hysterical language from plays about tragic heroines, and also the tales of seduced girls the courtesans acted out in Kelly's parlor. By repeating "what shall I do," she succeeded in communicating her distress without promising that she would not return to Sir Harry or
indeed seek another man. Greville seized his moment. He puffed himself up and pronounced, "Nothing but your letter & your distres could incline me to alter my system." Gratified to see the glamour girl of Uppark plead, he was determined never again to see her choose other men over him. On the day he received her letter, he sent a money order and a set of stipulations.

He admonished her that "it was your duty to deserve good treatment" from Sir Harry, criticized her for being "imprudent" the "first time you came to G. [i.e., Greville] from the country," and complained that "the same conduct was repeated when you was last in town." We can deduce that she came to see him from Uppark but then refused to sleep with him or perhaps met with another gentleman friend. Enjoying his revenge, he hectored, "To prove to you that I do not accuse you falsely I only mention 5 guineas, & half a guinea for coach." He had given her money to visit him, and she had not behaved as he wished. Greville pressed home his point:

As you seem quite miserable now, I do not mean to cause you uneasiness, but comfort, & tell you that I will forget your faults & bad conduct to Sir H. & to myself & will not repent my good humour, if I shall find that you have learnt by experience to value yourself & endeavour to preserve your Friends by good conduct & affection.

Greville went on to explain to Emma how he expected her to "preserve" him. She must give up Harry and her other lovers and see only him. "I would not be troubled with your connexions (excepting your mother) and with Sir H.'s friends for the universe." If she pursued Sir Harry again or chose to "hunt after a new connexion, or try to regain the old ones you gave up as lost," then the deal would be off, for "it would be ridiculous in me to take care of his girl." However, he added, if "you mean to have my protection, I
must first
know from you that you are clear of
every connexion, & that you will never take them again without my consent."
Emma would be required to sever all contacts, not only with Sir Harry and old paramours but also with friends, fellow courtesans, and her entire family other than her mother. She would have to come to town "free from all engagements" and "live very retired." Even her maid, Sophy, would have to go (he promised the girl money and a "good many kisses"). Presumably a Londoner, poor Sophy was stranded in Chester because Greville could not bear Emma to have a servant who had worked for her when
she was companion to many men. Emma was not even allowed to keep her old name. "You should part with your maid and take another name…. I will get you a new set of acquaintances, & by keeping your own secret, & nobody about you having it in their power to betray you, I may expect to see you respected and admired."
⁵
She had no choice but to accept his terms. The bargain was agreed.

Deeply relieved to have a protector, Emma spent the following days staying with friends and then family in the Chester area, who were all smiles now that Greville was sending her money. Then she set off back to London, in a little more comfort than she had experienced when she was twelve. Greville had warned her to ensure that she should not "be on the road without some money to spare, in case you should be fatigued and wish to take your time," so she was able to take perhaps a week, allowing herself to stop at inns and eat properly. When she arrived, exhausted and disoriented, Greville was probably not there to meet her (escorting on journeys was usually the job of a servant, and moreover, Greville was paranoid that anyone might see him with the famous Miss Lyon, mistress of Sir Harry). Instead, his servant took her to a lying-in house for the final weeks of her pregnancy, probably in the City or East End, where they were most common. There, attended by the landlady and an occasional midwife (doctors were expensive and called only in emergencies), she waited to give birth. Greville probably did not visit, for he would have been nervous about his coach being spotted outside a lying-in house. In her January letter to Greville begging for help, Emma added, "Don't tell my mother what distress I am in" (he must have met Mary the previous summer when he entertained Emma in London) but it seems he did tell her, and perhaps Mary visited Emma at the lying-in house.

As many as one in ten eighteenth-century women died in childbirth, or within a few days of delivery, and even mature matrons dreaded giving birth. Many wrote letters to their unborn child in case they died. Only seventeen, Emma was terrified. She was weakened by bloodletting, a practice fashionable in lying-in houses. When the time came, she would have lain on her left side, with the knees bent up and drawn to the abdomen, a position recommended in lying-in houses because it allowed the patient to preserve her modesty and avoid looking at the doctor if he was needed. Wearing a shift tucked up under the arms, she gave birth to her baby. There was no anesthesia, and cesareans were carried out only if the mother died in labor and the child was still alive. Emma had no drugs or alcohol to dull the pain (lying-in houses tended to forbid them). She had
to give birth by herself, for the alternatives were terrible. If a woman could not eject the baby, then she died undelivered (the option for poor women) or the doctor began a horrific operation in which the baby was killed with a blunt hook poked into the vagina, and then cut and removed in pieces. But Emma was young and strong, and gave birth relatively easily to a daughter, whom she named Emma. The baby was taken from her arms almost immediately.