England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton (47 page)

Emma's lifestyle was ruinously expensive. She and Sir William had chosen one of London's premium rental properties. The lease for a year cost £1,000, and Emma had spent over £2,000 furnishing the house, including £300 on repairing the coach, £300 on wine and coal, and £28 on
employing an exquisitely fashionable French cook. The named staff included Oliver, Emma's maids Fatima, Julia, and Marianne, a valet and butler, coachmen, footmen and housemaids, scullery maids, and kitchen maids. Hiring singers and musicians for evening parties sent costs soaring. Emma opened a bank account with Thomas Coutts, a social climber, known for his generous terms to the Prince of Wales and the aristocracy, although he would not give her a loan. Believing he would soon return to Naples, Sir William was still renting the Palazzo Sessa and the Villa Emma, and paying his staff. He owed more than £6,000 to his bankers there. He also had belongings and a coach waiting for him in Palermo. At the end of 1800, no longer able to hide from his debts, he instructed his agent in Naples to give notice on the lease for the Posillipo house and to sell the furniture and effects from the Palazzo Sessa.

Sir William still hoped for compensation from the British government for his losses at Naples, estimated at around £13,000. Beckford instructed Emma to "pursue your object with those omnipotent looks, words and gestures with which Heaven has gifted you. By such persevering Efforts, and by such alone, we shall obtain justice."
⁴
Emma's flirtatious smiles were hardly going to sway the Foreign Office, however, and they resolutely refused to pay out. The bills for setting up 23 Piccadilly had to be paid, and so Emma agreed to sell most of her diamonds, beginning probably with those Maria Carolina had given her in Naples. She rewarded her husband for his supportive behavior over the birth of Horatia with jewels they believed were worth £30,000, and in return Sir William allowed her to bring Horatia to Piccadilly for a visit. The press were always watching the house, and Emma warned Mrs. Gibson to ensure Horatia was "well covered getting in and out of the coach."
⁵
In the event, the diamonds were sold for only £2,500 (presumably they were not quite as precious as Maria Carolina had implied), and the Hamiltons soon fell into debt again. Sir William heard that the coach he had bought just before they fled Naples was "so heavy no tolerable offer was ever made for it," and the furniture from the Palazzo Sessa was equally unsaleable.
⁶
They hoped Nelson would capture enemy ships in the North Sea and return with prize money, but in the meantime Sir William was forced to take drastic measures. He advertised an auction of his belongings at Christie's. Aiming to generate huge publicity, he made it known that he would be selling most of his portraits of Emma.

"I see clearly, my dearest friend, you are on SALE," Nelson agonized to
Emma. "I am almost mad to think of the iniquity of wanting you to associate with a set of whores, bawds, & unprincipled lyars." He was wretched at the thought of his darling exposed to the crowds at Christie's. "I am really miserable, I look at all your pictures, at your dear hair, I am ready to cry." He begged Davison to remove one portrait from the auction, the notorious
Bacchante
by Vigée-Lebrun, in which Emma reclines on a leopard-skin rug. Vigée-Lebrun's works sold for spectacular prices, particularly because she had painted few English subjects. Christie's demanded £300, but Nelson would have paid any sum. Exhilarated by his catch, Nelson wrote to Emma that if it "had cost me 300 drops of blood I would have given it with pleasure." "If you was single and I found you under a hedge, I would instantly marry you. Sir Wm has a treasure, and does he want to throw it away? That other chap [Greville] did throw away the most precious jewel that God Almighty ever set on this earth." The sudden disappearance of one of the most celebrated paintings set tongues wagging— and made Emma even more notorious. While Nelson was away, she cut her hair to match the latest Paris fashion for short hair. When she revealed her new look, a boyish cut curling around the ears that left the neck enticingly bare, women dashed to hairdressers to follow her lead.

A visit to 23 Piccadilly was the hottest ticket in town, particularly thanks to the patronage of the royal brothers and the Whig circle of the Duchess of Devonshire. Everyone expected luxurious entertainment from Britain's biggest celebrity. Nelson was gratified she was courting London's fashionable set and welcoming his family and friends, but he had no clue about the costs of being a grand hostess. Emma was borrowing heavily, but this time she was doing so against the prospect of Nelson's next win, receiving credit by presenting herself as his mistress.

On March 12, Nelson departed for the Baltic. As the
Morning Herald
joked, "A
celebrntedfemale attitudinarian
ever since our Northern Squadron has put to sea has thrown aside all the lighter airs, and positions of gaiety, confining her imitative talents to those of a graver cast. Cleopatra arrayed in
mournful graces
is now the model that she daily copies."
⁷

"I burn all your dear letters because it is right for your sake," Nelson hinted to Emma. "I wish you would burn all mine. They can do no good and will do us both harm if any seizure of them, or the dropping even one of them would fill the mouths of the world."
⁸
But Emma kept every letter, lovingly dwelling on his every word, although perhaps not when he wrote to her that he saw her crying, dressed in black, and then "I dreamt last
night that I beat you with a stick on account of that fellow [the Prince of Wales] and then attempted to throw over your head a tub of Boiling hot water, you may believe I awoke in agony"
⁹

The jealous hero soon had fighting to distract him. The government suspected the Danes might ally with the Tsar of Russia and the French, and sent Nelson to Copenhagen to look threatening and do some saber rattling. He ended up engaged in a full-scale attack on a country with which England was not officially at war. The Battle of Copenhagen was an equivocal victory and a public relations disaster. Nelson's enemies claimed he had proposed a truce because he could no longer fight and that he had in fact capitulated. Three hundred and fifty of his men were killed and a thousand injured. The English government advised citizens to spend their money not on celebratory flags but on donations to the many widows and orphans of the dead seamen.

Emma heard the news on April 15 and celebrated with a dinner party for a Neapolitan duke, the actor John Kemble, and various socialites. She entertained the guests by performing a tarantella with her glamorous Sudanese maid, Fatima. Writer-about-town Nathaniel Wraxall felt rather faint watching her perform a scene about a nymph and satyr or bacchante and faun (a pose in which Emma had modeled for Romney). He decided it "certainly not of a nature to be performed except before a select company, from the screams, attitudes, starts, and embraces with which it was intermingled."
¹⁰
Now that Emma was no longer pregnant, the Attitudes became risque once more.

Nelson wrote to Emma after his victory at Copenhagen, "very tired after a hard won battle," and sent her a few sweet lines of poetry, addressing her as "Lord Nelson's Guardian Angel." "I leave my anchor in my Angel's heart," he continued, and reminisced how "this day twelve months we sailed from Palermo on our tour to Malta. Ah! those were happy times, days of ease and nights of pleasure." Three days after the victory, he gave a party on his ship to celebrate Emma's birthday and had his mates and superior officer, Sir Hyde Parker, raise champagne toasts to "the Birthday of Santa Emma." Convinced she brought him good luck, he heaped her with compliments: "There is certainly more of the angel than the human being about you."
¹¹

CHAPTER 42
Paradise Merton

N
o detail was too insignificant for Nelson's passionate letters to A Emma. He even described how he had not cut his nails since February, for "I should have thought it a treason to have them cut, as long as there was a possibility of my returning for my old dear friend to do the job for me." He was nervous, suffering from palpitations, and "more emaciated than you can conceive."
¹
Eager to spend every possible minute on his return with Emma, he was tired of snatching time with her in Sir William's house and hotels. He wanted Emma to find him a home.

Even though she had Horatia, Emma's position was not secure. Crowds of starstruck girls, powerful aristocrats, respectable wives, and fine ladies were desperate for a piece of England's hero. Nelson, always a social climber, was most attracted by the aristocrats. Emma knew from her own experience his fondness for kissing hands, bowing, flattering, and making lecherous comments, and she had to ensure that no rival stole his heart, as she had done. She felt stronger on her own territory, and she knew that sharing a house with Nelson would confirm her as his mistress, controller of his patronage, and head of his domestic life.

Sir William continued to take on the cost of caring for Emma Carew while Nelson remained unaware of her existence. In April, taking advantage of Nelson's absence, Emma paid for her ever-reliable mother to visit the Kidds in Hawarden and then Manchester, to see Emma, now nearly twenty. It would seem that she had been unhappy as a governess or had retired because of ill health, for she was living back with Mrs. Blackburn and no longer working. There were still no precise plans for her future.

When the hero of Copenhagen arrived in England on June 30, he immediately
hired a decorated post chaise drawn by six fine stallions, rattling to 23 Piccadilly, where the lovers were reunited. Emma planned a holiday (along with her husband) at Box Hill in Surrey, where, Nelson wrote, "we are all very happy." The party then set off for a fishing holiday on the Thames along with William Nelson and his wife and daughter, two of Nelson's officers, and Captain Edward Parker, Nelson's latest protege. They spent a fortnight soaking up the sun, staying at the Bush Inn in Staines. Sir William fished contentedly while the lovers boated and walked, joining up with the rest of the party for raucous dinners at the inn. The paparazzi were always peering over the wall and hiring boats to go alongside them, but they were all growing more practiced at ignoring them. The holiday came to an abrupt end with the news that Napoleon was preparing to invade England. Nelson was called to Whitehall and sent to protect the south coast between Orfordness and Beachy Head. There he waited dolefully, obsessed with his desire for a home.

Nelson wanted a palatial mansion and grounds in which he could play at being a country squire. It also had to be comfortably furnished, situated on a good road to London, and not too expensive. "I am very anxious for a house and I have nobody to do any business for me but you, my dear friend," he chivvied. Emma was enthused by the responsibility of choosing a house, and by August 1 he authorized her to buy one she had seen at Turnham Green. The newspapers followed her efforts—the
Times
reported that during an outing to Harrow with Sir William's relation, the Marquis of Abercorn, the horses tipped Emma and the Machioness into a hedge.
²
On the fifteenth, she was considering another property in Chiswick. At the same time, Nelson led an attack on Boulogne that ended in disaster: no French boats were taken and 44 English sailors were left dead, with 128 wounded. Although Nelson had brushed off criticism of the Battle of Copenhagen, he knew that his attack on Boulogne had been a terrible failure. He sailed back to Deal, on the Kent coast, deeply depressed, begging his friends to come and comfort him.

Emma had good news for him. She had spotted what she thought could be their dream home in the village of Merton in Surrey, southwest of London, now a suburb of Wimbledon. Inhabited by an elderly lady for years, Merton Place had fallen into terrible disrepair. All the rooms needed modernizing, the land was uncultivated, and there was no stabling or coach house. The horrified surveyor judged it "the worst place under all its circumstances that I ever saw pretending to suit a Gentleman's family."
When his solicitor advised him to demand a discount on the price, Nelson exploded with frustration against equivocating lawyers and their “hard bargains.”
³
Claiming to admire the man who could make a decision on the spot, he commanded, “I cannot afford a fine house and grounds therefore I wish for Merton as it is.”
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Desperate to live with Emma, he refused to be delayed by petty disagreements.

So that Emma could visit Nelson without any impropriety in the eyes of society, Sir William rushed down from a business trip in Wales to be her chaperone. Nelson tried to brush off his gloom by focusing on his idea of a perfect life together in a gorgeous house. They took suites in a luxury hotel along with Nelson's brother's wife, Sarah. Emma had been busily winning the affections of Sarah and her two children, Horace and Charlotte. Bowled over by Emma's connections and riches, Sarah leapt to take advantage of an all-expenses-paid trip to the sea. Despite their efforts to cheer him, Nelson was still despairing. Young Captain Parker was dying from a wound he had received at Boulogne, and his state was a daily reminder to Nelson of the failure there. After her morning bathing, Emma rushed to tend Parker's brow with soothing milks and warm poultices, but there was little she and Sarah could do for the little “Nelsonite,” as she called him.