England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton (48 page)

When she set off back north in her carriage after over a fortnight with Nelson, Emma was determined to win him his house. On September 18, Nelson acquired Merton Place for £9,000, borrowing money from his friend Davison, with the expectation of moving in on October 10. “I hope you will always love Merton,” he wrote excitedly to Emma.
⁵
Her first task was to find his belongings at Dod's warehouse and separate them from Fanny's. Nelson had been infuriated by Fanny's habit of asking for his help and advice about the tiniest decision: Emma resolved to manage alone. He ordered her to spend freely on furniture and supplies without bothering him with the details, instructing, “I entreat I may never hear about the expenses again… at Merton I must keep a table.”

Mrs. Greaves, the former owner of the house, had discovered that the buyer was none other than the great Lord Nelson, and she was dying to meet him. She tried everything to remain in the house. Dreading Nelson's fury at finding an elderly lady beckoning him through the door, offering tea and cakes, Emma demanded her lawyers force her to depart. Furniture was arriving from Portsmouth, trees and shrubs were about to be delivered, and the painters were ready to start work. After some tense
arguments, Mrs. Greaves finally agreed to move. Emma and Sir William rattled down in their carriages a few days later. He was looking forward to relaxing in the country; she was ready to start work.

"I am in silent distraction," wrote Nelson to Emma at the end of September, looking despondently around his cabin. "The four pictures of Lady Hn are hung up, but alas! I have lost the original…. How can I bear our separation?"
⁶
His mood was so fragile after the debacle at Boulogne that Emma worried that he might be disappointed. Sir William aimed to buoy her confidence and wrote to Nelson to extol Merton as a superb bargain: "perfect retirement" only an hour from Hyde Park, requiring only cosmetic improvements and full of excellent furniture. "I never saw so many conveniences united in so small a compass." He promised Nelson he would "enjoy immediately." If all this was not enough, since the purchase, it had become public knowledge that Napoleon was unlikely to invade, so the house had increased in value by at least £1,000. With Sir William's help, Emma promoted herself to Nelson as the antithesis of Fanny: efficient, shrewd, and indomitable. "Well done farmer's wife!" the hero bubbled. "You will make us rich with your economy." Nelson the publicity lover paid her his ultimate compliment: he imagined her turned into a caricature to be sold in the print shops. He decided "the Beautiful Emma rowing the one-armed Admiral in a boat" around the grounds "should certainly be caricatured." But Emma would need all her energy to turn ramshackle Merton into a home for a hero.

Merton Place was built around the beginning of the eighteenth century. A heavy, symmetrical Queen Anne-style square, it was rather like a smaller, much cheaper version of Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh's Uppark. Similar homes dotted all of Britain, but Nelson's was bigger and far more chaotic. Off the large entrance hall, there was a dining room to the left and a drawing room to the right. Behind the drawing room were a breakfast room and a ramshackle room that Emma would transform into a library, then pantries and servants' quarters.
⁷
Upstairs was the main drawing room, five large bedrooms, and a sizeable attic space. Divided by a road that is now Merton High Street were seventy acres of overgrown land. The offshoot of the River Wandle running through the grounds was, according to the anguished surveyor, a "broad ditch, which keeps the whole place damp."

Nelson described the house as the "farm," and he wanted the fashionable country life. Emma planned to turn the land around the house into expensive landscaped gardens, and use the rest as pasture for animals. She
set about discussing plans with gardeners, buying shrubs and trees, filling the stream and ponds with fish, and populating the grounds with chubby pigs, poultry, and sheep. Sir William conjured a bucolic image of “Emma and her mother fitting up pig-sties and hen-coops, & already the Canal is enlivened with ducks & the cock is strutting with his hens about the walk.” Emma renamed the “ditch” the Nile and built an Italian bridge over it. She arranged to rent the nearby fields and granary for £55 per annum so that Nelson could control the land he saw from his window.
⁸
Emma was soon growing vegetables and brewing beer, although their milk, cheese, and meat, as well as fruit, came from neighborhood farmers. Merton was not far from Marie-Antoinette's fantasy of playing shepherdess: it looked like a pretty farm, but it was neither self-sufficient nor economical. The rustic vision depended on Emma buying animals ready grown and putting fish in ponds into which they would not breed.

Emma planned to transform the house into a spectacular celebration of Nelson's genius, lavishly stuffed with mirrors, thick carpets, gold trimmings, and memorabilia. She obeyed Nelson's command to spare no expense and decided it should be an imposing double-fronted mansion atop a long sweep of drive and graceful gardens. They would build an enormous modern kitchen, suitable for extravagant entertaining, and develop a cubby into a proper cellar for their vintage wines. The bedrooms would be completely remodeled—fit to house the most eminent guests—and she planned to add a dressing room and modern water closet to the master bedroom, as well as put the eight servants' rooms in the attic to house her visitors' staff. Ambitious to make the house as light as possible, she resolved to add glass doors at the front, a long passage with glass doors opening into the lawn behind, and mirrored doors on the principal rooms. Large mirrors were a great luxury, and this was a crazily expensive innovation. Although the house was Nelson's, Emma used her husband's credit, as well as borrowing money herself, to pay for the extravagant alterations. She wished to turn Merton Place into a representation of her overwhelming love affair with Nelson and to cancel every trace of Fanny from his life.

The interior was soon transformed into a temple to kitsch. Along with mirrors and gold, Emma adorned it with Nelson memorabilia. Her lover instructed her to take from Piccadilly only the portrait of her and a painting of the Battle of the Nile, and to buy the rest. Remembering the chill dreariness of his home with Fanny, Emma adorned Merton Place with Nelson-themed curtains, tea sets, draperies, and hangings, as well as paintings of him, swords, and relics, such as pieces of his ships. Bursting
with brand-new goods, souvenirs of Nelson, and tributes to his great career, her home was a snub to those who decreed that interior decor should be restrained. Giant A.'s festooned the walls, windows, crockery, and ornaments, as well as Emma's dresses. After spending her youth in Sir Harry's Uppark, which was covered wall to ceiling with pictures of the Fether-stonhaughs and their horses, she wanted to show that she owned Merton. Sixteen trunks of Emma's belongings and dresses were still floating around Europe (they ended up back in Naples), but she no longer needed her old things. One early visitor, Lord Minto, the ex-envoy to Vienna who had entertained them on their visit to the city, was struck dumb by the decoration. Minto, who came from a class who inherited houses ready-furnished, goggled: "Not only the rooms, but the whole house, staircase and all, are covered with nothing but pictures of her and him, of all sizes and sorts, and representations of his naval actions, coats of arms, pieces of plate in his honour, the flagstaff of L'Orient etc." He dubbed the house a "mere looking-glass to view himself all day."
⁹

Lady Hamilton's taste in decoration set the tone for a nation deep in the throes of a Nelson cult. Thousands of women expressed their fervent admiration for the hero by stocking their homes with Nelson dinner plates, drawer pulls, plant pots, chests, and pictures. Fashion plates showed whole rooms decorated in the style of Nelson and offered suggestions on how to decorate windows to pay tribute to him—blue curtains with anchors, gold ties with anchors, and a red swagging. In decorating their homes "alia Nelson," Emma and the thousands of other Britons who followed her were displaying their political loyalties for all to see. Since there were no restaurants in which to entertain clients, friends, and family, nearly all social occasions from board meetings to job interviews, secret business coups and meetings with lawyers to firing employees, and christenings to marriage proposals were carried out in the home. The way in which a couple decorated their house directed the way in which they were perceived by friends, relations, colleagues, and clients. Led by Emma, British homes in the period of the Napoleonic Wars were a riot of brand-new glitz and color. Very far from the modern vision of the eighteenth century as the age of elegance and taste, homes were gaudy and cluttered, covered in bright clashing colors, the ornaments a mishmash of souvenirs and impulse buys.

Emma's taste chimed perfectly with the desire of those of the middle classes, many newly rich, to display their wealth and show themselves as Nelson's fervid supporters. She was the high priestess of the Nelson cult,
and he loved her for it. A man who preferred watching theatrical versions of his own triumph at the Nile to any other play, he was enchanted by a house in which everything he saw bore a picture of him.

On October 23, Nelson arrived at dawn in a post chaise drawn by four horses, through a triumphal arch erected by the villagers at the front of the house. Emma had encouraged them to welcome her lover in style by setting off fireworks, illuminating their houses and lining the road to cheer. Delighted by his new home, Nelson was quick to take on the role of village squire by instructing Emma to use only local tradesmen and planning to patronize the parish church. “We are all so joyous today, we do not know what to do,” Emma gloried. She arranged for him to meet Horatia at 23 Piccadilly. It was ten o'clock on a Monday, and Sir William tactfully arranged to pay a visit to his dealers. Now a sturdy ten months old, Horatia was not shy. Father and daughter were immediate friends.

The bustle of Merton made Sir William feel old. He knew he was too infirm to return to his beloved Naples, so he instructed his agent in the city to discharge the servants still waiting for him at the Palazzo Sessa. Vincenzo, his valet, was devastated that Hamilton had not offered him a pension or a lump sum for years of faithful service. He was soon, as the agent pleaded, struggling “in very narrow Circumstances, with a large family,” but Sir William ignored his plight. Neapolitan tradesmen tried to call in their debts from him.
¹⁰
The government had awarded him a pension of just over £1,000 a year, but he still owed more than £12,000 (over $1 million in today's money). Fortunately for him, Nelson was adamant that Emma's husband would not own a single item in the house, although they split the day-to-day expenses of the house. Despite his debts, Sir William was a spendthrift and too old to change. Freed from the bother of having to buy new furniture, still convinced that the government would compensate him for the loss of his possessions in Naples, and confident that Nelson would secure a big prize at sea, he spent wildly on food, clothes, and antiques.

At Merton, Emma addressed herself to winning over Nelson's elderly father, inviting him to stay for ten days in November. The visit went off perfectly. Ill and weak, eighty-year-old Edmund welcomed Emma's tender nursing, falling head over heels in love with her. He was tempted to move in full time, but he could not bear to leave his beloved Norfolk. Emma tried to mold Nelson's greedy relations into the loving, unselfish, worshiping family he desired. His sisters, Kitty and Susanna, had married George Matcham and Thomas Bolton, respectively, men of energy but
not much money, and they were always looking for help for their packs of children. Susanna had twin girls in their early twenties, a young son, and two pre-teenage daughters, and Kitty had five children under the age of twelve, and gave birth to another girl in 1801, naming her Horatia as a tribute to Emma's daughter. Kitty was almost constantly breast-feeding or pregnant throughout the early 1800s, and she relied on her brother and his mistress to help her make ends meet.

Emma entertained the Matchams and Boltons to lavish dinners at Mer-ton and 23 Piccadilly and tried to mediate the demands of his brother, William, and his wife, Sarah, who wanted money and a promotion for her husband. "If we could but get some little addition to our Income, we should be more independent & be in Town whenever you liked," pressed Sarah Nelson. She extracted favors from Emma by promising to win Nelson's sister Susanna Bolton over to her side by telling her "how
pleasant
& good you are & that I loved you dearly, & tell them every thing you gave me. I did bring down one of Charlotte's Frocks, which you gave her, which they shall see I Love."
¹¹
Nelson paid the fees at Eton for their son, Horace, and she wanted Emma to transform her lumpy daughter into a society debutante. Emma, presumably using Sir William's money, paid for thirteen-year-old Charlotte's education at an expensive girls' school in Chelsea, as well as dancing lessons, a singing teacher, outings, and plays for her and her school friends and cousin on weekends.
¹²
Sarah wrote to Charlotte, without the "accomplishments" gained with Lady Hamilton, "you would be nothing."
¹³

Nelson anointed Emma "Lady Paramount of all the territories and waters of Merton, and we are all to be your guests, and to obey all lawful commands." Her frantic efforts won her his total loyalty. It appears that she finally felt sufficiently secure to tell him about Emma Carew. She found she had been worrying for nothing: Nelson seems to have been unruffled by the secret. Emma invited little Emma for a visit, but her husband worried about gossip if she stayed at 23 Piccadilly. As Nelson wrote to Emma, "if your relative cannot stay in your house in town, surely Sir William can have no objection to your taking [her] to the farm." Emma's female relations, such as Mrs. Cadogan's sister Connor and her children, tended to visit in groups: this sole relation, unwanted by Sir William, was most likely Miss Carew.