England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton (49 page)

Fanny heard the news that her husband had set up home in Merton. She made a last-ditch attempt to regain her position. "Do my dear husband, let us live together," she wrote. "I can never be happy till such an
event takes place.” Alexander Davison returned it to her and curtly inscribed on the back, “Opened by mistake by Lord Nelson, but not read,”
¹⁴
without adding another word of comfort. Nelson never wrote to Fanny again.

Emma planned an elaborate first family Christmas. On December 14, Emma sent an urgent message to Mrs. Gibson demanding that she bring Horatia to Merton in a post chaise on the following day.
“Do not fail,”
she begged.
¹⁵
Painstaking preparation went into her dramatic extravaganzas. To perform her piece “The Favourite Sultana,” Emma planned every detail of the opulent dress for herself and the company. She left extensive wardrobe notes on her own outfit and those of her attendants. She left her hair loose (and she had a turban behind the scenes, ready to whip on at any moment) and braided with strings of pearls, with two long locks of hair curling on the breast. A circlet of diamonds sparkled on her forehead, and draped over her head was a fine crêpe or muslin shawl so long that it reached the floor. Her pantaloons were twilled silk in bright colors—blue or green suited her—and she wore embroidered square-toed Turkish slippers and gold ankle bracelets. Over her pantaloons, she wore a colored shift and tied the ends of the wide gauze sleeves behind her back. The outer gown was half one color and half another, perhaps pink and red, and her jacket was a rich satin. Her arms glittered with dozens of bracelets, thick gold rings adorned her fingers, and her necklace was a long gold chain bearing a small perfume flask. The effect was truly spectacular.

Emma gave intricate commands to her assistants. Nelson's two little nieces, Kitty and Lizzy Matcham, as Moorish ladies, wore long pantaloons, gowns striped in two colors, embroidered slippers, and veils over their heads. Even dowdy Mrs. Cadogan became a Grecian lady, attired in a long white gown with wide embroidered sleeves and a short bolero-type jacket, and she wore her hair in small curls pinned under a cap. A “Miss K,” perhaps Emma Carew or the daughter of a neighbor, played a Negro sultana, dressed in a “negro mask,” a black dress, gold sandals, a colored turban with a long veil, gold girdle, and jewelry, and a rainbow train. The men had roles too: a Major Magra and Nelson's secretary, Mr. Tyson, were “as magnificent as they can dress themselves; whiskers and no beards,” the neighbors Messrs. Blow, Cumyng, and Jefferson were “Moors of Quality,” and the artist Thomas Baxter and any other spare gentlemen played slaves, wearing Negro masks, long, wide sleeves, shawls, and “long pipes and bags.”
¹⁶
After a sumptuous dinner, the lights were turned down, the candles were lit against the glittering glass windows, and Emma was the
star of the show. She made sure that everybody knew that Nelson was her faithful devotee, wholly absorbed in her, his own "favourite Sultana" and lady of Paradise Merton.

Soon the "favourite Sultana" had the answer to her prayers. On March 25, 1802, France and Britain agreed to the Treaty of Amiens. The war was over.

CHAPTER 43
Keeping Nelson

T
he new peace released Nelson from service, and he contentedly settled at Paradise Merton. Although he was on half pay, for he was no longer on active service, he wanted to keep his newfound position in society by maintaining an aura of incredible wealth. "Nelson cannot be like others," the hero insisted. "Everybody knows that Lord Nelson is
amazingly rich."
Emma had to be the proof: fashionable, glamorous, and dripping with expensive jewels, a generous hostess to his relations, his friends, his captains, and the aristocrats he needed to cultivate, as well as being a doyenne of the arts, a charitable patroness, his tireless domestic manager, and a doting mother. In the four years after he bought Merton, Emma worked hard to live up to his dream.

"I am as much amused by pigs and hens as I was at the Court of Naples," wrote Emma with flourish to a friend. Nelson, she declared, "seldom goes to town and for that reason is much desired and sought for. ‘Keeping men off as you keep them on’ will do for men as well as women."
^∗
1
Emma splurged attention on her lover. As Lord Minto sneered, she was always "cramming Nelson with trowelfuls of flattery, which he goes on taking as quietly as a child does pap." She invited writers and social commentators to report on their home, adorned with images of their love. Denied a lush wedding or an appearance at court on his arm, she staged extravagant entertainments. The newspapers reported her every move. She, rather than Lady Nelson, received all the requests for
patronage, favor, and money that streamed toward the great Nile hero. Minto, now a frequent visitor, thought she wanted a reward for her exertions. "She looks ultimately towards marriage," he decided.

^∗
Emma quotes a famous description of the techniques of coquettish Polly Peachum from John Gay's
The Beggar's Opera.

At the end of April 1802, Nelson heard that his father was seriously ill. Edmund wrote to his son he hoped to recover and visit him to "smell a Merton rose in June." But he grew sicker, and by April 24 it was clear he was dying. Nelson did not visit him. Although Fanny was not nursing Edmund, for relations between them had cooled, Nelson dreaded encountering her if she returned to the deathbed. He was suffering from stomach pain and worried that the coach journey might make it worse. He stayed at Merton to celebrate Emma's thirty-seventh birthday. To distract him from his worry, Emma threw a big party, and they gave themselves even more of an excuse for a celebration by christening Emma's Sudanese maid. Fatima Emma Charlotte Nelson Hamilton was recorded in the parish register as "a negress, about 20 years of age."
²
On the same day, Edmund Nelson's fragile grip on life loosened and he died at Bath. Many men tried to avoid deathbed scenes (it was seen as women's work), but Nelson declined even to attend the funeral. Distressed that Nelson's behavior might be considered callous, Emma publicly excused him by declaring that his stomach was causing him such pain that he might need a surgical operation.

Meanwhile, Sir William was making plans to visit his Welsh estates. Emma decided to turn his summer business trip into a triumphal tour for Nelson. Tours were the business of royals, and the idea that a mere admiral might saunter around the country charming the ordinary people was unprecedented. Emma's plan was shrewd: the king hated traveling and visited only the west country for holidays, and his provincial subjects were starved of glamour and celebrity. In planning their tour to cities that never saw anyone from London but merchants, she was determined to capitalize on public affection for Nelson and make herself as famous as Queen Charlotte.

Emma invited the William Nelsons to accompany them, and left her mother in charge of Merton. On June 21, four carriages loaded with servants, maids, secretaries, and endless changes of outfit rolled out of London and westward to Wales. Oxford awarded Nelson the freedom of the city, and he and Sir William received the honorary degrees of doctor of civil law. Shops along the way did a roaring trade in Nelsonia, and the whole population of Gloucester came out to wave Nelson portraits, hats, and ribbons at them. At Ross on Wye, on the way into south Wales, the
party took a boat garlanded with laurel for the seventy-mile journey to Monmouth, escorted by hundreds of little boats, while thousands of fans cheered from the banks of the river. The mayor of Monmouth received them on the banks while cannons sounded a salute from a nearby hill. After traveling up through mid-Wales, they reached Milford Haven by nightfall, where a cattle show, a rowing match, and a fair had all been laid on in their honor. Nelson and Emma basked in the adoring attention.

Sir William checked on his estates, and the party set off home through south Wales. Pembroke, Swansea, Cardiff, and Newport welcomed them with receptions, fireworks, and colossal banquets—where Emma nearly always sang, often her versions of "God Save the King" and "Rule Britannia" in Nelson's honor. Hysterical crowds unhitched the party's horses and dragged the carriage through the streets. The local newspapers breathlessly reported even the smallest details about "Lord Nelson's tourists." As they progressed home through Hereford, Leominster, Lud-low, Worcester, and Birmingham, press packs from the London papers followed behind, eager to keep their readers up to date with the extravagant tour. The
Morning Post
reported that Nelson received a branch of an apple tree from the city of Hereford and "his Lordship, with all the gallantry of Paris, presented the apple to Lady Hamilton, thereby acknowledging her Ladyship a perfect VENUS."
³
Emma was showing the country that she was the wife of Nelson's heart and the woman who shared his fame.

In Worcester, Nelson treated himself to a dessert service decorated with his coat of arms; in Birmingham's jewelry workshops, they gathered dozens of rings, necklaces, and bracelets; and they bought trunks of toys for Horatia at Theophilus Richards's toy warehouse. At Coventry, gushed the
Coventry Mercury,
"every heart overflowed with gratitude."
⁴
After visiting Towcester, Dunstable, St. Albans, Watford, and Brentford, they arrived at Merton Place on September 5. Their tour had cost nearly £500, around a year's pay for Nelson at his current rate, and they had spent even more on souvenirs. It had been worth every bruise and every penny. "Oh, how our Hero has been received!" Emma exulted to Kitty Matcham.
⁵
As the
Morning Post
reported, "It is a singular fact that more eclat attends Lord Nelson in his provincial rambles than attends the King."
⁶

The tour ensured that Emma's fashions were copied across England and Wales.
The Lady's Magazine
declared early in the following year, "Such has been the progress of good taste among our leading belles of fashion, that all the heavy appendages of dress, which used to encumber rather than adorn, have been judiciously relinquished for decorations more delicate
and appropriate."
⁷
The most fashionable dress was "á la Lady Hamilton," an empire-line style made from "white satin, gauze and muslin." Voguish women now wore their hair cut close around the ears, with no hat.

In cartoons depicting Nelson rescuing Britannia, the beleaguered country now looked very like Emma: a statuesque woman with long dark hair in a white dress, often throwing a dramatic pose. Novels, now quite forgotten, featured heroines that exploited Emma's fame. Mary Charl-ton's
The Wife and the Mistress
(1802) excused the love triangle. Horatio Nelson became Horace Nevare, a romantic hero superior to trivial amusements, who follows the truth of his heart and courts virtuous Laura without caring that her parentage is obscure. Charlton also added a character named Mrs. Hamilton who is the absolute epitome of virtuous behavior, and she also included a Fanny and a Sir William. Emma clearly enjoyed the portrayal: she bought
The Wife and the Mistress
and kept it until nearly the very end of her life.

In the following year, an even more uncompromising defense of the affair appeared in the
Lady's Magazine.
Emma, Nelson, Horatia, Sir William, and Fanny all had starring roles, and Emma was triumphant. The hero, Horatio, a figure of Nelson, is a perfect man, "not more respected for his immense wealth than his amiable and gentle manners." He has a toddler daughter, who is "the most perfect of nature's children," but his shrewish, "cruel, treacherous, and resentful" wife "embittered" his life with "peevish jealousies." The "manly Horatio scorned to use a husband's power towards her," but his "soft rebukes" have made "not the least impression on her adamantine heart." He gains his only happiness from a virtuous friendship with a beautiful, innocent girl, Miss Emily Lewis, the daughter of his sister, Emma Lewis. The journalist perhaps had an inkling about Emma's daughter, Emma Carew, who had been to stay with Emma at least once, and the suggestion that Horatio derived his only pleasure from talking to young Miss Lewis verges on implying an incestuous attraction.

If this was not enough, Emma Lewis's early life reflects that of Emma Lyon's experience as a courtesan, mistress to Greville, and wife. As a young girl, Emma travels to London and "pursues with eager avidity its luxuriant pleasures." After her lover abandons her, she meets gentle Mr. Lewis, who, like Emma's real-life Sir William, has a "prepossessing and mild exterior, joined to the most profound knowledge, which he had improved by travelling, and the sensible converse of the most enlightened men." Emma confesses that "for him I felt not that ardent passion I had done for the regretted Alfred, no the passion which the worthy Lewis inspired
was respect, which soon ripened into a pure attachment, never to be severed till death should part us."