England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton (53 page)

Merton was beginning to correspond to Nelson's dream: a grand, spacious house, full of children. But when Mrs. Gibson heard that Horatia would be leaving her care, she began to demand money. Horatia was an easy, well-behaved charge, and Mrs. Gibson had been paid about £50 every two months, much more than the going rate. Since Emma bought the clothes, trinkets, medicines, and toys, Mrs. Gibson had only to shell
out for food and mending. It was not uncommon for a nurse to refuse to give up her charge until she was given a golden handshake, and Mrs. Gibson saw her chance to extract a fortune from Emma. She had arranged the false baptism, knew the identity of Horatia's parentage, and almost certainly knew about the second child. Emma begged Nelson to solve the impasse, and he instructed his solicitors to offer a pension to Mrs. Gibson of £20 a year, on condition that she make no attempt to keep Horatia or communicate with her again.
¹⁴
Five-year-old Horatia arrived to live at Merton in May 1805.

That summer, Emma, desperate for a respite from the demands of her creditors, traveled to Southend. The fashionable Essex resort on the south coast was popular with Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prince of Wales, and sometimes Princess Caroline, his estranged wife. A theater was erected in 1804, and there were plentiful bathing machines, an indoor warm bath, a billiard room, and gardens. The Royal Hotel had a coffee room, a giant ballroom, a music gallery, and supper and card rooms. With England at war with France, people had to holiday at home, and British sea resorts were crammed. Newspapers published lists of the fashionable in attendance every day. They reported that Emma was holidaying with Charlotte Nelson, Mrs. Billington, and some other "young ladies who composed the family party," Horatia and Cecilia Connor, and possibly Emma Carew, as well as the little Matcham and Bolton sisters. The journalists tracked her every move. On August 19, the
Post's
Southend correspondent filed an excited report: "Lady Hamilton suddenly quitted this place, in a chaise and four, at five o'clock this morning. She took her departure, I understand, in consequence of an express that arrived here yesterday evening."
¹⁵

The express brought Emma the news she had waited so long to hear: the
Victory
had landed.
¹⁶
Terrified Nelson would arrive and find her absent, Emma hurried Horatia out of bed, packed some of her belongings, and dashed back to Merton.

CHAPTER 47
Relighting the Fire

N
elson drove through the night. He arrived at 6 a.m next day to see Merton looking at its very best in the early morning sunlight. As soon as he entered the hall, he saw Emma's visions of his grandeur: busts, paintings, and decorations, curtains draped in his honor, and elaborate new furnishings. "Merton is become a perfect Paradise," he exulted. "The house is so entirely different, the water changed, and the grounds laid out in the most beautiful manner, and all by her taste."

They had not seen each other for two years and three months, and there was so much news to exchange. "What a day of rejoicing," sighed Emma. Emma desperately wanted to fall pregnant again, frantic to wash away the pain of losing little Emma. "She is a clever being after all," wrote Lord Minto on the first Saturday after Nelson's arrival. "The passion is as hot as ever."
¹

London was wild to see him. "He is adored as he walks the streets, thousands follow him, blessing him," gloried Emma.
²
While Nelson visited the Admiralty and conducted business meetings, Emma received his family at Clarges Street. Nelson bought his daughter her own small fork and spoon and ordered them to be engraved with "To my much-loved Horatia." When they returned to Merton, guests, including the Duke of Clarence and his mistress, Dora Jordan, flocked to dine, and Nelson's siblings arrived frequently with their many children. She played the graceful hostess to them all. "What a Paradise he must think Merton, to say nothing of the Eve it contains," wrote Mrs. Bolton flatteringly
³
Minto extolled how Emma "has improved and added to the house extremely well and without his knowing she was about it." She appeared to be the ideal seaman's
wife, managing the home, domestic life, and everyday finances without bothering her man while he was away.

Emma had changed, however. She remained as vivacious as ever, but losing her daughter had taken away some of her intense appetite for life. In believing that Nelson's homecoming would solve her spiraling debts, allay her worries, and chase away her inner pain, her expectations were impossibly high.

Nelson was nearly fifty, and everybody expected he would be retired from active service after one or two more battles. Emma looked forward to turning Paradise Merton into the home of a retired hero, heavily decorated after his victories. She thought she could tell him about the expense when he returned triumphant, dripping with medals, and fabulously rich.

Emma accompanied Nelson on every visit she could and sat in on all his interviews. A young Danish journalist, J. A. Andersen, left entranced, gushing praise for "elegant" Merton and the lobby packed with hundreds of Nelson paintings, objets d'art, and a bust. Although Nelson was standing at the entrance wearing a uniform emblazoned with different orders of knighthood, he only had eyes for his hostess. When "ushered into a magnificent apartment, where Lady Hamilton sat at a window. I at first scarcely noticed his Lordship."
⁴

Nelson loved to watch his Emma, high queen of Paradise Merton, welcoming a dozen or more for dinner at his table. She was always performing. One visitor was startled when she pronounced in front of the whole table, "I would wish with all my heart to die in two hours, so I might be your wife for one." Nelson was similarly willing to play to his adoring audience, flirting outrageously with the ladies, cadging kisses, and telling them stories. Flirtatious, amoral Bess Foster was a frequent visitor to Merton and she simply adored Nelson. Her friends poked fun at her efforts to win him—when sharing a carriage away from Merton, another visitor, Lady Percival, declared that had Nelson kissed her good-bye but not kissed Bess, she should never "otherwise have ventured to have got into the same carriage." Dozens of guests joked about catfights over him. Nelson soaked up all the adulation, and Minto thought him "remarkably well and full of spirits."

The happy summer break was not to last. Within a fortnight of Nelson's return, Captain Blackwood arrived at the house to inform Nelson that Admiral Villeneuve and the French fleet had been detected at Cadiz. He drove to London to receive his orders from the Admiralty. He came away knowing he was to command the fleet in its assault against Villeneuve
as soon as
Victory
was ready. By September 10, Nelson knew he would be leaving three days later. "Again he is obliged to go forth," sighed Emma. She arranged a ceremony to celebrate their relationship, probably at Merton Church. As one witness reported, "Nelson took Emma's hand and facing the priest, said, ‘Emma, I have taken the sacrament with you this day to prove to the world that our friendship is most pure and innocent, and of this I call God to witness.’ "
⁵
Emma still dreamt of more. "I should like to say—how pretty it sounds—Emma Nelson," she wrote wistfully
⁶

Nearly everyone who knew Nelson claimed that they saw him in the few days before he departed for Trafalgar. Most of them were lying, for he was almost permanently occupied with government business. He received a last-minute invitation from the Prince of Wales to visit him in London on the twelfth, and then visited Lord Castlereagh, the secretary for war. In the waiting room, he had his first and only meeting with Arthur Wellesley later Duke of Wellington, then a youngish major general recently arrived from India. The future conqueror of the French at Waterloo was decidedly unimpressed by the Nile hero's nervous chatter. Nelson returned home to dine with Lord Minto and some other neighbors. Emma tried hard to be happy and festive, but she could hardly eat or drink.

She knew that Nelson hated it when women cried, but she could not help it. On the morning of the thirteenth, he hurried to London for his final sailing orders, and then they had the day to themselves. After dinner, the post chaise arrived to whisk him away. He whispered a prayer beside the bed of the sleeping Horatia. Then he said his good-byes to Emma: he promised to be true, to always love her, and never to sleep off ship, and he encouraged her to rally her spirits. Then he left. She could only weep hopelessly. "I am again broken hearted," she mourned. "It seems as though I have had a fortnight's dream, and am awoke to the misery of this cruel separation. But what can I do? His powerful arm is of so much consequence to his country." After not even twenty-five days with Nelson, she was alone again.

Nelson wrote in his diary on the road, "Friday night, at half-past ten, drove from dear, dear Merton, where I left all I hold dear to this world, to go to serve my king and country." He arrived at Portsmouth at 6 a.m. and scribbled a quick line to Emma. On board the
Victory,
he dined with George Rose, vice president to the Board of Trade, soon to be treasurer of the navy, and pressed him to pursue the issue of a pension for his beloved. "I love you beyond any Woman in this World and next our dear Ha," he
promised. "How I long to settle what I intend upon her and not leave her to the Mercy of any one or even to any foolish thing I may do in my old age."
⁷
While he was home, however, he did not get around to arranging a settlement, and Emma did not push him. Nelson believed himself invincible, and she was confident he would return. "Cheer up," he wrote to her from the ship, "and we will look forward to many, many happy years, and be surrounded by our children's children."

CHAPTER 48
Trafalgar

A
fter Nelson's departure, Emma traveled to Canterbury with the William Nelsons. On October 4, she wrote to him praising Horaria, and forwarding a letter from Cecilia Connor who, with Mrs. Cado-gan, was caring for her at Merton. Cecilia had taken Horatia to London to buy shoes, stockings, and a hat for her new doll and helped the little girl to make her doll a sumptuous bed with pillows and a mattress.
¹
"What a blessing for her parents to have such a child, so sweet, altho' so young, so amiable!" exulted Emma. Mrs. Cadogan, she reported, "doats on her, she says she could not live without her."
²
Nelson wanted Horatia to be good at languages, like her mother, and Emma reported she was already picking up French and Italian.

My heart cannot bear to be without her. You will be even fonder of her when you return. She says, "I love my dear, dear godpapa, but Mrs Gibson told me he kill'd all the people, and I was afraid." Dearest angel she is! Oh, Nelson, how I love her, but how I do idolize you—the dearest husband of my heart, you are all in this world to your Emma. May God send you victory, and home to your
Emma, Horatia, and paradise Merton
for when you are there it will be paradise.
³

Emma begged for details about life at sea, for "the smallest trifle that concerns you is so very interesting." After passing on tidbits of local news and Lord Douglas's request for some Turkish tobacco, she confessed she "had begun to fret at not having letters from you."

By far the hardest role for a navy wife or mistress was the waiting. Women scoured the newspapers and chased their friends for scraps of news in order to guess the whereabouts of the fleet, and relied on the other navy wives for emotional support. Authorities in port towns were constantly battling to suppress fortune-tellers, card readers, and white witches, for sailors' wives flocked to them, desperate for any reassurance they could find. Many sailors married other seamen's daughters, girls schooled in the self-discipline needed to wait out long periods without news. Emma was not used to being left alone, and as she did not socialize with the wives of Nelson's captains, she was unable to draw on the friendship of other women waiting for their men. By mid-October, she was back at Merton, trying to keep herself busy by overseeing the renovations to the house. Little Horada, she wrote sadly, was weeping daily for her father.