Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; (4 page)

At Up Park, most probably, Greville had first met her in the autumn of 1781, on one of those shooting-parties in great houses which he always frequented more from fashion than amusement. She had doubtless contrasted him with Sir Harry's stupid and commonplace acquaintances. Greville always took real interest in people who interested him at all, and at least he never acted below his professions. He was nobly bred, considerate, and composed; he was good-looking, prudent, and ever liberal—in advice. No wonder that his condescension seemed ideal to this girl of sixteen, who had lost yet coveted self-respect; who had already suffered from degrading experience, and yet had ever " felt something of virtue " in her " mind." He had afterwards (as his letter will show) befriended and scolded her headstrong sallies, though his warnings must have passed unheeded. On her retirement in disgrace and despair to her loving grandmother at Hawarden, he doubtless gave her the franked and addressed papers enabling her to communicate with him should need compel her. Just as evidently, she had written and been touched with the kind tone of his answer. It seems obvious also from Greville's coming reply that, as was her way, she would neither cajole Sir Harry into renewed favour nor be de-

pendent on anything but sincere kindness. But at last she was trembling on a precipice from the brink of which she besought him to rescue her.

To him and to Fetherstonehaugh she was known as Emily Hart; nor, in spite of Greville's advice, would she, or did she, change that name till her wedding. Whence it was assumed is unknown. In the Harvey family there lingered a tradition that " Emma Hart " was born at Southwell, near Biggleswade, and with her mother had served at Ickwell Bury, where she was first seen and painted by Romney. But this is wholly unfounded, though Romney appears to have painted portraits in that house, and it is curious that, about forty years ago, one Robert Hart—still living—was a butler in their service and professed to be in some way related to Lady Hamilton. A guess might be hazarded that " Hart" was derived from the musician of that name who visited Hamilton's house at Naples in 1786 as her old acquaintance. Not one of the parish registers offers any solution through the names of her kindred. The " Emily" became Emma through the artists and the poets, through Romney and Hayley.

It is " Emly Hart's " pleading and pathetic note, then, that Charles Greville still holds in his fastidious hands on this winter morning. With a glance at his statues, specimens, and the repaired Venus, and possibly with a pang at the thought of the plight to which this " modern piece of virtu" was reduced, he sits down most deliberately to compose his answer. How deliberately, is shown by the fact that of this letter he kept a " pressed copy " done in the ink just invented by James Watt; it was a minute of semi-official importance. The letter is long, and extracts will suffice; it will be gathered that he was more prig than

profligate, and he had evidently formed the delightful design of being her mentor :—

" My dear Emily,—I do not make apologies for Sir H.'s behaviour to you, and altho' I advised you to deserve his esteem by your good conduct, I own I never expected better from him. It was your duty to deserve good treatment, and it gave me great concern to see you imprudent the first time you came to G., from the country, as the same conduct was repeated when you was last in town, I began to despair of your happiness. To prove to you that I do not accuse you falsely, I only mention five guineas and half a guinea for coach. But, my dear Emily, as you seem quite miserable now, I do not mean to give you uneasiness, but comfort, and tell you that I will forget your faults and bad conduct to Sir H. and myself, and will not repent my good humor if I find that you have learned by experience to value yourself, and endeavor to preserve your friends by good conduct and affection. I will now answer your last letter. You tell me you think your friends look cooly on you, it is therefore time to leave them: but it is necessary for you to decide some points before you come to town. You are sensible that for the next three months your situation will not admit of a giddy life, if you wished it. ... After you have told me that Sir H. gave you barely money to get to your friends, and has never answered one letter since, and neither provides for you nor takes any notice of you, it might appear laughing at you to advise you to make Sir H. more kind and attentive. I do not think a great deal of time should be lost, for I have never seen a woman clever enough to keep a man who was tired of her. But it is a great deal more for me to advise you never to see him again, and to write only to inform him of your determination. You must, however, do either the one or the other. . . . You may

easily see, my dearest Emily, why it is absolutely necessary for this point to be completely settled before I can move one step. If you love Sir H. you should not give him up. ... But besides this, my Emily, I would not be troubled with your connexions (excepting your mother) and with Sir H.('s) friends for the universe. My advice then is to take a steady resolution. ... I shall then be free to dry up the tears of my lovely Emily and to give her comfort. If you do not forfeit my esteem perhaps my Emily may be happy. You know I have been so by avoiding the vexation which frequently arises from ingratitude and caprice. Nothing but your letter and your distress could incline me to alter my system, but remember I never will give up my peace, or continue my connexion one moment after my confidence is betray'd. If you should come to town and take my advice . . . You should part with your maid and take another name. By degrees I would get you a new set of acquaintances, and by keeping your own secret, and no one about you having it in their power to betray you, I may expect to see you respected and admired. Thus far as relates to yourself. As to the child ... its mother shall obtain it kindness from me, and it shall never want. I inclose you some money; do not throw it away. You may send some presents when you arrive in town, but do not be on the road without some money to spare in case you should be fatigued and wish to take your time. I will send Sophy anything she wishes for. . . . God bless you, my dearest lovely girl; take your determination and let me hear from you once more. Adieu, my dear Emily." *

And with this salutation Greville folds his paper with precision and addresses it, in the complacent belief that it is irresistible. Truly an impeccable shep-1 Morrison MS. 114, January 10, 1782.

herd of lost sheep, a prodigious preacher to runagates continuing in scarceness; a Mr. Barlow-Rochester with a vengeance! And yet real goodwill underlies the guardedness of his disrespectable sermon. As, however, he sinks back in his chair, and plumes himself on the communique, it never strikes him for an instant that this wild and unfortunate girl is quite capable of distancing her tutor and of swaying larger destinies than his. His main and constant object was never to appear ridiculous. So absurd a forecast would have irretrievably grotesqued him in his own eyes and in those of his friends. His attitude towards women appears best from his reflections nearly five years later, which read like a page of La Rochefoucauld tied up with red tape:—

". . . With women, I observe they have only resource in Art, and there is to them no interval between plain ground and the precipice; and the springs of action are so much in the extreme of sublime and low, that no absolute dependence can be given by men. It is for this reason I always have anticipated cases to prepare their mind to reasonable conduct, and it will always have its impression, altho' they will fly at the mere mention of truth if it either hurts their pride or their intrest, and the latter has much more rarely weight with a young woman than the former; and therefore it is like playing a trout to keep up pride to make them despise meaness, and not to retain the bombast which would render the man who gave way to 'it the air of a dupe and a fool. It requires much conduct to steer properly, but it is to be done when a person is handsome, and has a good heart; but to do it without hurting their feelings requires constant attention; it is not in the moment of irritation or passion that advice has effect; it is in the moment of reason and good nature. It reduces itself to simple subjects; and

Memoirs—Vol. 14—2

when a woman can see more than one alternative of comfort or despair, of attention and desertion, they can take a line." *

Thus Greville—the prudent psychologist of womankind and the nice moralist of the immoral. His metaphor of the " trout " must have appealed to that keen fisherman, his " dear Hamilton." Greville angled for " disinterested " hearts with a supple rod. His " system " was to attach friendship rather than to rivet affection; to " play " a woman's heart in the quick stream of credulous emotion past the perilous eddies of headlong impulse with the bait of self-esteem, till it could be safely landed in a basket, to be afterwards transferred for the fish's own benefit to a friend. If the trout refused thus to be landed, it must be dropped into the depths of its own freward will; but the sportsman could at least console himself by the thought that, as sportsman, he had done his duty and observed the rules of his game. Greville was already contemplating a less expensive shrine for his minerals and old masters. He was anxious to be quit of Portman Square, and a light purse proverbially makes a heavy heart.

He must be left calculating his chances, while his Dulcinea books places in the Chester coach, weeps for joy, and kisses her Don Quixote's billet with impetuous gratitude.

*Morrisorv MS. 156, November (?) 1786.

CHAPTER II

" THE FAIR TEA-MAKER OF EDGWARE ROW "

March 1782— August 1784

AjrIRLISH voice, fresh as the spring morning on Paddington Green outside, with its rim of tall elms, and clear as the warbling of their birds, rings out through the open window with its bright burden of " Banish sorrow until to-morrow." The music-master has just passed through the little garden-wicket, the benefactor will soon return from town, and fond Emma will please him by her progress. Nature smiles without and within; " Mrs. Cadogan " bustles over the spring-cleaning below, and to-morrow the radiant housewife will take her shilling's-worth of hackney coach as far as Romney's studio in Cavendish Square. She is very happy; it is almost as if she were a young bride; perchance, who knows, one day she may be Greville's wife. In her heart she is so now; and yet at times that hateful past will haunt her. It shall be buried with the winter; " I will have it so," as she was to write of another matter. And is it not

" Spring-time, the only pretty ring time, When birds do sing hey ding a-ding a-ding"?

Edgware Row a hundred and twenty-three years ago was the reverse of what it looks to-day. Its site, now a network of slums, was then a country prospect. It fronted the green sward of a common, abutting on the inclosure of a quaint old church, in a vault of

which, when the crowning blow fell, Lady Hamilton was to lay the remains of her devoted mother. That church had for many years been associated with artists, singers, and musicians, British and foreign. Here in March, 1733, the apprentice Hogarth had wedded Jane Thornhill, his master's daughter. Here lay buried Matthew Dubourg, the court violinist; and Emma could still read his epitaph :—

" Tho' sweet as Orpheus them couldst bring Soft pleadings from the trembling string, Unmoved the King of Terror stands Nor owns the magic of thy hands."

Here, too, lay buried George Barret, " an eminent painter and worthy man." Here later were to lie Lolli, the violinist; the artists Schiavonetti and Sandby; Nol-lekens and Banks the sculptors; Alexander Geddes the scholar; Merlin the mechanic; Caleb Whiteford the wine-merchant wit; and his great patron, John Henry Petty, Marquis of Lansdowne, who descends to history as the Earl of Shelburne. Here once resided the charitable Denis Chirac, jeweller to Queen Anne. Here, too, were voluntary schools and the lying-in hospital. The canal, meandering as far as Bolingbroke's Hayes in one direction, and Lady Sarah Child's Norwood in the other, was not finished till 1801, when Lady Hamilton may have witnessed its opening ceremony.

Greville, still saddled with his town abode, at once economised. The Edgware Row establishment was modest in both senses of the word. He brought reputable friends to the house,and a few neighbouringladies seem to have called. The household expenses did not exceed some £150 a year. Emma's own yearly allowance was only about £50, and she lived well within it. Her mother was a clever manager, whose services the thrifty prodigal appreciated. The existing household

accounts in Emma's handwriting only start in 1784, but from them some idea may be formed of what they were in the two years preceding. They belong to thei Hamilton papers inherited by Greville in 1803, and they were evidently deemed worthy of preservation both by nephew and uncle.

It is clear from these accounts that all was now " retrenchment and reform "; that all was not plenty, is equally apparent. But Emma was more than satisfied with her lot. Had not her knight-errant (or erring) dropped from heaven? From the first she regarded him as a superior being, and by 1784 she came to love him with intense tenderness; indeed she idealised him as much as others were afterwards to idealise her.

All was not yet, however, wholly peace. Her character was far from being ideal, quite apart from the circumstances which, by comparison, she viewed as almost conjugal. Her petulant temper remained un-quelled long after her tamer undertook to " break it in," and there were already occasional " scenes" against her own interest. Yet how soon and warmheartedly she repented may be gathered from her letters two years onwards, when she was sea-bathing at Parkgate: " So, my dearest Greville," pleads one of them, " don't think on my past follies, think on my good, little as it has been." And, before, " Oh! Greville, when I think on your goodness, your tender kindness, my heart is so full of gratitude that I want words to express it. But I have one happiness in view, which I am determined to practice, and that is eveness of temper and steadin[e]ss of mind. For endead I have thought so much of your amable goodness when you have been tried to the utmost, that I will, endead I will manege myself, and try to be like Greville. Endead I can never be like him. But I