The story of Lady Hamilton (5 page)

THE STORY OF LADY HAMILTON

happy creature isyour Emma!—methat had no friend, no protector, no body that I could trust, and now to be the friend, the Emma of Sir William Hamilton!" She declares " one hour's absence is a year," and says with a bewildering mixture of ideas, that to her he is, " my friend, my All, my earthly Good, my Kind home in one, you are to me eating, drinking and cloathing, my comforter in distress. Then why shall I not love you ? En-dead, I must and ought, whilst life is left in me, or reason to think on you." Later she wrote, " I confess ... I doat on him. Nor I never can love any other person but him " —a dangerous prophesy for a woman of Emma's temperament. But the shadow of another man, as lovable as he was great, had not then touched her glowing girl's horizon. Sir William was supreme, the spectacle of their devotion was commented on by a friend of Greville's with some concern :—

" Her influenceover him exceeds all belief. . . The language of both parties, who always spoke in the plural number—we, us, and ours

So

EMMA HAMILTON'S STAY IN ITALY

—stagger'd me at first, but soon made me determined to speak openly to him on the subject, when he assur'd me, what I confess I was most happy to hear, that he was not married; but flung out some hints of doing justice to her good behaviour."

Five years before, in one of her enraged and stricken letters to the deserting Greville, Emma had threatened, "I will make him [Sir William] marry me." But during those five years she had not attained her wish, though Sir William, who was willing to lavish everything upon her save the small wedding-ring, was not unconscious of her very natural ambition. " I fear,"he wrote, "that her views are beyond what I can bring myself to execute, and that when her hopes on this point are over she will make herself and me unhappy."

Greville and all the worldly-wise were ranged against her, but in 1789 Emma received an unexpected and socially powerful ally in the charming Elizabeth Gunning, Duchess of Argyll, who came to Naples for her health. By her first marriage the beautiful Si

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Duchess was related to Sir William Hamilton and as she conceived a great liking for Emma it made less great and less generous ladies draw in their supercilious horns. She regarded Emma'sambiguouspositionasnobar tofriendship and urged Sir William to do the honourable thing. No doubt but that her personal charm and social influence were a great help in making Emma Hartunto Lady Hamilton; nowonderthatEmmawroteafter the Duchess's death in the year following, " I never had such a friend as her, and that you will know, when I see you and recount to you all the acts of kindness she shew'd to me; for they were too good and numerous to describe in a letter. Think then to a heart of sensibility and gratitude, whatit must suffer." By thesummerof 1791 events wereturning in the direction of Emma's wishes—she and Sir William were to come to London and be married there. In a letter informing Greville of the coming visit, but not of the coming marriage, Emma said that all her ambition is to make Sir William happy, "And you will

EMMA HAMILTON'S STAY IN ITALY

see he is so—" the little triumph of that sentence must surely have been sweet. "You can't think," she goes on, "2 people that has lived five years with all the domestick happiness that's possible can separate, and those 2 persons, thatknows noothercomfortbutin each other's company, which is the case I assure you with ous."

When Sir William Hamilton and his Emma returned to London there was much excitement and curiosity about them both and many meetings with old friends under newconditions—of the meeting with Greville there is unfortunately no record. Romney was enchanted to behold his "divine lady" again, and, even amid the pressure of her affairs, she gave him many sittings. Hayley, too, that friend of the Cavendish Square studio days, Emma affectionately remembered, and after her marriage and return to Naples wrote ch'aracteristically to Romney:—

"Tell Hayley I am allways reading his 'Triumphs of Temper,' it was that made me Lady H., for God knows I had for|5 years 53

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enough to try my temper, and I am affraid if it had not been for the good example Serena taught me, my girdle wou'd have burst, and if ithad I had been undone; for SirW. minds more temper than beauty."

Emma's career in town before her marriage was something of a triumph. Everyone ran after her and admired her. "Gallini," says Romney, "offered her two thousand pounds a year, and two benefits, if she would engage withhim,on which Sir William said pleasantly that he had engaged her for life."

The marriage which made the nameless daughter of the people into Lady Hamilton, wife of the British Ambassador at Naples, took place at Marylebone Church on the 6th ofSeptember, 1791. ItmeantmuchtoEmma, this marriage,in spite of the triumphant way in which she had faced her world without it, as is shown in a touching letter to Romney: —" I am the happiest woman in the world. Sir William is fonder of me every day, and I hope he will have no corse to repent of what he has done; for I feel so gratefull to him that

I think I shall never be able to make him amends for his goodness to me. But why do I tell you this ? You know me enough. You was the first dear friend I opend my heart to. You oughttoknowme, for you have seen and discoursed with me in my poorer days. . . . How gratefull then do I feel to my dear,dear husband, that as restored peace to my mind, that as given me honors, rank, and what is more,innocenceandhappiness. Rejoice with me, my dear Sir, my friend, my more than father. Believe me, I am still that same Emma you knew me."

Little did Horace Walpole know of the warm heart that lay beneath the " Attitudes" when he heard the news of the British Ambassador's somewhat surprising marriage— " So Sir William has married his gallery of statues ! " was his characteristic comment.

So we behold Emma returning to Naples triumphantly on the arm of her distinguished husband—onhervery wedding-day shegave Romneyasittingforhispictureofheras'The Ambassadress"—and in her own opinion, at

least, the equal of those she described as " Ladys Malmsbury, Maiden, Plymouth Car-neigee, Wright, &c." They were all very kind and attentive to her on her return—"you know what prudes our Ladys are," she remarks, with a sudden glimpse of the street gamin that always underlay her graces. The Queen of Naples was no longer " distantly civil," but took her into a friendship that was very intoxicating to the impressionable Emma and destined to have remarkable consequences.

LADY HAMILTON AS A "SEAMSTRESS

By Romney

CHAPTER FOUR

BATTLE OF THE NILE, & AFTER

CHAPTER FOUR

BATTLE OF THE NILE, AND AFTER

THE STAGE IS SET FOR A LARGER SCENE — Emma no longerdiscourses on compliments, "bluehats," and parties. The French Revolution, the tragic deaths of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette,—who was sister to Queen Maria Carolina of Naples—have rolled a dark cloud of portent across her frivolities. But even so we still picture Emma a little as a child standing at a window watching the blinding streaks of lightning and listening to the loud thunder-claps, shuddering, excited, and all the while delighted to be in the midst of such a magnificent tempest. She became a woman of affairs, the close friend of the capable daughter of Maria Teresa, the counsellor of England's greatest Admiral, she took herself and her parts in these historic matters with overwhelming seriousness— but through all there remains that incurable, delightful,ridiculoustouchofthechild, which makes her so often both lovable and absurd. Her admiration for the Queen of Naples became at once extreme and was expressed 59

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with all her usual ardour of freedom. After two years' intimacy she wrote :—

" No person can be so charming as the Queen, she is everything one can wish—the best mother, wife, and friend in the world. I live constantly with her, and have done intimately so for 2 years, and I never have in all that time seen anything butgoodnessand sincerity in her, and, if ever you hear any lyes about her,contradict them,and if youshould see acursed book written by a vile french dog with her character in it, don't believe one word."

But Maria Carolina was a far more subtle and deep-scheming woman than Emma realised—shedidnotoffer friendship to the wife ofthe British Ambassador forthesimplesake of her beauxyeux or warm heart, Emma was the tool of her ambitions and her fears. After the outbreak of the French Revolution which slew her sister and shookall thebigandlittle thrones of Europe, the Queen of Naples turned to England as the only refuge and help in that time of chaos and terror—-everything

BATTLE OF THE NILE, AND AFTER

English was good, everything French an abomination. She told Emmathatshe relied on her " generous nation " to accomplish the vengeance for which the blood of her sister cried out. And finally, though, lonely and unsupported, Pittheld out against the popular clamour, England plunged into theGreat War—that prolonged struggle with Napoleon which only ended many years later at Waterloo.

It was a dramatic and fateful moment— the openingof the War—when Captain Horatio Nelson, in that famous sixty-four-gun ship the Agamemnon^ sailed into the Bay of Naples bearing the tidings of the surrender of Toulon. He was received by the ardent Maria Carolina with rapture as the "Saviour of Italy." He and Emma Hamilton met for the first time—little guessing either of them how fatefully they were to affect each other's lives. Nelson's comment on Lady Hamilton tohiswife after the meeting is quite detached and indifferent, " she is a young woman of amiable manners, and who does honour to 61

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the station to which she is raised." Sir William Hamilton appears to have been more impressed by Nelson's qualities after this first meeting than Emma, for he told her, " The Captain I am about to introduce to you is a little man and far from handsome, buthe will live to be a great man. I know it from the talk I have had with him."

At this time Nelson was close upon thirty-five years old. In appearance he was not the familiar Nelson of theportraits, with one arm, and worn face drawn into deep lines by the quick workings of that spirit which suffered and dared so much. When Emma first saw him Nelson bore none of his honourable battle-scars, he still had the use of his right arm and eye,he still worehishair tossed back from his brow in his early manner, for it was only after he waswounded in the forehead at the Nilethat he broughtdown hishair tohide the scar. A picture of him painted by Rigaud when he was a young captain of twenty-two gives a closer idea of him at this time, probably, than any of the laterportraits. He was

BATTLE OF THE NILE, AND AFTER

slender, erect, with level-set eyes and sensitive mouth—Sir William might callhim "far from handsome," and some of the portraits emphasise that point to the verge of ugliness, but in his expression and bearing was something far finer and more rare. Theshock with which we try to imagine Nelson "handsome" in the conventional sense showshowunusual and alone is that familiar face.

"Admiral" Nelson, as General and Prime Minister Acton called him prematurely on this visit, wishing to make some return for the hospitality he had received, invited the King and Queen, Sir William Hamilton, his " amiable " wife, and the Neapolitan Ministers to a luncheon party on board the Agamemnon. But when the day arrived there came also an express for Nelson with the news that a French man-of-war and three sail under convoy had anchored ofTSardinia. The decorations were instantly stripped from the Agamemnon. " Unfit as my ship was," wrote Nelson, " I had nothing left for the honour of our country but to sail, which I did in two

THE STORY OF LADY HAMILTON

hours afterwards. It was necessary to show them what an English man-of-war would do."

And so in his famous ship Nelson went stretching down the coast, leaving Emma, leaving Naples, without a backward thought —to return no more for five momentous years.

For Emma, too, these years were rilled to the brim. Her friendship with her " adored Queen "occupied most of her thoughts. Each day brought some fresh excitement and agitation, and Emma was in the thick of it all, for as she had earlier told Greville, she had " got into politicks." She was exercising her dawning powers as a woman of affairs in the Italy that was shaking to the tread of Napoleon, that Alexander new upsprung to conquer the world. The Italian campaign, the Jacobin excitement at Naples, the withdrawal of the English fleet from the Mediterranean—" I lament our present orders in sackcloth and ashes, so dishonourable to the dignity of England whose fleets are equal to meet the world in arms," wrote Nelson—tha