England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton (40 page)

As soon as Nelson was created Duke of Bronte, Emma ordered muslins embroidered with his new title and wore them at every opportunity. This piece of hem is part of a whole dress embroidered with her lover's name in gold thread and sequins.

After living with his wife and Nelson closely on the
Foudroyant
in Naples from June 24 or 25 to August 5, Sir William was used to taking a backseat to their intense relationship. He was secretly grateful that the little sailor had taken flamboyant Emma off his hands and relieved him of her bouts of hysteria. When Nelson sailed briefly to Minorca in October, Sir William sent him a letter begging, “Emma is tired of the Colli for God's sake come back as soon as possible.” He felt he was fading, and he recognized that Nelson loved Emma in a way that she needed and he was unable to give her. Naturally sanguine, he had always been out of step with her expressive and demonstrative nature, and he had resented the emotional demands she made. “My shattered constitution now calls for some little repose and relaxation,” he groaned.
¹⁴
He was simply too tired to protest against being cuckolded.

Sir William had been asking the government since March to allow him leave for a holiday in England. Once at home, he would "consult with my Friends what is best for me." For, as he confessed to Greville, "to keep on as I have done for 35 years—it is impossible… even with Emma's assistance, which is infinite."
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He suffered from frequent diarrhea and bouts of sickness that he blamed on the "intense heats and damp" but were actually caused by dysentery. When he was not fretting about his health, he was worried about money. He owed well over £19,000 to bankers in Palermo, Naples, and London, and the rents from his estates hardly covered his interest payments. He longed to return home but declared he could not, for it was "impossible to quit Lord Nelson who does not understand any languages but his own and fairly said that if we went he could not stay here." The king and queen wanted Nelson to remain, so Sir William had to wait, but he lamented to Greville that it was "at an Expense I can no means afford." Not only did "all Foreigners and the Nobility of this Country flock to this house" but also Nelson's "numerous train of officers that come to him on business."
¹⁶
Tired of the round of celebrations and Emma's relentless sociability, he complained that "a Comely Landlady calls more company than I could wish to my House."
¹⁷

"I shall finish my Diplomatical Career gloriously," he declared, believing his acts to quell the rebellion confirmed him worthy of the highest honor from the British government.
¹⁸
He wanted to return to England, relax for a year, and ensure his comfortable retirement by extracting compensation and a bigger salary from the government. If it failed to comply, he would appeal directly to King George. The Foreign Office maneuverd to head off Sir William's attempt to hold the government to ransom by removing him from his post. Lord Grenville wrote in December to grant the leave and added he had arranged for a permanent replacement.

Nelson was entirely happy, puffed up by the attention from the Neapolitan ladies and flirtations with Maria Carolina's daughters, who were frequent visitors to the Palazzo Palagonia. A twenty-five-year-old traveling English artist, Henry Barker, compared him and Emma to Hercules and Omphale, the Lydian queen who held the Greek hero captive. When Barker paid an afternoon visit, he found Emma and one of the princesses spinning together. At dinner, "Lord N. sat on L.H's right & she cut his meat. He was very lively." Nelson thought it a huge joke to tell the princesses that "Damn your eyes" was a good way to greet an Englishman. Barker was dazzled by the array of nobility but shocked by the gambling, in which "Lady H. & Lord N. were principal actors."
¹⁹
Emma loved gaming
and Nelson loved to sit by her, offering whispered advice, brushing his hand against her, touching her hair, intoxicated by her glamour and falling ever more desperately in love. Excited by the illicit thrill and the midnight secrets of the long, hot Sicilian nights, they seized every chance to be together.

CHAPTER 35
Days of Ease and Nights of Pleasure

H
eroes and conquerors are subdued in their turn,"joked the
Times
in November 1799. "Mark Antony followed Cleopatra into the Nile when he should have fought with Octavius and laid down his laurels and power, to sail down the Cydnus with her in the dress, the character, and the
attitudes
of Venus."
¹
"The admirable Attitudes of Lady HAM-T-N are called
Admiral-attitudes.
"
²
English readers were hungry for every salacious detail about Nelson's affair with glamorous Lady Hamilton.

Caricatures began to appear in the print shops. In the eyes of eighteenth-century satirists, mistresses and courtesans could do as they pleased, but a wife who was unfaithful was beyond the pale. Emma received some harsh treatment. One of the most scabrous depictions of Emma and Nelson ever produced appeared at some point in late 1798 or early 1799.
The Night Mare on the Source of the Nile
is a parody
of The Nightmare,
the famous gothic work by Swiss painter Henry Fuseli, in which a woman lies on a bed, a small demon balanced over her. Emma is shown in the same position on a large round bed (perhaps an allusion to James Graham's Celestial Bed) and Nelson, as a crook-nosed little demon, perches on her midriff and pulls up her skirt. The affair between Nelson and Emma sold newspapers and prints, and few missed the chance to exploit it.
^∗

The ordinary seamen adored Emma, and begged her to intercede in disputes. Nelson's officers, however, began to fret. Admiral Goodall
branded Emma an "enchantress." Captain Troubridge warned Emma that her "enemies" in London were whispering about her unseemly influence over Nelson, and he implored Nelson to stop gambling at "nocturnal parties," for "Lady Hamilton's character will suffer; nothing can prevent people from talking." Lord Elgin was traveling through Palermo on his way to take up a position as ambassador to Constantinople, and the new Lady Elgin, just twenty-one, judged Emma according to the gossip columns: she decided Emma managed Nelson entirely, while he behaved "as if he had no other thought than her." She derided "the fuss the Queen made with Lady H." She thought Emma buxom, described her dress as showy and revealing, and decided she would be just her father's type: a "fine Woman" of "good flesh and blood," a phrase used at the time to imply sexual susceptibility
³

^∗
As pornographic cartoons tend not to survive (they are hardly items people treasure for their relations), it is very likely that dozens of similar cartoons appeared.

By January, Lord Keith, the commander of the British fleet in the Mediterranean, was sick of the antics of the "silly pair of sentimental fools" and ordered Nelson to meet him in Leghorn. Emma clung to him before they parted, no doubt aware that he had conducted an affair there with the singer Adelaide Correglia, and begged him not to sleep off ship or to socialize, for "there is no comfort their for you." She had no need to worry. He wrote the earliest of his love letters to her that survives:

Last night I did nothing but dream of you altho' I woke twenty times in the night, in one of my dreams I thought I was at a large table you was not present, sitting between a Princess who I detest and another, they both tried to seduce me and the first wanted to take those liberties with me which no Woman in this World but yourself ever did, the consequence was I knocked her down and in the moment of bustle you came in and taking me to your embrace wispered I love nothing but you my Nelson, I kissed you fervently and we enjoy'd the height of love. Ah Emma I pour out my soul to you. If you love any thing but me you love those who feel not like your N….

No separation no time my only beloved Emma can alter my love and affection for you, it is founded on the truest principles of honor, and it only remains for us to regret which I do with the bitterest anguish that there are any obstacles to our being united in the closest ties of this Worlds rigid rules, as we are in those of real love. Continue only to love your faithful Nelson, as he loves his Emma, you are my guide I submit to you.

The "Princesses" are probably Maria Carolina's daughters, Amelia and Antoinette, young, single, and teasing (future queens of France and Spain, respectively). Later in the letter he uses his small appetite to beg her attention. "I never touch even pudding you know the reason, no I would starve sooner, my only hope is to find you have equally kept your promises to me." He is "confident of the reallity of your love and that you would die sooner than be false in the smallest thing to your own faithful Nelson who lives only for his Emma." She missed him terribly, and her letters to him were probably even more passionate and explicit. He burned them to protect her honor as soon as he could bear to do so.

In January, to his utter shock, Sir William read in the
Morning Chronicle
that he had been relieved of his post. He tried to hope that the newspaper had been mistaken, but he became increasingly worried. When Lord Grenville's letter reached him some time afterward, probably in late January, he realized despondently that his bid for security and a large payout had failed. Disoriented and feeling wounded and underappreciated by the government, Sir William planned to travel with Emma to England and then return quickly to live on the Bronte estate, with Nelson either fighting in the Mediterranean or retired. Emma worried about returning to England, where every woman wanted the hero of the Nile. As Nelson's nephew later remarked, "His warm heart eagerly strove to attach itself to some object of primary affection; if Lady Hamilton had not artfully endeavoured to inveigle it, some other female would."
⁴
Anxious that she might lose him, she aimed to have his child.

Nelson had probably been asking for the intimacy of unprotected relations for some time. In mid-February, he had his wish. As he reminisced to her later, "I did remember well the 12th February and also the months afterwards. I shall never be sorry for the consequences," going on to discuss their child. She no doubt promised him a son to inherit his dukedom and his aptitude for leadership. But she needed to become pregnant quickly. She was nearly thirty-five, with Nelson forty-two, and couples of a similar age usually have regular intercourse for over six months or a year before they conceive.

Emma made her decision just in time. Nelson was also about to be recalled. His commanders were angered by gossip in the newspapers that they could not control him. In May, Lord Spencer commanded Nelson silkily, "You will be more likely to recover your health and strength in England than in an inactive situation at a foreign court, however pleasing the respect and gratitude shown to you for your services may be."
"We are coming home; and I am miserable to leave my dearest friend, the Queen," Emma wrote to Greville on February 25. Their last months in Sicily were a turmoil of arrangements. Emma was concerned by the plight of the people of the island of Malta, south of Sicily. After Napoleon's troops had invaded and looted the island in 1798, the furious Maltese had decided to attempt to force the French troops to surrender by blockading them in the garrison. British ships arrived to surround the island and prevent the French from bringing in men or supplies. Then King Ferdinand, concerned about rising food prices in Sicily, refused to let the British take grain to the Maltese. The islanders were soon starving. When Nelson begged Ferdinand to reconsider, he promised the moon but gave nothing. Emma stepped in, sending supplies of food and inveigling £10,000 from Maria Carolina to give to the governor.
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In gratitude for her efforts, Emperor Paul I of Russia awarded her the Cross of Malta. When she received the solid gold cross, the queen took it to set it with diamonds. Emma gloated, "I am the first Englishwoman that ever had it. Sir W is pleased, so I
am happy.
" She was a Dame of the Order of Malta, or
dame petite croix.
It was a title that was entirely her own (she was Emma, Lady Hamilton, rather than Lady Emma Hamilton because her title was her husband's). She used "Dame" when she was being her very grandest. Sir William tried to pretend he was merely returning to England for a well-deserved break. After thirty-seven years in his post, he believed that he had turned a minor ambassadorial post into a major one. He thought himself essential and could not believe that the government would not accede to his request to take a sabbatical of a year or two and then resume the position when he pleased. Maria Carolina, whom Sir William had welcomed from Austria thirty-two years before, begged her husband to protest to the Foreign Office. Ferdinand did not write, but his intervention probably would not have carried much weight in any case. The British government wanted to distance itself from the controversial reprisals after the rebellions. The new envoy, Arthur Paget, only twenty-nine years old, had promised to represent the interests of his country rather than those of Maria Carolina. Lord Dalkeith teased him that he should not only take Hamilton's place but "occupy Lady Hamilton too, a place you are much better fitted to fill than the old knight."
⁶
After fending off similar schoolboy jokes, Paget arrived in April to find that Sir William not only refused to present him at court but also appeared to have destroyed
his files. All the records and correspondence had vanished. Paget would resign within a year.