England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton (41 page)

Desperate to grasp a few last moments together, Nelson and Emma planned a voyage to Syracuse and Malta on Nelson's ship, setting out on April 23 with Sir William and an assortment of English tourists. The ostensible purpose was to join the ships blockading Malta. In reality, the ship on which Caracciolo had been sentenced now hosted a honeymoon cruise of, as Nelson put it, "days of ease and nights of pleasure." On the journey out, Emma claimed to be suffering from palpitations. Nelson consoled her ardently. Soon her declarations of illness were excuses for them to escape the other guests and languish in the cabin. Emma celebrated her thirty-fifth birthday on the way and recovered sufficiently to throw a party, with toasts and songs.

In Syracuse, Nelson and Emma wandered around like teenage lovers, leaving Hamilton alone with the other guests. Sir William struggled with his thoughts: he hoped that the affair might wane, but he also knew that now he was retired, staying friendly with Nelson was his only chance of retaining some influence back in England.

Emma fell pregnant after only a few weeks of unprotected sex. The baby was conceived between late April and early May, either on the cruise or just before departure. Emma wanted to give Nelson a child, and she threw away every worldly advantage she had gained in order to do so: her respectable status as Sir William's wife, her chances of social advancement, and her "virtue." If she had not become pregnant, no one could have proved her affair was anything other than the friendship that she and Nelson declared it to be. Emma's first baby caused her nothing but stress and heartache. Her second would change her life.

After a few days in Syracuse, the party sailed south to St Paul's Bay on Malta's north coast. Now built up with high-rise hotels and cafés, the bay was then a quiet fishing port. As
Foudroyant
entered, the blockading ships fired off spectacular welcoming salutes, and villages across Malta were illuminated. After a week, Nelson and Emma sailed to the capital, Valetta, hurrying off when they were fired at to join the southern blockade at the scenic Marsa Sirocco Bay. They returned on June 1 to hear that Ferdinand had pardoned all those who participated in the Neapolitan rebellions. Sir William added to his debts by hosting a sumptuous banquet at the Palazzo Palagonia in honor of the birthday of George III. Unwilling to part with her friend, Maria Carolina decided to visit her daughter and son-in-law,
the Empress and Emperor of Vienna, accompanying the Hamiltons as far as Leghorn.

When Emma had first arrived abruptly in Naples, she thought it was merely a holiday destination. Now she was about to leave her dear queen, many close friends, and her home for thirteen years to return to London.

CHAPTER 36
Baron Crocodile's Road Show

W
hen he heard that Nelson planned to transport Maria Carolina
r r
on his ship to Trieste and accompany the Hamiltons home, his commander, Lord Keith, exploded that Lady Hamilton had ruled the fleet long enough. Despite his opposition, fanfares sounded across the harbor as the
Foudroyant
set off on June 10, 1800, weighed down with the queen, her four youngest children, and three marriageable daughters, together with eighty ministers, nobles, attendants and servants, doctors, cooks, and nannies. The Hamiltons had about twelve secretaries and servants, as well as Mrs. Cadogan and various English friends who expected the
tria
to pay for their trip home. It was Emma's homeward journey, and she looked forward to showing off her celebrity, but she was seven weeks pregnant and feeling weak and very nauseated.

At Leghorn, on the Tuscan coast, Maria Carolina said good-bye to Emma, showering her with heaps of jewels, including a diamond necklace containing locks of her children's hair, and giving splendid presents to Sir William and to Nelson. Then the British navy refused permission for Nelson to sail the
Foudroyant
back to England. As he fumed and tried to work out how to reach home (there were no ships he could charter to take them, even if he could have afforded to), the queen grew increasingly afraid of the nearby French forces and begged Nelson to take her entire party back to Sicily in the
Foudroyant.
While the queen cajoled and Emma tried to encourage Nelson to negotiate with his superiors, the French continued to advance. On July 8, the terrified inhabitants of Leghorn seized the city's stock of arms and surrounded their royal visitors in the governor's palace, declaring that they would keep them prisoner until Nelson
led them into battle against the enemy. Nelson locked himself in a back room, and Maria Carolina, the princesses, and the ladies of the court fell into hysterics.

Emma had to come to the fore—and her skills as an actress would never be more necessary. Dressed in white, she appeared on the palace balcony and extolled her friend's innocence and delicacy, pleading against "violently surrounding an amiable and illustrious queen." Her heartfelt appeal won over the crowd. But they still wanted Nelson, and Emma had to tell them he would not speak to them until they returned their weapons to the city's stores. They straggled home, most welcoming the excuse to turn back with honor. Maria Carolina, relieved but still piqued that Emma had failed to get her on the
Foudroyant,
dashed inland to Florence, with Nelson and the Hamiltons hot on her heels. They decided to travel more than 150 miles east to Ancona, on the Adriatic coast, from where they could catch a ship to Trieste.

The Hamiltons and friends rambled within two miles of French military posts, through swarms of people fleeing the enemy advance. At Ancona, they discovered that the nervous queen had dismissed the Austrian frigate that had been fitted out to receive her. The giant party drummed their heels for three weeks until Nelson managed to commandeer enough Russian boats to transport them. Once they had piled onto the ships, their unhappiness only increased. The weather was terrible, and the first lieutenant, a close friend of Caracciolo, reviled the royal family and had no interest in making the journey more comfortable. There was so little space that some of the passengers had to sleep on the orlop deck among the ordinary sailors. Sir William lay in bed groaning, declaring he was dying. Nelson, who knew that Emma stood to be impoverished by the terms of Sir William's current will, encouraged him to write a new will to amend it to make a more generous provision for her. Sir William refused, determined that his estate would be Greville's.

At Trieste, the Nelson party collapsed into bed in their luxury hotel. As they departed on August 10, the city blazed with more than four thousand wax lights and oil lamps in Nelson's honor. They had a long route ahead of them through the Austro-Hungarian Empire: Trieste to Laibach (now Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia), Klagenfurt to Graz (now in Austria), through Baden to Vienna, then to Prague, capital of Bohemia, then up the great Elbe River from Dresden, capital of Saxony, through Magdeburg in Prussia, to Hamburg, where they would catch a ship to England's south coast—well over seven hundred miles.

It was chaos all the way as the fourteen carriages and three baggage wagons rumbled through the pretty valleys and mountains of Slovenia and Hungary. At every place they stopped, everybody came out to goggle at the hero of the Nile and his glamorous mistress, as well as the queen and her ninety-two horses. Usually quiet roads were jammed with traffic as carts and horses tailed along the roads behind them. Almost every evening, Emma had to assemble her finery from a trunk and sparkle at a dinner and play or concert put on by local dignitaries in Nelson's honor. She always wore a "Nelson outfit" or converted one of the fine court dresses Maria Carolina had given her by accessorizing with anchor earrings or necklaces, and she never tired of praising him and singing about him. Everyone watched her lead her lover, take hold of his hand, or whisper into his ear. In public she cut his food, opened doors, and held items he wished to see, and in private she arranged his hair and trimmed the nails on his fingers and toes. She now understood the price of falling in love with a public hero. No longer able to control her own exposure through stage-managing her parties and appearances, she had to smile through dinners and walkabouts during which people grabbed at her clothes. She had to be ready at any time to play the role of Lady Hamilton, Nelson's heroine. Left behind at the hotels as her daughter dazzled, Mrs. Cadogan continued to let out the waists of the queen's old dresses.

After a musical celebration commemorating the Battle of the Nile and a sumptuous commemorative dinner at Laibach, the Hamiltons and Nelson set off north after a few hours' sleep for the Karawanken mountain range, a rocky route notorious for its bloodthirsty bandits. They walked to the top, to save the horses. After another four days of travel, they arrived in Graz. Crowds of people had been waiting for hours to welcome Nelson, many on the brink of tears. "The manifestation of esteem and affection so moved the hero," gushed Graz's local newspaper, "that he not only invited many people into his own room but even went into the street amongst the crowd—with the beautiful Lady Hamilton on his arm," pressing hands, kissing babies, and accepting little presents.
¹
After they had recovered from the shock of realizing that the great man was tiny, pale, and scrawny, Graz's journalists decided they had never seen such a hero. To their delight, Emma staged her own personal walkabouts, playing to the image of her as Cleopatra, flanked by her glamorous Nubian maid. "The respect which the hero universally inspired was equalled by the admiration for Lady Hamilton's beauty."

Before dawn, the Nelson and Emma show departed for Gloggnitz, intending to meet up with the queen in order to enter Vienna in a triumphal progress. They burned into the quiet town only to be bitterly disappointed: she had already left. Her nephew and son-in-law, Emperor Leopold of Austria, was afraid of offending Napoleon, and he had instructed her to come alone. Nelson was infuriated by the queen's decision to hurry on without them, and when they arrived at the luxury spa resort of Baden Baden, he decided they had no time to bathe, even though his hernias were giving him pain and Emma's limbs were swollen.

Despite the emperor's attempt to play down the hero's arrival, the Viennese treated Nelson and Emma as the biggest stars they had ever seen, covering themselves in Nelson memorabilia. Portraits of the hero seemed to hang over half of the city. The Viennese ladies were resplendent in the latest look, a “bonnet a la Nelson,” which resembled a crocodile, and muslins embroidered in gold and silver to commemorate his victories. “A la Lady Hamilton” led fashion: short haircut, no bonnet, light muslin dress, earrings in the shape of anchors, and a replica Maltese Cross. The newspapers threw up their hands, declaring that “many women now refuse to wear any dress other than their ‘Nelson.’”
²

Even though they had traveled more than three hundred miles in a week, Nelson and Emma gamely welcomed the cheering crowds. Snowed under by invitations to soirées, concerts, and dinners, they found that everybody tried to pay for their food and wine, and presents arrived at their hotel. Lord and Lady Minto, the British envoy and his wife, entertained their new guests, stunned at the frenzy for the hero. “The door of his house is always crowded with people, and even the street whenever his carriage is at the door,” Lady Minto wrote.
³
People thronged the route when Nelson and Emma traveled out in their carriage, and the audience stood and cheered when they arrived in their box at the theater. Every artist offered to paint the hero and his mistress, musicians and composers waited for Emma's and Sir William's attention, and Mrs. Cadogan and Emma's maids were besieged by jewelers, dressmakers, and milliners hoping for favor. Tradesmen offered Nelson goods in order to claim him as a customer and named their shops, cafés, and hotels after him. They had no time for most of the offers, but Nelson did pay attention to the painters. He tried to distract Emma from her resentment at Maria Carolina's neglect by arranging for her to sit for the state painter, Heinrich Füger. In London, the
Morning Post
joked that Füger was “drawing Lady
Hamilton and Lord Nelson at full length together. An Irish correspondent hopes the artist will have the delicacy to put Sir William between them."
⁴

On the Thursday after Nelson and Emma arrived, the empress invited them to tea with her children and Maria Carolina at the recently built Schonbrunn Palace. Soon after, they received good news. Stunned by the outpouring of support for the Nile hero, the emperor had decided he could no longer ignore his visitors, and he had invited Nelson and the Hamiltons to a grand court reception.

Emma's pregnancy was beginning to show. Although she was not sharing a room with her husband, he would have realized the reason for Emma's nausea and Nelson's protectiveness by the time the party reached Vienna. Under eighteenth-century law, custody of a child, even an infant, was always given to the mother's husband, and she had no rights of access if the pair separated. The baby inside Emma was legally Sir William's possession, but he and everybody else knew it was not his child. Sly comments appeared in the newspapers about Emma's size: reporters praised the wonderful face of "the most beautiful woman in Europe" but tittered that her figure had swelled.