Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; (16 page)

counted himself among Emma's devotees, replied in terms of humble respect. He deprecated the liberty of sending a friend with a letter of introduction, and only wished that he could express his feelings on the perusal of her " happyness." " May God grant it may remain so to the end of your days."

How " attentive " to her Lady Plymouth and the English sisterhood were at this early period is shown by a letter which changed hands during the present year. It is couched not only in terms of affection, but of trust. If the French terror became actual at Naples, Lady Plymouth would take refuge with Lady Hamilton, and " creep under the shadow of" her " wings." The leaders of English society relished, as always, a new sensation, and, away from England, delighted to honour one so different from themselves.

While all this underground disturbance proceeded, the outward aspect of court and city was serenity itself. Ancient Pompeii could not have been more frivolously festive. Ill as they suited her mood, the Queen, from policy, encouraged these galas. They distracted the court from treason, they pleased her husband and people, and they attracted a crowd of useful foreigners, especially the English, who, during these two years, inundated Naples to their Ambassador's dismay. The distinguished English visitors of 1792 included the sickly young Prince Augustus, afterwards Duke of Sussex, whose delicate health and morganatic marriage l alike added to Hamilton's anxieties. But for the disturbed state of the Continent, " Vathek " Beckford—to whom Sir William was always kind— would have revisited his kinsman also. He had not

1 With Lady Augusta Murray, to whom he was a devoted husband in the teeth of his father's and brother's opposition. Lady Hamilton continued to enjoy his friendship long afterwards.

long- quitted his " dear " and queenly friend " Mary of Portugal," and was now travelling through Savoy with a retinue worthy of Disraeli's Sidonia and composed of half the emigres, musicians, and cooks— chefs d'orchestre et de cuisine —of Versailles; and Emma's old friend Gavin Hamilton was also among the throng. A correspondence between husband and wife during the January of this year, and his absence with the King at Persano, is pleasant reading, and pictures a happy pair. The Ambassador, who up to now had found his business in sport, cheerfully roughing it on bread and butter, going to bed at nine and rising at five, reading, too, " to digest his dinner," is affectionate and playful. He was " sorry," he writes on leaving, that his " dear Em " must " harden " herself to such little misfortunes as a temporary parting "; but he " cannot blame her for having a good and tender heart." " Believe me, you are in thorough possession of all mine, though I will allow it to be rather tough." His diary of the hour flows from a light heart and pen. He tells her the gossip: " Yesterday the courier brought the order of S't. Stephano from the Emperor for the Prince Ausberg, and the King was desired to invest him with it. As soon as the King received it, he ran into the Prince's room, whom he found in his shirt, and without his breeches, and in that condition was he decorated with the star and ribbon by his majesty, who has wrote the whole circumstance to the Emperor. Leopold may, perhaps, not like the joking with his first order. Such nonsense should certainly be done with solemnity; or it becomes, what it really is, a little tinsel and a few yards of broad ribbon." His watchful wife, in her turn, acquaints him with London cabals to dislodge him from office. " Our conduct." he answers with indignation, " shall be such as to be un-attackable. . . . Twenty-seven years' service, having

spent all the King's money, and all my own, besides running in debts, deserves something better than a dismission. ... I would not be married to any woman but yourself for all the world." And again, " I never doubted your gaining every soul you approach. . . . Nothing pleases me more than to hear you do not neglect your singing. It would be a pity, as you are near the point of perfection." The very etiquette of the Embassy he leaves with confidence in her hands. " You did admirably, my dear Em., in not inviting Lady A. H[atton] to dine with the prince, and still better in telling her honestly the reason. I have always found that going straight is the best method, though not the way of the world. You did also very well in asking Madame Skamouski, and not taking upon you to present her [to the Queen] without leave. In short, consult your own good sense, and do not be in a hurry; and I am sure you will always act right. . . . As the Prince asked you, you did right to send for a song of Douglas's, but in general you will do right to sing only at home." He also politely deprecates his plebeian mother-in-law's attendance at formal receptions. But Emma, throughout her career, disdained to be parted for a moment. Unlike most parvenues, she never blushed for the homely creature who had stood by her in the day of trouble, and her intense love for her mother, even when it stood most in her way, ennobles her character.

The Neapolitan revelries were sometimes the reverse of squeamish: " Let them all roll on the carpet," he writes, " provided you are not of the party. My trust is in you alone."

It may be added that from stray allusions in this series it is evident that even thus early Lady Hamilton could translate letters and transact business. Sir William was naturally torpid, and his enthusiasm cen-*

tred on the wife who bestirred him. His efforts to keep eternally young were already being damped by the deaths of contemporaries. That of his old intimate, Lord Pembroke, in 1794, was to evoke a characteristic comment:—" It gave me a little twist; but I have for some time perceived that my friends, with whom I spent my younger days, have been dropping around me."

The close of 1792 saw the first of those serious illnesses through which Emma was so often to nurse him. For more than a fortnight he lay in danger at Caserta. Lady Hamilton was " eight days without undressing, eating, or sleeping." The Queen and King sent constantly to inquire. Although Naples was distant sixteen miles, Ladies Plymouth, Dunmore, and Webster, with others of the British contingent, offered even to stay with her. She tells her dear Mr. Greville (how changed the appellation!) of her "great obligations," and of her grief. " Endead I was almost distracted from such extreme happiness at once to such misery. . . . What cou'd console me for the loss of such a husband, friend, and protector? For surely no happiness is like ours. We live but for one another. But I was too happy. 1 1 had imagined I was never more to be unhappy. All is right. I now know myself again, and shall not easily fall into the same error again. For every moment I feel what I felt when I thought I was loseing him for ever." x This is the letter concerning her grandmother to which reference has already been made. Since I lay stress on the fact that Emma was a typical daughter of the people both in scorn and affection, that she was warm-hearted, un-mercenary, and grateful, and that she never lowered the natures of those with whom she was brought into contact, another excerpt may be pardoned:—" I will 1 Morrison MS. 215; Caserta, December 4, 1792.

trouble you with my own affairs as you are so good as to interest yourself about me. You must know I send my grandmother every Cristmas twenty pounds, and so I ought. I have 200 a year for nonsense, and it wou'd be hard I cou'd not give her twenty pounds when she has so often given me her last shilling. As Sir William is ill, I cannot ask him for the order; but if you will get the twenty pounds and send it to her, you will do me the greatest favor; for if the time passes without hearing from me, she may imagine I have forgot her, and I would not keep her poor old heart in suspense for the world. . . . Cou'd you not write to her a line from me and send to her, and tell her by my order, and she may write to you? Send me her answer. For I cannot divest myself of my original feelings. It will contribute to my happiness, and I am sure you will assist to make me happy. Tell her every year she shal have twenty pound. The fourth of November last I had a dress on that cost twenty-five pounds, as it was Gala at Court; and believe me I felt unhappy all the while I had it on. Excuse the trouble I give you."

The end of 1792 and the whole of 1793 loomed big with crisis. The new year opened with the judicial murder of the French King, it closed with that of Marie Antoinette. Her execution exasperated all Europe against France. England declared war; Prussia retired from the first Coalition, and the second was formed. An Anglo-Sicilian understanding ensued. Through the arrival of La Touche Treville's squadron at Naples, the French sansculottes shook hands with the Italian. Hood's capture of Toulon, Napoleon's undoing of it, and Nelson's advent in the Agamemnon, opened out a death-struggle unfinished even when the hero died.

To the Queen's promptings of temperament and hab-

its of principle were now to be added the goads of revenge. Jacobinism for her and her friends soon came to mean the devil. And with this year, too, opened also Lady Hamilton's intimacy with the Queen, her awakening of her listless husband, and her keen endeavours on behalf of the British navy.

The worst hysteria is that of a woman who is able to conceal it. Such was now the Queen's. The overture to this drama of 1793 was her formal dismissal of Citizen Mackau, for a few months past the unwelcome Jacobin representative of France at the Neapolitan court; at the same time, the Queen's influence procured the dismissal of Semouville, another " citizen " ambassador at Constantinople. Treville's fleet promptly appeared to enforce reparation. His largest vessel dropped anchor in face of Castel Del Uovo, and the rest formed in line of battle behind it. A council was called. The Anglo-Sicilian treaty was yet in abeyance, and with shame and rage Maria Carolina had to submit, and receive the minister back again. But this was not all. No sooner had Treville departed than a convenient storm shattered his fleet, and he returned to refit. His sailors hobnobbed with the secret societies, and a definite revolution began. France had hoped for attack; open war being refused, she renewed her designs by stealth. The Queen, incensed beyond measure, redoubled her suspicions and her precautions. To the secret tribunal she added a closed " Junta," and the grim work of deportation and proscription set in. All Naples, except the Lazzaroni, rose. Despite the Neapolitan neutrality, Maria now organised a second coalition against France, which was at first successful. The French, too, were beaten off Sardinia. In August she renewed her desperate attempts to save her sister; the jailor's wife was interviewed. Archduchess Christine contrived to send the Marquis Burlot and

Rosalia D'Albert with carte blanche on a mission of rescue. It was too late: they were arrested. But Toulon was betrayed by Trogoff to Hood, who took possession of it for Louis XVII.

Meanwhile, repression reigned at Naples. Every French servant was banished; some of the English visitors, among them, as Mackau's friend, Mr. Hodges, who pestered Emma by his attentions, were implicated. The Queen, mistrustful of the crew who had played her false, turned to Emma in her misfortunes, for Lady Hamilton was now quite as familiar with the royalties as her husband. One of the Neapolitan duchesses long afterwards insinuated to the Marchioness of Solari that Emma's paramount influence was due to spying on them and the libertine King. 1 This may at first have been so (though envy supplies a likelier reason), but the real cause lies deeper. The Queen's correspondence commences in the winter of 1/93, and it is quite clear that its mainspring was sympathy.

•" Par le sort de la naissance

L'un est roi, 1'autre est berger. Le hasard fit leur distance; L'esprit seul peut tout changer." 2

The constraint of a traitorous and artificial court left the Queen without a confidante, and she welcomed a child of nature whom she fancied she could mould

1 Abominable rumours, as to her and the Queen, passed current among the French Jacobins, who fastened the same filth with as little foundation on Marie Antoinette. Emma told Greyille how she despised and ignored the lying scandals of Paris which Napoleon afterwards favoured from policy.

2 It may thus be paraphrased :—

" Random lot of birth can start Peasant one, another Queen. Chance has placed them far apart; Mother-wit can change the scene."

at will. The more her pent-up hatred fastened on her courtiers, the more she spited them by petting her new favourite. The friendship of queens with the lowly appeals to vanity as well as to devotion. It proved so with both Sarah Jennings and even more with the humbler Abigail Masham. In still greater degree did it now so prove with Emma. It was not long before she rode out regularly on a horse from the royal stables, attended by a royal equerry, and enjoying semi-royal privileges. Maria's haughty ladies-in-waiting, the Marchionesses of San Marco and of San Clemente, can scarcely have been pleased. Jealousy must have abounded, but it found no outlet for her downfall. That the Neapolitan nobility, at any rate, believed in her real services to England, is shown by the rumour among them that she was Pitt's informer. Henceforward dates the growth of an English party and an Anglo-mania at the Neapolitan court which was violently opposed alike by the pro-Spanish, the pro-Jacobin, and the " down-with-the-foreigner " parties. Emma, however, stood as yet only on the threshold of her political influence.

In the June of that year, " for political reasons," Lady Hamilton informs Greville, " we have lived eight months at Caserta," formerly only their winter abode, but now the Queen's regular residence during the hot months. " Our house has been like an inn this winter." (Sir William naturally sighed over the expense.) ". . . We had the Duchess of Ancaster several days. It is but 3 days since the Devonshire family has left; and we had fifty in our family for four days at Caserta. 'Tis true we dined every day at court, or at some casino of the King; for you cannot immagine how good our King and Queen as been to the principal English who have been here—particularly to Lord and Lady Palmerston, Cholmondely, Devon-

shire, Lady Spencer, Lady Bessborough, Lady Plymouth, Sir George and Lady Webster. And I have carried the ladies to the Queen very often, as she as permitted me to go very often in private, which I do. ... In the evenings I go to her, and we are tete-a-tete 2 or 3 hours. Sometimes we sing. Yesterday the King and me sang duetts 3 hours. It was but bad. . . . To-day the Princess Royal of Sweden comes to court to take leave of their Majesties. Sir William and me are invited to dinner with her. She is an amiable princess, and as lived very much with us. The other ministers' wives have not shewed her the least attention because she did not pay them the first visit, as she travels under the name of the Countess of Wasa. . . . Her Majesty told me I had done very well in waiting on Her Royal Highness the moment she arrived. However, the ministers' wives are very fond of me, as the[y] see I have no pretentions; nor do I abuse of Her Majesty's goodness, and she observed the other night at court at Naples [when] we had a drawing-room in honner of the Empress having brought a son. I had been with the Queen the night before alone en famille laughing and singing, etc. etc., but at the drawing-room I kept my distance, and payd the Queen as much respect as tho' I had never seen her before, which pleased her very much. But she shewed me great distinction that night, and told me several times how she admired my good conduct. I onely tell you this to shew and convince you I shall never change, but allways be simple and natural. You may immagine how happy my dear, dear Sir William is. ... We live more like lovers than husband and wife, as husbands and wives go nowadays. Lord deliver me! and the English are as bad as the Italians, some few excepted.