Nelson: The Essential Hero (36 page)

Sir William Hamilton was the son of a Scottish duke. He had served in the Army but, after marrying a Welsh heiress, had turned to the diplomatic world and had become British envoy to the Bourbon Court in Naples in 1764. On his first wife’s dying in 1782 he had inherited her estate near Swansea, the money from which he had largely devoted to his pursuit of works of classical art, the production of beautiful and lavishly illustrated books on antiquity and on volcanoes - the latter being his second passion. He had made twenty-two ascents of Vesuvius and was one of the first and foremost volcanists in history. By the time that Nelson knew him he had become so perfectly assimilated to this kingdom in the sun that a British visitor had remarked of him, ‘As to Sir William Hamilton, he was a perfect Neapolitan both in mind and manners.’ This was to be less than fair to a man who might better have been described as the epitome of an eighteenth-century English aristocrat. Civilised, courteous, urbane, he took a Horatian view of life. His relationship with his second wife has often aroused controversy, but it is best perhaps summed up by his biographer Brian Fothergill:

After seven years of marriage and twelve years living under the same roof as Emma Sir William had no complaints to lay at her door; he was still devoted to her. The exact nature of their relationship must remain a matter for speculation, but it is probable that he was not a very ardent or demanding husband. The fact that he had no children by either of his marriages . . . might well suggest that he was either impotent or sterile. Emma, as we know, had a child long before he met her and was later to present Nelson with a daughter and possibly another child who was still-born. Hamilton’s amorous adventures during his first wife’s lifetime have a note of comic opera about them and consisted in no more than mild philandering; there is no evidence that he ever had any illegitimate children. His lifelong love of beauty, the ‘attitudes’ that featured so early in his life with Emma, his whole manner of treating her like a wonderful
objet d’art
which so often amused his friends, the swimming boys who performed for his entertainment at Posillipo (as Tischbeing witnessed) are all indications that in matters of sex Sir William was possibly one of those men for whom a feast for the eyes is banquet enough.

Goethe in his
Travels in Italy
summed up his impressions of the ambassador with the words: ‘Hamilton is a person of universal taste, and after having wandered through the whole realm of creation has found rest at last in a most beautiful companion, a masterpiece of that great artist - Nature.’

His companion, now his wife, and thirteen years older than when Goethe had met her, was Emma, nee Amy Lyon, born the daughter of a Cheshire blacksmith. Taken early to London by a shrewd mother, she had swiftly graduated to a so-called Temple of Health in the Adelphi, which would appear to have been a cross between a quack apothecary’s shop and a fashionable house of assignation. Her beauty had infatuated Romney who had drawn and painted her innumerable times, catching in her youthful skin, lips and eyes a perfection of natural health and glowing vitality. Taken up by a young baronet, Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh of (appropriately named) Up Park on the South Downs, she proceeded to live a life which she was herself later to describe as ‘wild and thoughtless’. After less than a year she found herself pregnant and the gates of this wanton Eden were closed behind her. It was at this point that one of Sir Harry’s friends, the cool and cultivated Charles Greville, stepped in to become her protector. He not only adopted her child, a daughter named Emma, but kept her as his mistress for four years in his small house in Edgware Row. She had now changed her name to Emily Hart. Greville found that he had a devoted mistress who truly loved him for the kindness he had shown her, together with an efficient housekeeper in her mother. He taught her how to spell (though this was never to be her forte), had her instructed in music, and indeed made out of his wild country rose a flower that sat elegantly in the buttonhole of a young man about town. It was he who introduced her to Romney. Greville was Sir William Hamilton’s nephew and, like his uncle, though well born he had no fortune, so it was incumbent upon him to find an heiress to maintain his style of life. (Unlike his uncle he was never to find one.) But in the search for an heiress it was necessary to disencumber himself of his mistress. Hamilton, already a widower, had visited England and had been much taken with the beauty of his nephew’s young protegee, but his interest was decidedly no more than an admiring platonism. Greville thought that this situation could easily be improved upon and arranged, after Hamilton’s return to Naples, for Emma and her mother (Mrs Cadogan as the latter now called herself) to visit the envoy in his romantic city. Sir William was a reluctant lover, and it was some time before Emma became his mistress. Indeed Emma, who genuinely loved Greville, was most unwilling to exchange him for his elderly uncle, however kind and gentle the latter might be. Indeed, it is quite clear from the numerous tragic letters that she wrote Greville from Naples, that he was perhaps the only man she ever loved with simple passion unmixed with artistry. (Her love for Nelson, as will be seen, was of another calibre.) ‘You are everything’, she wrote, ‘that is dear to me on hearth, and I hope happier times will soon restore you to me, for endead I would rather be with you starving then from you in the greatest splender in the world.’

She did not starve, however -
she
made the rich marriage that Greville never did - and she returned to Naples, after Sir William had paid another visit to England, as Lady Hamilton, wife of the envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Before passing on to consider what Emma looked like when Nelson came to know her on this visit in
Vanguard
it is worth considering the judgement of genius, of Goethe who saw Emma as a young woman :

... an English girl of about twenty years of age. She is very handsome with a beautiful figure. The old knight has made a Greek costume for her which becomes her extremely. Dressed in this, letting her hair fall loose, and making use of a couple of shawls, she exhibits every possible variety of pose, expression, and aspect, so that in the end the spectator almost imagines himself in a dream. Here one sees in perfection, in ravishing variety, in movement, all that the greatest artists have loved to express.

At the time that they all now met Emma was thirty-three; Sir William nearly sixty-nine; and Nelson would be forty within a few days.

Nelson’s original intention was to settle himself into a hotel, for he knew that there would be much coming and going of naval officers and couriers : he had after all to consider the whole disposition of the ships throughout the central and eastern Mediterranean as well as prosecute the blockade of Malta. Napoleon was still triumphant in Egypt, even if deprived of his fleet, and the host of French transports were still at anchor in Alexandria harbour. Sir William, however, was determined to have the Admiral as his guest and the hero must of necessity be lodged in the Palazzo Sessa. This was Sir William’s town house, a palace of considerable grandeur that had been further enriched by his magnificent collection of antiques and old masters. Here an upper-floor room had been set aside for Nelson, from which a curving window gave out upon the whole prospect of the Bay of Naples. It was a far call from the cramped quarters and low headroom of his cabin aboard the
Vanguard
, from that simple wooden home from which, as he remarked, he had not been absent for some six months. Nelson was still ill from his head-wound, and his frail appearance, his one arm, his sightless eye, and the evidence of considerable fatigue dating from all those weeks of relentless chase, culminating in the thunder of the Nile, made him an obvious subject for rest and careful nursing. Emma took this upon herself. She was, it must be pointed out, no longer quite Goethe’s vision of loveliness, although her face had retained the glowing charm that Romney had loved to paint. She was, as one observer described her, ‘full in person, not fat, but
embonpoint
’. She was also, though ‘ill-bred, often very affected’, a woman who had learned throughout her curiously chequered career to discern the nature of men and know how to please them. It did not take her very long to discover that Nelson’s greatest weakness was his vanity. Indeed, as he himself wrote to Fanny, ‘The preparations of Lady Hamilton for celebrating my birthday tomorrow are enough to fill me with vanity. Every ribbon, every button has “Nelson” etc., the whole service are “H.N. Glorious 1st August”. Songs, sonnets are numerous beyond what I ever could deserve. I send you the additional verse to “God save the King” as I know you will sing it with pleasure.’ The verse read :

Join we great Nelson’s name First on the roll of fame Him let us sing Spread we his praise around Honour of British ground Who made Nile’s shores resound God save the King.

Even the cool and imperturbable Troubridge might have had his head slightly turned by all the adulation that now fell upon Nelson.

The Admiral’s fortieth birthday - marred only by the fact that Josiah Nisbet got outrageously drunk - was a fantasy of lights, decorations, triumphal arches, and all the fanfaronade that came so easily to the Neapolitan temperament. Nelson was celebrated in much the same way as the Caesars had once been hailed in this bright bay of the Sirens. It is significant, however, that he had not yet quite succumbed to those blandishing voices, that his letters to his wife are still the letters of a loving husband, and that he could write to St Vincent on the day after his birthday: ‘I trust, my Lord, in a week we shall be at sea. I am very unwell, and the miserable conduct of this Court is not likely to cool my irritable temper. It is a country of fiddlers and poets, whores and scoundrels.’ One suspects that the Admiral may have had a hangover, but his judgement was still sound.

His immediate preoccupation was to capitalise upon the victory of Aboukir Bay and to take advantage of the rising tide of hope throughout Europe. It seemed essential to strike on land, while Napoleon was still immersed in the affairs of the East, and unable to return so long as the Royal Navy held the seas between Egypt and France. All seemed set for a military expansion, moving northwards to free Rome, with the intention of ultimately driving the French out of Italy. On the surface of it, the overall plan was reasonable enough, but what Nelson neglected to appreciate was that the material with which to effect it was sadly wanting. The Neapolitan troops, with whom he hoped to effect this thrust, were - as he should well have known from his previous experience in western Italy and France - ill-trained, and incompetently officered. However, the tide was at the full: the Queen was fired by the desire to see the hated French expelled from Italy, Ferdinand even was carried along by Nelson’s enthusiasm, and Sir William Hamilton cast aside his better judgement to join the war party. Negotiations were already afoot for a coalition against France in which Britain, Austria and Russia were to act in concert. Early in October General Mack arrived from Vienna. He was unfortunately a very typical example of an Austrian general of the period - and Nelson had had good reason to mistrust their capabilities from previous experience. But he felt himself borne forward on the shining wave of success, and the atmosphere by which he was surrounded was hardly conducive to clear thinking, even by one who was less susceptible to flattery than Nelson or, indeed, of a less amorous disposition. One letter to St Vincent is revealing enough for, after commenting sensibly on the general procrastination and inefficiency in Naples (with the exception of the Queen), he goes on: ‘We all dine this day with the King on board a ship, he is very attentive. I have been with the Queen, she is truly a daughter of Maria Theresa. I am writing opposite Lady Hamilton, therefore you will not be surprised at the glorious jumble of this letter. Were your Lordship in my place, I much doubt if you could write so well; our hearts and our hands must be all in a flutter: Naples is a dangerous place, and we must keep clear of it.’ The words spring clear enough from the page - Nelson was already half in love with the Ambassadress. If he had heeded his own sound advice, history would have been very different.

On 14 October, he sailed for Malta where a Portuguese squadron had joined Captain Ball to assist in the blockade of the island. It was a long slow passage from Naples, ten days at sea, but on arrival Nelson was able to see for himself that the islanders were actively conducting a siege of their capital, Valetta, where General Vaubois and his troops were besieged with little food, and almost no hope of receiving any assistance from the sea. It seemed at that time as if Valetta must soon fall, and this last French base be eliminated from the middle sea. In fact, Vaubois and his men were to hold out for many months. Before making his way back to Naples Nelson had the satisfaction of seeing the French in the little northern island of Gozo, invested by Ball, come to terms and capitulate. Five ships-of-the-line were left behind to help in prosecuting the blockade of Malta itself and Nelson felt that he could now turn his attention to the march on Rome - something which, if General Mack and the Neapolitans had been anything but dilatory, should have been almost ready.

Not even the atmosphere of war, as Nelson quickly found out, could bring any sense of urgency or real understanding of the task ahead of them to either King Ferdinand, General Mack, or their officers and troops. Although some thirty thousand men had been assembled at San Germano for manoeuvres and for a personal inspection by Nelson, it could not escape the latter’s critical eye that all was not well. He drily observed, ‘I have formed my opinion. I heartily hope I may be mistaken.’ Goletta, the historian of Naples during this period, describes the scene :

The King had taken up his quarters in this camp, prepared to march with the army; the queen, attired in a riding-habit, constantly drove along the lines in a chariot and four, accompanied by the Ambassadors from friendly sovereigns, and other foreigners of distinction, the barons of the kingdom, and Lady Hamilton, who, under pretence of escorting her Majesty, displayed her own beauty in all its magnificence to the camp, and paraded her conquest over the victor of Aboukir who, seated beside her in the same chariot, appeared fascinated and submissive to her charms.