Nelson's Lady Hamilton (11 page)

1

LADY HAMILTON AS EMMA

FROM A DRAWING BY SIR T. LAWRENCE

the month before her marriage Emma and Sir William Hamilton spent some time in visiting at country houses, glad to get out of town during an unusually hot August. Among other places, they went to Fonthill Abbey, where Emma's somewhat exuberant taste was delighted by the bizarre glories of " Vathek" Beckford's palatial residence. Nearly ten years later she and Sir William were to vist Fonthill again, having Nelson with them.

Emma was destined to play many parts, but she only played that of a bride on one occasion. Her wedding-day was the 6th of September, 1791, and she was married at Marylebone Church, in the presence of Lord Abercorn and the Mr. Dutens to whom she refers in her letter to Romney. It was a very happy Emma who turned away from the church door with her hand on Sir William's arm. Now she could look the world in the face without either shrinking or defiance. She rested content in the thought of the name and the position her " dear, dear husband " had given her, and probably considered that her adventures and her ambitions were ended—whereas, in reality, they were only dawning upon the horizon of her consciousness.

As for Sir William Hamilton, no doubt he too was happy in an approvingl conscience and the highly respectable ending of a doubtful adventure. He was certainly proud of the radiant and

94 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON

lovely woman at his side whom he believed— how mistakenly the future was to prove—he had " engaged for life/ 1

Horace Walpole's comment on the marriage was, " So Sir William has married his gallery of statues!" But Emma was very little of a statue at heart—had she been a little colder she would have remained Sir William's " for life/' and Nelson's glory would have had no single stain upon it.

CHAPTER VII

THE QUEEN'S COMRADE

ON their return to Naples, Sir William and Lady Hamilton passed through Paris, where they were received by Marie Antoinette, the sister of the Queen of Naples. The coming doom was already darkening round the fair head of the French Queen, and there can be little doubt that she took the opportunity of their visit to send some communication to her sister of Naples by the hand of the British Ambassador. Lady Hamilton, who was beginning to thrill to the excitement of the European situation, and who always tended to exaggerate her part in events, declared, many years later, that she brought Marie Antoinette's last letter to the Queen of Naples.

The unhappy Queen of France has become one of the heroines 'of history because of the unenviable greatness and the tragic fall that fate and circumstance thrust upon her. But her sister, Maria Carolina, though less known to fame, as playing her part upon a smaller stage,

96 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON

was in reality far more richly endowed by nature —she had greater beauty, infinitely more brain power, and a considerable share of the forceful-ness, capacity, and statecraft of her mother, Maria Theresa. Her King and consort, Ferdinand, was the son of Charles III. of Spain, and a typical Bourbon in his extravagant passion for the chase. He cared little for the dignities and the responsibilities of his position—the fate of dynasties and the internal condition of his people were matters that he was generally content to leave to his clever wife, while he pursued the noble boar at Persano. On the whole, it was fortunate that his tastes turned to sport instead of government, for on the rare occasions when he remembered his duty as a monarch, he showed himself to be of a bullying, obstructive disposition. Beckford called him "a lobster crushed by his shell." His heavy good humour, on which the Queen played, enabled her to be the effectual ruler of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; but occasionally his Spanish tendencies would bestir themselves in his slow mind, and with characteristic delicacy and chivalry he would call his wife the " Austrian hen." The Bourbon in him, the Hapsburg in her, were continually at war; but the advantages were with the alert and determined Queen, for her Bourbon husband was so much occupied with sport and his own forms of enjoyment that he never really mobilized his forces. General Pepe",

THE QUEEN'S COMRADE 97

in his " Memoirs," said of him, " He was both by nature and education weak, strongly addicted to pleasure, and utterly incapable of opposing himself to the strong mind of the young queen, who soon discovered the character of her husband.'* Sir John Acton, that curious, cautious, capable, wooden-natured Englishman who played such a variety of parts at the Neapolitan Court, from Admiral of the Neapolitan Fleet (such as it was) to Field-Marshal and Minister of Finance, summed up the King by saying that he was a good sort of man because nature had not endowed him with the faculties necessary for the making of a bad man.

The outbreak of the Revolution in France was watched with great uneasiness and distress of mind by the Queen of Naples, not only because of the threatening danger to her sister and Louis XVI., but also because she saw it as the beginning of a tempest that might soon sweep through Europe to the shores of Italy. "The French have shown themselves/' said Burke, "the ablest architects of ruin who have hitherto existed in the world. In a short space of time they have pulled to the ground their army, their navy, their commerce, their arts, and their manufactures." And it was as "architects of ruin" that Maria Carolina regarded all Jacobins, whether French or Neapolitan.

With France in ruins and dishevelment, with

98 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON

Europe bewildered, with a pro-Spanish husband, the Queen saw herself and her schemes in sore need of support. Her hopes turned towards the England of Pitt—the great Minister who stood out unmoved and calm and obstinately sanguine amid the growing storm. She took the English Acton for her counsellor, she cultivated English sympathies and English good will. She had always been gracious to the British Ambassador, but when he returned in the autumn of 1791 with his wife, she took the surest way to make him her friend by extending a hand to Emma, whom she had heretofore been unable formally to countenance. " Emma has had a difficult part to act," wrote Sir William Hamilton to Horace Walpole, "and has succeeded wonderfully, having gained, by having no pretensions, the thorough approbation of all the English ladies. The Queen of Naples was very kind to her on our return, and treats her like any other travelling lady of distinction; in short, we are very comfortably situated here."

A little later the Queen was to treat her not as a "travelling lady of distinction," but as a friend and confidant and tool, though Emma herself never realized the latter fact.

But before following the development of Emma's intercourse with the Queen, before taking the plunge into the political affairs in which she was soon involved, it is necessary to devote a

THE QUEEN'S COMRADE 99

little further space to the domestic side of the unfolding drama, as revealed in the letters of the period. The guillotine was already casting its ghastly shadow athwart the fair fields of France, Napoleon's great wars and England's greater resistance were already rising slowly above the horizon of the future. But still there was sunshine at Naples, fetes and dinners and the social round in which Emma always delighted —particularly now in her new and assured position as wife of the British Ambassador. " We dined yesterday with Sir William and Lady Hamilton/' writes Lady Malmesbury. " She really behaves as well as possible, and quite wonderfully, considering her origin and education."

This is not, perhaps, very high praise; but Nelson's friend, Sir Gilbert Elliot, writing in 1796, hardly says as much for her :—

" She is all Nature and yet all Art, that is to say, her manners are perfectly unpolished, of course very easy, though not with the ease of good breeding, but of a barmaid; excessively good humoured, and wishing to please and be admired by all ages and sorts of persons that come in her way ; but besides considerable natural understanding, she has acquired, since her marriage, some knowledge of history and of the arts, and one wonders at the application and pains she has taken to make herself what she is. With men her language and conversation

are exaggerations of anything I ever heard anywhere ; and I was wonderfully struck with these inveterate remains of her origin, though the impression was very much weakened by seeing the other ladies of Naples."

But when Sir Gilbert Elliot saw the "Attitudes " he was charmed, like all beholders. " We had the * Attitudes' a night or two ago by candli light," he wrote in the same year. " They com< up to my expectations fully, which is saying everything. They set Lady Hamilton in a ven different light from any I had seen her in before nothing about her, neither her conversation, hei manners, nor figure, announce the very refinec taste which she discovers in this performance, besides the extraordinary talent which is neede< for the execution."

Five years earlier than this, the year oi Emma's marriage, Lady Malmesbury wrote witl enthusiasm : " You never saw anything so charming as Lady Hamilton's ' Attitudes/ The mo; graceful statues or pictures do not give you ai idea of them."

Sir William Hamilton's attachment to his wife was evidently sincere and warm, and when h< left her for a short time in January, 1792, to g( on one of his sporting expeditions with the Kin] at Persano, he wrote her some charming letters telling her of all that he did and saw, and giving her much affectionate advice.

LADY HAMILTON AS "A BACCHANTE

GEORGE ROMNEY

THE QUEEN'S COMRADE 101

It is somewhat amusing to learn that the obstinacy of the King of Naples sometimes went to the length of spoiling his sport—the most disastrous thing possible, in his own eyes. There were wolves and wild boars in plenty, " but the king would direct how we should beat the wood, and began at the wrong end," says Sir William, "by which the wolves and boars escaped, and we remained without shooting power." He adds with a touch of malice, " The King's face is very long at this moment."

In nearly every letter he declares his attachment to Emma: " I would not be married to any woman, but yourself, on earth, for all the world." And next day, " I am glad all goes on so well. I never doubted your gaining every soul you approach. I am far from being angry at your feeling the loss of me so much! Nay, I am flattered." In the same letter he says, " The cold and fatigue makes my hand something like yours—which, by the bye, you neglect rather too much; but, as what you write is good sense, every body will forgive the scrawl." He tells her a day or two later, " I am glad you have been at the Academy, and in the great world. It is time enough for you to find out, that the only real comfort is to be met with at home; I have been in that secret some time. You are, certainly, the most domestic young woman I know : but you are young, and most beautiful; and it would