Nelson's Lady Hamilton (19 page)

Thus the ardent Emma. To see her " painting the drooping situation," with her left arm extended in imitation of Nelson, is surely a very triumph of the " Attitudes " ! Certain it is that

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Nelson would be struck with the picture presented to his imagination, he would admire her spirit, and be grateful for her advocacy of his views. Nearly all the rest of this letter is a paean of praise of the two most glorious beings then existing in the estimation of Emma Hamilton— Nelson and Maria Carolina. She becomes intoxicated with admiration as she thinks of them. She tells Nelson, " But how every body loves and esteems you. 'Tis universal from the high to the low; and, do you know, I sing now nothing but the Conquering Hero. . . . God bless you, prosper and assist you in all you undertake ; and may you live Long, Long, Long, for the sake of your country, your King, your familly, all Europe, Asia, Affrica, and America, and for the scorge of France, but particularly for the happiness of Sir William and self, who Love you, admire you, and glory in your friendship." Then she falls to reflecting on the gratitude England owes him : " Your statue ought to be made of pure gold and placed in the middle of London. Never, never was there such a battle, and if you are not regarded as you ought, and I wish, I will renounce my country and become either a Mameluch or a Turk. The Queen yesterday said to me, 'the more I think on it, the greater I find it, and I feil such gratitude to the warrior, the glorious Nelson, that my respect is such that I cou'd fall at his honner'd feet and kiss jthem/ You that

know us booth, and how alike we are in many things, that is, I as Emma Hamilton, and she as Queen of Naples—imagine us booth speaking of you. We touch ourselves into terms of rapture, respect, and admiration, and conclude their is not such another in the world. I told her Majesty, we onely wanted Lady Nelson to be the female tria juncta in nno y for we all Love you, and yet all three differently, and yet all equally— if you can make that out. Sir William laughs at us, but he owns women have great souls, at least his has. I would not be a lukewarm friend for the world.

" I am no one's enemy, and unfortunately am difficult, and cannot make friendships with all. But the few friends I have, I wou'd die for them. And I assure you now, if things take an unfortunate turn here, and the Queen dies at her post, I will remain with her. I feil I owe it to her friendship uncommon for me."

Assuredly, with all her faults, Emma was no " lukewarm friend," though equally certainly she deceived herself when she said she was " difficult "—in reality the fundamental weakness of her character was that she was too easy. But in her ardour, her generous, even extravagant enthusiasm, her real courage and grit, she was a woman after Nelson's own heart—as he was already beginning to discover. " My situation in this country," he wrote from Naples at the beginning

of December to Commodore Duckworth, who had just captured Minorca, "has had doubtless one rose, but it has been plucked from a bed of thorns." Within five months of the Nile, in the midst of thronging events and many anxieties, Emma was thus beginning to stand out in his eyes from all around her.

The time was rapidly approaching when Emma's courage was to be put to the test. Idle boasting was dangerous for those who lived amid wars and rumours of wars, for quick on the heels of the boast came the imperative need to prove it. But Emma's fondness for big words was based on a fondness for big actions, and she welcomed the occasion when it faced her. As Mahan says, " There was in her make-up a good deal of pagan virtue." And Greville's quite just estimate of her was, " Emma's passion is admiration, and it is capable of aspiring to any line which will be celebrated, and it would be indifferent, when on that key, whether she was Lucretia or Sappho, or Scaevola or Regulus; anything grand, masculine or feminine, she could take up."

By the end of November the King of Naples and General Mack—whom Rosebery describes as "a strategist of unalloyed incompetency and unvaried failure"—had marched to Rome with their army and entered the city in triumph. But the first triumph was the last; the French defeated Mack's scattered columns in detail, and on the

7th of December Ferdinand fled from Rome, while the retreat of his rash and untrained army quickly became a rout. Nelson scornfully wrote to the First Lord of the Admiralty : "The Neapolitan officers have not lost much honour, for God knows they have but little to lose; but they lost all they had." The soldiers who ran away at Toulon ran away again; while the officers, said Nelson, " seemed alarmed at a drawn sword, or a gun, if loaded with shot."

Having been so dared by the ill-advised King of Naples, the French speedily followed him across the frontiers of his kingdom; and thus the war that was to have been carried into the enemies' territory and away from home, came hot upon the footsteps of the defeated Ferdinand. There seemed no alternative for the distracted Court save flight. But though the French were on the borders, and the fate of Marie Antoinette and her Consort seemed hovering above the heads of the Sicilian sovereigns, yet there were many difficulties in Naples. The Lazzaroni were entirely loyal to their King; but it was a fierce loyalty, ready to tear him and his wife and children in pieces if they saw any signs of escape—which naturally enough in their eyes would wear all the ugly colours of desertion and abandonment.

In this tangle of fears and dangers Emma Hamilton's sound English grit came out. It seemed that into her hands and into Nelson's was

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committed the safety of the Sicilian Court. They worked together, and in that working, amid storm and the peril of death, came to such knowledge of each other as first led them into love. He stood upon the height of his fame—a fame un-marred and perfect; she had touched the last point of her beauty—the point at which the rose has reached its fullest and final flowering before the petals fall. And to the woman who had in so large a measure redeemed the past, as to the man whose past was bright with glorious deeds without a blot to darken it—to them at this dangerous and inflammable time came no voice saying, " Have regard to thy name ; for that shall continue with thee above a thousand great treasures of gold."

CHAPTER X THE FLIGHT FROM NAPLES

FOR the first and last time in his life Nelson was to counsel flight. He came back to Naples from Leghorn on the fth of December, and ten days later was writing urgently to Trou-bridge—

" Things are in such a critital state here, that I desire you will join me without one moment's loss of time. . . . The King is returned here, and everything is as bad as possible. For God's sake make haste! Approach the place with caution. Messina, probably, I shall be found at; but you can inquire at the Lipari Islands if we are at Palermo."

Things were indeed "as bad as possible." The population of Naples was in a ferment. The upper and middle classes were most affected by the republican spirit—which did not touch the uneducated and priest-ridden peasants and fisherfolk —and were already turning in secret welcome towards the oncoming French, while traitors and spies lurked about the precincts of the 'Palace.

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The Lazzaroni, as has been said, were loyal to the King and Queen ; but their loyalty took the alarming form of going up and down the streets murdering those suspected of French sympathies or French birth, and continually shouting for Ferdinand and Maria Carolina, that with their own eyes they might be satisfied the sovereigns had not fled, but were trusting to the loyalty and courage of their brave Lazzaroni to protect them from the French armies now rapidly drawing near Naples.

The Queen was no coward, and her wish was to stay in Naples and await what might befall. The early disasters that overtook General Mack left her determination unshaken. When Nelson and Lady Hamilton urged upon her the pressing necessity of flight, she could only see it as disgrace, and a " fresh blow to her soul and spirit." She was anxious to send her children out of danger, but even that seemed impossible in face of the thronging difficulties. The dignity of despair came to her. " I have renounced this world," she wrote. " I have renounced my reputation as wife and mother. I am preparing to die, and making ready for an eternity for which I long. This is all that is left to me."

But Emma was by no means making ready for eternity; she had no intention of quitting the world's stage at this very moment of highest

LADY HAMILTON

\V. I5ENNET

From an engraving by K. Mackenzie

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dramatic interest. It was not that she feared death—her physical courage, as was shortly to be proved, was of a very genuine and reliable quality—but she loved life too much to be prepared to leave it without a struggle. It is impossible to help feeling that the universal air of tragedy and gloom, a kingdom shaking to its fall, revolutions, invading armies, a queen in tears, appealed to the play-actress in Emma as a superb stage-setting. She moved through these days to the accompaniment of appropriate music —muted strings, and the threatening thunder of the double-bass.

But she was practical as well as dramatic. If the royal family had to fly they must carry their valuables with them, not leaving gold, jewels, rare vases and paintings, to fall into the hands of the execrable French. This was an affair of considerable difficulty, for the bulky treasure had to be packed and removed in secrecy, lest rumour of the intended flight should get abroad. Here was a matter specially adapted to Emma's gifts, by reason of her skill and quickness of resource. Nelson provided transport ; he sent for the Goliath, for Troubridge in the Culloden, and his squadron; and on the 14th of December Captain Hope in the Alcmene arrived from Egypt—the Vanguard till their arrival having been the only man-of-war in the Bay. Besides this, there were three transports for the

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effects of the English refugees, and a number of merchant ships. During these anxious days of preparation the Vanguard was being painted and fitted with cots to receive the royal guests, while Nelson's Journal contains notes of other preparations. "Getting ready for sea," he writes, "and getting off the valuable effects of Her Sicilian Majesty in the night time." The next day it is, " Smuggling on board the Queen's diamonds, etc."

While he worked with the ships in the Bay, Emma worked on shore. She cheered the Queen, she fetched or received at the British Embassy cases containing the royal valuables, which were then transported to the ships. In secrecy and danger she played her part to admiration. There was none of the timid care in Lady Hamilton that induced Nelson's wife to beg him, after St. Vincent, " to leave boarding to captains." Emma was made of very different stuff, coarser in texture, but strong to stand a strain ; while her gallant spirit responded instantly all on fire to the heroic act, the daring deed. Even when the odds were life or death or a kingdom, cold caution never checked her courage. " The whole correspondence relative to this import business," wrote Nelson to St. Vincent, 4 'was carried on with the greatest address by Lady Hamilton and the Queen, who being constantly in the habits of correspondence, no one

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could suspect. It would have been highly imprudent in either Sir William Hamilton or myself to have gone to Court, as we knew that all our movements were watched, and even an idea by the Jacobins of arresting our persons as a hostage." In the same letter Nelson says that from the i4th to the 2ist of December every night Lady Hamilton received the jewels, clothes, and other effects of the royal family, "to the amount, I am confident, of full two millions five hundred thousand pounds sterling."

While these measures were being carried out the Neapolitan populace showed increasing excitement. On the 20th, "very large assemblies of people were in commotion, and several people were killed." The embarkation was fixed for the night of the 2ist of December, but there were hesitations, delays, a last clinging to the hope that Providence would interfere on behalf of the Sicilian royalties. General Acton had at last reached the point of thinking that " no time should be lost;" but he hastened to qualify that rash statement by adding, "If the wind does not blow too hard."

But even the delay of a night was more than Nelson would endure calmly. He was firm in his determination that as flight was the only remedy, it should be adopted without further dalliance. As the evening of the 2ist drew on, the Queen sat down in her dismantled palace to

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write a heart-broken letter to her daughter the Empress of Austria. Naples was in a tumult, the secret assassin walked the streets, the cloud of failure and disaster lay heavy on her spirit. Emma and Nelson were her only hope at this dark crisis, and they were both absent. On the very eve of the momentous flight, Sir William and Lady Hamilton, with Nelson, were attending a reception—which might well seem a strange form of amusement for people who had so much on their hands. But Emma gives the reason in her Prince Regent Memorial, written many years later:—