Nelson's Lady Hamilton (20 page)

"To shew the caution and secrecy that was necessarily used in thus getting away, I had on the night of our embarkation to attend the party given by the Kilim Effendi, who was sent by the grand seignior to Naples to present Nelson with the Shahlerih or Plume of Triumph. I had to steal from the party, leaving our carriages and equipages waiting at his house, and in about fifteen minutes to be at my post, where it was my task to conduct the Royal Family through the subterranean passage to Nelsons boats, by that moment waiting for us on the shore."

In a letter written to Charles Greville after reaching Palermo, she carries the adventure a little further, giving more detail:—

"On the 2ist, at ten at night, Lord Nelson, Sir Wm., Mother and self went out to pay a visit,

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sent all our servants away, and ordered them in 2 hours to come with the coach, and ordered supper at home. When they were gone, we sett off, walked to our boat, and after two hours got to the Vanguard. Lord N. then went with armed boats to a secret passage adjoining to the pallace, got up the dark staircase that goes into the Queen's room, and with a dark lantern, cutlases, pistols, etc., brought off every soul, ten in number, to the Vanguard at twelve o'clock. If we had remained to the next day, we shou'd have all been imprisoned."

Could anything be more gloriously to Emma's taste than this Arabian Nights adventure ? First the reception, where she appeared to avert suspicion, feigning nonchalance and pleasure, then the swift walk to the waterside, where Nelson's boats waited in the dark, the secret passage, the "dark lantern, cutlases, pistols, etc." It is impossible to help thinking that the excitable Emma piled on her plurals a little here; Nelson, with his single hand, could hardly have managed more than one dark lantern, pistol, and cutlass, to say nothing of the "etc"! But that is typically Emma; she loved to paint with a broad brush and plenty of colour.

It will be noticed that her two accounts—the Prince Regent Memorial, and the letter to Greville —do not quite harmonize. In the one she says that she personally conducted the royal family

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through the subterranean passage to the boats, while in the other (written within a few weeks of the actual happening) the implication is that Nelson, armed to the teeth as in the pages of boys* fiction, undertook this business. Emma had not the temperament that is marked by meticulous accuracy, and this, like many another of her statements, shows a certain offhand carelessness. But in general she followed the broader lines of truth, and knowing her extravagant attachment to Maria Carolina and her passion for a prominent part in every adventure, even when accompanied by peril, it is not impossible to make the two statements fit by assuming that Nelson, as she says in the letter to Greville, undertook to see the royal party through the secret passage, but that she, instead of awaiting them at the boats, persuaded Nelson to let her accompany him, and share every one of the thrilling moments. There can be little doubt that her presence at this distressing time would be comforting to Maria Carolina.

That Nelson himself anticipated some danger in the embarkation is shown by his secret orders to the squadron: the boats of the Vanguard and the Alcmena were to be armed with cutlasses, the launches with carronades, and the boats were to carry from four to half a dozen soldiers each, while in case assistance was wanted by Nelson on shore,

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But these precautions, so wise under the circumstances, were, after all, not needed. The royal family and all their belongings were safely and without alarm rowed to the British flagship. But though they were all stowed on board by midnight of December the 2ist, the Vanguard was not able to weigh anchor till seven o'clock on the evening of the 23rd. The two days' delay was caused by waiting for further consignments of treasure, and for the last of the refugees to fly to the ships before they up-anchored and sailed from the curving Bay of Naples—which Maria Carolina thought never to behold again. A favourable breeze had blown steadily from the 2ist to the 23rd, but when the squadron sailed it was with a dropping barometer and every sign of threatening weather. The next day a tremendous storm struck them, and as Nelson, with his very considerable experience, said, "It blew harder than I ever experienced since I have been at

sea."

Emma Hamilton was a good sailor, and when nearly all on board the Vanguard, with the exception of the regular ship's company, were prostrated with sea-sickness and fear, she kept up her spirit and her health, cheering, nursing, and waiting on everybody. In few of the varied and striking episodes of her life does she shine with a lustre so simple and unselfish. The royal children, deprived of their proper attendants,

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frightened and miserable, clung to her reviving kindness, and their unhappy mother not less so. Nelson was recording the unadorned truth when he wrote to St. Vincent—

"It is my duty to tell your Lordship the obligations which the Royal Family as well as myself are under on this trying occasion to her Ladyship. They necessarily came on board 1 without a bed, nor could the least preparation; be made for their reception. Lady Hamilton; provided her own beds, linen, etc., and became their slave, for except one man, no person belonging to Royalty assisted the Royal Family, nor did her Ladyship enter a bed the whole time they were on board."

The "poor wretched Vanguard? as Nelson once called her, seemed a special mark for storms and tempests. Nelson, it will be remembered, had been nearly wrecked in her off San Pietro earlier in the year, and in this, the worst gale of his recollection, her sails were split to ribbons, and it seemed at one time as though the masts would have to be cut away. In these stark circumstances, with the terrified Neapolitans calling on every saint in the Catholic calendar, Emma proved herself made of the true heroic stuff. Fear is contagious, but she did not catch it; and Sir John Macpherson, writing to Sir William Hamilton after this voyage to Palermo, had reason to congratulate the British Ambassador on

AS "MIRANDA"

GEORGE ROMNEY

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laving a wife " of so good a heart and so fine a nind." Lady Betty Foster, when writing to Lady Hamilton on the 8th of February, 1799, wished to express " the universal tribute of praise ind admiration which is paid to the very great :ourage and feeling which you have shown on .he late melancholy occasion/'

But Lady Hamilton was not thinking of praise or admiration when, on the Christmas Day of 1798, Prince Albert, the youngest son of the King and Queen of Naples, yielded up his little spirit to the storm. The baby prince, she tells Greville, was "six years old, my favourite, taken with convulsions in the midst of the storm, and, at seven in the evening of Christmas day, ex-)ired in my arms, not a soul to help me, as the few women her Majesty brought on board were incapable of helping her or the poor royal children."

In the early morning of December 26th the Vanguard anchored at Palermo. The King anded publicly, with salutes and " every proper lonour" paid to his barge. The Queen, heartbroken and prostrate over the death of her little son, would not land till later; and then she did so privately, accompanied by Nelson, who wrote : " Her Majesty being so much affected by the death of Prince Albert that she could not bear to go on shore in a public manner." Maria Carolina was miserable and depressed; and she got little

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sympathy from the King, who was inclined regard her English sympathies as the cause their troubles. All Emma's generous ardoui were roused for the unhappy Maria Carolina, She wrote to Greville shortly after the landing at Palermo—

"The Queen, whom I love better than an; person in the world, is very unwell. We wee] together, and now that is our onely comfort. Sir William and the King are philosophers;' nothing affects them, thank God, and we are scolded even for shewing proper sensibility."

In the same letter it appears that the charms of Palermo, beautiful in her amphitheatre of mountains, with the two horns of the bay guarded by the threatening heights of Pellegrino to the north-west, and Zaffarano to the east, had little appeal for the exiles. Emma cries for " dear, dear Naples," and says, "we now dare not show our love for that place ; for this country is jelous of the other." Sir William Hamilton also wrote to Greville from Palermo in a tone of great dissatisfaction : "I have been driven from my comfortable house at Naples," he says, " to a house here without chimneys, and calculated only for the summer." He complains that this is hard upon a man who feels himself growing old, and suffering as he does both from bilious and rheumatic complaints. " I am still most desirous of returning home by the first ship that Lord Nelson

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sends down to Gibraltar, as I am worn out and want repose." Another cause of distress to the artistic and antiquarian Sir William was the enforced and hurried parting from the larger portion of his carefully collected treasures. In one of her letters his wife says, " We have left everything at Naples but the vases and best pictures. 3 houses elegantly furnished, all our horses and our 6 or 7 carriages, I think is enough for the vile French. For we cou'd not get our things off, not to betray the royal family." Some of the most valuable things in the collection, which had been packed to send to England were lost at sea in the Colossus. In later years, when appealing for a pension, Emma made some extravagant statements as to her own and her husband's losses: " When the many, I may say hair-breadth risks, we ran in our escapes are considered, it must be obvious that to cover and colour our proceedings we were compelled to abandon our houses and our valuables as they stood, without venturing to remove a single article. My own private property thus left, to effect this great purpose, was little if any short of ,£9,000, and Sir William's not less than ,£30,000, which sum, had he bequeathed, might naturally have been willed to me in whole or part." It is exceedingly unlikely that Emma's private property, which would consist principally of dresses and jewels, came anywhere near the sum she set down. She certainly saved a portion

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of her things, and any loss she suffered was fully made up by the Queen's lavish generosity. As! to Sir William, though he undoubtedly lost seriously in the Coloss^is, that was owing to the hand of accident, and not to voluntary abandonment in a "great purpose," as Emma, always emotional and inaccurate, claims.

Nelson and the Hamiltons shared a house at Palermo, Nelson paying fully his share of the expenses, for when they all returned to England together, in 1800, Sir William owed the admiral ^2000. It was probably in thus setting up house together— Tria juncta in uno, as both Sir William and Emma were fond of calling their three-sided friendship—that the first faint breaths of scandal began to dim the shining mirror of Nelson's fame. No doubt Emma's fine conduct during the stormy passage from Naples tc Palermo had made a considerable impressioi upon Nelson, who loved courage, especially whei joined to such " feeling sensibility " and lovelinej as Lady Hamilton's. In his letters of this tim< she is wreathed in many adjectives. " Our deai Lady Hamilton," he calls her in one of thei "whom to see is to admire, but, to know, are be added honour and respect; her head and he; surpass her beauty, which cannot be equalled b] anything I have seen." In his letters to his wife he praised the fascinating Emma with moi warmth than wisdom. Some time before the

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flight to Palermo Lady Nelson had shown signs of uneasiness, and expressed her wish to come out and join him. It is very plain that Nelson would have found her a burthen on his hands, for in rebuking her for the very natural suggestion he says, "You would by February have seen how unpleasant it would have been had you followed any advice which carried you from England to a wandering sailor. I could, if you had come, only have struck my flag, and carried you back again, for it would have been impossible to have set up an establishment at either Naples or Palermo. 0

It is a little difficult to see where the impossibility comes in. If he could set up house with Sir William and Lady Hamilton, why not with his own much more frugal and careful wife ? But already he was slipping almost unconsciously into the toils—to his battle-wearied frame and craving heart the enchantment of Emma's sympathetic adoration was potent. On her side the enchantment she wielded was almost as unconscious as his yielding to it; nature gave her the spell, and it was as natural to her to use it as to breathe or smile.

From Palermo onwards may be traced a certain slackening of moral fibre in Nelson—he is no longer quite the same Nelson we have known. This is said with reserve and a recognition of its seriousness, but the fact remains.

He is as lovable as ever, and more pitiable; as a o

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