Nelson's Lady Hamilton (30 page)

were your own daughter/ when Lady H. turned round, much incensed as I was present, and replied, ' Perhaps she is/ Mrs. Cadogan looked at her and replied : ' Emma, that will not do with me; you know that I know better/ Lady H. then ordered me out of the room. On her deathbed, at Calais, I earnestly prayed her to tell me who my mother was, but she would not, influenced then, I think, by the fear that I might leave her." During the ordeal of Emma's secret confinement, Nelson, who had hoisted his flag as Second-in-Command of the Channel Fleet, was at Plymouth, expecting day by day the orders that would take him from England to strike at the Northern Coalition, for as he said in one of his letters, " We are now arrived at that period, what we have often heard of, but must now execute—that of fighting for our dear Country." It was a cruel situation for both of them; but they had foreseen it, and provided themselves with a means of communicating freely. It was not safe in letters which might be seen by other eyes to refer openly to the expected child which was officially non-existent. Yet the anxious father must have news. So a Mr. and Mrs. Thompson were invented—Thompson supposed to be an officer in Nelson's own ship, his wife on shore * under Lady Hamilton's special protection and care. Thus, under other names, Nelson and Emma were able to express their own feelings

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and agitations. The first reference to the Thompsons occurs in a letter from the Admiral to Lady Hamilton, dated the 25th of January, when he did not know whether the child was yet born or how the mother fared : " I delivered poor Mrs. Thompson's note," he tells her; " her friend is truly thankful for her kindness and your goodness. Who does not admire your benevolent heart ? Poor man, he is very anxious, and begs you will, if she is not able, write a line just to comfort him. He appears to feel very much her situation. He is so agitated, and will be so for 2 or 3 days, that he says he cannot write, and that I must send his kind love and affectionate regards." In a letter three days later he says: " I have this moment seen Mrs. Thompson's friend. Poor fellow ! he seems very uneasy and melancholy. He begs you to be kind to her! and I have assured him of your readiness to relieve the dear, good woman."

When the news of the child's birth reached him, Nelson gave expression to his own gladness and relief under the assumed name.

" I believe," he wrote to the Emma, who was also " Mrs. Thompson," " dear Mrs. Thompson's friend will go mad with joy. He cries, prays, and performs all tricks, yet dares not show all or any of his feelings, but he has only me to consult with. He swears he will drink your health this day in a bumper, and damn me if I

don't join him in spite of all the doctors in Europe, for none regard you with truer affection than myself. You are a dear good creature, and your kindness and attention to poor Mrs. T. stamps you higher than ever in my mind. I cannot write, I am so agitated by this young man jat my elbow. I believe he is foolish, he does nothing but rave about you and her. I own I participate in his joy and cannot write anything."

In another and later letter he wrote direct to Mrs. Thompson in his own name and person—

" I sit down, my dear Mrs. T.," he says, " by desire of poor Thompson, to write you a line: not to assure you of his eternal love and affection for you and his dear child, but only to say that he is well and as happy as he can be, separated from all which he holds dear in this world. He has no thoughts separated from your love and your interest. They are united with his ; one fate, one destiny, he assures me, awaits you both. What can I say more ? Only to kiss his child for him : and love him as truly, sincerely, and faithfully as he does you; which is from the bottom of his soul. He desires that you will more and more attach yourself to dear Lady Hamilton."

Thus the Thompson fiction was varied; though with the excitability and lack of caution which might be expected from Nelson under such circumstances, the disguise at times wears very thin. But in one respect he showed considerable

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self-control—he burnt all Lady Hamilton's letters to him at this time, and that is the reason we only possess his side of the correspondence. " I burn all your dear letters, because it is right for your sake," he told her on the ist of March, " and I wish you would burn all mine—they can do no good, and will do us both harm, if any seizure of them, or the dropping even one of them, would fill the mouths of the world sooner than we intend." Emma disobeyed his wishes in this respect, for she kept his letters to her, both those addressed to her as Mrs. Thompson and in her own name. Probably she felt unequal to the sacrifice of destroying them ; possibly— and the suspicion is not entirely unjustified in view of some of her later actions—she thought they might have some future value. There is every reason to believe that Nelson's love for her was far more deep-rooted, far more an essential part of his nature, than hers for him. It was his first and his only real passion: it was not hers—long ago Charles Greville had had the best of her heart.

In those letters to her, which are not primarily love-letters, Nelson says some fine and characteristic things. In one of them, dated February 8th, he writes—

" I am not in very good spirits; and, except that our Country demands all our services and abilities, to bring about an honourable Peace

nothing should prevent my being the bearer of my own letter. But, my dear friend, I know you are so true and loyal an Englishwoman, that you would hate those who would not stand forth in defence of our King, Laws, Religion, and all that is dear to us. It is your sex that make us go forth; and seem to tell us—' None but the brave deserve the fair!' and, if we fall, we still live in the hearts of those females, who are dear to us. It is your sex that rewards us; it is your sex who cherish our memories; and you, my dear, honoured friend, are, believe me, the first, the best of your sex. I have been the world around, and in every corner of it, and never yet saw your equal, or even one which could be put in comparison with you. You know how to reward virtue, honour, and courage; and never to ask if it is placed in a Prince, Duke, Lord, or Peasant." Lady Hamilton expressed her feelings about Nelson with her usual freedom to her intimate friend, Mrs. William Nelson, the wife of the admiral's brother. Writing towards the end of February, she says : " I received yesterday Letters from that great adored being, that we all so Love, esteem, and admire. The more one knows him, the more one wonders at his greatness; his heart, his head, booth so perfect." Then she indulges in a little outburst which reminds one of her statement many years earlier to Greville, that "the wild, unthinking Emma has turned philosopher."

" I miss our little friendly confidential chats,'* she tells Mrs. Nelson ; "but in this world nothing is compleat. If all went on smoothly, one shou'd regret quitting it, but 'tis the many little vexations and crosses, separations from one's dear friends, that makes one not regret leaving it."

Before going to the Baltic, Nelson had three days' leave of absence, and came up to London to see Emma, and—in secret—his child : the child that he already regarded with such passionate affection. In later times, while the little Horatia was still under the care of the foster-mother, Mrs. Gibson, she used to tell how Nelson, "often came alone, and played for hours with the infant on the floor, calling her his own child." It is a new aspect of Nelson's character, but the desire for a child to call his own had always been with him; and as he held his little Horatia upon his knee, he may have felt, in spite of that consuming passion for glory which had driven him all his life to great actions—

" How vainly men themselves amaze, To win the palm, the oak, or bays."

Records of this short visit are preserved in Emma's letters to Mrs. William Nelson. The day after his arrival she writes:

continues: " Oh, my dearest friend, our dear Lord is just come in. He goes off to-night and sails immediately. My heart is fit to Burst quite with greef. Oh, what pain, God only knows ! I can only say, may the Allmighty God bless, prosper, and protect him. I shall go mad with grief. Oh, God only knows what it is to part with such a friend, suck a one. We were truly called the ' Tria Juncta in nno,' for Sir William, he, and I have but one heart in three bodies!' After Nelson's departure Emma writes again : "Anxiety and heart-bleedings for your dear brother's departure has made me so ill, I have not been able to write. I cannot eat or sleep. Oh, may God prosper and bless him / "

Before Nelson came up to town the Hamil-tons had moved from the house in Grosvenor Square, lent them by William Beckford, to a house of their own in Piccadilly—Emma selling some of her valuable diamonds in order to furnish it in suitable splendour. Nelson might be sighing for her at sea, and she might consider herself prostrate with grief over his absence, but she meant to take advantage, nevertheless, of the pleasures of London society, and was bent on entertaining. It will be remembered that Mr. Elliot had prophesied of her at Dresden, " She will captivate the Prince of Wales, whose mind is as vulgar as her own, and play a great part in England." A portion of this prophecy

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threatened to come true, for shortly after moving into their new house the Hamiltons were informed that the Prince desired to dine with thei and have the pleasure of hearing Emma sing. Sir William Hamilton wrote to inform Nelsoi of this fact, telling him—

" We have been drawn in to be under th< absolute necessity of giving a dinner to the P. ol Wales on Sunday next. He asked it himsell having expressed a strong desire of hearing Banti's and Emma's voices together. I am well aware of the dangers ... Not that I fear, that Emma could ever be induced to act contrary to the prudent conduct she has hitherto pursued; but the world is so ill-natured, that the worst construction is put upon the most innocent actions. As this dinner must be, or he would be offended, I shall keep strictly to the musical part, invite only Banti, her husband, and Taylor; and as I wish to show a civility to Davison, I have sent him an invitation. In short, we will get rid of it as well as we can, and guard against its producing more meetings of the same sort. Emma would really have gone any lengths to have avoided Sunday's dinner. But I thought it would not be prudent to break with the P. of Wales; who, really, has shewn the greatest civility to us, when we were last in England, and since we returned: and she has, at last, acquiesced to my opinion."

This news affected Nelson violently. His frantic anxiety that Emma should not be contaminated would be ludicrous were it not so pitiable as showing how his love had idealized and glorified her into something almost saintly. He wrote distractedly—

" You are too beautiful not to have enemies, and even one visit will stamp you. . . . But, my dear friend, I know you too well not to be convinced you cannot be seduced by any prince in Europe. You are, in my opinion, the pattern of perfection." But in spite of this profession of faith, he cries, " The thought so agitates me that I cannot write. I had wrote a few lines last night but I am in tears, I cannot bear it." And again, " I own I sometimes fear that you will not be so true to me as I am to you, yet I cannot, will not believe, you can be false. No ! I judge you by myself. I hope to be dead before that should happen, but it will not. Forgive me, Emma, oh, forgive your own dear, disinterested Nelson." He cannot reconcile his mind to the thought of the projected dinner-party, it preys upon him like a nightmare. " I am so agitated that I can write nothing. I knew it would be so, and you can't help it. Do not sit long at table. Good God! He will be next you, and telling you soft things. . . . Oh, God ! that I was dead! But I do not, my dearest Emma, blame you, nor do I fear your constancy. ... I

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am gone almost mad, but you cannot help it. It will be in all the newspapers with hints." He has heard, he says, that the words of the Prince of Wales are so charming that no person can withstand them : " No one, not even Emma, could resist the serpent's flattering tongue." Then he breaks out into a melancholy strain that recalls Ophelia's wandering words, " I know my Emma, and don't forget that you had once a Nelson, a friend, a dear friend, but alas! he has his misfortunes. He has lost the best, his only friend, his only love. Don't forget him, poor fellow! He is honest. Oh 1 I could thunder and strike dead with my lightning." After he comes back a little to his senses, he writes : " Forgive my letter wrote and sent last night, perhaps my head was a little affected. No wonder, it was such an unexpected, such a knock-down blow; such a death. But I will not go on, for I shall get out of my senses again."

And after all this the tragedy was avoided, the dinner-party did not take place. Emma wrote to her friend, Mrs. William Nelson, on the 2Oth of February: " I am so unwell that we cannot have his Royal Highness to dinner on Sunday, which will NOT vex me." But it is very evident that she had not expended upon the episode any of the anxiety and perturbation of spirit that almost tore Nelson in pieces. The admiral was as relieved as he had been agitated.