Nelson's Lady Hamilton (4 page)

The Honourable Charles Greville was curiously careful of the smaller proprieties, though he cared little for the larger ones, and either he or Mrs. Cadogan usually accompanied Emma on these visits to the painter. According to John Romney's account, " She always had a hackney-

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coach to bring and take her away ; and she never appeared in the streets without her mother." In the same "Life" of his father, he says, "In all Mr. Romney's intercourse with her, she was treated with the utmost respect, and her demeanour fully entitled her to it. In the characters in which she has been represented, she sat only for the face and a slight sketch of the attitude, and the drapery was painted either from other models or from the layman."

But there was a much deeper attachment between the artist and his lovely model than would be guessed from John Romney's careful sentences. Emma's warm heart went out to all who were good to her, and for Romney she soon felt a daughter's affection. She called him her friend, her " more than father;" she confided her little griefs and joys to him with the simplicity of a child, and in later years, as will be seen, wrote to him and spoke of him with sincere affection. There is, too, no doubt that his intense admiration of her beauty—in which she herself took the most naive and open pleasure—was very acceptable to her. But she gave quite as much as she received. Hayley, writing of Romney to her in 1804, said, "You were not only his model but his inspirer, and he truly and gratefully said, that he owed a great part of his felicity as a painter to the angelic kindness and intelligence with which you used to animate his

diffident and tremulous spirits to the grandest efforts of art."

So thus by intercourse with Romney and the cultured Charles Greville, by the aid of singing-masters and instructors, and the study of "The Triumphs of Temper," Emma was educated in all the graces and not a few of the virtues.

CHAPTER III

"PLINY THE ELDER"

TO the little household in Edgware Row came, in 1784, a new and most agreeable visitor, Greville's uncle, Sir William Hamilton. He was, in a superlative degree, " the man of taste, 1 and also—far more than his nephew—the " man of feeling." He was as well an antiquary and collector, not an idle dilettante, but one whose original research and genuine knowledge entitled him to the respect of the learned. In his youth he had been in the army, and served as an ensign in Holland under the Duke of Cumberland. " To the last," says Mr. Jeaffreson, " he retained the air and carriage of a man of arms." Soldier, man of letters, man of the world, philosopher, British Ambassador at Naples—such was the somewhat dazzling personality of the man who made Emma's acquaintance in the year 1784, and at once stepped into her favour as the admired uncle of her " dear Greville."

Sir William Hamilton's view of life is very completely expressed in a letter he wrote Emma

some years later. " My study of antiquities," he told her, "has kept me in constant thought of the perpetual fluctuation of everything. The whole art is, really, to live all the days of our life ; and not, with anxious care, disturb the sweetest hour that life affords—which is, the present. Admire the Creator, and all His works to us incomprehensible ; and do all the good you can upon earth; and take the chance of eternity without dismay."

Such was his philosophy, and he certainly lived up to it in the matter of taking freely of whatever enjoyment the present might offer him, whether it was a cameo, an Etruscan vase, an eruption of Vesuvius (he was a great authority on volcanoes), or the smiles of a charming girl.

His first wife had died two years before he met Emma. She was a good and noble-natured woman, though not beautiful, whom young William Hamilton had married "something against his inclination" when he was only twenty-seven, because she was an heiress. But however he may have fallen short of the higher motives in marrying her, he won and kept his wife's devoted attachment during all the years of their married life. He knew how to make a woman happy by the most graceful and constant little attentions. He was very much a man of the world, and by no means rigorous or lofty in his ideas of conduct; yet he had a certain sweetness of nature,

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a certain kindly charm, that never lost its power over his delicate and retiring wife. After many years of marriage, when she felt the shadow of coming death draw near her, she wrote to him with deep and passionate affection : " How shall I express my love and tenderness to you, dearest of earthly blessings ? My only attachment to this world has been my love to you, and you are my only regret in leaving it. My heart has followed your footsteps where ever you went, and you have been the source of all my joys. I would have preferred beggary with you to kingdoms without you, but all this must have an end— forget and forgive my faults and remember me with kindness."

The first Lady Hamilton is merely a shadow, a ghost, in the many-coloured story of her successor ; but, as she moves for a moment through it, she breathes a nobler and serener atmosphere than often came near Emma.

Sir William Hamilton and his nephew Charles Greville were attached to each other by that strongest of all ties, the bond of mutual sympathies and tastes. They liked the same things and the same people, they pursued the same aims. Pictures, coins, vases, stirred them to intense enthusiasm, and in Emma Greville felt that he had something to show his critical and widely travelled uncle, which even he had never seen surpassed. Sir William was instantly and

entirely charmed. When Greville remarked complacently that Emma was " about as perfect a thing as can be found in all Nature," his uncle capped the climax—for in those days Art was considered superior to Nature—by saying, " She is better than anything in Nature; in her particular way she is finer than anything that is to be found in antique Art ! "

So we have the somewhat extraordinary picture of the young and the middle-aged connoisseur studying Emma's charms, and exulting in her as though she was an antique cameo or an unearthed statue instead of a very human piece of flesh and blood.

But Emma did not mind. She was accustomed to pose, and she enjoyed her own beauty as much as any of them. The sensitiveness that would have shrunk from such cataloguing of her graces was always conspicuously lacking in her. She was at once too much the untutored child of Nature, and too much the victim of circumstances to have that feeling and that delicacy implanted in her easy young heart.

And both Greville and his uncle were men

refinement and breeding. There could have ien nothing in their admiration, openly ex-

issed though it was, to offend the not too susceptible Emma. Indeed, she took a great liking to Sir William Hamilton, and was soon on terms of bantering and affectionate friendship

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with him, though at first she regarded him as "old"—he was fifty-five and she herself was not yet twenty. But Sir William was young for his years, upright and handsome looking, as well as charming in his manner and attentions to " the fair tea-maker of Edgware Row" (as he called her), so that Emma's impression of his age soon wore off. He flattered the girl's dawning intellectual powers by talking to her of philosophy and history and antique art, and by telling her of all the wonders of Italy. He taught her to call him " Pliny the Elder," drawing the parallel between himself and " Pliny the Younger," as he named Greville, so that Emma adopted the name gaily and with a great sense of airing her classical knowledge.

The summer brought a break-up of all these pleasant intimacies. Sir William Hamilton and his nephew had visits to pay at great houses in Scotland and elsewhere, to which the " fair tea-maker" naturally could not expect to go. But she required a change ; sea-bathing was recommended, and more than all she longed to see again her child, the little Emma who had been born shortly before she went to live with Greville in 1782. Greville had faithfully paid for the maintenance of the child, as he had promised to do, but he did not want it in sight, and it had been cared for by old Mrs. Kidd at Hawarden.

LADY HAMILTON

(NO ARTIST'S OK ENGRAVER'S NAME GIVEN)

Emma's letters to Greville during this period of separation give a very natural and attractive picture of her doings and her thoughts while away from him. She was to go to Chester and then decide for herself what watering-place to choose. From Chester, on the I2th of June, 1784, she writes—

" MY DEAR GREVILLE, — I have had no letter from you yett, which makes me unhappy. I can't go to Abbergelly, as it is forty miles, and a very uncumfortable place, and I am now going to Parkgate, as it is the only place beside High Lake I can go to ; but I will try to go there. Pray, my dear Greville, do write directly, and lett it be left at the Post Office, Parkgate, till calld for. God bless you ! I have got my poor Emma with me and I have took leave of all my friends. I have took her from a good home, and I hope she will prove worthy of your goodness to her and her mother. I should not write now tell I got to Parkgate, only I want to hear from you. Pray write, my dear Greville, directly, and send me word how to bile that bark; for parting with you made me so unhappy, I forgot the book. I can't stop to write, for the coach is waiting. My dear Greville, don't be angry, but I gave my granmother 5 guineas; for she had laid some out on her, [the child] and I would not take her awhay shabbily. But Emma shall pay

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you. Adue my ever dear Greville, and believe yours ever truly. EMMA HART.'*

She adds in a postscript, " I will write on Monday again. My love to Sir W., and say everything that you can. I am low-spirited; so do excuse me. My dear Greville, I wish I was with you. God bless you."

Three days later she wrote again, this time from Parkgate—

" MY DEAREST GREVILLE, —You see by the date where I am gott and likely to be; and yett it is not through any neglect of seeking after other places. As to Abbergely it is 40 miles, and so dear that I could not with my mother and me and the child have been there under 2 guines and a half a week. It is grown such a fashionable place. And High Lake as 3 houses in it, and not one of them as is fit for a Christian. The best is a publick-house for the sailers of such ships as is obliged to put in there, so you see there is no possibility of going to either of those places. Has to where I am, I find it very comfortable, considering from you. I am in the house of a Laidy, whose husband is at sea. She and her granmother live together, and we board with her at present, till I hear from you. The price is high, but they don't lodge anybody without boarding; and as it is comfortable,

decent, and quiet, I thought it wou'd not ruin us, till I could have your oppionon, which I hope to have freely and without restraint, as, believe me, you will give it to one who will allways be happy to follow it, lett it be what it will ; as I am sure you wou'd not lead me wrong. And though my little temper may have been sometimes high, believe me, I have allways thought you right in the end, when I have come to reason. I bathe, and find the water very soult. Here is a good many laidys batheing, but I have no society with them, as it is best not. So pray, my dearest Greville, write soon, and tell me what to do, as I will do just what you think proper ; and tell me what to do with the child. For she is a great romp, and I can hardly master her. I don't think she is ugly, but I think her greatly improved. She is tall, good eyes and brows, and as to lashes, she will be passible; but she has overgrown all her cloaths. I am making and mending all as I can for her. . . . Pray, my dear Greville, do lett me come home as soon as you can ; for I am all most broken-hearted being from you. I wish I could not think on you ; but, if I was the greatest laidy in the world, I should not be happy from you. So don't lett me stay long. Tell Sir William everything you can, and tell him I am sorry our sittuation prevented me from giving him a kiss, but my heart was ready to break. But I will give him one, and entreat if

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he will axcept it. Ask him how I looked, and lett him say something kind to me when you write. Indead, my dear Greville, you don't know how much I love you, and your behaiver to me, when we parted, was so kind, Greville, I don't know what to do; but I will make you a mends by my kind behaviour to you. For I have grattude, and I will show it you all I can. So don't think of my faults, Greville. Think of all my good, and blot out all my bad : for it is all gone and berried, never to come again. So, good-by, dear Greville. Think of nobody but me, for I have not a thought but of you. God bless you and believe me Your Truly and Affectionately. EMMA HART."

Again she adds a postscript to say, " Poor Emma gives her duty to you. I bathe her. The people is very civil to ous. I give a guinea and a half a week for ous all together, but you will tell me what to do. God bless you, my dear Greville. I long to see you, for endead I am not happy from you, tho' I will stay if you like till a week before you go home, but I must go first. I hav had no letter from you, and you promised to write to me before I left home. It made me unhappy."