Nelson's Lady Hamilton (5 page)

Her letters were added to day by day, so that they form a sort of diary of her doings—and, still

more, her feelings—while separated from her "ever dear Greville," and waiting and watching for the letters which were so long in coming. She begins her next epistle—

" How teadous does the time pass awhay till I hear from you. Endead, I should be miserable if I did not recollect on what happy terms we parted — parted, yess, but to meet again with tenfould happiness. ... If you had not behaved with such angel-like goodness to me at parting, it would not have had such effect on me. I have done nothing but think of you since. And, oh, Greville, did you but know, when I so think, what thoughts—what tender thoughts, you would say ' Good God! and can Emma have such feeling sensibility ? No, I never could think it. But now I may hope to bring her to conviction, and she may prove a valluable and amiable whoman!' True, Greville! and you shall not be disappointed. I will be everything you can wish. But mind you, Greville, your own great goodness has brought this about. You don't know what I am become. Would you think it, Greville ? Emma—the wild, unthinking Emma, is a grave, thoughtful phylosopher. 'Tis true, Greville, and I will convince you I am, when I see you. But how I am runing on. I say nothing abbout this guidy, wild girl of mine. What shall we do with her, Greville ? She is as wild and as thoughtless as somebody, when she

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was a little girl; so you may gess how that is. ... Would you believe, on Sattarday we had a little quarel, I mean Emma and me; and I did slap her on her hands, and when she came to kiss me and make it up, I took her on my lap and cried. Pray, do you blame me or not ? Pray tell me. Oh, Greville, you don't know how I love her. Endead I do. When she comes and looks in my face and calls me 'mother/ endead I then truly am a mother, for all the mother's feelings rise at once, and tels me I am or ought to be a mother, for she has a wright to my protection ; and she shall have it as long as I can, and I will do all in my power to prevent her falling into the error her poor miserable mother fell into. But why do I say miserable ? Am not I happy abbove any of my sex, at least in my situation ? Does not Greville love me, or at least like me ? Does not he protect me ? Is not he a father to my child ? Why do I call myself miserable ? No ; it was a mistake, and I will be happy, chearful and kind, and do all my poor abbility will lett me, to return the fatherly goodness and protection he has shewn. Again, my dear Greville, the recollection of past scenes brings tears in my eyes. But they are tears of happiness. To think of your goodness is too much. But once for all, Greville, I will be grateful. Adue. It is near bathing time, and I must lay down my pen, and I won't finish till I see when the post comes,

whether there is a letter. He conies in abbout one o'clock. I hope to have a letter to-day. . . . Greville, I am oblidged to give a shilling a day for the bathing horse and whoman, and twopence a day for the dress. It is a great expense, and it fretts me when I think of it."

It is a sufficient proof of Emma's real attachment to Greville that she was so exercised in her mind about economy. She loved Greville; she had an idea already that he was somewhat straitened for money; so the expenditure of even a few pennies a day fretted her—when they were his pennies—who was naturally so large and easy in her dealings. She retained this careful feeling about money for some years after she went to Italy, and then circumstances did their work, and the woman who had been distressed at spending twopence a day over a bathing-dress became a gambler who loved to play for high stakes, and would lose ^500 of Nelson's money at the faro-tables—so the story goes—with more indifference than she spent a shilling of Greville's.

But the Emma of Parkgate is not the Emma of Palermo ; instead, she is a somewhat pathetic, trustful creature, half woman and half child, whose whole existence hangs for the time on the coming of a letter from the forgetful Greville. Two days later she adds to the letter already quoted—

" With what impatience do I sett down to

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wright till I see the postman. But sure I shall have a letter to-day. Can you, Greville— no, you can't—have forgot your poor Emma allready ? Tho' I am but a few weeks absent from you, my heart will not one moment leave you. I am allways thinking of you, and cou'd allmost fancy I hear you, see you ; and think, Greville, what a disapointment when I find myself deceived, and ever nor never heard from you. But my heart wont lett me scold you. Endead, it thinks on you with two much tenderness. So do wright, my dear Greville. Don't you remember how you promised ? Don't you recollect what you said at parting ? how you shou'd be happy to see me again ? O Greville, think on me with kindness ! Think how many happy days weeks and years—I hope—we may yett pass. And think out of some that is past, there as been some little pleasure as well as pain; and, endead, did you but know how much I love you, you would freily forgive me any passed quarrels. For I now suffer for them, and one line from you would make me happy."

Greville's behaviour to Emma at this time is a forecast of his later behaviour to her when she had gone to Naples. His admiration and pleasure in her was that of the connoisseur and collector—she delighted his eyes, but she did not really stir that very self-contained heart of his. Absent from this woman, whom he considered

LADY HAMILTON

SKETCH. GEORGE ROMNEY

" as perfect a thing as can be found in all Nature," he was more or less indifferent to her appeals and her pathetic letters. He probably regarded the separation as salutary, not only for her health—• " You can't think how soult the watter is," Emma told him with artless amazement—but also as a mental discipline. Greville had a strong strain of the pedant in his character, and was particularly gifted in a style of lofty reproof.

After a considerable interval he replied to Emma's long missives; but his first letter could not have been agreeable, for in reply to his second she was moved to say, " I was very happy, my dearest Greville, to hear from you, as your other letter vex'd me; you scolded me so." Then she goes on to discuss the education and the future of little Emma. Her wish to have the child with her permanently at the house in Edgware Row had been negatived by Greville— he was willing to pay for the child's keep and schooling, but he did not intend to burden himself with her presence. So Emma, who was adaptable to his wishes, even when they so markedly crossed her own, wrote to him: " I come into your whay athinking; hollidays spoils children. It takes there attention of from there scool, it gives them a bad habbit. When they have been a month and goes back this does not pleas them, and that is not wright, and the[y] do nothing but think when the[y] shall go back again. Now

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Emma will never expect what she never had." In the postscript of the same letter she adds, " I bathe Emma, and she is very well and grows. Her hair will grow very well on her forehead, and I don't think her nose will be very snub. Her eyes is blue and pretty. But she don't speak through her nose, but she speaks country-fied, but she will forget it. We squable sometimes ; still she is fond of me, and endead I love her. For she is sensible. So much for Beauty." One further extract from this Parkgate correspondence, in reference to Sir William Hamilton, is interesting in view of later events. Emma sends him her "kind love," and bids Greville "Tell him next to you I love him abbove any body, and that I wish I was with him to give him a kiss."

CHAPTER IV

A BARGAIN AND ITS RESULTS

EMMA returned to Edgware Row, all eager to begin her domestic life again, though already aware from Greville's "kind instructing letter," that he meant to rearrange things somewhat. She writes to him in a letter of this time—

" You shall have your appartment to yourself, you shall read, wright, or sett still, just as you please ; for I shall think myself happy to be under the seam roof with Greville, and do all I can to make it agreable, without disturbing him in any pursuits that he can follow, to employ himself in at home or else whare. For your absence has taught me that I ought to think myself happy if I was within a mile of you."

A week or two after Emma's return, when everything was in readiness in his little household, Greville himself came home. But he was not so eager as Emma to begin again the game which was her " whole existence" to the woman. His financial difficulties were pressing upon him.

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The " reasonable plan," as recommended by his relatives, was to marry an heiress, which he could hardly do while he had Emma on his hands ; and the impulse to get rid of her was heightened by the fact that Sir William had signified his willingness to become responsible for her.

In the whole of the cold-blooded transaction which eventually transferred the trusting Emma to Naples, the only good thing that can be said for Greville is that not even in the pursuit of the desirable heiress did he intend to turn Emma adrift as Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh had done. It was his intention to give her a little income of her own, and he begged Sir William also to settle something on her. In a letter to his uncle he says, with a very just appreciation of Emma's character at this time—

" She shall never want, and if I decide sooner than I am forced to stop by necessity, it will be that I may give her part of my pittance; and, if I do so it must be by sudden resolution and by putting it out of her power to refuse it, for I know her disinterestedness to be such that she will rather encounter any difficulty than distress me. I should not write to you thus, if I did not think you seem'd as partial as I am to her."

Another portion of this letter contains the gist of the business, put forth without any of

that subtle circumlocution which was generally so pleasing to the Honourable Charles Greville: " If you did not chuse a wife," he tells his uncle, " I wish the tea-maker of Edgware Rowe was yours, if I could without banishing myself from a visit to Naples. I do not know how to part with what I am not tired with : I do not know how to go on, and I give her every merit of prudence and moderation and affection."

Two of Greville's interests would be served by the transference of Emma to his uncle's care. Sir William would be less likely to marry if he had the " fair tea-maker " to amuse him, and as Greville had reason to regard himself as his childless uncle's heir, he did not wish Sir William to marry again. Also, once Emma was off his hands he could look round for the young lady of wealth and accomplishments who was to repair his fortunes. It may be said, in passing, that he never found her, which was, perhaps, in the phrase of the old country people who look directly for the hand of Providence in every event, " a judgment" on him.

But meanwhile Emma was unconscious of all the schemes to get rid of her; unconscious of all the nicely veiled transactions which were already turning the path of her life towards the point where she and Nelson met.

Romney was once more painting her portrait —this time for Sir William Hamilton. She was

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painted as a " Bacchante," with a dog who leaps and barks at her while she moves forward with archly smiling face, her unbound hair and her long skirts flowing behind her in fine, free lines ; it is one of the most exquisite of his pictures of the " divine lady." Sir William Hamilton might well desire to have the original as well as the "counterfeit presentment." Greville wrote to him at this time : " Emma is very grateful for your remembrance. Her picture shall be sent by the first ship. I wish Romney yet to mend the dog."

It is sad to think of the poor " Bacchante," smiling so gaily upon the little world that was her all, and that she thought loved and cared for her, while the whole time Greville was planning —with a nice regard for every one's feelings but Emma's—to hand her over to his uncle.

It is not necessary to go into all the plotting and counterplotting that went on for many months between the two. Greville was sufficiently sensible of the difficulty of getting rid of a girl so affectionate and devoted to him that she had already declined two offers of honourable marriage and at least one offer of a similar position considerably more gilded. She would only go to Naples if she was under a misapprehension as to the nature and duration of her visit. So Greville wrote to Sir William—

" If you could form a plan by which you could