The story of Lady Hamilton

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'HE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LADY HAMILTON AS "BACCHANTE"

Frontispiece

By Sir Joshua Reynolds, after the original painting in the Cranbury Park Collection; reproduced bv permission ofTankerville Chamberlayne^ Esq., M.P.

LADY HAMILTON AS " MIRANDA " Page 4

Drazvn on stone by J. W. Slater; painted by Rontney

LADY HAMILTON AS "BACCHANTE" . 8

By George Romney, after the original painting in the Cranbury l^ark Collection; reproduced bv permission ofTankerville Chamberlayne, Esq., M.P,

LADY HAMILTON 13

"A BACCHANTE" 16

From picture in the Vernon Gallery. Painted by Romney; engraved by C. Holl

LADY HAMILTON (EMMA HART). . . 20

After Romney, byj. Skelton LADY HAMILTON AS "NATURE" . . 24

After painting by Romney

EMMA, 1791 29

Drawing by Sir T. Lawrence, in British Museum

LADY HAMILTON 33

After F. Rehberg

LADY HAMILTON AS "SIBYL" . . 36

By Romney

LADY HAMILTON AS "SPINSTRESS" . 40

After painting by Romney

LADY HAMILTON AS "DAPHNE" . . 45 By Romney

LADY HAMILTON AS "KATE". . . 4 8

By Romney

THE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIO.

LADY HAMILTON AS A "SEAMSTRESS"

By Romney

EMMA, LADY HAMILTON AS " ST

CECILIA" .......

By Romney

LADY HAMILTON AS "BACCHANTE" .

By Le Brun, from the original painting in the Cranbury Park Collection ; reproduced by permission of Tankerville Chamberlayne, Esq., M.P.

LADY HAMILTON AS "AMBASSADRESS"

Engraved by T. G. Appleton, after George Romney, from the picture in possession of Sir Robert Harvey ', Bart.; by permission of Messrs Henry Graves & 1 Co. , Ltd., 6 Pall Mall, London, owners of the copyright, and publishers of the engraving

SENSIBILITY .......

Painted by G. Romney ; engraved by R. Earlom

EMMA ........

Painted by Romney ; engraved in stipple byjno. Jonei

LADY HAMILTON EN SIBYLLE

Painted by Mme. le Brun ; engraved by Greveden

LADY HAMILTON AS A NUN PRAYING .

By George Romney; reproduced by permission of Tankerville Chamberlayne, Esq., M.P.

QUAM VETERES GRAII PULCHRAM ESFINXERE THALIAM ESFICTA EST NOSTRO PULCHRIOR IN LATIO

HORATIA, NELSON'S DAUGHTER .

By Lady Hamilton, miniature by Sir W. C. Ross, R.A.

NELSON'S LAST LETTER

THE "DIVINE LADY" OF ROMNEY

THE STORY OF LADY HAMILTON CHAPTER ONE

THE "DIVINE LADY" OF ROMNEY

EMMA HAMILTON IS ONE OF THE MOST picturesque feminine figures on the stage of history, by reason of her beauty, grace, and vitality, and because of the extraordinary nature of the events—events that shook the foundations of Europe—in which she took so conspicuous a part. And there is something more than merepicturesqueness about her—a warm heart, a real richness of nature mark her out for ever among greater,though colder, women. It is commonly considered that her warm heart was her undoing—but it was much more truly her making. Without that quality—which she had lavishly— even though with all her beauty, she never would have so captured Nelson's devotion, and therefore would not have existed in English history, as she now exists. Emma Hamilton, without Nelson, would endure to sight only, a vision on canvas, a painter's dream and inspiring model. It is because Nelson loved her that she is a woman to us 3

THE STORY OF LADY HAMILTON

—an impulsive, ill-regulated, most human creature.

Eloquent as her features were, they were but the expression of her eloquent heart. Her life was the struggle for expression, every sentiment and feeling at once burst forth in gladness or in rage, without the faintest regard to the restraints of convention. Owing to her birth and upbringing convention had no hold upon her, shedid not so much ignore itasremain unconsciousof itsexistence. Her natural exuberance was never checked—no wonder that on many occasions itoverflowed the bounds and left people of refined taste in a state of amazement. In many respects Emma'stemperamentwasmoreElizabethan than belonging to the eighteenth century. But if she did not find her setting she had something approaching genius formaking it —her adaptability, moulding atonce herself and her surroundings, was extraordinary.

Thisadaptability was perhapsher greatest gift. Her life was a tissue of the most varied circumstance, a romance of improbabilities,

4

LADY HAMILTON AS "MIRANDA"

Drawn on stone by J, W. Slater; painted by Roinney

THE -DIVINE LADY" OF ROMNEY

and every happening she met with a supreme readiness, an amazing capacity for suiting herself to her environment. The one necessity for her was an audience, the bigger the better, though there were occasions when an audience of one sufficed, so long as that one was entirely wrapt in admiration. She delighted in receiving unexpected tribute to her beauty and powers : " I love," she said, "tosurprisepeople." If that wereso,she must have had much satisfaction, for throughout her career we see the heads of all beholders turned after her in equal admiration and astonishment.

Her face befits her character. But its sheer beauty seems to partake of the nature of immortality, it lives so perpetually and so delightfully on canvas. Still we seem to see her dancing, posing, and smiling through the famous "Attitudes" so admired by her generation, rendering the Tragic or the Comic Muse with equal grace and Tightness—a stormy, threatening Cassandra; astately and alluring Circe; a pensive Ariadne; or de-5

THE STORY OF LADY HAMILTON

licious domestic Spinstress; agay Bacchante in many forms, as if she were the sheer untrammelled spirit of Naturesprung wild from woods and fountains, her lips parted in the earliestlaughter oftheworld. Alltheseparts Emma could make her own—her face and form were a plastic mould into which she poured her interpretative genius, for indeed it was nothing less. No wonder Romney called her his " divine lady," for it may be doubted if such beauty and such expressiveness ever rejoiced a painter before. Hay ley knew Emmawell,and says inhis"Lifeof Romney": " The talents which nature bestowed on the fair Emma led her to delight in the two kindred arts of music and painting; in the first she acquired great practical ability ; for the second she had exquisite taste, and such expressive powers as could furnish to an historical painter an inspiring model for the various characters,either delicate or sublime.... Her features, like the language of Shakespeare, could exhibit all the gradations of every passion with a most fascinating touch

THE "DIVINE LADY" OF ROMNEY

offelicity of expression. Romney delighted in observing the wonderful command she possessed over her eloquent features."

Of her beauty we have record in words as well as on canvas. Charles Greville, while she was under his protection, remarked with the complacence of a connoisseur, that she was "about as perfect a thing as can be found in all Nature." But his uncle, Sir William Hamilton, went further than this—for in the eighteenth century the Man of Taste considered Art vastly superior to Nature—saying, "She is better than anything in Nature; inherparticularwaysheisfmer than anything that is to be found in antique Art!" The old Bishop of Derry, Sir William's friend and schoolfellow, was so carried away that he remarked that the Creator was in a "glorious mood" when He made Emma. There was a Grecian symmetry about her form and features,but none of thecoldnessof "antique Art" in her colouring and temperament. Her hair was warm auburn, flowing abundantly toner heels; her mouth was considered 7

THE STORY OF LADY HAMILTON

a miracle of beauty, and her eyes were the kind of grey that changes according tolights and mood, for they have been variously described as violet and blue—the perfection of their shape can be seen in any one of Rom-ney's portraits. A radiant creature she was in her youth, full of the vigour and power of rebound of her peasant stock, but in some mysterious way there was grafted on to that a grace and ability—or adaptability—that sprang from some source unexplained. Add to her beauty, rough upbringing, and ignor-anceof the world, that warm and overflowing heart of hers, that easy, half-pagan temper combined with her crude, ill-regulated ambitions, and some parts of her destiny require no gipsy's magic to foreknow. But though destiny and men so ill-used this simple country girl in her early years, that was by no means the end, as with so many others, but merely the beginning—the first painful steps into a wider world. She was richly endowed with vitality, with an enthusiasm for life. She faced her calamities with a kind

THE "DIVINE LADY" OF ROMNEY

of animal courage and something of the

callousness or fatalism of the peasant. After

the most shattering experiences she arose

and looked optimistically towards the un-

marred future. And onceherambitionswere

awake, once she had tasted the intoxication

of taking part in great events, of having,

"A kingdom for a stage, princes to act,

And monarchs to behold the swelling

scene!"

she felt she had gained that for which she was born, for which she had struggled through many troubled years. She had found that she who was the penniless daughter of a village blacksmith could be the Muse and the inspirer of men whose names rang gloriously in the world's loud mouth.

CHAPTER TWO

"THE TRIUMPHS OF TEMPER"

LADY HAMILTON

CHAPTER TWO

-THE TRIUMPHS OF TEMPER" THE FIRST DEFINITE EXPRESSION OF HER personality, where we first catch the tone of her authentic and unmistakable voice, is in a distracted letter she wrote to the Honourable Charles Greville, second son of the Earl of Warwick. This letter needs some little explanation. She whom the world knows as Emma Hamilton was born Emily Lyon,and for a time after she went out into the world called herself Emily Hart. At about the age of fifteen she left the country and came to London as a domestic servant. She did not stay long in this first situation, but wandered about and fell into the dangers which beset a girl so young, so poor, so ignorant and lovely. The Prince Regent used to declare that he remembered seeing her selling fruit in the streets, with wooden pattens on her feet. Many stories are told of her life at this time, and many of them are untrue, for the careerofanobscurelittlecountrymaidastray in the town is not a matter of which history takes much heed. That she did go astray is

THE STORY OF LADY HAMILTON

undoubted, and is far less shame to her confiding warm heart than to the unscrupulous men who misled her. It was at the house of one of these men, Sir Harry Fetherstone-haugh, a young squire of the typical eighteenth-century sporting type, that Charles Greville probably first saw her, and he must have extended the hand of a somewhat condescending kindness to her, for when Fether-stonehaugh, with singular brutality, turned her adrift without a guinea, and with a coming child, it was to Greville that she appealed in this pitiful, panic-stricken letter:—

"Yesterday did I receive your kind letter. It put me in some spirits, for, believe me, I am allmost distrackted. I have never hard from Sir H., and he is not at Lechster now. I am sure I have wrote 7 letters, and no anser. What shall I dow? Good God, what shall I dow ? I can't come to town for want of money. I have not a farthing to bless my self with, and I think my frends looks cooly on me. I think so. O, G., what shall I dow? What shall I dow ? O how your letter af-