more from fashion than amusement. She had doubt-
less contrasted him with Sir Harry's stupid and com-
monplace acquaintances. Greville always took real in-
terest in people who interested him at all, and at least he never acted below his professions. He was nobly
bred, considerate, and composed; he was good-look-
ing, prudent, and ever liberal in advice. No wonder
that his condescension seemed ideal to this girl of six-
teen, who had lost yet coveted self-respect; who had
already suffered from degrading experience, and yet
had ever " felt something of virtue " in her " mind."
He had afterwards (as his letter will show) be-
friended and scolded her headstrong sallies, though
his warnings must have passed unheeded. On her
retirement in disgrace and despair to her loving grand-
mother at Hawarden, he doubtless gave her the franked
and addressed papers enabling her to communicate
with him should need compel her. Just as evidently,
she had written and been touched with the kind tone of
his answer. It seems obvious also from Greville's
coming reply that, as was her way, she would neither
cajole Sir Harry into renewed favour nor be de-
32 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
pendent on anything but sincere kindness. But at last
she was trembling on a precipice from the brink of
which she besought him to rescue her.
To him and to Fetherstonehaugh she was known as
Emily Hart; nor, in spite of Greville's advice, would
she, or did she, change that name till her wedding.
Whence it was assumed is unknown. In the Harvey
family there lingered a tradition that " Emma Hart "
was born at Southwell, near Biggleswade, and with her
mother had served at Ickwell Bury, where she was
first seen and painted by Romney. But this is wholly
unfounded, though Romney appears to have painted
portraits in that house, and it is curious that, about
forty years ago, one Robert Hart still living was a
butler in their service and professed to be in some
way related to Lady Hamilton. A guess might
be hazarded that " Hart " was derived from the musician of that name who visited Hamilton's
house at Naples in 1786 as her old acquaintance. Not
one of the parish registers offers any solution through
the names of her kindred. The " Emily " became Emma through the artists and the poets, through Romney and Hayley.
It is " Emly Hart's " pleading and pathetic note, then, that Charles Greville still holds in his fastidious hands on this winter morning. With a glance at his
statues, specimens, and the repaired Venus, and pos-
sibly with a pang at the thought of the plight to which
this " modern piece of virtu " was reduced, he sits down most deliberately to compose his answer. How
deliberately, is shown by the fact that of this letter
he kept a " pressed copy " done in the ink just invented by James Watt ; it was a minute of semi-official
importance. The letter is long, and extracts will suf-
fice; it will be gathered that he was more prig than
33
profligate, and he had evidently formed the delightful
design of being her mentor :
" My dear Emily, I do not make apologies for Sir
H.'s behaviour to you, and altho' I advised you to
deserve his esteem by your good conduct, I own I never
expected better from him. It was your duty to de-
serve good treatment, and it gave me great concern
to see you imprudent the first time you came to G.,
from the country, as the same conduct was repeated
when you was last in town, I began to despair of your
happiness. To prove to you that I do not accuse you
falsely, I only mention five guineas and half a guinea
for coach. But, my dear Emily, as you seem quite
miserable now, I do not mean to give you uneasiness,
but comfort, and tell you that I will forget your faults and bad conduct to Sir H. and myself, and will not
repent my good humor if I find that you have learned
by experience to value yourself, and endeavor to pre-
serve your friends by good conduct and affection. I
will now answer your last letter. You tell me you
think your friends look cooly on you, it is therefore
time to leave them: but it is necessary for you to de-
cide some points before you come to town. You are
sensible that for the next three months your situation
will not admit of a giddy life, if you wished it. ...
After you have told me that Sir H. gave you barely
money to get to your friends, and has never answered
one letter since, and neither provides for you nor takes any notice of you, it might appear laughing at you to
advise you to make Sir H. more kind and attentive. I
do not think a great deal of time should be lost, for I
have never seen a woman clever enough to keep a man
who was tired of her. But it is a great deal more for
me to advise you never to see him again, and to write
only to inform him of your determination. You must,
however, do either the one or the other. . . . You may
34 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
easily see, my dearest Emily, why it is absolutely necessary for this point to be completely settled before I can move one step. If you love Sir H. you should not give
him up. ... But besides this, my Emily, I would not
be troubled with your connexions (excepting your
mother) and with Sir H. ('s) friends for the universe.
My advice then is to take a steady resolution. ... I
shall then be free to dry up the tears of my lovely
Emily and to give her comfort. If you do not forfeit
my esteem perhaps my Emily may be happy. You
know I have been so by avoiding the vexation which
frequently arises from ingratitude and caprice.
Nothing but your letter and your distress could incline
me to alter my system, but remember I never will give
up my peace, or continue my connexion one moment
after my confidence is betray'd. If you should come
to town and take my advice . . . You should part
with your maid and take another name. By degrees
I would get you a new set of acquaintances, and by
keeping your own secret, and no one about you having
it in their power to betray you, I may expect to see you respected and admired. Thus far as relates to yourself. As to the child ... its mother shall obtain it
kindness from me, and it shall never want. I inclose
you some money; do not throw it away. You may
send some presents when you arrive in town, but do
not be on the road without some money to spare in
case you should be fatigued and wish to take your time.
I will send Sophy anything she wishes for. . . . God
bless you, my dearest lovely girl ; take your determina-
tion and let me hear from you once more. Adieu, my
dear Emily." *
And with this salutation Greville folds his paper
with precision and addresses it, in the complacent be-
lief that it is irresistible. Truly an impeccable shep-
1 Morrison MS. 114, January 10, 1782.
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 35
herd of lost sheep, a prodig
ious preacher to runagates
continuing in scarceness; a Mr. Barlow-Rochester with
a vengeance! And yet real goodwill underlies the
guardedness of his disrespectable sermon. As, how-
ever, he sinks back in his chair, and plumes himself
on the communique, it never strikes him for an instant
that this wild and unfortunate girl is quite capable of
distancing her tutor and of swaying larger destinies
than his. His main and constant object was never to
appear ridiculous. So absurd a forecast would have
irretrievably grotesqued him in his own eyes and in
those of his friends. His attitude towards women ap-
pears best from his reflections nearly five years later, which read like a page of La Rochefoucauld tied up
with red tape :
". . . With women, I observe they have only re-
source in Art, and there is to them no interval between
plain ground and the precipice; and the springs of ac-
tion are so much in the extreme of sublime and low,
that no absolute dependence can be given by men. It
is for this reason I always have anticipated cases to
prepare their mind to reasonable conduct, and it will
always have its impression, altho' they will fly at the
mere mention of truth if it either hurts their pride
or their intrest, and the latter has much more rarely
weight with a young woman than the former; and
therefore it is like playing a trout to keep up pride to make them despise meaness, and not to retain the bom-bast which would render the man who gave way to
'it the air of a dupe and a fool. It requires much con-
duct to steer properly, but it is to be done when a
person is handsome, and has a good heart; but to do
it without hurting their feelings requires constant at-
tention; it is not in the moment of irritation or passion that advice has effect; it is in the moment of reason and good nature. It reduces itself to simple subjects; and
Memoirs Vol. 142
36 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
when a woman can see more than one alternative of
comfort or despair, of attention and desertion, they can take a line." *
Thus Greville the prudent psychologist of woman-
kind and the nice moralist of the immoral. His meta-
phor of the " trout " must have appealed to that keen fisherman, his " dear Hamilton." Greville angled for
" disinterested " hearts with a supple rod. His " system " was to attach friendship rather than to rivet affection; to " play " a woman's heart in the quick stream of credulous emotion past the perilous eddies of head-long impulse with the bait of self-esteem, till it could be safely landed in a basket, to be afterwards transferred for the fish's own benefit to a friend. If the
trout refused thus to be landed, it must be dropped
into the depths of its own f reward will; but the sportsman could at least console himself by the thought that,
as sportsman, he had done his duty and observed the
rules of his game. Greville was already contemplat-
ing a less expensive shrine for his minerals and old
masters. He was anxious to be quit of Portman
Square, and a light purse proverbially makes a heavy
heart.
He must be left calculating his chances, while his
Dulcinea books places in the Chester coach, weeps for
joy, and kisses her Don Quixote's billet with impetuous
gratitude.
*Morrisorv MS. 156, November (?) 1786.
CHAPTER II
" THE FAIR TEA-MAKER OF EDGWARE ROW "
March 1782 August 1784
AjrIRLISH voice, fresh as the spring morning on
Paddington Green outside, with its rim of tall
elms, and clear as the warbling of their birds,
rings out through the open window with its bright
burden of " Banish sorrow until to-morrow." The music-master has just passed through the little garden-wicket, the benefactor will soon return from town,
and fond Emma will please him by her progress. Na-
ture smiles without and within ; " Mrs. Cadogan "
bustles over the spring-cleaning below, and to-morrow
the radiant housewife will take her shilling's-worth of
hackney coach as far as Romney's studio in Cavendish
Square. She is very happy; it is almost as if she were
a young bride ; perchance, who knows, one day she may
be Greville's wife. In her heart she is so now; and
yet at times that hateful past will haunt her. It shall
be buried with the winter; " I will have it so," as she was to write of another matter. And is it not
" Spring-time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing hey ding a-ding a-ding"?
Edgware Row a hundred and twenty-three years
ago was the reverse of what it looks to-day. Its site,
now a network of slums, was then a country prospect.
It fronted the green sward of a common, abutting
on the inclosure of a quaint old church, in a vault of
37
38 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
which, when the crowning blow fell, Lady Hamilton
was to lay the remains of her devoted mother. That
church had for many years been associated with artists,
singers, and musicians, British and foreign. Here in
March, 1733, the apprentice Hogarth had wedded Jane
Thornhill, his master's daughter. Here lay buried
Matthew Dubourg, the court violinist; and Emma
could still read his epitaph :
" Tho' sweet as Orpheus them couldst bring
Soft pleadings from the trembling string,
Unmoved the King of Terror stands
Nor owns the magic of thy hands."
Here, too, lay buried George Barret, " an eminent
painter and worthy man." Here later were to lie Lolli, the violinist ; the artists Schiavonetti and Sandby ; Nol-lekens and Banks the sculptors; Alexander Geddes the
scholar; Merlin the mechanic; Caleb Whiteford the
wine-merchant wit; and his great patron, John Henry
Petty, Marquis of Lansdowne, who descends to his-
tory as the Earl of Shelburne. Here once resided the
charitable Denis Chirac, jeweller to Queen Anne.
Here, too, were voluntary schools and the lying-in hos-
pital. The canal, meandering as far as Bolingbroke's
Hayes in one direction, and Lady Sarah Child's Nor-
wood in the other, was not finished till 1801, when
Lady Hamilton may have witnessed its opening cere-
mony.
Greville, still saddled with his town abode, at once
economised. The Edgware Row establishment was
modest in both senses of the word. He brought repu-
table friends to the house, and a few neighbouringladies seem to have called. The household expenses did not
exceed some 150 a year. Emma's own yearly allow-
ance was only about 50, and she lived well within it.
Her mother was a clever manager, whose services the
thrifty prodigal appreciated. The existing household
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 39
accounts in Emma's handwriting only start in 1784,
but from them some idea may be formed of what they
were in the two years preceding. They belong to thei
Hamilton papers inherited by Greville in 1803, and
they were evidently deemed worthy of preservation
both by nephew and uncle.
It is clear from these accounts that all was now
&nbs
p; " retrenchment and reform " ; that all was not plenty, is equally apparent. But Emma was more than satisfied with her lot. Had not her knight-errant (or
erring) dropped from heaven? From the first she re-
garded him as a superior being, and by 1784 she came
to love him with intense tenderness; indeed she ideal-
ised him as much as others were afterwards to idealise
her.
All was not yet, however, wholly peace. Her char-
acter was far from being ideal, quite apart from the
circumstances which, by comparison, she viewed as
almost conjugal. Her petulant temper remained un-
quelled long after her tamer undertook to " break it in," and there were already occasional " scenes "
against her own interest. Yet how soon and warm-
heartedly she repented may be gathered from her let-
ters two years onwards, when she was sea-bathing at
Parkgate : " So, my dearest Greville," pleads one of them, " don't think on my past follies, think on my good, little as it has been." And, before, " Oh !
Greville, when I think on your goodness, your tender
kindness, my heart is so full of gratitude that I want
words to express it. But I have one happiness in
view, which I am determined to practice, and that is
eveness of temper and steadin[e]ss of mind. For
endead I have thought so much of your amable good-
ness when you have been tried to the utmost, that I
will, endead I will manege myself, and try to be like
Greville. Endead I can never be like him. But I
40 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
will do all I can towards it, and I am sure you will not desire more. I think if the time would come over
again, I would be differant. But it does not matter.
There is nothing like bying expearance. I may be
happyer for it hereafter, and I will think of the time
coming and not of the past, except to make compar-
rasons, to shew you what alterations there is for the
best. . . . O Greville ! think on me with kindness !
Think on how many happy days weeks and years I
hope we may yett pass. . . . And endead, did you
but know how much I love you, you wou'd freely for-
give me any passed quarrels. For I now suffer from
them, and one line from you wou'd make me happy.
. . . But how am I to make you amends? ... I will
try, I will do my utmost; and I can only regrett that
fortune will not put it in my power to make a return
Full text of Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; Page 4