Full text of Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples;

by Yelena Kopylova

  84 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON

  Neapolitan noblesse, all seemed miracles, broke down

  the easy barriers of susceptible southerners, and gained her hosts of " sensible admirers." So early as February, 1787, Sir William reported to his nephew:

  ". . . Our dear Em. goes on now quite as I cou'd

  .wish, and is universally beloved " a phrase which

  Emma herself repeated ten months later to her first

  mentor, with the proud consciousness of shining at a

  distance before him. " She is wonderful," added Hamilton, " considering her youth and beauty, and I flatter myself that E. and her Mother are happy to be

  with me, so that I see my every wish fulfilled." By the August of this year, when she first wrote Italian,

  she saw " good company," she delighted the whole diplomatic circle; Sir William was indissociable ; she

  used the familiar " we " " our house at Caserta is fitted up," while Sir William followed suit. The very servants styled her " Eccellenza." Her attached Ambassador " is distractedly in love " ; " he deserves it, and indeed I love him dearly." There was not a grain in her of inconstancy. " He is so kind, so good and tender to me," she wrote as Emma Hart, in an unpublished letter, " that I love him so much that I have not a warm look left for the Neapolitans." His evenings, he wrote, were sweet with song and admiring

  guests, while her own society rendered them a " comfort." Inclination went on steadily ripening, until it settled within three years into deep mutual fondness.

  He fitted up for her a new boudoir in the Naples house

  with its round mirrors, as Miss Knight has recorded,

  covering the entire side of the wall opposite the semi-

  circular window, and reflecting the moonlit bay with

  its glimmering boats, the glass tanks with their marine

  treasures of " sea-oranges " and the like. Within a year Hamilton tells Greville that she asks him " Do you

  love me, aye, but as much as your new apartment ? "

  EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 85

  both here and at Caserta. He did his best to " form "

  her, and in the course of time she was able to share his botanical studies, which they pursued not as " pedantical prigs " to air learning, but with zeal and pleasure in the early mornings and fresh air of the " English "

  gardens. Her aptitude and adaptiveness worked

  wonders. Within a year she could take an intelligent

  interest in the virtuoso's new volume, if we may judge

  from Sir J. Banks, who some years later again bade

  his old crony tell her that he hoped she admired Penel-

  ope in his work on Urns. She aided his volcanic ob-

  servations; Sir William laughed, and said she would

  rival him with the mountain now. Both had already

  stayed with, and she had enchanted, the Duke and

  Duchess of St. Maitre at Sorrento, the musical

  Countess of Mahoney at Ischia; cries of " Una donna rara," " bellissima creatura," were on every mouth.

  The Duke of Gloucester begged Hamilton to favour

  him with her acquaintance. The Olympian Goethe

  himself beheld and marvelled. Her unpretending

  naivete won her adherents at every step. " All the female nobility, with the queen at their head," were

  " distantly civil " to her already; none rude to Emma were allowed within the precincts. Meddlers or censors were sent roundly to the right-about, and in-

  formed that she was the sweetest, the best, the clev-

  erest creature in the world. When he returned from

  his periodical royal wild-boar chases, it was Emma

  again who brewed his punch and petted him. Now

  and again there peeps out also that half voluptuous

  tinge in her wifeliness which never wholly deserted her.

  She had been Greville's devoted slave; Sir Villiam was

  already hers. Her monitor had repulsed her free

  sacrifice and urged it for his own advantage towards

  his uncle; but her worshipper had now fanned not so

  much the flame, perhaps, as the incense of her un-

  86 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON

  feigned * attachment. The English dined with her

  while Sir William was away shooting with the king.

  She trilled Handel and Paisiello, learned French,

  Italian, music, dancing, design, and history. Hamil-

  ton, himself musical, used later on to accompany her

  voice of which he was a good judge on the viola.

  She laughed at the foibles and follies of the court;

  she retailed to him the gossip of the hour. She en-

  tered into his routine and protected his interests; she

  prevented him from being pestered or plundered. Only

  a few years, and she was dictating etiquette even to an

  English nobleman.

  It was a triumphal progress which took the town by

  storm; her beauty swept men off their feet. The

  transformations of these eighteen months, which lifted

  her out of her cramped nook at Paddington into a

  wide arena, read like a dream, or one of those Arabian

  fairy-tales where peasants turn princes in an hour.

  Nor is the least surprise, .among many, the thought

  that these dissolving views present themselves as ad-

  ventures of admired virtue, and not as unsanctioned

  escapades. At Naples the worst of her past seemed

  buried, and she could be born again. Her accent, her

  vulgarisms mattered little; she spoke to new friends

  in a new language. The " lovely woman " who had

  " stooped to folly, and learned too late that men betray," seems rather to have " stooped to conquer " by the approved methods of the same Goldsmith's heroine.

  The scene of her debut is that of Opera, all moon-

  light, flutter, music, and masquerade. Escaping in

  *Cf. Morrison MS. 164, 1787 (Emma to Sir William): "... My comforter in distress. Then why shall I not love you. Endead I must and ought whilst life is left in me or reason to think on you.

  . . . My heart and eyes fill. ... I owe everything to you, and shall ever with gratitude remember it. . . ." And cf. ibid, 172, 1788 ;"...! love Sir William, for he renounces all for me."

  EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 87

  the cool of the evening from her chambers, thronged

  by artists, wax-modellers, and intaglio-cutters, she at-

  tends Sir William's evening saunter in the royal gar-

  dens at the fashionable hour. Her , complexion so

  much resembles apple-blossom, that beholders question

  it, although she neither paints nor powders. Dapper

  Prince Dietrichstein from Vienna (" Draydrixton "

  in her parlance as in Acton's) attends her as " cavaliere servente," whispering to her in broken English that she is a " diamond of the first water." Two more princes and " two or three nobles " follow at her heels.

  She wears a loose muslin gown, the sleeves tied in

  folds with blue ribbon and trimmed with lace, a blue

  sash and the big blue hat which Greville has sent her

  as peace-offering. Beyond them stand the king, the

  queen, the minister Acton, and a brilliant retinue.

  That queen, careworn but beautiful, who already

  " likes her much," has begged the Austrian beau to walk near her that she may get a glimpse of his fair

  companion, the English girl, who is a " modern an-

  tique." " But Greville," writes Emma, " the king

  [h]as eyes, he [h]as a heart, and I have made an

  impression on it. But I told the prince, Hamilton

  is my friend, and she belongs to his nephew, for all

  our friends know it." * Only last Sunday that " Roi d'Yve
tot " had dined at Posilippo, mooring his boat by the casements of Hamilton's country casino for a

  nearer view. This garden-house is already named the

  " Villa Emma," and there for Emma a new " music-room " is building. Emma and the Ambassador had

  been entertaining a " diplomatick party." They issue forth beneath the moon to their private boat. At

  once the monarch places his " boat of musick " next to theirs. His band of " French Horns " strikes up a serenade for the queen of hearts. The king re-1 Morrison MS. 152, July 22, 1786.

  88

  moves his hat, sits with it on his knees, and " when going to land," bows and says, " it was a sin he could not speak English." She has him in her train every

  evening at San Carlo, villa, or promenade ; she is the

  cynosure of each day, and the toast of every night.

  Or, again, she entertains informally at Sorrento, all

  orange-blossom in February, after an afternoon of

  rambling donkey-rides near flaming Vesuvius, and

  visits to grandees in villeggiatura. In one room sits

  Sir William's orchestra ; in the other she receives their guests. At last her turn comes round to sing; she

  chooses " Luce Bella," in which the Banti makes such a furore at San Carlo, that famous Bant? who had

  already marvelled at the tone and compass of her

  voice, when in fear and trembling she had been in-

  duced to follow her. As she ceases, there is a ten

  minutes' round of applause, a hubbub of " Bravas "

  and " Ancoras." And then she performs in " buffo "

  i " that one " (and Greville knew it) " with a Tam-bourin, in the character of a young girl with a raire-

  shew [raree-show], the pretiest thing you ever heard."

  He must concede her triumph, the hard, unruffled man !

  She turns the heads of the Sorrentines; she leaves

  " some dying, some crying, and some in despair. Mind you, this was all nobility, as proud as the devil " ; but and here brags the people's daughter " we humbled

  them "; " but what astonished them was that I shou'd speak such good Italian. For I paid them, I spared

  non[e] of them, tho' I was civil and oblidging. One

  asked me if I left a love at Naples, that I left them so soon. I pulled my lip at him, to say, ' I pray, do you

  take me for an Italian? . . . Look, sir, I am Eng-

  lish. I have one Cavaliere servente, and have brought

  him with me,' pointing to Sir William." Hart, the

  English musician, wept to hear her sing an air by Han-

  del, pronouncing that in her the tragic and comic

  EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 89

  Muses were so happily blended that Garrick would

  have been enraptured. These were the very qualities

  that even thus early distinguished her self-taught " Attitudes," by common consent of all beholders a mar-

  vel of artistic expression and refinement. Goethe, at

  this moment in Naples, and certainly no biassed critic,

  was an eye-witness. He had been introduced by his

  friends, the German artists, 1 to the Maecenas Ambas-

  sador and " his Emma." He thus records his im-

  pressions :

  ". . . The Chevalier Hamilton, so long resident

  here as English Ambassador, so long, too, connoisseur

  and student of Art and Nature, has found their coun-

  terpart and acme with exquisite delight in a lovely

  girl English, and some twenty years of age. She is

  exceedingly beautiful and finely built. She wears a

  Greek garb becoming her to perfection. She then

  merely loosens her locks, takes a pair of shawls, and

  effects changes of postures, moods, gestures, mien, and

  appearance that make one really feel as if one were in

  some dream. Here is visible complete, and bodied

  forth in movements of surprising variety, all that so

  many artists have sought in vain to fix and render.

  Successively standing, kneeling, seated, reclining,

  grave, sad, sportive, teasing, abandoned, penitent,

  alluring, threatening, agonised. One follows the

  other, and grows out of it. She knows how to choose

  and shift the simple folds of her single kerchief for

  every expression, and to adjust it into a hundred kinds

  of headgear. Her elderly knight holds the torches for

  her performance, and is absorbed in his soul's desire.

  In her he finds the charm of all antiques, the fair

  profiles on Sicilian coins, the Apollo Belvedere him-

  self. . . . We have already rejoiced in the spectacle

  1 Tischbein, Hackert, and Andreas, who, with others, were at this time painting in Naples.

  90 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON

  two evenings. Early to-morrow Tischbein paints

  her." x

  There are less familiar references also in the Italian

  Journey. On Goethe's return from Sicily in May, the

  author of Werther, occupied with the art, the peasant

  life, and the geology of the neighbourhood, renewed

  his acquaintance with the pair and acknowledges their

  kindnesses. He dined with them again. Sir William

  favoured him with a view of his excavated treasures

  in the odd " vault," where statues and sarcophagi, bronze candelabra and busts, lay disarranged and

  jumbled. Among them Goethe noticed an upright,

  open chest " rimmed exquisitely with gold, and large enough to contain a life-size figure in its dark, inner

  background." Sir William explained how Emma,

  attired in bright Pompeiian costume, had stood mo-

  tionless inside it with an effect in the half-light even more striking than her grace as " moving statue."

  Goethe, ever curious, was now keenly interested in

  studying the superstitions of the Neapolitan peasantry,

  including the realistic shows of manger and Magi with

  which they celebrated Christmas-tide. In these, living

  images were intermixed with coloured casts of clay.

  And he hazards the remark while deprecating it from

  the lips of a contented guest that perhaps " Miss

  Harte " was at root not more than such a living image a tableau vivant. Perchance, he muses, the main

  lack of his " fair hostess " is "geist " or soulfulness of mind. Her dumb shows, he adds, were naturally un-voiced, and voice alone expresses spirit. Even her

  admired singing he then thought deficient in " ful-

  ness." Had Goethe, however, known her whole na-

  ture, he would have owned that if she were " geistlos"

  in the highest sense, she was never dull, and was to

  prove the reverse of soulless; while he, of all men,

  1 Goethe, Italienische Reise, March 16, 1787.

  EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 91

  would have admired not only her enthusiasm but her

  more practical qualities. Did he, perhaps, in after

  years recall this mute and lovely vision when her name,

  for good or ill, had entered history? At any rate,

  though neither Hamilton nor Emma has noticed him in

  existing letters, they both endure on Goethe's pages;

  and to have impressed Goethe was even then no easy

  task. That the creator of Iphigcnia and Tasso was

  deeply impressed is proved by another and better

  known passage, where after praising Hamilton as " a man of universal taste, who has roamed through all

  the realms of creation," and has " made a beautiful existence which he enjoys in the evening of life," he adds that Emma is " a masterpiece of the Arch-Artist."

  To resu
me our dissolving views : a priest begs her

  picture on a box, which he clasps to his bosom. A

  countess weeps when she departs. The Russian

  empress hears her fame, and orders her portrait.

  Commodore Melville gives a dinner to thirty on board

  his Dutch frigate in her honour, and seats her at the

  head as " mistress of the feast." She is robed " all in virgin white," her hair " in ringlets reaching almost to her heels," so long, that Sir William says she

  " look't and moved amongst it." She has soon learned by rote the little ways of the big world, and whispers

  to him that it is gala night at San Carlo, and de

  rigucur to reach their box before the royal party en-

  tered their neighbouring one. The guns salute; the

  pinnace starts amid laughter, song, and roses, while

  off she speeds to semi-royal triumphs " as tho' I

  was a queen." Serena's wholesome lesson is being

  half forgotten.

  Once more, Vesuvius " looks beautiful," with its lava-streams descending far as Portici. She climbs

  the peak of fire at midnight five miles of flame; the

  92 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON

  peasants deem the mountain " burst." The climbers seek the shelter of the Hermit's cabin that strange

  Hermit who had thus retired to solitude and exile for

  love of a princess. 1 Has she not spirit ? Let Greville

  mark : " For me, I was enraptured. I could have staid all night there, and I have never been in charity with

  the moon since, for it looked so pale and sickly. And

  the red-hot lava served to light up the moon, for the

  light of the moon was nothing to the lava." Ascend-

  ing, she meets the Prince-Royal. His " foolish

  tuters," fearful of their charge's safety and their own, escort him only halfway, and allow him but three

  minutes for the sight. She asks him how he likes it.

  " Bella, ma poca roba," replies the lad. Five hundred yards higher he could have watched " the noblest,

  sublimest sight in the world." But the " poor frightened creatures" beat "a scared" retreat: "O, I shall kill myself with laughing! " And is not the plebeian girl schooling herself to be a match for crass blue

  blood? " Their [h]as been a prince paying us a visit.

  He is sixty years of age, one of the first families, and fh]as allways lived at Naples; and when I told him I

  had been at Caprea, he asked me if I went there by

  land. Only think what ignorance! I staired at him,