" kindly intended," but owing to Emma's " former line of life " impossible to accept. These proprieties confirmed Sir William's determination, and aroused
Emma's ire. The one was accustomed to observe that
the " reformed rake " proverb applied fully as much to a woman as a man. The other felt herself morti-fied and insulted just when her virtues rang on every
lip. If the frail Lady Craven, for instance, were good
enough to touch the hem of Mrs. Legge's garments,
why not Emma, who had rashly hastened to be kind?
Legge must tell the rest himself: " Her influence over him exceeds all belief. . . . The language of both
parties, who always spoke in the plural number we,
us, and ours stagger'd me at first, but soon made me
determined to speak openly to him on the subject,
when he assur'd me, what I confess I was most happy
to hear, that he was not married; but flung out some
hints of doing justice to her good behaviour, if his
public situation did not forbid him to consider himself
an independent man. . . . She gives everybody to un-
derstand that he is now going to England to solicit
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 119
the K.'s consent to marry her. ... I am confident
she will gain her point, against which it is the duty
of every friend to strengthen his mind as much as
possible; and she will be satisfied with no argument
but the King's absolute refusal of his approbation.
Her talents and powers of amusing are very wonder-
full. Her voice is very fine, but she does not sing
with great taste, and Aprili [sic] says she has not a
good ear; her Attitudes are beyond description beau-
tifull and striking, and I think you will find her figure much improved since you last saw her. They say they
shall be in London by the latter end of May, that
their stay in England will be as short as possible,
and that, having settled his affairs, he is determined
never to return. She is much visited here by ladies
of the highest rank, and many of the corps diploma-
tique; does the honours of his house with great atten-
tion and desire to please, but wants a little refinement of manners in which ... I wonder she has not made
greater progress. I have all along told her that she
could never change her situation, and that she was a
happier woman as Mrs. H. than she wou'd be as
Lady H., when more reserved behaviour being
necessary, she wou'd be depriv'd of half her amuse-
ments."
Sound sense enough, but most unlikely to convince
Emma's self-confidence. Mrs. Legge, too, and after-
wards Queen Charlotte, were justified in excom-
municating Emma before her marriage ; such decencies
are concerns of precedent, the etiquette of morality.
But it is surely a cruel and un-Christian precedent, to
set up without exception that a girl who had raised
and trained herself as Emma had done should be de-
barred from the possibility of legitimate retrieval.
Such standards savour far more of the world than of
1 Morrison MS. 190 ; Legge to Greville, Naples, March 8, 1791.
120 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
Heaven. And, at all events, it must be conceded
that at this period Emma, who had been beloved not
only by the Duchesses of Argyll and Devonshire, but
by such young ladies as Miss Carr, could not possibly
have hurt or soiled the British matron. There may
well have been quite as much unamiable envy as in-
jured innocence in the blank refusal to let her show
that she was a kind and helpful woman, even though
she had not always been irreproachable.
London was reached at last, and the King's re-
luctant sanction obtained. They were feted and en-
tertained by the Marquis of Abercorn, by Beckford at
Fonthill, and by the Duke of Queensberry, who gave
a brilliant concert at Richmond in their honour, where
Emma herself performed. But her chief delight was
her reunion with those art coteries where she had ever
felt herself freest and most at home. One of her first
visits was to Cavendish Square. On a June morning
she surprised Romney an apparition in " Turkish
dress " while he was ailing and melancholy. Neither his trip in the previous year, nor the warm friendship
of Hayley, who had now fitted up a studio for him
at Eartham, could exorcise the demon of dejection
which brooded over him. The wonderful girl whose
career he had watched afar, cheered him back to his
former source of inspiration. His letters to Hayley
of this date are full of her. She was eager that her
old friend should recognise that she was " still the same Emma." She sat for him constantly, and besides his many other studies and portraits of her, he at once made her the model of his Joan of Arc, the idea
of which his recent journey across the Channel had
suggested. Both this and a " Magdalen " were commissioned by the Prince of Wales, who seems to have
met her at the Duke of Queensberry's. He painted
her as " Cassandra," he designed to paint her as " Con-EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 121
stance," he commenced a fresh " Bacchante." He dined with her and Sir William, and they both dined
thrice with him, first in July and afterwards in August.
He broke his rule of solitude in order that " several people of fashion " might behold the performances of one whom he declared " superior to all womankind."
She in her turn begged him to let Hayley set about
writing his life. All that she did or said fascinated
him; and the fondest father, remarks his biographer,
could not have taken a keener pleasure in the marriage
of a favourite daughter than did Romney in her im-
minent wedding. Her acting and singing so trans-
ported him, that he was on the point of posting off
near midnight to fetch Hayley from Eartham. " She
performed both in the serious and comic to admira-
tion : but her ' Nina ' " a part two years later the especial delight of Maria Carolina " surpasses everything I ever saw, and I believe, as a piece of acting,
nothing ever surpassed it. The whole company were
in an agony of sorrow. Her acting is simple, grand,
terrible, and pathetic." It was this power of moving others that, according to a tradition often repeated
by the late Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, once so worked
on Nelson ten years afterwards, that he walked up
and down the crowded room muttering, " D
Mrs. Siddons ! " with whom somebody had contrasted
her. On the occasion just mentioned Gallini, the im-
presario, offered her 2000 a year and two benefits " if she would engage with him " ; but, in Romney 's words,
" Sir William said pleasantly that he had engaged
her for life."
For a few weeks Romney fancied her attitude
towards him altered ; the mere suspicion disquieted his
nerves, but the cloud was soon dispelled. Meanwhile
Hayley, who was to compose a fresh poem on her just
before her wedding, indited the following:
122 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
"Gracious Cassandra! whose benign esteem
To my weak talent every aid supplied,
Thy smile to me was
inspiration's beam,
Thy charms my model, and thy taste my guide.
But say ! what cruel clouds have darkly chilled
Thy favour, that to me was vital fire?
O let it shine again ! or worse than killed,
Thy soul-sunk artist feels his art expire."
On her very wedding day Emma sat for the last
time to the great artist for that noble portrait of her
as the " Ambassadress," and she and her husband
" took a tender leave " of one inseverable from her for ever.
Hamilton and she were the talk of the town. When
they drove out or went to parties, or entered the box
at Drury Lane, every eye was upon them, and it was
at Drury Lane that the acting of Jane Powell brought
together the two former mates in servitude as the ad-
mired of all beholders.
All this must have nettled Greville, of whose feel-
ings at this time there is no record. But his opposi-
tion does not seem to have been serious, for Sir Will-
iam and Emma passed their time in a round of visits to
the whole circle of his relations, who were mostly
her keen partisans. Lord Abercorn, indeed, went so
far as to protest that her personality had " made it impossible " for him " to see or hear without making comparisons " ; and from this time forward Lord William Douglas also became Emma's lifelong upholder.
The summer of 1791 was unusually hot, and from the
latter part of July to mid- August they stayed with
relatives in the country, including Beckford, when
Emma for the first time beheld the Oriental and the
Gothic glories, the mounting spire, the magic ter-
races, the fairy gardens, and all the bizarre splendours, including its owner, of Fonthill Abbey.
On the whole, this delicate experiment had sue-
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 123
ceeded, although Queen Charlotte's ban doubtless
rankled in Emma's breast. 1 The King himself was
more pained than offended, and had confirmed Ham-
ilton in the security of his appointment.
Nor was it only grand folks or old friends that
Emma had frequented. It is clear from allusions in
shortly subsequent letters that both she and her mother
visited that " poor little Emma " who had re-awakened the longings of motherhood in the old but unfor'gotten days of Parkgate.
On September 6th Sir William and " Emy," or
" Emily," Lyon were duly wedded at Marylebone
Church, long associated with the Hamilton family.
The marriage was solemnised by the Rev. Doctor Ed-
ward Barry, rector of Elsdon, Northumberland. The
witnesses were Lord Abercorn and L. Dutens, sec-
retary to the English Minister at Turin, with whom
Emma long maintained a faithful friendship. Her
heart was overflowing. She felt, as she told Rom-
ney, so grateful to her husband, so glad in restored
innocence and happiness, that she would " never be
able to make " him " amends for his goodness." They started homeward by way of Paris, where they were
to see for the first and last time that tortured Queen
who was fast completing the tragedy of her doom.
Henceforward the name of " Hart " is heard no
more. Henceforward Emma is no longer obscure,
but, as Lady Hamilton, passes into history.
'The Queen would never receive Lady Hamilton even after
the return of the Hamiltons to England, and Nelson will be found angry that Sir William would go to court alone; cf. post, chap. xii.
CHAPTER V
TILL THE FIRST MEETING
I79I-I793
EDY HAMILTON returned to bask in social
favour. It was not only the Neapolitan noblesse
and the English wives that courted and caressed
her. Their young- daughters also vied with each other
in attentions, and vowed that never was any one so
amiable and accomplished as this eighth wonder.
Among these was a Miss Carr, who not long after-
wards married General Cheney, an Aide-de-Camp to
the Duke of York, during the next few years more
than once a visitor at Naples. The writer possesses
a miniature in water-colour, drawn by this young lady,
of the friend to whom she long remained attached.
Emma sits, clad all in white, with an air of sweetness
and repose. At the back of this memento she has
herself recorded: "Emma Hamilton, Naples, Feb. n,
1792. I had the happiness of my dear Miss Carr's
company all day ; but, alas, the day was too short."
There is nothing in this likeness to betoken the pur-
pose and ambition which she was shortly to display
in the side-scenes of history. Horace Walpole had
written, " So Sir William has married his gallery of statues." Emma soon ceases to be a statue, and becomes prominent in the labyrinth of Neapolitan in-
trigue; her role as patriot begins to be foreshadowed.
Throughout these three critical years of stress and
shock momentous issues were brewing, destined to
124
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 125
bring into sharp relief and typical collision the two
giants of France and England, Napoleon and Nelson;
while all the time, under fate's invisible hand, Nelson
was as surely tending towards Naples and Emma, as
Emma was being drawn towards Nelson. From the
moment of her return in the late autumn of 1791 she
began, at first under Hamilton's tuition, to study and
understand the political landscape.
Nowhere outside France did the Revolution bode
omens more sinister than at the Neapolitan court. The
Queen clearly discerned that her French sister and
brother-in-law trembled on the brink of destruction.
She knew that the epidemic of anarchy must endanger
Naples among the first, and might involve the possible
extinction of its dynasty. She was not deceived by
the many false prophets crying peace where no peace
was; still less by the wild schemes for hairbreadth
escapes which sent visionary deliverers scouring
through Europe. Her one hope soon rudely shat-
tered lay in Austria's power to effect a coalition of
great powers and strong armies. She had just quit-
ted the family council in Vienna, following on the
death of her brother Joseph the Second, and the short-
lived accession to the throne of her other brother
Leopold, the pedantic philanthropist. Its object had
been, in Horace Walpole's phrase, to " Austriacise "
the position of the Italian Bourbons, by family inter-
marriages and a betrothal. Her efforts were bent on
a league against France, and it was for this that on
her way home she had contrived a surprise meeting
with the weak Pope Pius VI., penetrated the Vatican,
abjured her anti-papal policy, and humiliated herself
in the dust. And yet Louis XVI. besought her to sus-
pend efforts which might rescue him, and shrank from
embittering his false friends. Austria, too, was for
seven years to prove a broken reed. Spain was never a
whole-hearted enemy of France,, and within three years
was to become her ally. The Queen awoke to a fury
of indignation and hopelessness. Her
foes were
those of her own household her nobles, her husband,
his Spanish brother and sister, and herself. Hith-
erto she had been reckoned an enlightened patroness,
compassing the equality and fraternity of subjects who
had never required political liberty. She had stub-
bornly resisted the Spanish Machiavellianism which
had manoeuvred to undermine those very f reemasonries
which Maria Carolina had founded and forwarded.
Spain was, in truth, the key of the present position.
Spain was befooling Ferdinand and spiting his wife
at every turn. The Spanish queen coveted Naples for
her own offspring, and the two queens abominated each
other. She was quite aware that the pro-Spanish
party, abetted by her blockhead of a husband, covertly
designed the transference of the Crown of the Two
Sicilies to the Duke of Parma, while many of the
Neapolitan nobles, affronted at the abolition of their
feudal rights, were in secret confederation with it.
She sprang from a house glorying in its despotic
monopoly of popular principles, yet it was to such
fatalities that these very principles were leading.
Stability and authority had been her aims, yet the
ground was fast slipping from beneath her feet. She
was a true scion of the casuist Hapsburgs, who had
always considered pride cs a sacred duty, and who, if
their system were imperilled, would be ready to de-
fend it by conscientious crimes. In the refrain of her
own subsequent letters, "II faut faire son devoir
fusqu'au fombeau"
And added to all this was the shifting mood of her
consort, whose infidelities she (like the queen of our
own George the Second) only condoned in order that
his good humour might enable her to rule. He had
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 127
always twitted her with being an " Illuminata," he now derided her as the " Austrian hen." His advisers would prompt him to rely more than ever on his Spanish kindred, to slight the Hapsburgs and herself.
When Emma long afterwards claimed to have " De-
Bourbonised " the Neapolitan court, it was to these conditions that she referred.
Gallo, the foreign minister, leaned towards and upon
Spain. Even Acton hitherto had been content to pro-
pitiate the King by taking his cue from Madrid. The
King himself had regarded England merely as a mar-
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