ket for dogs and horses, the Queen, only as an enemy
of Spain. That the attitude of both was shortly
to be transformed was partly due to Emma's enthusi-
asm as spokeswoman for her husband. Even in
February, 1796, Emma wrote to Lord Macartney, who
had just arrived at Naples, that " the Queen has much to do to persuade " Ferdinand, that " she is wore out with fatigue," and that " he approves of all our prospects." She refers, I think, to his Spanish bias. The moot question soon became, Was Naples to be Spanish
or English? The Austrian influence, so prized by an
Austrian princess, was on the wane. As England's
advocate the light-hearted Emma was drawn into the
political vortex, and assumed the mysterious solemnity
befitting her part.
In her perplexity it was to Acton that Maria Caro-
lina turned. She thought him a man of iron, whereas
he was really one of wood; but he was methodical,
pro-Austrian, and at the core pro-English. Under
the imminence of crisis, he and Hamilton still a man
of pleasure, but not its slave both came to perceive
that unless the whole system of Europe was to be
reversed, an Anglo-Sicilian alliance was imperative.
Hamilton, however, was slower to discern the neces-
sity which Emma realised by instinct. Writing in
128 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
April, 1792, he says: "The Neapolitans, provided
they can get their bellies full at a cheap rate, will not, I am sure, trouble their heads with what passes in
other countries, and great pains are taken to prevent
any of the democratic propaganda, or their writings,
finding their way into this kingdom." Even in 1795
he was to be more concerned with the success of his
treatises on Vesuvius than with the tangle of treaties
fast growing out of the situation. It was not till
1796 that he took any strong initiative with Acton.
The two Sicilies indeed were now a shuttlecock between
the treacheries of Spain and the dilatoriness as well as venality of Austria.
- But for England the French cataclysm meant some-
thing wholly different from its significance for the
Continent. Great Britain stood alone and aloof from
other powers. She was the nurse of traditional order
and traditional liberty conjoined; disorder and license, although exploitable by political factions under specious masks, never appealed to the nation at large. Britain's
upheavals had been settled by happy compromise more
than a century before. Jacobinism menaced her
" free " trade, and might strike even at her free institutions. She was a great maritime and a Mediter-
ranean power whose coign of vantage in Gibraltar
would prove useless if Naples and Sicily, Malta and
Sardinia should fall to France. Sicily, indeed, had
been one of her objectives in that great Utrecht Treaty
which had transferred it to the friendly house of
Savoy, while it secured Gibraltar and Port Mahon to
Great Britain. And ever since, Spain had been Eng-
land's sworn enemy. Spain was France's natural ally,
nor would the revolutionary burst long deter the Span-
ish Bourbons from an anti-British policy. Spain had
tricked Austria and braved Great Britain throughout
the eighteenth century, yet it was on Spain that Maria
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 129
Carolina's husband habitually relied. From England,
too, throughout that century, had rained those showers
of gold which had subsidised the enemies of Bourbon
preponderance. " Will England," wrote Acton some years later to Hamilton, when Emma, as the Queen's
" minister plenipotentiary," had " spurred " them on,
" see all Italy, and even the two Sicilies, in the French hands with indifference? . . . We shall perish if such
is our destiny, but we hope of selling dear our destruc-
tion."
In England the remonstrant Burke forsook the
pseudo-Jacobin Whigs. It was hoped, and not with-
out reason, that Pitt as a great statesman might fore-
see the situation. But the difficulty all along in the
British cabinet, and sometimes the obstacle, was to
prove Lord Grenville, cold, stiff, timid, official to a
fault; so cautious that he twice counselled the two
Sicilies to make the best peace they could with Buona-
parte, since they must go under; and so diplomatic
that, even after Nelson's Mediterranean expedition
had been concerted between the two courts, he begged
Circello, the Neapolitan Ambassador, to pretend dis-
content in public with what had just been privately
arranged. In the same year, defending the ministry
against the Duke of Bedford's abortive motion for.
their dismissal, and praising the gallant navy " which had ridden triumphant at the same moment -at the
mouths of Brest and Cadiz and Texel," the Secretary for Foreign Affairs could only be wise after the event.
He could only defend the prolongation of war by
Barere's threat of " Delenda est Carthago," by Con-dorcet's opinion that under a peace we should have
been relieved of Jamaica, Bengal, and our Indian pos-
sessions; by bemoaning England's vanished "power
to control the Continent," by proclaiming that she was
" at her lowest ebb," and by complaining that Austria 130 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
had deserted the Alliance. Commenting on his at-
titude, thirteen years afterwards, towards Emma's
claims, Canning, who warmly favoured them, dwells
on the same characteristic of " coldest caution." Such a spirit could ill deal with the conjuncture. Mob-despotism was now the dread of Europe. Mob-rule
was already rampant in France, though the time was
still distant when the Marchioness of Solari could
declare that the French had robbed her of all but the
haunting memory of Parisian gutters swimming with
blood.
Acton acceded to the Queen's request with rigour,
but his weak point lay in the fact that he was a born
bureaucrat; while the sort of bureaucracy that he fa-
voured, one of secret inquisition, turned political of-
fences into heresies, and Jacobins into martyrs. Bu-
reaucracies may check, but have never stemmed,
revolutions which are calmed when they can be
calmed by commanding personality alone. A bu-
reaucrat is never a trusted nor even a single figure,
for he belongs to unpopular and unavailing groups and
systems, which from their nature must at best be
temporary stop-gaps. As Jacobinism throve and per-
severed, the Lazzaroni, who execrated it as a foreign
innovation, cheered their careless King, but they came
to hiss the Queen for her countenance of bureaucracy,
until Nelson entered the arena, and Emma formed, in
1799, a " Queen's party," at the very moment when Maria Carolina dared not so much as show her face
at Naples.
Already in the spring the French events began to
affect Naples. Mirabeau dead, the abortive escape to
Varennes, Louis XVI. in open and abject terror, Dan-
ton and Petion bribed, the National Convention, the
cosmopolitan cries of " Let us sow the ideas of 1789
t
hroughout the world. . . . We all belong to our
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 131
country when it is in danger. . . . Liberty and equality constitute country," spread their contagion broadcast.
They did not yet inflame the Neapolitan middle class;
they never caught the Neapolitan people; but their
leaven had already touched the offended nobles and
the ungrateful students. From the moment of Louis'
imprisonment in the Temple, his sister-in-law changed
her tack and resolved to go " Thorough." The pulpits were pressed into an anti- Jacobin crusade. The
administration of the twelve city wards, hitherto su-
pervised by elected aldermen, was transferred without
warning to chiefs of police as judges and inspectors.
Denouncers and informers were hired, although as yet
the brooding Queen used her spies for precaution alone,
and not for vengeance. The republican seed of the
secret societies, sown by her own hands, had borne a
crop of democracy ripening towards harvest. Her
academic reformers were fast developing into open
revolutionaries. The red cap was worn and flaunted.
Copies of the French Statute were seized in thousands
as they lurked in sacks on the rocks of Chiaromonte;
two even found their way into the Queen's apartments.
This conspiracy she hoped to nip in the bud. It had
not assumed its worst proportions ; nor as yet had dis-
loyalty thrown off the mask, and appeared as a bribed
hireling of the National Convention. The grisly hor-
rors at Paris of 1792, preluding only too distinctly
the crowning executions of 1793, called also for sterner measures. By July, Beckford, an eye-witness, remarks that even Savoy was " bejacobinised, and plundering, ravaging," were " going on swimmingly."
The Queen bestirred herself abroad. A league was
formed between Prussia and Austria. The Duke of
Brunswick issued his manifesto that one finger laid
on Louis would be avenged. Danton exclaimed, " To
arms ! " France, generalled by Dumouriez, hero of
Memoirs Vol. 14- 5
132 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
Jemappes, and Kellermann of Valmy, was invaded.
The assassination of Gustavus of Sweden followed.
But the brief victory of the confederate arms at
Lottgwy soon yielded to the Valmy defeat. Monarch v
was on its trial.
Once more the Queen conferred with Acton, and
their deliberations resulted in the detestable Star Chamber of the " Camera Oscura." Force was to be met by force, and cabal by cabal. Prince Castelcicala, a
far abler minister than Acton, was recalled from Lon-
don to assist in its councils; Ruffo, not yet Cardinal,
became its assessor ; while the stripling Luigi di Medici, under the title of " Regente della vicaria," was made its head inquisitor. But mercy was still shown. She
does not indeed appear at this period to have enter-
tained any idea of persecution. Most odious means,
however, were taker! to crush a conspiracy of foreign
and unpopular origin. Some hundreds of the better
class, some thousands of the scum, were banished, or
confined in the prisons of Lampedusa and Tremiti.
Such is an imperfect outline of what happened in 1791
and 1792.
The interview of the Hamiltons with Marie An-
toinette on their homeward journey has been already
noticed. Nearly twenty-four years afterwards Lady
Hamilton, never accurate, and constitutionally exag-
gerative, declared in her last memorial under the
pressure of sore distress, that she then presented to the Queen of Naples her sister's last letter. There is small disproof that substantially she told the truth. She
may well have carried a missive, for Marie Antoinette
neglected none of her now rare chances of communica-
tion. About the same timej however, the Marchioness
of Solari also repaired from Paris to Naples with
another communication, which was probably verbal,
and may possibly have preceded Lady Hamilton's al-
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 133
leged message. In the autumn of 1793, however, the
Marchioness again visited Naples and brought with
her what undoubtedly seems the last letter received
by Maria from Marie. Emma's statement has been
questioned on the ground that hers was not the last
message. It is perhaps hardly worth while debating
whether all credence should be denied to the bearer of
an important letter simply on the ground of priority.
Any such letter whatever would have recommended its
bearer to the Queen of Naples.
Whether or no this incident fastened afresh the
Queen's regard, certain it is that Maria Carolina gave
the mot d'ordre for Lady Hamilton's acceptability.
Nobody disputed her position, least of all the English.
She was at once formally presented to the Queen. By
mid-April of 1792 Sir William Hamilton coulcl tell
Horace Walpole, just acceding to his earldom, that the
Queen had been very kind, and treated his wife " like any other travelling lady of distinction." " Emma,"
he adds, " has had a difficult part to act, and has succeeded wonderfully, having gained by having no pre-
tensions the thorough approbation of all the English
ladies. . . . You cannot imagine how delighted Lady
H. was in having gained your approbation in England.
. . . She goes on improving daily. . . . She is really
an extraordinary being."
Within a month of her arrival in the previous
autumn, and in the midst of successes, she sat down
to write to Romney. The tone of this letter deserves
close attention, for no under-motive could colour a
communication to so old and fatherly a comrade :
" I have been received with open arms by all the
Neapolitans of both sexes, by all the foreigners of
every distinction. I have been presented to the Queen
of Naples by her own desire, she [h]as shewn me all
sorts of kind and affectionate attentions ; in short, I am 134 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
the happiest woman in the world. Sir William is
fonder of me every day, and I hope 'I [he ?] will have
no corse to repent of what he [h]as done, for I feel
so grateful to him that I think I shall never be able
to make him amends for his goodness to me. But
why do I tell you this ? You was the first dear friend
I open'd my heart to; you ought to know me. 1 . . .
How grateful then do I feel to my dear, dear husband
that has restored peace to my mind, that has given
me honors, rank, and what is more, innocence and
happiness. Rejoice with me, my dear sir, my friend,
my more than father; believe me, I am still that same
Emma you knew me. -If I could forget for a mo-
ment what I was, I ought to suffer. Command me in
anything I can do for you here; believe me, I shall
have a real pleasure. Come to Naples, and I will be
your model, anything to induce you to come, that I
may have an opportunity to show my gratitude to you.
. . . We have a many English at Naples, Ladys
Malm[e]sbury, Maiden, Plymouth, Carnegie, and
Wright, etc. They are very
kind and attentive to me ;
they all make it a point to be remarkably cevil to me.
Tell Hayly I am always reading his Triumphs of Tem-
per; it was that that made me Lady H., for God
knows I had for five years enough to try my temper,
and I am affraid if it had not been for the good ex-
ample Serena taught me, my girdle wou'd have burst,
and if it had I had been undone; for Sir W. minds
more temper than beauty. He therefore wishes Mr.
Hayly wou'd come, that he might thank him for his
sweet-tempered wife. I swear to you, I have never
once been out of humour since the 6th of last Septem-
ber. God bless you."
Romney, whose friend Flaxman, now in Rome,
1 Here follows the passage about her " sense of virtue " not being overcome in her earliest distresses, quoted ante in chap. ii.
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 135
counted himself among Emma's devotees, replied in
terms of humble respect. He deprecated the liberty
of sending a friend with a letter of introduction, and
only wished that he could express his feelings on the
perusal of her " happyness." " May God grant it may remain so to the end of your days."
How " attentive " to her Lady Plymouth and the English sisterhood were at this early period is shown
by a letter which changed hands during the present
year. It is couched not only in terms of affection,
but of trust. If the French terror became actual at
Naples, Lady Plymouth would take refuge with Lady
Hamilton, and " creep under the shadow of " her
" wings." The leaders of English society relished, as always, a new sensation, and, away from England, delighted to honour one so different from themselves.
While all this underground disturbance proceeded,
the outward aspect of court and city was serenity it-
self. Ancient Pompeii could not have been more
frivolously festive. Ill as they suited her mood, the
Queen, from policy, encouraged these galas. They
distracted the court from treason, they pleased her
husband and people, and they attracted a crowd of
useful foreigners, especially the English, who, during
these two years, inundated Naples to their Ambassa-
dor's dismay. The distinguished English visitors of
1792 included the sickly young Prince Augustus, after-
wards Duke of Sussex, whose delicate health and mor-
ganatic marriage l alike added to Hamilton's anxieties.
But for the disturbed state of the Continent, " Vathek "
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