cavalier on whom she had conferred absolute power,
was denounced by a mathematical professor. As
" Regente della Vicaria " he was tried by the last novelty in tribunals, an invention of Acton. Besides other
old hands like the inevitable Prince Pignatelli, it
consisted of three principal assessors Guidobaldi, a
judge; Prince Castelcicala, a prop always trusted; and
lastly Vanni, a man of the people, a 1 " professional "
whom the Queen had actually made Marquis. This
trio was nicknamed " Cerberus." It was the reverse of former experiments: for the first time two members of the disaffected " professionals " were admitted into the bureaucracy. Vanni, a miniature Marat, who
well merited his subsequent downfall, dictated; and his
dictatorship stank in the nostrils of all Italy as " the white terror of Naples." Di Medici had himself
headed a fresh conspiracy for the King's murder
Lady Hamilton as Circe.
From the original painting by George Romney.
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 163
which for a long time simmered in the political caldron.
He was imprisoned in the fortress of Gaeta, to re-
appear, however, a few years later as a pardoned
protege. Prince Caramanico, despatched after Sici-
gniano's sad suicide to the Embassy in London, died be-
fore starting, with the usual suspicion of poison. The
execution in the " Mercato Vecchio " of the cultivated Tommaso Amato, who was deprived even of supreme
unction, lent its first horror to the notorious death-
chamber of the " Capella della Vicaria," and was soon followed by that of sixty more Jacobins. The cause
of " order and religion " was publicly pitted against these damnable heresies. Even communications with
the self-styled " Patriots " were to be punished. It was decreed treason for more than ten to assemble,
save by license. The judges, it is true, were bidden
to be " conscientious in equity and justice," but three witnesses sufficed for the death-sentence. Apart from
capital sentences, the castles and prisons were crammed
with suspects, so much so that those of Brindisi were
requisitioned. Massacres desolated Sicily; blood ran
in the Neapolitan streets. Ferdinand, who had been
amusing himself by lengthened law-suits with the
Prince of Tarsia over a silk monopoly, called on the
clergy to expose the " French errors " ; and at Naples devotion and disaster ever trod closely on each other's
heels. Three days of solemn prayer were once more
decreed in the Metropolitan Church of St. Januarius.
Both King and Queen were perpetually seen in devout
attendance at the principal shrines. The pulpits
preached " death to the French," and war against Jacobinism was declared religious. To be a " patriot "
(an innocent fault in palmier days) was now sacrilege.
A fresh eve of St. Bartholomew was feared. In a
word, the methods of crushing rebellion and opinion
were eminently southern, but they were also a counter-
Memoirs Vol. 14 6
164 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
blast to equal barbarities in the north. Save for the
sansculottes and their propaganda, Naples would have
escaped the fever and remained a drowsy castle of con-
tented indolence.
While, as queen, Maria Carolina cowed the city, as
woman she was demented by Buonaparte's Italian vic-
tories. Naples, alone of all Italy, still defied him.
The Neapolitan royalties to their honour sacrificed
fortune and jewels to dare the new Alexander. At
the same time, they called on both nobles and ecclesi-
astics to emulate their public spirit, and thereby unconsciously did much to hasten the " patriot " insurrection.
One hundred and three thousand ducats were de-
manded from the town, one hundred and twenty thou-
sand from the nobles; church property was alienated.
Everything was seized for the common cause. The
news of Nelson's heroism and the English triumph in
Corsica was received with rapture. And the Neapol-
itan troops on this occasion shamed the general
cowardice. By 1795 Prince Moliterno was acclaimed
a national hero; the courage of General Cuto's three
regiments in the Tyrol raised the Neapolitan name,
while Mantua and Rome showed the white feather and
necessitated the onerous peace of Brescia.
It may now be guessed what agitated the Queen's
bosom as day by day she sat down to pen her French
missives to Emma, and what were the feelings natur-
ally instilled in Emma by Hamilton, Nelson's letters,
and the Queen. The Jacobin cause was the prime pest
of Europe, to be crushed at all costs; Napoleon, an
impudent upstart and usurper; the Neapolitan rebels,
monsters of ingratitude and treachery. All these con-
victions were as binding as articles of faith. Emma's
own heart was tender to a fault. She detested blood-
shed and liked to use her influence for mercy, as, to
do her bare justice, was then the Queen's instinct, after EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 165
the first spasm had passed. In Emma's eyes the Queen
herself, so kind and good at home, so sincere and
friendly, was " adorable." She could do no wrong.
The past peccadilloes of this baffling woman, contrast-
ing with her present domesticity, seemed to her, even
if she believed them, merely a royal prerogative. She
was as Emma assured Greville in a letter congratulat-
ing him on his new vice-chamberlainship, " Every-
thing one can wish the best mother, wife, and freind
in the world. I live constantly with her, and have
done intimately so for 2 years, and I never have in all
that time seen anything but goodness and sincerity in
her, and if ever you hear any lyes about her, contradict them, and if you shou'd see a cursed book written by
a vile French dog, with her character in it, don't be-
lieve one word." Hours passed with her were " enchantment." " No person can be so charming as the Queen. If I was her daughter she could not be
kinder to me, and I love her with my whole soul." As she grew more influential on the stirring scene she
caught and exaggerated her royal friend's effusiveness.
" Oh that everyone," is her endorsement on a letter,
" could know her as I do, they would esteem her as I do from my soul. May every good attend her and
hers." Thus Ruth, of Naomi. From such a friend
impartiality was no more to be expected than from
such enemies as the " vile French dogs."
The Queen's correspondence 1 with Emma opens
earlier with a touching note about the fate of the poor
Dauphin; a sweet little portrait still remains under its cover. This innocent child, she wrote, implores a sig-1 Most of her letters of this and the next five years are transcribed from the various Egerton MS. by R. Palumbo in his Maria Carolina and Emma Hamilton, which to much valuable material adds some of the old rumours about her earlier and later life.
166 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
nal vengeance for the massacre of his parents before
the Eternal Throne. His afflictions " have renewed
wounds that will never heal." In January, 1794, a
fete was given by the Hamiltons to Prince Augustus.
It was a golden occas
ion for fanning the English fever,
which by now had spread throughout the loyalist ranks.
The Queen's letter of that afternoon begged the
hostess to tell her company " God save great George our King," rejoiced over the Anglo-Sicilian alliance, and sent her compliments to all the English present.
In the following June she exulted over George's speech
to Parliament renewing the war. She longed for
English news from Toulon. At his fete two years
later, she was to protest that she loved the British
prince as a son. She was perpetually anxious about
Emma's health and prescribing remedies. As for her
own " old health," it was not worth her young friend's disquietude. When Sir William lay at death's door
she bade her " put confidence in God, who never forsakes those who trust in Him," and count on the
" sincere friendship " of her " attached friend."
Emma's performances she applauded to the skies, espe-
cially that of " Nina," which had been Romney's favourite.
In one of her constant billets she tenderly inquired
after " ce cher aimable bienfaisant eveque " the flip-pant but kindly worldling and " Right Reverend Father in God " (as Beckford terms him) Lord Bristol, Bishop of Derry. Of this odd wit, erratic vagrant and sentimental scapegrace, so typical of a century that in-
cluded both Horace Walpole and Laurence Sterne a
veritable Gallio-in-gaiters, with his whimsical projects for endless improvements, his connoisseurship, his restlessness, his real pluck and independence, we have al-
ready caught glimpses in eccentric attire at Caserta.
One of his queerest features was the blended care
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 167
and carelessness both of money and family. Attached
to his devoted and economical daughter Louisa, he
quarrelled with his son for not marrying an heiress.
His bitterest reproach against his old wife was that
she disbelieved " in the current coin of the realm."
Lady Hamilton thus at this time described him to
Greville : " He is very fond of me, and very kind.
He is very entertaining and dashes at everything. Nor
does he mind King and Queen when he is inclined to
shew his talents." The French victories were soon
to be fatal to the esprit moqueur, and to cool his volatile impatience for some eighteen months within the
clammy walls of a Milanese fortress. Besides his
autographs in the Morrison Collection, and two now
belonging to the writer, a few letters from him to
Emma exist in that surreptitious edition of the pilfered Nelson Letters which, in 1814, were to add one more
drop to her cup of bitterness. They all show that he
purveyed information, both serious and scandalous,
through Emma to the Queen. They stamp the in-
triguer, the patriot, and the friend. The first seems
written among the embroilments of 1793.
The sale and purchase of antiquities absorbed him
like Sir William; unlike the Ambassador, he never
shirked labour, but rather meddled officiously with the
departments over which his leisurely friend had been
up to now so disposed to loiter. In 1793 he is to be
found spying on the spies who misled " the dear, dear Queen." At the opening, too, of 1794, he forwards
Venetian secrets to be communicated " a la premiere des femmes, cette tnaltresse femme." " I have been in bed," he adds, " these four weeks with what is called a flying gout, but were it such it would be gone long
ago, and it hovers round me like a ghost round its
sepulchre." In 1795 again the nomad was at Berlin
routing out State-secrets. The date of the following
i68
must be that of the shameful Austrian treaties in
1797 which succeeded the galling peace of Brescia.
" MY EVER DEAREST LADY HAMILTON, 1 should
certainly have made this Sunday an holy day to me, and
have taken a Sabbath day's journey to Caserta, had not
poor Mr. Lovel been confined to his bed above three
days with a fever. To-day it is departed; to-morrow
Dr. Nudi has secured us from its resurrection; and
after to-morrow, I hope, virtue will be its own reward.
. . . All public and private accounts agree in the im-
mediate prospect of a general peace. It will make a
delicious foreground in the picture of the new year;
many of which I wish, from the top, bottom, and
centre of my heart, to the incomparable Emma qnella
senza paragone." The next snatch is worth quoting
for its humour : " I went down to your opera-box
two minutes after you left ; and should have seen you
on the morning of your departure but was detained in
the arms of Murphy, as Lady Eden expresses it, and
was too late. You say nothing of the adorable Queen ;
I hope she has not forgot me. ... I veritably deem
her the very best edition of a woman I ever saw I
mean of such as are not in folio. . . . My duties ob-
struct my pleasure. ... You see, I am but the sec-
ond letter of your alphabet, though you are the first of mine."
A last extract, penned a few months after his libera-
tion, must complete this vignette : " I know not, dearest Emma, whether friend Sir William has been able
to obtain my passport or not ; but this I know that
if they have refused it, they are damned fools for their pains: for never was a Malta orange better worth
squeezing or sucking ; and if they leave me to die, without a tombstone over me to tell the contents taut pis
pour eux. In the meantime, I will frankly confess
to you that my health most seriously and urgently re-
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 169
quires the balmy air of dear Naples, and the more
balmy atmosphere of those I love, arid who love me;
and that I shall forego rriy garret with more regret
than most people of my silly rank in society forego
a palace or a drawing-room." He then sketched his
tour on horseback to " that unexplored region Dal-
matia " ; he described Spalato as " a modern city built within the precincts of an ancient palace." Spalato reminded him of Diocletian, the " wise sovereigti who quitted the sceptre of an architect's rule," and the two together, of a new project for a " packet-boat in these perilous times between Spalato and Manfredonia."
The serious debut of Emma as " Stateswoman " (in the sense of England's spokeswoman at Naples) chimes
with the episode of the King of Spain's secret letters
heralding and announcing his rupture with the anti-
French alliance during 1795 and 1796. But before
dealing with that crisis, I may be pardoned for glanc-
ing at one more picturesque figure among Emma's sur-
roundings that of Wilhelmina, Countess of Lich-
tenau.
She was nobly born and bred ; but in girlhood, under
a broken promise, it would seem, of morganatic mar-
riage, had become mistress and intellectual companion
of Frederick, King of Prussia a tie countenanced by
her mother. Political intrigue drove her from Berlin
to Italy, as it afterwards involved her in despair and
ruin. She was cultivated, artistic, sensitive, and un-
happy. She became the honoured correspondent of
many distinguished statesmen and authors. Lavater
and Arthur Paget were her fi
rm friends, as also the
luckless Alexandre Sauveur, already noticed in his
" hermitage " on Mount Vesuvius. Lord Bristol, naturally, knelt at her shrine. In her Memoires she
frankly admits that she (like Emma) was vain; but
maintains that all women are so by birthright. Lovel,
170 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
the parson friend of the Bishop of Derry, used to sign
himself her " brother by adoption," and address her as
" a very dear sister " ; Paget corresponded with her as
" dear Wilhelmina." Throughout 1795 she was at Naples, where her cicisbeo was the handsome Chevalier
de Saxe, afterwards killed in a duel with the Russian
M. Saboff. A letter from him towards the close of
this year of Neapolitan enthusiasm for the English,
when the Elliots among others were praising and ap-
plauding Emma to the skies, describes the great ball
given by Lady Plymouth in celebration of Prince
Augustus's birthday. The supper was one of enthusi-
asm and " God save the King." " They drank," he chronicles, "a I'Anglaise: the toasts were noisy, and the healths of others were so flattered as to derange our own." Sir William was constantly begging of her to
forward the sale of his collections at the Russian cap-
ital; nor was tea, now fashionable at court, the least
agent for English interests. Emma herself had be-
come the " fair tea-maker " of the Chiaja instead of, as once, of Edgware Row, and Mrs. Cadogan too held
her own tea-parties. Emma often corresponded with
the beautiful Countess, and one of her letters of this
period, not here transcribed, supplies evidence of what
kind of French she had learned to write by a period
when she had mastered not only Neapolitan patois but
Spanish and Italian. At the troublous outset of 1796
Wilhelmina quitted Italy never to return.
These characters are scarcely edifying. The scoff-
ing Bishop, the frail Countess, however, were a typ-
ical outcome of sincere reaction against hollow and
hypocritical observance. There was nothing diabolical
about them. The virtues that they professed, they
practised; their faults, those of free thinkers and free livers, do not differentiate them from their contemporaries. It is surely remarkable that these, and such
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 171
as these, paved the way for Nelson's vindication of
Great Britain in the Mediterranean, far more than
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