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

by Yelena Kopylova

the train of decent frivolity and formal virtue that did nothing without distinction. High Bohemia has always wielded some power in the world. Far more

  was it a force when the French Revolution threatened

  the very foundations of society, and opened up ave-

  nues to every sort of adventure and adventurer.

  Emma has already been found twice acquainting

  Greville of her new metier as politician. Her present

  circumstances and influence over the Queen may be

  gauged independently by a letter from her husband

  to his nephew from Caserta of November, which has

  only recently passed into the national collection :

  ". . . Here we are as usual for the winter hunting

  and shooting season, and Emma is not at all dis-

  pleased to retire with me at times from the great world, altho' no one is better received when she chuses to go

  into it. The Queen of Naples seems to have great

  pleasure in her society. She sends for her generally

  three or four times a week. ... In fact, all goes well

  chez nous. [He is taking more exercise.] . . . I have

  not neglected of my duty, and flatter myself that I

  must be approved of at home for some real services

  which my particular situation at this court has en-

  abled me to render to our Ministry. I have at least the

  satisfaction of feeling that I have done all in my power, altho' at the expense of my own health and fortune."

  This last sentence points to the political situation, and Emma's assistance in the episode of the King of

  Spain's letters; for not one, but a whole series were

  involved.

  These letters, from 1795 to 1796, were the secret

  channels by which Ferdinand was made aware first of

  his brother's intention to desert the Alliance, and, in

  the next year, to join the enemy.

  172

  In touching the effects and causes of an event so

  critical, Emma's pretensions to a part in its discovery

  must be discussed also. Their consideration, inter-

  rupting the sequence of our narrative, will not affect its movement. It is no dry recital, for it concerns events

  and character.

  From 1795 to the opening of 1797 the league against

  Napoleon, as thrones and principalities one by one tot-

  tered before him, was faced by rising republics and

  defecting allies. In vain were Wurmser and the

  Neapolitan troops to rajly the Romagna. In vain did

  Nelson recount to the Hamiltons Hood's and Hotham's

  successes along the Jtaliajn coast. Acton's own letters

  of about this period complain of the Austrian delays

  and suspicions. Prussia estranged herself from the

  banded powers. England herself was, for a moment,

  ready to throw up the sponge. In 1795, so great was

  the popular fear of conflict, that prints in every Lon-

  don shop window represented the blessings of peace

  and the horrors of war. Even in the October of 1796

  Nelson told the Hamiltons, with a wrathful sigh, " We have a narrow-minded party to work against, but I feel

  above it." - And writing from Bastia in December,

  1796, he was again indignant at the orders for the

  evacuation of the Mediterranean, which plunged the

  Queen in despair. " Till this time," commented the true patriot, " it has been usual for the allies of England to fall from her, but till now she never was

  known to desert her friends whilst she had the power

  of supporting them."

  The home explosion had been arrested; Neapolitan

  discontent had been appeased; but the frauds of the

  corn-contractor, Mackinnon, added knavery to increas-

  ing fiscal embarrassments. And Naples was soon to

  become involved in a mesh of degrading treaties. The

  Peace of Brescia, enforcing her neutrality and mulcting

  EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 173

  her of eight million francs, sounded the first note of

  Austrian retreat. It culminated by 1797 in the shame-

  ful treaties of Campoformio and Tolentino, which

  eventually bound Austria to cry off. By the close of

  1796 the distraught Queen raved over a separate and

  partly secret compact exacted by France the most

  galling condition of which excluded more than four

  vessels of the allies at one time from any Neapolitan

  or Sicilian port a proviso critical in 1798. By 1797

  Naples was forced to acknowledge the French Cisalpine

  Republic, and France had gained the natural frontiers

  of the Alps and the Rhine. Buonaparte returned to

  Paris covered with glory. In a single campaign he

  had defeated five armies, and won eighteen pitched bat-

  tles and sixty-seven smaller combats. He had made

  one hundred and fifty thousand prisoners. He had

  freed eighteen states. He had rifled Italy of her

  statues, pictures, and manuscripts. For his adopted

  country's arsenals he had pillaged eleven hundred and

  eighty pieces of artillery, and fifty-one muniments for

  her harbours; while no less than two hundred million

  francs were secured for her treasuries.

  But a worse defection than Prussia's or Austria's

  was that of Spain, which fell like a bomb on the coali-

  tion against France, and which, as Emma alleged, first

  brought her on the political stage to the knowledge of

  the English Ministry.

  Her claim, and Nelson's for her, differing in dates,

  since there were several transactions, was that her

  friendship with the Queen obtained the loan of a secret

  document addressed by the Spanish monarch to the

  King of Naples, and forewarning him of his intention

  to ally himself with France, a copy of which she got

  forwarded to London.

  This service has been more questioned by Professor

  Laughton than by Mr. Jeaffreson, who, however,

  174 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON

  doubts some particulars in her account of this obscure

  matter, and her direct initiative in it. Whatever its

  subsequent embroidery, Emma's contention, certified by

  Nelson, nor ever denied by the truthful Hamilton, is

  favoured by its likelihood. At the very outset, any

  subsidiary objection raised as to the improbability that an important despatch in cipher would have been entrusted to her keeping, falls at once to the ground, since there exists such a document in her own handwriting

  among the Morrison autographs; 1 while in the Queen's

  correspondence occurs more than one mention of a

  cipher transmitted to her. But, indeed, neither in her

  memorial of 1813 to the Prince of Wales, nor in that

  other to the King, nor in Nelson's last codicil, is a

  " ciphered letter " mentioned. The first document styles it only a " private letter." The last two agree in calling it the King of Spain's letter " expressive of "

  or " acquainting him with " his " intention of declaring war aga.inst England." Such pains perhaps need

  hardly have been bestowed to identify the document

  meant, with the celebrated cipher of Galatone, which

  the Queen handed to Emma in the spring of 1795.

  Some circumstantial evidence may favour the view

  that the substance of her claim relates to information

  sent home in autumn 1796, the year specified by Nel-

  son's las
t codicil, by his conversation at Dresden in

  1800, and on many other occasions.

  Roughly speaking, the facts are these.

  From the opening of the year 1795 to the autumn of

  1796 the Neapolitan Ambassador at Madrid (in 1795

  " Galatone," Prince Belmonte) was in constant communication, both open and secret, with the King,

  Queen, and Gallo, then foreign minister; and in such

  1 Morrison MS. 259. Transcript (in Italian) in Lady Hamilton's handwriting of a letter (in cipher) to the Foreign Minister of Naples. Dated Aranjuez, March 31, 1796.

  EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 175

  cases official letters, which are naturally guarded,

  should be carefully distinguished from private in-

  formation surreptitiously conveyed. From the mo-

  ment that the French Directory replaced the Reign of

  Terror in Thermidor, 1794, and represented itself un-

  der the dazzling triumphs of Napoleon as a stable, if

  epicicr, Government, Spain had been steadily smooth-

  ing the way for wriggling out of the Anti-Gallic Coali-

  tion, the more so as she longed to try conclusions with

  Great Britain in partnership with France, whom she

  had hitherto been bound to attack. For this purpose

  as Acton's manuscript letters attest she sought to

  bully Naples, first out of the Anti-Gallic league, and

  subsequently, in 1797, out of enforced neutrality. She

  still considered her navy powerful, although through-

  out 1795 Nelson derided it as worse than useless. Her

  Florentine envoy wrote insolently in the autumn of

  1795 that it was of no consequence that the English

  flag was flaunted in Mediterranean waters; the real

  Spanish objective ought to be Cuba, Porto Rico, St.

  Domingo. Tradition, national pride, and inclination

  all united in her effort gradually and insidiously to prepare a breach with the allied powers and a rapproche-

  ment with France.

  During these long negotiations both Acton and Ham-

  ilton were kept in designed ignorance by the King, who,

  under his inherited bias for Spanish influence, rejoiced to think that he was now at last his own minister, outwitting and emancipated from his thwarted Queen.

  Maria Carolina, however, had provided her own chan-

  nels of information also. All that she could ferret out

  was carefully communicated to Lady Hamilton, and

  forwarded, under strict pledges not to compromise by

  naming her, to Lord Grenville in London.

  There are two distinct sets of the correspondence be-

  tween Hamilton and Acton and Acton and Hamilton

  176 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON

  that of spring and early summer, 1795, relative to the

  Spanish peace with France achieved in July, the project

  for which, however, had leaked out long before; and

  that of late summer and autumn, 1796, regarding

  Spain's much more secret and momentous decision to

  strike a definite alliance, offensive as well as defensive, with the enemy of Europe.

  It was in connection with the latter that Nelson's last

  codicil claimed Emma's assistance in divulging it to

  the ministers, while he regretted the opportunities

  missed by their failure to improve the occasion. Lady

  Hamilton's last memorial assigns no specific date,

  though her brief narrative there confuses (as usual)

  the peace and the alliance together. The evidence

  points to a possibility of her having been twice in-

  strumental in procuring documents weighty for both

  these emergencies; but her main exertion, as Nelson

  averred, was bound up with the last. Professor

  Laughton's acumen bears most strongly upon the let-

  ters of 1795, though at the same time he supplies and

  discusses the data for 1796. To his article the stu-

  dent is referred. Both he and Mr. Jeaffreson fasten

  upon her statement in the " Prince Regent " memorial alone, 1 and have not considered her undecorated and

  1 These are its words : " By unceasing application of that influence " i. e. with the Queen " and no less watchfulness to turn it to my country's good, it happened that I discovered a courier had brought the King of Naples a private letter from the King of Spain. I prevailed on the Queen to take it from his pocket unseen. We found it to contain the King of Spain's intention to withdraw from the Coalition, and join the French against England. My husband at that time lay dangerously ill.

  I prevailed on the Queen to allow my taking a copy, with which I immediately despatched a messenger to Lord Grenville, taking all the necessary precautions ; for his safe arrival then became very difficult, and altogether cost me about 400 paid out of my privy purse." Cf. Morrison MS. 1046, where the date conjectured "March, 1813 " tallies with her letter in the Rose diaries inclosing it.

  Her memorial to the King contains a simpler statement

  EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 177

  simple account tallying with Nelson's in her memorial

  to the King. I beg the reader's patient attention to

  the wording of both of these, below cited.

  It is clear from the first that Emma in treating of

  two years mixes up the documents which she admit-

  tedly obtained from the Queen and delivered to Ham-

  ilton for transmission both in April and June, 1795,

  with one of several that she obtained in 1796. No

  single " letter " could have comprised both the rupture with the alliance and the compact with France, belonging respectively to two successive years. On April

  28, 1795, the Queen sent her a ciphered letter from

  Galatone, demanding its return " before midnight."

  Next day she sent her " the promised cipher," " too glad in being able to render a service." Emma recorded on her copy of the first that her husband for-

  warded it with the cipher to England.

  It is open, however, to argument that Emma's chief

  aid in unravelling a long and tangled skein of matur-

  ing crisis may have been rendered about September,

  1796. Its history will resume our thread; and, since

  the next chapter's evidence is to support not only her

  crowning service with regard to the Mediterranean

  "That it was the good fortune of your Majesty's memorialist to acquire the confidential friendship of that great and august Princess, the Queen of Naples, your Majesty's most faithful and ardently attached Ally, at a period of peculiar peril, and when her august Consort . . . was unhappily constrained to profess a neutrality, but little in accordance with the feelings of his own excellent heart. By which means your Majesty's memorialist, among many inferior services, had an opportunity of obtaining, and actually did obtain, the King of Spain's letter to the King of Naples expressive of his intention to declare war against England. This important document, your Majesty's memorialist delivered to her husband, Sir William Hamilton, who immediately transmitted it to your Majesty's Ministers." This assertion tallies with Nelson's. There is no proof of the date of this paper, which in the Morrison MS. (1045) is guessed to be identical with that of the " Prince Regent " memorial above transcribed.

  178 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON

  fleet, but the substantial accuracy of her two statements of it, it is worth while in this matter also to inquire

  somewhat closely whether Emma was a liar, and Nel-

  son a dupe.

  Two Acton manuscripts towards the end of Augast,

  1796, cast a sidelight on the numerous letters of that

  year from the Spanish court, culminating in some kind


  of announcement by the Spanish King to his brother

  of Naples of his final decision to join the French.

  Acton vied amicably with Hamilton in obtaining

  the first advices for transmission to London; and

  indeed to Acton's penchant (like our own Harley's un-

  der Queen Anne) for engrossing business and favour

  Nelson afterwards referred in a letter to Lady Ham-

  ilton, where he declares that he will no longer " get everything done " through Acton, as was his " old way." Both Acton and Wyndham, England's envoy

  at Leghorn, were already aware of Spain's tentatives

  with France ; but neither they nor the English Ambas-

  sador at Madrid could have discovered till later the

  precise terms of a coming alliance, vital to Europe. It

  would press the more on Naples, in view of that un-

  dignified and stringent accommodation with the French

  Directory, into which the Franco-Hispanian con-

  spiracy, after a brief armistice, was fast driving her

  reluctant councils. For months Prince Belmonte

  (transferred from Madrid to Paris) had been dangling

  his heels as negotiator in the French capital, subjected to insolent demands and mortifying delays and

  chicanes. From the spring of 1796 onwards a series

  of threatening letters had been received by Ferdinand

  from Charles; and all the time the pro-Spanish party,

  designing a dethronement of the Neapolitan Bour-

  bons, kept even pace with Maria Carolina's hatred of

  a sister-in-law caballing for her son. Ferdinand him-

  self still clung to the Spanish raft; Charles of Spain

  EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 179

  was his brother, and blood is thicker than water.

  While England grew more and more faint-hearted, and

  Grenville forwarded despatch after despatch advising

  Naples to give up the game and make the best terms

  available with the Directory; while Napoleon's vic-

  tories swelled the republicanisation of Italy, the Span-

  ish plot also for sapping Great Britain's Mediterranean

  power, and overthrowing the dynasty of the Two

  Sicilies, increased in strength. Yet the King of Na-

  ples still temporised. For a space even Acton veered ;

  he listened to Gallo and the King, the more readily be-

  cause his own post was endangered in 1795, when there

  had been actual rumours of his replacement by Gallo.

  In 1796 he saw no way out but the sorry compromise