world? I took for granted that the East India Com-
pany would pay their noble gift to Lady Nelson; and
whether she lays it out in house or land, is, I assure
you, a matter of perfect indifference to me. . . . Oh!
my dear friend, if I have a morsel of bread and cheese
in comfort it is all I ask of kind Heaven, until I reach the estate of six foot by two which I am fast approaching." It was not long before Maltese successes had
quite restored his spirits, and Ball could write to say
how happy it made him to think that " His Grace "
could enjoy exercise in company with the Hamiltons.
All this is characteristic of a tense organisation by turns on the rack and on the rebound, yet with an evenness
of patriotism and purpose immovable beneath its
elasticity.
Emma's fever of enthusiasm showed no abatement.
She immediately gave Nelson the pine-appled teapot
which has this year been generously presented with
other relics to the Greenwich Painted Chamber. His
letters to her breathed an affectionate respect. " May God almighty bless you," one of them closes, " and all my friends about you, and believe me amongst the most
faithful and affectionate of your friends." Was she not the " Victory " who had crowned him with honour?
He reposed such confidence in the Hamiltons that dur-
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 311
ing his absences he empowered them to open all his
letters.
But already there appeared a seamier side to Emma's
heroic gloss. The tmreinstated Queen still ailed in
health and spirits. She had set her heart on accom-
panying the King to Naples in his projected visit this
November, yet he had flatly refused. She seems to
have turned from the pious devotions which after her
darling boy's death had engrossed her to the delirium
of play. The King loved his quiet rubber, but he was
no gambler. The Queen gambled furiously all her
moods were extreme; she was a medley of passions.
She had been Emma's lucky star, but all along her evil
genius. Emma for the first time was bitten by the
mania. Sir William's fortunes were crippled; she
might sometimes be seen nightly with piles of gold be-
side her on the green baize. Troubridge bluntly re-
monstrated. His remonstrance, however, he added,
did not arise from any " impertinent interference, but from a wish to warn you of the ideas that are going
about," and to " the construction put on things which may appear to your Ladyship innocent, and I make no
doubt done with the best intention. Still, your enemies
will, and do, give things a different colouring." To his delight, she promised him to play no more. That
promise was shortlived; it was not likely to last.
Women of Emma's buoyancy and volatile salt are not
easily weaned from the false flutter of such a game.
All along her vein had been one of thrill under un-
certainty, and her whole course a cast for high stakes.
" I wish not to trust to Dame Fortune too long," wrote Nelson to her in possible allusion ; " she is a fickle dame, and I am no courtier." And reports some of them
untrue and most, exaggerated were beginning to filter
into England and affront the regularities of red-tape.
Nelson was depicted as Rinaldo in Armida's bower.
312 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
He is not shown to have himself gambled, but it was
rumoured that he assisted, half asleep, at these revels, till the small hours of the morning, and this though
his father appears to have been unwell at the time.
That she played with Nelson's money to the tune of
500 a night a rumour hardly confirmed by his bank-
book. That Sir William and he had nearly settled dif-
ferences by duel a preposterous idea. That the royal
bounty to her amounted to a value some five times
greater than it seemingly was. That the singers whom
Emma was constantly befriending and recommending
were a byword for their scandalous behaviour. It
never crossed her mind that anybody wished her ill.
Both the Hamiltons and Nelson had been living in an
isolated fool's paradise of popularity, remote from the
canons or the realities of England. They hugged the
illusion of home popularity. Unpopularity, whether
deserved or due to envy or ill-nature, usually comes as
a shock and a surprise to those who have provoked it
far less than Lady Hamilton. She had long passed
the patronage of that English society which only con-
dones in a parvenue what it can patronise. It now re-
sented her intrusion, while it resented more, and with
better reason, her perpetual association with Nelson,
who owned himself happy with the Hamiltons alone,
and suspicious of letters being opened. The Govern-
ment too had now decided to recall Hamilton. ; ' You
may not know," Troubridge told her, " that you have many enemies. I therefore risk your displeasure by
telling you. I am much gratified you have taken it, as
I meant it purely good. You tell me I must write
you all my wants. The Queen is the only person who
pushes things; you must excuse me; I trust nothing
there," he continues with personal soreness, " nor do I, or ever shall ask from the court of Naples anything but
for their service, and the just demands I have on them."
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 313
His motives leak out in the concluding sentences about
Lord Keith :"...! should have been a very rich man
if I had served George III. instead of the King of
Naples, . . . The new Admiral, I suppose, will send
us home the new hands will serve them better, as they
will soon be all from the north, full of liberality and
generosity, as all Scots are with some exceptions.''
Emma's own account deserves to be cited also. It oc-
curs in a letter to Greville, hitherto unnoticed, is perfectly truthful, and seeks to protect not herself, but
her husband and Nelson : " We are more united and
comfortable than ever, in spite of the infamous Jacobin
papers jealous of Lord Nelson's glory and Sir Will-
iam's and mine. But we do not mind them. Lord
N. is a truly vertuous and great man ; and because we
have been fagging, and ruining our health, and sacri-
ficing every comfort in the cause of loyalty, our pri-
vate characters are to be stabbed in the dark. First it
was said Sir W. and Lord N. fought; then that we
played and lost. First Sir W. and Lord N. live like
brothers; next Lord N. never plays: and this I give
you my word of honour. So I beg you will contradict
any of these vile reports. Not that Sir W. and Lord
N. mind it ; and I get scolded by the Queen and all of
them for having suffered one day's uneasiness." l
Yet she was by no means the slave of her new excite-
ment. She tried to heal old wounds, she corresponded
with diplomatists ; she could not relinquish her part of female politician, the less so as Hamilton had now settled to return home on the first opportunity, and the
Queen was desolated at the mere thought of separa-
tion. 2 The Duchess of Sorrentino besought her good
; 1 Nelson Letters, vol. i. p. 269, Lady Hamilton to Greville, February 25, 1800.
2 Morrison MS. 444, 484. In the first Hamilton tells Greville
" the Queen is really so fond of Emma that the parting will be 314 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
offices from Vienna, and in urging her suit Emma
abused the King so roundly, that in his umbrage he
turned violently both on her and the Queen. A heated
scene ensued so heated, indeed, that the monarch de-
manded Emma's death and threatened to throw her out
of the window for her contempt of court. 1
Nelson's acting chief command expired on January
6, 1800. Ill, and with a fresh murmur of " unkind-
ness," he put himself under Lord Keith's directions at Leghorn. The blockade of Malta, which had lasted
over a year, the as yet uncaptured remnant of the
French squadron from the Nile, the resolve that the
French army should not be suffered to quit Egypt
these were the objects, now shared with Emma, of his
thoughts and of his dreams. He determined to run
the risk of independent action. To Malta he pro-
ceeded instantly, and he was transported with joy when
he captured Le Genereux, though he had yet to wait
for the eventual surrender of the single remaining
frigate to his officers. " I feel anxious," he wrote in February to Emma, during his constant correspondence with the Hamiltons, " to get up with these ships, and shall be unhappy not to take them myself, for first
my greatest happiness is to serve my gracious King
and Country, and I am envious only of glory; for if it
be a sin to covet glory, I am the most offending soul
alive. But here I am in a heavy sea and thick fog !
Oh God ! the wind subsided but I trust to Providence
I shall have them. Eighteenth, in the evening, I have
got her Le Genereux thank God! twelve out of
a serious business." In the second, " Emma is in despair at the thought of parting from the Queen." Emma herself says,
" . . . I am miserable to leave my dearest friend. She cannot be consoled." Nelson Letters, vol. i. p. 272.
1 He became excellent friends, however, with her afterwards, and joined in pleasant messages to her so late as 1803.
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 315
thirteen, only the Guillaume Telle remaining; I am
after the others. I have not suffered the French Ad-
miral to contaminate the Foudroyant by setting his foot
in her." By the end of March the end of the Maltese blockade was in sight, and Nelson was back again in
Palermo. His health was so " precarious," that he
" dropped with a pain in his heart," and was " always in a fever." Troubridge was deputed to finish the
Maltese operations. When Nelson heard of the cap-
ture of the Guillaume Telle through Long and Black-
wood, his cup of thankfulness ran over, and his
despatch to Nepean is a Nunc dimittis.
" Pray let me know," wrote Ball from Malta in
March, " what Sir William Hamilton is determined on; he is the most amiable and accomplished man I know,
and his heart is certainly one of the best in the world.
I wish he and her Ladyship would pay me a visit ; they
are an irreparable loss to me. ... I long to know
Lord Nelson's determination." Ball had not long to
wait. Nelson was anxious to settle affairs finally for
Great Britain at Malta, a settlement that eventually
transferred it to Britain and greatly exasperated Maria
Carolina. Sir William had now been definitely super-
seded by his unwelcome successor Paget, although he
allowed himself the fond hope of a future return. He
resolved to sail on the Foudroyant, accompanied by his
friends and the indispensable poetess, Miss Knight. On
April 23 they proceeded from Palermo to Syracuse
the scene of Emma's triumph by the waters of Are-
thusa. Her birthday was celebrated on board by toasts
and songs. On May 3 they again set sail and anchored
in St. Paul's Bay before the next evening.
Hitherto only rumour had been busy with Nelson's
philanderings. Lord St. Vincent persisted to the last
in saying that he and Emma were only a simpering edi-
tion of Romeo and Juliet just a silly pair of senti-
316 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
mental fools. And at this time Sir William seems to
have thought the same ; it was all Emma's " Sensibility," all Nelson's loyal devotion. He was the idol of them both. But this voyage southward under the large
Sicilian stars marks the climax of that fence of pas-
sion, the first approaches, the feints, parries, and thrusts of which I have sought to depict. The " three joined in one," as they called themselves, had long been un-severed. From the date of the Malta visit, as events
prove, the liaison between the two of the trio ceases to be one of hearts merely. The Mediterranean has been
the cradle of religion, of commerce, and of empire. On
the Mediterranean Nelson had won his spurs and ven-
tured his greatest exploit; on it had happened the rise
of Emma's passion and his own, and it was now to be
the theatre of their fall. 1
It has been well said that apologies only try to ex-
cuse what they fail to explain, and any apology for
the bond which ever afterwards united them would be
idle. Yet a few reflections should be borne seriously
in mind. The firm tie that bound them, they them-
selves felt eternally binding ; no passing whim had fastened it, nor any madness of a moment. They had
plighted a real troth which neither of them ever either
broke or repented. Both found and lost themselves
in each other. Their love was no sacrifice to lower in-
stincts; it was a true link of hearts. Nelson would
have adored Emma had she not been so beautiful. She
worshipped him the more for never basking in court or
official sunshine. And their passion was lasting as
well as deep. Not even calumny has whispered that
1 From a passage, however, in a letter from Nelson of
February 17, 1801, it would seem to have happened earlier.
Cf. Morrison MS. 516: "Ah! my dear friend, I did remember well the I2th February, and also the two months afterwards.
I never shall forget them, and never be sorry for the consequences."
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 317
Emma was ever unfaithful even to Nelson's memory;
and Nelson held their union, though unconsecrated,
as wholly sacred and unalterable. If the light of their
torch was not from heaven, at least its intensity was
undimmed.
Their worst wrong, however, was to the defied and
wounded wife. Cold letters had already reached Nel-
son, and rankling words may already have been ex-
changed ; Lady Nelson's jealousy was justified, al-
though as yet Nelson never meditated repudiation.
Emma had no scruple in hardening his heart and her
own towards one whom she had offended unseen and
unprovoked; she would suffer none to dispute her
dominion. Under her spell, Nelson perverted the
whole scale of duty and of circumstance. In his en-
chanted eyes wedlock became sacrilege, and passion a
sacrament; his insulted Fanny seemed the insulter; his
Emma's dishonour, honour. The woman who had
failed to nerve or share his genius, turned into an un-
worthy persecutress and termagant; she who had suc-
ceeded, into the pattern of womankind. The mistress
of his home was confronted by the mistress of his
heart, Vesta by Venus; nor did he for one moment
doubt which was the interloper. Unregenerateness ap-
peared grace to his warped vision. Nothing but sin-
cerity can extenuate, nothing but sheer human nature
can explain these deplorable transposals. The reality
for him of this marriage of the spirit without the let-
ter, blinded both of them to all other realities outside it. Emma's few surviving letters to him are those of
an idolising wife. One unfamiliar sentence from one
of his, written within a year of this period, speaks volumes : " I worship, nay, adore you, and if you was
single, and I found you under a hedge, I would in-
stantly marry you." *
1 Morrison MS. 539, Nelson to Lady H., March 6, 1801.
gi8 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
But the part of Sir William in this strange alliance
formed, perhaps, its strangest element. Throughout,
even after Greville and the caricatures in the shop win-
dows must have opened his eyes, he deliberately shut
them. He never ceased his attachment to Emma or
abated his chivalrous fealty to Nelson. Those feelings,
incredible as it may sound, were genuinely recipro-
cated by both of them. He seems almost to have more
than accepted that veil of mystification with which the
next year was to shroud their intimacy. Indeed, it was
Emma's care for Nelson's career, and Nelson's for her
good name, that constrained the fiction. That a
woman should join a daughter's devotion to an old
husband with a wife's devotion to the lover of her
choice, is a phenomenon in female psychology. Swift
towards Stella and Vanessa, Goethe towards Mina and
Bettina, are not the only men who have cherished a
dual constancy ; but, as a rule, the woman inconstant to one will prove inconstant to many others.
Miss Knight noticed how low-spirited Emma seemed
on the return passage to Palermo. Indeed, the
familiar stanzas of her composing, " Come, cheer up, fair Emma " a line often repeated in Nelson's later letters were prompted by this unaccountable melancholy. 1 Such dispiritment hardly betokens the mood of
an adventuress intriguing to secure a successor to the
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