Greville used concerning his methods with woman-
kind in the first letter which she ever received from
him. Goldsmid had been an " angel " ; friends were so kind that she scarcely missed her carriage and
horses.
Emma had every reason to be grateful. She was
clear of debt. She could still retain the valuables that were out of Merton. With Horatia's settlement, she
could count on her old revenue when the " annuities "
had been discharged. Somehow they never were, and
they again figure largely during her last debacle. The
mysteries of her entanglements baffle discovery; so
does her sanguine improvidence which, to the end,
alternated with deep depression. In a few years she
and Horatia, like Hagar and Ishmael, were to go forth
into the wilderness; but even then she was still buoyed
up with this mirage of an oasis in her tantalising
desert.
Relieved for the moment, she resumed the tenor of
her way at Richmond. She frequented concerts, and
sometimes dances, in the fashionable set of the Duke
and the Abercorns. In June, 1809, Lord Northwick
begged her to come to the Harrow speeches, and after-
wards meet a few " old Neapolitan friends " and her life-long friend the Duke of Sussex at " a fete in his house." The fame of Horatia's accomplishments
added the zest of curiosity. All were eager to meet
the " interesting eleve whom Lady Hamilton has
brought up " with every grace and every charm. The
Duke of Sussex looked forward to the encounter with
pleasure; Emma had not yet lost her empire over the
hearts of men. Of this invitation Emma took ad-
vantage to do a thoughtful kindness for an unhappy
bride who had just married the composer Francesco
Memoirs Vol. 14 15
452 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
Bianchi. Twelve days earlier she had tried appar-
ently to heal the breach between them.
The Bohemians, therefore, were always with her.
She continued to receive the Italian singers as well as
their patrons; she still saw Mrs. Denis and Mrs. Bil-
lington, whose brutal husband, Filisan, was now threat-
ening her from Paris; while Mrs. Grafer, on the very
eve of return to Italy, continued to beset her with im-
portunities. Nor did her old friends, naval, musical,
and literary, spare the largeness of her hospitality or
the narrowness of her purse.
But, in addition to these diversions, she still over-
tasked herself with Horatia's education so much so,
that Mrs. Bolton wrote beseeching her to desist. Sarah
Connor had now transferred her services to the Nel-
son family, and Emma eventually took the musical
but far less literate Cecilia for Horatia's governess.
" Old Q.," her patron, now in the last year of his self-indulgent life, was busy making a new will every
week. His friendship for Emma, however, had been
truly disinterested, and even calumny never coupled
their names together. When he died next year, he
left her an annuity of 500, which, however such was
her persistent ill luck she never lived to receive, for
the old voluptuary's will was contested, it would seem,
till after Lady Hamilton had paid the debt of nature.
Even if she had survived the litigation, it would prob-
ably have absorbed a portion of the bequest.
The autumn of 1809 saw, too, the end of Greville.
Since his mean and heartless treatment of her after
Hamilton's death, Emma, save for the glimpse of
reconciliation afforded by the remarkable communica-
tion of 1808 just quoted, had never so much as breathed
his name in any of her surviving letters. The collector
of stones had, till that moment of compunction, him-
self been petrified. In 1812 his crystals, for which he
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 453
had so long ago exchanged Emma, together with the
paintings which his cult of beauty at the expense of
the beautiful had amassed, were sold at Christie's.
" The object of this connoisseur," writes M. Simond, an eye-witness of the auction, " was to exhibit the progress of the art from its origin by a series of pictures of successive ages many of them very bad."
And perhaps the faultiest of his pictures had been him-
self.
From 1810, when they left Richmond, onwards,
Emma and Horatia owned no fixed abode. They
moved from Bond Street to Albemarle Street, thence,
after perhaps a brief sojourn in Piccadilly again, to
Dover Street, thence to two separate lodgings at the
two ends again of Bond Street, where Nelson for a
brief space after Sir William's death had also lodged.
Lady Bolton, with her daughter, the godchild Emma,
who had failed to find her at the opening of the year,
expressed their keen disappointment : " You cannot
think how melancholy I felt when we passed the gate
at the top of Piccadilly, thinking how often we had
passed it together. . . . Emma sends her best love
and kisses to you, and Horatia, and Mrs. Cadogan.
When I told her just now how if we had gone two
houses further we should have seen you, she looked
very grave. At last she called out : ' Pray, Mama,
promise me to call as we go back to Cranwich.' . . .
My love to Mrs. Cadogan, Miss Connor, and my dear
Horatia. . . . God bless you, my dear Lady Ham-
ilton."
But the worst blow was yet to fall. By the opening
of the new year her mother lay on her deathbed.
Her old admirer, Sir H. Fetherstonehaugh and
nothing is more curious in this extraordinary woman's
life than the way in which the light lover of her first
girlhood re-emerges after thirty years as a respectful
454 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
friend began a series of sympathising letters. He
was much concerned for her health, and ill as she was,
she forgot her own ailments in the terrible trial of
her mother's malady. " As I am alive to all nervous sensations," he wrote, " be assured I understand your language." "I trust you will soon be relieved from all that load of anxiety you have had so much of lately, and which no one so little deserves."
Mrs. Cadogan died on the same day as the date of
this letter, and Emma with. Horatia now drifted for-
lorn and alone in a pitiless world. Emma's mother
had endeared herself to all the Nelson and Hamilton
circle, as well as to her own humble kindred. " Dear Blessed Saint," wrote Mrs. Bolton to Lady Hamilton,
" was she not a mother to us all ! How I wish I was near you ! " She was buried in that Paddington
churchyard which she and Emma had known so well
in the old days at Edgware Row.
Emma was paralysed by the blow. More than a
year afterwards she wrote that she could feel " no
pleasure but that of thinking and speaking of her." In sending to Mrs. Girdlestone whose family still possesses so many relics of Nelson the box which the
Duke of Sussex had presented to Mrs. Cadogan in
Naples, the bereaved daughter concluded a touching
letter as follows : " Accept then, my dear Friend, this box. You that are so fond a mother, and h
ave such
good children, will be pleased to take it as a token of
my regard, for I have lost the best of mothers, my
wounded heart, my comfort, all buried with her."
" Endeavour," wrote Mrs. Bolton, " to keep up your spirits: after a storm comes a calm, and God knows
you have had storm enough, and surely the sun must
shine sometimes."
The sun was never to shine again. This very year
two more staunch friends, to whom Emma had been
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 455
indebted for many kindnesses, made their exit, the old
Duke and the generous Abraham Goldsmid, who, in
despair at the failure of the recent Government loan,
died by his own hand. It was a year of tumult. The
din and riot of Burdett's election endangered the
streets; abroad it was the year of Napoleon's second
marriage, of the great battle of Wagram preluding
the Russian campaign. Maria Carolina was an exile
once more. Austria and the allies were worsted and
rabid. Whichever way Emma's distraught mind
turned, despair and misery were her outlook, and Nel-
son seemed to have died in vain.
The sum raised for her relief had been soon ex-
hausted. In removing to Bond Street she intended
really to retrench, but everything was swallowed up
by the crowd of parasites who consumed her substance
behind her back. Her landlady, Mrs.Daumier, pressed
for payment. And yet Lady Hamilton's own require-
ments seem to have been modest enough. It was Mrs.
Bianchi, Mrs. Billington, the person, whoever he may
have been, who filched her papers from her afterwards,
and the battening Neapolitans that rendered economy
impossible and swarmed around her to the close. Nor
would old dependants of Nelson believe that she was
impoverished. One, " William Nelson," importuned her for another from Bethnal Green ; Mr. Twiss, Mrs.
Siddons's nephew, urged her influence for his solicita-
tions to gain a " commissionership of Bankruptcy "
an ominous word for Emma. The Kidds, Reynoldses,
and Charles Connor still lived on, the girl Connors with her. Their conduct ill contrasted with that of the
once " poor little Emma " ; for the unacknowledged Emma " Carew," after disdaining dependence on her prosperity, was now, in adversity, bidding her a last
and loving farewell. Sir William Bolton still en-
treated her good offices with the royal dukes for " poor 456 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
Horace " ; so did Mrs. Matcham with Rose. She
could not even now refrain from maintaining appear-
ances, and keeping open house. She could not bring
herself to let those debonair royal dukes know that
one whom they fancied all song and sunshine was on
the brink of beggary. She could not hold the promise,
repeated to her befrienders, of living in tranquillity
and retirement. Nor would she desist from making
presents. She still visited fashionable resorts like
Brighton. She still enjoyed the friendship of Lady
Elizabeth Foster, by now the new Duchess of Devon-
shire. She still flattered herself, and listened to the
flatteries of others. She still trusted to chance to her elusive claims and her elusive legacy.
The old Duke had left Miss Connor a legacy also,
but all his bequests were long postponed. While Mrs.
Matcham was congratulating Emma on accessions of
fortune, while elderly, complimentary, Frenchified
Fetherstonehaugh rejoiced at the Queensberry " mite out of such a mass of wealth," forwarded her " envoies de gibier" and promised her " a view of old Up Park dans la belle saison," the widow's cruse was wellnigh drained. Nor after Greville's death, was his brother,
as trustee, always regular in his payments of her fore-
stalled revenue. With reason, as well as with excuses,
Lord Mansfield warned her not to increase her ex-
penditure till her " affairs were settled." Sir Richard Puleston, inviting her from Wrexham to revisit the
scenes of her childhood, could still gloat over her
" fairy palace in Bond Street."
In extreme need, she revived her desperate petitions
to the new Government. Her fashionable friends
called her " a national blessing," and cried shame on the deniers of her suit. But Mrs. Bolton well said to
her that she feared the friendly Rose was " promising more than he could procure " ; and amid these dubious EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 457
hopes two tell-tale pieces of paper in the Morrison Col-
lection speak volumes. They are bills drawn on
Emma by Carlo Rovedino, an Italian, for 150 each.
Even Cecilia Connor, with whom she had quarrelled
but who owed her everything, dunned " her Ladyship "
for the salary due for such education as she had given
" dear Horatia." This was the last straw.
The Matchams and Boltons invited her yet again,
but she did not come. She concerted fresh petitions
with a fresh man of the pen. He hastened at Emma's
bidding from his " Woodbine Cottage " at Wootton Bridge. He worked " like a horse." During his absence his wife was ill. Emma could not rest for think-
ing of her. She inquired of her from a common
friend. She wrote to her herself: " You do not know how many obligations I have to Mr. Russell, and if I
have success it will be all owing to his exertions for
me. Would to God you were in town. What a con-
solation it would be to me." All smiles to the world, full of wretchedness within, she could not, as she wrote so many years ago, " divest " herself " of her natural feelings." But her uniform love of excitement of
which these hazardous petitions were a form peeps
out at the close of this little note : " It must be very didl, alltho' your charming family must be such a comfort to you."
The crash came suddenly with the opening of the
new year, and just as Miss Matcham was begging her
to repose herself with them at Ashfield Lodge. Hora-
tia had whooping-cough. Emma, who was never with-
out a companion, had replaced Cecilia Connor by a
Miss Wheatley. For the sixth time she had failed in
moving the ministers, but her tenacity was inexpug-
nable. She owed it to her kind committee, to Nelson's
memory, to Horatia, to herself. The creditors, how-
ever, at last perceived that the asset on which they had 458 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
built their hopes had vanished. In vain she prayed
for time ; the royal dukes would not see her draggled
in the dust. Royal dukes, however, were not cash,
thought the creditors, when they promptly arrested
her for debt. It was the first time such a calamity
had even entered her mind, but it was not to be the last, as we shall soon discover. She implored none of her
grand friends. From the disgrace of prison she saved
herself. Ill, with the ailing Horatia, she found a scant lodging at 12 Temple Place, within the rules of the
King's Bench. To her old Merton friend, James
Perry, afterwards proprietor of the Morning Chron-
icle, and through thick and thin her warm upholder,
she addressed the following scrawl
" Will you have the goodness to see my old Dame
Francis, as you was so good to say to me at once at
any time for the
present existing and unhappy cir-
cumstances you wou'd befriend me, and if you cou'd at
your conveaneance call on me to aid me by your advice
as before. My friends come to town to-morrow for
the season, when I must see what can be done, so
that I shall not remain here ; for I am so truly unhappy and wretched and have been ill ever since I had the
pleasure of seeing you on dear Horatia's birthday, that
I have not had either spirits or energy to write to you.
You that loved Sir William and Nelson, and feel that
I have deserved from my country some tribute of re-
muneration, will aid by your counsel your ever affec-
tionate and grate full. . . ." *
And to the Abbe Campbell, who had just left for
Naples :
". . . You was beloved and honour'd by my hus-
band, Nelson, and myself; knew me in all my former
splendours; you I look on as a dear, dear friend and
relation. You are going amongst friends who love
1 Morrison MS. 1042, January 3, 1813.
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 459
you ; but rest assured none reveres you nor loves more
than your ever, etc. PS. Poor Horatia was so
broken-hearted at not seeing you. Tell dear Mr.
Tegart to call on me, for I do indeed feil truly for-
lorn and friendless. God bless you. As glorious
Nelson said, Amen, Amen, Amen."
Her stay in these purlieus was not long. Perry,
and probably the Mertonite Alderman Smith, must
have bailed her out. But during these few weeks of
restricted liberty she slaved at new petitions, was vis-
ited by friends, and continued her correspondence with
the Boltons and the Matchams, who begged hard for
Horatia, whom they would meet at Reigate if Emma
" could not manage to come " with her. They forwarded her presents of potatoes and turkeys from the
country, and their letters evidently treat her just as if she were at large.
All her energies were bent on the two final memorials
so often referred to in these pages that to the Prince
Regent, and that to the King. Rose now at last
espoused her cause with real warmth, and Canning
favoured her, despite his pique at her exaggerated ac-
count of what Nelson understood from their last in-
terview. All, however, ended in smoke. Perceval,
whom she had persuaded into benefiting one of Nel-
son's nephews, had been shot in the previous year,
and Lord Liverpool trod in the footsteps of Lord
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