Grenville.
Whither she repaired on liberation is unknown,
though by the summer of the year she managed to
reinstate herself in Bond Street. 1 There is no head-
ing to the strange remonstrance which the distressed
1 No. 150. This is manifest from the inventory and sale catalogue of the following July sold at Sotheby's on July 8, 1905. It is dated " Thursday, July 8, 1813." Her last refuge was at Fulham with Mrs. Billington.
460 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
mother penned, in one of her fitful moods, to Horatia
on " Easter Sunday " * of this year :
" Listen to a kind, good mother, who has ever been
to you affectionate, truly kind, and 'who has neither
spared pains nor expense to make you the most
amiable and accomplished of your sex. Ah ! Horatia,
if you had grown up as I wished you, what a joy, what
a comfort might you have been to me! For I have
been constant to you, and willingly pleas'd for every
manifestation you shew'd to learn and profitt of my
lessons. . . . Look into yourself well, correct your-
self of your errors, your caprices, your nonsensical
follies. ... I have weathered many a storm for your
sake, but these frequent blows have kill'd me. Listen
then from a mother, who speaks from the dead. Re-
form your conduct, or you will be detested by all the
world, and when you shall no longer have my foster-
ing arm to sheild you, woe betide you, you will sink
to nothing. Be good, be honourable, tell not false-
hoods, be not capricious." She threatened to put her to school a threat never executed. " I grieve and
lament to see the increasing strength of your turbulent
passions ; I weep, and pray you may not be totally lost ; my fervent prayers are offered up to God for you. I
hope you may become yet sensible of your eternal wel-
fare. I shall go join your father and my blessed
mother, and may you on your deathbed have as little
to reproach yourself as your once affectionate mother
has, for I can glorify, and say I was a good child.
Can Horatia Nelson say so? I am unhappy to say
you cannot. No answer to this! I shall to-morrow
look out for a school for your sake to save you, that
you may bless the memory of an injured mother.
PS. Look on me as gone from this world."
Six months later she again blamed her for her
1 April 18, 1813. Cf. Morrison MS. 1047.
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 461
" cruel treatment." It may well be that the poor young girl, bandied about with Emma's fortunes, and
with her driven from pillar to post, complained of hard
treatment. "If my poor mother," once more ex-
claimed Emma, who had, at any rate, been a most duti-
ful daughter, " If my poor mother was living to take my part, broken as I am with greif and ill-health, I
should be happy to breathe my last in her arms. I
thank you for what you have done to-day. You have
helped me nearer to God and may God forgive you."
In two days " all will be arranged for her future establishment." She will summon Colonel and Mrs. Clive,
Colonel and Mrs. Smith, Mr. and Mrs. Denis, Dr.
Norton, Nanny the old servant, Mr. Slop, Mr. Sice,
Annie Deane, all the gossips from Richmond, to " tell the truth " if she " has used her ill." " Every servant shall be on oath." " The all-seeing eye of God " knows
" her innocence."
Of these two ebullitions, it is impossible not to
discern in the first a fear lest her own errors should be repeated in her daughter. And it should not be forgotten that, through the connivance of Haslewood,
Nelson's solicitor, Horatia to the last refused to believe that Lady Hamilton, whom she tenderly nursed and
comforted at the close, was her real mother. Some
such denials of Emma's motherhood may have caused
these outbursts, proportioned in their violence to the
intense and unceasing love that Emma fostered for
Nelson's child, on her real relationship to whom she
here and here only within four walls laid such ve-
hement stress.
She had been compelled to part with Horatia's
christening-cup, Nelson's own gift, to a Bond Street
silversmith. Sir Harris Nicolas declared that he had
seen a statement in her handwriting to the effect that
" Horatia's mother " was " too great a lady to be men-462 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
tioned." It has been assumed that his ambiguous
phrase pointed to the Queen of Naples, who so late as
1808 was in friendly correspondence with Emma.
This, however, remains uncertain. Nelson's own ac-
tion had constrained her to envelop their joint offspring in mystery, for Horatia's benefit as well as their own.
It is just as probable that the words " too great a lady " were used of herself, for the same words are used of her by Mrs. Bolton in 1809.
Things went rapidly from bad to worse. The
smaller fry of her creditors were emboldened by the
complete neglect of her last " memorials " into renewed action. At the instance of an exorbitant coach-
builder, with a long bill in his hands, she was re-
arrested, and in Horatia's company she found herself,
towards the end of July, 1813, for the second time in
the bare lodgings at Temple Place. All her remaining
effects in Bond Street were sold. The articles offered
were by no means luxurious, and included the rem-
nants of Hamilton's library; many of them were
bought by the silversmith, whom she still owed, and
by Alderman Smith, her most generous benefactor.
The city remained her champion.
She could still see her friends, Coxe and George
Matcham among them, and she was permitted, such
was her miserable health, to drive out on occasion.
But the game, spiritedly contested to the last, was now
up. Mrs. Bolton's death in the preceding July added
one more to the many fatalities that thronged around
her. The Matchams, themselves poor, were unweary-
ing in their solicitude, and three years earlier a small windfall had enabled them to contribute 100 to her
dire necessities. Alderman Smith came for the sec-
ond time to the rescue, and once more stood her bail.
But before even this alleviation was vouchsafed, and
while she had been for three months confined to her
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 463;
bed, a crowning trouble beset her. Through the per-
fidy of some dependant l Nelson's most private letters
to her had been abstracted some years before, and were
now published to the world. This is the invaluable
correspondence on which these pages have so fre-
quently drawn. It was not their revelation of the
" Thomson " letters that prejudiced her : her enemies were always willing to insinuate even that she had
foisted Horatia on Nelson. It was the revelation of
the Prince of Wales episode of 1801, that scandalised
the big world, and destroyed the last shred of hope
for any future " memorials." It was insinuated that she herself had published the volume. " Weather
this person," she told Mr. Perry, " has made use of any of these papers, or weather they are the invention
of a vile mercenary wretch, I know not, but y
ou will
oblige me much by contradicting these falsehoods."
" I have taken an oath and confirmed it at the altar,"
the much-harried Emma was to write to the press in
the next September, after she had crossed the Chan-
nel, " that I know nothing of these infamous publications that are imputed to me. My letters were stolen
from me by that scoundrel whose family I had in
charity so long supported. I never once saw or knew
of them. That base man is capable of forging any
handwriting, and I am told that he has obtained money
from the [Prince of Wales] by his impositions. Sir
William Hamilton, Lord N., and myself were too much
attached to his [Royal Highness] ever to speak ill or
think ill of him. If I had the means I would prosecute
the wretches who have thus traduced me." In still
another of her last letters she is even more specific on this sore subject. " I again before God declare," she avers, " I know nothing of the publication of these stolen letters."
'Harrison; cf. Horatia's letter, Cornhill, June, 1906.
464 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
These statements point to Emma's truthfulness.
All that she asserts is her ignorance of the contents
of the volume, and how they came to be published.
The Prince of Wales letters in this collection are un-
doubtedly genuine, corroborated, as they are, by many
of their companions in the Morrison Manuscripts.
The letters had been purloined by a rascal, and their
publication blasted her last chances with the Prince
whom in her will she had begged to protect Horatia
after she was gone, while it also disclosed for the first time her dishonour of her husband.
Her sin had found her out; but her sin had been
born of real devotion, and surely it should not harden
us against her lovableness, or alienate us from charity
towards the weight of temptation, and from pity for
the tragedy of her lot.
She had abstained from reading the book. If she
meant to deny the authenticity of these letters, then
indisputably she must be taken to have lied. But even
so, she was driven to bay and at the end of her tether.
The perjury would have been exceptional. It would
not have been Plato's " lie in the soul " : it would have been a lie in defence of the dead and the living.
"The lips have sworn: unsworn remains the soul."
CHAPTER XV
FROM DEBT TO DEATH
July, 1814 January, 1815
SHORT and evil were the few days remaining.
" What shall I do; God, what shall I do! " had been her exclamation thirty-two years ago to
Greville. As she began, so she closed.
Mrs. Bolton's death in the late summer of 1813
left her more desolate than ever at Temple Place. The
Matchams resumed their warm invitations; alas! she
could not leave; she was still an undischarged bank-
rupt. The Matchams themselves were breaking up
the last of their many establishments. They all wished
to join Emma and Horatia, when possible, in some
" city, town, or village abroad." This proposal probably suggested the idea of retiring to Calais when her
present ordeal in the stale air of stuffy Alsatia should come to an end.
But even in tribulation she had celebrated, as best
she could, the " glorious ist of August." I have seen a letter inviting a few even then not " pinchbeck,"
she calls them, " but true gold " round that little table in Temple Place, to drink for the last time to the
hero's memory.
The few surviving records unite in proving her
genuine anxiety that through her no creditor should
suffer. Though imprudence, as she confessed, had not
a little contributed, her main disasters were due to a
crowd of worthless onhangers whom she had reck-
465
4 66 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
lessly maintained. She herself had gone bail " for
a. person " whom she thought " honourable." This
" person " was probably one Jewett, a young friend of the Russells, in whom she had taken a warm interest. " I should be better," she had written to her
" kind, good, benevolent Mr. and Mrs. Russell," " if I could know that this unfortunate and, I think, not
guilty young man was saved. He has been a dupe in
the hands of villains. ... I have never seen him, for
I could not have borne to have seen him and his
amiable wife and children suffer as they must." She employs the same phrase " dupe of villains " about herself in a long epistle of this very date to Rose.
All her property was surrendered; with the ex-
ception of a few sacred relics, everything unseized had
been sold, even Nelson's sword of honour. Her just
creditors lost not a penny. The sole extortioners she
would not benefit were those annuitant Shylocks who
had preyed upon her utmost need, and who had well
secured themselves by insuring her life in the Pelican
Insurance Company.
James Perry and Alderman Smith exerted them-
selves to the utmost on her behalf. A small further
sum was collected for her in the city, and by the last
week of June, 1814, her full discharge was obtained
from Lord Ellenborough. She was now free with
less than fifty pounds in her pocket.
But she soon gleaned the fact that these merciless
" annuitants " purposed her re-arrest. Without dishonour, she prepared for exodus to France.
It was a flight requiring management and secrecy to
elude the new writs about to be issued : it was her last thrill. How different from that memorable flight to
Palermo sixteen years earlier, which had earned the
admiration of Nelson, the gratitude of a court, and the
praise of Britain!
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 467
About the last day of June she and Horatia, unat-
tended, embarked at the Tower. The stormy passage
thence to Calais took three days. Her single thought
was for Horatia's future, but she still buoyed herself
up by believing that an ungrateful ministry would at
length provide for her daughter. Sir William Scott,
she wrote, assured her that there were " some hopes "
for her " irresistible claims." She fancied, moreover, that she had some disposing power over the ac-
cumulations of arrears on her income under her hus-
band's will, so long withheld and intercepted by greedy
annuitants. "If I was to die/' she told Greville's
brother and executor, imploring him at the same time
for 100 on account, " I should have left that money away, for the annuitants have no right to have it,
nor can they claim it, for I was most dreadfully im-
posed upon by my good nature. . . . When I came
away, I came with honour, as Mr. Alderman Smith
can inform you, but mine own innocence keeps me up,
and I despise all false accusations and aspersions. I
have given up everything to pay just debts, but [for]
annuitants, never will."
She at first lodged at Dessein's famous hotel the
inn where Sterne (of whom Romney, his first por-
trayer's pupil, must have often told her) started on his Sentimental Journey, by the confession over a bottle
of Burgundy that there wa
s " mildness in the Bour-
bon blood " ; and where the " Englishman who did not travel to see Englishmen " first inspected, in his host's company, the ramshackle desobligeante which was to
be the vehicle of his whimsies.
Dessein's, however, was expensive as well as senti-
mental. It was not long before she inhabited the
smaller " Quillac's " and looked out for a still humbler abode. Her " Old Dame Francis " was soon to join her as housekeeper.
468 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
She thus describes their manner of life to George
Rose :
". . . Near me is an English lady, who has resided
here for twenty-five years, who has a day-school, but
not for eating or sleeping. At eight in the morning I
take Horatia, fetch her at one; at three we dine; she
goes out till five, and then in the evening we walk.
She learns everything piano, harp, languages gram-
matically. She knows French and Italian well, but
she will still improve. Not any girls, but those of
the best families go there. Last evening we walked
two miles to a jete champetre pour les bourgeois.
Everybody is pleased with Horatia. The General and
his good old wife are very good to us; but our little
world of happiness is ourselves. If, my dear Sir,
Lord Sidmouth would do something for dear Horatia,
so that I can be enabled to give her an education, and
also for her dress, it would ease me, and make me
very happy. Surely he owes this to Nelson. For
God's sake, do try for me, for you do not know how
limited I am. ... I have been the victim of artful,
mercenary wretches."
Dis aliter visum; it was not to be. Nothing but the
pittance of Horatia's settlement remained. Rose be-
stirred himself, but Lord Sidmouth continued imper-
vious to the importunate widow, herself slowly re-
covering from the jaundice.
When " Dame Francis " arrived, they tenanted a farmhouse two miles distant in the Commune of St.
Pierre " Common of St. Peter's," as Lady Hamilton writes it and from this farmhouse, not long afterwards, they again removed to a neighbouring one. It
1 Cf . Rose's Diaries, vol. i. p. 272 ; and cf . Morrison MS. 1055.
" Horatia is improving in person and education every day. She speaks French like a French girl, Italian, German, English," etc.
September 21.
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 469
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