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

by Yelena Kopylova

  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