belonged to two ladies who had lost a large sum by
the refusal of their sons to join Napoleon's invading
army. Its rooms were large, its garden extensive.
She could at length take exercise in a pony-cart. She
and Horatia were regular in church attendance: the
French prayers were like their own. Provisions were
cheap: turkeys two shillings, partridges fivepence the
brace ; Bordeaux wine from five to fifteen pence. Oc-
casionally a stray visitor passed their way. Lord Cath-
cart, Sir William's old friend and relative, had visited them, and spied out the nakedness of the land. It was
well known at Calais that the celebrated Lady Hamil-
ton was in retreat : a real live " milord " must have fluttered the farmhouse dovecote. For a time there was
a brief spell of cheerful tranquillity, but the gleam
was transient. It was only a reprieve before the final
summons. " If my dear Horatia were provided for,"
she wrote to Sir William Scott, " I should dye happy, and if I could only now be enabled to make her more
comfortable, and finish her education, ah God, how I
would bless them that enabled me to do it ! " She was teaching her German and Spanish; music, French,
Italian, and English she " already knew." Emma
" had seen enough of grandeur not to regret it " ;
" comfort, and what would make Horatia and myself
live like gentlewomen, would be all I wish, and to live
to see her well settled in the world." It was of no avail that her illness was leaving her. " My Broken Heart does not leave me." " Without a pound in "
her "pocket," what could she do? "On the 2ist of October, fatal day, I shall have some. I wrote to
Davison to ask the Earl to let me have my Bronte
pension quarterly instead of half-yearly, and the Earl
refused, saying that he was too poor. . . . Think,
then, of the situation of Nelson's child, and Lady Ham-
ilton, who so much contributed to the Battle of the
470 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
Nile, paid often and often out of my own pocket at
Naples . . . and also at Palermo for corn to save
Malta. Indeed, I have been ill used. Lord Sidmouth
is a good man, and Lord Liverpool is also an upright
Minister. Pray, and if ever Sir William Hamilton's
and Lord Nelson's services were deserving, ask them
to aid me. Think what I must feel who was used to
give God only knows [how much], and now to ask! " l Such was the plight of one who had gladly lavished
care and money on the son and daughter of Earl Nel-
son. That new-made Earl, who had canvassed her
favour, and called her his " best friend," was now calmly leaving her to perish, and his great brother's
daughter to share her carking penury and privation.
Lawyers' letters molested even the seclusion of St.
Pierre. The English papers published calumnies
which she was forced to contradict. Their little fund
was fast dwindling, and as late autumn set in they were
forced to transfer their scanty effects to a meagre
lodging in the town itself.
In the Rue Franchise No. in and even there in
its worst apartments, looking due north, the distressed
fugitives found themselves in the depth of a hard
winter.
They were not in absolute want, but, had their sus-
pense been protracted, they must ere long have been so.
At the beginning of December the " annuitants' " at-torneys were in close correspondence with the Honour-
able Colonel Sir R. Fulke Greville. Proceedings, in-
deed, were being instigated in Chancery, which were
only stopped by Lady Hamilton's unexpected demise.
An embargo was laid on every penny of Emma's in-
come. Even Horatia's pittance was not paid in ad-
vance, till she herself begged for a trifle on account
from her uncle, Earl Nelson.
'Lady Hamilton to Sir William Scott September 12, 1814.
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 471
. Under the strain of uncertainty, Emma, worried
out of her wits, and drawn more closely than ever to
the daughter who absorbed her fears, her sorrow, and
her affection, at length collapsed. The strong and
buoyant spirits, which had brought her through so
many crises, including Horatia's own birth, and the
coil of its consequences, failed any longer to support
her. A dropsical complaint, complicated by a chill,
fastened upon her chest. By New Year's Day, 1815,
her state of pocket, as well as of health, had become
critical. Some ten pounds, in English money, her
wearing apparel, and a few pawn tickets for pledged
pieces of plate, were the sole means of subsistence un-
til Horatia's next quarter's allowance should fall due.
In 1811 the Matchams had sent all they could spare;
they may have done so again. If the mother, denuded
of all, asked for anything, it was for Horatia that she
pleaded. At her debut, Greville had noticed that she
would starve rather than beg : it proved so now. Only
seven years ago she had implored the Duke not to
let their " enemies trample upon them." Those enemies had trampled on them indeed. A new creditor
was knocking at her door, the last creditor Death.
One can picture that deserted death-scene in the
Calais garret, where the wan woman, round whom so
much brilliance had hovered, lay poverty-stricken and
alone. Where now were the tribes of flatterers, of
importuners for promotion, or even the crowd of true
and genial hearts? Her still lingering beauty had
formed an element of her age, but now only the prim-
itive elements of ebbing life remained intact the
mother and her child. By her bedside stood a crucifix
for she had openly professed her faith. Over her
bed hung, doubtless, the small portraits of Nelson
and of her mother remnants from the wreck. Nel-
son was no longer loathed at Calais ; a Bourbon sat on
472 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
the throne, and not even wounded pride angered the
French against the man who had delivered the sister
now dead herself of Marie Antoinette. Perhaps
Emma is trying to dictate a last piteous entreaty to the hard-hearted Earl, and sad Horatia writing it at the
bare table by the attic casement. Perhaps, while she
gasps for breath, and calls to mind the child within
her arms, she strives but fails to utter all the weight
upon her heart. Horatia sobs, and kisses again, may
be, and again that " guardian " whom now she loves and trusts with a daughter's heart. Sorrow unites
them closely; here " they and sorrow sit."
Of her many tragic " Attitudes " (had Constance ever been one?) the tragedy of this last eclipses all.
She, whose loveliness had dazzled Europe, whose
voice and gestures had charmed all Italy, and had spell-
bound princes alike and peasants; whose fame, what-
ever might be muttered, was destined to re-echo long
after life's broken cadence had died upon the air; she
whose lightest word had been cherished she now lay
dying here. Nelson, her mother, her child, these are
still her company and comfort, as memories float be-
&nbs
p; fore her fading eyes. Ah ! will she find the first again, and must she lose, the last ?
A pang, a spasm, a cry. The priest is fetched in
haste. She still has strength to be absolved, to re-
ceive extreme unction from a stranger's hands. Weep-
ing Horatia and old " Dame Francis " re-enter as, in that awful moment, shrived, let us hope, and reconciled, she clings, and rests in their embrace.
It had been her wish to lie beside her mother in the
Paddington church. This, too, was thwarted. On the
next Friday she was buried. The hearse was fol-
lowed by the many naval officers then at Calais to the
cheerless cemetery, before many years converted into
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 473
a timber-yard. Had she died a Protestant such was
the revival of Catholicism with monarchy in France
intolerance would have refused a service : only a few
months earlier, a blameless and charming actress had
been pitched at Paris into an unconsecrated grave.
It was these circumstances that engendered the fables,
soon circulated in England, of Emma's burial in a
deal box covered by a tattered petticoat.
Earl Nelson and the Mr. Henry Cadogan, who has
been mentioned earlier, came over before the begin-
ning of February the former to bring Horatia back,
the latter to pay, through Alderman Smith's large-
heartedness, the last of the many debts owing on the
score of Lady Hamilton. None of them were de-
frayed by the Earl, who had never given his niece so
much as " a frock or a sixpence." It was soon known that the " celebrated Emma " had passed away. Polite letters were exchanged between Colonel Greville and
the " Prefect of the Department of Calais " as to the actual facts, and Greville's executor was much relieved
to feel that Emma's departure had spared him the
bother of a long lawsuit.
Horatia owed nothing to her uncle Nelson's care:
she stayed with the Matchams until her marriage, in
1822, to the Reverend Philip Ward of Tenterden. She
became the mother of many children, and died, an
octogenarian, in 1881.
The research of these pages has tried to illumine
Lady Hamilton's misdeeds as well as her good qualities,
to interpret the problems and contrasts of a mixed
character and a mixed career. It has tracked the many
phases and vicissitudes both of circumstance and calibre that she underwent. We have seen her as a girl,
friendless and forsaken, only to be rescued and trained
by a selfish pedant, who collected her as he collected
474 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
his indifferent pictures and metallic minerals. We
have seen her handed on to the amiable voluptuary
whose torpor she bestirred, and for whose classical
taste she embodied the beautiful ideal. We have seen
her swaying a Queen, influencing statesmen and even
a dynasty, exalted by marriage to a platform which
enabled her to save, more than once, a situation critical alike for her country, for Naples, and for Europe.
We have seen her rising not only to, but above, the
occasions which her highest fortunes enabled. We
have followed her conspicuous courage, from its germs
in battling with mean disaster, to a development which
attracted and enthralled the most valiant captain of
his age. We have marked how her resource also en-
hanced even his resourcefulness. We have watched
her swept into a vortex of passionate love for the hero
who transcended her dramatic dreams, and sacrificing
all, even her native truthfulness, for the real and un-
shaken love of their lives. We have shown that she
cannot be held to have detained him from his public
duty so long as history is unable to point to a single
exploit unachieved. And eventually, we have found
that the infinite expressiveness which throughout ren-
dered her a muse both to men of reverie and of action,
rendered herself a blank, when the personalities she
prompted were withdrawn and could no more inspire
her as she had inspired them. We have viewed her
marvellous rise, and we have traced her melancholy
decline, from the moment of the prelude to Horatia's
birth to the years which involved its far-reaching and
inevitable sequels. We have found, despite all the re-
sulting stains which soiled a frank and fervid but un-
schooled and unbridled nature, that she never lost" a capacity for devotion, and even self-abandonment;
while her kindness and bounty remained as reckless
and extravagant as the wil fulness of her moods and
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 475
the exuberance of her enthusiasm. We have found
her headstrong successively, and resolute, bold and
brazen, capricious and loyal, vain-glorious, but vainer
for the glory of those she loved; strenuous yet inert,
eminently domestic yet waywardly pleasure-loving;
serviceable yet alluring, at once Vesta and Hebe. We
have tracked her, as catastrophe lowered, tenaciously
beating the air, and ever sanguine that she could turn
stones even the stones flung at her to gold. We
have tracked also the cruelty and shabbiness of those
that were first and foremost in throwing those stones,
whose propriety was prudence, and whose virtue was
self-interest. We have marked how long this woman
of Samaria's way fare was beset by bad Samaritans.
We have felt the falsities to which they bowed as
falser than the genuine idolatry which held her from a
nobler worship, and from an air purer than most of
her surrounders ever breathed. It was in Nelson's
erring unselfishness that her salvation and her damna-
tion met. And in her semi-consecration of true
motherhood, springing at first from wild-animal de-
votion to her first child, we can discern the refine-
ment of instinct which at length led the born pagan
within the pale of reverence. Astray as a girl, she
had found refuge in her own devotion, with which she
invested Greville's patronage. An outcast at the close,
she turned for shelter to a worthier home. And
above all, implanted in her from the first, and in-
eradicable, her unwavering fondness for her mother
has half-erased her darkest blot, and made her more
beautiful than her beauty. May we not say, at the
last, that because she loved much, much shall be for-
given her : quid multum amavit.
The site of her grave has vanished, and with it the
two poor monuments rumoured to have marked the
spot; the first (if Mrs. Hunter be here believed) of
476 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
wood, " like a battledore, handle downwards " ; the second, a headstone, which a Guide to Calais mentions
in 1833. 1 Its Latin inscription was then partially de-
cipherable :
"... Quae
. . . Calesiae
Via in Gallica vocata
Et in domo c.vi. obiit
Die xv. Mensis Januarii. A.D. MDCCCXV.
suae LI." 2
It was perhaps erected by some officer of that navy
which, long after she had gone,
always remembered
her unflagging zeal and kindness with gratitude.
Her best epitaph may be found in the touching lines
indited by the literary doctor Beattie (not Nelson's Sir William Beatty), after visiting her grave on his return from attending William IV. and his wife in Ger-
many. They were published in 1831, and have been
quoted by Pettigrew.
" And here is one a nameless grave the grass
Waves dank and dismal o'er its crumbling mass
Of mortal elements the wintry sedge
Weeps drooping o'er the rampart's watery edge;
The rustling reed the darkly rippling wave
Announce the tenant of that lowly grave.
. . . Levelled with the soil,
The wasting worm hath revelled in its spoil
The spoil of beauty ! This, the poor remains
Of one who, living, could command the strains
Of flattery's harp and pen. Whose incense, flung
From venal breath upon her altar, hung,
A halo ; while in loveliness supreme
She moved in brightness, like th' embodied dream
1 Pettigrew, vol. ii. p. 636. The " battledore " bore the inscription, " Emma Hamilton, England's friend."
1 i. e. In the fifty-first year of her age.
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 477
Of some rapt minstrel's warm imaginings,
The more than form and face of earthly things.
Few bend them at thy bier, unhappy one !
All know thy shame, thy mental sufferings, none.
All know thy frailties all thou wast and art!
But thine were faults of circumstance, not heart.
Thy soul was formed to bless and to be bless'd
With that immortal boon a guiltless breast,
And be what others seem had bounteous Heaven
Less beauty lent, or stronger virtue given !
The frugal matron of some lowlier hearth,
Thou hadst not known the splendid woes of earth:
Dispensing happiness, and happy there
Thou hadst not known the curse of being fair!
But like yon lonely vesper star, thy light
Thy love had been as pure as it was bright.
I've met thy pictured bust in many lands,
I've seen the stranger pause with lifted hands
In deep, mute admiration, while his eye
Dwelt sparkling on thy peerless symmetry.
I've seen the poet's painter's sculptor's gaze
Speak, with rapt glance, their eloquence of praise.
I've seen thee as a gem in royal halls
Stoop, like presiding angel from the walls,
And only less than worshipp'd ! Yet 'tis come
To this ! When all but slander's voice is dumb,
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