by Karen Essex
“They say she uses Admiral Lord Nelson as a servant. Why not her own mother?” Elgin whispered back.
They were ushered into a candlelit parlor where several guests had already been seated, and informed that they were to be treated to a performance of the “Attitudes,” the dramatic enactment that had made Emma Hamilton famous throughout Europe. “This is more than we bargained for,” Mary said to Elgin, afraid now that she was going to be forced to witness something that no amount of prayers or Sunday services might amend. But Elgin was smiling, nodding at Lord Nelson as if the two were old friends. Did he really expect her to sit through one of Lady Hamilton’s erotic performances?
Apparently he did, because he ushered her past a group of musicians to a seat and sat next to her, putting a firm hand on her arm. “I am in the Foreign Service, Mary,” he said to her. “I must submit to whatever entertainments are provided. And you are my wife and you must do the same. You will see stranger things than this in the land of the Turks, and I will not allow you to run away like a skittish girl.”
“As you wish,” she replied, and focused her attention upon Lord Nelson.
Strange to think that the diminutive, one-armed, and apparently one-eyed creature before her was the same hero who had inspired the admiration of a nation and ignited the romantic imagination of virtually every woman in England. His hair was unruly and of a strange color, somewhere between carrot and ginger, with coarse gray strands running through it. He was unreasonably short, so short that he looked like a child in his chair.
“Why, I believe he is even shorter than his adversary, Napoleon,” Mary said to Elgin. “And I cannot tell whether he has one eye or two.”
The visible eye was cloudy and rheumy, and the other was shut, whether by infection or the absence of an eyeball she could not tell. Nelson was missing a few crucial upper teeth as well. He looked particularly horrid in comparison to the handsome Elgin, but Mary was not even certain that she would have chosen him over the elderly but elegant Sir William, who sat next to him. Sir William was tall and lean and had a pleasant face that still held a shadow of his younger self despite the fact that he was in his mid-seventies. His hands were rather crippled and craggy, but at least he still had both of them.
The chatter in the room came to an abrupt halt. Everyone’s eyes turned to the drapes made of swirls of scarlet and violet silk, flanked by two antique-looking columns. Upon the shorter column sat an ancient Roman urn. Suddenly a tall woman with ebony skin and a turban piled high upon her head and a cuff of gold around her neck dashed into the room with long gliding strides and whisked the curtain aside, revealing a voluptuous figure draped in purple, huge eyes turned upward, arms flung dramatically to the sides. The woman was even taller than her dark-skinned accomplice. Her lush raven hair rippled in waves over an abundant white bosom, but was purposely positioned, it seemed to Mary, to cascade along the sides of her breasts so as to not interfere with the overflow of cleavage. She stood still as a statue. A violinist picked up his instrument and sounded a mournful note, but all eyes remained riveted upon Emma Hamilton.
She was not young, Mary thought with satisfaction, and was perhaps a little fat. But as Emma began to move, taking from the accomplice a sheer cloth and draping it over her face, Mary found herself rapt, following each fluid movement. Emma picked up the funerary urn from the column. Two small girls appeared, and with each grasping Emma’s flowing robe as if clinging to a mother, the three began a solemn procession through the seated audience, the children cowering as Emma moved them along, and she staring into the faces of her spectators with a mixture of ferocity and fear.
“Agrippina!” shouted one man. Emma raised an approving brow at him, but did not break her stern countenance. She moved soundlessly, but her lips looked as if she were miming a hiss.
“She is returning the ashes of Germanicus to Rome!” exclaimed another.
It was not mere performance, but parlor game. “Look at her face,” a woman whispered. “She knows her husband has been poisoned.”
Some people gasped as Emma confronted them with her eyes. “Upon seeing Agrippina with her children and her husband’s ashes, a single groan arose from the multitude,” someone intoned.
“So wrote the historian Tacitus,” added Sir William.
Satisfied that her character had been identified, Emma whirled around and made the return voyage through her audience. She placed the urn back on the column and the children disappeared behind the curtain. Sinking low into a pile of fabric and props, she emerged wrapped in a white outer drape, her hair crowned with a wreath of fresh ivy. She stood slowly as if in a state of delirium, though her movements were graceful and seamless. The dark-skinned woman appeared, placing in Emma’s hands a coiling snake. A few of the ladies made audible noises, apparently thinking the creature real, but Mary, from her vantage point, saw that it was a replica, though lifelike.
Emma raised the thing above her head and began to sway, first slowly, and then faster, not to any music but to some internal rhythm. Her hips rolled in slow, mesmerizing circles, which Elgin, Mary could not help but notice, followed with his eyes. One of the musicians picked up a flute and began to play a slow, low tune that slithered into higher and more frantic reaches as Emma twirled in a circle, her dazzling hair floating behind as she whipped around.
“A bacchante!” “A maenad!” Several people guessed the pantomime at the same time, pleased to display their knowledge.
An ingenious parlor game, Mary thought. No wonder the woman was so popular. She entertained the audience and made them feel not only intelligent but involved in the performance.
And no wonder all the great portraitists of England and France had vied for this muse. The gossips would have one believe that a woman like Emma traded on providing easy sexual services that a more respectable woman would not offer. But Mary saw now that it was more than that. Emma embodied an authentic classical grace, but unlike the statues from which modern man had formed his appreciation for the ancient arts, Emma was flesh and blood, alive and sensual. Here was a modern woman bringing the qualities for which the ancient statues were praised into living form, and doing so with graceful ease. Mary now made sense out of the rumors that poor Mr. Romney, after having painted Emma so many times in the poses of the most beautiful and memorable women of history, was half out of his mind with lust for her. Emma represented not merely one woman but—to a man, and especially to an artist—all women.
Emma’s body seemed to unravel from its core as she twirled and flailed, giving in to the frenzy of the Dionysian ritual. As she succumbed to the thrall of the pagan god, she captivated every man in the room, holding them all in the spell of her erotic offerings. Sexuality is its own witchcraft, Mary thought. Why must highborn women be confined in their behavior when what men truly seem to desire is sensuality unleashed? She could not resolve the contradiction, but she understood the power that Emma Hamilton held over these powerful men.
All eyes followed Emma as she finished the dance of the maenad, shedding the white robe and slithering into a sort of cocoon on the floor. The black woman draped a cloth of shimmering gold over one of Emma’s shoulders, and in what seemed like only a few seconds, Emma stood again, completely transformed, wearing a crown in the shape of an asp. The rosy cheeks of her bacchanalian celebrant had gone stark white. Now she was entirely solemn. She still held the snake, which she turned toward her breast.
“Cleopatra!” Several people guessed it at once.
“‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.’”
The same might be said of Emma, Mary thought. Infinite variety, indeed. What would it be like to be unshackled from the conventions of society with its strict customs and manners, free to play the muse to men?
The black assistant fell upon her knees, begging with outstretched arms, while Emma stoically looked away. With her accomplice clutching at her feet, Emma put the snake to her breast, throwing her head back, feigning great, searing pain, and then f
alling slowly, like silk itself, to the floor. The other woman took the snake from her mistress, put it to her own neck, and fell promptly as if dead upon Emma’s prone figure.
Silence. Then applause.
“Brava! Brava!” shouted the Italian guests, who were soon joined by Admiral Lord Nelson, who leapt to his feet. Sir William slowly struggled to stand, rubbing his hip with one hand as he tried to clap with his other.
Emma rose majestically, like Aphrodite being born out of the waves. She stood tall, taking in the applause and shouts of approval before sinking into a low curtsey, so low that her luxuriant hair almost touched the floor. Then she disappeared behind the curtain before the clapping stopped.
“There’s a fine woman for you,” Elgin said, still clapping his hands. “Excellent flesh and bones.”
“Yes indeed!” Mary whispered for Elgin’s ears alone. “A real whapper!” She was not sure she had ever before said out loud the nasty slang word for a loose woman. Was Emma Hamilton’s trans-gressive behavior influencing her?
Elgin smiled. “Did you find her performance vulgar?”
“Of course,” Mary replied, sounding to her own ears a bit too haughty. The performance was vulgar. But it was many other things as well, which Mary could not quite put words to at this moment. She realized that she found the notorious Mrs. Hamilton as fascinating as she found her repugnant.
Emma reappeared at dinner, wearing what all the ladies’ fashion magazines were calling Dress à la Nile. Her earrings were big gold anchors. Not unlike one of her costumes, her dress was a loose, white satin gown, draped and flowing, bound just above the waist with a ribbon. She appeared to wear no stays. Loose flesh, loose woman, Mary thought. She did not know whether she could walk about in decent company with her body unbound. And yet Emma did not seem to have a problem with her freedom. She wore flat-heeled slippers, but she was still taller than any woman in the room. A gold and white triangular shawl embroidered with the words Nelson in one corner and Victory in the other was draped loosely about her shoulders, and she was graciously soaking in her guests’ compliments for her performance.
She was pleasant, Mary had to admit, aware that Emma was refraining from suggestive eye contact with Elgin—though Mary thought it was causing the seductress much pain to have such a handsome and highborn man in her presence without being able to cast her spell. Emma begged Mary to take an apartment in the couple’s palazzo, where Her Ladyship and Sir William would see to it that she had complete privacy and every comfort and service that they could provide “in these strange circumstances in which we find ourselves, exiled from our Neapolitan home.” Determined that she would honor her vow not to share a roof with “That Hamilton Woman,” as the gossip magazines called Emma, Mary politely declined.
“The queen and king desire your presence tomorrow at the rowing matches. The royals are quite anxious to make your acquaintance, Lady Elgin,” Emma said. “But please do not bother about your dress. We are very casual here away from the formalities of the court at Naples. I shall wear the simplest of morning dresses.”
“Will the queen not take it as a sign of disrespect?” Mary asked. She would be relieved to wear a light dress in the horrible Sicilian heat, but for the sake of Elgin’s prestige, she did not wish to make an unfavorable impression. She particularly did not wish to be presented to the royals by Emma, but Lady Hamilton was the wife of the envoy to their court. Mary hoped that the king and queen would not confuse obedience to protocol with approval of Emma Hamilton.
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Lady Hamilton. “I shall hardly bother to do my hair.”
Soon after dinner, Mary and Elgin departed, leaving Sir William asleep in a chair by the fire, and Lord Nelson hanging on his mistress’s every word and gesture. An uxorious, lovesick puppy, Mary laughed to herself, and hardly befitting the role he carried in the public eye.
DUPED. TRICKED. Deceived by that Jezebel. Why did low-class females always, no matter what opportunities and indulgences they were granted, inevitably live up to the wickedness that the highborn assign to them?
The casual rowing match to which Mary was invited by Emma was, in fact, a formal occasion, attended by every grandee on the island of Sicily. The queen had welcomed Mary and Elgin, giving them places of honor in her private stand. Mary was also presented, with every dignity and honor, to the three princesses and the king. It should have been a festive and triumphant occasion.
Except that while Mary was in a simple cotton day dress, Emma Hamilton showed up in a fine gold and colored silk gown worked over with diamonds and every type of jewel. The queen and the princesses were turned out in fine dresses sewn through with thousands of pearls. Mary, horrified, apologized to the queen, who would not allow her to speak of the indiscretion.
“Mrs. Hamilton advised me to dress simply,” Mary said to the queen, perhaps indiscreetly. But she would not allow herself to be thought so provincial that she did not know what costume was proper for such an event. “I must be allowed to return to my quarters to change clothes.”
“We will not hear of it,” replied the queen. “We are delighted with your presence and we will not hear you speak of it! Is that not correct?” she asked the king, who agreed that Mary should not bother about her clothes but enjoy the day.
They seemed genuine enough. Mary now understood how Emma Hamilton garnered so much attention; she designed every event to be a theatrical presentation starring herself. Mary despised Emma, to be sure, but she understood that there might be a lesson worth learning from her. Emma certainly knew how to captivate men, though Mary chose to undercut Emma’s powers when she spoke of her with Elgin.
“Her lovers are Sir Old Body and Sir Maimed-A-Lot,” Mary whispered in Elgin’s ear.
“Why Mary, ’tis a pity you were born a good Scottish girl and not someone who could contribute to Town & Country or Bon Ton Magazine,” Elgin laughed. “For I do believe that you can sneer with the best of them when you wish to.”
All day long, Mary noticed that the queen and king made a great fuss over Emma if she was in the presence of Lord Nelson. Elgin explained that her influence with the great man earned her the attention.
“Even so. Sir William and Lord Nelson and that woman are the three biggest dupes I have ever laid eyes on,” Mary said, not about to give voice to her own growing fascination with Emma Hamilton. “They think they’re duping the world, but they are fooling no one but themselves. She flaunts her intimacy with the queen with even more transparency than she flaunts her affair with the admiral. And the queen, I have heard through the infallible gossip of servants, laughs very much at her to all the Neapolitans. The woman deserves nothing better.”
Mary was furious enough to refuse to accompany Elgin to a final meeting with Sir William, but after being assured that Emma Hamilton had gone to the country—which Mary guessed was a euphemism for running off somewhere with Nelson—she agreed to “take a turn in Sir William’s library,” as Elgin had put it.
“Is not your home a lonely one when the lady of the house is away?” Mary asked Sir William provocatively as he ushered her and Elgin into his “much-reduced collection of books.” The majority of his manuscripts were either still in Naples or, with a great many of his vases, statues, and other antiquities, had sunk to the bottom of the sea in the transport. Mary could not tell whether it was the loss of so many of his treasures, the loss of his health, or the loss of his wife to Lord Nelson that caused him to seem so melancholy.
“My dear, I am seventy-four years of age. Lady Hamilton has recently passed her thirty-fourth birthday. I was sensible of the fact and said so when I married that I should be superannuated when my wife would be in the full beauty and vigor of youth. Now that time has arrived, and we must make the best of it.”
“A man of your stature deserves naught but comfort in his later years,” Mary replied. She did not care if Sir William detected her disapproval of his situation.
“I shall remind you of that in years to come,” Elgin said.
According to Sir William, it was Emma who organized the escape of themselves and the royal family from Naples to Sicily when the French were marching on the city. “If she had not used her influence with Admiral Lord Nelson, who evacuated us, surely we would have been torn apart by the antimonarchists who welcomed a French-style revolution in Naples. If you wonder why Queen Maria Carolina is so very fond of my wife, it is because Emma saved her from the fate of her sister Marie Antoinette in France. The masses were calling for her head, you see.”
Sir William listed Emma’s services to himself and to the government as if he were telling a well-rehearsed tale. Mary felt awful; she was undoubtedly just another visitor to whom he had to defend his wife. According to Sir William, Emma had acted as a spy, passing secret letters written to Maria Carolina by the king of Spain to British intelligence, who considered the information contained within very valuable. Emma’s service as a spy to the British government was instrumental in securing an alliance between Naples and England, preventing Naples from going to the French. She was responsible in part for Nelson’s victory in Egypt because she single-handedly convinced the queen to provide victuals for the British navy after the Sicilian government had refused him.
No wonder Nelson had fallen in love with her!
“Her beauty is naught compared to her selfless courage and the breadth of her heart,” Sir William concluded.
Mary tried to contain her astonishment as well as her dismay that Sir William was extolling Emma in Elgin’s presence. She’d had no idea that a diplomat’s wife could or should be so influential. She intended to be a great partner and fierce helpmeet to her husband, but she wondered now if she would be able to be as effective as Emma Hamilton. But surely a woman of Mary’s birth, connections, and stature should have no difficulty in comparison to a former prostitute and the daughter of a blacksmith. Surely.