Nelson's Lady Hamilton

by Meynell, Esther

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  was a little girl; so you may gess how that is. ... Would you believe, on Sattarday we had a little quarel, I mean Emma and me; and I did slap her on her hands, and when she came to kiss me and make it up, I took her on my lap and cried. Pray, do you blame me or not ? Pray tell me. Oh, Greville, you don't know how I love her. Endead I do. When she comes and looks in my face and calls me 'mother/ endead I then truly am a mother, for all the mother's feelings rise at once, and tels me I am or ought to be a mother, for she has a wright to my protection ; and she shall have it as long as I can, and I will do all in my power to prevent her falling into the error her poor miserable mother fell into. But why do I say miserable ? Am not I happy abbove any of my sex, at least in my situation ? Does not Greville love me, or at least like me ? Does not he protect me ? Is not he a father to my child ? Why do I call myself miserable ? No ; it was a mistake, and I will be happy, chearful and kind, and do all my poor abbility will lett me, to return the fatherly goodness and protection he has shewn. Again, my dear Greville, the recollection of past scenes brings tears in my eyes. But they are tears of happiness. To think of your goodness is too much. But once for all, Greville, I will be grateful. Adue. It is near bathing time, and I must lay down my pen, and I won't finish till I see when the post comes,

  whether there is a letter. He conies in abbout one o'clock. I hope to have a letter to-day. . . . Greville, I am oblidged to give a shilling a day for the bathing horse and whoman, and twopence a day for the dress. It is a great expense, and it fretts me when I think of it."

  It is a sufficient proof of Emma's real attachment to Greville that she was so exercised in her mind about economy. She loved Greville; she had an idea already that he was somewhat straitened for money; so the expenditure of even a few pennies a day fretted her—when they were his pennies—who was naturally so large and easy in her dealings. She retained this careful feeling about money for some years after she went to Italy, and then circumstances did their work, and the woman who had been distressed at spending twopence a day over a bathing-dress became a gambler who loved to play for high stakes, and would lose ^500 of Nelson's money at the faro-tables—so the story goes—with more indifference than she spent a shilling of Greville's.

  But the Emma of Parkgate is not the Emma of Palermo ; instead, she is a somewhat pathetic, trustful creature, half woman and half child, whose whole existence hangs for the time on the coming of a letter from the forgetful Greville. Two days later she adds to the letter already quoted—

  " With what impatience do I sett down to

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  wright till I see the postman. But sure I shall have a letter to-day. Can you, Greville— no, you can't—have forgot your poor Emma allready ? Tho' I am but a few weeks absent from you, my heart will not one moment leave you. I am allways thinking of you, and cou'd allmost fancy I hear you, see you ; and think, Greville, what a disapointment when I find myself deceived, and ever nor never heard from you. But my heart wont lett me scold you. Endead, it thinks on you with two much tenderness. So do wright, my dear Greville. Don't you remember how you promised ? Don't you recollect what you said at parting ? how you shou'd be happy to see me again ? O Greville, think on me with kindness ! Think how many happy days weeks and years—I hope—we may yett pass. And think out of some that is past, there as been some little pleasure as well as pain; and, endead, did you but know how much I love you, you would freily forgive me any passed quarrels. For I now suffer for them, and one line from you would make me happy."

  Greville's behaviour to Emma at this time is a forecast of his later behaviour to her when she had gone to Naples. His admiration and pleasure in her was that of the connoisseur and collector—she delighted his eyes, but she did not really stir that very self-contained heart of his. Absent from this woman, whom he considered

  LADY HAMILTON

  SKETCH. GEORGE ROMNEY

  " as perfect a thing as can be found in all Nature," he was more or less indifferent to her appeals and her pathetic letters. He probably regarded the separation as salutary, not only for her health—• " You can't think how soult the watter is," Emma told him with artless amazement—but also as a mental discipline. Greville had a strong strain of the pedant in his character, and was particularly gifted in a style of lofty reproof.

  After a considerable interval he replied to Emma's long missives; but his first letter could not have been agreeable, for in reply to his second she was moved to say, " I was very happy, my dearest Greville, to hear from you, as your other letter vex'd me; you scolded me so." Then she goes on to discuss the education and the future of little Emma. Her wish to have the child with her permanently at the house in Edgware Row had been negatived by Greville— he was willing to pay for the child's keep and schooling, but he did not intend to burden himself with her presence. So Emma, who was adaptable to his wishes, even when they so markedly crossed her own, wrote to him: " I come into your whay athinking; hollidays spoils children. It takes there attention of from there scool, it gives them a bad habbit. When they have been a month and goes back this does not pleas them, and that is not wright, and the[y] do nothing but think when the[y] shall go back again. Now

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  Emma will never expect what she never had." In the postscript of the same letter she adds, " I bathe Emma, and she is very well and grows. Her hair will grow very well on her forehead, and I don't think her nose will be very snub. Her eyes is blue and pretty. But she don't speak through her nose, but she speaks country-fied, but she will forget it. We squable sometimes ; still she is fond of me, and endead I love her. For she is sensible. So much for Beauty." One further extract from this Parkgate correspondence, in reference to Sir William Hamilton, is interesting in view of later events. Emma sends him her "kind love," and bids Greville "Tell him next to you I love him abbove any body, and that I wish I was with him to give him a kiss."

  CHAPTER IV

  A BARGAIN AND ITS RESULTS

  EMMA returned to Edgware Row, all eager to begin her domestic life again, though already aware from Greville's "kind instructing letter," that he meant to rearrange things somewhat. She writes to him in a letter of this time—

  " You shall have your appartment to yourself, you shall read, wright, or sett still, just as you please ; for I shall think myself happy to be under the seam roof with Greville, and do all I can to make it agreable, without disturbing him in any pursuits that he can follow, to employ himself in at home or else whare. For your absence has taught me that I ought to think myself happy if I was within a mile of you."

  A week or two after Emma's return, when everything was in readiness in his little household, Greville himself came home. But he was not so eager as Emma to begin again the game which was her " whole existence" to the woman. His financial difficulties were pressing upon him.

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  The " reasonable plan," as recommended by his relatives, was to marry an heiress, which he could hardly do while he had Emma on his hands ; and the impulse to get rid of her was heightened by the fact that Sir William had signified his willingness to become responsible for her.

  In the whole of the cold-blooded transaction which eventually transferred the trusting Emma to Naples, the only good thing that can be said for Greville is that not even in the pursuit of the desirable heiress did he intend to turn Emma adrift as Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh had done. It was his intention to give her a little income of her own, and he begged Sir William also to settle something on her. In a letter to his uncle he says, with a very just appreciation of Emma's character at this time—

  " She shall never want, and if I decide sooner than I am forced to stop by necessity, it will be that I may give her part of my pittance; and, if I do so it must be by sudden resolution and by putting it out of her power to refuse it, for I know her disinterestedness to be such that she will rather encounter any difficulty than distress me. I should not write to you thus,
if I did not think you seem'd as partial as I am to her."

  Another portion of this letter contains the gist of the business, put forth without any of

  that subtle circumlocution which was generally so pleasing to the Honourable Charles Greville: " If you did not chuse a wife," he tells his uncle, " I wish the tea-maker of Edgware Rowe was yours, if I could without banishing myself from a visit to Naples. I do not know how to part with what I am not tired with : I do not know how to go on, and I give her every merit of prudence and moderation and affection."

  Two of Greville's interests would be served by the transference of Emma to his uncle's care. Sir William would be less likely to marry if he had the " fair tea-maker " to amuse him, and as Greville had reason to regard himself as his childless uncle's heir, he did not wish Sir William to marry again. Also, once Emma was off his hands he could look round for the young lady of wealth and accomplishments who was to repair his fortunes. It may be said, in passing, that he never found her, which was, perhaps, in the phrase of the old country people who look directly for the hand of Providence in every event, " a judgment" on him.

  But meanwhile Emma was unconscious of all the schemes to get rid of her; unconscious of all the nicely veiled transactions which were already turning the path of her life towards the point where she and Nelson met.

  Romney was once more painting her portrait —this time for Sir William Hamilton. She was

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  painted as a " Bacchante," with a dog who leaps and barks at her while she moves forward with archly smiling face, her unbound hair and her long skirts flowing behind her in fine, free lines ; it is one of the most exquisite of his pictures of the " divine lady." Sir William Hamilton might well desire to have the original as well as the "counterfeit presentment." Greville wrote to him at this time : " Emma is very grateful for your remembrance. Her picture shall be sent by the first ship. I wish Romney yet to mend the dog."

  It is sad to think of the poor " Bacchante," smiling so gaily upon the little world that was her all, and that she thought loved and cared for her, while the whole time Greville was planning —with a nice regard for every one's feelings but Emma's—to hand her over to his uncle.

  It is not necessary to go into all the plotting and counterplotting that went on for many months between the two. Greville was sufficiently sensible of the difficulty of getting rid of a girl so affectionate and devoted to him that she had already declined two offers of honourable marriage and at least one offer of a similar position considerably more gilded. She would only go to Naples if she was under a misapprehension as to the nature and duration of her visit. So Greville wrote to Sir William—

  " If you could form a plan by which you could

  ' BACCHANTE"

  GEOKGE KOMNEY

  A BARGAIN AND ITS RESULTS 51

  have a trial, and could invite her and tell her that I ought not to leave England, and that I cannot afford to go on; and state it as a kindness to me if she would accept your invitation, she would go with pleasure. She is to be six weeks at some bathing place ; and when you could write an answer to this, and inclose a letter to her, I could manage it ; and either by land, by the coach to Geneva, and from thence by Vettu-rino forward her, or else by sea. I must add that I could not manage it so well later; after a month, and absent from me, she would consider the whole more calmly. If there was in the world a person she loved so well as yourself after me, I could not arrange with so much sangfroid; and I am sure I would not let her go to you, if any risque of the usual coquetry of the sex [were] likely to give uneasiness."

  Sir William Hamilton himself, when in London, had painted to Emma in vivid colours the advantages and charms of Italy; how her beauty and her voice would alike expand and glow in that sunny atmosphere, promising that with Italian cultivation she might well become the first singer of her day. The people of Italy, impulsive and ardent, the radiant climate, the gorgeous scenery of the Bay of Naples, the gay, dirty, fascinating city itself, all were exactly suited to her temperament and character. Paddington Green must have seemed a little dull to Emma

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  as Sir William drew his skilful contrasts. But then London and Paddington Green meant Greville, and so her affectionate heart swung the balance even.

  It was something over a year from the time of the British Ambassador's return to Naples before Greville considered his plans sufficiently well laid and the occasion ripe to bring about Emma's transplantation.

  So, according to arrangement, one day at the end of 1785 a letter arrived from Sir William Hamilton inviting Emma and her mother to pay him a visit of several months' duration, so that Emma might cultivate her fine voice in a congenial atmosphere, and Greville rearrange his financial affairs in England. At the end of the time Greville was to come out to Naples and fetch them home. At first Emma was all tears and protestations ; she could not endure to be separated from Greville, " whom you know I love tenderly," as she told Sir William. She found that six weeks at a watering-place away from him made her quite wretched; how could she contemplate calmly a separation of six months or more ?

  But when Greville made it plain to her that she would be serving his interests with his uncle by consenting to go, that in no other way could she so please him and show her devotion, her protests were at an end—though not her tears.

  A BARGAIN AND ITS RESULTS 53

  The day before she arrived in Naples, Sir William had written to his nephew : " You may be assured I will comfort her for the loss of you as well as I am able, but I know, from the small specimens during your absence from London, that I shall have at times many tears to wipe from those charming eyes." He, at any rate, did not make the mistake of under-valuing the strength of her attachment to Greville.

  The excitement of the journey through Europe under the care of her mother and Mr. Gavin Hamilton, the enchantments of the Bay of Naples spread beneath her windows, could not divert her thoughts from the man she had parted from so reluctantly and sadly, even though she thought the parting only temporary. The day of her arrival, the 26th of April, 1786, was also her birthday; and a few days later she wrote to Greville—

  " I dreaded setting down to write, for I try to appear as chearful before Sir William as I could, and I am sure to cry the moment I think of you. For I feel more and more unhappy at being separated from you, and if my fatal ruin depends on seeing you, I will and must at the end of the sumer. For to live without you is impossible. I love you to that degree that at this time there is not a hardship upon hearth either of poverty, cold, death, or even to walk barefooted to Scotland to see you, but

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  what I would undergo. Therefore my dear, dear Greville, if you do love me, for my sake, try all you can to come hear as soon as possible. ... I find it is not either a fine horse, or a fine coach, or a pack of servants, or plays, or operas, can make happy. It is you that as it in your power either to make me very happy or very miserable." Referring to the day of her arrival, she goes on, " It was my birthday, and I was very low-spirited. Oh God! that day that you used to smile on me and stay at home, and be kind to me—that that day I should be at such a distance from you! But my comfort is that I rely upon your promise, and September or October I shall see you/'

  Sir William Hamilton had made all possible arrangements for her comfort and that of her mother, Mrs. Cadogan, who was to lend her easy chaperonage and throw a mantle of propriety over everything. The British Ambassador did not at first receive them in his own house, or lend them his carriages and liveried servants, so well known in Naples. To have done so would have exposed Emma Hart to misconstruction; so he fitted up for her an apartment of four rooms looking out on the Bay of Naples, he gave her a carriage and a boat of her own, and servants in her own livery. Besides these things, which she shared with her mother, he made her many personal gifts. She writes a

  A BARGAIN AND ITS RESULTS 55

  delighted catalogue to Greville, divert
ed for the moment from her grief and dimly moving fears by the feminine pleasure in pretty things.

  " Sir William as give me a camlet shawl, like my old one," she tells him. " I know you will be pleased to hear that, and he as given me a beautiful gown, cost 25 guineas (India painting on wite sattin) and several little things of Lady Hamilton's, and is going to by me some muslin dresses loose, to tye with a sash for the hot weather — made like the turkey dresses, the sleeves tyed in fowlds with ribban and trimd with lace. In short, he is always contriving what he shall get for me. The people admire my English dresses. But the blue hat, Greville, pleases most. Sir William is quite inchanted with it."

  What a picture is conjured up by the artless little statement that "the blue hat pleases most"! One can almost see the pretty creature, with her English freshness of colouring, looking out from under the becoming brim of her blue hat— looking with young interest and pleasure at the Italians, who already frantically admired her; looking most of all, rather wistful and afraid under her smiles, at Sir William, whose manner already disturbed her. She liked admiration; she had enjoyed the ambassador's delight in her beauty when he was in London and Greville was at hand, but here in Naples alone it was not