experiences she arose with a head unbowed and optimist eyes fronting the yet unshattered future. It is courage distinctly, and moral courage, too, though lacking in the finer spiritual qualities. But in judging her career and character, this courage and this marvellous power of recovery must not be forgotten.
She never could resist the enticing voice that called to her in the tone of kindness and affection : she responded with fatal quickness and no forethought. In the words of an American poet, who would have fully appreciated her vitality, she might have said, and thus summed up all her blunders and mistakes—
" Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I
shall follow,
As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps anywhere around the globe."
After parting from Greville, and until the te when she met Nelson, Emma regarded Sir r illiam Hamilton with real affection and devo-ion. In one of her letters she says, " He is so :ind, so good and tender to me that I love him much that I have not a warm look left for the eapolitans." When he tore himself away to shooting with the king at Persano, Emma rrote to him in the same agitated and warm-learted manner she had used to Greville so short time before— " I have just received your dear sweet letter,"
72 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
she tells him. "It has charmed me. I don't know what to say to you to thank you in words kind enough. Oh, how kind! Do you call me your dear friend ? Oh, what a happy creature is your Emma !—me that had no friend, no protector, no body that I could trust, and now to be the friend, the Emma, of Sir William Hamilton! If I had words to thank you, that I may not thus be choaked with meanings, for which I can find no utterance! Think only, my dear Sir William, what I would say to you, if I could express myself, only to thank you a thousand times."
Temporarily separated from him on a later occasion, she writes, within a few hours of the parting—
" I can't be happy till I have wrote to you, my dearest Sir William, tho* it is so lattely I saw you. But what of that to a person that loves as I do. One hour's absence is a year, and I shall count the hours and moments till Saturday, when I shall find myself once more in your dear kind arms, my dear Sir William, my friend, my All, my earthly Good, my Kind home in one, you are to me eating, drinking and cloathing, my comforter in distress. Then why shall I not love you ? Endead, I must and ought, whilst life is left in me, or reason to think on you. I believe it is right I should be sepe-rated from you sometimes, to make me know
s
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myself, for I don't know till you are absent how dear you are to me; and I won't tell you how many tears I shed for you this morning, and even now I can't stop them, for in thinking on you, my heart and eyes fill. ... I have had a long lesson, and am going now to have another, for musick quiets my mind, so that I shall study much tell I see you. I can't finish this subject tell I have thank'd you, my dearest Sir William, for having given me the means of at least amusing myself a little, if in your absence I can be amused. I owe everything to you, and shall for ever with gratitude remember it. Pray, one little line, if you have time, just that I may kiss your name. . . . Take care of your dear self."
In an earlier letter, written to Sir William while he was absent on one of his sporting expeditions, there is a touch of feminine pity for the victims of the sportsmen that shows how little hardened her heart was to suffering, though later a base calumny was to accuse her of exulting in the execution of Caracciolo. " I am glad you had some good sport," she writes, evidently using a conventional phrase, without considering its meaning, " I should like to see that that is 200 weight, for it must be a fine one; but the other 2, that got of wounded, they must be somewere in great pain."
But even for the pleasure of killing his dumb fellow-creatures Sir William Hamilton did not
74 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
leave his fair Emma often. She was so sweet and gay, such a joy to watch and to educate, that he could not tear himself away from her. She had masters of all sorts, to teach her Italian, to teach her singing; while the Palazzo Sessa was thronged with painters and sculptors, all occupied—by Sir William's orders—in perpetuating her beauty on canvas, in marble, in cameos. Inexhaustible good temper, as well as a considerable share of vanity, must have been necessary to enable her to endure the strain. In one of her letters of this period she says—
" The house is ful of painters painting me. He [Sir William] as now got nine pictures of me, and 2 a painting. Marchant is cutting my head in stone, that is in camea for a ring. There is another man modeling me in wax, and another in clay. All the artists is come from Rome to study from me, that Sir William as fitted up a room, that is calld the painting-room. Sir William is never a moment from me. He goes no where without me. He as no diners but what I can be of the party. No body comes without the[y] are civil to me. We have allways good company. . . . My old apartments is made the musick-rooms, where I have my lessons in the morning. Our house at Caserta is fitting up eleganter this year, a room making for my musick, and a room fitting up for my master, as he goes with ous. Sir William says he loves nothing but me, likes no
«
person to sing but me, and takes delight in all I do, and all I say, to see me happy. ... It is a most extraordinary thing that my voice is totally altered. It is the finest soprano, you ever heard, so that Sir William shuts his eyes and thinks one of the Castratos is singing; and, what is most extraordinary that my shake, or tril, what you call it, is so very good in every note, my master says that, if he did not feil and see and no that I am a substance, he would think I was an angel/'
In another and earlier letter she had carefully detailed for the benefit of the admiring Sir William some of the compliments on her music that she received during his absence :—
"Mr. Hart went awhay yesterday with his head turned; I sung so well Handell's 3 songs , . that you never saw a man so delighted. He said it was the most extraordinary thing he ever knew. But what struck him was holding on the notes and going from the high to the low notes so very neat. He says I shall turn the heads of the English. . . . Galucci played solo some of my solfegos and you whold have thought he would have gone mad. He says he had heard a great deal of me. But he never saw or heard of such a whoman before. He says when he first came in, I frightened him with a Majesty and Juno look that I receved him with. Then he says that whent of on being more acquainted, and I enchanted him by my politeness and the
76 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
maner in which I did the honors, and then I made him allmost cry with Handels; and with the comick he could not contain himself, for he says he never saw the tragick and comick muse blended so happily together."
Emma certainly did not mind " the butter spread too thick ! "
In the late summer of 1787 she commenced writing again to Charles Greville, keeping a sort of journal-letter for his benefit which gives a vivacious account of her doings for about four months. She allows herself the luxury of a few reproaches at the beginning, but it should be remembered that the generous creature never said or did anything that could injure the nephew's prospects with his uncle, though it was fully in her power to have done so had she cherished a taste for revenge.
"Altho' you never think me worth writing to," she says, " yet I cannot so easily forget you, and whenever I have had any particular pleasure, I feil as tho' I was not right tell I had communicated it to my dearest Greville. For you will ever be dear to me, and tho' we cannot be together, lett ous corespond as freinds. I have a happiness in hearing from you, and a comfort in communicating my little storeys to you, because I flatter myself that you still love the name of that Emma, that was once very dear to you."
After this little outburst, she tells him of her
visits and her singing, and how she draws pictures of Vesuvius—all with a charming simplicity and friendliness that Greville certainly did not deserve. Then she goes on—
"
We was last night up Vesuvus [if she could draw the mountain she couldn't spell its name!] at twelve a clock, and in my life I never saw so fine a sight. The lava runs about five mile down from the top; for the mountain is not burst, as ignorant people say it is. But, when we got to the Hermitage, there was the finest fountain of liquid fire falling down a great precipice, and as it run down it sett fire to the trees and brushwood, so that the mountain looked like one entire mountain of fire. We saw the lava surround the poor hermit's house, and take possession of the chapel, notwithstanding it was covered with pictures of Saints and other religios preservitaves against the fury of nature. For me, I was enraptured. I could have staid all night there, and I have never been in charity with the moon since, for it looked so pale and sickly; and the red-hot lava served to light up the moon, for the light of the moon was nothing to the lava. We met the Prince Royal on the mountain. But his foolish tuters onely took him up a little whay, and did not lett him stay 3 minuets; so, when we asked him how he liked it, he said, * Bella ma poca roba,' when, if they had took him five hundred yards higher, he would have seen the noblest, sublimest
78 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
sight in the world. But, poor creatures, the[y] were frightened out of their sences, and glad to make a hasty retreat.—O, I shall kill my selfe with laughing! Their has been a prince paying us a visit. He is sixty years of age, one of the first families, and as all ways lived at Naples, and when I told him I had been to Caprea, he asked me if I went there by land. Only think, what ignorance! I staired at him and asked him who was his tutor."
It was very delightful to this daughter of a village blacksmith to be able to " stair " at princes and ask them who was responsible for their amazing ignorance! It was delightful, also, to be entertained as the guest of honour on board a Dutch man-of-war. She describes everything for Greville's benefit in the same lengthy letter—
" There was the Comodore, and the Captain and four more of the first officers waited to conduct ous to the ship. The 2 ships was dress'd out so fine in all the collowrs; the men all put in order; a band of musick and all the marrine did their duty, and when we went on board, twenty peices of cannon fired. But as we past the frigate, she fired all her guns, that I wish you had seen it. We sett down thirty to dine,— me at the head of the table, mistress of the feast, drest all in virgin white and my hair all in rinlgets, reaching allmost to my heals. I asure you it is so long, that I realy look'd and moved amongst
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fe *
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it, Sir William said so. That night there was a great opera at St. Carlo's, in honor of the King of Spain's name-day. So St. Carlos was illu-manated, and everybody in great galla. Well, I had the finest dress made up on purpose, as I had a box near the King and Queen. My gown was purple sattin, wite sattin peticoat trimd with crape and spangles. My cap lovely, from Paris, all white fethers. My hair was to have been delightfully dres'd, as I have a very good hairdresser. But for me unfortunately, the diner on board did not finish tell half-past-five, English. Then the Comodore would have another bottle to drink to the loveliest whoman in the world, as the[y] cald me at least. I whispered to Sir William and told him I should be angry with him, if he did not get up to go, as we was to dress, and it was necessary to be at the theatre before the royal party. So at last the[y] put out the boat, to offer a salute from the 2 ships of all the guns. We arrived on shoar with the Comodore and five princapal officers, and in we all crowd into our coach, which is large. We just got in time to the Opera. The Comodore went with ous, and the officers came next and attended my box all the time, and behaved to me as tho' I was a Queen."
Emma's own letters and all the personal records of this time give the most brilliant picture of her success—she quotes with much satisfaction
80 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
the praise of Prince Dietrichstein, " he says I am a dymond of the first watter, and the finest creature on the hearth." The praise of princes is not necessarily worth much, but in spite of her vanity there was a sort of native sweetness and overflowing kindness in Emma that won the praise of others than princes — servants and peasants loved her, good old priests and a whole convent-full of nuns were quite enchanted with her, and in spite of her reprehensible position and her amazing beauty society ladies admired and liked her, even when her unaided eyes outshone their diamonds, and her simple " wite sattin" put their expensive splendours in the shade. It was a real triumph for Emma—won by tact and an unaffected warm heart. Ladies of fashion, as a rule, are very merciless to a woman in the " Signora Hart's " position. Slights and stabs no doubt she had to endure, but they were comparatively few, and the real wonder is that her head was not completely turned by all the adulation she received. The Empress of Russia commissioned her portrait; and when Madame Vigee Le Brun, flying from distracted France, came to Naples, Sir William Hamilton invited her to paint his "fair Grecian," as he called Emma. She was painted once more as a Bacchante, resting on a leopard-skin in a cave by the sea, a wine-cup in her hand. It lacks the wild-wood grace and radiant charm of Romney's
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portraits, and is a little heavy. But though not conspicuously successful in the picture, Madame Le Brun described her looks with admiration, " Her lovely face was very animated. She had an enormous quantity of beautiful chestnut hair, which, when loose, completely covered her : thus, as a Bacchante, she was perfect."
But Emma Hart was not content to remain the "perfect Bacchante." New abilities and powers were making themselves felt through all ! her gaieties and love of admiration, new ambitions were stirring in her. She had conquered one position, she had become indispensable to Sir William Hamilton, who had told his remonstrating niece, Mrs. Dickenson, that Emma " was necessary to his happiness," as well as "the handsomest, loveliest, cleverest, and best creature in the world." But if she had conquered Sir William's heart it was by the warmth of her own, not by any calculating scheme of self-advantage, for she wrote in 1791 with her usual ardour of conviction, " I confess ... I doat on him. Nor I never can love any other person but him." Her affections pointed the same way as her dawning ambitions. She had not pressed the point, she had waited through several years, but she had never abandoned her intention to fulfil the statement she made to Greville in 1786, " I will make him marry me."
CHAPTER VI
MARRIAGE
WHEN the charming and gracious Elizabeth Gunning, Duchess of Argyll, died at the end of 1790, Emma had many reasons for sadness. She wrote to Greville, " You may think of my afflictions, when I heard of the Duchess of Argyll's death. I never had such a friend as her, and that you will know, when I see you and recount to you all the acts of kindness she shewd to me; for they where too good and numerous to describe in a letter. Think then to a heart of sensibility and gratitude, what it must suffer."
By her first marriage the Duchess was related to Sir William Hamilton, and when she came to Naples for her health in 1789, she met Emma, and took an immediate liking to her. She threw the whole weight of her great social influence into the scales on Emma's side, and by so doing easily made Emma's detractors—who were not so conspicuous for virtue as for small-mindedness and backbiting—of very little account. Emma was naturally grateful to the great lady and generous woman who had understood that though
unwedded she was not an abandoned creature— the more grateful as it was no condescending patronage the Duchess of Argyll gave her, but a genuine and affectionate friendship.
The countenance and support of the lovely and irreproachable Duchess were of immense | help to Emma at one of the crises of her existence. Sir William Hamilton had not yet come to share ler wishes about marriage. " I fear/' he wrote,
I that her views are beyond what I can bring myself :o execute, and that when her hopes on this point ire over she will make herself and me unhappy." But he admitted at the same time that " hitherto ler conduct is irreproachable."
Still, in spite of her ad
mirable conduct, there vas a considerable gulf between Emma's wishes ind Sir William's intentions. This gulf the Duchess of Argyll set herself to bridge on Emma's >ehalf. She urged him to do the right thing .nd make the woman who had adorned his house Dr three years his wife. How far she prevailed nd turned his mind in the desired direction is hown by a letter written to Greville from Naples i March, 1791, by a certain worldly-wise friend f his named Heneage Legge : —
"Her [Emma's] influence over him exceeds
II belief. . . . The language of both parties, ho always spoke in the plural number—we, us, id ours—stagger'd me at first, but soon made ic determined to speak openly to him on the
84 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
subject, when he assur'd me, what I confess I was most happy to hear, that he was not married ; but flung out some hints of doing justice to her good behaviour, if his public situation did not forbid him to consider himself an independant man. . . . She gives everybody to understand that he is now going to England to solicit the K.'s consent to marry her. ... I am confident she will gain her point, against which it is the duty of every friend to strengthen his mind as much as possible; and she will be satisfied with no argument but the King's absolute refusal of his approbation. Her talents and powers of I amusing are very wonderful. Her voice is very fine, but she does not sing with great taste, and Aprili says she has not a good ear; her Attitudes are beyond description beautiful and striking, and I think you will find her figure much improved since you last saw her. They say they shall be in London by the latter end of May, that theirs stay in England will be as short as possible, and that, having settled his affairs, he is determined) never to return. She is much visited here byj ladies of the highest rank, and many of the corp& diplomatique ; does the honours of his house with great attention and desire to please, but wants 1 ! a little refinement of manners."
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