Kate Williams
Page 31
∗ The Prince had renounced Mrs. Fitzherbert to marry Caroline, but not his many mistresses or his reputation as a ladies’ man.
† Broadside was a term for a cheap printed song or pamphlet, as well as a naval term describing the moment when a battleship fired all its guns (from one side) into the enemy. Partly a comment on the outpouring of satiric material the publicity-seeking pair inspired, it was a very rude joke about Nelson’s virility.
Isaac Cruikshank’s Smoking Attitudes. The Lord Mayor, Sir William, and Prime Minister Pitt enjoy tobacco together. Nelson and Emma are, as ever, utterly absorbed in each other.
Society commentators found Emma’s behavior bewildering, although they hardly blinked when a man kept both mistress and wife (such as the setup at Devonshire House, where the duke lived with both his wife and Bess Foster, her friend and his mistress). Sir William excused his wife because he loved her, valued her companionship, and welcomed not having to be her sole support. And, as he knew, his only alternative was being alone. “A man of my age ought not to be attach’d to any worldly thing too much,” he wrote, “but certain it is the greatest attachment I have is the friendship and society of Lrd N. and my dear Emma.” He also felt a little guilty for asking her to sacrifice her desire for children. Because Emma was happy with Nelson, she was kinder and more solicitous to him than she had been for some time. He always defended his wife and told everyone how much he loved her. He could have sought to harm the relationship by telling Nelson about Emma Carew, but he never disclosed the secret.
The Nelsons and the Hamiltons spent most evenings together at parties, dinners, or theater trips. Fanny sat bolt upright with misery as she watched her husband in ecstasies over Emma’s singing and dancing. At his box in Covent Garden, after a musical performance of The Mouth of the Nile, Nelson forced his wife to sit on his left, with Emma on his right, so that, as everybody saw, his mistress could help him eat when he wanted to enjoy a snack in the interval. As one newspaper put it, “Lady Hamilton sat on that side of Lord Nelson on which he is disarmed.” The Morning Herald reported that Emma was “embonpoint” but “extremely pretty” in a blue satin gown and plumed headdress, while Fanny wore a white dress and small white feather.6
Emma also planted stories in the newspapers and encouraged her friends to do the same. The Morning Post reported, “Lady Hamilton is fitting up a room for the purpose of displaying her attitudes and in a short time she will give large attitude parties. Attitudes, it is thought, will be much more in vogue this winter than shape” (a reference to Emma’s lost figure).7 The Times predicted she would be received at court on November 18, and reminded its readers that the Queen of Naples had written to Queen Charlotte praising Emma, adding it was thanks to Emma’s “exertions” that Nelson’s fleet was victualed and thus able to win at the Battle of the Nile.8
Nelson bought a black terrier dog from a shop in Holborn, adorned with a silver collar, called him Nileus, and gave him to Emma. Emma patched up her old disagreement with Anne Darner and commissioned her to sculpt a huge marble bust of Nelson. The Morning Post joked about his flirtatious sittings for the “fair artist” and compared the nose of the statue to Nelson’s manhood.
When he was without Emma, Nelson behaved cruelly to his wife. At a dinner with Lady Spencer, wife of the Lord of the Admiralty, who he thought took Fanny’s side, Nelson was sullen. When Fanny offered him a walnut she had shelled for him, he refused it so roughly that it flew across the room and smashed a glass. Fanny fled and wept outside the door. Only Emma was allowed to prepare his food for him, to love him. He no longer cared who knew it.
CHAPTER 38
Show Time
On November 24, the Hamiltons and the Nelsons arranged to see Richard Sheridan’s version of Pizarro, a play by the popular German playwright August von Kotzebue. A tragic drama of love and revenge, Pizarro had become inordinately popular during the conflict between England and France. The audience cheered any possible allusion to fighting the good fight, the players delivered their speeches as pro-war tirades, and the actor playing Pizarro hammed up comparisons of the heroic main character to Nelson by wearing Nile dress and swashbuckling around the stage. Announcements that Nelson had ordered a box caused a huge crush for tickets, even on a Monday night. The house was crowded in every part by a “splendid assemblage of beauty and fashion,” trilled the Morning Herald. The excitable crowds burst into applause when Nelson arrived, and did so repeatedly throughout the play1 Fanny attempted to concentrate on the stage as Nelson and Emma whispered together and petted. She was miserable and longed to be back at 17 Dover Street—but there was much worse to come.
Jane Powell, Emma’s old friend, starred as Elvira, and Pizarro was John Kemble, whom Emma had already met and charmed.∗ Like Emma, Jane had come far since the days of scrubbing at Dr. Budd’s, and she was now an accomplished tragedienne, second only to the great Sarah Siddons. It was a setup—either Emma had met Jane a few days before and plotted with her, or Jane had guessed at the way to please Nelson’s mistress and gain herself some notoriety into the bargain. The high point in the play came when the actress playing Elvira threatened vengeful Pizarro that she would defeat him if he attacked her. The audience was expectant. Jane waited for a degree of quiet, and then delivered the killer line. She taunted Pizarro to “wave thy glittering sword”; then, to the amazement of the crowd, she paused and turned to look straight at Lady Nelson before crying, “And meet and survive—an injured woman’s fury.”
∗ Emma knew well in advance that Jane had taken the lead role, since it would have been advertised.
Fanny let out a scream of shock. She had been demeaned repeatedly, and now an actress was dubbing her an “injured woman” in front of everybody. The theater dissolved in uproar. Fanny fainted. Nelson refused to leave the box, and Fanny suffered the indignity of being carried out by their servants. Nelson was infuriated with his wife for making a scene, but everybody else could hardly believe what they had just witnessed, and journalists went wild for the news. One newspaper reported that Emma helped Fanny and Nelson’s father away from the theater and into the carriage. Poor Fanny was so bereft of her husband’s support that she had to depend on the woman she hated more than anyone in the world. The Morning Herald remarked that Fanny was “for some days in a very indifferent state of health.”2
Emma was beginning to feel the strain of keeping up appearances. At a dinner she was seized with nausea and vomited repeatedly in a basin in front of Fanny. It was looking increasingly unlikely that she would be received at court, as Queen Charlotte showed no signs of relenting in the face of media pressure. Nelson had not improved his popularity with the royals by his predilection for converting “God Save the King” into a hymn to his own victories. They could not refuse to see him, but they could snub Emma. In an effort to cheer her up, Nelson accepted an invitation to spend Christmas with Sir William’s friend and relation, William Beckford, at his crazy Gothic-style mansion, Fonthill Abbey. Rumors abounded about Fonthill, and only Britain’s chosen few stepped inside its luxurious doors. Leaving Fanny alone in London, with only her pompous brother-in-law William and his wife for company, Emma, Nelson, and Sir William set off for an eccentric winter break. Beckford promised that Nelson and Emma could stay free from “the sight and prattle of drawing room Parasites,” but it was impossible to escape the reporters.3 The public was always hungry to read every slavering detail about Nelson and Emma—where they stayed, who they met, and what they wore, ate, and drank.
Local volunteers in army dress playing “Rule Britannia” welcomed the visitors from London. Friends from Naples also attended: the soprano Brigida Banti, Emma’s old duet partner, French émigrés, and other nobles and dignitaries. The Gentleman’s Magazine reported the entertainment in luxurious detail to readers across England. After a tour of the flamboyant house led by hooded servants carrying torches, the guests were ushered to Beckford’s sumptuous purple-draped reception rooms. Sitting nervously on priceless ivory chairs around ebony
tables, they enjoyed an exquisite dinner served from huge silver dishes, expensive wines, and “confectionery served in gold baskets,” under glittering gold lights. At eleven at night, when everybody’s attention was heightened,
Lady Hamilton appeared in the character of Agrippina, bearing the ashes of Germanicus in a golden urn, as she presented them before the Roman people…. Lady Hamilton displayed with truth and energy every gesture, attitude, and expression of countenance which could be conceived in Agrippina herself, best calculated to have moved the passions of the Romans on behalf of their favourite General. The action of her head, of her hands, and arms in the various positions of the urn; in her manner of presenting it before the Romans, or of holding it up to the Gods in the act of supplication, was most classically graceful. Every change of dress, principally of the head, to suit the different situations in which she successively presented herself, was performed instantaneously with the most perfect ease, and, without returning or scarcely turning aside a moment from the spectators.
Half drunk, satiated with sweetmeats and dazzled by Beckford’s elaborate decor, Nelson fell in love with Emma all over again. The delighted company wept at her “pathetically addressed” speech as Agrippina. Heavily pregnant, Emma emphasized her condition by playing maternal roles instead of more provocative nymphs. The journalist compared the experience of watching her to “magic” and decided, “I can scarcely help doubting whether the whole of the last evening’s entertainment were a reality or only the visionary coinage of fancy.“4 Behind her back, Beckford joked she was “Lord Nelson’s Lady Hamilton or anybody else’s Lady Hamilton,” but to her face, he eulogized “that light alone which beams from your Image ever before my fancy like a Vision of the Madonna della Gloria.“5
On December 26, they returned to a bleak London. Nelson went back to Dover Street, where Fanny awaited him. Emma could not give birth in 22 Grosvenor Square, for it was not their own house but Beckford’s, so Sir William quickly rented a large and handsome town house in the prime location of 23 Piccadilly, facing Green Park. Emma was still just about able to get around, and they began to pack their belongings. Their old friend Louis Dutens, acting as their de facto assistant, took charge of furnishings. He worried that there were not enough beds for the eight servants, arranged to dye the dining room curtains, and wrote that he would move her bed from the room facing north to “be placed in that fronting the South, looking onto the Park.” The bed had presumably been in the room adjoining Sir William’s chamber, and she wished to give birth in a room farther from him.6
On January 1, Nelson’s promotion to vice admiral was confirmed and he prepared to receive new orders to go to sea. Emma tried to be pleased for him, but she was miserable that he would not be with her for the birth, and perhaps would not return for a year. The promotion prompted Fanny to make an ultimatum. She could no longer bear the humiliation of her position, and she dreaded Nelson returning to sea with the situation unresolved. She begged him to tell her if he had ever mistrusted her or doubted her fidelity, covertly implying to Nelson that he might doubt Emma’s ability to be loyal to him while he was away. She declared she was weary of “dear Lady Hamilton, and am resolved that you shall give up either her or me.” Nelson was livid that Fanny had dared tell him what to do. He chose Emma and decided to take steps to formalize his separation from his wife. That same night, he left for Plymouth to embark on his ship, the San Josef Fanny had lost Nelson for good. He never saw her again.
CHAPTER 39
A Pledge of Love
As the Morning Post joked, Lady Hamilton had arrived in London C_/ £ in the “nick of time.“1 With only a month of her pregnancy to go, Emma was big and uncomfortable in her new home. Carrying a baby was much more difficult than when she was seventeen, and, like many women at that time, she was afraid of dying in childbirth. Only a few years later, Mary Shelley died in agony after a doctor tore out her undelivered placenta with his bare hands. Mrs. Cadogan cared for Emma and told inquisitive visitors and journalists that she was in bed with a cold. The doctor came secretly to escape the attention of the press. Amid the confusion, Nileus hurtled off into the park. Emma frantically advertised for her dog in the newspapers, offering a lavish reward, but he was never found.2
Nelson arranged to sell Roundwood, his home with Fanny. Unlike many men, who left their wives no property or money on separation, he gave Fanny half his income, the equivalent now of about $120,000 a year. Although taking half his income signified their separation, Fanny refused to be beaten. On receiving her first payment on January 13, 1801, she wrote warmly to thank the “man whose affection constitutes my happiness.” When she heard that Nelson was ill with eye pain, and knowing that Emma was in no fit state to travel, she offered to come and comfort him. Enraged, Nelson replied, “Whether I am blind or not, it is nothing to any person, I want neither nursing nor attention, and had you come here, I should not have gone on shore nor would you have come afloat. I fixed as I thought a proper allowance to enable you to remain quiet.“3 He wrote to Emma that he had sent such a stinging rebuff that he worried “you will think I have gone too far,” begging her not to be angry at the strength of the letter.4 Fanny continued to promote herself as the perfect wife to Nelson’s friends. She had already implied to him that Emma would be unable to endure the prolonged separation and would find fresh company elsewhere, and she hoped fervently this would come true.
Nelson wrote regularly to Emma, sometimes twice a day, brimming with “all the affection which is possible for man to feel towards Woman and such a Woman.” He was lonely and overworked, complaining that his “business” was “endless.“5 Nelson’s eye became inflamed, as it did in periods of stress, and he begged Emma to sew him some green shades to shield it from the light.6 Lord St. Vincent, less than thrilled to be in charge of England’s biggest celebrity lover, grumbled he was so obsessed with Emma that he wrote four letters a day. Far from her, he was becoming fretful about the child due to be born.
In their letters, Nelson and Emma established an elaborate secret code to discuss Emma’s condition. They pretended he wrote to Emma on behalf of a sailor on his ship called Thomson or Thompson, whose pregnant wife was under Emma’s protection. William Hamilton became Mrs. Thompson’s uncle. Since the publication of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s La Nouvelk Héloise, English aristocrats had rushed to adopt pen names to conduct their amorous correspondence, enjoying the frisson of speaking in code and pretending to be a member of the lower classes. The code of the “Thompsons” was more of a mutual thrill than a useful strategy. Firing off letters late at night, Nelson was often so carried away by feeling that he wrote “I” instead of “Thompson.”
Nelson instructed his friend and prize agent, Alexander Davison, to hustle Fanny out of town. “I will stay on purpose,” she protested. But Davison increased the pressure and none of Nelson’s family or friends would support her, so she was forced to leave. Nelson wrote to a triumphant Emma, “Let her go to Brighton or wherever she pleases, I care not; she is a great fool and thank god you are not in the least like her.” The stage was clear for Emma to give birth.
Emma locked herself in her room and crossed her fingers, praying for a boy. Only the wealthiest women, whose heirs were of paramount importance, paid for a doctor to attend a routine childbirth, but Emma paid £100 for medical services, so she must have hired a doctor, midwife, and nurse. The child was born on January 28, 1801. It was a girl. Emma was not too disappointed, for she planned to get pregnant again very quickly and give Nelson a son. Now that the baby was born, she was relieved that he was away. She did not want to risk him developing any sort of familiarity with the doctor and midwife, to whom it was evident that she was not giving birth for the first time. Nelson wanted to call the baby Emma, but she overruled him and named her Horatia. A very rare name for a girl, it was the most ridiculously obvious declaration possible that the baby was Nelson’s child.
“I believe poor dear Mrs Thomson’s friend will go mad with joy,” bubbled the new fa
ther when he heard. He “does nothing but rave about you and her.” Most men in the period were fathers by thirty. Nelson, exulting that “I never had a dear pledge of love til you gave me one,” was embarking on fatherhood at forty-three.7 Surrounded by men with families of five or more, Nelson had felt self-conscious about his childlessness. Now he had proof: Fanny was infertile, not him. Bursting with glee, he suggested that his daughter should be registered as born of Johem and Morata Et-norbe, the surname being “Bronte” backward and the former anagrams of “Emma” and “Hora,” with an extra “Jo” added to make it sound more like a name. It was accepted practice for astute mistresses—particularly those who had essentially obtained the status of common-law wife—to press for the establishment of a settlement for their child as soon as possible after birth. Emma did not do so because she was sure that there was no need: Nelson truly loved her and would never fail to provide for Horatia and herself.
Doctors and midwives told women to shut themselves up in their rooms for weeks after birth, keeping the fires burning high and never opening the windows. Nelson instructed her to stay in bed for a week and at home for a fortnight, but Emma wanted to reveal her victory to the nation. Defiant and triumphant, she retrieved a glamorous evening dress and made a spectacular appearance at a concert at the house of the Duke of Norfolk in St. James’s Square on February 1, only a few days after the birth. Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh and Charles Greville were among the guests. The gossip columnists scrambled to file suggestive reports about Lady Hamilton’s lovely new figure.8 Emma was flaunting the return of her beauty and also demonstrating that, because she was not hiding at home, she was well and the baby was alive.∗