Kate Williams

by Unknown

  Sir William checked on his estates, and the party set off home through south Wales. Pembroke, Swansea, Cardiff, and Newport welcomed them with receptions, fireworks, and colossal banquets—where Emma nearly always sang, often her versions of “God Save the King” and “Rule Britannia” in Nelson’s honor. Hysterical crowds unhitched the party’s horses and dragged the carriage through the streets. The local newspapers breathlessly reported even the smallest details about “Lord Nelson’s tourists.” As they progressed home through Hereford, Leominster, Lud-low, Worcester, and Birmingham, press packs from the London papers followed behind, eager to keep their readers up to date with the extravagant tour. The Morning Post reported that Nelson received a branch of an apple tree from the city of Hereford and “his Lordship, with all the gallantry of Paris, presented the apple to Lady Hamilton, thereby acknowledging her Ladyship a perfect VENUS.“3 Emma was showing the country that she was the wife of Nelson’s heart and the woman who shared his fame.

  In Worcester, Nelson treated himself to a dessert service decorated with his coat of arms; in Birmingham’s jewelry workshops, they gathered dozens of rings, necklaces, and bracelets; and they bought trunks of toys for Horatia at Theophilus Richards’s toy warehouse. At Coventry, gushed the Coventry Mercury, “every heart overflowed with gratitude.“4 After visiting Towcester, Dunstable, St. Albans, Watford, and Brentford, they arrived at Merton Place on September 5. Their tour had cost nearly £500, around a year’s pay for Nelson at his current rate, and they had spent even more on souvenirs. It had been worth every bruise and every penny. “Oh, how our Hero has been received!” Emma exulted to Kitty Matcham.5 As the Morning Post reported, “It is a singular fact that more eclat attends Lord Nelson in his provincial rambles than attends the King.“6

  The tour ensured that Emma’s fashions were copied across England and Wales. The Lady’s Magazine declared early in the following year, “Such has been the progress of good taste among our leading belles of fashion, that all the heavy appendages of dress, which used to encumber rather than adorn, have been judiciously relinquished for decorations more delicate and appropriate.“7 The most fashionable dress was “á la Lady Hamilton,” an empire-line style made from “white satin, gauze and muslin.” Voguish women now wore their hair cut close around the ears, with no hat.

  In cartoons depicting Nelson rescuing Britannia, the beleaguered country now looked very like Emma: a statuesque woman with long dark hair in a white dress, often throwing a dramatic pose. Novels, now quite forgotten, featured heroines that exploited Emma’s fame. Mary Charlton’s The Wife and the Mistress (1802) excused the love triangle. Horatio Nelson became Horace Nevare, a romantic hero superior to trivial amusements, who follows the truth of his heart and courts virtuous Laura without caring that her parentage is obscure. Charlton also added a character named Mrs. Hamilton who is the absolute epitome of virtuous behavior, and she also included a Fanny and a Sir William. Emma clearly enjoyed the portrayal: she bought The Wife and the Mistress and kept it until nearly the very end of her life.

  In the following year, an even more uncompromising defense of the affair appeared in the Lady’s Magazine. Emma, Nelson, Horatia, Sir William, and Fanny all had starring roles, and Emma was triumphant. The hero, Horatio, a figure of Nelson, is a perfect man, “not more respected for his immense wealth than his amiable and gentle manners.” He has a toddler daughter, who is “the most perfect of nature’s children,” but his shrewish, “cruel, treacherous, and resentful” wife “embittered” his life with “peevish jealousies.” The “manly Horatio scorned to use a husband’s power towards her,” but his “soft rebukes” have made “not the least impression on her adamantine heart.” He gains his only happiness from a virtuous friendship with a beautiful, innocent girl, Miss Emily Lewis, the daughter of his sister, Emma Lewis. The journalist perhaps had an inkling about Emma’s daughter, Emma Carew, who had been to stay with Emma at least once, and the suggestion that Horatio derived his only pleasure from talking to young Miss Lewis verges on implying an incestuous attraction.

  If this was not enough, Emma Lewis’s early life reflects that of Emma Lyon’s experience as a courtesan, mistress to Greville, and wife. As a young girl, Emma travels to London and “pursues with eager avidity its luxuriant pleasures.” After her lover abandons her, she meets gentle Mr. Lewis, who, like Emma’s real-life Sir William, has a “prepossessing and mild exterior, joined to the most profound knowledge, which he had improved by travelling, and the sensible converse of the most enlightened men.” Emma confesses that “for him I felt not that ardent passion I had done for the regretted Alfred, no the passion which the worthy Lewis inspired was respect, which soon ripened into a pure attachment, never to be severed till death should part us.”

  There could hardly be a more blatant version of the story of Emma Lyon, Greville, Sir William, and Nelson, in which everything happens just short of Emma Lewis herself actually enjoying Horatio’s admiration, which instead went to her daughter, Emily. In case any particularly slow reader had still failed to spot the resemblances to England’s favorite love triangle, the author has the entire party go to watch Horatio’s wife act Elvira in Pizarro (a play indelibly associated with Nelson and Emma since the shocking spectacle at Drury Lane of Fanny’s humiliation, eighteen months before). The point is simple: Emily (Emma) gives Horatio (Nelson) optimism and relief from his sufferings from his cruel and spiteful wife. Poor Fanny could not pick up even a magazine without reading about Emma’s triumphs. The years 1801-1803 were truly her years of despair. The mistress had won a resounding victory.

  CHAPTER 44

  Changes

  I was sensible, & said so when I married, that I should be superan-nuated when my wife would be in her full beauty and vigour of youth,” lamented Sir William in September 1802. “That time is arrived, and we must make the best of it.” Exhausted by the recent tour, he was tired of watching her indulge Nelson’s grasping family and preside over the social whirl of Merton, “seldom less than 12 or 14 at table, & those varying continually.” Her energy, her appetite for society, and her excellence as a hostess had once excited him. Now he wanted only to live quietly.

  Emma tried to please her husband by holidaying with him in the fashionable beach resort of Ramsgate on England’s southeast coast. But everywhere she went, she was pursued by the press and besieged by crowds, people hunting for a favor, and crazed obsessives, greedy for a touch of the star’s mantle. As the Morning Herald reported, “A Lady swimmer at Ramsgate, who is said to be a perfect attitudinarian in the water, is now the morning gaze of the place.” The reporter claimed she was such an excellent swimmer that she was “secure against any marine enemy, but as she is young and beautiful, she is perhaps more in danger from the land sharks. Journalists followed her friends and bombarded them with questions. Emma had instructed Mrs. Gibson to bring Horatia to nearby Margate incognito. On her first attempt to visit her daughter she forgot the address as soon as she arrived, but later managed to travel to play with her daughter when she could escape the gossip columnists.2 Anxious to protect Horatia from the news hounds, she implored Mrs. Gibson “on no consideration to answer any questions about Miss Thompson,” the name they used to discuss Horatia, and certainly not “who placed her” with her faithful nurse.

  Miserable in the bustle of bathers and fashion, Sir William wished he were alone with her: “I care not a pin for the great world, and am attached to no one so much as you.“3 Emma was exasperated with him, complaining she had her hands full with trying to dodge the journalists and see Horatia. Sir William decided he had no choice but to threaten her with separation. “I am fully determined not to have any more of the very silly altercations that happen but too often between us and embitter the present moments exceedingly,” he insisted. “If realy one cannot live comfortably together, a wise and well concerted separation is preferable; but I think, considering the probability of my not troubling any party long in this world, the best for us all wou’d be to bear the ills we
have.” He wanted to fish, visit his friends, and tour picture auctions, making the most of every moment because he felt he was fading fast. “I have but a very short time to live, and every moment is precious to me.” Only two years earlier, he had been hunting with the Esterházys and dancing with the Elliots, but now he declared he was dying. Emma was shocked, for she had hardly realized that she had been neglecting her husband. She tried to make more time for him and no longer pressured him to attend her parties. He went fishing on the Thames and treated himself, as the Herald noted, to an “elegant new chariot.“4

  Although Nelson enthused in his romantic moods that they could “live on bread and cheese,” he was adamant that Merton should always have “good wine, good fires, and a hearty welcome for our friends.” Emma was overspending, as usual. As most of her guests stayed overnight and traveled to London next morning, the parties continued late into the night, and she had to accommodate and feed her visitors’ servants and horses. She hosted their neighbors at Merton, mostly wealthy bankers, as well as London aristocrats and foreign royals, including Prince Leopold, youngest son of the Queen of Naples. The press was particularly interested in the regular visits of the Prince of Wales’s brothers, the portly womanizing twenty-nine-year-old William, Duke of Clarence, who had been star of the show at Nelson’s wedding to Fanny, and his wheezy younger brother, Duke of Sussex, who as Prince Augustus had been a regular guest at the Palazzo Sessa. Nelson’s family came frequently, and Charlotte Nelson was living with Emma almost full time. Politicians also attended, keen to tempt Nelson to their interests. One night the talk would be of Pitt, the next Drury Lane. Jane Powell often swept through the porch, along with other great actors and actresses. Opera stars such as the great Brígida Banti came to sing with Emma, and Mrs. Billington often graced Emma’s soirees, for she had fled Naples just after Emma. London had missed her and she was soon singing at both Covent Garden and Drury Lane, for stratospheric fees of £10,000 a season. She was still friendly with the wheezy Duke of Sussex, and there were whispers she was also indulging his brother, the Prince of Wales. Emma pressed invitations on her glamorous female friends—tableaux such as “The Favourite Sultana” needed plenty of willing extras.

  After his isolated childhood, Nelson wanted the house filled with family and friends, and Emma ensured carriages were always rattling into the drive. She invited all those she thought might give Nelson patronage, including the Devonshire set and, to Nelson’s fury, the Prince of Wales. Even when she was up to her ears in boxes moving to Merton, Nelson fulminated about “that fellow’s wanting you for his mistress, but I know your virtue too well to be the whore of any rank stinking king’s evil; the meanness of the titled pimps does not suprize me in these degenerate days. I suppose he will try to get at Merton, as it lays in the road, I believe, to Brighton; but I am sure you will never let them in.” Her ebullient guests were high-stake gamblers at faro and hazard. By the end of the year, her banker Thomas Coutts informed her that the balance in her account was an unacceptably low twelve shillings and eleven pence.

  The Morning Chronicle reported Nelson’s birthday party in breathless detail, rhapsodizing about Lady Hamilton’s singing. Emma spent over £60 a week on food alone, and coal, wines, candles, and decorations cost her hundreds a year.5 She was expected to set trends not only in fashion, acting, and dance but also in entertaining, balls, table decoration, and dining. As the Oracle reported in March, the exotic delicacy of sows’ udders from Sicily had arrived at the Customs House in London and “The Lady of a celebrated Antiquarian has lately imported a large quantity, flattering herself that their salubrious effects will ever continue her the blooming goddess of health.“6

  By the autumn of 1803, the Peace of Amiens was disintegrating. Nelson expected to be back at sea in the new year. Emma knew she was about to lose him again. “I love him, adore him, his virtue, heart, mind, soul, courage,” she scrawled, busily trying to organize an extravagant Christmas party for him.7 She pressed Kitty Matcham that they had “3 Boltons, 2 Nelsons, and only need two or three little Matchams to be quite en famille.“8 Determined to have Horatia at Merton, she invited all the nephews and nieces to cover their daughter’s presence. Nelson’s family and friends expressed their pleasure in Nelson’s “godchild,” although the William Nelsons saw her as a potential rival as Nelson’s heir and prayed there would be no son. The Children’s Ball after New Year’s, which continued until 3 a.m., was thrown in Horatia’s honor. Now that she was nearly one, her resemblance to Nelson was striking. She behaved beautifully for her first Christmas and entranced both her father and Sir William, who, as Nelson later wrote, thought her “the finest child he had seen.”

  Sir William seemed to be recovering from his recent bout of ill health. In the first month of 1803, the Post spotted him and Emma enjoying a winter walk near the Serpentine, in London’s Hyde Park. “Among the fashionable, Lady Hamilton was much noticed for the elegance of her dress and appearance. Her Ladyship was in plain white, with a rich white satin cloack, trimmed with ermine and lined with amber.“9 In February the Hamiltons staged a grand concert at home for a hundred guests, and the newspapers reported that her performance at the pianoforte “electrified her auditors.” But within a week, Sir William collapsed at 23 Piccadilly. By late March he was dying. Emma spent every night nursing him with Mrs. Cadogan, and Nelson also assisted. There was little she could do except keep her husband comfortable, but she refused to go to bed, determined to be with him through the final days. Still lucid in spite of the painkilling drugs, he instructed Greville he did not want to see a clergyman. A few days later, on April 6, he died in Emma’s arms with Nelson holding his hand. “Unhappy day for the forlorn Emma,” she mourned. “At ten minutes past ten, dear, blessed Sir William left me.”

  Her grief was real. Sir William had been her loyal partner since she was twenty-one, and her husband for twelve years. He had been the first man to treat her with respect, ignoring the judgment of his family and friends and risking his social status to marry her for love. Although sometimes remote he had always indulged her. “I feel truly bereaved of all comfort,” she wrote; “my wounds bleed afresh in writing & thinking on what I have lost in such a man, such a husband.“10 The intense devotion she had inidaily felt for him had mellowed, but although her passions were engaged elsewhere, she loved him, depended on him, and had never imagined being without him.

  Emma threw herself into arranging the funeral and hung a hatchment depicting Sir William’s armorial bearings outside 23 Piccadilly to inform everyone of his death. Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun visited and could hardly see the widow under her vast black veil. Nelson had moved from Emma’s home to lodge nearby at 19 Piccadilly—with Greville, to the awkward dismay of both men—and Sarah Nelson came to assist Emma. Sir William was buried next to his first wife in the chapel of Slebech Castle in Pembrokeshire, their graves looking out to sea. Almost immediately after Sir William’s death, Emma’s creditors closed in. She begged Greville to tell her if he would pay her debts and how much he would give her of Sir William’s estate, so that she could, in her words, “reduce her expences and establishment immediately.” Greville instructed her to vacate 23 Piccadilly directly but gave no answer about the debts. For the sake of respectability, Emma needed her own residence separate from Merton, which was officially Nelson’s home, so she took another house in an only slightly less expensive location, 11 Clarges Street, just off Piccadilly, still near Green Park and the Duchess of Devonshire’s London home. The street was heavily bombed during the Second World War and number 11 was finally demolished in the early 1960s, but there are still some surviving examples like the graceful four-story house in which Emma once lived.

  “I hope she will be left properly, but I doubt,” Nelson wrote gloomily. Emma had previously complained to Sir William that the will left her to “poverty and distress,” and she had no pleasant surprises when it was read. She received £300—hardly enough for three weeks of entertaining at Merton—and an £800 annuity, out
of which £100 had to be given to Mrs. Cadogan. In a codicil, Sir William asked that when the Treasury paid out compensation for his losses, Emma should receive £450 to pay her debts. As the Morning Herald put it, Lady Hamilton “had not been left in independent circumstances.“11 Emma’s debts far exceeded £450 and the Treasury was unlikely to pay, even if Greville had been willing to press her claim. Sir William had kept to the usual eighteenth-century principle of wills: keeping estates intact. Charles Greville finally had what he had desired and for which he had, in effect, exchanged Emma and broken her heart so long ago. He also inherited the paintings of Emma that Sir William had not sold: Romney’s Emma Hart in Morning Dress and the Bacchante that he had made Romney paint over and over until he thought it perfect enough to sway his uncle to adopt his lover as mistress.

  Sir William’s kindest act was to bequeath to Nelson an enamel version by Henry Bone of the portrait by Vigée-Lebrun of Emma as a bacchante. Pained to see erotic images of Emma on sale, he had sent Alexander Davison to buy the original from Christie’s in 1801. Sir William was well aware that Nelson was wildly jealous of Greville and would detest the thought of Emma’s ex-lover possessing such a portrait of her or even worse, selling it. Nelson treasured the enamel, and it now hangs on the walls of the sumptuous Wallace Collection in Manchester Square, London.

  Charles was infuriated to find that his uncle had squandered his inheritance and amassed debts of over £5,000. As both executor and sole beneficiary, he was not about to give his old mistress any more money than she had already received. Quickly realizing that Greville was too angry about the debts to do much for her, and newly poor, since Sir William’s pension from the government ceased at his death, Emma redoubled her efforts to extract money from the government for services rendered at Naples. It was usual to give a pension to the wife of an ambassador, but the government was proving reluctant to accept Emma’s claim, still infuriated that the envoy and Nelson had been dragged into putting down an internal rebellion.