by Unknown
Emma had no idea of the truth: her husband had put up the greatest obstacle to her ever receiving any financial recompense for her work. In his letters to the Foreign Office, Sir William did not mention any of the acts for which she claimed a pension, including her contribution to victualing the fleet before the Nile and her efforts in assisting the royal family to flee. Despite the fact that Maria Carolina mistrusted him and communicated secrets exclusively to Emma, Sir William had claimed to the government that the queen herself had given him the letters from the King of Spain that proved so vital to espionage in 1795. Sir William told his friends and Greville about Emma’s deeds, but he inflated his role to the government (stung by gossip that Emma did all the work). He had never sent them official word that she was so much more than his “private wife.” As a consequence, they considered her descriptions of her services as lies.
In the midst of the financial chaos, Nelson was offered the position of commander in chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. Emma had to prepare herself to cope alone. They rushed to have Horatia christened before he left. Emma wrote to Mrs. Gibson to take Horatia to Marylebone Parish Church and to pay the clergyman and the clerk double fees not to mention the name of the father and mother. Horada Nelson Thompson was recorded as born on October 29, 1800.12 The date of her birth was put back three months to pretend that she had been born in Naples and pursue the fiction that she was the couple’s “godchild.“13 Emma tried to distract herself from worrying over Nelson’s imminent departure by planning (and paying for) the wedding of his niece Kitty Bolton and her cousin William Bolton. Secretly, Nelson was dismayed by his family’s greed, and he hated the way Sarah Nelson pushed Emma to cement her friendship with the Prince of Wales in order to gain patronage for her husband, but he had no time to tell her his feelings.14 On May 18, the same day as the wedding, Nelson left at four in the morning for Portsmouth. Emma had been wise to keep herself busy; he hated a weepy parting and he wanted her to be affectionate but brave. She cried a little, for he sent a message from the first stage of his journey:
Cheer up, my dearest Emma, and be assured that I ever have been, and am, and ever will be, your most affectionate and faithful
Nelson and Bronte
Neither of them knew it then, but she was pregnant with their second child.
CHAPTER 45
Nelson’s Lonely Mistress
Emma hoped Nelson might return in six months. Soon after he left C_^ in 1803, she began to suspect she was pregnant, and by midsummer she was sure. Lonely and needy, she wrote to Nelson constantly, but he did not receive any of her letters until July. She spent most of the year in mourning for Sir William, her growing bulge hidden under voluminous black robes.
Everybody clamored to see Emma’s Attitudes, but she performed them only for a select few. Even though she had declared she would never do them in London again, Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun persuaded her to put on a show for two French emigré princes on their visit to London.
I placed a large frame in the centre of the room and two screens on either side of the frame. I had an enormous candle which bathed the scene in a pool of light but I placed it out of sight so that the whole might resemble a painting more. After all the invited guests had arrived, Lady Hamilton took up various poses within this frame and her expressions were indeed quite remarkable. She had brought a little girl with her who must have been about seven or eight and who resembled her greatly. I was told this was the daughter of Mme [Sarah] Nelson. She had the child pose with her and the picture reminded me of the women fleeing in Poussin’s Rape of the Sabine Women. She passed from sorrow to joy, from joy to terror, so rapidly and so convincingly that we were all delighted.1
Vigée-Lebrun adds a sly hint that Emma was performing with a daughter—but Horatia was hardly two and Emma Carew too old. The child was more likely little Lizzy Matcham, Nelson’s eight-year-old niece. Vigée-Lebrun, perceptive as ever, spotted that Emma was pregnant, alerted by the fact that she was drinking porter, a fortified wine popular with expectant women, and looking much bigger.
In the summer, Emma’s old friend Jane Powell begged her to visit Southend, where she was playing at the local theater: “Your absence is regretted by all ranks of people. Would to Heaven you were here to enliven this present dull scene.” Everyone wanted to meet her, but Emma had lost interest in socializing. On September 6, she commemorated her wedding to “that dearest and best of men.” “This day am I at South End forlorn & alone my Husband to a better world, Nelson our friend gone out to save his Country oh Great God protect him for all our sakes prays the hapless Comfortless Emma Hamilton.“2
After years in the limelight, Emma had wearied of press attention. Despite frequent bathing, she was suffering from blisters on the neck and stomach, digestive problems, and headaches. When she read the newspaper gossip that she and Mrs. Billington were singing regularly for the Duke of Queensberry at Clarges Street, she issued a disclaimer in the Post asserting she had been “very unwell and does not see any company”3 Feeling lost without Nelson, she begged him to allow her to come out to live with him on ship, but he told her it was impossible.
At Christmas she packed her house with guests in a vain attempt to forget that she was without her lover. In his chilly cabin on the Mediterranean, Nelson was missing Emma and Horatia. “She must be grown so much,” he wrote. “How I long to hear her prattle.“4 In January, his Christmas package of presents and letters finally arrived for Emma. To Horatia he sent a doting note thanking her for her letter and her present of “a lock of your beautiful hair,” and enclosing some of his own hair and £1 to buy a locket to hold it. He promised her a watch, adding, “I am glad to hear that you are so good and mind everything that your Governess and Lady Hamilton tell you.“5 Brimming with anticipation of being a father once more, Nelson wrote to Emma, “Kiss dear Horatia for me, and the other.” He confessed he had “been so uneasy for this last month, desiring, most ardently, to hear of your well doing.” “I shall make you a Duchesss; and if it pleases God that time may arrive!” he exulted. “What changes]” Emma had been pondering names. Nelson replied, “Call him what you please, if a girl, Emma.”
Nelson encouraged Emma to move to Merton for her final weeks of pregnancy. He knew there had been gossip about Emma’s condition, and he dreaded a repetition of the press frenzy about her “embonpoint.” “You will live much more comfortable and much cheaper than in London,” he wrote. “If you like to have the house altered, you can do it.“6 Although Nelson directed her to keep the architect to his estimate, he urgently expected the “new room built, the grounds laid out neatly but not expensively, new Piccadilly gates, kitchen garden, &c.” He instructed her “not to pay from the income,” ordering her to keep account of how much she had paid for improvements, and give him the bills. He had no idea of the cost of materials and workmen. Emma lied that the alterations were cheaper than they were and paid the surplus with credit.
Soon, Emma was in no state to be thinking of home improvements. She retired to Clarges Street and by mid-January was in the final stages of a complicated pregnancy. After a difficult labor, she gave birth to a girl. At nearly forty, she was exhausted and ill for three weeks afterward, and at least one doctor was in regular attendance. The child was also weak. Too feeble to be given to Mrs. Gibson to take to Marylebone, as Emma had intended, baby Emma sickened at home. In Titchfield Street, Horatia also fell ill, possibly with smallpox. Emma believed she might lose both her daughters.
Some six weeks later, little Emma died. Emma had to ensure news of the death did not leak out, while trying to crush her grief. She could not take comfort from Nelson, the only man apart from her doctor who knew the secret.
Emma had to pay an undertaker double the usual fee to keep quiet and remove the body from Clarges Street without attracting the attention of the press. The child’s burial is not recorded either in her parish of St. George’s Hanover Square or in the Marylebone parish of Mrs. Gibson. Little Emma lay in an unmarked grave, probably outside
London, for church grounds were reserved for declared parishioners. Emma usually found some consolation in expressing her emotions extravagantly, but now she had to stifle her pain and mourn in silence. She tried to focus instead on Horatia’s recovery, but her daughter was too weak to visit Clarges Street. In despair, she longed for Nelson to understand and sympathize. He received a bundle of her letters in April and replied as soon as he heard.
I opened—opened—found none but December and early January. I was in such an agitation! At last, I found one without a date, which thank God! told my poor heart that you was recovering, but that dear little Emma was no more! and that Horatia had been so very ill—it all together upset me. But it was just at bed time, and I had time to reflect and be thankful to God for sparing you and our dear Horatia. I am sure the loss of one—much more both—would have drove me mad.
Nelson had his work to occupy his thoughts, but Emma could not forget, and nothing dulled the pain. As she confessed to Sarah Nelson, “I have not been out these 3 weeks, so very ill I have been.” Infant mortality was high in the early nineteenth century, but few women had to endure such sorrow with almost no support from friends and family. Although Nelson’s siblings and her friends knew of her loss, she downplayed her distress to them, for she was terrified of anyone suggesting that she might lose her hold on Nelson’s heart because she had failed to give him the large family he so wanted. At nearly forty, she knew she was unlikely to have another child. She yearned to travel out to visit him, but he discouraged her.
Always bad at being alone, Emma found it increasingly difficult to cope with the death of the baby without Nelson’s passionate love or Sir William’s supportive companionship. Previously, she had been less of a drinker and gambler than most high-society women. In the early months of 1804, she succumbed to binges of heavy drinking and eating, followed by days in bed, destroying her constitution with frantic dissipation. Society feted her, but in private she was racked with pain and misery. Crippled by fevers, sickness, stomachaches, and migraines, she took laudanum to ease the pain and to comfort her sleepless nights. She longed to be with Nelson again.
I am anxious and agitated to see him. The disappointment would kill me. I love him, I adore him, my mind and soul is now transported with the thought of that blessed ecstatic moment when I shall see him, embrace him. My love is no common love. It may be a sin to love I say it might have been a sin when I was anothers but I had merit then in trying to suppress it. I am now free and I must sin on and love him more than ever. It is a crime worth going to Hell for.7
CHAPTER 46
Money Is Trash
The thought of seeing him again agitates me and makes me mad with joy, then fear comes across me that he may not come.” Emma had just received a bundle of Nelson’s letters and she was reading fifty-four pages of news, protestations of love, and advice on improving their home, veering between “different feelings that elate and oppress me.” “Your resemblance is never far from my mind,” he wrote in one. “I hope very soon that I shall embrace the substantial part of you instead of the Ideal, that will I am sure give us both real pleasure and exquisite happiness.8 His romantic letters lifted her heart but others brought back the raw pain of losing her baby. Every woman in England wanted to be Lady Hamilton, but no one understood her difficulties. She was spending heavily to try to stifle her grief Urgently attempting to keep up appearances, all the while worrying about Nelson, she shone at the most expensive parties, and entertained a few true friends and many sycophants and hangers-on with luxurious dinners. Nelson worried about the “intrigues” of the set around Lady H—, possibly Lady Hertford, intimate of the Prince of Wales, whom he termed “as great a pimp as any of them.” Otherwise, he loved Emma’s extravagance, for it seemed to him fitting to his status. “Don’t mind the expense, money is trash,” Nelson had used to fulminate to Fanny, exasperated that she could not cut the dash he wished after his success at the Nile.
Soon after the death of her husband, the marriage proposals began. In 1804 alone, she received one from an earl, from the second son of a viscount, and from a relation of Sir William’s. Her suitors were wealthy men—they had to be to countenance her gigantic and ever-growing debts.
Emma had to dress stylishly, entertain the highest echelons of society, and maintain two houses, but her £1,200 a year from Nelson and £800 left to her by Sir William hardly covered the food bills. She still owed money to her husband’s creditors. Nelson promised that he would become wealthy with prize money and would leave her rich in his will, and she borrowed more and more, eager to believe him. She comforted herself by remembering the amounts her friends owed, such as the Duchess of Devonshire, in debt for an amount equivalent to $9 million today, accrued mainly through gambling and socializing. Emma did not understand how much more vulnerable she was than such great ladies. Aristocrats such as Devonshire had the assets to sustain their debt and they could always beg money from their family.
Emma’s paramount desire was to keep in with the Prince of Wales, who she thought would protect her. She was trying to promote herself as a hostess to the glamorous Whig set, as well as attempting to win over James Perry, editor of the pro-Fox and pro-Whig and sometimes anti-Nelson Morning Chronicle. Bitterly disappointed in the king’s treatment of her, she was convinced that the accession of the Prince of Wales would bring her and Nelson more recognition. Nelson’s political loyalties wavered, so after he took his seat in the House of Lords in October 1801 the Whigs wanted him on their side.
London was fizzing with political gossip. The Whigs had been debating an alliance with Lord Grenville of the Tory party, against Henry Addington, current prime minister. Covert meetings mushroomed across London. James Gillray satirized the cabaling in his caricature L’Assemblée Nationale—or, Grand Cooperative Meeting at St Ann’s Hilt. The major Whigs discuss allying with Grenville at the house of Charles James Fox. Emma, adorned with a Nelson miniature, stands above Fox and his wife as they receive the notables. She flutters her fan and gossips with the Duchess of Devonshire, while Greville’s brother, Colonel Robert Greville, eavesdrops on them. Among the luminaries in attendance are the Prince of Wales, Mrs. Fitzherbert, who was still at the prince’s beck and call despite his stream of mistresses, the Dukes of Bedford and Norfolk, the Duchess of Gordon, Lord Cholmondeley, the Duke of Clarence (future William IV) and his mistress, the actress Mrs. Jordan, Lord and Lady Derby, and Lady Buckinghamshire, and Lord Grenville. Emma was swinging with the in crowd. By frantic entertaining, socializing, and spending, she presented herself as the keeper of Nelson’s flame and favor. The Fox set had bottomless purses—Fox once lost £32,000 at the card tables in a single night—and most owed the equivalent of millions. Emma could not afford to keep up, but she tried.
James Gillray’s LAssemblée Nationale—or, Grand Cooperative Meeting at St Ann’s Hill (June 1804). Emma, wearing a Nelson miniature around her neck and a feathered headdress, gossips with the Duchess of Devonshire as, directly in front of them, plump little Charles James Fox and his wife receive the luminaries. Emma’s position with the duchess in the center of the picture suggests how predominant she was in the hedonistic Fox set.
The same aristocrats were active in the “Pic-Nics,” an amateur dramatic society organized by Colonel Greville, at Tottenham Court in London, and it seems as if Emma was also a participant. The press declared their weekly meetings were excuses for giant orgies and extravagance.2 One commentator decided that if the “uncorrupted… did not oppose and overthrow [private theaters], decency would abandon Britain.”3 In Dilettante Theatricals, Gillray caricatured the party staging The Rival Queens, by Nathaniel Lee, with Emma singing at the back of the party behind Mrs. Billington. The gossips were wrong: the Pic-Nics’ only excess was the inordinate sums expended on costumes, sets, and jewels, which was money Emma could ill afford.
Like all society women, Emma was trying to establish herself as a charitable patron. She had allied herself with a fashionable London orphanage, the Foundlin
g Hospital, by standing as “godmother” to a child, which meant that she gave money and occasionally received updates on the child’s progress. As Nelson indulged her, “Your purse, my dear Emma, will always be empty; your heart is generous beyond your means.“4 Otherwise, she spent her time visiting Nelson’s relations and bathing in the sea. A sharp-eyed lady spotted her in Ramsgate in the summer of 1804, lonely in the sea resort without Sir William.5 She was endeavoring to take the waters to improve her fertility, hoping to fall pregnant quickly when her lover returned.
Emma worried that her lover “seems to hope the rooms are done and has written a great deal about improvements.” His designs to landscape the grounds, construct a driveway, and add new entertaining rooms and bedrooms were proving increasingly expensive. She was having a new entrance constructed on the north side of the house, and building stables, while planning a proper coach house. Thomas Cribb, the garden designer, had employed twenty men to turn the muddy grounds into a graceful and orderly garden. Ambitious to transform the first house that was truly her own into a handsome modern mansion, a lasting monument to Nelson’s glory, and the equivalent of an aristocratic seat, she willingly paid the bills. “What I have done has been to make comfortable the man that my soul dotes on, that I would think it little to sacrifice my life to make him happy,” she wrote. “Nelson and Emma can have but one mind, one heart, one soul, one interest, and I can assure you that if the nation was to give my beloved Nelson a Blenheim, Merton would be the place he would live in.”