by Unknown
Emma could have achieved her success only in the last years of the eighteenth century. She was a woman of her period. But her abilities and ambitions cried out for a different time, when there were more options available to a woman than marriage, motherhood, or the life of a courtesan.
Emma has been castigated as fat, drunk, extravagant, promiscuous, a prostitute. And yet she had a better figure than most women of her class, and her drinking, gambling, and spending were, although reckless and excessive, nothing unusual when compared with the habits of her friends. Most of her debts were incurred in an effort to improve Merton and make herself the glamorous, generous hostess Nelson so craved. If she was a courtesan, she was in good company: many female aristocrats had once been demimondaines, and at least one in eight women had worked as a prostitute at some period in their lives. She was a good wife to Sir William and a faithful mistress to Nelson, and her relationship with Horatia was spoiled only by the pressures of debt and illness. She cannot be held responsible for breaking Nelson’s marriage: he had long since fallen out of love with his unhappy wife and resented her inability to have children. Nor was Emma a distraction from his duty. His pursuit of glory was in part motivated by his desire to win money and fame for his daughter and “wife in the face of heaven.”
Emma’s story is about ambition and heartbreak, beauty and pain. While writing this biography, I discovered that everybody knew about Nelson and his battles, but Emma provoked very different reactions from men. A pensioner at a friend’s wedding told me she must have been a “fantastic fuck.” Another guest said, “That’s what happens to you when you don’t live a good life.” It is still Nelson’s mistress—not Nelson—who is judged and must suffer for the affair.
Although Emma Hamilton has been disparaged, I have been startled by the hundreds of people who claim to be her descendants. Most were people I simply happened to meet, such as an estate agent or a friend of a friend; others contacted me directly after seeing me speak on television programs. Surfing on the Internet revealed many more, and it seems that thousands of people around the world believe themselves to be descended from Nelson and Emma, based on perceived physical resemblances and family myth. Punch once printed a cartoon about the one man on earth who had not had an affair with Emma Hamilton. The satire is spot on: nearly everyone whose male ancestor passed within a mile of Emma (and some female relations too) claims he had a torrid affair with her, and often that she bore his child. Nelson and Emma are probably the most cited ancestors in British history. Historians may condemn the pair, but, enchanted by the glory and tragedy of their lives, scores of us wish to be related to them.
Even more of us wish we owned some of their belongings. I have been shown hundreds of items that dealers and owners assert originally belonged to her, including shoes, dresses, musical instruments, and furniture, and nude pictures that families say she gave to Nelson’s captains. Very few of these items date from the early 1800s, and most were made later in the nineteenth century. Almost all of her belongings were sold, and those she gave away were lost or even destroyed, for the belongings of most of her friends were also destroyed after their death. The Prince of Wales did keep his mementoes of Emma, in a bizarre, secret collection. After George IV died, his executor, the Duke of Wellington, was shocked to find a stash of “a prodigious quantity of hair—women’s hair—of all colours and lengths, gages d’amour,” or love tokens.3 Stuffy Wellington reeled at the “Volumes of love letters… trinkets of all sorts, quantities of women’s gloves,” even pocket handkerchiefs he had used to wrap up old “faded nosegays… in short, such a collection of trash as he had never seen before,” in the words of a friend. He decided the best thing would be to burn the whole lot.4 Locks of Emma’s chestnut hair and her gloves and letters were tied up in these bundles, along with those of other society beauties such as Maria Fitzherbert, Mary Robinson, Elizabeth Billington, Lady Jersey, and Lady Conyngham.
Emma’s life was intense, dazzling, and soon over. She fought for her celebrity by constantly recreating herself and directing her image. When society had little to offer a woman of her class other than exploitation by men, she struggled to establish her own identity. Emma refused to be beaten, but she was destroyed by her mix of overconfidence and a wish to please, desires that made her vulnerable in a society that had no place for a woman like her. Despite all her charisma, intelligence, and charm, Emma had no rights and had to rely on what she could win from men—and when men would not give it to her, she had nothing. Striving for success, she was always tormented by what she had achieved and what she had sacrificed. Glamorous, open-minded, optimistic, and showy but also undisciplined, unaccustomed to compromise, and overreaching, she epitomized the high Georgian age. And yet she also showed its limitations as she struggled to forge her own destiny, ignore social prejudice, live independently, and survive without a protector. Today, when women have more opportunities than ever before to realize their ambitions but still feel terrible compunction about doing so, her strong will and attempts to follow her heart have even more resonance. A woman who both embodied and transcended her age, she was, truly, England’s mistress.
NOTES
This book is based on the original documents of letters by Emma, as well as letters, diaries, and reports by those who knew her. These are contained in archives across the world, at the Houghton Library, Harvard University, the Beinecke Library, Yale University, Huntington Library, San Marino, California, the British Library in London, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, the Nelson Museum in Monmouth, the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the Fitzwilliam Library, Cambridge, as well as record offices across the country, and also in private collections. If a letter has been cited but not footnoted, this is because it is in a private collection, seen with the very kind courtesy of the owner, or printed in The Collection of Letters and Historical Documents formed by Alfred Morrison, the Hamilton and Nelson Papers, edited by Alfred Morrison, two volumes (privately printed, 1893-4); or the Dispatches and Letters of Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson by Sir Nicolas Harris Nicolas, seven volumes (London, 1844–46), and the originals have been lost.
Abbreviations are: BL: British Library Manuscript Room. Hundreds of Emma documents are contained in the sixteen Egerton volumes of correspondence between Maria Carolina and Emma, as well as the Egerton collection of Nelson’s letters to Emma, and there are hundreds more, chiefly in the ninety bound volumes of Additional MSS, 34902-34992, between Nelson and his wife, and within the Nelson family, and also the Additional MS collection of William Hamilton correspondence, as well as the papers of St. Vincent and the Althorp MS papers of the Spencer family. NMM: National Maritime Museum Greenwich. More than two thousand Emma documents are contained in the Nelson-Ward (NWD), Bridport (BRP), Trafalgar (TRA), Davison (DAV), Keith (KEI), Girdlestone (GIR), and Matcham (MAM) collections, as well as in the Letterbooks (LBK). PRO: Public Record Office, Kew. The letters from William Hamilton to the Foreign Office, and also to Charles Greville, contained in thirteen volumes, FO 70, 1-13, covering the period 1780 to 1800, have proved an invaluable source, along with the prison record books, PRIS. Monmouth: The Nelson Museum, Monmouth. More than eight hundred letters and documents, most unpublished and many throwing much new light on Emma. Bodleian: Bodleian Library, Oxford; Fitzwilliam: Fitzwilliam Library, Cambridge; Wellcome: Wellcome Library for the History of Science and Medicine, London; Beinecke: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Houghton: Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Harvard University; Huntington: Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
CHAPTER 1
1. William Mortimer, History of the Hundred of Wirral (Manchester, 1972), p. 65.
CHAPTER 2
1. Nathaniel Spencer, The Complete English Traveller (London, 1771), p. 412.
CHAPTER 3
1. National Library of Wales, PA 1605-30. See also Flintshire Record Office, D/HA/312, 599, 601.
CHAPTER 4
1. Dr. Thomas was buried in 1805 at the age of seventy-six.
3. It is said that the family used her as a model for their drawings—although there is no evidence for this—and if so, perhaps she had become too friendly with her new employers.
4. The Carlton House Magazine, April 1793.
CHAPTER 5
1. At this date, London was just bigger than the other world cities: Peking and Edo, modern-day Tokyo.
2. Sophie von la Roche, “Diary for 1786,” in Sophie in London, ed. Clare Williams (London, 1933), p. 141.
CHAPTER 6
1. Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz, A Picture of England (London, 1791), p. 191.
2. Henry Fielding, An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers (London, 1751), p. 10.
3. Pierre Grosley A Tour to London (London, 1772), I:75.
4. Anon., A Present for Servants from their Ministers, Masters or other Friends, eighth edition (London, 1768), p. 17.
5. As Emma’s later portraits by Romney show exquisitely pale hands, one has to question how hard she scrubbed the hearths and saucepans at Chatham Place.
6. Town and Country Magazine, April 1777, p. 186.
CHAPTER 7
1. Fielding, Late Increase of Robbers, p. 76.
2. Anon., Authentic Memoirs of the Green Room (London, 1801), pp. 184–85.
3. Anon., The Secret History of the Green Room (London, 1793), p. 185.
4. On Jane’s roles, see Philip H. Highfill, A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses in London, 1660-1800 (Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1973), pp. 65-66.
5. Grosley, Tour to London, I:49.
6. Fielding, Late Increase of Robbers, p. 6.
CHAPTER 8
1. John B. Morritt, Letters and Journeys, 1794-96, A Grand Tour, ed. G. E. Marindin (London, 1985), p. 215.
2. Melesina Trench, “The Recollections of Melesina Trench,” Hampshire Record Office, 23 m/93 2/1.
3. Elizabeth Steele, Memoirs of Mrs. Sophia Baddeley (London, 1787), II:114.
4. See The London Stage 1660-1800, ed. William van Lennep, Emmet L. Avery, A. H. Scouten, G. W. Stone Jr., and C. B. Hogan (Carbondale, Illinois, 1969), V:193.
5. Secret History of the Green Room, p. 55.
6. Ibid., p. 69.
7. Grosley, Tour to London, I:160.
8. Henry Angelo, Reminiscences of Henry Angelo (London, 1828), II:21.
CHAPTER 9
1. Sir John Fielding, A Plan for a Preservatory and Reformatory for the Benefit of Deserted Girls (London, 1758), p. 10.
2. One of Sir William’s colleagues, James Bland Burges, declared Emma “set out as a common prostitute in Hedge Lane” before being “engaged by the Committee of the Royal Academy to exhibit herself naked as a model for the young Designers.” (James Bland Burges, 1791, Fitzwilliam Museum, Percival Bequest MS).
3. William Hickey Memoirs (1809), ed. Roger Hudson (London, 1995), p. 276; James Northcote, Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds (London, 1813), p. 280; World, September 1781.
4. Joseph Farington, The Farington Diaries, ed. Kathryn Cave (New Haven, 1982), VIII:3170.
5. See Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, ed. David Mannings (New Haven and London, 2000), p. 556.
6. Nicholas Penny, ed., Joshua Reynolds (London, 1986), p. 295.
7. Thomas Rowlandson implied she modeled for the Academy in his caricature Lady H———s Attitudes.
8. Northcote, Memoirs, p. 103.
9. Emma to Romney December 20, 1791, Houghton Library, MS Eng. 156.
CHAPTER 10
1. See Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Memoirs, translated by Siân Evans (London, 1989), p. 101.
CHAPTER 11
1. Town and Country Magazine, April 1778, p. 177. The newspapers also made sly hints on her work in the “Nunnery,” and many of those who knew Emma commented on her experiences at Kelly’s. Nelson’s contemporaries suggested she had been employed by a St. James madam.
2. Archenholz, A Picture of England, I:179.
3. Ibid., The Whore’s Rhetorick (London, 1693; rep. 1960), p. 96.
4. Ibid., A Picture of England, I:192.
CHAPTER 12
1. The way in which both Charles Greville and Sir Harry refer to her stay at Uppark makes it clear that she was a member of the party in the house.
2. Morning Post, October 4, 1780.
3. West Sussex Record Office, Uppark Papers, 228.
4. John George Sutherland Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll, ed., Intimate Society Letters of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1910), II:415.
5. In 1784–85, Sir Harry entertained the prince to a raucous extended visit.
6. Uppark Papers, 227.
CHAPTER 13
1. Uppark Papers, 227.
2. See Uppark Account Books, 227, unpaginated, 1780-1781.
3. Morning Post, April 8, 1780.
4. Emma to Charles Greville, January 1782, NMM LBK/6.
5. Greville to Emma, January 10, 1782, NMM LBK/6.
CHAPTER 14
1. Westminster, Marylebone, and Hawarden parish registers.
2. It has been argued that the Cadogans owned Broad Lane Hall but there is no possibility that the owners of Broad Lane Hall before Sir John were the Cadogans.
3. Greville to Emma, January 10, 1782, NMM LBK/6.
4. Emma to Greville, July 3, 1784, NMM LBK/6.
5. Ibid., June 12, 1784, NMM LBK/6.
6. European Magazine, July 1782, p. 16.
7. Ibid., May 1784, p. 400.
8. Ibid.
9. In letters from Naples, Emma asked Greville to send on her blue dresses and hats.
CHAPTER 15
1. Sir William later purchased Sensibility from Greville.
2. William Hayley to Emma, May 17, 1804, Beinecke Library, Osborn MS File 16927.
3. Ibid., June 7, 1806, Beinecke Library, Osborn MS File 16927.
4. Romney’s Victorian descendants claimed he had visited her in Edgware Row, even though it would have been impossible for him to transport all his materials and props to Paddington.
5. See Francis Cotes’s painting, Portrait of Lady Hoare, c. 1760.
6. European Magazine, July 1785, p. 24.
7. Von la Roche, Diary, p. 82.
CHAPTER 16
1. His salary as envoy plenipotentiary (confirmed 1766) was handsome, at three thousand pounds a year, but not enough to keep up with the court.
2. Charles Greville, “Memorandum,” BL Add. MS 42071, f 40.
3. John Hervey Memoirs of the Reign of George III (London, 1884), II:475.
4. European Magazine, April 1784.
5. Mary Hamilton, Letters and Diaries of Mary Hamilton, ed. Elizabeth and Florence Anson (London, 1925), pp. 174-75.
6. Charles Burney A General History of Music (London, 1779), IV45.
7. Chester Chronicle, 1782.
8. Emma to Greville, June 22, 1784, NMM LBK/6.
9. Ibid., June 27, 1784, NMM LBK/6. 10. Morning Post, July 5, 1777.
CHAPTER 17
1. Elizabeth, Lady Craven, The Beautiful Lady Craven: The Original Memoirs of Elizabeth, Baroness Craven, ed. A. M. Broadley and L. Melville (London, 1914), II:150.
2. Sir William to Greville, February 1785, BL Add. MS 42071, f 2. Sir William confessed his feelings to Greville some time after the proposal.
3. European Magazine, July 1785, p. 251.
4. Sir William to Greville, June 1, 1785, BL Add. MS 42071, f 4.
CHAPTER 18
1. Anne Miller, Letters from Italy (London, 1776), pp. 209-10.
2. Hester Thrale, Observations and Reflections made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy and Germany (London, 1789), p. 223; Miller, Letters from Italy, p. 274.
3. Since Emma had given her letters to the servant to seal and put in the postbag, Sir William would have opened them and read them.
4. Hamilton, Letters and Diaries, p. 305.
CHAPTER 19
1. Thomas Martyn,A Gentleman’s Guide to His
Tour Through Italy (London, 1787), p. 264.
2. Thrale, Observations, p. 231.
3. Martyn, Gentleman’s Guide, p. 286.
4. William Beckford, Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal (London, 1834), p. 200.
5. Sir William to Marquis of Camarthen, November 20, 1786, PRO FO 70/3, 306.
6. Thomas Watkins, Travels through Swisserland, Italy, Sicily (London, 1792), I:425.
7. Miller, Letters from Italy, pp. 248-49.
8. James Boswell, Boswell on the Grand Tour, ed. F. A. Pottle (London, 1953), I:111.
9. Stendhal (Marie Henri Beyle), Rome, Naples, and Florence, ed. Henri Martineau (Paris, 1927), p. 350.
10. Sir William to Camarthen, April 11, 1786, PRO, FO 70/3, 267.
11. Watkins, Travels, p. 50.
12. Miller, Letters from Italy, p. 60.
13. Thrale, Observations, p. 260.
14. Boswell, Boswell on the Grand Tour, pp. 62, 111. Even those who relished visiting the churches, buildings, and museums felt, like Goethe, uncomfortable admiring Catholic art.
15. Charles Mercier Dupaty Travels through Italy (London, 1789), p. 303.
CHAPTER 20