by Amanda Elyot
We frequently dined en famille with the Nelsons in their modest apartments in Dover Street as well as out in company, much to Fanny’s continual mortification. One such dinner is indelibly printed upon my memory. The four of us had been asked to sup at Admiralty House with Lord and Lady Spencer. I had been terribly unwell all day, yet never would I have missed that most prestigious invitation.
A bowl of walnuts was served with the puddings and Nelson was having difficulty cracking open the nuts with his left hand. “Here, allow me, Horace,” Fanny said attentively, taking the morsel from his hand. With maternal solicitude, she began opening the walnuts for her husband, placing them before him on his plate.
“Damme, woman!” Nelson exploded tetchily, “I am no suckling infant that needs to be coddled!” He tossed the plate like a discus, smashing it to bits against the damasked wall and sending walnuts flying about the eating room.
Fanny burst into tears. “Whatever have I done to upset or disappoint you, Horace?” she asked him. “Have I ever given you cause to be dissatisfied with me as a wife?”
Lady Spencer quickly dismissed the servants from the room.
“Love, madam, is, I believe, an integral ingredient for the recipe that is a happy marriage.”
“You did love me once. Or made me believe so. I still have the letters you wrote to me after you left Nevis.”
“At the time, I had naturally never entertained the possibility that our bed could grow so cold, given the warm climate in which you had lived for so many years. Madam, you made me feel like an outcast onshore.”
Sir William and the Spencers were shocked that they should quarrel so frankly before us, referring in particular to Fanny’s long-standing distaste for sexual congress. But Nelson had a temper, and his soul had been tormented with guilt since our arrival in England. He had been horribly out of love with his wife for some time and wished to extract himself from their marriage as quickly as possible, even if the parliamentary procedure involved in the getting of a divorce rendered that event a near impossibility.
A few moments later, I found it necessary to excuse myself from the eating room, availing myself of a basin I found in a commode just off the boudoir. I could not disguise my retching, and soon found myself in the company of Sir William and the Nelsons, the Spencers having wisely elected to maintain a discreet distance.
“My dear Lady Hamilton, pray, what can I do to alleviate your discomfort?” Nelson, ever solicitous toward me, glared at his wife. “Fanny, ask Lady Spencer to see that a cup of chamomile tea is prepared for her ladyship.”
Fanny could scarce swallow her humiliation, but a woman dares not disobey her husband, no matter what demands he made of her.
After successfully digesting the tea, I felt well enough to go home, and Sir William and I made for Grosvenor Square, where we retired to our separate bedrooms, as had been our arrangement for the past couple of years. Sir William’s increasing age—for he was seventy now—and his numerous infirmities had contributed to a loss of interest in the acts that had so delighted him in the past. I could not even recall the last time we had played at “all fours.” Since Nelson and I first became lovers in Palermo—after many, many months of celibacy within my marriage—Sir William had never uttered so much as a single word about it. It was as if the time had come for him to pass me on to the man he most esteemed—the man in the better position to satisfy me—just as his nephew had done so many years ago. Would this always be my destiny? With a touch of sadness I remembered the beautiful blue Barberini Vase he’d sold to the Duchess of Portland, now in display at the British Museum for the entire public to admire: loved by many, and owned by none.
In the middle of the night, our entire household was awakened by an insistent thumping at the door. I followed Sir William as he pattered downstairs to answer it, admitting a terribly fagged Nelson, who was clutching his head in pain. He fairly collapsed into the nearest chair. “I cannot live with the woman anymore. That much is plain. I would not impose upon your hospitality, Sir William, but I have been walking the streets of London all night in search of a solution to my dilemma.”
“My dear, is it all right with you if we take Lord Nelson in? What say you?”
I pondered the idea, for my desires and the exigencies of propriety were most distinctly at odds. “I daresay we could fix up Miss Knight’s old room for tonight, for we cannot possibly let ’im continue to roam the streets like a wayfaring stranger, but you must ’ave considered this as well as I ’ave. . . . To take ’im in permanently . . . ’ere in London . . . bienséance and all . . . would it not present an odd appearance to the world?”
Sir William glanced at his dear friend, slumped miserably in the chair. “At the moment, Emma, it would appear that he cares not a fig for the world.”
Thirty-six
Horatia
In the light of day, Nelson recognized the impracticality of the arrangement, returning to Dover Street the following morning, but he viewed his capitulation as temporary. His plan was to secure his own lodgings as soon as possible, and in any event, he expected that a new commission would soon be forthcoming. I despaired of his being at sea when I gave birth, but Lady Hamilton’s lying-in was most assuredly not among the Admiralty’s chief concerns.
In early January, Sir William and I found a charming house of our own opposite Green Park, at 23 Piccadilly. I sold my jewelry to buy our new furnishings. We reckoned the jewels’ value at over sixty thousand pounds, but to our immense disappointment they fetched a paltry twenty-five hundred. We were told, somewhat apologetically, that the market was already flooded with the jewels of French émigrés seeking to forge a new life on English shores.
Nelson, having been promoted to vice admiral of the blue, was given a reprieve from his misery at Dover Street, dispatched to Tor-bay as second-in-command of the Channel Fleet, under Lord St. Vincent. I received a mournful letter from him with bad news from the ship’s surgeon regarding his eyesight. Could I possibly whip up a batch of green eyeshades? But of course! Though I was nearing my confinement, I leapt to the task with alacrity, for I could not bear to think that Nelson was in pain or suffering for a single moment.
On January 16, Nelson was appointed second-in-command of His Majesty’s North Sea fleet. He had hoped for supreme command, and was mightily displeased that Sir Hyde Parker, a dreadful footdragger, was preferred above him. Damn excuses and damn seniority! I was certain they were punishing Nelson for loving me.
Nelson hated to be so far away as I neared my time, for he was horribly anxious for my health. My relatively advanced age, as well as our necessity for the utmost secrecy, greatly increased the dangers of childbirth, and neither Nelson nor I was insensible to it. I was called upon to behave as normally as ever, or else hazard censure—or, worse, exposure. Well into my ninth month, I maintained as active a social calendar as ever, for it would never have occurred to anyone that a woman about to give birth was making the rounds of dinner and theatre and card parties. It simply was not done.
Aware of the inadequate security of the postal system, and that his letters might be lost, stolen, intercepted and read by just about anyone, Nelson devised a persona, an alter ego whom he identified in his missives as a poor “Mr. Thompson.” This fictional sailor had left a pregnant sweetheart back in England, and had asked his compassionate commander (Nelson) to urge the gracious Lady Hamilton to intercede for him by ascertaining news of his sweetheart’s well-being and reporting upon it in her letters to Nelson. Nelson destroyed all of my correspondence to him that it might not fall into the wrong hands, but I saved every one of his passionate letters.
I took to bed with a “very bad cold” on the twenty-sixth of January. We could afford no telltale signs of my lying-in: no straw upon the front steps, no muffled door knocker. Sir William, who was not insensible of the truth, though we never discussed it, found it convenient not to disturb me during my “illness,” taking the opportunity to spend as much time as possible at the Dilettanti Society or a
t his club. Even the servants were not privy to my secret. Only Mam was present when on the chilly gray morning of January 29, after a remarkably brief period of labor, I brought into this world a healthy baby girl. There was never a question about her name. Of course, she would be Horatia.
The little beauty seemed to know her place from the moment she took her first breath, for she was not a fussy babe. Obediently she went to my breast and obligingly refrained from bawling. Nelson was in ecstasies, delighted that I had given him a daughter, and relieved beyond measure that Horatia and I were both hale and in good spirits. His letter to me of February 1, written as if his alter ego sat beside him as he penned it, was filled with elation:I believe Mrs. Thompson’s friend will go mad with joy. He swears he will drink your health this day in a bumper. I cannot write. I am so agitated by the young man at my elbow. I believe he is foolish; he does nothing but rave about you and her.
Though my body was fagged beyond comprehension, I forced myself to resume my social evenings almost immediately, the better to give the lie to my condition, as well-bred women recuperated from childbirth for weeks, if not months, and I knew all eyes had been upon me ever since we returned to England.
A few days after Horatia’s birth, Mam quietly handed me a slip of paper with an address on it. On February 7, I swathed myself to the eyes in furs, wrapped Horatia as warmly as I could, hired a hack, and brought her to 9 Little Titchfield Street, a mile from 23 Piccadilly, delivering Horatia into the hands of Mrs. Gibson, a widow with a young daughter of her own. “I am Lady ’Amilton,” I told her, “and this little girl was born last October twenty-ninth to a poor young woman under my protection who finds, to her most profound dismay, that she cannot care for the infant ’erself.”
Mrs. Gibson gave me the fish eye. Clearly she didn’t believe that the little bundle in my arms was already three months old. But Nelson’s guineas spoke louder than my lies. Mrs. Gibson was to secure a wet nurse and look after Horatia with all the kindness of a foster mother, providing me with frequent reports of her health and progress. I was all sensibility, for my body still bore the signs of my recent ordeal. It took every ounce of nerve to refrain from weeping as I bade farewell to tiny Horatia, for Mrs. Gibson was never for a moment to suspect that I was the girl’s mother.
I stained my furs with tears throughout the bumpy ride back to Piccadilly. I had brought two daughters into this gray world, only to bow to bienséance and part with both of them.
I have been the world around, and in every corner of it, and never yet saw your equal, never one which could be put in comparison with you. You cannot think how my feelings are alive towards you, probably more than ever, and they never can be diminished. I want not to conquer any heart, if that which I have conquered is happy in its lot: I am confident, for the conq ueror is become the conquered. My hearty endeavours shall not be wanting to improve and to give us new ties of regard and affection. For ever, ever yours, only yours.
Such were the words of a proud and loving papa who wrote to thank me for the lock of Horatia’s hair I had sent him, even more in love with the baby’s dear mama than ever he was. Nelson then altered his will, leaving property to any child of his, whether born in or out of wedlock, thus insuring little Horatia a legacy.
Settling financial matters still left him with sleepless nights, for he missed me something dreadful and longed to see our daughter. I am really miserable; I look at all your pictures, at your dear hair, I am ready to cry, my heart is so full.
Sir William had begun to campaign for his retirement pension, expecting the customary sum of two thousand pounds per annum, though he had also run up thousands of pounds in debts from his many years of good service in Naples. He’d sold his own diamonds to help make ends meet, but still required a reimbursement of eight thousand pounds from Whitehall or he would remain in distress to the end of his life. “My mother look’d after us both; the same nurse suckled us,” he reminded our sovereign. “Having passed my whole life in the service of my king and country, I do not ask what is more than common justice.” The prime minister ignored his pleas, and His Majesty, though not unsympathetic, informed Sir William that whenever he might receive his pension, and whatever amount it should be, the sum would not revert to Lady Hamilton upon his death. Sir William bore this news far better than I, for he would not be around to witness the outcome. “They continue to insult us!” I fumed.
My husband then conceived the notion that it might do well for him to count the Prince of Wales as a friend and ally, for though the heir and his father were ever at odds, if not at each other’s throats, “Prinny” would one day, of course, be king.
But the news that we might entertain England’s most notorious rake under our roof sent Nelson into a panic. He scribbled letter after letter to me, full of his fears that I might succumb to the prince’s seductions, and accusing Sir William—referring to him as my “uncle”—of trying to sell me to the prince in exchange for his pension. My poor lover was beside himself, at one moment praising me for my fidelity and, in the next, fearing that I might play him false, particularly when it came to His Royal Highness, whose reputation as an “unprincipled lyar” he traduced in nearly every sentence. England’s bravest hero displayed the full measure of his vulnerability, mindful that his letters might be intercepted and yet heedless of all but his own torment. Nelson wrote daily, and sometimes oftener, his words and anxieties tumbling pell-mell, one upon the other, like the rocks disgorged in a violent volcanic eruption. He confessed to being sleepless over the whole shoddy business, blinded by anger and tears, his fears for my virtue driving him to such distraction that he could not eat for days.
Nelson’s passionately despairing correspondence reminded me all too well of the raft of fearful and frantic letters I had dispatched to Greville twenty years earlier, when I’d been pregnant with little Emma, and revived my memories of the fifteen panicked missives that I’d sent Greville back in 1786 when I first arrived in Naples. How could I fault my beloved for his epistolary onslaught when our tenderest sensibilities and heightened passions, even our mutual tendency toward the dramatic, were so simpatico?
That night, Nelson wrote another letter from the St. George, with a postscript to “Mrs. Thompson.”
Your friend is at my elbow, and enjoins me to assure you that his love for you and your child is, if possible, greater than ever, and that he calls God to witness that he will marry you as soon as possible, and that it will be his delight to call you his own. He desires you will adhere to Lady H’s good advice and, like her, keep those impertinent men at a proper distance. He behaves, I can assure you, incomparably well and loves you as much as man ever loved woman, and do you, my dear, believe me your dear friend.
As “Thompson,” he was all love and passion, but as Nelson, he remained all despair.
The coda on the Prince of Wales dinner was an anticlimax, though anything would have seemed so after Nelson’s frantic barrages. I pleaded a headache on the Sunday fixed for the soiree and took to my bed with it, and there spelt an end to the matter. Talk about a tempest in a teapot!
On February 23, Nelson wrote to “Mrs. Thompson” in a holiday mood, full of flirtatious double entendres, so eager to make love with me he hinted that his most noble parts were full enough to make him twice as potent.
To the Care of Lady Hamilton.
My dear Mrs. T, poor Thompson seems to have forgot all his ill health, and all his mortifications and sorrows, in the thought that he will soon bury them all in your dear, dear bosom; he seems almost beside himself. I daresay twins will again be the fruit of your & his meeting. The thought is too much to bear. Have the dear thatched cottage ready to receive him & I will answer that he would not give it up for a queen and a palace. Kiss dear H. for me, etc.
That very day, he was granted three days’ leave, and made posthaste for London. The Dover Street flat was shut, Tom Tit—my nickname for Fanny—being in Brighton, so Nelson took rooms at Lothian’s Hotel. Together, we visited Horatia at M
rs. Gibson’s, and what a joy it was to see Nelson cooing over his little “pattern of perfection,” as he called his tiny daughter. But how painful it was for the two of us not to be able to let on that we were her parents.
“I do believe Horatia’s eyes and brow resemble your own,” Nelson said affectionately once we had safely rounded the corner of Little Titchfield Street.
“Do you really, now?” I chuckled. “I think she’s the spitting image of ’er father! Not a trace of Emma in ’er little face. I’d scarce believe I was ’er mam ’ad I not seen the little mite wriggle out from between my legs. Why, ’er every feature, even the shape of ’er face, is pure Nelson!”
Nelson grew doleful. “I received a letter from Fanny when she learnt I’d gotten leave.”
“And what did Tom Tit have to say for ’erself?” I asked anxiously.
“Tom Tit? I’ve been meaning to ask you, why in heaven’s name do you call her that?”
“Tom Tit?” I bosted out laughing so hard I almost snapped my stays. “It’s Cockney rhyming slang, something I ’eard plenty of when I first came to London as a girl. Tom Tit is cant for shit!”
Nelson erupted in laughter as well. “And here I thought it was because Fanny is pigeon-breasted! I told her not to bother. In response to her letter about coming to London to meet up with me.”