England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton (45 page)

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."
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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.
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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 father 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.
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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.
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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.
^∗

Emma had played a difficult game, ensuring everyone knew she was the mother of Nelson's child, but without suggesting she had intended to
court newspaper attention. Aware that women could be elevated one day and eviscerated the next, Emma worked hard to keep the newspapers on her side by pretending not to actively court their attention but "allowing" it if it came her way. A flurry of gossip and jokes in the newspapers followed the birth. Caricaturists were just as quick. James Gillray worked overtime drawing Emma as the Carthaginian queen in
Dido in Despair,
and it was immediately displayed in pride of place in the print shops. A heavily pregnant Emma in her nightdress (a joke on her revealing muslin dresses) throws an attitude of misery. Out of the window, we see Nelson's ships sailing away
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Gillray portrays Emma's bedroom as littered with Sir William's broken statues, erotic art, and a book of her Attitudes. Sir William slumbers on in bed, oblivious. Emma's poor ankles are heavily swollen from pregnancy. It was impossible for anyone to misunderstand Gillray's point: Emma was massively pregnant and about to give birth as Nelson departs. Like Dido (and not Cleopatra), Emma weeps alone, keeping her grief to her bedroom, just as society believed a woman should.

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Women who wanted to give birth covertly hurried abroad or to a country retreat. Because she needed to prove she had been pregnant by showing herself off as swollen and then recovered, Emma had chosen to have her baby in one of the most conspicuous houses in London.

Five days later, Gillray produced another caricature exploiting the birth of Nelson's child. In
A Cognocenti Contemplating the Beauties of the Antique
a wizened Sir William hunches in his collection rooms surrounded by broken stone phalluses and cracked pots, examining a bust of Emma missing a nose. A pot was a figure for the (unsatisfied) woman in caricatures, and Gillray means his reader to infer that Emma's husband was impotent. On the walls in front of him are three portraits: a topless Emma in a version of Romney's
Mirth,
Nelson looking manly, and Vesuvius exploding with the fire Sir William lacked. He had, as everyone now knew, been well and truly cuckolded.

Emma quickly recovered her health. Convalescing in closed, hot rooms put women at severe risk of catching puerperal fever, and Emma's decision to venture out undoubtedly improved her health. A romantic man such as Nelson might hope that his children would be breast-fed, believing that breast milk carried spirit and character, but Emma could not keep the child at 23 Piccadilly. Everybody loved to joke about her baby, but no one would visit her home if they thought the baby was present, and she would be publicly reviled if she was ever seen with her child.

A few days later, Mrs. Cadogan wrapped her granddaughter in a muff and furs and, perhaps accompanied by Emma, hurried in a hired cab from 23 Piccadilly to the home of a Mrs. Gibson at 9 Little Titchfield Street, Marylebone. Mrs. Gibson seemed to be discreet. Her lack of a husband
was a bonus, for men tended to be more alert to the opportunities for selling stories to the newspapers. Emma paid Mrs. Gibson handsomely to care for Horatia and hire a wet nurse. The gentry routinely sent children out of the home for the first eighteen months or so. Only the upper aristocracy had nannies and wet nurses living with them, and Emma's behavior would have been little different if her child had been legitimate. She had to express her milk at home to ease her discomfort, once again separated from a baby daughter only a few days after her birth.

James Gillray's A Cognocenti Contemplating the Beauties of the Antique. Emma's pregnancy was the definitive evidence that Sir William had been cuckolded.

Soon Emma had a second problem to deal with. The Prince of Wales had decided she had “hit his fancy.” He had admired Emma for years and, to Nelson's intense jealousy, owned portraits of her. “I know his aim is to have you for his mistress,” moaned Nelson to Emma on February 4. The prince was separated from the Princess of Wales, and his only other regular
lover was modest Mrs. Fitzherbert, who lacked the sexy, blowsy allure he adored. There was a definite vacancy for a new and glamorous celebrity woman in his life. Emma was just his type: strong-minded, stylish, and adored by the public. Nelson was terrified. It seemed to him that Fanny's insinuation that Emma was incapable of the fidelity needed to be his partner might well prove true after all.

CHAPTER 40
The Prince and the Showgirl

O
h God, why do I live?" Nelson wailed about a week after the birth of Horatia. "I am mad, almost dead…. God strike him blind if he looks at you." Even the newspapers were beginning to hint at the Prince of Wales's passion for Nelson's Cleopatra. "I am in tears, I cannot bear it."

Emma was the most famous woman in England, and the prince wanted her. The prince could give Emma anything she desired: a Mayfair mansion, her own carriage with six white horses, showers of diamonds, court dresses, and introductions to anyone she desired. An affair with the prince would turn her into a megawattage celebrity: courted by aristocrats, mobbed in her carriage, the toast of dressmakers, the star of every fashion plate. Nelson mournfully decided himself a poor prize in comparison. He wrote self-pityingly, "I am only fit to be second or third, or four" in Emma's heart. It was obvious to him—and to the newspapers—that becoming the prince's mistress would be Emma's revenge on the royal family for not inviting her to court, and it would also solve her financial problems. Even worse, she might have her eye on marriage. Nelson rued, "You would grace a Court better as a Queen than a visitor." The prince was a fabulous prize. As Nelson whimpered, "No one, not even Emma, could resist the serpent's tongue."

Emma was still uncomfortable after the birth, longing to be with her child, and trying to play hostess while pandering to a fretful Sir William. Even worse, a nurse, probably one of the wet nurses, was threatening to talk and had to be bribed. And now Nelson, only a few days after he claimed to be dancing with joy, was bombarding her with frantic letters full of explicit references to her as the prince's courtesan. Most women
did not resume sexual relations until at least four weeks after giving birth. And Emma was in no state to be making love with anybody, let alone the party-loving Prince of Wales.

But Nelson could not think rationally. Suffering from stress and searing eye pain, which he could only dull with opium, he implored, "I cannot, will not believe you can be false. No, I judge you by myself; I hope to be dead before that should happen, but it will not. Forgive me, Emma, oh, forgive your own dear, disinterested Nelson." In a muddle of feelings, he scribbled she was "kind and good to an old friend with one arm, a broken head, and no teeth,"
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and then later, "Hush, hush my poor heart keep in my breast, be calm. Emma is true!" He declared that his cooled alter ego, Mr. Thompson, "is almost distracted; he wishes there was peace," so that he could "instantly quit all the world and its greatness to live with you a domestic, quiet life," because he "doats on you and the child." Nelson even promised to sacrifice the chance to beat Bonaparte just to be with Emma.

The prospect of the prince coming to dinner tipped him into hysteria. He had visions of Emma performing suggestive songs to her royal guest that she had once sung to him. "I could bawl with my whole strength and my last breath should say
do not suffer him into your home.
"
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Late at night he scrawled, "Will you sing for the fellow,
The Prince, unable to Conceal His Pain?
No you will not…. Tell me all, every word, that passes. He will propose if you—no, you will not try; he is Sir Wm's guest." Before he could send the letter, he received one from Emma. He replied: