England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton (50 page)

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 "god-child," 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.