England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton (61 page)

The publishers chose the perfect time. Ten days before, the war with France had been declared over. London lit up in celebration at the news that Napoleon had abdicated and retreated to exile on the island of Elba. Fireworks exploded every night. Central London was so crowded that the St. James cows dashed in a panic out of Green Park. The city was crammed with visitors with money to burn—and everybody was buying the
Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton.

Nelson's adoring populace lapped up the book, shocked by his complaints about the Admiralty, greedily appalled by his jealousy of the Prince of Wales, and outraged that he had wanted to dally with Emma rather than carry out his duty at sea. Almost overnight, the image of Emma in the public imagination as the adoring mistress of Nelson and the mother of his child was shattered. If she had ever had any chance of a pension, the book crushed it for good. The prince—even though he had sold the king's fraught letters to him to three newspapers in 1803—seized the excuse to
reject her petitions. The government followed suit. The royal brothers, aristocrats, and Nelson's family welcomed the opportunity to turn their backs on her.

Emma implored James Perry to defend her, declaring she had once left her papers in a case with a friend she thought she "cou'd depend on." Emma and Horatia believed the culprit was James Harrison, who had stayed in her house while working on his
Life of Nelson.
She had allowed him to look at her papers, and he could easily have found other letters and transcribed them with the help of his blackmailing ex-secretary friend, Francis Oliver. Emma had always been dogged by former acquaintances and staff who wanted to spill the details about life at Merton to the newspapers, but Oliver had the biggest hold of all, for he had delivered Nelson's most explicit letters to her.

Emma had not helped herself by being chronically disorganized through the chaos of moving between homes and taking frequent holidays. She was a compulsive hoarder, and by 1810, having lost her mother and her more reliable maids, she was drowning in a confusion of memorabilia and belongings. In 1811, Dr. Beatty was entreating her to return a letter from Nelson to a friend that he had sent her in 1806, but she never found it.
¹
She had failed to keep track of her letters—and now she was paying the penalty.

The sale of Nelson's letters would have brought her a sizable injection of cash, but her finances only declined from 1805 onward. If she had wanted to sell them, it would have made sense to do the deal via James Perry, but he was ignorant of the affair and the
Herald,
his rival paper, had the scoop. Unlike mistresses who had extorted money from aristocrats by threatening to publish their letters, Emma had never contemplated her love letters as some kind of pension. She expected the government would recompense her for her services.

As her last friends turned their backs on her and the newspapers feasted on the remnants of her reputation, she frantically beseeched Earl Nelson for the £500 a year pension from Bronte that Nelson had left her.
²
When he reluctantly paid over £200, it was a drop in the ocean. Emma's health had declined rapidly. Suffering from crippling stomach pain, she was so weak, dizzy, and sick that she could not leave her bed. She believed she was dying and begged Joshua Smith and James Perry not to leave her to live out her last days in prison. But they knew that if they bailed her out, she would only be arrested once more at the behest of another creditor. Smith and Perry hatched a plan. As they told her, she could not be arrested
in a foreign country and now that the war was over, travelers could visit France.

Smith and Perry sold her remaining valuables, including the silver dishes that had pleased Sir William Dillon, and raised further cash from other friends. Smith put up bail on June 22, and the next day, after a year living under the Rules of the King's Bench, Emma was free. Perry and Smith arranged for her and Horada to escape. Emma's discharge certificate is still in a box in the Public Record Office, along with those for hundreds of other debtors released in the same month. For the clerk writing out paper after paper, the poignant decline of Nelson's mistress was just one story of self-delusion and bad luck among many. She was anxious to leave the country immediately, but she risked being arrested again if she traveled on a normal cross-Channel ferry. To put her creditors off the scent, she and Horatia hid in England for a week as Perry and Smith worked frantically to arrange her escape. On July 1, Emma and her daughter boarded a small private boat from London Bridge, bound for Calais, on France's northern coast. She was exhilarated to be free but had only £50 in her purse.

CHAPTER 56
"A Chance I May Live"

A
fter a miserable "three days sickeness at sea," Emma was relieved to be on dry land. "I managed so well with Horada alone that I was at Calais before any new writs could be issued out against me," she reported in delight. With Napoleon in exile on Elba, Calais was retrieving its prewar swing as one of the most fashionable and expensive resorts in Europe, crowded with pleasure seekers on their way to Paris or nearby spas. Emma hoped to prevail on some of those who had enjoyed her hospitality in the past and to regain her old glitter.

Emma knew only one way of raising her profile: to spend money. She took apartments in the expensive Dessein's Hotel, the only place for traveling luminaries. Aristocrats supped on boiled turtle in the exquisitely decorated restaurant and swapped fashion tips in the glamorous lounge. The Duke of Clarence had been rather fond of the town when he had visited, and Emma hoped he might return. She still cut a grand enough dash to fool the Calais moneylenders into giving her credit and, flush with bundles of new notes, she threw splendid dinner parties and hired a harp and piano for Horatia as well as music teachers, insisting, "I would sooner starve than her fine and beautiful mind should not be cultivated." Radiating optimism and new hopes, Emma wrote to George Rose on July 4,

I feel so much better, from change of climate, food, air, large rooms and
liberty,
that there is a chance I may live to see Horatia brought up. I am looking out for a lodging. I have an excellent Frenchwoman who is good at everything; for Horatia and myself, and my old dame, who is coming, will be my establishment. Near me is an English lady who has, resided here for twenty-five years, who has a day school, but not for eating and sleeping. At eight in the morning, I take Horatia; fetch her at one; at three, we dine, and then in the evening we walk. She learns everything—piano, harp, languages grammatically. She knows French and Italian well, but she will improve. Not any girls, but those of the first families go there. Last evening we walked two miles to a fete cham-petre pour les bourgeois. Everybody is pleased with Horatia… our little world of happiness is in ourselves.
¹

Emma was proud that Horatia was becoming a fine young lady proficient in French and Italian, as well as speaking a little German and Spanish. She was also making progress in music, mathematics, geography, and English and classical history. As Horatia later asserted, about her mother, "through
all her
difficulties she
invariably
till the last few months, expended on my education etc., the whole of the
interest
of the sum left me by Lord Nelson, and which was left entirely in her control."
²
Emma implored Rose to petition Lord Sidmouth for money for Horatia's education and clothes, declaring that she was "the victim of artful mercenary wretches."

After a few months, the Calais lenders and shopkeepers began to question Emma's grande dame act, and she began the old game of hiding from them and fobbing them off At the same time, she was increasingly dispirited by the hopeless watch for the mail, and her health worsened. She was once more confined to bed with stomach pain, nausea, and headaches. Fretting about money, Emma moved into a large farmhouse in the village of St. Pierre, two miles from Calais—so out of the way that she did not trust her post to arrive, and she asked friends to send mail to Dessein's Hotel. The rent in St. Pierre was cheaper, and she thought that the country air might alleviate her sickness. Emma hoped that moving away would help her to hide her illness, for the Calais creditors would start pressing in earnest the minute they knew she was seriously unwell. She also aimed to keep her sickness out of the newspapers: she had a chance of a pension to care for Nelson's daughter only if she looked to live a long time.

Emma and Horatia were not dirt poor. They felt destitute because they had recently lived so stylishly, but they were never without food. Emma's old housekeeper, Dame Francis, came to run the household, and there were other servants, such as one Mary Cornish, to do her cooking, cleaning, and washing and serve her guests. Emma sent her maids to buy nourishing food at prices much cheaper than in London. In one letter, she described how they bought the best meat at five pence a pound and two
big turkeys for four shillings, a large turbot for a half a crown, partridges, and excellent Bordeaux. She was anxious that Horada live as normally as possible, getting out of bed to take her to parties and dances, and delighting when her daughter's graceful dancing and fluent French made her the pet of the company.

By the end of September, the Calais tradesmen were demanding repayment. Her annuity from Sir William had been pledged away. She begged the executor of Sir William's will, Robert Greville, for an advance of £100, but he was still fending off her creditors and had no money to spare. Her attempt to hide her illness was working too well—the gossip columns in England reported on Lady Hamilton living it up in Calais, exaggerating her spending, which did not help persuade Robert Greville or the government to send her money. Emma protested angrily that she was living quietly and contested the revelations of the
Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton,
declaring to the
Morning Herald
that she, Sir William, and Nelson were all "too much attached to his Royal Highness ever to speak or think ill of him," but her quest to win sympathy was doomed.
³
Convinced that she would be rescued, Emma kept up the show to the end and continued to solicit assistance by hosting grand parties. But for most of the English in Calais, a drive out to Nelson's flamboyant mistress simply meant a free dinner and a good story to tell their friends. In October, she beseeched the government that she had not a shilling, pleading, "If there is Humanity still left in British Hearts they will not suffer us to die in famine in a foreign Country for God's sake."
⁴
Money failed to appear, and her health worsened. She began to seek the solace of religion, attending the local Catholic church and finding a sympathetic friend in the local priest. The behavior of Earl Nelson, erstwhile clergyman, perhaps convinced her to embrace a faith in which priests seemed less worldly. Her reasons for turning to Catholicism were also pragmatic—in the St. Pierre congregation, she was free of the prying eyes of the English at the Anglican church in Calais, a gossipy little social club for expats and travelers.

Religion gave her optimism, but her body was unable to keep up. Emma's long-term problems with sickness, diarrhea, and stomach pain were the result of amoebic dysentery, probably picked up in Naples, since Sir William had suffered from the same complaint. Although her love of rich foods and fine wine did not help, her health was ruined not by gluttony, as is commonly argued, but by a parasite caught in the city that made her famous.

By November, Emma was unable to afford the farm and too ill to live
in the country, for she needed daily access to doctors and chemists. She, Horatia, Dame Francis, Mary, and the other maids moved to a cheap flat in 27 rue Frangaise in Calais, rented from a Monsieur Damas. Emma had one room, Horatia lived next door, and the servants were crammed into another. The move exhausted her last shreds of energy, and within a week of arriving, she took to her bed. She wrote no more letters. In an attempt to dull the pain, she drank spirits and took heavy doses of laudanum, which, mercifully, was freely available and cheaper than alcohol. She was dying.

Shivering and struggling to breathe, Emma passed her final weeks in a blur of pain. Initially, her hands and feet began to swell, then her legs filled with fluid as the abscess drained into the lungs, stomach, and chest. Eventually, as her kidneys failed and her body became saturated, she suffered severe shooting pains, coughing, and vomiting. Horatia believed she had "water on the chest" or tuberculosis, which suggests she was coughing blood and unable to eat or drink. Doctors commonly treated stomach and liver complaints with doses of mercury, so her sufferings would have been intensified by even more vomiting.