panion when he went to Calais to fetch Horatia away,
after Lady Hamilton's death in 1815, was to be a
Mr. Henry Cadogan, a relation of the late and well-
known Mr. Rothery.
Only two sisters of Emma's mother are generally
mentioned. Both of these seem also to have risen
above their station. The one married a Mr. John
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 23
Moore, afterwards, it would seem, successful in busi-
ness at Liverpool, but at one time addressed by Emma
at the house of a Mr. Potter in Harley Street. The
other was a Mrs. Connor, who had six children, all of
them long supported by Lady Hamilton : one of them,
Sarah, to be the governess both at Merton and Cran-
wich, was well educated; another, Cecilia, became an
accomplished singer, and also a (though a less capable)
preceptress. Ann, the eldest, and Eliza both rose
above their sphere, though they proved most ungrate-
ful ; while Charles, who entered the Navy under Nel-
son's protection, could write an excellent letter, but unfortunately went mad, for, as Lady Hamilton recorded
in a very curious statement regarding four of them,
" there was madness in the family." Ann's showed itself in eventually asserting that she was Lady Hamilton's daughter, for which there is no evidence; in-
deed, to her must be traced the unfounded rumour
spread by the chronique scandaleuse of the time that
Ann, Eliza, and Charles were Greville's three chil-
dren. Mary, too, was to be popular, and with all her
sisters intimate with the whole Nelson and Hamil-
ton family, as well as with Sir William Hamilton's
relations.
Lady Hamilton's mother had also a third sister,
Ann, who married " Richard Reynolds, Whitesmith,"
in 1774. The Sarah (misspelt "Reynalds") who
finds a mention as grateful to her titled cousin in the
Morrison correspondence, was probably his daughter.
She may further have had another brother or cousin,
William, an entry regarding whom and his wife Mary
finds place also in the Hawarden parish books. There
were the " Nicolls," whom, just before her own bank-ruptcy, Emma is found continuously maintaining with
the rest of her connections. And finally there are
traces of friends of her Parkgate landlady in 1784,
24
Mrs. Downward, and of a Mrs. Ladmore whom she
seems to have known.
When we remember the bright and intelligent letters
that remain of this Connor family, their acquirements,
and the way in which they were treated and received,
the fairy-tale of Lady Hamilton's conquest over cir-
cumstance seems to have extended also to her rela-
tions.
Nothing can be proved of Emma's childhood but
that it was passed at Hawarden in extreme poverty,
that she was a madcap, and that she blossomed early
and fairly into stature and ripeness beyond her age.
At sixteen (or perhaps thirteen) she was already a
grown woman, which explains the puzzled Greville's
inquiry for the register of her baptism. The most
ridiculous romances were spread during her lifetime
and after it. Hairbreadth escapes and Family Herald
love-stories, regardless of facts or dates, adorn the
pages of a novel published in the fifties, and pro-
fessing to be circumstantial ; * while Alexandre Dumas
has embroidered his Souvenirs d'Une Favorite with
all the wild scandals of a teeming imagination. The
earliest certainty is that at some thirteen years of age she entered the service of Mr. Thomas of Hawarden,
the father of a London physician, and brother-in-law
of the famous art patron, Alderman Boydell of Lon-
don. Miss Thomas was the first to sketch Emma
while she was their nurse-maid. The drawing survives
at Hawarden, and the Thomases always remained her
friends. Whether it is possible that the roving Rom-
ney may have seen her there must be left to fancy. It
is at least a curious fact that she came so early into
indirect touch with art. The loose rumour ascribing
her departure from Hawarden to the severity of her
first master or mistress is entirely without foundation.
1 Nelson's Legacy.
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 25
A far more probable conjecture is that she left
Hawarden for London because her mother left also.
It seems probable from the letter to Greville, already
quoted, as well as from Greville's answer, which will
soon follow, that Mrs. " Cadogan " was already in some London situation known to and approved of by
Greville.
About the end, then, of 1779 or the beginning of
1780, when Emma was some fifteen years of age, she
repaired with her mother to the capital; and there
seems little doubt that she found employment with Dr.
Budd, a surgeon of repute, at Chatham Place, near St.
James's Market. A comrade with her in this service
was the talented and refined woman afterwards famed
as the actress, Jane Powell, who is not to be confused
with the older Harriet Powell, eventually Lady Sea-
forth. When Sir William and Lady Hamilton re-
turned home in 1800, they attended a performance at
Drury Lane, where Emma and her old fellow-servant
were the cynosure of an audience ignorant of their
former association. When Lady Hamilton was at
Southend in the late summer of 1803 she again met
her quondam colleague. Pettigrew possessed and
quoted a nice letter from her on this occasion. It is
assuredly not among the least of the many marvels
attending Emma's progress that an eminent surgeon
should have harboured two such belles in his area.
And now Apocrypha is renewed. Gossip has it
that she served in a shop; that she became parlour-
maid elsewhere, and afterwards the risky " compan-
ion " of a vicious " Lady of Quality." The Prince Regent, who was years afterwards to solicit and be repulsed by her, used to declare that he recollected her
selling fruit with wooden pattens on her feet; but he
also used to insist, it must be recollected, on his own
presence at the battle of Waterloo. It was said, too,
26 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
that she had been a model for the Academy students.
For such canards there is no certainty, and for many
rumours there is slight foundation. But there is a
shade of evidence to show that somewhere about 1781
she was in the service of the manager of Drury Lane
Theatre, Sheridan's father-in-law, Thomas Linley the
elder, and that she suddenly quitted it from grief at
the death of his young son, a naval lieutenant, whom
she had nursed. Angelo in his Reminiscences has
drawn the pathetic picture of his chance meeting with
her in Rathbone Place, a dejected figure clad in deep
mourning; he has added an earlier encounter and an
allusion to her brief sojourn with the " Abbess " of Arlington Street, Mrs. Kelly, who may be identical
with the " Lady of Quality." If so, destitution must have caused her downfall. Hitherto this girl of sixteen,
so beautiful that passers-by turned spellbound to
look at her, had rejected all overtures of evil. Writ-
ing to Romney after her marriage, in a letter which
seems to imply that she had known him even before her
acquaintance with Greville, Lady Hamilton thus recalls
her past : " You have seen and discoursed with me in my poorer days, you have known me in my poverty and
prosperity, and I had no occasion to have lived for
years in poverty and distress if I had not felt some-
thing of virtue in my mind. Oh, my dear friend, for
a time I own through distress my virtue was van-
quished, but my sense of virtue was not overcome."
Some two years earlier, when she had insisted on ac-
companying Sir William on a shooting expedition,
and he had evidently remonstrated about hardship,
rough lodging did not deter her; she had been accus-
tomed to it.
From Angelo's story it would appear that her
earliest admirer was Fetherstonehaugh, who will soon
cross the scene, and who in her later years was to
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 27
emerge friendly and even respectful. But the name of
her first betrayer has been so constantly given as that
of " Captain," afterwards Rear-Admiral, " Jack " Willet-Payne, man of fashion, member of Parliament, and
eventually treasurer of Greenwich Hospital, that the
story cannot be wholly discredited. Tradition has
added that she first encountered him in a bold attempt
to rescue a cousin from being impressed into the
service. This may or may not be. The sole side-
light, afforded by an unnoticed letter from Nelson of
1 80 1, which proves that she had confided much of her
past to her hero, more probably refers to Greville:
" That other chap did throw away the most precious
jewel that God ever sent on this earth."
Her relations with the Captain can scarcely have
lasted more than about two months. If she was his
Ariadne, he sailed away in haste, nor does he darken
her path again. It was perhaps on his sudden de-
parture that this lonely girl fell in with Dr. Graham,
the empiric and showman. How she met him is un-
known: that he was anything to her but an employer
has never been suggested; that he ever employed her
at all rests merely on a story, so accredited by Petti-
grew, who had known several of her early contem-
poraries, that one can hardly doubt it. The sole evi-
dence that she ever "posed" for him. is to be found in Greville's reply to Emma's appeal already cited: in
it Greville speaks of the last time you came to " G.,"
which Mr. Jeaffreson guesses to mean " Graham." It may, however, at once be noted that his living advertisement of the goddess of health and beauty, " Hebe Vestina," did not figure in his museum of specifics until 1782, when he had removed from the Adelphi to
Pall Mall, and had there opened his " Temple of
Hymen " in the eastern part of Schomberg House, the western side of which had been leased to Gainsborough
28 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
by the eccentric artist and adventurer, Jack Astley.
The strong probability is that Emma was first engaged
by him as a singer in those miniature mock-oratorios
and cantatas, composed by himself, which played such
a part in his miscellany, and were supposed to attune
the souls of the faithful; while her expressive beauty
may have soon tempted him to exhibit her as the
draped statue of " Hygieia," or Goddess of Health, though certainly not as his later tableau vivant of
" Hebe Vestina."
Dr. Graham was no common impostor. He belongs
to the class of charlatan that unites pseudo-mysticism
and pseudo-piety to real skill in short, a High Priest
of Pompeian Isis. He was no mere conjurer; he ef-
fected genuine cures besides dealing in quack remedies.
At this time he was about forty years of age. He
may have qualified in Edinburgh University; he had
certainly travelled in France and America, and re-
ceived testimonials from personages at home and
abroad. He knew his classics, which he quoted
profusely in those curious " lectures " combining puff with literary, satirical, scriptural, philanthropic, and scientific allusion. His brother had married the " historian," Mrs. Catharine Macaulay, who often figures in his florid catalogues of cures. That authoress is
depicted in mezzo-tints as a sickly-looking lady, pen
in hand, with a row of her volumes before her, trying
apparently to draw inspiration from the ceiling. He
was never tired of assuring the public that she was own
sister to " Mr. John Sawbridge, M.P. for London."
He posed as a sort of prayerful alchemist, eradicating
and healing at once the causes of vice, and its conse-
quences. His advertisements are a queer union of
cant earnestness, travestied truth, sensible nonsense,
humour and the lack of it, effrontery and belief
especially in himself. After he had closed his costly:
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 29
and ruinous London exhibitions, he turned " Christian Philosopher " at Bath and Newcastle, anticipated the modern open-air . cure, " paraphrased " the Lord's Prayer for the public, the Book of Wisdom for the
Prince of Wales, and hastened to lay on the pillow of
the suffering George III. one of his numerous
"prayers." His specialty in 1780 (and throughout his career) was the then derided but now accepted electricity and mud-baths. By their means he claimed to
restore and preserve beauty, to prolong existence, to
enable a decayed generation to repair its losses by a
vigorous, comely, and healthful progeny. He had
opened a pinchbeck palace enriched with symbolical
paintings, gilt statues, and coloured windows, where
up to ten o'clock nightly he advertised his wares to
the sound of sweet music, in his " Temple of yEscu-
lapius " at the Royal Terrace, Adelphi. His pamphlets, sermons, hymns, exhortations, and satires, were rained
on the town. In one of these pieces of fulsome reclame
he describes his museum of elixirs as Emma may have
viewed it in 1780 or 1781. Over the porch stood
the inscription " Templum ./Esculapio Sacrum." There were three gorgeously decorated rooms with galleries
above, and pictures of heroes and kings, including
Alfred the Great. Crystal glass pillars enshrined the
costly electrical apparatus for reviving youth and
strength. The third chamber was the tinsel " Temple of Apollo " with its magnetic " celestial bed," with its gilt dragons, overarching " Pavilion," and inscription,
" Dolorifica res est si quis homo dives nullum habet domi suse successorem." " But on the right of the Temple," he says, " is strikingly seen a beautiful figure of Fecundity," holding her cornucopia and surrounded by reclining children ; and above all, an " electric "
" celestial glory," which, mellowed by the stained windows, shed a dim and solemn light. Strains of
30 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
majestic melody filled the air; and here also were sold
his " Nervous Balsam " and " Electrical ^Ether " ; while in the mornings this reverse of " seraphic " doctor punctually attended consultations in the dwelling-
rooms adjoining.
Whether such ambrosia
l tomfoolery yielded Emma
an intermittent livelihood at all, and whether before
she loved Willet-Payne or after, remains doubtful; the
latter is more probable. The blatant novelty-monger
offered prizes for emblematic pictures, and it is possible that Tresham, or even his friend Romney, might have
been pressed into his service. It may well be, too,
that here the young blood and baronet, Sir Henry
Fetherstonehaugh, became her admirer. As we see
him in his letters some thirty years afterwards, this
worthy appears as a silly old beau and sportsman, in-
dulging in compliments pompous as his political reflec-
tions, and interlarding his correspondence with super-
fluous French. In his old age he educated and mar-
ried a most worthy peasant girl, and brought her sis-
ter (also educated in France) to reside with them at
Up Park, while from Lady Fetherstonehaugh the
estate passed into that sister's possession.
Up Park (like Willet-Payne) was fraught with
dreams of the fleet, for from its lofty position on the
steep Sussex Downs it commands a prospect of Ports-
mouth and the Isle of Wight. Here this erring and
struggling girl, for a brief space, it may be in 1781,
became the mistress of the mansion and its roystering
owner, both Nimrod and Macaroni. Here she
" witched the world with noble horsemanship," for she was always a fearless rider. Here, among rakes,
she could not rest, as she sighed for the artistic ad-
miration which her tableau vivant in the Adelphi had
already aroused among clever Bohemians. Here, per-
haps in despair, she became so reckless and capricious,
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 31
so hopeless of that peace of mind and happy innocence
which, ten years later, she joyfully assured Romney
had been restored to her by marriage, that she was
ejected and cast adrift at the very moment when she
found herself soon to become a mother. That she
was " a girl in reall distres " for the first time (and not, as has often been presumed, for the second) will
be shown when we come to " little Emma," and it is here evidenced by her entreaty that Greville would
spare her mother any knowledge of this fresh and
crushing blow.
At Up Park, most probably, Greville had first met
her in the autumn of 1781, on one of those shooting-
parties in great houses which he always frequented
Full text of Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; Page 3
