her. For she is sensible. So much for Beauty.
Adue, I long to see you." *
Empowered by the Sultan of Edgware Row, the
two Emmas, to their great but fleeting joy, were suf-
1 Morrison MS. 128. There is, of course, no conclusive evidence for identifying " little Emma " with the nameless child born early in 1782, but I can see no reason otherwise, or for supposing an earlier " Emma."
58 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
fered to return in the middle of July. Sir William
and his nephew were still on their provincial tour, when Emma, who fell ill again in town, thus addressed
him for the last time before his own return. It shall
be our closing excerpt :
" I received your kind letter last night, and, my dearest Greville, I want words to express to you how
happy it made me. For I thought I was like a lost
sheep, and everybody had forsook me. I was eight
days confined to my room and very ill, but am, thank
God, very well now, and a great deal better for your
kind instructing letter, and own the justice of your
remarks. You shall have your appartment to your-
self, you shall read, wright, or sett still, just as you pleas; for I shall think myself happy to be under the
seam roof with Greville, and do all I can to make it
agreable, without disturbing him in any pursuits that he can follow, to employ himself in at home or else whare.
For your absence has taught me that I ought to think
myself happy if I was within a mile of you; so as I
cou'd see the place as contained you I shou'd think my-
self happy abbove my sphear. So, my dear G., come
home. . . . You shall find me good, kind, gentle, and
affectionate, and everything you wish me to do I will
do. For I will give myself a fair trial, and follow
your advice, for I allways think it wright. . . . .Don't think, Greville, this is the wild fancy of a moment's
consideration. It is not. I have thoughroly con-
sidered everything in my confinement, and say nothing
now but what I sliall practice. ... I have a deal to
say to you when I see you. Oh, Greville, to think it is
9 weeks since I saw you. I think I shall die with the
pleasure of seeing you. ... I am all ways thinking of
your goodness. . . . Emma is very well, and is allways
wondering why you don't come home. She sends her
duty to you. . . . Pray, pray come as soon as you
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 59
come to town. Good by, God bless you! Oh, how I
long to see you."
It should be at once remarked that Greville conscien-
tiously performed his promise. He put " little
Emma " to a good school, and several traces of her
future survive. Meanwhile, having won his point, and
having also " prepared " her mind for another separation, of which she little dreamed, he came back to his
bower of thankful worship and submissive meekness.
He can scarcely have played often with the child,
whose benefactor he was a dancing-master, so to
speak, of beneficence, ever standing in the first posi-
tion of correct deportment. In August he bade fare-
well to his indulgent uncle, whom, indeed, he had " reason " to remember with as much " gratitude and affection " as Emma did. Romney was commissioned to
paint her as the " Bacchante " for the returning Ambassador, who had reassured his nephew about the
distant future. He had appointed him his heir, and
offered to stand security if he needed to borrow. He
had also joined Greville's other friends in advising him to bow to the inevitable and console his purse with an
heiress. Whether he also had already contemplated an
exchange seems more than doubtful. But the secretive
Greville had already begun to harbour an idea, soon
turned into a plan, and perpetually justified as a piece of benevolent unselfishness. While the ship bears the
unwedded uncle to softer climes and laxer standards,
while Greville, with a sigh of relief,, pores over his
accounts, we may well exclaim of these two knowing
and obliging materialists, par nobile fratrum a noble
brace of brothers indeed !
CHAPTER III
" WHAT GOD, AND GREVILLE, PLEASES "
To March, 1786
*'"" REALY do not feel myself in a situation to accept favours." " I depend on you for some
-* cristals in lavas, etc., from Sicily." These
sentences from two long epistles to his uncle at the
close of 1784 are keynotes to Greville's tune of mind.
With the new year he became rather more explicit :
" Emma is very grateful for your remembrance. Her
picture shall be sent by the first ship I wish Romney
yet to mend the dog. 1 She certainly is much improved
since she has been with me. She has none of the bad
habits which giddiness and inexperience encouraged,
and which bad choice of company introduced. ... I
am sure she is attached to me, or she would not have
refused the offers which I know have been great ; and
such is her spirit that on the least slight or expression of my being tired or burthened by her, I am sure she
would not only give up the connexion, but would not
even accept a farthing for future assistance."
Here let us pause a moment. In the " honest bar-
gain " shortly to be struck after much obliquity,
Greville's shabbiness consists, if we reflect on the prevailing tone of his age and set, not so much in the dis-
guised transfer a mean trick in itself as in the fact
1 In the first picture of the " Bacchante." Some trace of a goat as well as of a dog figures in all the known versions.
60
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 61
that, while he had no reproach to make and was avow-
edly more attached to her than ever, he practised upon
the very disinterestedness and fondness that he praised.
Had he been unable to rely on them with absolute confi-
dence, so wary a strategist would scarcely have ven-
tured on the attempt, since his future prospects largely depended on her never disadvantaging him with Sir
William. That she never did so, even in the first burst
of bitter disillusion; that she always, and zealously,
advocated his interests, redounds to her credit and
proves her magnanimity. A revengeful woman, whose
love and self-love had been wounded to the quick,
might have ruined him, as the censor of Paddington
was well aware. That he continued to approve his part
in these delicate negotiations is shown by the fact of
preserving these letters after they came into his pos-
session as his uncle's executor. He never ceased to pro-
test that his motives in the transaction were for her own ultimate good. He was not callous, but he was Jesuit-ical. Let him pursue his scattered hints further :
" This is another part of my situation. If I was independent I should think so little of any other con-
nexion that I never would marry. I have not an idea
of it at present, but if any proper opportunity offer'd
I shou'd be much harassed, not know how to manage,
or how to fix Emma to her satisfaction; and to forego
the reasonable plan which you and my friends ad-
vised is not right. I am not quite of an age to re-
tire from bustle, and to retire into distress and poverty is worse. I can keep on here creditably this winter.
The offer I made of my pictures is to get rid of the
Humberston engagements which I told you of. I have
a 1000 ready and 1000 to provide. I therefore am
making money. If Ross will take in payment from
me my bond with your security, I shall get free from
Humberston affairs entirely, and be able to give them
62 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
up. It is indifferent to me whether what I value is in
your keeping or mine. I will deposit with you gems
which you shall value at above that sum. ... It will
be on that condition I will involve you, for favor I take as favor, and business as business."
His subsequent communications dole out the grow-
ing plot by degrees and approaches; he works by sap
and mine. In March, 1785, after discussing politics
at large, he doubts if his uncle's " heart or his feet "
are " the lightest." He compliments him on his energy in sport, flirtation, and friendship " quests " not " in-compatible " in " a good heart." He moots his design in the light of Hamilton's welfare. " He must be a
very interested friend indeed who does not sincerely
wish everything that can give happiness to a friend."
He is convinced that each of them can sincerely judge
for the other. He does not, of course, venture to
" suppose " an " experiment " for the diplomatist ; but he himself has made the happiest though a " limited "
experiment, which, however, " from poverty . . . cannot last " ; his poverty but not his will consents. And then he opens the scheme. " If you did not chuse a
wife, I wish the tea-maker of Edgware Rowe was
yours, if I could without banishing myself from a visit
to Naples. I do not know how to part with what I
am not tired with. I do not know how to go on, and
I give her every merit of prudence and moderation and
affection. She shall never ^vant, and if I decide sooner than I am forced to stop by necessity, it will be that I may give her part of my pittance; and, if I do so it
must be by sudden resolution and by putting it out of
her power to refuse it for I know her disinterestedness
to be such that she will rather encounter any difficulty than distress me. I should not write to you thus, if I
did not think you seem'd as partial as I am to her. She
would not hear at once of any change, and from no
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 63
one that was not liked by her. I think I could secure
on her near 100 a year. It is more than in justice
to all I can do; but with parting with part of my virtu, I can secure it to her and content myself with the remainder. I think you might settle another on her.
... I am not a dog in the manger. If I could go on
I would never make this arrangement, but to be re-
duced to a standstill and involve myself in distress
further than I could extricate myself, and then to be
unable to provide for her at all, would make me mis-
erable from thinking myself unjust to her. And as
she is too young and handsome to retire into a con-
vent or the country, and is honorable and honest and
can be trusted, after reconciling myself to the neces-
sity I consider where she could be happy. I know you
thought me jealous of your attention to her; I can as-
sure you her conduct entitles her more than ever to
my confidence. Judge, then, as you know my satisfac-
tion in looking on a modern piece of virtu, if I do not
think you a second self, in thinking that by placing her within your reach, I render a necessity which would
otherwise be heartbreaking tolerable and even com-
forting."
Havdng prepared the ground, he wrote again in the
following May, " without affectation or disguise."
Delicacy had prevented him from writing about " Lady C [raven] " who, Hamilton's friends were glad to
learn, had departed. Would not all of them prefer one
like Emma? The " odds " in their own two lives were not " proportioned to the difference " of their years; he was very " sensible " of his uncle's intentions towards him. At what followed Sir William must have smiled.
The real reason for all his fencing emerges. Sir
William's joint security on the pledge of half his
minerals, the assurance that he was made his heir,
were mere credentials to be shown by Greville to a
64 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
prospective father-in-law. " Suppose a lady of 30,000
was to marry me," and so forth a vista of married
fortune. Even now the name of the lady thus hon-
oured was withheld; but Hamilton must have known it
perfectly: ". . . If you dislike my frankness, I shall be sorry, for it cost me a little to throw myself so open, and to no one's friendship could I have trusted myself
but to yours, from which I have ever been treated
with indulgence and preference."
A month more and he disclosed a positive, if
" distant and imperfect," prospect. Lord Middleton's youngest daughter was the favoured lady in the
" requisites of beauty and disposition," " beyond the mark for a younger brother." The die was cast; he
penned a formal proposal to her father. It may be
gathered that the lady rejected him; Greville certainly
never married. Often and often he must have wished
his poor and unfashionable Emma back again, when
she was poor and unfashionable no longer: his amour
propre had been hurt, and, till he became vice-cham-
berlain in 1794, to Lady Hamilton's genuine pleasure, 1
his fortunes drooped.
Greville's tentatives were now at an end. At length
he laid a plain outline before Sir William : " If you 1 Cf . her letter of congratulation (Sept. 16, 1794), Morrison MS. 246, in answer to his letter of August 18 announcing his good fortune and claiming the approbation of such friends as herself, as the best reward for one who plumes himself on friendship [Nelson Letters (1814), vol. i. p. 265]: "I should not flatter myself so far," he writes, "if I was not very sincerely interested in }-our happiness and ever affectionately yours." " I congratulate you," she answers, " with all my heart on your appointment. . . . You have well merited it; and all your friends must be happy at a change so favourable not only for your pecuniary circumstances, as for the honner of the situation. May you long enjoy it with every happiness that you deserve ! I speak from my heart. I don't know a better, honester, or more amiable and worthy man than yourself; and if is a great deal for me to say this, for, whatever I think, I am not apt to pay compliments."
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 65
could form a plan by which you could have a trial, and
could invite her and tell her that I ought not to leave
England, and that I cannot afford to go on ; and state
it as a kindness to me if she would accept your invita-
tion, she would go with pleasure. She is to be six
weeks at some bathing place ; and when you could write
an answer to this, and inclose a letter to her, I could
manage it ; and either by land, by the coach to Geneva,
and from thence by Veturine forward her, or else by
sea. I must add that I could not manage it so well
later; after a month, and absent from me, she would
consider the whole more calmly. If there was in the
world a person she loved so well as yourself after me,
>
I could not arrange with so much sang-froid; and I am
sure I would not let her go to you, if any risque of the usual coquetry of the sex being likely to give uneasiness or appearance. . . ."
Sir William's " invitation " was to be perfectly innocent. She was to understand that her dear Greville's
interest demanded a temporary separation; that she and
her mother would be honoured guests at the Naples
Embassy; that she could improve the delightful change
of scene and climate by training her musical gifts un-
der the best masters, by studying the arts in their
motherland, by learning languages amid a cosmopol-
itan crowd ; that by October her fairy-prince would re-
appear, and, like another Orpheus, bring back his Eu-
rydice. And all this she was to be told, after absence,
that makes the heart grow fonder, had inured her to
separation, softened her heart to self-sacrifice, and
reconciled her to his lightest bidding when, in short,
it would be easiest to practise on devotion. About
these machinations Emma was presumably left in the
dark; their windings took place behind her back. Her
all-wise, all-powerful and tender Greville could never
consult but for her good, while his real unselfishness
66 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
towards the child forbade any suspicion of his pur-
pose.
To Emma his prim platitudes were the loving elo-
quence of Romeo. And for the last few months he
had been always preaching up to her the spotless ex-
ample of a certain " Mrs. Wells," refined and accomplished, who, in Emma's own situation, had earned and
kept both her own self-respect and that of more than
one successive admirer; who had learned the art of re-
taining the lover as friend, while she accepted his friend as lover. These innuendoes may well have puzzled
her. Had she not realised a dream of constancy, and
could that pass ? Had she not parted with the child she
loved to please the man of her heart, and fasten his
faith to hers? Yet all the time her dearest Greville
could speak of " forwarding " her, just as if she were one of those crystals on which he doted.
The fact was that, added to his embarrassments, his
need for fortune with a wife, his wish at once to oblige Sir William and to preclude him from wedlock, his
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