84 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
Neapolitan noblesse, all seemed miracles, broke down
the easy barriers of susceptible southerners, and gained her hosts of " sensible admirers." So early as February, 1787, Sir William reported to his nephew:
". . . Our dear Em. goes on now quite as I cou'd
.wish, and is universally beloved " a phrase which
Emma herself repeated ten months later to her first
mentor, with the proud consciousness of shining at a
distance before him. " She is wonderful," added Hamilton, " considering her youth and beauty, and I flatter myself that E. and her Mother are happy to be
with me, so that I see my every wish fulfilled." By the August of this year, when she first wrote Italian,
she saw " good company," she delighted the whole diplomatic circle; Sir William was indissociable ; she
used the familiar " we " " our house at Caserta is fitted up," while Sir William followed suit. The very servants styled her " Eccellenza." Her attached Ambassador " is distractedly in love " ; " he deserves it, and indeed I love him dearly." There was not a grain in her of inconstancy. " He is so kind, so good and tender to me," she wrote as Emma Hart, in an unpublished letter, " that I love him so much that I have not a warm look left for the Neapolitans." His evenings, he wrote, were sweet with song and admiring
guests, while her own society rendered them a " comfort." Inclination went on steadily ripening, until it settled within three years into deep mutual fondness.
He fitted up for her a new boudoir in the Naples house
with its round mirrors, as Miss Knight has recorded,
covering the entire side of the wall opposite the semi-
circular window, and reflecting the moonlit bay with
its glimmering boats, the glass tanks with their marine
treasures of " sea-oranges " and the like. Within a year Hamilton tells Greville that she asks him " Do you
love me, aye, but as much as your new apartment ? "
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 85
both here and at Caserta. He did his best to " form "
her, and in the course of time she was able to share his botanical studies, which they pursued not as " pedantical prigs " to air learning, but with zeal and pleasure in the early mornings and fresh air of the " English "
gardens. Her aptitude and adaptiveness worked
wonders. Within a year she could take an intelligent
interest in the virtuoso's new volume, if we may judge
from Sir J. Banks, who some years later again bade
his old crony tell her that he hoped she admired Penel-
ope in his work on Urns. She aided his volcanic ob-
servations; Sir William laughed, and said she would
rival him with the mountain now. Both had already
stayed with, and she had enchanted, the Duke and
Duchess of St. Maitre at Sorrento, the musical
Countess of Mahoney at Ischia; cries of " Una donna rara," " bellissima creatura," were on every mouth.
The Duke of Gloucester begged Hamilton to favour
him with her acquaintance. The Olympian Goethe
himself beheld and marvelled. Her unpretending
naivete won her adherents at every step. " All the female nobility, with the queen at their head," were
" distantly civil " to her already; none rude to Emma were allowed within the precincts. Meddlers or censors were sent roundly to the right-about, and in-
formed that she was the sweetest, the best, the clev-
erest creature in the world. When he returned from
his periodical royal wild-boar chases, it was Emma
again who brewed his punch and petted him. Now
and again there peeps out also that half voluptuous
tinge in her wifeliness which never wholly deserted her.
She had been Greville's devoted slave; Sir Villiam was
already hers. Her monitor had repulsed her free
sacrifice and urged it for his own advantage towards
his uncle; but her worshipper had now fanned not so
much the flame, perhaps, as the incense of her un-
86 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
feigned * attachment. The English dined with her
while Sir William was away shooting with the king.
She trilled Handel and Paisiello, learned French,
Italian, music, dancing, design, and history. Hamil-
ton, himself musical, used later on to accompany her
voice of which he was a good judge on the viola.
She laughed at the foibles and follies of the court;
she retailed to him the gossip of the hour. She en-
tered into his routine and protected his interests; she
prevented him from being pestered or plundered. Only
a few years, and she was dictating etiquette even to an
English nobleman.
It was a triumphal progress which took the town by
storm; her beauty swept men off their feet. The
transformations of these eighteen months, which lifted
her out of her cramped nook at Paddington into a
wide arena, read like a dream, or one of those Arabian
fairy-tales where peasants turn princes in an hour.
Nor is the least surprise, .among many, the thought
that these dissolving views present themselves as ad-
ventures of admired virtue, and not as unsanctioned
escapades. At Naples the worst of her past seemed
buried, and she could be born again. Her accent, her
vulgarisms mattered little; she spoke to new friends
in a new language. The " lovely woman " who had
" stooped to folly, and learned too late that men betray," seems rather to have " stooped to conquer " by the approved methods of the same Goldsmith's heroine.
The scene of her debut is that of Opera, all moon-
light, flutter, music, and masquerade. Escaping in
*Cf. Morrison MS. 164, 1787 (Emma to Sir William): "... My comforter in distress. Then why shall I not love you. Endead I must and ought whilst life is left in me or reason to think on you.
. . . My heart and eyes fill. ... I owe everything to you, and shall ever with gratitude remember it. . . ." And cf. ibid, 172, 1788 ;"...! love Sir William, for he renounces all for me."
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 87
the cool of the evening from her chambers, thronged
by artists, wax-modellers, and intaglio-cutters, she at-
tends Sir William's evening saunter in the royal gar-
dens at the fashionable hour. Her , complexion so
much resembles apple-blossom, that beholders question
it, although she neither paints nor powders. Dapper
Prince Dietrichstein from Vienna (" Draydrixton "
in her parlance as in Acton's) attends her as " cavaliere servente," whispering to her in broken English that she is a " diamond of the first water." Two more princes and " two or three nobles " follow at her heels.
She wears a loose muslin gown, the sleeves tied in
folds with blue ribbon and trimmed with lace, a blue
sash and the big blue hat which Greville has sent her
as peace-offering. Beyond them stand the king, the
queen, the minister Acton, and a brilliant retinue.
That queen, careworn but beautiful, who already
" likes her much," has begged the Austrian beau to walk near her that she may get a glimpse of his fair
companion, the English girl, who is a " modern an-
tique." " But Greville," writes Emma, " the king
[h]as eyes, he [h]as a heart, and I have made an
impression on it. But I told the prince, Hamilton
is my friend, and she belongs to his nephew, for all
our friends know it." * Only last Sunday that " Roi d'Yve
tot " had dined at Posilippo, mooring his boat by the casements of Hamilton's country casino for a
nearer view. This garden-house is already named the
" Villa Emma," and there for Emma a new " music-room " is building. Emma and the Ambassador had
been entertaining a " diplomatick party." They issue forth beneath the moon to their private boat. At
once the monarch places his " boat of musick " next to theirs. His band of " French Horns " strikes up a serenade for the queen of hearts. The king re-1 Morrison MS. 152, July 22, 1786.
88
moves his hat, sits with it on his knees, and " when going to land," bows and says, " it was a sin he could not speak English." She has him in her train every
evening at San Carlo, villa, or promenade ; she is the
cynosure of each day, and the toast of every night.
Or, again, she entertains informally at Sorrento, all
orange-blossom in February, after an afternoon of
rambling donkey-rides near flaming Vesuvius, and
visits to grandees in villeggiatura. In one room sits
Sir William's orchestra ; in the other she receives their guests. At last her turn comes round to sing; she
chooses " Luce Bella," in which the Banti makes such a furore at San Carlo, that famous Bant? who had
already marvelled at the tone and compass of her
voice, when in fear and trembling she had been in-
duced to follow her. As she ceases, there is a ten
minutes' round of applause, a hubbub of " Bravas "
and " Ancoras." And then she performs in " buffo "
i " that one " (and Greville knew it) " with a Tam-bourin, in the character of a young girl with a raire-
shew [raree-show], the pretiest thing you ever heard."
He must concede her triumph, the hard, unruffled man !
She turns the heads of the Sorrentines; she leaves
" some dying, some crying, and some in despair. Mind you, this was all nobility, as proud as the devil " ; but and here brags the people's daughter " we humbled
them "; " but what astonished them was that I shou'd speak such good Italian. For I paid them, I spared
non[e] of them, tho' I was civil and oblidging. One
asked me if I left a love at Naples, that I left them so soon. I pulled my lip at him, to say, ' I pray, do you
take me for an Italian? . . . Look, sir, I am Eng-
lish. I have one Cavaliere servente, and have brought
him with me,' pointing to Sir William." Hart, the
English musician, wept to hear her sing an air by Han-
del, pronouncing that in her the tragic and comic
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 89
Muses were so happily blended that Garrick would
have been enraptured. These were the very qualities
that even thus early distinguished her self-taught " Attitudes," by common consent of all beholders a mar-
vel of artistic expression and refinement. Goethe, at
this moment in Naples, and certainly no biassed critic,
was an eye-witness. He had been introduced by his
friends, the German artists, 1 to the Maecenas Ambas-
sador and " his Emma." He thus records his im-
pressions :
". . . The Chevalier Hamilton, so long resident
here as English Ambassador, so long, too, connoisseur
and student of Art and Nature, has found their coun-
terpart and acme with exquisite delight in a lovely
girl English, and some twenty years of age. She is
exceedingly beautiful and finely built. She wears a
Greek garb becoming her to perfection. She then
merely loosens her locks, takes a pair of shawls, and
effects changes of postures, moods, gestures, mien, and
appearance that make one really feel as if one were in
some dream. Here is visible complete, and bodied
forth in movements of surprising variety, all that so
many artists have sought in vain to fix and render.
Successively standing, kneeling, seated, reclining,
grave, sad, sportive, teasing, abandoned, penitent,
alluring, threatening, agonised. One follows the
other, and grows out of it. She knows how to choose
and shift the simple folds of her single kerchief for
every expression, and to adjust it into a hundred kinds
of headgear. Her elderly knight holds the torches for
her performance, and is absorbed in his soul's desire.
In her he finds the charm of all antiques, the fair
profiles on Sicilian coins, the Apollo Belvedere him-
self. . . . We have already rejoiced in the spectacle
1 Tischbein, Hackert, and Andreas, who, with others, were at this time painting in Naples.
90 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
two evenings. Early to-morrow Tischbein paints
her." x
There are less familiar references also in the Italian
Journey. On Goethe's return from Sicily in May, the
author of Werther, occupied with the art, the peasant
life, and the geology of the neighbourhood, renewed
his acquaintance with the pair and acknowledges their
kindnesses. He dined with them again. Sir William
favoured him with a view of his excavated treasures
in the odd " vault," where statues and sarcophagi, bronze candelabra and busts, lay disarranged and
jumbled. Among them Goethe noticed an upright,
open chest " rimmed exquisitely with gold, and large enough to contain a life-size figure in its dark, inner
background." Sir William explained how Emma,
attired in bright Pompeiian costume, had stood mo-
tionless inside it with an effect in the half-light even more striking than her grace as " moving statue."
Goethe, ever curious, was now keenly interested in
studying the superstitions of the Neapolitan peasantry,
including the realistic shows of manger and Magi with
which they celebrated Christmas-tide. In these, living
images were intermixed with coloured casts of clay.
And he hazards the remark while deprecating it from
the lips of a contented guest that perhaps " Miss
Harte " was at root not more than such a living image a tableau vivant. Perchance, he muses, the main
lack of his " fair hostess " is "geist " or soulfulness of mind. Her dumb shows, he adds, were naturally un-voiced, and voice alone expresses spirit. Even her
admired singing he then thought deficient in " ful-
ness." Had Goethe, however, known her whole na-
ture, he would have owned that if she were " geistlos"
in the highest sense, she was never dull, and was to
prove the reverse of soulless; while he, of all men,
1 Goethe, Italienische Reise, March 16, 1787.
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 91
would have admired not only her enthusiasm but her
more practical qualities. Did he, perhaps, in after
years recall this mute and lovely vision when her name,
for good or ill, had entered history? At any rate,
though neither Hamilton nor Emma has noticed him in
existing letters, they both endure on Goethe's pages;
and to have impressed Goethe was even then no easy
task. That the creator of Iphigcnia and Tasso was
deeply impressed is proved by another and better
known passage, where after praising Hamilton as " a man of universal taste, who has roamed through all
the realms of creation," and has " made a beautiful existence which he enjoys in the evening of life," he adds that Emma is " a masterpiece of the Arch-Artist."
To resu
me our dissolving views : a priest begs her
picture on a box, which he clasps to his bosom. A
countess weeps when she departs. The Russian
empress hears her fame, and orders her portrait.
Commodore Melville gives a dinner to thirty on board
his Dutch frigate in her honour, and seats her at the
head as " mistress of the feast." She is robed " all in virgin white," her hair " in ringlets reaching almost to her heels," so long, that Sir William says she
" look't and moved amongst it." She has soon learned by rote the little ways of the big world, and whispers
to him that it is gala night at San Carlo, and de
rigucur to reach their box before the royal party en-
tered their neighbouring one. The guns salute; the
pinnace starts amid laughter, song, and roses, while
off she speeds to semi-royal triumphs " as tho' I
was a queen." Serena's wholesome lesson is being
half forgotten.
Once more, Vesuvius " looks beautiful," with its lava-streams descending far as Portici. She climbs
the peak of fire at midnight five miles of flame; the
92 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
peasants deem the mountain " burst." The climbers seek the shelter of the Hermit's cabin that strange
Hermit who had thus retired to solitude and exile for
love of a princess. 1 Has she not spirit ? Let Greville
mark : " For me, I was enraptured. I could have staid all night there, and I have never been in charity with
the moon since, for it looked so pale and sickly. And
the red-hot lava served to light up the moon, for the
light of the moon was nothing to the lava." Ascend-
ing, she meets the Prince-Royal. His " foolish
tuters," fearful of their charge's safety and their own, escort him only halfway, and allow him but three
minutes for the sight. She asks him how he likes it.
" Bella, ma poca roba," replies the lad. Five hundred yards higher he could have watched " the noblest,
sublimest sight in the world." But the " poor frightened creatures" beat "a scared" retreat: "O, I shall kill myself with laughing! " And is not the plebeian girl schooling herself to be a match for crass blue
blood? " Their [h]as been a prince paying us a visit.
He is sixty years of age, one of the first families, and fh]as allways lived at Naples; and when I told him I
had been at Caprea, he asked me if I went there by
land. Only think what ignorance! I staired at him,
Full text of Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; Page 10
