and asked him who was his tutor," coolly remarks the femme savant e who writes of " as " and " stair."
She cannot tear her eyes away from the volcano's
awful pageant. She takes one of her maids " a great biggot " up to her house-top and shows her the con-flagration. The contadina drops on her knees, call-
ing on the city's patron saints : " O Janaro mio, Antonio mio!" Ejnma falls down on hers, exclaiming,
" Santa Loola mia, Loola mia! " Teresa rises, and with open eyes inquires whether " her Excellency "
*Alexandre Sauveur, who dared to love the Princess Ferdinand, whose tutor he was.
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 93
doubts the saints. " No," replies her mistress in Italian, " it is quite the same if you pray to my own
' Loola.' ' "... She look't at me, and said, to be
sure, I read a great many books and must know more
than her. But she says, ' Does not God favour you
more than ous?' Says I, no. 'O God,' says she,
' your eccellenza is very ungrateful ! He [h]as been so
good as to make your face the same as he made the
face of the Blessed Virgin's, and you don't esteem it a
favour ! ' ' Why,' says I, ' did you ever see the
Virgin? ' ' O yes,' says she, ' you are like every pic-
ture that there is of her, and you know the people
at Iscea fel down on their knees to you, and beg'd you
to grant them favours in her name.' And, Greville, it
is true that they have all got it in their heads that I
am like the Virgin, and do come to beg favours of
me. Last night there was two preists came to my
house, and Sir William made me put a shawl over
my head, and look up, and the preist burst into tears
and kist my feet, and said God had sent me a purpose."
Emma is in vein indeed. How buoyantly she swims
and splashes on the rising tide ! How exuberantly the
whole breathes of " I always knew I could, if opportunity but walked towards me ! " and of " I will show Greville what a pearl he has cast away ! " Although she could be diffident when matched with genuine excellence or before those she loved, how the blare of
her trumpet drowns all the still small voices! One is
reminded of Woollett, the celebrated eighteenth cen-
tury engraver, who was in the habit of firing off a
small cannon from the roof of his house every time he
had finished a successful plate. What a profuse med-
ley of candour and contrivance, of simplicity and van-
ity, of commonness and elegance, of courtesy and chal-
lenge, of audacity and courage, of quick-wittedness
and ignorance, of honest kindness and honest irrever-
94 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
ence! She is already a born actress of realities, and
on no mimic stage. Yet many of her faults she fully
felt, and held them curable. " Patienza," she sighs, and time may mend thean; in her own words of this
very period, " I am a pretty woman, and one cannot
be everything at once."
But a more delicate strain is audible when her heart
is really touched.
At the convent whither she resorted for daily les-
sons during Sir William's absence, now transpired an
idyl which must be repeated just as she describes it :
" I had hardly time to thank you for your kind let-
ter of this morning as I was buisy prepairing for to
go on my visit to the Convent of Santa Romita; and
endead I am glad I went, tho' it was a short visit.
But to-morrow I dine with them in full assembly. I
am quite charmed with Beatrice Acquaviva. Such is
the name of the charming whoman I saw to-day. Oh
Sir William, she is a pretty whoman. She is 29 years
old. She took the veil at twenty ; and does not repent
to this day, though if I am a judge in physiognomy,
her eyes does not look like the eyes of a nun. They
are allways laughing, and something in them vastly
alluring, and I wonder the men of Naples wou'd suffer
the oneley pretty whoman who is realy pretty to be
shut in a convent. But it is like the mean-spirited ill
taste of the Neapolitans. I told her I wondered how
she wou'd be lett to hide herself from the world, and I
daresay thousands of tears was shed the day she de-
prived Naples of one of its greatest ornaments. She
answered with a sigh, that endead numbers of tears
was shed, and once or twice her resolution was allmost
shook, but a pleasing comfort she felt at regaining
her friends that she had been brought up with, and
religious considerations strengthened her mind, and
she parted with the world with pleasure. And since
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 95
that time one of her sisters had followed her example,
and another which I saw was preparing to enter
soon. But neither of her sisters is so beautiful as her, tho' the[y] are booth very agreable. But I think Beatrice is charming, and I realy feil for her an affection.
Her eyes, Sir William, is I don't know how to describe
them. I stopt one hour with them; and I had all the
good things to eat, and I promise you they don't starve
themselves. But there dress is very becoming, and she
told me that she was allow'd to wear rings and mufs
and any little thing she liked, and endead she display'd to-day a good deal of finery, for she had 4 or 5 dimond
rings on her fingers, and seemed fond of her muff.
She has excellent teeth, and shows them, for she is all-
ways laughing. She kissed my lips, cheeks, and fore-
head, and every moment exclaimed ' Charming, fine
creature,' admired my dress, said I looked like an
angel, for I was in clear white dimity and a blue
sash." (This, surely, is scarcely the seraphic garb as the great masters imaged it.) ". . . She said she had heard I was good to the poor, generous, and noble-minded. * Now/ she says, ' it wou'd be worth wile to
live for such a one as you. Your good heart wou'd
melt at any trouble that befel me, and partake of one's
greef or be equaly happy at one's good fortune. But
I never met with a f reind yet, or I ever saw a person I cou'd love till now, and you shall have proofs of my
love.' In short I sat and listened to her, and .the tears stood in my eyes, I don't know why; but I loved her
at that moment. I thought what a charming wife
she wou'd have made,, what a mother of a family,
what a f reind, and the first good and amiable whoman
I have seen since I came to Naples for to be lost to
the world how cruel! She give me a sattin pocket-
book of her own work, and bid me think of her, when
I saw it, and was many miles far of[f]; and years
96 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
hence when she peraps shou'd be no more, to look at it,
and think the person that give it had not a bad heart.
Did not she speak very pretty? But not one word of
religion. But I shall be happy to-day, for I shall
dine with them aU, and come home at night. There
is sixty whomen and all well-looking, but not like the
fair Beatrice. 'Oh Emma,' she says to me, 'the[y]
brought here the Viene minister's wife, but I did not
like the looks of her at first. She was little, short,
pinch'd face, and I received her cooly. How dif-
you tall in statu[r]e. We may read your heart in
your countenance, your complexion; in short, your
figure and features is rare, for you are like the marble statues I saw when I was in the world.' I think she
flattered me up, but I was pleased." *
The convent cloisters bordered on those " royal "
or " English " gardens which Sir William and she were afterwards so much to improve; and here, if the
Marchesa di Solari's memory can be trusted and it
constantly trips in her Italian record happened, it
would seem, about this time, another incident typical
of another side, more comic than pathetic. It sounds
like some interlude by Beaumarchais, and recalls
Rosina of Figaro. Intrigue belongs to Naples. The
young Goethe observed of the Neapolitan atmosphere:
" Naples is a paradise. Every one lives, after his
manner, .intoxicated with self-forgetfulness. It is the
same with me. I scarcely recognise myself, I seem
an altered being. Yesterday I thought ' either you
'were or are mad.' " 2
The madcap belle's stratagem was this. Walking
1 Morrison MS. 160, January 10, 1787. It should here be commemorated that one of her first actions^at Naples was to procure a post for Robert White, a protege of Greville.
2 Goethe, Italienische Reise, March 16, 1787.
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 97
there one afternoon under the escort of her duenna,
she was accosted by a personage whom she knew to
be King Ferdinand. He solicited a private interview,
and was peremptorily refused. He succeeded, how-
ever, in bribing her attendant, and followed her to a
remote nook, where they would be unobserved. He
pressed his promises with fervour, but Emma refused
to listen to a word, unless everything was committed
to paper. 1 The monarch complied, and thereupon
Emma hastened to the palace and urgently entreated
an audience with the Queen. Sobbing on her knees,
she implored her to save her from persecutions so great
that unless they were removed she had resolved to quit
the world and find shelter with the nuns. The Queen,
touched by such beauty in such distress, urged her to
disclose the name of her unknown importuner. There-
upon Emma handed her the paper, was bidden by the
Queen to rise, and comforted. So far there seems
ground for the tale. The Marchesa says that Sir Will-
iam " partially " confirmed it; and this must allude to the sequel which represents Maria Carolina as urging
the Ambassador to marry his Lucretia without delay.
Whether it is true that the tears of affliction were
caused by an onion, and that Emma was " on her mar-
row-bones " in the garden while the Queen was perusing the tell-tale document, depends upon the number
of embellishments such a farce would probably re-
ceive. If true, it hardly redounds to Emma's credit.
But from Emma we must now part awhile to con-
1 From indications in her letter. Cf. Morrison MS. 157, December 26, 1786 (Emma to Sir William) : " If I had the offer of crowns, I would refuse them and except you, and I don't care if all the world knows it. ... Certain it is I love you and sincerely." And cf. ibid. 153: "We are closely besieged by the King in a roundabout manner, but . . . we never give him any encouragement." In this very year the prima donna Banti was whisked off across the frontier by the Queen's orders for presuming to favour the amorous King's attentions.
98 EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
sider the social and political conditions of the court of Naples, very different now from what they were to
become a few years later under the new forces of the
French Revolution, and, afterwards, of the meteoric
Napoleon. It is a panorama which here can only be
sketched in outline. It was to prove the theatre of
Emma's best activities.
During the entire eighteenth century, from the War
of Succession to the Treaty of Utrecht, from the
Treaty of Utrecht to that of the Quadruple Alliance,
from that again to those of Vienna and of Aix, the
Bourbons and the Hapsburgs had been perpetually
wrestling for the rich provinces of central and south-
ern Italy a prize which united the secular appeal to
Catholic Europe with supremacy over the Mediter-
ranean. The Bourbons, by a strange chain of co-
incidence, had prevailed in Spain, and in 1731 "Baby Carlos " solemnly entered on his Italian and Sicilian heritage, long so craftily and powerfully compassed by
his ambitious mother, Elizabeth Farnese. The Haps-
burgs, however, never relinquished their aim, though
the weak and pompous Emperor, Charles VI., was re-
duced to spending his energies on the mere phantom of
the " Pragmatic Sanction " by which he hoped to cement his incoherent Empire in the person of his masterful daughter; he died hugging, so to speak, that
" Pragmatic Sanction " to his heart. Maria Theresa proved herself the heroine of Europe in her proud
struggle with the Prussian aggressor who for a time
forced her into an unnatural and lukewarm league
with the French Bourbons, themselves covetous of
the Italian Mediterranean. Even after the French
Bourbons were quelled, France, in the person of Na-
poleon, succeeded to their ambitions. Second only to
his hankering after Eastern Empire, was from the
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON 99
first the persistent hankering after Naples and Sicily
of the would-be dominator of the sea, whose coast
had been his cradle.
Maria Theresa was therefore delighted when in
April, 1768, her eldest daughter, Maria Charlotte, bet-
ter known as " Maria Carolina," espoused, when barely sixteen years of age, Ferdinand, son of the Bourbon
Charles III. of Spain, then only one year her senior,
and already from his eighth year King of the Two
Sicilies. Still more did she rejoice when two years
later her other daughter, Marie Antoinette, married at
the same age the Due de Berri, then heir-presumptive
to the French throne, which he ascended four years
afterwards. Both daughters were to fight manfully
with a fate which worsted the one and extinguished
the other, while the husbands of both were true Bour-
bons in their indecision and their love of the table;
for of the Bourbons it was well said that their chapel
was their kitchen.
" King " Maria Theresa educated all her children to believe in three things: their religion, their race,
and their destiny. They were never to forget that
they were Catholics, imperialists, and politicians. But
she also taught them to be enlightened and benevolent,
provided that their faithful subjects accepted the grace of these virtues unmurmuring from their hands. They
were to be monopolists of reform. They were also
to be monopolists of power; nor was husband or wife
to dispute their sway. Indeed, the two daughters
were schooled to believe that control over their con-
sorts was an absolute duty, doubly important from
the rival ascendency wielded by the Queens of the
Spanish Bourbons, who for three generations had been
mated with im
becile or half-imbecile sovereigns; they
had a knack of calling their husbands cowards. And
they were to be monopolists of religion even against
Memoirs Vol. 11 1
ioo EMMA, LADY HAMILTON
the Pope if he unduly interfered. These lessons were
graven on the hearts of all but Marie Antoinette, who
shared the obstinacy but lacked the penetration of her
sister and brothers.
Maria Theresa's son and successor, Joseph II. of
Austria, showed to the full this union of bigotry
and benevolence, both arbitrary yet both popular. He
and his premier, Kaunitz, were strenuous in educa-
tion and reform, but also strenuous in suppressing the
Jesuits. His brothers were the same. Archduke
Ferdinand played the benevolent despot in Bohemia,
while Leopold, afterwards Grand Duke of the Tuscan
dominions, was even more ostentatious in his high-
handed well-doing. Never vas a dynasty politer,
more cultivated, more affable. But never also was one
haughtier, more obstinate, or more formal. All were
martyrs to etiquette, but all were also enthusiastic
freemasons, and Queen Maria Carolina's family en-
thusiasm for the secret societies of '' Illuminati "
sowed those misfortunes which were afterwards
watered with blood, reaped in tears, and harvested by
iron. In 1790 Leopold, for a space, succeeded to
Joseph; and Maria Carolina was afterwards to see one
of her sixteen children wedded to Francis, Leopold's
successor on the Austrian throne, another to the King
of Sardinia, a third, in the midst of her final calamities, united at Palermo to the future Louis Philippe. She
thus became mother-in-law to an emperor of whom
she was aunt, as well as to two monarchs ; while already she had been sister to two successive emperors.
Her husband, Ferdinand IV., was a boor and bon
vivant, good-natured on the surface, but with a strong
spice of cruelty beneath it; suspicious of talent, but up to the fatal sequels of the French Revolution the
darling of his people. As the little Prince of Asturias, he had been handed to the tutorship of the old Duke
101
of San Nicandro, who was restricted by the royal
commands to instruction in sport, and in his own
learning to a bowing acquaintance with his breviary.
Inheriting a throne, while a child, by the accident of
his father's accession to the Spanish crown, he had
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