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name or acknowledged parents. That I should have taken such a step shows, at least, that I have a mind misfortune has not subdued. That I should persevere in it is what I owe to myself and to you, for it shall never be said that I avail myself of your partiality, or my own inclination, unless I learn my claim on you is greater than you have hitherto acknowledged. But the time may come when the same reasons may cease to operate, and then, with a heart filled with tenderness and affection, will I show you both my duty and attachment."
There is a tone of sincerity and self-reliance in that letter which wins respect, but there is no record that the sad, inquiring voice was ever answered.
CHAPTER II
GREVILLE'S TRAINING
r "T'HE really important thing that happened to 1 Emily Hart (as she now called herself) while at Up Park under the dubious protection of Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh was that there, in all probability, she first met the Honourable Charles Greville—the man who was to influence her more vitally than any other save Nelson.
Greville was the second son of the Earl of Warwick, a collector of rare and beautiful things, and the holder of a post at the Board of Admiralty. He was comparatively poor for a man of his position—so poor in his own eyes that marriage with an heiress was an absolute necessity if he was to take and maintain that place in the world to which his talents entitled him and his ambition pointed. When he first came across Emma, he was a year or two over thirty—young, good looking, and extremely well connected. Romney painted his portrait, and the face is distinctly attractive—large eyes, well set in the head, with an eager, searching look about
14 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
them, a long, well-shaped nose, a somewhat feminine chin, but the effect of the whole refined and distinguished, a man who might well appeal to a much more cultivated and critical girl than Emily Hart.
It is evident, from the tone of her first letters to him, that Greville must have taken some special notice of the wild and charming girl at Up Park, if that was where he first met her. When she was sent from Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh in disgrace, with the terror of coming motherhood hanging over her head, Greville must have indicated to her that she might write to him in certain circumstances. But at first Emily Hart clung to the hope—poor and shameful hope though it was—that the Sussex baronet would take her back. From Hawarden—for she had returned to her grandmother's thatched cottage in her trouble—she wrote repeatedly to Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh, and it was not till she had written him seven letters without receiving a word in answer or even a contemptuous guinea to lessen her pressing poverty, that Emily Hart gave up hope of being restored to favour.
She was in a very desperate situation; she had no money to support herself, let alone the coming child, and her kind old grandmother could not afford to keep her indefinitely. In her shame and distress she turned to the one man among her Up Park acquaintances, who had been something
LADY HAMILTON AS "BACCHANTE"
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS
more than a rake or a rowdy young sportsman, to the man who had given her a glimpse of something better—for it was characteristic of Emma, in spite of her numerous stumblings and mistakes, that she was always attracted to what she regarded as noble and exalted; it was her nature to idolize and glorify those she loved. The Honourable Charles Greville was the best type of man she had yet known. That he was innately selfish and cold-hearted she was not to learn for several years to come.
So she wrote to him, telling him of her sad situation, and he appears to have replied pretty promptly. The pitiful eagerness with which she seized upon the first kind hand held out to her is revealed by the following almost panic-stricken letter, still breathing in every one of its ill-spelled sentences the anguish of her mind:—
"My DEAR GREVELL, —Yesterday did I re-ceve your kind letter. It put me in some spirits, for, believe me, I am allmost distracktid. I have never hard from Sir H., and he is not at Lechster now, I am sure. I have wrote 7 letters, and no anser. What shall I dow ? Good God, what shall I dow ? I can't come to town for want of money. I have not a farthing to bless my self with, and I think my frends looks cooly on me. I think so. O, G., what shall I dow? What shall I dow ? O how your letter affected me
16 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
when you wished me happiness. O, G., that I was in your posesion or in Sir H. what a happy girl would I have been ! Girl indeed! What else am I but a girl in distress—in reall distress ? For God's sake, G., write the minet you get this, and only tell me what I am to dow. Direct some whay. I am allmos mad. O for God's sake tell me what is to become on me. O dear Grevell, write to me. Write to me. G., adue, and believe yours for ever. EMLY HART
" Don't tel my mother what distres I am in, and dow afford me some comfort."
Greville would have been indeed hardhearted if he could have read this " distracktid " epistle without being moved, though the way it was written, the servant-girl spelling and handwriting, must have seriously offended his fastidious taste. But such beauty as the erring Emma's covers a multitude of sins. Greville knew her to be tractable and warm-hearted, as well as beautiful. She seemed to him a promising subject for his training, so he wrote her the following curious medley of reproof, comforting assurances, and worldly wisdom :—
" MY DEAR EMILY, —I do not make apologies for Sir H.'s behaviour to you, and altho' I advised you to deserve his esteem by your good conduct,
I own I never expected better from him. It was your duty to deserve good treatment, and it gave me great concern to see you imprudent the first time you came to G., from the country, as the same conduct was repeated when you was last in town, I began to despair of your happiness. To prove to you that I do not accuse you falsely, I only mention five guineas and half a guinea for a coach. But, my dear Emily, as you seem quite miserable now, I do not mean to give you uneasiness, but comfort, and tell you that I will forget your faults and bad conduct to Sir H. and myself, and will not repent my good humour if I find that you have learned by experience to value yourself, and endeavour to preserve your friends by good conduct and affection. I will now answer your last letter. You tell me you think your friends look cooly on you, it is therefore time to leave them: but it is necessary for you to decide some points before you come to town. You are sensible that for the next three months your situation will not admit of a giddy life, if you wished it. ... After you have told me that Sir H. gave you barely money to get to your friends, and has never answered one letter since, and neither provides for you nor takes any notice of you, it might appear laughing at you to advise you to make Sir H. more kind and attentive. I do not think a great deal of time should be lost, for I have never seen a
18 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
woman clever enough to keep a man who was tired of her. But it is a great deal more for me to advise you never to see him again, and to write only to inform him of your determination. You must, however, do either the one or the other. . . . You may easily see, my dearest Emily, why it is absolutely necessary for this point to be completely settled before I can move one step. If you love Sir H. you should not give him up. . . . My advice then is to take a steady resolution. ... I shall then be free to dry up the tears of my lovely Emily and to give her comfort. If you do not forfeit my esteem perhaps my Emily may be happy. You know I have been so by avoiding the vexation which frequently arises from ingratitude and caprice. Nothing but your letter and your distress could incline me to alter my system, but remember I never will give up my place, or continue my connexion one moment after my confidence is betray'd. . , . By degrees I would get you a new set of acquaintances, and by keeping your own secret, and no one about you having it in their power to betray you, I may expect to see you respected and admired. Thus far as relates to yourself. As to the child ... its mother shall obtain it kindness from me, and it shall never want. I enclose you some money; do not throw it away. You may send some presents when you arrive in town, but do not be on the road witho
ut some money to spare in case
you should be fatigued and wish to take your time. . . . God bless you, my dearest lovely girl; take your determination and let me hear from you once more. Adieu, my dear Emily."
This letter is fully as characteristic of Greville as the preceding impetuous outburst is of Emma. In it may be seen his temperament and outlook nicely sketched by his own hand. His standard of happiness is "avoiding vexation " — and avoiding also, it may be said, anything that jarred on his taste or injured his material prospects. His willingness to alter his " system " and admit this impulsive girl, of whom he was by no means certain, into his carefully ordered existence, is explained by two things: first, her classical beauty and charm of colouring, which pleased his critical eye at every point; and, second, a marked strain of the pedant in himself, which made attractive the thought of having this delicious young thing to mould according to his own ideas. "If you do not forfeit my esteem/' as this admirable mentor told her, "perhaps my Emily may be happy/'
But it is easy to wax over-sarcastic towards Greville. He has been somewhat severely treated by several of the beauty's later champions, whose chivalry has carried them to the point of seeing him almost as an unnatural monster. He was really the saving of Emily Hart at a time
20 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
when she was hovering on the verge of a very dark abyss, and though his motives do not stand close inspection, it is probable that he really pitied and liked the girl. It is obvious that his proposals to her are entirely lacking in any moral feeling; but it must be remembered that he belonged to a worldly and cynical age as regards women, also he knew very well that Emily Hart was not an innocent untempted girl, but one whose " reall distres " and lack of protection was in danger of pushing her down past the chance of recovery. Indeed, it might have been expected that a girl who had already tripped and fallen several times would have finally gone under and been no more seen. But Emma had a really marvellous power of recovery and a sort of ineradicable innocence—or, if that word is barely applicable, a kind of freshness like that of running water, for ever moving eagerly forward and for ever obliterating the traces of the past. She had something of Nature's own quality, turning one season's soilure and despair to " the music and the bloom and all the mighty ravishment of spring." Her terrified question, " Good God, what shall I dow ?" was not so much a voice from the depths, as the cry of a child in the dark—a child who is ready to smile again the instant the light returns, though the tears are yet wet on her lashes.
Greville's patronizing, kindly, immoral letter
was the light in the night of her distress. She came up to London from Flintshire as he advised her, and early in the spring of 1782 Greville had settled her and himself in a quiet little house in Edgware Row, with Emma's mother, now calling herself Mrs. Cadogan, to look after them generally. Mrs. Cadogan was an excellent woman, in spite of the complacent way in which she joined her daughter's different establishments when she was living first with Mr. Greville and afterwards with his uncle, as the wife of neither. She was a first-rate housekeeper and cook; Greville, as usual, knew what he was about when he told "his Emily" that "I would not be troubled with your connexions (excepting your mother) for the universe."
Edgware Row calls up an unattractive vision at the present day, but one hundred and twenty-five years ago it was quite a pretty country neighbourhood, close to Paddington Green—a region of " fresh woods and pastures new " to Emma, who spent some of the happiest, simplest, and most care-free years of her life there. The house was small and unassuming. Mr. J. C. Jeaffreson describes its interior minutely :—
" To visit this house, at any time of its tenancy by Mr. Greville, was to see he was a connoisseur. Together with fine examples of the Dutch school, the collector's choicest treasures comprised a few works by the best English
22 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
painters. In the drawing-room, there was a portrait of Emily Bertie, in the character of Thais, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds for Mr. Greville, and re-touched in certain points by the famous artist before it left the easel, to put it altogether in harmony with the young connoisseur's conceptions of the beautiful and true. In this salon might also be seen folios of rare engravings and unsurpassably fine mezzotints, bits of sculpture in marble and bronze, the cabinet of antique coins which Mr. Greville had brought together with infinite trouble and pleasure, and the fine collection of mineralogical specimens, which showed that the gentleman, who was very much of a connoisseur, was also something of a savant."
But without doubt the " choicest treasure " of Mr. Greville's collection was neither the Sir Joshua nor the minerals, but Emma herself. At this time she was close upon eighteen years old, and her beauty was blossoming towards its most exquisite period—a beauty radiant and fresh as the lilies of the field, the kind of beauty that " so draws the heart out of itself as to seem like magic," in the words of Richard Jefferies. She had that rare loveliness which is at once classic in outline yet sensitively mobile and changing in expression. No wonder Sir William Hamilton said of her that she was " finer than anything in antique art. 1 ' Her gift for dramatising emotion in her famous "Attitudes" will be referred to
later; but it is sufficiently proved by the extraordinary variety and expressiveness of her poses in Romney's pictures: she personifies all the moods, and not as is done in so many conventional paintings, where an " Allegro " can hardly be distinguished from a " Penseroso," but with real feeling and exquisite adaptability. Hayley, who knew Emma well, says in his " Life of Romney," " The talents which nature bestowed on the fair Emma led her to delight in the two kindred arts of music and painting; in the first she acquired great practical ability; for the second she had exquisite taste, and such expressive powers as could furnish to an historical painter an inspiring model for the various characters, either delicate or sublime. . . . Her features, like the language of Shakespeare, could exhibit all the gradations of every passion with a most fascinating truth and felicity of expression. Romney delighted in observing the wonderful command she possessed over her eloquent features."
Her colouring was of the pure and perfect kind that goes with warm, auburn hair, and this same hair was almost the greatest of her many beauties, growing in delicious lines from the broad, low forehead, and flowing almost to her heels—the hair of a true " Bacchante." Her eyes were grey—the " colour of genius," as it has been called, and in her own way Emma certainly was
24 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
a genius ; but her eyes must have been the kind of grey that was capable of deepening and brightening, for they have been described as both violet and blue. Some critics considered her " beautiful and uncommon mouth " the most exquisite of her features. Take her all in all, and it will be admitted that the old Bishop of Derry was right, if not particularly reverent, when he said that the Creator was in a " glorious mood" when He made Emma.
It was this radiant creature that Greville established in the retirement of Paddington Green. Pettigrew speaks of the "splendid misery" of her life at this time, but the words are singularly ill-chosen. Her life was neither splendid nor miserable, but probably as complete an example of simple domestic happiness, in spite of the lack of the proper domestic tie, as could be found in the London of that day. Only good management kept the household running, as Greville insisted it must be run, on about a hundred a year, while Emma's own allowance for dress, charity, and amusements, was some ^30 yearly. She had two maidservants, whose wages were £8 and £g a year— wages, it must be remembered, were much lower then than now. " Splendid misery " hardly fits this modest establishment and this strictly limited income. Some of the household account-books in Emma's handwriting remain, and the sums
AS A "BACCHANTE
GEORGE ROMNKY
spent are amusingly small: apples, 2d. ; mangle, 5^f. ; cotton and needles, gd. ; coach, is. ; poor man, d.
After living with her for three years, Greville was able to say of the girl whose wildness and extravagance had
been too much for Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh, " She does not wish for much society, but to retain two or three creditable acquaintances in the neighbourhood she has avoided every appearance of giddiness, and prides herself on the neatness of her person and the good order of her house; these are habits both comfortable and convenient to me. She has vanity and likes admiration; but she connects it so much with her desire of appearing prudent, that she is more pleas'd with accidental admira-' tion than that of crowds which now distress her. In short, this habit, of three or four years' acquiring, is not a caprice, but is easily to be continued/' And a little later he says, " She never has wished for an improper acquaintance. She has dropt every one she thought I could except against, and those of her own choice have been in a line of prudence and plainness, which, tho' I might have wished for, I could not have proposed to confine her." John Romney also said of her that " Her only resources were reading and music at home, and sitting for pictures."
Here was a discreet and transformed Emma! But the change, though genuine so far as it went,
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was more on the surface than fundamental. It was not that her nature—always expressive and struggling for expression—was altered, but that she had become much more accomplished and —imitative and susceptible as she was—had insensibly acquired a more refined restraint of manner from living with Greville, who all his life, put manners before morals and repressed unbecoming emotion. Greville would not have influenced Emma so strongly if it had not been that she was very deeply and truly devoted to him. In her grateful eyes he was a model of all the virtues, and though there were times when her impulsive temper chafed at the restraints of Greville's " system," times when there were little outbursts, quickly repented, she yet spent her days in trying to please him and follow his wishes.
Nelson's Lady Hamilton Page 2
