Nelson's Lady Hamilton

by Meynell, Esther

  "To shew the caution and secrecy that was necessarily used in thus getting away, I had on the night of our embarkation to attend the party given by the Kilim Effendi, who was sent by the grand seignior to Naples to present Nelson with the Shahlerih or Plume of Triumph. I had to steal from the party, leaving our carriages and equipages waiting at his house, and in about fifteen minutes to be at my post, where it was my task to conduct the Royal Family through the subterranean passage to Nelsons boats, by that moment waiting for us on the shore."

  In a letter written to Charles Greville after reaching Palermo, she carries the adventure a little further, giving more detail:—

  "On the 2ist, at ten at night, Lord Nelson, Sir Wm., Mother and self went out to pay a visit,

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  sent all our servants away, and ordered them in 2 hours to come with the coach, and ordered supper at home. When they were gone, we sett off, walked to our boat, and after two hours got to the Vanguard. Lord N. then went with armed boats to a secret passage adjoining to the pallace, got up the dark staircase that goes into the Queen's room, and with a dark lantern, cutlases, pistols, etc., brought off every soul, ten in number, to the Vanguard at twelve o'clock. If we had remained to the next day, we shou'd have all been imprisoned."

  Could anything be more gloriously to Emma's taste than this Arabian Nights adventure ? First the reception, where she appeared to avert suspicion, feigning nonchalance and pleasure, then the swift walk to the waterside, where Nelson's boats waited in the dark, the secret passage, the "dark lantern, cutlases, pistols, etc." It is impossible to help thinking that the excitable Emma piled on her plurals a little here; Nelson, with his single hand, could hardly have managed more than one dark lantern, pistol, and cutlass, to say nothing of the "etc"! But that is typically Emma; she loved to paint with a broad brush and plenty of colour.

  It will be noticed that her two accounts—the Prince Regent Memorial, and the letter to Greville —do not quite harmonize. In the one she says that she personally conducted the royal family

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  through the subterranean passage to the boats, while in the other (written within a few weeks of the actual happening) the implication is that Nelson, armed to the teeth as in the pages of boys* fiction, undertook this business. Emma had not the temperament that is marked by meticulous accuracy, and this, like many another of her statements, shows a certain offhand carelessness. But in general she followed the broader lines of truth, and knowing her extravagant attachment to Maria Carolina and her passion for a prominent part in every adventure, even when accompanied by peril, it is not impossible to make the two statements fit by assuming that Nelson, as she says in the letter to Greville, undertook to see the royal party through the secret passage, but that she, instead of awaiting them at the boats, persuaded Nelson to let her accompany him, and share every one of the thrilling moments. There can be little doubt that her presence at this distressing time would be comforting to Maria Carolina.

  That Nelson himself anticipated some danger in the embarkation is shown by his secret orders to the squadron: the boats of the Vanguard and the Alcmena were to be armed with cutlasses, the launches with carronades, and the boats were to carry from four to half a dozen soldiers each, while in case assistance was wanted by Nelson on shore,
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  But these precautions, so wise under the circumstances, were, after all, not needed. The royal family and all their belongings were safely and without alarm rowed to the British flagship. But though they were all stowed on board by midnight of December the 2ist, the Vanguard was not able to weigh anchor till seven o'clock on the evening of the 23rd. The two days' delay was caused by waiting for further consignments of treasure, and for the last of the refugees to fly to the ships before they up-anchored and sailed from the curving Bay of Naples—which Maria Carolina thought never to behold again. A favourable breeze had blown steadily from the 2ist to the 23rd, but when the squadron sailed it was with a dropping barometer and every sign of threatening weather. The next day a tremendous storm struck them, and as Nelson, with his very considerable experience, said, "It blew harder than I ever experienced since I have been at

  sea."

  Emma Hamilton was a good sailor, and when nearly all on board the Vanguard, with the exception of the regular ship's company, were prostrated with sea-sickness and fear, she kept up her spirit and her health, cheering, nursing, and waiting on everybody. In few of the varied and striking episodes of her life does she shine with a lustre so simple and unselfish. The royal children, deprived of their proper attendants,

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  frightened and miserable, clung to her reviving kindness, and their unhappy mother not less so. Nelson was recording the unadorned truth when he wrote to St. Vincent—

  "It is my duty to tell your Lordship the obligations which the Royal Family as well as myself are under on this trying occasion to her Ladyship. They necessarily came on board 1 without a bed, nor could the least preparation; be made for their reception. Lady Hamilton; provided her own beds, linen, etc., and became their slave, for except one man, no person belonging to Royalty assisted the Royal Family, nor did her Ladyship enter a bed the whole time they were on board."

  The "poor wretched Vanguard? as Nelson once called her, seemed a special mark for storms and tempests. Nelson, it will be remembered, had been nearly wrecked in her off San Pietro earlier in the year, and in this, the worst gale of his recollection, her sails were split to ribbons, and it seemed at one time as though the masts would have to be cut away. In these stark circumstances, with the terrified Neapolitans calling on every saint in the Catholic calendar, Emma proved herself made of the true heroic stuff. Fear is contagious, but she did not catch it; and Sir John Macpherson, writing to Sir William Hamilton after this voyage to Palermo, had reason to congratulate the British Ambassador on

  AS "MIRANDA"

  GEORGE ROMNEY

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  laving a wife " of so good a heart and so fine a nind." Lady Betty Foster, when writing to Lady Hamilton on the 8th of February, 1799, wished to express " the universal tribute of praise ind admiration which is paid to the very great :ourage and feeling which you have shown on .he late melancholy occasion/'

  But Lady Hamilton was not thinking of praise or admiration when, on the Christmas Day of 1798, Prince Albert, the youngest son of the King and Queen of Naples, yielded up his little spirit to the storm. The baby prince, she tells Greville, was "six years old, my favourite, taken with convulsions in the midst of the storm, and, at seven in the evening of Christmas day, ex-)ired in my arms, not a soul to help me, as the few women her Majesty brought on board were incapable of helping her or the poor royal children."

  In the early morning of December 26th the Vanguard anchored at Palermo. The King anded publicly, with salutes and " every proper lonour" paid to his barge. The Queen, heartbroken and prostrate over the death of her little son, would not land till later; and then she did so privately, accompanied by Nelson, who wrote : " Her Majesty being so much affected by the death of Prince Albert that she could not bear to go on shore in a public manner." Maria Carolina was miserable and depressed; and she got little

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  sympathy from the King, who was inclined regard her English sympathies as the cause their troubles. All Emma's generous ardoui were roused for the unhappy Maria Carolina, She wrote to Greville shortly after the landing at Palermo—

  "The Queen, whom I love better than an; person in the world, is very unwell. We wee] together, and now that is our onely comfort. Sir William and the King are philosophers;' nothing affects them, thank God, and we are scolded even for shewing proper sensibility."

  In the same letter it appears that the charms of Palermo, beautiful in her amphitheatre of mountains, with the two horns of the bay guarded by the threatening heights of Pellegrino to the north-west
, and Zaffarano to the east, had little appeal for the exiles. Emma cries for " dear, dear Naples," and says, "we now dare not show our love for that place ; for this country is jelous of the other." Sir William Hamilton also wrote to Greville from Palermo in a tone of great dissatisfaction : "I have been driven from my comfortable house at Naples," he says, " to a house here without chimneys, and calculated only for the summer." He complains that this is hard upon a man who feels himself growing old, and suffering as he does both from bilious and rheumatic complaints. " I am still most desirous of returning home by the first ship that Lord Nelson

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  sends down to Gibraltar, as I am worn out and want repose." Another cause of distress to the artistic and antiquarian Sir William was the enforced and hurried parting from the larger portion of his carefully collected treasures. In one of her letters his wife says, " We have left everything at Naples but the vases and best pictures. 3 houses elegantly furnished, all our horses and our 6 or 7 carriages, I think is enough for the vile French. For we cou'd not get our things off, not to betray the royal family." Some of the most valuable things in the collection, which had been packed to send to England were lost at sea in the Colossus. In later years, when appealing for a pension, Emma made some extravagant statements as to her own and her husband's losses: " When the many, I may say hair-breadth risks, we ran in our escapes are considered, it must be obvious that to cover and colour our proceedings we were compelled to abandon our houses and our valuables as they stood, without venturing to remove a single article. My own private property thus left, to effect this great purpose, was little if any short of ,£9,000, and Sir William's not less than ,£30,000, which sum, had he bequeathed, might naturally have been willed to me in whole or part." It is exceedingly unlikely that Emma's private property, which would consist principally of dresses and jewels, came anywhere near the sum she set down. She certainly saved a portion

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  of her things, and any loss she suffered was fully made up by the Queen's lavish generosity. As! to Sir William, though he undoubtedly lost seriously in the Coloss^is, that was owing to the hand of accident, and not to voluntary abandonment in a "great purpose," as Emma, always emotional and inaccurate, claims.

  Nelson and the Hamiltons shared a house at Palermo, Nelson paying fully his share of the expenses, for when they all returned to England together, in 1800, Sir William owed the admiral ^2000. It was probably in thus setting up house together— Tria juncta in uno, as both Sir William and Emma were fond of calling their three-sided friendship—that the first faint breaths of scandal began to dim the shining mirror of Nelson's fame. No doubt Emma's fine conduct during the stormy passage from Naples tc Palermo had made a considerable impressioi upon Nelson, who loved courage, especially whei joined to such " feeling sensibility " and lovelinej as Lady Hamilton's. In his letters of this tim< she is wreathed in many adjectives. " Our deai Lady Hamilton," he calls her in one of thei "whom to see is to admire, but, to know, are be added honour and respect; her head and he; surpass her beauty, which cannot be equalled b] anything I have seen." In his letters to his wife he praised the fascinating Emma with moi warmth than wisdom. Some time before the

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  flight to Palermo Lady Nelson had shown signs of uneasiness, and expressed her wish to come out and join him. It is very plain that Nelson would have found her a burthen on his hands, for in rebuking her for the very natural suggestion he says, "You would by February have seen how unpleasant it would have been had you followed any advice which carried you from England to a wandering sailor. I could, if you had come, only have struck my flag, and carried you back again, for it would have been impossible to have set up an establishment at either Naples or Palermo. 0

  It is a little difficult to see where the impossibility comes in. If he could set up house with Sir William and Lady Hamilton, why not with his own much more frugal and careful wife ? But already he was slipping almost unconsciously into the toils—to his battle-wearied frame and craving heart the enchantment of Emma's sympathetic adoration was potent. On her side the enchantment she wielded was almost as unconscious as his yielding to it; nature gave her the spell, and it was as natural to her to use it as to breathe or smile.

  From Palermo onwards may be traced a certain slackening of moral fibre in Nelson—he is no longer quite the same Nelson we have known. This is said with reserve and a recognition of its seriousness, but the fact remains.

  He is as lovable as ever, and more pitiable; as a o

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  sea-officer his genius knows no dimming till his sun goes down in splendour off Cape Trafalgar; but as a man he is henceforth to know a moral struggle and a moral defeat to which he had hitherto been a stranger. Captain Mahan's verdict, if severe, is substantially just, and it is trifling with the truth to pretend otherwise. " The glory of the hero," he says, " brought a temptation which wrecked the happiness of the man. The loss of serenity, the dark evidences of inward conflict, of yielding against conviction, of consequent dissatisfaction with self and gradual deterioration, make between his past and future a break as clear as, and far sharper than, the startling increase of radiancy that attends the Battle of the Nile, and thenceforth shines with undiminished intensity to the end. The lustre of his well-deserved and worldwide renown, the consistency and ever-rising merit of his professional conduct, contrast painfully with the shadows of reprobation, the swerving, and the declension, which begin to attend a life heretofore conformed, in the general, to healthy normal standards of right and wrong."

  Under the combined influence of Lady Hamilton and the Queen of Naples, Nelson consented to fetter himself with promises—a thing he would have scorned a year earlier—and in February, 1799, he wrote : " I have promised my flag shall not go out of the mole at Palermo

  LADY HAMILTON

  GEORGE KOMNEY From an engraving by J. Conde in the " European Magazine : '

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  without the approbation of the Court, and that I never expect to get."

  But it is clear, from his letters written during the early months at Palermo, that he suffered much conflict of spirit, which, as always, reacted on his bodily health. To Lady Parker he wrote, at the beginning of February—

  " My health is such that without a great alteration, I will venture to say a very short space of time will send me to that bourne from whence none return; but God's will be done. After the Action I had nearly fell into a decline, but at Naples my invaluable friends Sir William and Lady Hamilton nursed and set me up again. I am worse than ever: my spirits have received such a shock that I think they cannot recover it, ... but who can see what I have and be well in health ? Kingdoms lost and a Royal Family in distress; but they are pleased to place confidence in me, and whilst I live and my services can be useful to them, I shall never leave this Country, although I know that nothing but the air of England, and peace and quietness, can perfectly restore me."

  To Alexander Davison he wrote, at the end of the same month, in a still more melancholy strain—

  " Believe me, my only wish is to sink with honour into the grave, and when that shall please God, I shall meet death with a smile.

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  Not that I am insensible to the honours and riches my King and Country have heaped upon me, so much more than any Officer could deserve ; yet I am ready to quit this world of trouble, and envy none but those of the estate six feet by two." But if Lady Hamilton and the feeling she aroused in his honourable heart were the real cause of all this inward conflict, owing to the irony of circumstances, it was to Lady Hamilton he turned for comfort in his depression. She was very skilful in comforting. And so the tangle grew, till nothing could cut the knot save flight from a dangerous atmosphere and an innocently dangerous woman—for there is nothing in Lady Hamilton's character to justify the belief that she deliberately set herself to entrap Nelson. But against the remed
y of flight there was his promise to Maria Carolina that he would not desert her, as well as the Fourth Article of the Anglo-Sicilian Treaty, signed on the ist of December, 1798, which promised that Great Britain should keep a naval force in the Mediterranean " decidedly superior to that of the enemy, in order to provide by this means for the safety of the dominions of his Sicilian Majesty." All through the unhappy business at Palermo his duty as a British admiral and his inclination as a man seemed to point the same way. That was the fatal attack in front and rear before which he eventually went down. But in later years, when her influence over him

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  •was supreme and undoubted, Emma Hamilton used to boast that she had never turned him from his duty to his country; and certain it is, as any impartial student of his letters and despatches at this period must admit, that, far from idling away his time in an Armida-garden, Nelson was very fully occupied with his professional duties and the affairs of his country and of the Two Sicilies. The danger lay in the fact that Emma was so much mixed up in these things. She interpreted and translated and copied, not only for her husband, but for Nelson. Sir William told Greville that " Lord Nelson, for want of language and experiences of this court and country, without Emma and me would be at the greatest loss every moment/' She claimed a part in big affairs ; she was the " Patroness of the Navy," the ambassadress of the Queen, and later (at this time she was inclined to put Sicily first) the ardent upholder of English glory. She could not be ignored or put on one side. When Lady Nelson inquired as to the admiral's return, he told her, " If I have the happiness of seeing their Sicilian Majesties safe on the throne again, it is probable I shall still be home in the summer. Good Sir William, Lady Hamilton and myself are the mainsprings of the machine which manages what is going on in this country. We are all bound to England, when we can quit our posts with propriety." It is probable that quiet and retiring