Nelson's Lady Hamilton

by Meynell, Esther

  Nelson was always readier to render services than to receive material rewards, and he was fully justified in his proud boast to Alexander Davison at this time: " I might have before received money and jewels, but I rejected them, as became me, and never received one farthing for all the expenses of the Royal Family on board the Vanguard and Foudroyant. This I expect from the Board of Admiralty, and that they will order me a suitable sum. It has been

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  honour, and not money which I have sought, nor sought in vain."

  At this time Palermo was all fifes and flattery ; but Nelson wrote to Rear-Admiral Duckworth on the 16th of August: " We are dying with heat, and the feast of Santa Rosalia begins this day : how shall we get through it ? " Even Lady Hamilton had drooped : " Our dear Lady has been very unwell, and if this fete to-night do not kill her, I dare say she will write to you tomorrow, for there is none she respects more than yourself."

  On the 3rd of September, which was the anniversary of the day the news of the Nile reached Naples, all the resources of the Sicilian Court were put forth to celebrate the occasion with befitting splendour. The King's palace and gardens at Colli were brilliantly illuminated; the battle of the Nile was displayed in fireworks, with a most impressive representation of the blowing up of the great French flagship Orient. Lieutenant Parsons, who was there, has written a flowery description of "the fairy scene presented by the illuminated palace and the gardens, the assembled royal family, the great in rank, the bold in arms, with Italy's nut-brown daughters, their lustrous black eyes and raven tresses, their elegant and voluptuous forms gliding through the mazy dance; and the whole presided over by the Genius of Taste, whose Attitudes were never

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  equalled, and with a suavity of manner, and a generous openness of mind and heart, where selfishness, with all its unamiable concomitants,

  pride, envy, and jealousy would never dwell "

  Here the good lieutenant gets a little bewildered with his own phrases, and suddenly pulls up and says bluntly, " I mean Emma, Lady Hamilton."

  Kind Emma certainly was on all occasions, and even amid this distracting scene, where there were so many important people calling upon her, she attended to the excited middies, and snatched a moment to win five pounds for them at rouge et noir, guessing that the state of their finances might be low. Emma's hand and Emma's flamboyant taste may be traced in the details of this festivity, and especially in what Lieutenant Parsons describes as "A temple erected to the goddess of Fame, who, perched on the dome, was blowing her trumpet; under the portico was seen an admirable Statue of our gallant hero, supported by Lady Hamilton on his right, and Sir William on his left. These statues were imposing and excellent likenesses. As we approached, the king's band played ' Rule Britannia/ At once silence prevailed. His present Majesty of Naples (then Prince Leopold) mounted the steps behind the large statue of Nelson, on which he placed a crown of laurel, richly inlaid with diamonds. The trumpets then blew a point of war, and the bands struck up

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  with great animation, ' See the conquering hero comes!' Lord Nelson's feelings were greatly touched, and big tears coursed each other down his weather-beaten cheeks, as on one knee he received the young prince in his only arm, who, with inimitable grace, had embraced him, calling him the guardian angel of his papa and his dominions. All who were susceptible of the finer feelings, showed them by their emotion; and many a countenance, that had looked with unconcern on the battle and the breeze, now turned aside, ashamed of their womanly weakness."

  This was the gala side of life at Palermo. But with the more serious aspect of affairs Nelson was thoroughly dissatisfied—fretted, over-| worked, restless, with a heart ill at ease, and a temper irritably resentful of even the delicate and respectful warnings as to his conduct at the Sicilian Court, which were sent to him from headquarters at home. Because his own conscience was disapproving, he was morbidly sensitive to any suggestion of slight or reproof. To Lord Spencer he wrote, on one occasion, like a hurt child, " Do not, my dear Lord, let the Admiralty write harshly to me—my generous soul cannot bear it." He felt, not unjustly, that he was entitled to the chief command in the Mediterranean ; but the Admiralty only entrusted him with it during the temporary absence of Lord Keith— from September, 1799, to tne en< ^ of the year.

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  Possibly it was felt at home that Nelson's ardour for the cause of his Sicilian Majesty had somewhat overstepped the bounds, and unpleasant rumours were getting back to England of the undue influence of Lady Hamilton and the extravagant scenes at Palermo. The impression made upon Lord Keith by the Hamilton household, of which Nelson was now a far more important member than Sir William, is shown by his writing early in 1800 to the Honourable Arthur Paget, who succeeded Sir William Hamilton as British Minister: "Anything absurd coming from the quarter you mention does not surprise me. The whole was a scene of fulsome vanity and absurdity all the long eight days I was at Palermo."

  But Nelson had already reached the point at which he could see no wrong in anything that Emma said or did—she embodied perfection in his partial eyes.

  His somewhat excessive devotion to the Sicilian royalties was, however, strained almost to breaking-point at times. Ferdinand was not a statesman, and would not see the force of the reasons Nelson urged for his return to Naples to once more take up the affairs of his kingdom. "My situation here is indeed an uncomfortable one," the admiral wrote to Earl Spencer, "for plain common sense points out that the King should return to Naples, but nothing can move

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  him." And again, " Unfortunately the King and her Majesty do not at this moment draw exactly the same way ; therefore, his Majesty will not go at this moment to Naples, where his presence is much wanted." Later he cried impatiently, " We do but waste our breath." It was not a satisfactory Court to serve; the true Neapolitan shuffle took place on every occasion, and Nelson himself would have seen things sooner in their proper light had it not been for the glamour that Lady Hamilton cast over him. Troubridge had no Emma to blind his clear seaman's eyes, and he was furious that the Maltese should be left to perish for want of the corn which the Court could so well have supplied. He wrote to Nelson from Malta early in January, 1800, with passionate indignation—

  " As the King of Naples, or rather the Queen and her party, are bent on starving us, I see no alternative, but to leave these poor unhappy people to starve, without our being witnesses to their distress. I curse the day I ever served the King of Naples. ... If the Neapolitan government will not supply corn, I pray your Lordship to recall us. ... Such is the fever of my brain this minute, that I assure you, on my honour, if the Palermo traitors were here, I would shoot them first, and then myself. . . . Oh, could you see the horrid distress I daily experience, something would be done."

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  Nelson told General Graham that " I pray and beg, alas ! in vain. Corn is here for Malta, but the Vessels will not go to sea. . . . Nothing is well done in this Country."

  Lady Hamilton, as might be expected from her sympathetic heart, was active in her endeavours to procure a supply of grain for the Maltese. She told Greville, " I have rendered some service to the poor Maltese. I got them ten thousand pounds, and sent them corn when they were in distress." For these services, at Nelson's request, the Czar, as Grand Master of the Maltese Knights, bestowed upon her the Grand Cross of the Order. She had the right to call herself, " Dame Chevaliere of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem," and was the only Englishwoman, as she was proud to think, upon whom the Cross had been conferred. Nelson was mud pleased, and wrote to Lord Minto : " The Emperoi of Russia has just granted my request for cross of Malta to our dear and invaluable Lad 1 Hamilton."

  But Nelson's infatuation for the "dear an< invaluable Lady Hamilton" was fast becoming a scandal that threatened to darken his reputation, He and she at Palermo were making for themselves a dangero
us paradise, and, shut up withii it, were determined to ignore the world's; censure —indeed, the outer world and the sane an< wholesome ideals in which he had been brought

  LADY HAMILTON EN SYBILLE

  MADAME LEI5RUN, PINX.

  up at home must have seemed very far away to Nelson as he looked upon—

  " The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams."

  His early traditions of right and wrong in matters of the most delicate personal honour, the simple memories of his Norfolk home, his good father and his patient wife, all alike seemed forgotten under the spell of one woman's influence. It is not meant to imply that Emma Hamilton was a Circe who wilfully bewitched men to their undoing and degradation—in her early days it was always she who had suffered and been the victim of men's selfish passions. At her worst she was not immoral, but at her best she remained unmoral. Her easy standards were not simply the result of her early unfortunate circumstances and experiences, but also of her own nature— large, capacious, tolerant, devoted, but unrestrained and without spiritual sensitiveness. The side of life that is spiritual and unseen never touched her; she liked the things that she could take in both hands and taste and touch; she revelled in glitter and profusion, in the pride of the eye. There was an essential coarseness of grain in her which was glossed over in her youth by her radiant beauty, her abounding vitality, and her eager willingness to please and to be pleased. But as she grew older and more assured in her

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  position as the wife of the British Ambassador and the friend of a Queen, the surface bloom was visibly rubbed away, and she began to degenerate in a lax, loud-mannered woman, whose defiance of the conventions she outraged and the wife she had supplanted was of the most crude and vulgar description. But even to the end of her life her underlying coarseness was saved from being wholly objectionable by the generous impulses and ardours of her nature. To the last, to paraphrase Carlyle's saying of the French people, she was " A gesticulating, sympathetic creature, and has a heart, and wears it on its sleeve."

  It is not surprising that with her excitable, pleasure-loving temperament she became a victim to a passion for gambling—even before she ever touched a card she had gambled unconsciously with her beauty and her reputation as the stakes ; she had the true gambler's nature. Nelson himself cared nothing for cards ; but the unattractive spectacle of a woman flushed by the excitement of false gains, did not disturb his steady admiration for Emma, though many of his friends were much distressed by it. The good Troubridge, who was, as Captain Mahan says, " a pattern of that most faithful friendship which dares to risk alienation, if it may but save/' wrote urgently to Nelson at the end of 1799—

  " Pardon me, my Lord, it is my sincere esteem for you that makes me mention it. I

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  know you can have no pleasure sitting up all night at cards; why, then, sacrifice your health, comfort, purse, ease, everything, to the customs of a country where your stay cannot be long ? . . . Your Lordship is a stranger to half that happens, or the talk it occasions; if you knew what your friends feel for you, I am sure you would cut all the nocturnal parties. The gambling of the people at Palermo is publicly talked of everywhere. I beseech your Lordship leave off. I wish my pen could tell you my feelings, I am

  sure you would oblidge me. Lady H J s

  character will suffer, nothing can prevent people from talking. A gambling woman, in the eye of an Englishman, is lost/'

  People did talk, but neither Nelson nor Emma would take heed—the voice of friendship and the voice of censure alike fell on deaf ears. They seemed determined to believe that all must be well, because they wished it. Emma wrote to Greville in February, 1800—

  "We are more united and comfortable than ever, in spite of the infamous Jacobin papers jealous of Lord Nelson's glory and Sir William's and mine. But we do not mind them. Lord N. is a truly vertuous and great man; and because we have been fagging, and ruining our health, and sacrificing every comfort in the cause of loyalty, our private characters are to be stabbed in the dark. First it was said Sir W.

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  and Lord N. fought ; then that we played and lost. First Sir W. and Lord N. live like brothers; next Lord N. never plays: and this I give you my word of honour. So I beg you will contradict any of these vile reports. Not that Sir W. and Lord N. mind it; and I get scolded by the Queen and all of them for having suffered one day's uneasiness."

  But though Emma might protest, she did not alter her habits. Lady Minto, writing to her sister in July, 1800, described some of the things that took place at Palermo.

  "Nelson and the Hamiltons," she said, "all lived together in a house of which he bore the expense, which was enormous, and every sort of gaming went on half the night. Nelson used to sit with large parcels of gold before him, and generally go to sleep, Lady Hamilton taking from the heap without counting, and playing with his money to the amount of ^500 a night. Her rage is play, and Sir William says when he is dead she will be a beggar. However, she has about ,£30,000 worth of diamonds from the royal family in presents. She sits at the Councils, and rules everything and everybody."

  There is a certain malice and exaggeration in this picture, but undoubtedly it was substantially true, and the spectacle of Nelson sitting half asleep while Lady Hamilton gambled away his gold, is sad enough without any additions—

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  truly for him it was " the expense of spirit in a waste of shame."

  But even in the toils of his unhappy passion, Nelson was still active and ardent at sea in the pursuit of what he regarded as his life's mission, and which he expressed in the words, " Down, down, with the French!" During the months that he was commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, he never let his infatuation interfere with his professional duties, except in that he made Palermo his headquarters. After Lord Keith returned at the beginning of 1800, and directed him to report himself at Leghorn, he wrote to Lady Hamilton, "To say how I miss your house and company would be saying little ; but in truth you and Sir William have so spoiled me, that I am not happy anywhere else but with you, nor have I an idea that I ever can be." And on another occasion he tells her petulantly, " Having a Commander-in-Chief, I cannot come on shore till I have made my manners to him. Times are changed." Some of his complaints to her have the simplicity and directness of a child seeking instant consolation for a hurt. " My head aches dreadfully," he says in one letter, "and I have none here to give me a moment's comfort."

  But the true Nelson shines out when in chasing four French sail he wrote to her, " I feel anxious to get up with these ships, and shall

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  be unhappy not to take them myself, for first my greatest happiness is to serve my gracious King and Country, and I am envious only of glory ; for if it be sin to covet glory, I am the most offending soul alive." And on this occasion he had the immense satisfaction of capturing Le Gdndreux, one of the ships that escaped from the French rout in Aboukir Bay. " Thank God!" Nelson cries, "12 out of 13, onely the Guillaume Tell remaining.'* But between the grudge he bore Keith—his attitude is plainly shown in his bitter remark to Troubridge, " We of the Nile are not equal to Lord Keith in his estimation, and we ought to think it an honour to serve under such a clever man"—and his evident desire to get back to Palermo, Nelson's actions after this became distinctly warped. He told Sir William Hamilton that Lord Keith received him and his account with stiffness: " It did not, that I could perceive, cause a pleasing muscle in his face/ 1 as he somewhat oddly expresses it. To Lady Hamilton he wrote, " Had you seen the Peer receive me, I know not what you would have done ; but I can guess. But never mind. I told him that I had made a vow, if I took the Gdn6reux by myself, it was my intention to strike my flag. To which he made no answer." Probably Lord Keith was too much surprised that Nelson could talk of striking his flag when the tale of the Nile

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  trophies was still incomplete, when the Guillaume Tell was still uncaptured, to be able to make any answer. The same surprise affected Trou-bridge and Ball when they found that Nelson had, on the score of his health, requested permission from his commander-in-chief "to go to my friends, at Palermo, for a few weeks." Trou-bridge tried to tempt him with the prospect of French ships and of the long-expected fall of Malta: " I beseech you hear the entreaties of a sincere friend, and do not go to Sicily for the present/' Both he and Ball were " extremely anxious " that their beloved admiral should have the " honour and happiness" of receiving the surrender of the French ships and garrison. And more than this, they wished to keep him from Lady Hamilton. But Nelson was not to be led or persuaded: for the first and only time in his life he found Emma Hamilton a stronger attraction than his duty. He wrote to her on the 4th of March, "My health is in such a state, and to say the truth, an uneasy mind at being taught my lesson like a schoolboy, that my DETERMINATION is made to leave Malta on the 15th morning of this month, on the first moment after the wind comes favourable ; unless I am SURE that I shall get hold of the French ships." So he went back to Palermo, and a few days later the Guillaume Tell was captured by Berry and Blackwood.

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  Nelson never ceased contrasting Lord Keith with Lord St. Vincent. Even when forwarding to Keith letters regarding the capture of the Guillaume Tell, and saying, with his usual generous ardour, how he gloried in the success of his officers, who were his "darling children, served in his school," he could not refrain from the little sting of adding that " all of us caught our professional zeal and fire from the great and good Earl St. Vincent/'