Kate Williams

by Unknown

  Emma’s overblown style was perfect for an age when Sarah Siddons was acclaimed for tearing up the scenery when she played Lady Macbeth.

  At her writing desk, Emma scribbled begging letters, flitting between demanding the government carry out Nelson’s wishes and requesting a pension for her services in Naples. Unhappy that Mrs. Fox, widow of Charles James Fox and previously a courtesan, received a pension of more than £1,200 a year, she began to lie that she herself had collected the Neapolitan gold from Maria Carolina to put it on Nelson’s ship, rather than receiving the convoys of luggage at the Palazzo Sessa. Still no money came. Her position was hopeless. If she had sold Merton immediately, dismissed all her servants, and retired with Horada to a cheap rented house in Norfolk, perhaps, or by the sea, she could have managed on Sir William’s legacy. But she owed about £7,000 at Nelson’s death, and she had over a dozen people directly dependent on her, with many more soliciting regular payouts. She had no choice but to keep up Merton and continue wasting her money in London, the city with the highest cost of living in the world. Her life was crammed with concerts, parties, and dinners with the portly, womanizing forty-one-year-old Duke of Clarence, his younger brother, the Duke of Sussex, and sometimes their high-rolling brother, George, Prince of Wales. She was sure they would force the government to honor her.

  Emma, Horatia, Mrs. Cadogan, the Boltons, Madame Bianchi, and the Matcham sisters spent August at Worthing at Emma’s expense. The pretty Dorset resort, on the south coast, was the most expensive holiday spot in Britain, because the king and his retinue summered there. Emma’s large party rose early to bathe and then rode and walked in the balmy sun, returning to array themselves for sumptuous supper concerts featuring Emma and Madame Bianchi, to which Emma diligently invited every influential person she could meet. The press was always happy to see Lady Hamilton and her little “god-daughter” frolicking on the sands, especially after the publication of Nelson’s will had made it crystal clear to the world that Horatia was his child by her. As Emma wrote to Sarah Nelson, Horatia “creates universal enterest alltho’ Princess Charlotte is here” and “all come to look at Nelson’s angel.” Emma’s residence near thirteen-year-old Princess Charlotte, the Prince of Wales’s shy, only daughter and the heir to the throne, was no coincidence: she wanted the press corps following the royal party to see Horatia, and she intended to accost the Prince of Wales when he was in a receptive, relaxed mood. Instead, she was besieged by others requesting money and favor. A chaplain who had been present at the Battle of the Nile turned up, demanding money.

  She improves in languages, musick and accomplishments but my heart Bleeds to think how proud wou’d her glorious Father have been. He that lived only for her… ‘tis dreadful to me however she is my Comfort and solace and I act as alltho’ he could look down and approve and bless Emma for following up His every wish.8

  Nelson had desired his daughter to be clever, accomplished, and well educated, and Emma was determined that his dream would be fulfilled. Behind Emma’s bravado, Mrs. Cadogan was fighting to make ends meet, and the burden was weakening her health.

  Emma achieved her greatest social triumph at the end of November 1807. Eternal party boys, the Dukes of Sussex and Clarence came to Mer-ton for an extended visit, and the Prince of Wales also agreed to attend. The expense finally wrecked Emma’s finances. The three brothers arrived with their entourages: Dorothy Jordan, and her children with Clarence; Lady Hertford, the Prince of Wales’s mistress; as well as friends, servants, horses, and carriages. Rooms had to be rearranged, new furniture and decorations bought, entertainment hired, and the cellar stocked with the finest wines. Emma invited Madame Bianchi and Mrs. Billington and other singers and eminent guests. Keen that everyone share her passion for Horatia, she coached the little girl in singing and dancing, and the two performed Attitudes and songs together to the great pleasure of the audience. “You delight me by saying that Horatia has so much notice taken of her,” wrote Susanna Bolton. “I hope, when she is introduced at Windsor, George our King will fall in love with her, & give her a good pension out of his privy purse.” Convinced she had won over the prince, Emma sent a splendid parcel of food to the Boltons. “How favoured you have been by their Royal Highnesses passing so many days with you,” Susanna wrote. “I do not wonder their liking Merton Sí your society.”

  The Duke of Sussex so enjoyed his visit that he returned in early January with Mrs. Billington. He retired to his room when young George Matcham arrived, seeking money, but Emma was less skilled at dodging supplicants. Quick to capitalize on his patroness’s illustrious guests, Dr. Beatry wrote to her enthusing how it would be “highly gratifying to my feelings and flattering to my reputation” if she could obtain him the position of surgeon with the Prince of Wales—a ridiculous promotion for a ship’s surgeon, even if he had watched Nelson die.9

  The royal brothers did not give Emma money or speak to government ministers on her behalf, nor did they invite her to court. Although the Duke of Clarence had wept copiously at Nelson’s funeral and displayed a bust of the hero and a mast of the Victory in his dining room until he died, he was not prepared to help the admiral’s struggling mistress in any way. Clarence and Sussex had no concept of financial hardship and actually thought themselves poor, while the Prince of Wales was concerned only with gratifying his many extravagant desires. He was, in the words of the Times, “of all known beings the most selfish,” a spoiled brat who cared only to squander money and indulge “the most puerile caprices.”

  Within three years of Nelson’s death, Emma was more than £15,000 in debt. A few months after the royal princes left, her creditors were threatening to send officers to arrest her. Emma was in desperate straits. Merton would have to be sold.

  CHAPTER 51

  Selling Nelsons Legacy

  Emma was bitterly disappointed with the surveyor’s valuation. He assessed the house and grounds as worth £10,430, with an extra £2,500 for the effects and furniture, including the wines and Nelson memorabilia. Although his estimate was £1,500 more than the purchase price, Emma’s projects to build new rooms, a kitchen, landscape the gardens and drive, add stables and a tunnel, redecorate, stock the ponds and canal with fish, and build pens and coops had cost more than £8,000. When a reasonable estate sold for at least £50,000, and the grand estate of Standlynch near Salisbury, which became Earl Nelson’s palatial Trafalgar estate, cost £120,000, Nelson and Emma had been mad to attempt to turn a £9,000 ruin into a magisterial country home.

  In June 1808, Merton failed to sell at auction, and in July, Emma moved out for good. The house was put on the market. Heartbroken to leave it half finished, she wanted the next buyer to keep it intact—and to pay too much. Kitty Matcham comforted her that she would be happier in “constant residence” in London because “you can enjoy the society of your friends, without the immense expence of entertaining their servants, which you are obliged to do in the country.” She encouraged Emma to believe that a wealthy patron would appear. “I am delighted to hear of your going to all these great parties.”1 A despondent Emma consoled herself with socializing and making big donations to the Foundling Hospital.2 As Horatia later recalled, “Hardly a month passed but we used to drive to the Magdalen or the Blind School.”3

  Aristocrats relished her dinners and applauded her dances, but they saw her as only a pleasant diversion. Hundreds had enjoyed her generous hospitality over the years, but they fled when she begged for help. From 1800 to 1805, William Beckford praised her and expressed passionate desires to see her, but in 1806, Britain’s richest man would rather she left him alone. “You are justly aware, my dear Ldy Hamilton, that I know nothing about money matters—Mr Pedlers is the Money Man and if you will send to him I dare say he will do what he can.” He tried to shunt her onto another relation of Sir William’s, the eighty-four-year-old Duke of Queensberry, notorious for his colossal wealth and fond eye for the ladies. Why, he wondered, “did you not think of old Q in the midst of those Merton Plagues?—H
e is wallowing in gold and a few hundreds could not be missed from his Heap—my treasury is at a very low ebb.“4 But Emma had already turned to Queensberry, and she still needed more.

  Emma was losing her old friends. The Duchess of Devonshire, whom she had tried so hard to court, died in 1806, and when Bess Foster married the duke, her position was too insecure to allow her to give her burdened friend much help. Emma’s most loyal friends were actresses and singers, such as Mrs. Billington, Dora Jordan, and Madame Bianchi, but they could not fund her or supply government contacts. In a time when only just over 1 percent of the population owned land and there were no rich foreigners to buttonhole, someone hoping for charity had only a few possible benefactors. Emma was now relying heavily on the Duke of Queensberry and her neighbor, Abraham Goldsmid.

  The Duke of Queensberry offered her his large villa in Richmond, an expensive village on the Thames to the west of London, for a peppercorn rent. Lavish Herring House had eight bedrooms, a dressing room, a study, a bathroom, four reception rooms, a billiard room, offices, servants’ quarters, and ample stabling. Emma carted over the best heavy mahogany furniture from Merton, the ornate four-poster bed she had shared with Nelson, portraits, glass, china and silver plate, wine, and Sir William’s treasures and library, including an original Domesday Book. She installed all her old servants, including the elderly Dame Francis, the Merton housekeeper, her Sudanese maid Fatima, the highly paid Connor sisters, and a troupe of footmen dressed in her own exclusive red livery. Most aristocrats would cast off their staff whenever they fell into difficulties, giving them neither back pay nor a pension, just as Sir William had done to his Neapolitan valets. Emma was staunchly loyal, and her large establishment drained her purse. She was similarly softhearted toward her hangers-on. George Matcham praised Emma’s laudable “plan of economy” but worried that it would have been better that “the crowd of obsequeous attendance had been entirely dismissed instead of being partially diminished.“5 Dozens of former servants, distant relatives, and impoverished old friends lounged in her homes, many of them whining behind her back, others storing up rumors for future blackmail attempts. Some, like Melesina Trench, the traveling widow she had met in Dresden, visited frequently for dinners and parties while busying themselves writing bitchy accounts for their memoirs.

  By July there was an offer on Merton of £13,000, exclusive of the valuable furniture and treasures. But there was also bad news. Mr. Canning, the foreign secretary, had been investigating the possibility of taking money from the Secret Service fund—perhaps up to £7,000—for Emma, but he had been unable to do so. George Rose, the treasurer to the navy, whom Nelson had begged to pursue the question of a pension for Lady Hamilton just before leaving for Trafalgar, told her he could do nothing more. “I can most truly assure you that I have most anxiously and conscientiously discharged all that Lord Nelson could have expected from me if he were now alive, & I am most sincerely grieved that I have failed of success.” Rose had been a true friend to Emma, but she pushed her luck too far. William Beatty rhapsodized about Emma’s “transcendent kindness” until she asked Rose to endorse his ludicrous desire to be surgeon to the Prince of Wales.6 She felt very vulnerable to the doctor’s demands. As the main witness to Nelson’s final words, Dr. Beatty had the power to withdraw his statement and damage her chance of help from the government.

  The potential buyer of Merton pulled out, perhaps finding the kitschy decor too idiosyncratic and aggrieved that Emma had removed the mahogany furniture and all the valuables, leaving the house stuffed with old furniture and dusty Nelson knickknacks. The early 1800s was the worst time in decades to be selling. The war kept the property market sluggish, and everybody dreaded a crash in the economy. There were no longer any foreign buyers, and English people stayed put or rented. Emma wrote desperately to Queensberry:

  You are the only hope I have in this world to assist and protect me, in this moment of unhappiness and distress. To you, therefore, I appeal. I do not wish to have more than what I have. I can live on that at Richmond, only that I may live free from fear—that every debt be paid. I think, and hope, £15,000 will do for everything. For my sake, for Nelson’s sake, for the good I have done my country, purchase it; take it,… I beseech you, my dear Duke, to imagine that I only wish for you to do this, not to lose by it; but I see that I am lost and most miserable if you do not help me. My mind is made up to live on what I have. If I could but be free from Merton—all paid and only one hundred pounds in my pocket, you will live to see me blessing you, my mother blessing you, Horatia blessing you. If you would not wish to keep Merton, perhaps it will sell in the spring better—only let me pass my winter without the idea of a prison. Tis true my imprudence has brought it on me, and villany and ingratitude has helped involve me, but the sin be on them. Do not let my enemies trample on me; for God’s sake.

  No doubt others received similar letters. Fifteen thousand pounds was more than the property was worth, and Queensberry was already juggling half a dozen houses. He knew that Emma’s letter, in which she first asked for £15,000 and then an extra £100, would set off even more demands. Merton remained on the market, seldom viewed other than by curiosity seekers, still requiring to be cleaned and maintained, swallowing more money every day.

  In January, Earl Nelson’s son, Horace, Viscount Trafalgar, died of tuberculosis. William and Sarah were devastated at the death of their heir and favorite child. William Nelson’s title and honors would now pass to the Boltons’ eldest son, Thomas. Bereft of his male heir, the earl’s hatred of Emma and Horatia increased to fever pitch.

  Emma claimed to Queensberry that she wanted only to keep her portraits of Sir William, Nelson, and Maria Carolina. The magnificent days of the tria iuncto in uno were gone forever: Sir William was buried next to his wife in Pembrokeshire, Nelson was the possession of the state in St. Paul’s, Maria Carolina was a virtual prisoner of Napoleon, and the glamorous star of the Palazzo was a struggling debtor, owing well over a million in today’s money. There was no way she could survive. She would never be able to remarry: a husband was legally responsible for his wife’s debts, and very few men could pay off such a large amount. It seemed futile to save a few shillings when there were thousands outstanding. Only a grand gesture could save her. Emma began to despair. She fell ill with a form of jaundice in October and decided to write her will. She hoped in death to win the share of the glory that had eluded her in life.

  If I can be buried in St Pauls I shou’d be very happy to be near the glorious Nelson whom I Loved & admired and as once Sir William Nelson and myself had agreed we shou’d all be burried near each other, if the King had granted him a publick funeral this would have been that 3 persons who were so much attached to each other from virtues and friendship shou’d have been laid in one grave when they quitted this ill natured slanderous world. But tis past and in Heaven I hope we shall meet.

  Realistically, Emma knew that burial in the crypt was reserved for military heroes, and so she requested to be buried next to her mother, although she hoped that “she will live, and be a mother to Nelson’s child, Horaria.” Still deluded about the value of her house, Emma appeared to think that the sale of the house alone, excluding the furniture or effects, would cover her debts and leave her with enough to provide for Horatia and Mrs. Cadogan.

  I beg that Merton may be sold and all Debts paid & what ever money shall be left after all Debts paid I give to my dear mother and after her death to my dear Horatia Nelson. I aliso give all that I am possessed of in this world to my dear mother Mary Doggin or Cadogan for her use & after her death to Horatia Nelson I give them all my ready money, plate, linen, pictures, wearing apparel, household furniture, trinkets, wine in short every thing I have in the world to my mother during her life & after her death to my Dearest Horatia Nelson.7

  She asked George Rose to care for her mother and Horatia, and hoped that when he died, his son would “do me this last favour to see justice done to Nelson’s Daughter.” Still cherishing fond me
mories of the Christmas visit, she begged “the Prince of Wales, as he dearly loved Nelson, that his R. Highness will protect his child, and be kind to her; for this I beg of him, for there is no one that I so highly regard as his Royal Highness. Also my good friend the Duke of Queensbury, I beg of Him, as Nelson beseeched him to be kind to me, so I commend my dear mother and Horatia to his kind heart.”

  Emma was clutching at straws: the duke was nearly ninety, and the prince, captivated by the sophisticated Lady Hertford, shut his ears to depressing pleas for money. Emma made one final attempt to beg the help of the state.

  I have done my King and Country some service but as they were ungrateful enough to neglect the request of the virtuous Nelson in providing for me I do not expect they will do any thing for his child but if there should be any administration in at my death who have hearts and feelings I beg they will provide for Horatia Nelson the child who would have a father if he had not gone forth to fight his country’s battles therefore she has a claim on them.

  In early November, Emma was subjected to a barrage of letters and even worse, visits from hired toughs. “Lady Hamilton has been harassed and grievously insulted by her creditors,” wrote George Matcham in shock to his parents.8 Emma was on the brink of being arrested for debt.

  CHAPTER 52

  The Friends of Lady Hamilton

  Goldsmid has been an angel to me and his bounty shall never be abused,” Emma rejoiced to Charles Greville in November. Shocked by the news that she faced arrest for debt, her neighbors had exerted themselves to save her. “When I thought they neglected me, Goldsmid and my Citty friends came forward, and they have rescued me from destruction.”