Too Great a Lady

by Amanda Elyot

  But I put a gay face on it and tried to mask my feelings, which were colored at various times with anger, disappointment, and regret. Let them keep their dreary evenings to themselves, I thought, stuffing back tears, for no one wants their little entertainments anyway. It’s Mrs. Hart they all want to see.

  My third spring in Naples was dawning, and once again the city bloomed with fuchsia and oleander, and canzoni d’amore wafted on the breezes that blew off the azure bay. On April 26, 1788, my twenty-third birthday, Sir William presented me with a box bound in red Moroccan leather tooled with gold. I opened the catch and was stunned speechless.

  “You’ve often mentioned that you would like diamonds . . . as all the fashionable ladies of Naples wear ’em.” He permitted the tiniest smile to play upon his lips.

  “Oh, Sir Willum!” I jumped up from my dressing table and threw my arms about his neck. “If you are not the dearest, sweetest, most generous, most wonderful man in the world, then such a one does not exist!”

  Later, I was to learn that the diamonds cost Sir William five hundred pounds, more than double the amount of the annual allowance he permitted Mam and me for clothes and washing. We had the brilliants set into a suite comprising a choker and a pair of earrings and I wore them to every gala we attended that year, as proud of my glittering acquisition as Sir William was of me. “Can you imagine Greville or Uppark ’Arry doing such a thing?” I marveled to Mam.

  She clucked her tongue dismissively. “They wasn’t gentlemen, Emy, gal, despite their fancy birthrights. Sir Willum knows your value, that ’e does, and ’e also knows it’s worth an ’ole lot more than them stones you’re wearing, no matter what they cost ’im. ’E’s arsey yarsey in love with you, pet. He don’t spend that kind of money willy-nilly unless it’s something ’e really wants, like a statue or a painting or another one of them old jugs.”

  “Five ’undred pounds was Greville’s entire yearly income when we was together,” I mused. “It’s been two years, y’nau. Do you think Sir Willum will ever ask me to marry him?”

  “Dunno,” Mam replied. “ ’Is mind’s distracted by them newspaper reports about ’is ‘foster brother,’ as he calls ’im.”

  “Do you think King George ’as gone mad, Mam?”

  “With an heir such as ’e’s got, I wouldn’t blame the poor sod if ’e ’ad!”

  Sir William’s mother had been a lady-in-waiting to the king’s father, Frederick, back when Frederick had been the Prince of Wales. I confess I always wondered if Sir William was really a Hamilton and not a Hanover, but in all my life I never heard a word contradicting his legitimacy, and I never dared broach the subject. Sir William had become quite distressed over the accounts that surfaced throughout 1788 regarding King George’s bouts with madness. His Majesty would suffer an attack, then recover his wits after enduring the most horrid cures, only to relapse again. I felt sorry for him. That such a powerful man should be reduced to such pathetic wretchedness wrung my heart.

  My importance to Sir William and the value he placed on my love for him had been steadily increasing as the months progressed. No longer did he fear that I might wish to return to London, or seek another protector. We were now as secure in one another’s affections and first place in each other’s hearts as any pair of devoted lovers.

  Another sea change had taken place over the past several months. What had been at first a nodding acquaintance with Queen Maria Carolina, with careful and fastidious nurturing, was blossoming into a true, burgeoning friendship between us, though I was still unwelcome at official court functions, such as the bacio mano, or hand-kissing, ceremonies that Sir William was required to attend. And I remained unable to enter the front door of the palace as did the ladies of the Neapolitan nobility. If Her Majesty and I wanted to converse, I had to employ a subterranean passage that connected the Palazzo Sessa to a backstairs entrance leading to her private rooms within the Palazzo Reale.

  Yet outside of the city, things were slightly less formal. In the fine spring and summer months Sir William and I would ride out to Caserta every Sunday, along roads redolent with the aromas of orange, melon, lily, and rose and the strains of mandolin and guitar coming from nearly every garden and window. In the vast palace we dined en famille with the royal household. And when the men would retire to talk of hunting (for that was the king’s only subject that was fit for family ears), the queen and I would discuss everything from politics to her children, to the fashions of the day. “I am a mother first,” Her Majesty would always remind me. “The Queen is just a court dress I put on.” As she had brought seventeen children into this world, it was impossible for one to doubt her sensibility.

  To my utter astonishment, the queen took an interest in my life. “Êtes-vous heureuse?” she would sigh, solicitous for my happiness. Although an Italian monarch, she derided that language as coarse, insisting on speaking mostly in French, the courtliest of tongues and the universal language of diplomacy. “I wish I could do more for you, ma chère. The rules are silly, but without protocol, you have anarchy.”

  Although it bothered me that I had to sneak about like a thief to see her, our visits soon became everyday events. I was with her that awful day in July when the news arrived about the storming of the Bastille in Paris. She threw herself weeping into my arms, terrified for the safety of her beautiful younger sister, Marie Antoinette. I held her and stroked her hair as though she were my little Emma. But once the woman dried her tears, the queen vowed revenge. Although several French émigrés resided in Naples—royalist nobles as well as those with republican sensibilities—there had been no political rumblings of any sort here. Nevertheless, from that day forward, Maria Carolina resolved to maintain a tighter scrutiny on the Illuminati societies she had once strenuously supported.

  Perhaps it was the rumors of my close friendship with the Queen of Naples that gave rise to other tales about me. “There is talk that you and His Excellency are secretly married,” she disclosed one afternoon as her youngest children played at hoops in her private drawing room. The queen did not flinch when their boisterous game caused a Meissen ware shepherdess to topple from an end table, smashing to bits when it hit the highly polished floor.

  I smiled. “Is that why more doors are suddenly open to me? Not too long ago the same hostesses made a point of not including Mrs. Hart on their guest lists.”

  “Alors?” Her Majesty smiled like a cat.

  “If Sir Willum and I were married, would I not ’ave visited you this afternoon by entering the palace like Sua Eccellenza l’Ambasciatrice , instead of like a serving maid?”

  “He made you a present of five hundred pounds’ English worth of diamonds. Was it not a wedding present?”

  “It was not a wedding present, Your Majesty.” I laughed. “Don’t you think I would have known it?”

  The subject came to a head nearly a year later on a gloriously beautiful summer afternoon in the English Gardens at Caserta. I had brought my sketch pad and pencils and was strolling along one of the numerous winding pathways, in search of the perfect vista to immortalize. A furious crunching of gravel betrayed the presence of another, rapidly gaining on me.

  “Signora Hart! Signora Hart!” The panting voice was unmistakably that of the king. He had somehow run afoul of his servants and was completely alone. I stopped and waited for him to catch up with me. At least he had the manners to mop his brow before plunging into his theme. In all my years in Naples I never learned more than a few words in the local dialect, but I did not require a proficiency to take His Majesty’s meaning.

  “You are . . . a very beautiful woman,” he said, still panting. “You . . . very desirable.”

  “I am your dear friend’s lady,” I replied, expecting no need to elucidate any further. After all, when I’d first arrived in the city four years earlier, he admitted regret that he could not make me any overtures, for I belonged to Sir William’s nephew. For years now it was abundantly evident that Sir William was my protector, and even though he
was The King, Ferdinand must have realized that it would be unwise to attempt such a seduction.

  But he did! Like the country louts in the Chester of my childhood, his majesty tried to steer me into a secluded grove with every intention of having his way with me in the bushes!

  “Aspettate! Wait, Majesty!” I held up my drawing tablet, creating a barrier between my person and the king’s. In a flurry of pantomimed gestures and rickety Italian, I asked him to put his proposition in writing. Something as simple as “Ti voglio bene” would have sufficed.

  “In Eenglish—Inglese? Italiano? Napoletano?” The king was very keen on getting it right, as he was undoubtedly certain that if he did so, his wish would be granted and I’d lift my petticoats and open my legs just over the next rill.

  “Non fa differenza.”

  In his boyish scrawl, King Ferdinand took the tablet from my hands and wrote something in Napoletano, the only language in which he was as comfortable as he was in the subject of his text. Making sheep’s eyes at me, he offered the protestation of, if not his love for me, his unmitigated desire.

  “Mille grazie, Majesty!” I spied a pair of royal servants huffing and puffing toward us, still some distance away. I hallooed them, waving grandly but gaily. “Were you looking for ’Is Majesty?” I shouted. With all the subtlety of an opera buffo performer I pointed to his person. “Ecco qui!”

  Unscathed, I was thus able to effect a polite escape.

  I brought the king’s declaration straight to the queen. “Were I indeed married, would I be subject to such unwanted overtures?” I asked her. “ ’Ave I not always been the picture of fidelity? Do you know ’ow many years I ’ave ’ad to endure the jests and jabs about my ‘dubious past,’ when in truth my relationship with Sir Willum is thoroughly untainted by scandal and my ’ighborn critics are themselves adulterous and unfaithful? Now your own ’usband seems to have declared it ‘open season’ on Emma.” I dissolved into a flood of tears. “Your Majesty, since I came to Naples all I ’ave ever asked of life is to enable me to show my gratitude to Sir Willum for what ’e ’as done for me and given me. You are not a jealous woman. Can you not believe that a young beautiful woman, tho’ of obscure birth, could ’ave noble sentiments and act properly in the great world? I own I made mistakes in my youth—and many of ’em—but I assure you that I can be—have been—am—as virtuous as anyone born to the purple.”

  “Ma petite pauvre,” replied Maria Carolina sympathetically as she wiped the jam from the sticky palms of one of her young princes. “I wish it were within my power to allow Sir William to make you a proper offer of marriage. But that rests with your English sovereign, as His Excellency is a servant of King George. However, my dear Emma,” she added, with the sly smile of a consummate politician, “I will see what it is within my purview to attain. And as for my husband—you need not fear that he will renew his entreaties and advances. How is it you English say . . . ? I shall ‘take him well in hand,’ ” she purred silkily, slowly peeling off a long white glove.

  Twenty-one

  A Modest Proposal

  It soon became known throughout Naples and beyond that Emma Hart had been taken under the protection of the ever-astute Queen Maria Carolina. Owing to her influence, more doors opened to me socially. Several other artists came to render me in oils, clay, or watercolors, for Sir William never ceased to brag about his piece of “modern virtu.” We even fitted up a chamber in the Palazzo Sessa as a painting room. Among our artistic visitors was the German Wilhelm Tischbein, who had first come to Naples back in 1787 in the company of his countryman Goethe. I called him “Willie,” because he was such a serious little man I thought to quiz him out of his stuffiness. In 1790, Sir William offered a commission to a talented, though highly self-important, Frenchwoman named Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, who painted me a number of times. She depicted me twice as a bacchante: in one portrait I am dancing with a tambourine, my hair flowing behind me while Vesuvius smokes in the background. In the other bacchante, which has always remained one of my favorite portraits, I am reposing before a cave with a leopard skin draped over my hips. Mme. Le Brun’s painting of me as a Sibyl eventually became a calling card for her talent. For some time she carried the canvas with her as she traveled throughout the Continent in search of further commissions. But it saddened me to learn that Mme. Le Brun was quick to taint me with tawdriness once she stepped away from her easel, for word got back that she found me enchanting when costumed for any of the numerous roles in which she painted me, yet thought my usual wardrobe loud and vulgar. She could scarce believe it was the same woman, so she said. Well! All I can say to that is she comprehended very little of our Neapolitan society, where fine ladies were not afraid of color, or strangers to fancy trim.

  And this was from a woman who sought to enrich herself by promoting likenesses of my person! A brilliant portraitist, to be sure, but a common Frenchwoman when all was said and done.

  A year after the storming of the Bastille, Jacobin sympathies surfaced in Naples. Secret societies were unmasked and a number of Frenchies—shopkeepers, cooks, tavern keepers, and even artists—were deported for holding discussions on “The Liberty of the Subject.” Queen Maria Carolina wasted no time in prohibiting such sensibilities from festering. Sir William broached the subject of a journey to England, but foreign travel became inadvisable for several months.

  So we spent the rest of the year entertaining as usual at the Palazzo Sessa. It was not uncommon for us to have fifty or sixty to dinner several times a week, and one evening we threw a ball with four hundred in attendance, including many of the Neapolitan and foreign nobility. An invitation to the British embassy was by any account the most prestigious ticket in the city, for our gala nights were as much fun as they were festive, and dear Sir William took especial care that I should outshine even the most glittering of our guests. A simple white satin gown showed my figure to perfection; I applied a minimum of cosmetics—just enough to maintain the rosy bloom in my cheeks—and wore no powder in my hair, which Sir William desired me to leave unbound, loose, and flowing to my heels.

  Hints, winks, nudges, and nods—and occasionally the outright question—regarding our marital status continued to plague me. To all the world, Sir William and I appeared the most loving and devoted couple, and even my detractors were compelled to admit that the ambassador had a renewed spring in his step when he was in my presence, and positively glowed when he extolled my virtues. But for all these concessions, there remained a substantial contingent who still disapproved of the match, for whom my present conduct could not atone for my past, even though they had never known me when I was young and wild. Daily, I offered proofs of my complete reformation, but their prejudices trumped the truth. The wife of Sir William’s good friend Heneage Legge was ailing and Sir William suggested that I would make an excellent nurse and an entertaining and compassionate companion. Yet the invalid tartly refused his offer, saying that while she was certain it was well-meant, she did not think my present position in society too different from my past, and therefore would have been hard put to welcome me into her home.

  “I don’t know ’ow much longer I can go on this way,” I’d tearfully tell Sir William once the guests had departed, the torches and candles been extinguished. The slights, the digs, the little mortifications, added together became insults of far grander magnitude. It was affecting my health, too. My rashes had returned.

  The cuts wounded me—even tempted me to strike back in one of the only ways that was available to me: my performances. Herder, the noted poet and Lutheran minister, insisted on an invitation to see my Attitudes. I can’t imagine why, as his discomfort and disapproval were immediately evident. The more this pedantic prude frowned and fretted in his chair, the more I was tempted to play the seductress, retailoring my performance on the spot to ensnare him in my shawls the way a spider traps a fly. The more he squirmed, the more I wormed, until the rest of the audience was exploding with laughter at his expense.

  Ano
ther night I positively scandalized some of our guests when I introduced a popular native peasant dance into our postprandial concerts. Proper ladies did not dance the tarantella; it was considered far too risqué, so none of our guests would join me when I exhorted them to stand up and dance off some of their fine dinner. Thus refused, I was left with no alternative but to call for my maids, Laura and Giulia, and we gave them quite a show. Sir William pronounced my performance “downright erotic, by gad!” and demonstrated the full measure of his delight once we retired for the evening.

  “I do believe it is time for a holiday,” he sighed, nestling into my arms.

  I slept late the following morning, exhausted from all the hullabaloo of the previous night. Looking for Sir William, I found him in his observatory tower, gazing at his precious Vesuvius. “My love?”

  Startled out of a reverie, he turned around, his face a reflection of emotions that flowed into and over one another like the sparkling waves below us. He took my hands and seated me beside him on the upholstered banquette. “Emma . . . my own dear Emma . . . it pains me more than you know to live with the awareness that you are hurting inside. You are so good, so gracious, so loving, so . . .” His voice trailed off while he gathered his thoughts. “I turned sixty last December. We will celebrate your twenty-sixth birthday in April. I have long desired to be able to grant you what I have been fully aware for some years now is your greatest wish. And I have struggled to appreciate how the consequences attendant on the manifestation of this desire will affect each of us. For you must believe me, my beloved Emma, I never want to spend a day outside of your sunny company. There might have been a time when the opinions of others would have carried a degree of weight, might even have affected my decision, but I am beyond all that now.” I felt my heart quicken. “Emma . . . my angel . . . my darling girl . . . I should like to make you Lady Hamilton.”