Too Great a Lady

by Amanda Elyot

  My lips began to tremble and my eyes moistened. I gazed into Sir William’s face, more composed than I had expected it to be after so stunning a declaration. “Oh, Sir Willum!” I flung my arms about him and smothered him with kisses.

  “You realize, my dear,” he said modestly, between passionate embraces, “that I will be entering the twilight of my life just as you are approaching your zenith. And what a mismatched pair we shall be. It is no small trifle to consider. What will the world say when the glorious Emma must excuse herself from our grand dinners to attend to her ‘slippered Pantaloon’?”

  “Faugh!” I rested my head against Sir William’s chest. “You are ‘the most juvenile man I have ever known,’ remember?”

  But this most devoutly wish’d-for turn of events was to remain a secret until the eventuality might become the reality. As Queen Maria Carolina had so astutely observed, Sir William required King George’s consent to our union, and His Majesty’s permission was no certainty, their “foster brotherhood” notwithstanding. Queen Charlotte, fastidious about protocol and other societal niceties, had a tremendous influence on her husband, particularly since he had begun to slip in and out of madness.

  “Whatever will Greville say?!” I exclaimed through happy tears.

  “Given all that has transpired over the past few years, this will undoubtedly come as no shock to you,” Sir William replied. “One of the reasons my nephew was so insistent that I assume the responsibilities of your protection was precisely because he feared I would remarry and jeopardize his chance of inheriting what can laughingly be categorized as my ‘wealth.’ ”

  “But you named him your heir soon after I came to Naples. Was that not part of the bargain?” The memory still lingered somewhat bitterly.

  Sir William looked amused. “He had worried, particularly when I was entertaining Mrs. Damer, that I might marry some lady of quality and that would be an end of it, for I would settle an income on her and diminish his legacy. But if it was you that brightened my days and warmed my bed, he would have the best of all possible worlds: the ability to reduce his expenses while pursuing an heiress, and I would have a lively companion and ‘the cleanest bedfellow’ that he ‘had ever known,’ as he called you. Given your history, no matter how besotted with you I was, he was certain I would never be so foolish as to make you my wife. Nor, given the magnitude of the hurdles I must overcome to do so, did Greville ever believe such a thing might come to fruition.”

  “He does us both little credit. And what manner of man describes the woman who adored him no end for ’alf a decade as ‘the cleanest bedfellow’—never mind, I already reckon the answer. You know, ’e never said ’e loved me,” I added quietly. “For all the times I told ’im during the years we was together. So I guess ’e never did.” I took a deep breath before broaching the other subject on my mind. “And what of the unusual Mrs. Damer? Would you ’ave proposed to ’er?” I steeled myself for the reply.

  “She wouldn’t have me, you know.” Sir William chuckled. “Actually, ‘Don’t even take it into your head to ask me’ was what she said. And what a lucky escape she permitted me, for Mrs. Damer prizes her independence—and her breeches—above ‘the domestic prison of matrimony,’ I believe she called it.”

  “Then I shall try not to be jealous, but rather thank ’er for releasing your ’eart.”

  “My heart was not pledged then, Emma, nor was it ever engaged where Mrs. Damer was concerned. An amiable companionship was all I ever expected from any marriage to her.” Sir William pressed my hand to his cheek. “But that was a hundred years ago. You are as different from any woman I have ever known as—”

  “As Mrs. Damer in trousers is from the genuine article!”

  Sir William laughed loudly. “I am besotted, you know. Entirely enchanted. When you first arrived, I couldn’t take my eyes off of you, remember? And as the weeks and months passed, infatuation gave way to admiration and it gives me the most unalloyed pleasure to tell you, my precious Emma, that I stand before you now never having been more in love.” Sir William placed one of the brocaded cushions on the floor and dropped to one knee upon it. “Dear, dear, Emma, my love . . . my life . . . will you do me the greatest happiness of becoming my wife?”

  “My own adored Sir Willum . . . ’ow I love you! ’Ave I not already said yes?”

  I helped him to his feet. “But I had to make it formal, my dear, or I shouldn’t deserve the name of lover. A few minutes ago I made a declaration, an expression of desire. This time I was asking your permission!”

  “It was such a long time in coming, but I knew it would happen someday, Emy, gal, y’nau?” Mam was overjoyed when I imparted the good news and rushed to extend her felicitations to the prospective bridegroom. It took a good deal of persuading to convince her of the importance of keeping our confidence.

  We set out for London—and destiny. On April 21, 1791, just five days before my twenty-sixth birthday, Sir William, Mam, and I arrived in Venice, a fairy-tale city that rose out of the mists, and so unlike Naples it was hard to believe we were still in Italy. By midday the mists had lifted, as if La Serenissima, playing Salome, had shed her veils. Serenaded by gondolieri, Sir William and I held hands as we drifted under the Bridge of Sighs; at night we gambled at the casino that Casanova himself had habituated. And we saw many French émigrés who had fled their own country. They despaired not only for their own safety but for the entire future of their homeland.

  We reached London a month later, on May 22. That evening, my lover’s anxieties about this undertaking gave way to fear that his endeavor would fail. “Old Lady Spencer and Lady Bolingbroke are in our camp, my dear—as was the late Duchess of Argyll though of course they each married for love—but there’s many I thought to call my friends, Heneage Legge among them, who think I’m a fool and you’re considerably worse.”

  I knelt beside him and massaged his tired feet. “Damn them all, then,” I smiled. “There’s only one person that really counts.”

  “And by all accounts he’s a madder man than I am!” sighed Sir William.

  Twenty-two

  Lunacy Triumphs

  While Sir William set off for Windsor to begin his campaign, I commenced my English holiday by paying a visit to my old friend in Cavendish Square.

  “Emma!” exclaimed Romney, laying aside his brush and wiping his hands with a rag before rushing to greet me. “What a splendid surprise! What brings you to the city of stench and fog?”

  I kissed him on both cheeks in the Continental fashion. “The truth?”

  “Well, of course.”

  “I missed the stench and fog. Terribly boring in Naples with all that blue sky and the sparkling bay,” I added gaily. “Everywhere you go you are overwhelmed by the perfume of roses and one could go positively deaf from all the mandolins. Nothing but love songs night and day. And that dreary, irresponsible volcano always threatening to erupt but never seeing the thing through.”

  “What a wit!”

  “Sir Willum and I are ’ere on business, and you may ’ave me all summer, or until our—’is—affairs are completed and we once again set forth for foreign soil. We plan to return through France. Queen Maria Carolina insisted that I extend ’er sympathies to ’er poor sister. Why, Romney, perchè the frown?! Are you not beside yourself over what is ’appening across the Channel? To treat their king and queen with such disrespect—it makes me ill to think on’t!”

  Romney looked thoughtful and I feared he was beset with another bout of melancholy. “I ’ad the good fortune to do a portrait of Thomas Paine. And I am not a politically minded man, but I found much merit in his philosophies—the abolition of slavery, permissible divorce, and divisible property laws, for example. I would hazard a guess that even a royalist like Sir William would welcome a change in the property laws. ’E and Greville, being regular clients of mine, I know ’ow they stand in the world. They are both second sons, wrestling with perpetual financial woes, because a gentleman ain’t supposed to wor
k; yet they must make their own ways in the world while their elder brothers sit on their arses and inherit. Now, I don’t conscience murder, of course, as a stepping-stone to Liberty, but between you and me, Emma, absolute monarchy don’t sit quite right, either.”

  “Well, you might be right about Sir Willum and the in’eritance question. But don’t ever let ’im ’ear you talking like a Frenchy!”

  Sir William did not return from Windsor with an answer in hand. He had induced the king to make him a privy councillor, which entitled him to certain perquisites, but he had not received a response to his primary request. “These things take time,” he sighed, but counseled me to keep my chin up. “One of the first rules of diplomacy, my dear, is that nothing happens overnight.”

  In the meantime, we went about our holiday.

  In August, the prime month to be there, we set off for Bath, while Mam journeyed to Manchester to visit little Emma, who for some reason was now calling herself Emma Carew, though it was not the name of the family that raised her. I considered joining her, rather than going to Bath with Sir William, but I admit that I thought it would be better for the poor dear child if her quiet, simple life was not upended by my sudden appearance, when I should only have to tear myself away from her after a few days. Were I to suddenly swan into the girl’s life now that she was nine years old, I was certain, my arrival would raise more questions than it would answer.

  Sir William and I had made it our plan to remain in England for a few months so he might introduce me to certain influential members of British society. They were not to know of our engagement, of course, nor of Sir William’s petition to His Majesty, but if his suit was successful, he wanted the leaders of the fashionable world to know firsthand that I was as worthy of taking my place in society as any of them.

  To my astonishment and delight, some of the leading lights of the day scorned the hypocrisy of their contemporaries and welcomed me into their midst. I could have leapt for joy. At the Duchess of Devonshire’s salon, I met Her Grace, as well as her best friend, Lady Elizabeth Foster, who was also the duke’s mistress, an open secret among their set. There, rather than being disdained as vulgarity, my displays of emotion and exuberance and my unaffected spirit felt entirely at home. The duchess and I took to each other immediately. And her mother—who was one of the few to have been taken into Sir William’s confidence—was most encouraging regarding our marriage. But Georgiana was the liveliest and most generous and charitable soul—not to mention the most beautiful—that I had ever met. I remembered how I’d admired her when she’d been a frequent patron at the Temple of Health so many years earlier. What a different life I’d had then, counting myself lucky for earning my own way as neither a servant nor a Cyprian!

  I treated their coterie to a performance of the Attitudes, which were roundly praised, as were the simple, neoclassical gowns I had begun wearing daily during my visit. Within a few weeks, it seemed as though all the fashionable ladies of Bath were copying my ensembles, seeking to emulate the ancient heroines brought to life by the fresh and vivacious Mrs. Hart.

  Among the venerable guests who enjoyed my Attitudes in Her Grace’s salon was the Prince of Wales. Georgiana was amused at the way he practically fell over me with compliments. I knew his reputation, as well as the nature of his friendship with the duchess, and permitted him only the most benign of flirtatious gestures. “Well, then, I must have you in my boudoir any way I can,” he whispered suggestively, “even if it means I must hang you in effigy.”

  “Good ’eavens!”

  “A portrait, Mrs. Hart. Romney is the artist who captures you best, I believe. You see, I have become something of an Emma connoisseur . I think as Calypso, for you portrayed her so cunningly in your Attitudes, tho’ I wish’d you’d have sung, for didn’t Calypso enchant Ulysses with her voice?”

  “But the Attitudes are silent, Your Royal ’Ighness.”

  The heir to the English throne pouted like a petulant schoolboy. “Nevertheless! I should like to hear Calypso sing. In fact, I command it!”

  For a command performance of that sort, I was happy to oblige. I gave him a bit of Nina, a young woman driven mad by the death of her lover, and since the aria was in Italian, His Royal Highness didn’t know what the words meant anyway. But he was in raptures afterward and declared himself my eternal servant. Sir William congratulated me on having made yet another conquest.

  “Yes, but it’s ’is father ’oo counts.”

  “We are getting closer.” He handed me a copy of the letter he had written to the Archbishop of Canterbury on August 22.

  My Lord,

  As Your Grace is at Scarborough and I have but a short time to stay in England I am under the necessity of solliciting a favor of Your Grace in this manner instead of doing it personally as I cou’d have wished.

  In short My Lord it is my intention to marry a young person with whom I have been acquainted several years & whose behaviour I think fully merits all that it is in my power to bestow. Her name is Amy Lyon, tho’ better known by the name of Hart. Will Your Grace at the request of an old Friend grant me a Special License as speedily as possible—as I wish my marriage to be secret untill I have left England. I flatter myself that Your Grace will hear from many quarters of the merits & talent of the person that has induced me to take this Step so late in life, inshort it is my own affair and I shall be much mistaken if this Event does not insure my happiness. Excuse the confusion which I find in reading over what I have written—it is an awkward subject to write upon. I beleive my being a Privy Counsellor entitles my application to Your Grace but I shall take it as a very particular favor shoud you grant me the request & speedily.

  My heart was racing. “Do you think ’e’ll grant you the special license?”

  “I pray he does. But if His Majesty does not approve, it scuttles the whole affair, regardless of the archbishop’s acquiescence.”

  On August 28, Sir William revisited Windsor, returning to our rooms in Somerset Street late in the evening. His face betrayed nothing of his emotions.

  “Well?” My heart was pounding in my chest.

  “I have good news and bad news.”

  “What did the king say?”

  “Let’s say I got off better than I expected. I’d expected a thorough dressing-down, you know, ‘Duty’ and all that humdrum. The king knows well enough that some years ago, after he denied my requests to be transferred to the more vital embassy in Spain, I reconciled myself to remaining in Naples, out of the international eye, growing old and quietly living out my dotage in the shadow of Vesuvius amid my virtu. As long as I am never to have the post I coveted, why not at least have the happiness I deserved?”

  “But what did ’e say?!”

  Sir William hunched his shoulders a bit in mimicry of King George’s posture. “ ‘You’re not quite as religious as you were when you married the late Lady Hamilton, eh, wot-wot?’ ”

  “A quizzing?”

  “I assure you, though it could have been much worse, it was not altogether pleasant.”

  “But it’s a yes!”

  “It’s a yes!”

  “Oh, Sir Willum!” I drew him to me with such passion that we collapsed together on the settee. “You have made me the ’appiest woman in England.”

  King George’s consent to our marriage came with a number of caveats. I was not to be received at the Court of St. James. Not now. Not ever. I would be Lady Hamilton in name, but the marriage would not entitle me to be the ambassadress in any official capacity as was the first Lady Hamilton, who had been of gentle birth. The oddest restriction of all was that while Sir William Hamilton, private man, was free to marry the woman he loved, the person of His Britannic Majesty’s envoy was for all intents and purposes to be considered a celibate. Translated out of diplomatic language, it meant that the king had given Sir William his consent, while at the same time retaining his privilege not to recognize the marriage in any formal, official way.

  It was a triumph of love,
if not of lunacy.

  The archbishop split hairs as well, permitting us to be married “by license,” thereby dispensing with the posting of the banns, which would have ruined our attempt to keep our marriage a secret until we left the country.

  Our wedding was not a grand affair. Sir William, the secular humanist, had little use for churches and religion, so we exchanged our vows in a quiet ceremony at St. Marylebone, a charming little church so small that it had no room for a freestanding baptismal font.

  I wore a white satin gown accentuated with a wide sash, and a large pink bonnet with a white panache. The officiator was the Reverend Dr. Edward Barry, rector of Elsdon. Standing by as a witness was the elderly Marquess of Abercorn, one of Sir William’s relations: a thoroughly delightful gentleman who developed an immediate fondness for me. Mam was there of course, and to my surprise, Greville honored us both with his attendance.

  The briefest of congratulations were exchanged. There was to be no wedding breakfast. No sooner were we pronounced man and wife than Sir William and I dashed off to Cavendish Square.

  “Our business here is done,” Sir William declared, producing a bottle of champagne from a wicker hamper. “We depart for the Continent as soon as practicable. How fast can you paint?”

  Our dear old friend appeared utterly bemused—as much by Sir William’s uncharacteristic ebullience as by the flying bottle of champagne that landed in his hands.

  “Romney, my man, congratulate us. And allow me to be the first to commission a portrait of—dash it, I don’t care what the king says—of Her Excellency, the Ambassadress.” Sir William slipped his arms about my waist and lifted me into the air. “By gad, I am the happiest man in the world today. Kiss me, Lady Hamilton!”