Too Great a Lady

by Amanda Elyot

  A livid little Paget blamed me for the queen’s reluctance to entertain his requests for a meeting with herself and King Ferdinand. I was fiercely loyal to Sir William, believing he’d been horridly wronged by his king and country—embodied by the inexperienced pup who stood before me, puffing up his importance.

  “You are not the ambassador yet. What call ’as ’Er Majesty to greet a tourist?”

  The fatal Paget grew florid. “You are poisoning the Neapolitans’ minds against me! How will I ever be able to get anything accomplished at my post?”

  I smiled as wide as a Nile crocodile. “I ’ave no idea, my dear sir. I will not be around to see it.”

  On April 17, 1800, Sir William formally returned his credentials to Their Sicilian Majesties. I felt as though I were attending a funeral. He had received those credentials on August 31, 1764, and had arrived in Naples on November 17 of that year, taking up his post before the Honorable Arthur Paget was even born.

  As a parting honor to Nelson, the king established the Order of St. Ferdinand and Merit, proclaiming him the first knight of the order. Nelson was now beribboned all over, with three stars on his jacket and three medals about his neck, as well as the Turks’ diamond chelenkh, which he wore on his hat.

  A few days later, with heavy hearts, we loaded all of our possessions, our wardrobes, and our hopes onto the Foudroyant. The anchor was raised and Sir William and I bade a tearful farewell to a life, and a place, the likes of which we would never know again. Joining us were Mam, of course, and Miss Knight, who had resided with us at the Palazzo Palagonia, though, being a scribbler, she most often kept to herself. Her mother’s long illness had finally carried her off the year before. Maria Carolina, several of her children, and an entire retinue of nursemaids and ladies-in-waiting accompanied us as well. The queen had finally concluded that she would never regain the Neapolitan throne, and wished to return to Austria with her children, there to remain in the bosom of her large family. She and Ferdinand, who had recently begun to assert himself as a sovereign, no longer saw eye to eye on the political future of the Two Sicilies. They quarreled constantly, and I believe the queen was ready to acknowledge that their marriage was as doomed as their thrones. She requested Nelson to take her party as far as Leghorn, from whence they would travel overland to Vienna.

  We celebrated my thirty-fifth birthday on board Nelson’s flagship. Knowing how low my spirits had sunk, Nelson insisted that his officers and crew throw me the grandest gala possible. Miss Knight rewrote the lyric to an old chestnut and presented me with it, having spent the entire afternoon teaching Nelson’s crew to sing it. One of the men grabbed his accordion and played a hornpipe, and I linked elbows with Nelson’s left arm and Sir William’s right one and together we danced until our legs gave out and our sides were bosting from merriment.

  I wanted to make love with Nelson on my birthday, but the utmost prudence was necessary. Because of the watches, there were always men awake and alert for the slightest departure from the normal course of duty. Sir William and I shared a cabin and he was not a sound sleeper. The planks creaked. Were Nelson and I fooling ourselves into believing that no one knew we were shipboard lovers? Or perhaps, because we also believed we were the souls of discretion, everyone turned a blind eye.

  He always left his sleeping cabin unlocked for me. And how he managed to redeploy the marine assigned to stand guard outside his quarters was beyond my ken. That night, barefoot, I padded through his great cabin in my nightshirt and tiptoed into the room, parting the silken hangings about his bed. A single candle guttered on the small table. Nelson was already awake, as breathless with anticipation as I. He held out his hand to me and I climbed in beside him, trying not to laugh in amazement at the way we both managed to squeeze into the narrow suspended berth. But all romantics know that passion and true love are never daunted by something as pedestrian as logistics. “Happy birthday,” he whispered as our bodies met. “Happy birthday to the wife of my heart.”

  Upon our departure from Palermo, Nelson proposed a cruise to Syracuse before we made for England. Two days after my birthday, we anchored there, spending another two days visiting the city and its environs. Sir William was quite excited to tour the many ancient ruins. Nelson was eager to visit Bronte, for he had never seen his own dukedom.

  We were all extremely surprised by the inhospitality of the estate’s terrain. Much of it was more rocky than verdant; we had expected the volcanic soil to be more conducive to farming. Nor was the dukedom terribly majestic. In fact, it reminded me more of Hawarden, with its ramshackle stone farmhouse and long, low out-buildings standing gloomily amid the vineyards. On closer inspection, the farmhouse was abandoned and the furniture inside it broken and moldy. I was unhappy for Nelson’s sake that his royal demesne was neither grand nor noble. He deserved far better. This Bronte was more of an insult than an accolade.

  “Well, at least the chestnut groves are lovely,” Nelson sighed. But he was dismayed at the state of the tenants’ welfare. They lived in near-abject poverty, prompting him to declare that any income from the estate be put right back into it, in the form of agricultural improvements and social amenities. “I daresay His Sicilian Majesty did not give me much of a gift after all,” he muttered, “but at least I can try to provide my tenants with a proper living.” Setting about this aim with alacrity, he engaged as a steward Sir William’s old friend John Graefer, who had been one of the landscape designers of the English Gardens at Caserta.

  On May 4, the Foudroyant anchored in St. Paul’s Bay, in Malta. Czar Paul of Russia was now the Grand Master of the Order of Malta, because he had offered the order’s knights sanctuary in his own country after the French had confiscated their property. In order for one to be made a Knight of Malta, one had to prove noble lineage going back for five successive generations, on both sides of one’s family. However, the czar bestowed the Maltese Cross upon Sir Alexander Ball, the island’s governor, on Nelson, and upon me, as a gesture of thanks for an act of mercy and political expedience. Earlier in the year, as an “ambassador without portfolio,” I had been instrumental in getting shiploads of corn delivered to the starving Maltese.

  What an astounding honor! What would my dear gammer, now with the angels in heaven, think of her wild little Emy now? The grubby child who had stood by the Chester Road with a lump of coal in her besmirched hands now cradled a Maltese Cross, the first Englishwoman ever to be made a Dame of the Order of the Cross of Malta! It thrilled me to write to the College of Arms in London, for they had to record all enrollments in the order. My honor entitled me to commission the design of an escutcheon. I was to have my very own coat of arms! I could have danced on air.

  On the return journey from Malta to Palermo, though the seas were relatively calm, I felt dreadfully unwell. Nelson, despairing for my health, commanded every officer and member of his crew to tiptoe about the decks and rigging. “Not a sound should disturb Lady Hamilton,” he warned them, “or I may be compelled to consider the lash.” To complain of seasickness now, when I had proved myself such an excellent and indefatigable sailor during the tempest that had blown us from Naples to Palermo, was to betray my condition. But what could I do? Before the officers and crew of the Foudroyant, I put it down to influenza—and anxiety that we should be returning to an uncertain future in England after so many years abroad. The latter was, in fact, true.

  Nelson was anxious as well about returning to England. The man who had first found Naples to be a country of fiddlers, poets, scoundrels, and whores now could scarcely bring himself to quit the land of apples and music and golden sunshine, particularly for one of fog and gray . . . and Fanny.

  We had news from London that did nothing to allay our collective trepidation. The outspoken Whig leader Charles James Fox had denounced Nelson in the House of Commons for alleged atrocities and executions carried out in the Bay of Naples during the summer of 1799. Although the hero of the Nile was still the hero of John Bull, he was losing ground among the members
of the upper classes, who had also caught wind of the gossip about Nelson’s insubordination in the face of Lord Keith, and his conduct in Palermo, particularly as it involved Lady Hamilton.

  On the eighth of June, following a week of preparations, Nelson gave the order to weigh anchor, and we set sail for England. I suddenly remembered the inscription on the wall of Sir William’s study in the Palazzo Sessa. He had pointed it out to me the day I arrived in Naples, fourteen years earlier. La mia patria è dove mi trovo bene; “My homeland is where I feel at home.” My eyes welled with tears and I swallowed hard to fight the catch in my throat, having acknowledged in that moment that I wasn’t headed for my homeland; I was leaving it.

  Thirty-four

  The Toasts of the Continent

  In Leghorn, I prepared myself to say farewell to the queen. As a grown woman I had never been closer or more important to any other woman, save Mam, and I knew I should miss her dreadfully. After all, we saw each other several times a day for years and had guarded one another’s deepest confidences. I felt especially vulnerable and emotional, for by then I was certain I was carrying Nelson’s child. Our fondest wish had come true. I was deliriously happy about it, though I regretted being able to share this ecstasy with him alone. Mam, of course, had figured it out even before I did.

  “I’ve been through this with you before, y’nau,” she’d reminded me. “Don’t worry, gal. I won’t breathe a word of it to either of ’em: Sir Willum or the little admiral.”

  My fragile sensibilities, which swelled and dipped like the sea, had been in large measure responsible for my decision to lop off all my hair, for so many years my crowning glory. It was too difficult to keep clean on shipboard, its density and length suddenly made me feel too hot all the time, and I suppose with so many endings occurring all at once, chopping off my auburn tresses became just another one of them. I feared that Nelson would despise my looks now that I was shorn of several feet of hair, especially since he had so admired it. Perhaps it had all been a dreadful mistake to cut it— what had I been thinking? I felt heavy and hideous. But the dear man soothed my trepidation, assuring me that he found me just as beautiful and as magnificent as ever.

  We were all still aboard the Foudroyant on June 19, when Nelson and I received word of the Austrian defeat at the Battle of Marengo five days earlier. The queen feared to disembark, and rightly, Nelson refused to put her and her party ashore when Boney was on the march.

  Lord Keith had something to say about the situation, however. He commanded Nelson to dispatch all of his ships to Genoa to reinforce the British fleet stationed there, and to relinquish command of the Foudroyant, which needed to be sent to Minorca to be refitted. My lover had no choice but to obey. He moved his flag to the Alexander, yet refused to send that ship to Genoa along with his others. Keith became apoplectic.

  “He told me in no uncertain terms, ‘Lady Hamilton has ruled the fleet long enough.’ I wished to tell him to damn himself to hell,” Nelson confided.

  Learning that the Foudroyant was no longer to continue on to England, and fearful of the political climate in northern Italy and Austria, the queen asked that the eighty-gunner take her back to Sicily, where she would bide her time in relative safety. She and I employed all our feminine wiles to convince Keith to grant her request. He refused, stating that the Royal Navy was not to be abused by foreign monarchs, nor its vessels to be treated as private passenger ships. Keith suggested that Maria Carolina make haste for Vienna overland or else avail herself of a Neapolitan vessel. This time, she refused. Nelson sulked, Sir William fretted, my every changing emotion was worn on my sleeve, and Mam had her hands full with all of us.

  Sir William’s last collections of virtu were moved from the Alexander to the Serapis, which was bound for England. We all remained in Leghorn, though by now we had quit Nelson’s ships. But a few weeks later, we learnt that the republican army had marched into the nearby village of Lucca. Fearing they might become Boney’s next target, an armed mob of Livornese imprisoned Maria Carolina in the Governor’s Palace, vowing to keep her there until Nelson provided his personal guarantee to help them defend themselves against the French.

  The queen was beside herself with anguish. “I don’t know what to do, miledi. What do these people want from me? Have I not suffered enough? All I want to do is take my children home to Austria where it is safe. Tell me, what shall I do?”

  “You don’t fret, ma’am. I will speak to ’em and set ’em straight.” I stepped out onto the balcony of the governor’s residence and raised up my hands to quiet the people. “Lay down your arms,” I demanded. “It is unwise for you to ’old ’Er Sicilian Majesty for ransom, as Nelson will not treat with criminals. Return your weapons to the arsenal immediately, and then ’e will consider your situation.”

  No one was more astonished than I that the Livornese listened to me! The thing was done, to our immense relief. The next morning at first light, the queen departed for Florence. Our little quintet—Nelson, Sir William, Mam, Miss Knight, and I—followed her route, departing in two carriages the day after, on July 17.

  Our overland journey took us from town to tiny town. We endured flea-ridden mattresses in filthy posting inns, sweltering heat, and Boney within striking distance of us at every stop, until at last we gained Vienna on the eighteenth of August. But in short order we discovered that the mood among some of the people there was not entirely an elated one. Although the Viennese had, ever since the Nile victory, sported elegant black capes that they called “Nelsons,” and silly bonnets that looked like crocodile snouts, vicious gossip such as Troubridge had alluded to had somehow traveled north. Not everyone was kind to us.

  “Pray, sir, have you heard of the Battle of the Nile?” Nelson demanded to a particularly discourteous dinner companion one night. “That, sir, was the most extraordinary one that was ever fought, and it is unique, sir, for three reasons: first, for its having been fought at night; second, for its having been fought at anchor; and thirdly, for its having been gained by an admiral with one arm.”

  We gritted our teeth and jutted our chins and braved the occasional chilliness, for there were indeed many who were happy to meet us. Thirteen nights in succession we attended the theatre, because each one of the playhouses wanted to offer a performance in Nelson’s honor and he did not wish to offend any of the proprietors. There were dances and galas galore, all for us, with never fewer than seventy guests in attendance. They could not get enough of Nelson, the only man in Europe to have inflicted serious damage on the Corsican menace. Trumpets blared and cannons roared throughout the city as glasses were raised in toasts to his health and success.

  As had been the case in Bath when Sir William and I visited there just before our wedding, I became a fashion plate. Many Viennese women were keen to copy my ensembles: my Nelson caps (which did not resemble crocodiles) and my neoclassical gowns such as those I had donned for years when I performed my Attitudes. The truth was that these loose-fitting frocks were worn with only the lightest of stays beneath them—and because the gowns could be easily adjusted through the torso, they suited my burgeoning form.

  My sweet tooth was well satisfied, for the Viennese puddings were exceptional, and they had a penchant for topping everything, including coffee, with a generous helping of vanilla-flavored whipped cream. As my changing figure began to reveal my secret, the only way to disguise it was with prodigious gourmandizing so that people would think my increasing embonpoint was due to a surfeit of fine food and copious drink.

  At Eisenstadt, the country estate of the Prince and Princess of Esterhazy, we were introduced to Haydn, the court composer. It was a glittering soiree, where one was free to move about from room to room, like at the Neapolitan conversazioni, enjoying the music in one room and a hand of cards in another. We were treated to a performance of Haydn’s “Nelson Mass,” a most glowing tribute to the hero of the Nile. I wish’d at once to learn the soprano’s part, for I found it most beguiling.

  I was as i
mpressed with Haydn’s talent as he was with mine. The great maestro accompanied me on one or two lieder and a bit of Nina. Haydn, whom everyone affectionately called “Papa,” then composed a number of songs for me, including “The Spirit’s Song,” which he bestowed upon me at Eisenstadt on September 9, 1800. What an honor! What a gift! I still cherish the autographed original of the sheet music, inscribed to me by Papa.

  “My husband says you put him in mind of Dido and Calypso,” Princess Esterhazy told me. “And I must compliment you on your German. It is quite good for an Englishwoman. In fact, had I not known, I would have taken you immediately for a Viennese!”

  Vienna’s old-world ambience had by and large remained untouched and untainted by Jacobinism. Elaborately dressed powdered wigs and voluminous brocaded dresses with wide-caged underpinnings à l’ancien régime were still the fashion. Men still carried diamond-hilted swords at their hips. Life for the upper classes was a bit like living inside a candy box. Everything was mirrored or gilded, or both. At night, the thousands of perfumed wax candles were reflected tenfold. Maria Carolina, being a Hapsburg herself, settled into the atmosphere with ease. Her imperial manner restored, all her fears for her own kingdom seemed to evanesce.

  I had a harder time of it. My natural ebullience and vitality (even now when I was more than four months pregnant) had been well suited to the raucous and flamboyant Neapolitan court, but the Hapsburgs were different. Austria was extravagant, to be sure, but its rarefied atmosphere was one of fine and subtle decadence, far closer to what I had so briefly glimpsed in Paris than to the ambience of Naples and Palermo.