Too Great a Lady

by Amanda Elyot

  He charged me with finding a place outside London where he might settle. Since he had left Fanny, making over half his income to her, he was dependent on letting hotel rooms whenever he found himself onshore. The house was to be paid for with his money, with the title in his name, but it was intended for the rustication of the entire tria juncta in uno. I accepted my commission with zeal, looking hither and yon for the perfect property, and I found it but an hour’s drive from Westminster Bridge. Merton Place was just six miles outside of London, nestled amid the rustic and unspoilt Surrey countryside. It had but an acre and a half on its own. Mr. Cockerell, the surveyor, thought I was mad to say I would take it, for he took one look at the dirty little canal that meandered past it—a tributary of the River Wandle that I thought perfect for Sir William to fish from—and declared it most likely unsanitary. “I daresay your husband would be taking his life into his hands to eat a creature from that muck,” he insisted.

  Nor did the surveyor think the house itself a good prospect. The redbrick, rather antique-looking Merton Place, currently occupied and meanly furnished, was on the whole rather dark, and had but one large room on the ground floor, the rest being too tiny to be considered parlors, dining rooms, or sitting rooms. Upstairs, only one room was “fit for a gentleman,” according to Cockerell, “and even that wants a dressing room. In short, it is altogether the worst place under all its circumstances that I ever saw pretending to suit a gentleman’s family.” He went on to elaborate the unsuitability of the property—lacking stables and gardens, and surrounded on all sides by public roads, so as to offer not the least bit of privacy. The soil was poor, the house itself in need of major renovations and repairs just to make it habitable.

  What a narrow mind has this Mr. Cockerell! I thought. Such possibilities existed for this dear, sweet little place. “I will have it!” I declared ecstatically.

  The property, with its very modest parcel of land, cost ninety-four hundred pounds. It would not have been a hardship for Nelson to afford had he won his case against Lord St. Vincent, but the lawsuit had come to trial while Nelson was still in the Baltic. The dispute was over the thirteen thousand pounds in prizes taken from the 1797 Battle of Cape St. Vincent. Nelson’s barristers were appealing the verdict, yet only time would tell whether he would be awarded the damages he sought.

  Yet once the decision to purchase Merton had been taken, it took longer than either Nelson or I had expected to make the thing a reality. His shares in the three percents yielded but two-thirds of the purchase price, and he had to appeal to Alexander Davison to loan him the remaining three thousand pounds. Then there was the matter of convincing William Haslewood, Nelson’s solicitor, to permit his client to put all his eggs in the basket Nelson had begun to call Merton Farm.

  But Nelson trusted me above anyone else, and if I thought a little spit and polish would turn Merton Place into a paradise on earth, he was all for it and would hear no words of discouragement from any quarter. As he was still at sea, the task fell to me to prepare the property against his arrival. One tetchy matter was that of the removal of the present occupant. The widow Greaves dug in her heels and refused to quit Merton until Nelson’s arrival in October. Truth told, I believe she wanted to meet the hero. I dipped into my own purse to compensate Mrs. Greaves, and off she finally went. Then came the business of turning Merton into a place fit for a proper country squire. The property swarmed with builders and painters, and Mam acted as the foreman of all of them, overseeing the renovations with her sleeves pushed up past the elbows, her mobcap covered in brick dust.

  The Wandle tributary, which I had rechristened the Nile, was cleaned out, and where it widened into a lake, we stocked it with fish for Sir William. Hedgerows now bordered the property where it met the public roads. Mam and I planted a kitchen garden, set up pigsties and hen coops, and added a flock of sheep—which would have more room to graze if Nelson could persuade the adjacent landowner, Mr. Axe, to sell his acreage.

  We had plate glass installed on nearly every window, and several of the walls were hung with mirrors to bring in more light and create the illusion of space and depth. The rest of the walls were covered with Nelsoniana and other mementos of our relationship. “It’s looking a bit like a shrine, y’nau?” Mam remarked.

  “I know! Isn’t it wonderful!”

  “I dunno what Sir Willum will ’ave to say about all this.”

  “Sir Willum isn’t paying a farthing for it. Nelson won’t even ’ave any of Sir William’s furnishings here, not so much as a chair or a dish or a vase or a single volume of literature. It’s all to be ’is, and Sir Willum and I are to be naught but ’is frequent houseguests.”

  Mam chuckled. “Frequent as in ‘living ’ere all the time’?”

  “Well . . . when Sir Willum and I don’t need to be entertaining in town.”

  “Hmmm. Well, don’t let your ’eart run away with your ’ead, straight into your ’usband’s bad graces, is all I can say. You know I can be as plucky as a summer day is long, but you never know what can ’appen in this world, and Sir Willum is just about the most patient man I’ve ever known—not to mention ’e’s never been anything but good to the both of us. ’E’s a gentleman from ’is ’ead to ’is boots, acting for all the world like nothing bothers ’im, and if ’e don’t seem troubled by certain things, why, then there must be nothing in the world to be troubled by. Sir Willum’s always been good at chusing to overlook a thing if it prevents an inconvenience. But I see the way ’e looks at you. ’E’s still a man, and ’e’s still got a man’s ’eart, now matter how detached ’e likes to act or ’ow much ’e’s privately made ’is peace with the present situation. ’E’s like that volcano of ’is: all bubbling up inside and like to bost open at any time, y’nau? There’s not a soul in this life I love more than you, Emy, gal, and I want to see you protected.”

  On October 24, 1801, Nelson drove down from London in a post chaise, entering Merton Place for the first time, under a triumphal arch. Sir William, Mam, and I had already ensconced ourselves in the modest manor. What a day it was! Dressed in their Sunday best, every resident in the quiet country village had turned out to greet him, lining the lanes and cheering his carriage as it rumbled toward his new home. He alighted from the post chaise, struck to tears by the sight before him, for here was the farm of his dreams.

  I could scarce wait to take him upon the grand tour of his property. “The Nile!” he exclaimed, on seeing the meandering stream. “Is that little boat mine, too?”

  I nodded. “Well, the admiral needs to embark upon the waters on occasion, don’t ’e? With someone to row ’im about. Don’t you think I’d make a fine bo’sun’s mate?”

  Nelson inclined his head, his words intended for my ears alone. “I think you’d make a fine Nelson’s mate.”

  The “Nile” and the quaint Italianate bridge, the rose garden, and the little kitchen garden had left him in raptures, the livestock delighted him, and the house itself, complete with its alla Nelson decor and cozy furnishings, prompted exclamations of utter ecstasy. “Is this really all mine?” he asked repeatedly, dabbing at the wayward tear or two. “Oh, my dear, clever, magnificent Emma, do you know I have never truly felt I had a home to call my own? To my mind I always seemed to be imposing upon the kindness of my family at Burnham Thorpe, or even upon Fanny, when I’d come back to roost after so many months or years at sea. But this! My only love, you have indeed created the paradise of my fantasies. I am already in love with everything I see, and couldn’t possibly wish for anything different!”

  That first night, the entire village was illuminated, as though Nelson’s arrival among them was an event worthy of as big a celebration as a victory at sea. From the start, Nelson took an interest in the welfare of the villagers as he had done, if but briefly, at Bronte. He quickly befriended the Reverend Mr. Lancaster of the local parish, and began regularly attending church. I accompanied him, but Sir William, ever the humanist, preferred to remain at Merton, ensconcing himse
lf in the library, or fishing the “Nile.”

  For Sir William, Merton soon became an English version of the idyll he had left behind at Posillipo. Less than two months shy of his seventy-first birthday, he had finally acknowledged that a return to Naples was now naught but a pipe dream. He wrote to Samuel Ragland, his agent there, instructing him to close up Villa Emma in Posillipo, and to dismiss the servants from the Palazzo Sessa. But Sir William still owed back rent, as well as back payment to the servants and a number of Neapolitan tradesmen. The sale of our remaining furnishings there yielded but a fraction of what was owed. My poor husband was forced to sell 1,000 pounds of government stock in an attempt to cover the shortfall, but he suffered a huge loss on that as well, for the sale of the consols yielded him only 673 pounds.

  I was torn in two between my devotion to Nelson and my growing concern for Sir William’s increasing introspection. I endeavored to raise his spirits at Merton, but as the weeks wore on, he became more withdrawn, preferring solitude to the bustle and gaiety of our evening entertainments. What we had all envisioned as a quiet retreat soon became as popular as our homes in Naples and Palermo. With Nelson in residence, Merton bosted at the seams with company night and day, and my poor philosopher husband wanted little to do with any of them, feeling like a spare appendage and craving nothing but peace and quiet, with ample time for fishing and reflection.

  The house was filled with the sounds of laughter and merriment, of tinkling crystal and clinking silver, of outlandish sea tales and ribald country humor (saving the two Reverend Nelsons’ respect) because Nelson and I could not, even in his own home, be seen to be keeping private company. With my husband and mother as my constant companions, I was considered as much a guest as Nelson’s sisters (the vivacious Katty Matcham with her brood of six, and Susannah Bolton with her family of eight); my lover’s brother the Reverend William Nelson; his twittering wife, Sarah; and their two children, Charlotte and Horace; or any of my Welsh Connor cousins. I chaperoned the young people to parties and balls, tutored them in French and Italian, listened to their sagas of romantic woe, and dried the tears of the brokenhearted.

  It has always been my nature to require a grand project in which to immerse myself. Now that Naples was behind us, I spent my energies on all improvements at Merton, that Nelson’s every vision for his farm should be fulfilled. I wrote to a friend, We are very busy planting, and I am as much amused with pigs and hens as I was as the Court of Naples’ Ambassadress.

  We welcomed nabobs from the Admiralty, visiting foreign dignitaries, journalists, my singer friends from Naples, and even Maria Carolina’s son, Prince Leopold.

  We loved them all, for a house had become the home the itinerant Nelson had so long craved . . . but at bottom it was all an elaborate ruse of sorts: the only way Nelson and I could see each other every day, without censure. And never to pass another minute apart—that, above all else, was what we lived for.

  Thirty-nine

  Addio, il mio Marito

  At the end of March 1802, Lord Cornwallis returned to England, having reached a peace treaty with the French. Though it was called “the peace everybody is glad of and nobody is proud of,” no one in all of Britain could have been happier about it than I. It meant that my beloved Nelson would remain home!

  But just as he believed himself the happiest man in England, in April my lover received some sorrowful news. After a brief illness his father had passed away. Fanny had flown to the Reverend Nelson’s side when she learnt he had taken ill and she was with him in Bath when the sad event of his passing occurred. Yet neither she nor Nelson attended Edmund Nelson’s funeral, held at his rectory in Burnham Thorpe, each not wishing to encounter the other. I feared that Nelson’s spirits would not rally and suggested that we postpone our progress through the countryside, but he was quite adamant that our plans should not go amiss. A couple of months after his father’s death, we commenced our victory tour, beginning in Oxford, where Nelson was given the freedom of the city, and in full convocation he and Sir William were made honorary doctors of civil law. But things swiftly slid downhill from there. At Blenheim Palace, the Duke of Marlborough refused to admit our little party for fear that the scandal swirling about the tria juncta in uno might taint his family. But His Grace had the temerity to send out some light refreshments, that we might pic-nic—like a group of nonentities—on his manicured lawns. At Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, Nelson was accorded a hero’s welcome and we were noisily feted, but a cannon went off by mistake, killing a fourteen-year-old boy.

  “May I suggest that we now return home?” Sir William asked quietly. Unlike Nelson—and me—he did not have it in his character to derive oxygen from accolades. More than anything, he wished to leave off the hustle and bustle of whirlwind tours. The expenses of the recent excursion had mounted precipitously, and Sir William feared spending the twilight of his days in poverty.

  Greville poured pestilence in Sir William’s ear, for at bottom he did not wish to see his inheritance squandered on concerts and guttling. The man who had once praised my thrift now decried my extravagance. Out of politesse I oft invited Greville down to Merton, for Sir William missed his company, but Greville always declined.

  As the months had worn on, Sir William increasingly resented all the hullabaloo that surrounded our lives. He grew concerned about our expenditures, and yearned for peace and quiet: no raised voices, no large dinner parties. Marital tensions rose to the surface. If we were in London, Sir William wished to fish quietly at Merton. If we were all in the country, he missed his societies and the intellectual stimulus of the city. If we went sea bathing, or on some other excursion, he desired to be anywhere else but where we’d stopped. He took to leaving letters for me to read, rather than speaking with me directly. Still the diplomat, he avoided face-to-face confrontations that might prove unpleasant for all parties.

  My dear Emma . . . there is no being on earth that has a better understanding or better heart than yourself, if you would but give them fair play, but . . . you must excuse me if my having lived so long has given me Experience enough that the greatest fortunes will not stand the total want of attention to what are called trifling Expences. . . . Believe me, happiness is in a much narrower compass than most people think. But my Dear Emma let us cut this matter short. Do not then strain the bow too tight, least the string should break.

  Ponder well my Dear Emma these lines, let your good sense come forward—as to me it is perfectly indifferent what may happen! I shall be Patience in Purity. Ever yr. W. Hamilton.

  What a pedant he’d become! It saddened me greatly that our marriage, which had begun as a model of domestic felicity, had dwindled over the past few years into pettiness. Truth told, our most primary colors now surfaced—Emma, the wild and carefree profligate, and William, the coolly detached cynic—each of us selfish in our own way, and we irked each other in no small measure.

  The Merton expenses continued to mount and the number of guests never seemed to diminish, for Nelson, having never had the opportunity till now to gather his entire family about him and come to know them well, desired they should visit us as often as possible. After all, Merton was his home. He more than had a right to host whomever he pleased and for however long he chose to do so. And so the unspoken, though copiously documented, marital strife continued. And I was torn in my allegiances to each of the two men, like Helen caught between her passion for Paris and her duty to Menelaus.

  Sir William, who had believed that over the months he had made his opinions perfectly plain, once again laid out his positions and his terms for amity, writing to me one day in November 1802 sounding, not like a husband, but as if I were his opposite number at a diplomatic conference.

  I have passed the last 40 years of my life in the hurry and bustle that must necessarily be attendant on a publick character. I am arrived at the age when some repose is really necessary, and I promised myself a quiet home, and although I was sensible, and said so when I married, that I should be superannuat
ed when my wife would be in her full beauty and vigour of youth. That time is arrived and we must make the best of it for the comfort of both parties. Unfortunately our tastes as to the manner of living are very different. I have no complaint to make, but I feel that the whole attention of my wife is given to Lord Nelson and his interest at Merton. I well know the purity of Lord Nelson’s friendship for Emma and me, and I know how very uncomfortable it would make his Lordship, our best friend, if a separation should take place, and am therefore determined to do all in my power to prevent such an extremity. I mean to have a light Chariot or post Chaise by the month that I may make use of it in London and run backwards and forwards to Merton, &c. This is my plan, and we might go on very well, but I am fully determined not to have more of the very silly altercations that happen but too often between us and embitter the present moment exceedingly. If realy we cannot live comfortable together, a wise and well concerted separation is preferable; but I think, considering the possibility of my not troubling any party long in this world, the best for us all would be to bear those ills we have rather than flie to those we know not of. I have fairly stated what I have on my mind. I know and admire your talents and many excellent qualities, but I am not blind to your defects, and confess having many myself; therefore let us bear and forbear for God’s sake.

  Sir William’s prophecy had come true at last. I was indeed in the prime of life, while my husband, ailing and crotchety, was but a shadow of the vital, virile man I first met back in 1783, made love to in 1786, and married in 1791. He got his chariot, though he had not ceased reminding me of the consequences of my extravagance. Not long after, when I was at my toilette one morning, he delivered a letter from my bankers at Coutts. “This must be an error,” I said, puzzling over it. “They seem to believe that there is but twelve shillings and elevenpence in my account.”