Too Great a Lady

by Amanda Elyot

  I clutched Hardy’s hands, for he was one of the last to touch Nelson’s skin. He had no more words for me.

  “As Dr. Scott is God’s witness, he was with Nelson in his final moments,” said Blackwood. “Nelson said to him, ‘Doctor, I have not been a great sinner,’ to which the chaplain made no reply.”

  I brought Nelson’s handkerchief to my swollen eyelids. “If God is Love, ’ow can it be a great sin, if any sin at all, to love with all one’s ’eart?”

  “He then told Scott, ‘Remember that I leave Lady Hamilton and my daughter, Horatia, as a legacy to my country; and never forget Horatia,’ and he continued to call for relief and exclaim, ‘Thank God I have done my duty.’ Dr. Scott rubbed Nelson’s stomach until Dr. Beatty touched his shoulder. ‘You cannot help him anymore,’ Beatty said, for Nelson had by then breathed his last.” Hardy fell silent for a moment. His lips were quivering. “He expired at sixteen thirty, after the British victory had already been secured. Lady Hamilton, he died as he lived: a hero.”

  Hardy opened his satchel and handed me a parcel wrapped in brown paper. I opened it to discover Nelson’s effects: the silver drinking cup I had given him on his fortieth birthday and which he had used every day since; the miniature portrait of me that Nelson had worn every day about his neck; his queue, gray from worry, for he was only forty-seven when he died; and the blue naval coat he was wearing when he was shot. The musket ball had ripped a hole in the fabric. It was rimmed with dried blood. I held it against my chest, wishing his dead body were alive inside it and had returned to my arms.

  “There is as well a pair of shoe buckles which I took off his feet. To you I know they will be doubly dear as he so often knelt at yours. And there is a box downstairs with your larger portraits in it, milady. We wanted you to have everything that was Nelson’s before the Admiralty got their hands on them, for there is no more proper legatee than yourself. Chevalier, his valet, took the liberty of honoring one of Nelson’s final requests as well. Nelson asked him to remove the gold ring from his finger and see that it was returned to your ladyship.” From his pocket, Hardy produced a scrap of black velvet and, within it, the golden band that I had given Nelson at the little parish church in Merton a few days before our parting. I kissed it and slipped it on my little finger, for it was too small to wear just above its twin, my own ring.

  I could not take my hands from his damaged coat, caressing every inch of fabric, as though my touch could restore its owner to life. “Where is his dear body?”

  “He wished to be buried in England and it has been the duty of his men who loved him so to honor his every dying wish, and damn the Admiralty if they see things different!” said Blackwood. “His body was removed of all clothing, save his chemise, and he was placed within a leaguer cask, filled with spirits—brandy, if you must know—as well as such other preservatives as camphor and myrrh, that he might be transported home with minimal deterioration to his—forgive me, Lady Hamilton, this is hard for me to speak of. We who loved Nelson as though he was a brother, are as grieved as—I dare not say as grieved as you, for I own that no one can know the depths of your pain at this time—but, brave and sturdy men though we are, we are not insensible to the irretrievable loss of the greatest man England has ever produced.”

  “The Victorys wished to be the ones to escort his body home. We would not permit any other vessel to bear him,” Hardy told me. “But as the ship would never make it as far as Spithead without prodigious mending, she was taken first to Gibraltar, where the necessary repairs could be made.”

  “I will want to see ’im when the Victory arrives,” I told the captains. “I must see ’is poor dear body and kiss ’is lips for the last time.”

  The men exchanged a glance. “Rest assured, Lady Hamilton, we will apprise you of Nelson’s final return,” Blackwood told me.

  Hardy made a polite bow. “It shall be my constant study to meet your wishes, as it was our ever dear lord’s last request to be kind to you, which, I trust, I shall never forget.”

  They rose to leave and kissed my hand in parting.

  O miserable, wretched Emma! O glorious and happy Nelson! I scrawled upon his last letter to me. I feared my tears would wash away all traces of his final words.

  On December 6, I read in the Morning Chronicle that the Victory had reached Spithead. I sent a note to Hardy once again requesting permission to say farewell to Nelson’s body.

  By return post he dispatched a letter dissuading me, in the politest terms, from engaging in any spectacles of public mourning, though he admitted that were I to insist upon viewing Nelson’s body, he would not oppose it.

  I had been much misapprehended, for I had thought that Nelson’s men—especially Hardy, who had thought enough of honoring Nelson’s wishes to bring me his effects—should not think to discourage me.

  Had it begun already? Was England already beginning to forget Lady Hamilton’s importance to Lord Nelson, hero of the Nile and Trafalgar? Were they already preparing to enshrine him as a model of manufactured chastity, as insensible to passion and emotion—to love—as a marble statue?

  Britain had most certainly not forgotten Nelson’s family. William, who to everyone’s shock had blarted out to Sarah in company (which included the bishop of Chichester), “Never mind the Battle of Trafalgar, for it has made me an earl and thee a countess!” was granted a sizable pension along with the title. Grasping, greedy William Nelson, the parvenu who had never done a thing to earn it, was handed a greater title than the king had ever seen fit to bestow upon the hero himself! The Boltons and Matchams, too, had received tidy sums from the government. Even Tom Tit was voted a pension of two thousand pounds for life. For what? For making her husband miserable in what should have been his most joyous years? I was enraged.

  On the ninth of December, Rose informed me that Dr. Scott had spoken with him regarding Nelson’s dying words. The chaplain confirmed that he had never quit the hero’s side during his entire time in the orlop, and that Nelson had told him “Remember me to Lady Hamilton; remember me to Horatia. Doctor—remember me to Mr. Rose. Tell him I have made a will and left Lady Hamilton and Horatia to my country.” He told me that the document had been witnessed by both Hardy and Blackwood just before the action at Trafalgar began. Why had the captains neglected to speak of it to me?

  I went down to Whitehall to see it. The will turned out to be a codicil in fact, and Nelson had carefully written a prayer above it.

  May the Great God whom I worship Grant to my Country and for the benefit of Europe in general a great and Glorious Victory, and may no misconduct in any one tarnish it, and May humanity after Victory be the predominant feature in the British fleet. For myself individually I commit my life to Him who made me, and may his blessing light upon my endeavours for serving my Country faithfully, to Him I resign myself and the Just cause which is entrusted to me to Defend—Amen, Amen, Amen.

  Whereas the Eminent Services of Emma Hamilton Widow of the Right Honourable Sir William Hamilton have been of the very greatest Service to our King & Country to my knowledge without her receiving any reward from either our King or Country, first that she obtained the King of Spain’s letter in 1796 to His Brother the King of Naples acquainting him of his intention to Declare War against England from which letter the Ministry sent out order to Sir John Jervis to Strike a Stroke against either the arsenals of Spain or her fleets. The British fleet under my Command could never have returned the second time to Egypt had it not been for Lady Hamilton’s influence with the Queen of Naples to encourage the fleet being supplied with everything should they put into any port in Sicily. We put into Syracuse, and received every supply, went to Egypt, & destroyed the French fleet. I leave Emma Hamilton therefore a Legacy to my King and Country that they will give her an ample provision to maintain her Rank in Life. I also leave to the beneficence of my Country my adopted daughter, Horatia Nelson Thompson, and I desire She Will Use in future the name of Nelson only. These are the only favours I ask of my King an
d Country at this moment when I am going to fight their Battle. . . .

  Nelson & Bronte

  On December 22, I rode out to Margate, where the Victory had moored temporarily. The surgeon Beatty’s postmortem of the body had revealed the most remarkable things. For all Nelson’s ailments and complaints of ill health, his vital parts and organs were found to be so healthy—even his heart, which Nelson continually believed had suffered numerous attacks—that they more closely resembled those of a youth than of a man of forty-seven who had weathered the world. Had the sniper’s bullet never been fired, Nelson might have lived to see a hundred, and we could have dwelt many years retired together at Paradise Merton.

  There was numerous friends of Nelson’s, his officers, and minor government officials crowded into the admiral’s cabin, where his dear body was on view. It had been so well preserved by the spirits that he appeared a bit bloated but scarcely decayed. I had humbled myself before ’em by promising that if they let me kiss his lips once, I would neither cry nor speak. True to my pledge, I touched my mouth to Nelson’s for the last time.

  Nelson had given his life for England; he had been silenced forever. Now England, in its envy of the greatest love story in her glorious history, wished to silence Lady Hamilton as well.

  Ariadne

  1806-1814

  Forty-four

  The Painful Losses Tumble Down

  I had lost more than Nelson. I had lost myself. My heart and my head were gone. No longer the heroine of a hero, I felt rudderless.

  At the end of the year, while my love’s poor body was still en route to Greenwich, the Reverend William Nelson, made an earl upon his brother’s demise, was already making rumblings about being presented to His Majesty, more interested in attending a levee than attending to funeral arrangements. His family—the first to cut Fanny in 1801 when it became quite clear that the entrée to Nelson’s good graces was purchased only through kindness and respect to me—now dropped my acquaintance almost entirely and once more took up courting Lady Nelson’s goodwill.

  Nelson’s body lay in state in the Painted Hall in Greenwich, and tens of thousands of mourners queued up as far as Deptford to bid farewell. The funeral was a two-day spectacle. On January 8, a vast flotilla joined the funeral barge that bore Nelson’s body up the Thames from Greenwich to Whitehall. The entire river was a sea of black—the majestic gondolas, the extravagant canopies, the thousands of people clad in mourning—with the only sign of color being the Union Jack, which flew from many of the vessels. Nelson’s L’Orient coffin, which also contained the sheet music to my beloved’s favorite ballad, had been placed inside a splendid ebony catafalque—originally intended for Cardinal Wolsey—that was placed on public display in Pall Mall.

  This casket, draped with a black cloth of sumptuous Genoa velvet, was studded with no fewer than ten thousand double-gilt nails. The eight handles and the corner plates were gilded as well, the latter engraved with the crests and orders with which Nelson in his lifetime had been honored: Britannia and Neptune; the British Lion crushing the Gallic Cock under its mighty paw; and the Order of the Bath, with its most resonant motto, Tria juncta in uno.

  The following day, the saddest Thursday in living memory, Nelson was honored on land as he had been on the chilly Thames. Heading the procession of mourners to St. Paul’s Cathedral was the hearse, shaped like a ship of the line with the winged victory at her prow, and drawn by six coal blacks with violet plumes upon their heads. Following on foot came the Prince of Wales, leading the solemn cortege of dignitaries, nobles, and military men, marching, on horseback, or conveyed in carriages. The Chief Mourner was the eighty-three-year-old Sir Peter Parker, who’d mentored the young Nelson aboard his ship, the Bristol, and had promoted the promising young seaman from lieutenant to master and commander to post captain. No women took part in the procession. Everyone who attended Nelson’s funeral service at St. Paul’s received a printed admission ticket signed by the bishop of Lincoln, who was also the dean of the cathedral.

  After the entire cortege had passed, an empty, unmarked black coach forlornly brought up the rear. Though Lady Nelson did not attend the funeral, she had sent her carriage as an emblem of respect, its vacant compartment representing the void left by Nelson’s permanent absence. The bells of St. Paul’s, which had been rung at funerals only if the deceased was of royal birth, now sounded for Nelson.

  After the funeral service, Nelson’s dear body was entombed at St. Paul’s and his name passed into immortality even as it remained fresh on everyone’s lips and enshrined in every heart and mind.

  I, too, did not attend the funeral, nor had I been among the thousands of common citizens who came to say farewell when Nelson’s beloved body lay in state, first at Greenwich and then in Pall Mall. Even now, I am unsure what would have pained me more: to know that I was unwished for there, or to acknowledge that the memorial service was to be the final good-bye. Rather, I memorized every detail of the ceremonies as described in the morning papers.

  Many of my old friends endeavored to improve my spirits by inviting me to concerts and the theatre, but everywhere I went there were elegies and homages to Nelson, which made my wounds bleed afresh. Mam determined that it was best for me to remain quiet at Merton, for then my broken heart might be more gently treated. She was right, as always, and in the country, at what had been our idyll, I drew comfort from Nelson’s image on every wall; I slept with his bloodstained coat in my arms, and of course the most palpable reminder of our love was Nelson’s “dear pledge” of it, little Horatia. I tried not to overindulge her for Nelson’s sake, for I didn’t wish her to become spoilt, and the horse, once out of the barn, cannot be called back. His only issue should always remain a credit to his name. Horatia was progressing remarkably well in her schooling for one so young. Many was the time when out of habit I reached for paper and quill to write to Nelson of her improvement, only to collapse in sobs over my blotter, bitterly acknowledging the impossibility.

  On December 5, 1805, the earl had come into possession of Nelson’s pocket-book, the little volume of memorandums that contained, among other items, the codicil he had written shortly before his most tragic demise. The pocket-book was then to have been delivered to Pitt, but the prime minister’s sudden death on January 23, 1806, was a shock to the nation. His untimely passing struck a mighty blow to my campaign for a pension, for he had been sympathetic to my claims and might have been my Galahad in Parliament. At first, William Nelson had pretended to a cordiality with me, expressing his hope in writing that my claims to a pension might be granted. But no sooner did William Wyndham, Baron Grenville become prime minister, toward the end of February, than the earl began to demand the personal effects that Nelson had bestowed upon me—by will and codicil—as well as those that had been brought to me by Captain Hardy. We tussled mightily over them—it was monstrous unpleasant—with an unfortunate outcome that fully satisfied no one. The earl allowed me to retain Nelson’s bloodstained coat, but I was to forfeit to him the diamond aigrette, the Turk sultan’s chelenkh that the Kelim Effendi had conferred upon Nelson on the fateful night in Naples when we all took flight for Palermo.

  Rather than presenting my case to Parliament, Grenville held on to Nelson’s pocket-book well into the spring, and then returned it to the earl, saying that nothing could be done for me. The earl conveyed this news not without some glee. “The PM informs me that had your claims been presented to the government at the same time as Nelson’s family had presented theirs, your pension might have been granted. Alas, it appears there is nothing to be done; for it is ever a surety that the early bird catches the worm.”

  What colossal poppycock! They were all playing me false, for Grenville had been given the pocket-book containing Nelson’s codicil soon enough after his death, no thanks to the earl; but the new prime minister had sat upon this evidence—deliberately, I am sure—for nearly half a year, and then had the temerity to claim I was too tardy!

  We was clashing too, ov
er Bronte, for Nelson had also legally bequeathed to me the income from the dukedom. The earl claimed that Bronte had been in arrears for years before Nelson’s death, and therefore, any income currently being derived from it must be used to satisfy the estate’s many creditors. Consequently, I was not seeing a penny of Bronte’s yield. George Rose had counseled me to rely upon Nelson’s will. His codicil was, in fact, finally approved on July 4, 1806, so Lord Grenville would no longer be able to forestall me with lies and subterfuge. Like the Americans, on that day I toasted my independence—from debt—for I believed that my financial worries would soon be a thing of the past.

  In June 1808, after I’d struggled for two and a half years to hold on to my precious home, Merton was put on the auction block. Almost a year later, in April 1809, the estate was sold for thirteen thousand pounds, and for the first time in months, if not years, I felt able to breathe fully. As the year wore on, however, Mam grew unwell, and I became increasingly plagued by my own health issues. I developed jaundice, which Dr. Heaviside attributed to a liver condition, although I had been suffering from touches of jaundice now and again ever since I’d pushed poor baby Emma into the world in 1804. Nelson’s sister, Susannah Bolton, sent me the kindest note wishing me a swift recovery. You are too great a lady, she wrote, to quit this world so soon.