Too Great a Lady

by Amanda Elyot

  Her remark stung like a slap, but I still could not permit myself to tell her the truth. For one thing, if she so detested me now, I was certain she would not abruptly become proud of me were she to become suddenly enlightened. “I am the only mother you will ever ’ave, Horatia,” I replied stiffly. “Your father charged me with raising you, and by ’eaven I will keep my promise to ’im, if it takes my last shilling to do so.”

  In May, my collection of silver and plate was sold off, including a silver dinner service engraved with Nelson’s arms. I retained only a few trinkets and some gold cups, yet I always carried a Nelson ha’penny in my purse. The coins, bearing the likeness of my beloved, had been issued in 1812 and I vowed never to spend mine. Nelson remained my guardian angel, keeping me secure in the knowledge that there would always be money in my pocket; thus I managed to hold my head high through every reversal of fortune.

  But in June, three different litigants sued me for debts, listing their claims in the judgment book of the King’s Bench. As I lacked the means to honor them, by the end of the month I once more found myself in debtors’ prison, back Within the Rules and calling No. 12 Temple Place my home.

  Forty-six

  Denouement

  At noon on July 8, 1813, by virtue of an execution from the sheriff of Middlesex, nearly all of my furniture and possessions from 150 Bond Street was auctioned off on the premises. The catalogue was eighteen pages long.

  In accordance with the guidelines of the King’s Bench, as a prisoner of the Rules I was permitted to retain enough items to make our little household at Temple Place tolerably comfortable, but anything and everything that might have brought a reasonable price was sold out from under me.

  Like all proper ladies of the gentry, I began to pay regular “good works” calls at the Magdalen Hospital for penitent prostitutes. My visits to the Magdalen rekindled in me an interest in Catholicism that had been piqued by living so many years in Naples among devout, though profoundly superstitious, Papists. At Temple Place I began to entertain the visits of a priest named Father Peter, who offered me Communion there and educated me in the precepts of his religion. The more I learnt, the more it brought me comfort during a dark and difficult time.

  Everyone’s spirits were lifted that July when news reached England of Wellington’s stunning rout of the French at Vitoria in northern Spain. Even Within the Rules, Londoners scrambled to obtain copies of the Courier and the Gazette, for they both carried full accounts of the battle. There were public celebrations every night, though prisoners of the Rules were prohibited from enjoying them. I could hear the hoopla from my open windows, and even from the confines of the Magdalen quarter we could see the nightly illuminations in the nearest public square. Government buildings and private balconies were bedecked with lamps, whilst the facades of theatres and shops were festooned with garlands and buntings. The words Wellington and Victory were spelled out in lights in several prominent locations throughout the city, including Carlton House, the Regent’s residence, scene of a gala celebration that lasted for days. Even the Spanish consul’s house in the Strand bore the letters VICTORY, JUNE 21, 1813.

  How bittersweet that word—victory—tasted on my lips. Eight years too late for Nelson to enjoy in my embrace. Had he lived to see it, how happy he would have been, how proud for king and country, and how relieved to be able to tender his retirement on a glorious high note heard throughout the world, and return to Merton to live out the rest of his days in quiet comfort, with Horatia and me by his side. From Temple Place as I toasted our victory at Vitoria, I clutched his bloodstained coat to my heart as if Nelson himself were in my arms.

  Outwardly, as ever, I endeavored to present a picture to the world of the Emma my old friends knew: the blithe spirit who always grabbed life with both hands and wrung every precious and wonderful moment from it. I refused to allow our reduced circumstances to deter us from living every day to the fullest. Gala days were still to be honored, and so we celebrated the anniversary of the Glorious First of August at Temple Place, serving up as fine a dinner as we could muster for Alderman Smith and his family. How I missed my gallant and tender Nelson!

  That Christmas, with the grand news that peace negotiations were under way, I hosted a dinner party at Temple Place. The guest of honor was His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex, who had been just plain old Augustus Frederick when he had visited Sir William and me in Naples so very long ago. What a caution it was when, upon realizing that there wasn’t a carving knife to be had—I daresay they all must have been auctioned off—another of my guests, Sir William Dillon, a commander who had been a dear friend of Nelson’s, ripped apart the Christmas goose with his bare hands, as we all bosted out laughing. “For those of you who never served in His Majesty’s Navy,” the commander joked, “this is what it was like to mess with a bunch of midshipmen! One of the first rules of the navy is ‘Make do with what you’ve got.’ ”

  “Oh, it can’t be!” I laughed.

  “Well, close enough, at any rate! Now, who’s for a leg?” asked the commander, brandishing the goose limb, dripping with its own juices, as though it were a truncheon.

  What a mirthful celebration we had that night! But only a week later, I fell quite ill again, spending the New Year holiday abed with what I believed to be another attack of jaundice, though Dr. Tegart, the Rules’ physician, diagnosed me with dropsy, as well as edema, or “water on the chest,” both symptoms of liver disease. I spent the first three months of 1814 in my bed, shivering like the devil throughout the month of February, when it grew so cold in London that the Thames froze over and a Frost Fair was held upon the ice. Horatia was miffed that I would not permit her to go skating upon it. The newspapers reported it as the coldest winter in twenty years. Travel ceased, and mail deliveries were halted unless the post was delivered by special messenger. Horses slipped and slid on London’s frozen ruts and cobbles, and every exposed surface, including the shop windows, was frosted over with a layer of ice. It was as if the entire city lay under glass.

  It was during my extended convalescence that I read the Morning Herald’s April 10 article regarding the two-volume publication by Harrison and Lovewell of The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, with a Supplement of Interesting Letters by Distinguished Characters. I am certain now more than ever that it was Francis Oliver who brought the copies of my letters to these scoundrels, for not only did he know the details of my relationship with Nelson, but Nelson’s refusal to entertain the whole East India Company business, and my having spurned his amorous attentions gave him a double motive for attempting to ruin us in the eyes of all the world.

  I wish to extend my grateful thanks to Alderman Smith for covering the spunging house’s bill for “breakages” amounting to thirteen pounds, four shillings, eleven pence, incurred on April 10, as well as on the day I learnt that James Perry had refused to print my refutation of the volumes in the Morning Chronicle.

  Many people believed those letters to be forgeries, for they were either incapable of accepting their national hero as a passionate lover or else unwilling to conceive that such a great and noble man as Nelson would disparage—and so emphatically traduce—the character of the Prince of Wales. These letters would most certainly render me persona non grata in the eyes of the Regent, from whom I have been seeking my pension, so it naturally availed me greatly to disavow them, claiming that all of us—Nelson and Sir William and I—were too much attached to the prince to ever speak ill of him. It is true, however, that until I read the Morning Herald on April 10, I had not the merest inkling that these letters were being published. It was assuredly done without my permission, and I don’t stand to gain a penny from it.

  I dare not know what to make of the irony that now, during some of the darkest moments of my life, England finally basks in the radiant glow of victory after so many years of war. Napoleon has been exiled to the island of Elba, and Britons may now cross the Channel in safety. Now that there is peace between England and France, the p
ossibility of decamping to the Continent presents itself to me. I have been vilified since the public release of my letters, and once these memoirs are published I have little doubt but that I will be rendered completely friendless in my own country. At least my daughter—for once she reads this she will learn her mother’s identity—and I might live quietly, unknown and unmolested, across the Channel on foreign shores.

  On April 29, three days after I began to write this memoir, I applied to Earl Nelson for half my Bronte pension:My Lord,

  It cannot be more disagreeable to you to receive a letter from me than it is for me to write to you but I shall be glad to know from your Lordship weather the first half year of the Bronte pension which Nelson left in his will I was to receive & which I never have received is to be settled. . . . Every sixpence is of the utmost consequence to me, on account of Horatia, the beloved Child of dear Nelson. I do not in the midst of poverty neglect her Education which is such as will suit the rank in life which she will yet hold in society & which her great father wish’d her to move in. I ask not alms, I ask not anything but right, and to know weather I am to receive my due or not.

  On May 6, I did receive 225 pounds from Earl Nelson, representing half the Bronte pension, less 25 pounds deducted for property taxes. Now that I am near to becoming a Catholic, I do believe in miracles.

  When I began this memoir, on my forty-ninth birthday, all London was aglow with the celebration of Boney’s enforced abdication. As I reach the final pages, it is the twentieth of May and the streets are once again filled with the strains of “Rule Britannia” and joyful revelry, the night sky resplendent with fireworks and illuminations in celebration of the tyrant’s exile.

  Now that the Bronte payment is enough to settle my present debts, Alderman Smith has sent a petition for my release from the Rules to Lord Ellenborough, the chief justice of the King’s Bench. Yet the funds are insufficient to secure my future and Horatia’s, and in exchange for our freedom I leave my story as a legacy to the world. If I am ever to quit the Rules and raise Horatia with all the perquisites required to be a proper young lady, I must have a means of income.

  The shape of my extraordinary life has imitated that of a farrier’s horseshoe, which I suppose is sadly fitting, given my father’s profession. It is indeed an odd sort of inheritance. I have seen enough of grandeur not to regret it, but comfort, and what would make Horatia and myself live like gentlewomen, would be all I wish, and to live to see her well settled in the world. You will not see me an ambassadress, nor in splendor, but you will ever find me firm and my mind uncorrupted.

  Not too many years ago, Lady Melbourne remarked to me, “Anyone who braves the world sooner or later feels the consequences of it.” Her ladyship is a veritable Sibyl, for I have learnt the hard way that in English society, you can do anything you wish to, so long as you remain discreet about it. An indiscretion, once revealed, spells ruin. So for all these years, I have kept my secrets from Emma Carew, kept them from Horatia, too, that the innocent should not suffer disgrace for their mother’s past conduct. Perhaps the most dramatic—and the most heartbreaking—Attitude I ever assayed was Emma Pretending Not to Be the Mother of Her Two Daughters. I kept little Emma’s existence a secret from Nelson, and endeavored to keep Horatia’s existence a secret from Sir William, for I owed each of those great men so large a debt for my happiness that I could not have stood to see them suffer even the slightest degree of humiliation.

  Alexander Pope once asked, “Is it, in Heaven, a crime to love too well?” Apparently it is so in England, as it is a crime to be too beautiful. Of these two transgressions I stand convicted and for years have served my sentence for it. With the publication of the whole story it is my intention to transcend my detractors. By hazarding all, I will rise far above them, living with my daughter in comfort and contentment. The only thing the English abjure more than a fallen woman is one who has risen. Emma Hamilton, however, shall be in France!

  Afterword

  On July 2, 1814, with only 50 pounds in her purse, Emma slipped away with Horatia and boarded a small boat, the Little Tom, which lay moored near the Tower of London. Embarking from London was a far less risky prospect than fleeing to Dover and chancing discovery and subsequent remanding to debtors’ prison. Although Earl Nelson had finally paid her 225 pounds—half her Bronte pension (less taxes), which effected her release from debtors’ prison—she still, in fact, had numerous creditors. If she could reach the Continent, she would be safe from their claims as long as she remained there. Emma and Horatia sailed for Calais, where Emma immediately took rooms at Dessin’s Hotel, the city’s poshest hostelry. For some months Emma entertained and received guests at Dessin’s as though she were still an amabassadress. She continued to have Horatia schooled in music and languages by the finest instructors, though she spent several months suffering from a recurrence of her jaundice, most likely due to an enlarged liver from her excessive drinking. However, the money soon ran out and Emma and her young charge démenaged to a farmhouse outside of town, where they lived cheaply, but happily, and Emma herself took up Horatia’s instruction in German and Spanish. Petitions to Colonel Robert Fulke Greville for her installments of William Hamilton’s pension proved fruitless. Greville tartly informed her that creditors were claiming she had already pledged these sums to them. Finally, donations of forty pounds enabled Emma to settle herself and Horatia in a suite of dingy, if not outright squalid, rooms near the glamorous Dessin’s. Emma’s health continued to decline and she remained in her bed for days at a time, with Horatia keeping vigil. On January 15, 1815, Emma, Lady Hamilton, died. She was buried in Calais, after a proper funeral mass, having never received the government pension that Nelson had requested for her with his dying breaths. Neither did Horatia, who eventually wed a curate and became a proper Victorian. Throughout her life, Horatia never knew—or would deign to believe—that Emma Hamilton was her mother.

  Author’s Note

  Too Great a Lady is a work of historical fiction, told from Emma Hamilton’s perspective. To that end, certain events are recorded in the novel as they might have been seen through her eyes, and are based on what she would have known of those events at the time of their occurrence—depending on her own social and political inclinations, and on the sources from which she derived her knowledge and information. As a person, Emma was certainly jingoistic, and a fervent royalist; and in many ways, she was self-educated. Nelson, of course, could do no wrong in her eyes, so where modern historians might paint a more complex picture of his conduct, e.g., during the aftermath of the counterrevolution in Naples, or at Copenhagen, Emma herself would not have been privy to this research and information, nor would she have their detached and unbiased view. Also, she would have known what she read in the newspapers, and even in this day and age, journalistic reports of international conflicts often contain errors, or editorial agendas, and do not necessarily present the full picture!

  Though my novel was extensively researched, I make no claim to being an historian. I am a fiction writer, and in Too Great a Lady, my aim was simply to play the role of Emma Hamilton and to tell her story from a deeply personal point of view.

  —Amanda Elyot

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Claire Zion at NAL for sharing my vision and embracing Emma Hamilton’s story with passion and dedication. Trends in publishing and a writer’s initial story idea are not always in sync, however; I had so much exciting information to work with (and that I hated to eliminate) that the first draft of Too Great a Lady, at 715 pages, might easily (in my own view) have filled two books. So, thanks, too, to Irene Goodman for her tenacity and sound advice (even when the author didn’t want to hear it!). One could never ask for a better agent. Thanks to den farrier (both a seafarer and a Wunderkabinett owner) for cheering the novel every comma of the way with loving encouragement and enthusiasm; to Justin Reay, Admiralty historian, for his myriad insights and for the rare opportunity to walk in Nelson’s footsteps; and to Capt. Steven E.
Maffeo for his extensive, informative, and insightful comments on the manuscript.

  I am indebted to the numerous biographers of Emma Hamilton, Horatio Nelson, and Sir William Hamilton, whose various and several publications over the past century have illuminated so much about my principal characters’ world. Primary source material, such as eyewitness accounts of the Battle of the Nile published just a few months after the famous victory, and the voluminous extant correspondence between the key parties, proved invaluable. And to the ladies (and gentleman) of the Beau Monde, I doff my bonnet in gratitude for their wealth of knowledge about the arcana and minutiae of the era.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Amanda Elyot is a pen name of Leslie Carroll, a multipublished author of contemporary women’s fiction. An Ivy League graduate, and a professional actress, she currently resides in New York City. Visit www.tlt.com/authors/lesliecarroll.htm to meet the author online.

  READERS GUIDE

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. The passionate love affair between Emma and Nelson was real life that became romantic legend. Yet (and though divorces were extremely difficult to obtain during that era) both Emma and Nelson were committing adultery. How do you feel about that? Given the hypocritical moral standard of the day (“It’s okay as long as you’re discreet”), and the state of their respective marriages at the time Emma and Nelson began sleeping together, do you accept, or condone, their romance?