England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton (44 page)

Emma also planted stories in the newspapers and encouraged her friends to do the same. The
Morning Post
reported, "Lady Hamilton is fitting up a room for the purpose of displaying her
attitudes
and in a short time she will give large
attitude parties.
Attitudes, it is thought, will be much more in vogue this winter than
shape"
(a reference to Emma's lost figure).
⁷
The
Times
predicted she would be received at court on November 18, and reminded its readers that the Queen of Naples had written to Queen Charlotte praising Emma, adding it was thanks to Emma's "exertions" that Nelson's fleet was victualed and thus able to win at the Battle of the Nile.
⁸

Nelson bought a black terrier dog from a shop in Holborn, adorned with a silver collar, called him Nileus, and gave him to Emma. Emma patched up her old disagreement with Anne Darner and commissioned her to sculpt a huge marble bust of Nelson. The
Morning Post
joked about his flirtatious sittings for the "fair artist" and compared the nose of the statue to Nelson's manhood.

When he was without Emma, Nelson behaved cruelly to his wife. At a dinner with Lady Spencer, wife of the Lord of the Admiralty, who he thought took Fanny's side, Nelson was sullen. When Fanny offered him a walnut she had shelled for him, he refused it so roughly that it flew across the room and smashed a glass. Fanny fled and wept outside the door. Only Emma was allowed to prepare his food for him, to love him. He no longer cared who knew it.

CHAPTER 38
Show Time

O
n November 24, the Hamiltons and the Nelsons arranged to see Richard Sheridan's version of
Pizarro,
a play by the popular German playwright August von Kotzebue. A tragic drama of love and revenge,
Pizarro
had become inordinately popular during the conflict between England and France. The audience cheered any possible allusion to fighting the good fight, the players delivered their speeches as pro-war tirades, and the actor playing Pizarro hammed up comparisons of the heroic main character to Nelson by wearing Nile dress and swashbuckling around the stage. Announcements that Nelson had ordered a box caused a huge crush for tickets, even on a Monday night. The house was crowded in every part by a “splendid assemblage of beauty and fashion,” trilled the
Morning Herald.
The excitable crowds burst into applause when Nelson arrived, and did so repeatedly throughout the play
¹
Fanny attempted to concentrate on the stage as Nelson and Emma whispered together and petted. She was miserable and longed to be back at 17 Dover Street—but there was much worse to come.

Jane Powell, Emma's old friend, starred as Elvira, and Pizarro was John Kemble, whom Emma had already met and charmed.
^∗
Like Emma, Jane had come far since the days of scrubbing at Dr. Budd's, and she was now an accomplished tragedienne, second only to the great Sarah Siddons. It was a setup—either Emma had met Jane a few days before and plotted with her, or Jane had guessed at the way to please Nelson's mistress and gain herself some notoriety into the bargain. The high point in the play
came when the actress playing Elvira threatened vengeful Pizarro that she would defeat him if he attacked her. The audience was expectant. Jane waited for a degree of quiet, and then delivered the killer line. She taunted Pizarro to “wave thy glittering sword”; then, to the amazement of the crowd, she paused and turned to look straight at Lady Nelson before crying, “And meet and survive—an injured woman's fury.”

^∗
Emma knew well in advance that Jane had taken the lead role, since it would have been advertised.

Fanny let out a scream of shock. She had been demeaned repeatedly, and now an actress was dubbing her an “injured woman” in front of everybody. The theater dissolved in uproar. Fanny fainted. Nelson refused to leave the box, and Fanny suffered the indignity of being carried out by their servants. Nelson was infuriated with his wife for making a scene, but everybody else could hardly believe what they had just witnessed, and journalists went wild for the news. One newspaper reported that Emma helped Fanny and Nelson's father away from the theater and into the carriage. Poor Fanny was so bereft of her husband's support that she had to depend on the woman she hated more than anyone in the world. The
Morning Herald
remarked that Fanny was “for some days in a very indifferent state of health.”
²

Emma was beginning to feel the strain of keeping up appearances. At a dinner she was seized with nausea and vomited repeatedly in a basin in front of Fanny. It was looking increasingly unlikely that she would be received at court, as Queen Charlotte showed no signs of relenting in the face of media pressure. Nelson had not improved his popularity with the royals by his predilection for converting “God Save the King” into a hymn to his own victories. They could not refuse to see him, but they could snub Emma. In an effort to cheer her up, Nelson accepted an invitation to spend Christmas with Sir William's friend and relation, William Beckford, at his crazy Gothic-style mansion, Fonthill Abbey. Rumors abounded about Fonthill, and only Britain's chosen few stepped inside its luxurious doors. Leaving Fanny alone in London, with only her pompous brother-in-law William and his wife for company, Emma, Nelson, and Sir William set off for an eccentric winter break. Beckford promised that Nelson and Emma could stay free from “the sight and prattle of drawing room Parasites,” but it was impossible to escape the reporters.
³
The public was always hungry to read every slavering detail about Nelson and Emma—where they stayed, who they met, and what they wore, ate, and drank.

Local volunteers in army dress playing “Rule Britannia” welcomed the visitors from London. Friends from Naples also attended: the soprano Brigida Banti, Emma's old duet partner, French émigrés, and other nobles
and dignitaries. The
Gentleman's Magazine
reported the entertainment in luxurious detail to readers across England. After a tour of the flamboyant house led by hooded servants carrying torches, the guests were ushered to Beckford's sumptuous purple-draped reception rooms. Sitting nervously on priceless ivory chairs around ebony tables, they enjoyed an exquisite dinner served from huge silver dishes, expensive wines, and "confectionery served in gold baskets," under glittering gold lights. At eleven at night, when everybody's attention was heightened,

Lady Hamilton appeared in the character of Agrippina, bearing the ashes of Germanicus in a golden urn, as she presented them before the Roman people…. Lady Hamilton displayed with truth and energy every gesture, attitude, and expression of countenance which could be conceived in Agrippina herself, best calculated to have moved the passions of the Romans on behalf of their favourite General. The action of her head, of her hands, and arms in the various positions of the urn; in her manner of presenting it before the Romans, or of holding it up to the Gods in the act of supplication, was most classically graceful. Every change of dress, principally of the head, to suit the different situations in which she successively presented herself, was performed instantaneously with the most perfect ease, and, without returning or scarcely turning aside a moment from the spectators.

Half drunk, satiated with sweetmeats and dazzled by Beckford's elaborate decor, Nelson fell in love with Emma all over again. The delighted company wept at her "pathetically addressed" speech as Agrippina. Heavily pregnant, Emma emphasized her condition by playing maternal roles instead of more provocative nymphs. The journalist compared the experience of watching her to "magic" and decided, "I can scarcely help doubting whether the whole of the last evening's entertainment were a reality or only the visionary coinage of fancy."
⁴
Behind her back, Beckford joked she was "Lord Nelson's Lady Hamilton or anybody else's Lady Hamilton," but to her face, he eulogized "that light alone which beams from your Image ever before my fancy like a Vision of the Madonna della Gloria."
⁵

On December 26, they returned to a bleak London. Nelson went back to Dover Street, where Fanny awaited him. Emma could not give birth in 22 Grosvenor Square, for it was not their own house but Beckford's, so Sir William quickly rented a large and handsome town house in the prime location of 23 Piccadilly, facing Green Park. Emma was still just about able
to get around, and they began to pack their belongings. Their old friend Louis Dutens, acting as their de facto assistant, took charge of furnishings. He worried that there were not enough beds for the eight servants, arranged to dye the dining room curtains, and wrote that he would move her bed from the room facing north to “be placed in that fronting the South, looking onto the Park.” The bed had presumably been in the room adjoining Sir William's chamber, and she wished to give birth in a room farther from him.
⁶

On January 1, Nelson's promotion to vice admiral was confirmed and he prepared to receive new orders to go to sea. Emma tried to be pleased for him, but she was miserable that he would not be with her for the birth, and perhaps would not return for a year. The promotion prompted Fanny to make an ultimatum. She could no longer bear the humiliation of her position, and she dreaded Nelson returning to sea with the situation unresolved. She begged him to tell her if he had ever mistrusted her or doubted her fidelity, covertly implying to Nelson that he might doubt Emma's ability to be loyal to him while he was away. She declared she was weary of “dear Lady Hamilton, and am resolved that you shall give up either her or me.” Nelson was livid that Fanny had dared tell him what to do. He chose Emma and decided to take steps to formalize his separation from his wife. That same night, he left for Plymouth to embark on his ship, the
San Josef
Fanny had lost Nelson for good. He never saw her again.

CHAPTER 39
A Pledge of Love

A
s the
Morning Post
joked, Lady Hamilton had arrived in London C_/ £ in the "nick of time."
¹
With only a month of her pregnancy to go, Emma was big and uncomfortable in her new home. Carrying a baby was much more difficult than when she was seventeen, and, like many women at that time, she was afraid of dying in childbirth. Only a few years later, Mary Shelley died in agony after a doctor tore out her undelivered placenta with his bare hands. Mrs. Cadogan cared for Emma and told inquisitive visitors and journalists that she was in bed with a cold. The doctor came secretly to escape the attention of the press. Amid the confusion, Nileus hurtled off into the park. Emma frantically advertised for her dog in the newspapers, offering a lavish reward, but he was never found.
²

Nelson arranged to sell Roundwood, his home with Fanny. Unlike many men, who left their wives no property or money on separation, he gave Fanny half his income, the equivalent now of about $120,000 a year. Although taking half his income signified their separation, Fanny refused to be beaten. On receiving her first payment on January 13, 1801, she wrote warmly to thank the "man whose affection constitutes my happiness." When she heard that Nelson was ill with eye pain, and knowing that Emma was in no fit state to travel, she offered to come and comfort him. Enraged, Nelson replied, "Whether I am blind or not, it is nothing to any person, I want neither nursing nor attention, and had you come here, I should not have gone on shore nor would you have come afloat. I fixed as I thought a proper allowance to enable you to remain quiet."
³
He wrote to Emma that he had sent such a stinging rebuff that he worried "you will think I have gone too far," begging her not to be angry at the strength of
the letter.
⁴
Fanny continued to promote herself as the perfect wife to Nelson's friends. She had already implied to him that Emma would be unable to endure the prolonged separation and would find fresh company elsewhere, and she hoped fervently this would come true.