Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; (12 page)

of San Nicandro, who was restricted by the royal commands to instruction in sport, and in his own learning to a bowing acquaintance with his breviary. Inheriting a throne, while a child, by the accident of his father's accession to the Spanish crown, he had been reared in Sicily—always jealous of Naples—• under the tutelage of Prince Caramanico, a minister of opera bouffe, and of Tenucci, a corrupt vizier of the old-world pattern, who preferred place to statesmanship, and pocket to power. The young King, however, was by no means so illiterate or unjust as has often been assumed, and, if he was " eight years old when he began to reign," the rest of the Scripture cannot then, at any rate, be justly applied to him. He remained throughout his life a kind of Italianised Tony Lumpkin, addicted to cards and beauty, devoted to arms and sport. Indeed, in many ways he resembled a typical English squire of the period, as Lord William Bentinck shrewdly observed of him some twenty-five years afterwards. Music was also his hobby. He sang often, but scarcely well; and Emma, when he first began to practise duets with her, humorously remarked, " He sings like a King."

The people that he loved, and who adored him, were the Neapolitan Lazzaroni- -not beggars, as the name implies, but loafing artisans, peasants, and fishermen, noisy, loyal, superstitious, rollicking, unthrifty, vigorous, in alternate spasms of short-li -ed work and easy pleasure—the natural and ineradicable outcome of their sultry climate, their mongrel blood, their red-hot soil, and their pagan past. Motley was their wear. As happens to all peculiar peoples, they could not suffer or even fancy alien conditions. When the Grand Duke and Duchess of Russia visited Naples in 1782 during an abnormal spell of February cold, they swore that the northerners had brought the accursed weather

with them. They had their recognised leaders, their acknowledged improvisatores, their informal functions and functionaries, like a sort of unmigratory gypsy tribe. They had their own patois, their own customs, their own songs, their favourite monks. Such was the famous Padre Giordano, the six-foot portent of a handsome priest, the best preacher, the best singer, the best eater of macaroni in the King's dominions. They had, too, their own feuds, in a country where even composers like Cimarosa and Paisiello were always at loggerheads and made separate factions of their own. All that they knew of England before 1793 was that their own Calabria furnished the wood for its vaunted ships. With the Lazzaroni, Ferdinand early became a prime favourite. He was not only their king, but their jolly comrade. He was a Falstaff king, even in his gross proportions; a king of misrule in his boisterous humour. He was a Policinello king whose Bourbon nose won him the sobriquet of " Nasone " from his mountebank liegemen. He was a Robin Hood king, who early formed his own free-booting bodyguard; he was also King Reynard the Fox, with intervals of trick and avarice, although, unlike that jungle-Mephistopheles, Ferdinand could never cajole. He was, in truth, both cramped and spirited— " a lobster crushed by his shell," as Beckford once termed him—despite his defects both real and imputed, his want of dignity, his phlegmatic exterior and his rude antics. Every Christmas saw him in his box at San Carlo, sucking up macaroni sticks for their edification from a steaming basin of burnished silver, while the Queen discreetly retired to a back seat. Every Carnival witnessed him in fisher's garb playing at fish-auctioneer on the quay which served as market, bandying personal jests, indulging in rough horseplay, and driving preposterous bargains to their boister-

ous delight. This picturesque if greasy court would strike up the chorus in full sight of their macaroni monarch:—

" S'e levata la gabella alia farina! Evviva Ferdinando e Carolina."

He loved to play Haroun Alraschid—to do justice in the gate—and, when hunting, to pay surprise visits to the cabins of the peasantry and redress their wrongs; though when the fit was on him he could scourge them with scorpions. In his rambles on the beach the despot would toss the dirtiest of his rough adherents violently into the sea, and if he could not swim, would then himself plunge into the water and bring him laughing from his first bath to the shore.. It was one of these sallies that suggested to Canova his marble Hercules throwing Lichas into the sea, acquired by the bankers Torlonia before they were styled princes; and, indeed, the coarser side of Hercules as Euripides portrays him in the Alcestis bears some resemblance to this uncouth and burly Nim-rod.

While he was at first proud of his femme savante and left affairs of state until 1799 almost entirely in her hands and Acton's, his jealousy tended more and more to treat her as a prccieuse ridicule, and he grew fond of asserting his mastery by playing the Petruchio, sometimes to brutality.

For a long time he was pro-Spanish, while his wife remained pro-Austrian, and came to abominate Spanish policy more than ever when in 1778 Charles IV. of Spain ascended the throne with a caballing consort whom Maria Carolina detested. Ferdinand boasted that his people were happy because each could find subsistence at home, and the time was still distant when to the proverb on his name of " Farina " and

" Feste," " Forca " was superadded. If he pauperised his people with farinaceous morsels and festivities, he did not as yet execute them. Nor was he destitute of bluff wit and exceedingly common sense.

There is a familiar anecdote which may illustrate his rough and ready humour as well as his favourite methods of government. On one occasion his pedantic brother-in-law Leopold asked Ferdinand what he was " doing " for the people. " Nothing at all, which is the best," guffawed the King in answer; "and the proof is that while plenty of your folk go wheedling and begging in my territory, I will wager anything, you like that none of mine are soliciting anything in yours." This was the same Leopold whom the royal pair visited in their " golden journey " of 1785 which paraded the new navy organised by Acton.

The Queen, however, was an " illuminata " by bent and upbringing. She was always devising theories and executing schemes, and besides literature, botany, too, engrossed her attention. It is a mistake to judge either her or him in the light of after occurrences, and it is an error as misleading to judge even those events by the evidence of Jacobin litterateurs, one at least among the most violent of whom did not hesitate to recant. It was only long afterwards that she became lampooned, and that the " head of a Richelieu on a pretty woman " was held up to execration in the words of the ancient diatribe on Catherine of Medicis:—

" Si nous faisons 1'apologie

De Caroline et Jezabel, L'une fut reine en Italic,

Et 1'autre reine en Israel. Celle-ci de malice extreme, L'autre etait la malice meme." 1

1 " Would casuists find excuses try

Neither King nor Queen, though both have much to answer for at the bar of history, were ever the pantomime-masks of villainy and corruption that resentment and rumour, public and private, have affixed to their names.

The Queen's full influence was not apparent until the birth of an heir in 1777, when by a clause of her marriage-settlement she became entitled to sit in council. But long before, she had begun to inspire reforms very distasteful to the feudal barons who at first composed her court. She endeavoured to turn a set of antiquated prescriptions into a freer constitution, and to cleanse the Neapolitan homes. She limited the feudal system of rights—odious to the people at large—to narrow areas, and this popular limitation proved long afterwards the main cause of the nobility's share in the middle-class revolution of 1799. The marriage laws were re-cast much on the basis of Lord Hardwick's Act in England. The administration of justice was purified. Besides locating the University in the fine rooms of the suppressed Jesuit monastery, to some of which she transferred the magnificent antiques of the Farnese and Palatine collections, she founded schools and new institutions for the encouragement of agriculture and architecture. Even the hostile historian Colletta admits that she drew all the intellect of the age to Naples. Waste lands were reclaimed, colonies planted on uninhabited islands, existing industries developed, and the coral fisheries on the African coasts converted into a chartered com-

For Caroline and Jezebel, The one was queen in Italy, The other, queen in Israel. Extremes of malice marked the second, Malice itself the first was reckoned."

Cf. Crimes et Amours des Bourbons de Naples, Paris, Anon., 1861.

pany. The evils of tax-gathering were obviated; the ports of Brindisi and Baia restored; highways were made free of expense for the poor; tolerance was universally proclaimed; the Pope's right to nominate bishops was defied; nor was she reconciled to Pius VI. till policy compelled her to kneel before him in her Roman visit of 1791. At the period now before us, most of the pulpits favoured her. Padre Rocco, the blunt reformer of abuses, Padre Minasi, the musical archaeologist, were loud in her praises. And this despite the fact that, though regular in her devotions and the reverse of a free-thinker, she resolutely opposed the " crimping" system which from time to time reinforced the Neapolitan convents. She also bitterly offended the vested rights of the lawyers and the army. An enthusiast for freemasonry (and long after her death the Neapolitan lodges toasted her memory), she assembled around her through these societies a brilliant throng of savants and poets, while it was her special aim to elevate the intellects of women. Among the circle of all the talents around her were the great economist and jurist Filangieri, revered by Goethe, but dead within two years after Emma's arrival; the learned and ill-starred Cirillo and Pagano, who both perished afterwards in the Revolution; Palmieri, Galanti, Galiani, Delfico, the scientists; Caravelli, Caretto, Falaguerra, Ardinghelli, Pigna-telli, all lights of literature; and Conforti, the historian. But perhaps the most interesting of all, and the most typical, was Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel, subsequently muse and victim of the outburst in 1799.

This remarkable poetess, Portuguese by origin, merits and has received a monograph. Up to 1793, indeed, this friend and disciple of Metastasio was the professed eulogist of the Queen. She styled her

EMMA, LADY HAMILTON

" La verace virtute, e di lei figlio II verace valor." 1

She joined her in denouncing " Papal vassalage " in Italy. When the royal bambino died in 1778 she indited her " Orfeo " as elegy. When the " golden journey " was accomplished, the Miseno port re-opened, and the fleet re-organised, her " Proteus and Parthenope " celebrated the commencement of a golden age. But what most aroused her enthusiasm was the foundation of that singular experiment in monarchical socialism—the ideal colony of San Leucio at Caserta between the years 1777 and 1779. This settlement was the first-fruits of the Queen's socialism, though its occasion was the King's liking for his hunting-box— built in 1773 at the neighbouring Belvedere, and on the site of the ancient vineyard and palace of the old Princes of Caserta. A church was erected in 1776 for a parish governed by an enlightened code of duties " negative and positive," and even then numbering no less than seventeen families. Some of the royal buildings were converted into schools; even the prayers and religious ordinances were regulated, as were all observances of the hearth, and every distribution of property. Allegiance was to be paid first to God, then to the sovereign, and lastly to the ministers. Under Ferdinand's nominal authorship a book of the aims, orders, and laws of the colony was published, of which a copy exists in the British Museum. On its flyleaf Lady Hamilton has herself recorded:—" Given to me by the King of Naples at Belvedere or S. Leucio the i6th of May, 1793, when Sir William and I dined with his Majesty and the Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Webster, Lady Plymouth, Lady Bessborough, Lady E. Foster, Sir G. Webster, and Mr. Pelham. Emma Hamilton."

'"True virtue, and the birth of virtue true, True courage."

These names are in no accidental association. The then and the future Duchesses of Devonshire headed a galaxy of which Charles James Fox was chief, and to which Sir William's devotees, Lady " Di " Beauclerk and the Honourable Mrs. Damer, also belonged.

Eleonora's ode in its honour hymns the " royal city " where " nature's noble diadem " crowns " the spirit of ancient Hellas."

But for all these undertakings, even before stress of invasion and vengeance for wrongs prompted large armaments and an English alliance, financial talent of a high order was needful; taxation had to be broadened, and it could not be enlarged without pressing heavily on the professional classes, for the Lazzaroni were always privileged as exempt. The necessities which led to the shameful tampering with the banks in 1792-93 had not yet arisen; but organising talent was needed, and organising talent was wanting. Tenucci proved as poor a financier as once our own Godolphin or Dashwood. Jealous of Carolina's manifest direction, he caballed, and was replaced as first minister in 1776 by the phantom Sambuca. Even then the pro-Spanish party among the grandees menaced the succession well-nigh as much as the pro-Jacobins did some five years later. Even then it was on very few of the numberless Neapolitan nobles (a " golden book" of whom would outdo Venice and equal Spain) that the perplexed Queen could rely. Caramanico was a mere monument of the past, and as such consigned to England as ambassador; while his young and romantic son Joseph was reputed the Queen's lover, and forbidden the court. The coxcomb and procrastinator, Gallo, who afterwards ratted to Napoleon, was already mismanaging foreign affairs. The old and respectable Caracciolo, father of that rebel admiral whom Nelson was to execute, was

for the moment Minister of Finance, but approaching his end. That Admirable Crichton, Prince Belmonte, afterwards as " Galatone " ambassador at the crucial post of the Madrid Embassy, now preferred the office of Chamberlain to any active direction of affairs. Prince Castelcicala, twice ambassador to the court of St. James's, and nearly as acceptable to the Queen as Belmonte, had not yet been pressed into home concerns, nor had he disastrously earned his inquisitorial spurs of 1793. Sicigniano, who was to commit suicide when ambassador in London in the same year, belonged to the same category; the young and accomplished Luigi di Medici had not yet emerged into a prominence that proved his doom. Prince Torella was a nonentity; the Rovere family, which was to supply the Sidney or Bayard x of the Revolution, was not now of political significance. The professional classes were as yet excluded from government, and creatures like the notorious Vanni were denied power. Amid the general dearth the excitable Queen was at her wit's end for a capable minister. During her Vienna and Tuscan visits of 1778 she consulted, as always, her august relations; and the result was their recommendation of John Francis Edward Acton, whose younger brother had for some time been serving in the Austrian army. In consenting to the trial of an unknown man, middle-aged and a foreigner, the Queen hardly realised to what grave issues her random choice was leading.