Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; (13 page)

Acton, third cousin of Sir Richard Acton of Alden-ham Hall, Shropshire, to whose baronetcy and estates he most unexpectedly succeeded in 1791, was the son of a physician, Catholic and Jacobite, settled at Besan-c,on. He was born in 1736, and may have first entered the French Navy, which he quitted probably as a cadet 1 Prince Ettore Carafa.

no EMMA, LADY HAMILTON

in search of advancement, and not because of the vague discredits afterwards imputed by the Jacobins. The British Navy he could scarcely have contemplated, because in the days of the Georges Catholicism and Jacobitism were grave impediments to success. At the age of thirty-nine he entered the naval service of Carolina's brother, the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, and attracted Caramanico's notice by his bravery as Captain on a Spanish expedition against the Moors. Summoned by a stroke of luck to control a realm at once ambitious and sluggish, he infused English energy at every step. A martinet by training and disposition, shrewd, worldly, calculating, yet sturdy, and for Naples, where gold always reigned, inflexibly honest, he was well capable of defying and brow-beating the supple Neapolitan nobility who detested his introduction. A smooth-tongued adventurer, though good looks were not on his side, he speedily won the favour of a Queen inclined to make tools of favourites, and favourites of tools; but he soon convinced her also that a mere tool he could never remain. He was naturally pro-British, and Britain was already a Mediterranean power: Acton recommended the country of his origin to the Queen's notice in the veriest trifles. It was not many years before Maria Carolina was driving in the English curricle which Hamilton had provided for her. Little else than a stroke of destiny, under the conjunctures of the near future, brought the new foreigner into close alliance with Sir William Hamilton, whose patriotism in the very year when he was lolling with Sir Horace Mann at Portici had expressed itself in a fervent wish to see France " well drubbed," and a fury at the non-support of Rodney by Government. The different natures of the two perhaps cemented their friendship. Hamilton for all his natural indolence could

rise to emergency; Acton, on the contrary, was all compromise and caution—a sort of Robert Walpole in little, with " steady " for his motto. Hamilton was good-tempered to a fault: Emma wrote of him after her marriage that he preferred " good temper to beauty." In Acton lay a strong spice of the bully, and he could be very unjust if his authority was impugned. He was a born bureaucrat, and it was his love of bureaucracy, as will appear, that ruined the Queen.

Acton's only marriage occurred in his old age with his young niece, by papal dispensation in 1805, as Pet-tigrew has recorded. His brother Joseph's descendants are still at Naples. But none of his family play any part in the drama before us. Starting as an Admiral of the Neapolitan Fleet, he soon became Minister both of Marine and War. Caracciolo the elder's opportune transference to diplomacy in Paris and London, which Acton's future libellers accused him of contriving, as afterwards even of causing his death, installed him as Minister of Finance. He at once advised the institution of thirteen Commissioners who could all be censured in event of failure; "divide et impera" was his principle; and at first his resource proved successful. He was soon made also a Lieuten-ant-General; while some ten years later, in his heyday, he was appointed Captain-General, and at last a fullblown Field-Marshal. But long before, he blossomed into power with the Queen, whose anti-Spanish policy chimed with his own, and whose abhorrence of the pro-Spanish functionaries around her required a champion in council. This created two camps in the court, for up to 1796 the King was pro-Spanish to the core. But the Queen was already predominant, and it was soon bruited that the Latin " hie, hac, hoc " meant Acton, the Queen, and the King thus derided

as neuter; indeed some added that Acton was " hie, hose, hoc " in one. In a brief space Acton had consolidated a powerful fleet—which in 1793 he was able to despatch in aid of the English at Toulon—and a formidable army. The French events of 1789 rendered him all the more indispensable to Maria Carolina, whose ears were terrified by the first rumblings of an earthquake so soon to engulf her sister's family. The Bastille was taken, the Assembly held, and fawning false-loyalty loomed fully as dangerous as uproarious Jacobinism. In the same year America established her " Constitution." Already the aunts of Louis XVI., the two old " demoiselles de France," were on the verge of abandoning Paris for Rome; already the charged air tingled with 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity; already Carolina, masking hysterical restiveness by imperious composure, was debating if armed help were possible from Austria as well as from Naples. But the irritated barons were unwar-like, the King cared little, the lawyers still depended on his favour, the intelligent middle-class was beginning to welcome the Gallic doctrines. Austria, too, was by no means ready. And yet in Carolina's ears the hour of doom was already striking. She longed for an untemporising deliverer, a self-sacrificing friend, a leader of men and movements; and as she longed and champed in vain, she could only wait and hope and prepare. Her anxiety was not that of a normal woman. Calm in mind, in love and hate her ardour ran to extremes. Though she owned a far better head than her unhappy sister, her heart, outside her home and in spite of her passions, was far colder. She was truly devoted to her children, she was fond of romping even with the children of strangers; and yet when her sons-in-law grew lukewarm in aiding her, she could rage against her daughters. Jealousy of her

ogling and dangling consort was often a prime motive for her actions; and yet she had often been fern me galante, and was ever bent on mystery and intrigue. She harped on duty, but her notions of duty rested on maintaining the royal birthright of her house. Masterful as her mother, light-living as her eldest brother, she was neither hard nor frivolous. She could be both ice and fire. Her strange temperament combined the poles with the equator.

The year 1789 proved critical for Emma also. It brought to Naples, among other illustrious visitors, the good and gracious Duchess of Argyll, formerly Duchess of Hamilton, who, as the beautiful Miss Gunning, had years before taken England, and indeed Europe, by storm. She had come southward for her health. Her first marriage had related her to Sir William, and no sooner had she set eyes on Emma than she not only countenanced her in public but conceived for her the most admiring and intimate friendship. Hitherto the English ladies had been coldly civil, but under the lead of the Duchess they now began to follow the Italian vogue of sounding her praises. Emma became the fashion. It was already whispered that she was secretly married to the Ambassador, and had she been his wife she could scarcely have been more heartily, though she would have been more openly, accepted. Her request that she might accompany Sir William, the King, and Acton on one of their long and rough sporting journeys had been gladly granted. She had attended her deputy-husband on his equally rough antiquarian ramble through Puglia, made in the spring of 1789. " She is so good," he informed Greville, " there is no refusing her." By the spring of 1790 not only the Duchess but the whole Argyll family lavished kindness on the extraordinary girl whom

they must have respected. The new Spanish ambassador's wife also had become her intimate friend. Madame Le Brun, too, repaired in the wake of the French troubles to Naples, and was besieged for portraits. Madame Skavonska, the Russian ambassador's handsome wife, so empty-headed that she squandered her time in vacancy on a sofa, was her first sitter. Emma, brought by the eager Hamilton, was the second, and during her sittings she was accompanied by the Prince of Monaco and the Duchess of Fleury. Madame Le Brun, herself by no means devoid both of jealousy and snobbishness, raved of her beauty, but formed no opinion of her brain, while she found her " supercilious." This is curious, for by common consent Emma gave herself no airs; she conciliated all. But though never a parvenue in her affections, she could often behave as such in her dislikes; and her self-assertiveness could always combat jealous or freezing condescension. Her improvement both in knowledge and behaviour had from other accounts enhanced her accomplishments. No breath of scandal had touched her; she was Hamilton's unwedded wife, and her looks had kept even pace with her forward path in many directions: she was fairer than ever and far less vain. The Queen herself already pointed to her as an example for the court, to which, however, Emma could not gain formal admittance until the marriage which she had predicted in 1786 had been duly solemnised. For that desired climax everything now paved the way. Each night in the season she received fifty of the elite at the Embassy, till in January, 1791, her success was crowned by a concert and reception of unusual splendour. The stars of San Carlo performed. The court ladies vied with each other in jewels and attire. The first English, as well as the first Neapolitans, thronged every room; there

were some four hundred guests. Emma herself was conspicuously simple. Amid the blaze of gems and colours she shone in white satin, set off by the natural hues only of her hair and complexion.

And yet she was not elated. Her one study, her single aim, she wrote to Greville, were to render Sir William, on whom she " doated," happy. She would be the " horridest wretch " else. They had already passed nearly five years together, " with all the do-mestick happiness that's possible."

Was there any rift within the lute? If so, it lay in Greville's attitude. He opened his eyes and sighed as he read of Emma's virtuous glory; and he opened them still wider when she assured him of her " esteem " for " having been the means of me knowing him," and added " next year you may pay ous a visit." That Sir William should marry her quite passed the bounds of his philosophy; there would be an eclat, and eclats he detested; his uncle would make himself ridiculous. It seems likely, from an allusion in a letter from Hamilton of a full year earlier, that the nephew had already thrown out hints of suitable provision should chance or necessity ever separate the couple. Sir William, however, had been deaf to such suggestions, although, " thinking aloud," he did mention £150 a year to Emma, and £50 to her mother, " who is a very worthy woman." Such contingencies, however, could not apply to their present " footing," for " her conduct was such as to gain her universal esteem." The only chance for such a scheme hinged on her pertinacity in pressing him to marry her. " I fear," he continued, " that her views are beyond what I can bring myself to execute, and that when her hopes on this point are over, she will make herself and me unhappy." But he recoiled from the thought; despite the difference in their ages and antecedents, " hitherto

her conduct is irreproachable, but her temper, as you must know, unequal."

And now all these obstacles had melted under the enchanter's wand, it would seem, of the charming Duchess, who may well have urged him to defy convention and make Emma his wife. Sir William's fears were not for Naples, nor wholly for Greville, who might laugh if he chose. They were rather for the way in which his foster-brother, King George, and his Draco-Queen, might receive such news, and how they might eventually manifest their displeasure; the Ambassador, however much and often he was wont to bewail his fate, had no notion of retiring to absurd obscurity. But these objections also seem to have been equally dispersed by the fairy godmother of a Duchess who was bent on raising Cinderella to the throne; and although Queen Charlotte eventually refused to receive Lady Hamilton, yet Sir William's imminent return was in fact signalised by the honour of a privy councillorship. Long afterwards, he assured Greville that his treatment when he was eventually replaced, and subsequently when he was denied reimbursement for his losses and his services (both to go fully as unrewarded as his wife's), was not due to the king but to his ministers. Moreover, his two old Eton School friends, Banks and the ubiquitous Lord Bristol, Bishop of Derry, had signified their approval. The latter in his peregrinations had already worshipped at Emma's Neapolitan shrine—a devotee at once generous and money-grubbing, cynical and ingenuous, constant and capricious, who (in Lady Hamilton's words) " dashed at everything," and who was so eccentric as to roam Caserta in a gay silk robe and a white hat. This original—a miniature mixture of Peterborough, Hume, and, one might add, Thackeray's Charles Honeyman—had braced Hamil-

ton's resolution by telling him it was " fortitude " and a " manly part" to brave a stupid world and secure Emma's happiness and his own. Sir William, whose inclination struggled with Greville's prudence, could not gainsay his friends who echoed the wishes of his heart. And all this must have been furthered by the Duchess of Argyll.

No wonder that her sad death at the close of 1790, far away from the climate which had proved powerless to save her, desolated Emma. " I never," she assured Greville, who already knew of their homecoming in the spring, " I never had such a f reind as her, and that you will know when I see you, and recount ... all the acts of kindness she shew'd to me: for they where too good and numerous to describe in a letter. Think then to a heart of gratitude and sensibility what it must suffer. Ma passienza: io ho molto."

The marriage project was first to visit Rome, where they would meet the Queen, about to be reconciled to the Pope, on her homeward journey from Vienna. Then to repair to Florence, where they could take a short leave both of her and the King; and thence to Venice, where they were to encounter, besides many English, the cream of the flying French noblesse, including the Counts of Artois and Vaudreuil, the Poli-gnacs, and Calonne. Before May was over they would be in London, and there, if things went smoothly, the wedding should take place. Emma's heart must have throbbed when she reflected on the stray hazards that might still wreck that happiness for which she had long pined, and overthrow the full cup just as it neared her lips.

Greville was unaware of the dead secret, but he implored Emma not to live in London as she had done in Naples; he pressed the propriety of separate establish-