Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; (15 page)

And added to all this was the shifting mood of her consort, whose infidelities she (like the queen of our own George the Second) only condoned in order that his good humour might enable her to rule. He had

always twitted her with being an " Illuminata," he now derided her as the " Austrian hen." His advisers would prompt him to rely more than ever on his Spanish kindred, to slight the Hapsburgs and herself. When Emma long afterwards claimed to have " De-Bourbonised " the Neapolitan court, it was to these conditions that she referred.

Gallo, the foreign minister, leaned towards and upon Spain. Even Acton hitherto had been content to propitiate the King by taking his cue from Madrid. The King himself had regarded England merely as a market for dogs and horses, the Queen, only as an enemy of Spain. That the attitude of both was shortly to be transformed was partly due to Emma's enthusiasm as spokeswoman for her husband. Even in February, 1796, Emma wrote to Lord Macartney, who had just arrived at Naples, that " the Queen has much to do to persuade " Ferdinand, that " she is wore out with fatigue," and that " he approves of all our prospects." She refers, I think, to his Spanish bias. The moot question soon became, Was Naples to be Spanish or English? The Austrian influence, so prized by an Austrian princess, was on the wane. As England's advocate the light-hearted Emma was drawn into the political vortex, and assumed the mysterious solemnity befitting her part.

In her perplexity it was to Acton that Maria Carolina turned. She thought him a man of iron, whereas he was really one of wood; but he was methodical, pro-Austrian, and at the core pro-English. Under the imminence of crisis, he and Hamilton—still a man of pleasure, but not its slave—both came to perceive that unless the whole system of Europe was to be reversed, an Anglo-Sicilian alliance was imperative. Hamilton, however, was slower to discern the necessity which Emma realised by instinct. Writing in

April, 1792, he says: "The Neapolitans, provided they can get their bellies full at a cheap rate, will not, I am sure, trouble their heads with what passes in other countries, and great pains are taken to prevent any of the democratic propaganda, or their writings, finding their way into this kingdom." Even in 1795 he was to be more concerned with the success of his treatises on Vesuvius than with the tangle of treaties fast growing out of the situation. It was not till 1796 that he took any strong initiative with Acton. The two Sicilies indeed were now a shuttlecock between the treacheries of Spain and the dilatoriness as well as venality of Austria.

- But for England the French cataclysm meant something wholly different from its significance for the Continent. Great Britain stood alone and aloof from other powers. She was the nurse of traditional order and traditional liberty conjoined; disorder and license, although exploitable by political factions under specious masks, never appealed to the nation at large. Britain's upheavals had been settled by happy compromise more than a century before. Jacobinism menaced her " free " trade, and might strike even at her free institutions. She was a great maritime and a Mediterranean power whose coign of vantage in Gibraltar would prove useless if Naples and Sicily, Malta and Sardinia should fall to France. Sicily, indeed, had been one of her objectives in that great Utrecht Treaty which had transferred it to the friendly house of Savoy, while it secured Gibraltar and Port Mahon to Great Britain. And ever since, Spain had been England's sworn enemy. Spain was France's natural ally, nor would the revolutionary burst long deter the Spanish Bourbons from an anti-British policy. Spain had tricked Austria and braved Great Britain throughout the eighteenth century, yet it was on Spain that Maria

Carolina's husband habitually relied. From England, too, throughout that century, had rained those showers of gold which had subsidised the enemies of Bourbon preponderance. " Will England," wrote Acton some years later to Hamilton, when Emma, as the Queen's " minister plenipotentiary," had " spurred " them on, " see all Italy, and even the two Sicilies, in the French hands with indifference? . . . We shall perish if such is our destiny, but we hope of selling dear our destruction."

In England the remonstrant Burke forsook the pseudo-Jacobin Whigs. It was hoped, and not without reason, that Pitt as a great statesman might foresee the situation. But the difficulty all along in the British cabinet, and sometimes the obstacle, was to prove Lord Grenville, cold, stiff, timid, official to a fault; so cautious that he twice counselled the two Sicilies to make the best peace they could with Buonaparte, since they must go under; and so diplomatic that, even after Nelson's Mediterranean expedition had been concerted between the two courts, he begged Circello, the Neapolitan Ambassador, to pretend discontent in public with what had just been privately arranged. In the same year, defending the ministry against the Duke of Bedford's abortive motion for. their dismissal, and praising the gallant navy " which had ridden triumphant at the same moment-at the mouths of Brest and Cadiz and Texel," the Secretary for Foreign Affairs could only be wise after the event. He could only defend the prolongation of war by Barere's threat of " Delenda est Carthago," by Con-dorcet's opinion that under a peace we should have been relieved of Jamaica, Bengal, and our Indian possessions; by bemoaning England's vanished "power to control the Continent," by proclaiming that she was " at her lowest ebb," and by complaining that Austria

had deserted the Alliance. Commenting on his attitude, thirteen years afterwards, towards Emma's claims, Canning, who warmly favoured them, dwells on the same characteristic of " coldest caution." Such a spirit could ill deal with the conjuncture. Mob-despotism was now the dread of Europe. Mob-rule was already rampant in France, though the time was still distant when the Marchioness of Solari could declare that the French had robbed her of all but the haunting memory of Parisian gutters swimming with blood.

Acton acceded to the Queen's request with rigour, but his weak point lay in the fact that he was a born bureaucrat; while the sort of bureaucracy that he favoured, one of secret inquisition, turned political offences into heresies, and Jacobins into martyrs. Bureaucracies may check, but have never stemmed, revolutions which are calmed—when they can be calmed—by commanding personality alone. A bureaucrat is never a trusted nor even a single figure, for he belongs to unpopular and unavailing groups and systems, which from their nature must at best be temporary stop-gaps. As Jacobinism throve and persevered, the Lazzaroni, who execrated it as a foreign innovation, cheered their careless King, but they came to hiss the Queen for her countenance of bureaucracy, until Nelson entered the arena, and Emma formed, in 1799, a " Queen's party," at the very moment when Maria Carolina dared not so much as show her face at Naples.

Already in the spring the French events began to affect Naples. Mirabeau dead, the abortive escape to Varennes, Louis XVI. in open and abject terror, Dan-ton and Petion bribed, the National Convention, the cosmopolitan cries of " Let us sow the ideas of 1789 throughout the world. . . . We all belong to our

country when it is in danger. . . . Liberty and equality constitute country," spread their contagion broadcast. They did not yet inflame the Neapolitan middle class; they never caught the Neapolitan people; but their leaven had already touched the offended nobles and the ungrateful students. From the moment of Louis' imprisonment in the Temple, his sister-in-law changed her tack and resolved to go " Thorough." The pulpits were pressed into an anti-Jacobin crusade. The administration of the twelve city wards, hitherto supervised by elected aldermen, was transferred without warning to chiefs of police as judges and inspectors. Denouncers and informers were hired, although as yet the brooding Queen used her spies for precaution alone, and not for vengeance. The republican seed of the secret societies, sown by her own hands, had borne a crop of democracy ripening towards harvest. Her academic reformers were fast developing into open revolutionaries. The red cap was worn and flaunted. Copies of the French Statute were seized in thousands as they lurked in sacks on the rocks of Chiaromonte; two even found their way into the Queen's apartments. This conspiracy she hoped to nip in the bud. It had not assumed its worst proportions; nor as yet had disloyalty thrown off the mask, and appeared as a bribed hireling of the National Convention. The grisly horrors at Paris of 1792, preluding only too distinctly the crowning executions of 1793, called also for sterner measures. By July, Beckford, an eye-witness, remarks that even Savoy was " bejacobinised, and plundering, ravaging," were " going on swimmingly." The Queen bestirred herself abroad. A league was formed between Prussia and Austria. The Duke of Brunswick issued his manifesto that one finger laid on Louis would be avenged. Danton exclaimed, " To arms! " France, generalled by Dumouriez, hero of

Memoirs—Vol. 14- —5

Jemappes, and Kellermann of Valmy, was invaded. The assassination of Gustavus of Sweden followed. But the brief victory of the confederate arms at Lottgwy soon yielded to the Valmy defeat. Monarchv was on its trial.

Once more the Queen conferred with Acton, and their deliberations resulted in the detestable Star Chamber of the " Camera Oscura." Force was to be met by force, and cabal by cabal. Prince Castelcicala, a far abler minister than Acton, was recalled from London to assist in its councils; Ruffo, not yet Cardinal, became its assessor; while the stripling Luigi di Medici, under the title of " Regente della vicaria," was made its head inquisitor. But mercy was still shown. She does not indeed appear at this period to have entertained any idea of persecution. Most odious means, however, were taker! to crush a conspiracy of foreign and unpopular origin. Some hundreds of the better class, some thousands of the scum, were banished, or confined in the prisons of Lampedusa and Tremiti. Such is an imperfect outline of what happened in 1791 and 1792.

The interview of the Hamiltons with Marie Antoinette on their homeward journey has been already noticed. Nearly twenty-four years afterwards Lady Hamilton, never accurate, and constitutionally exaggerative, declared in her last memorial under the pressure of sore distress, that she then presented to the Queen of Naples her sister's last letter. There is small disproof that substantially she told the truth. She may well have carried a missive, for Marie Antoinette neglected none of her now rare chances of communication. About the same timej however, the Marchioness of Solari also repaired from Paris to Naples with another communication, which was probably verbal, and may possibly have preceded Lady Hamilton's al-

leged message. In the autumn of 1793, however, the Marchioness again visited Naples and brought with her what undoubtedly seems the last letter received by Maria from Marie. Emma's statement has been questioned on the ground that hers was not the last message. It is perhaps hardly worth while debating whether all credence should be denied to the bearer of an important letter simply on the ground of priority. Any such letter whatever would have recommended its bearer to the Queen of Naples.

Whether or no this incident fastened afresh the Queen's regard, certain it is that Maria Carolina gave the mot d'ordre for Lady Hamilton's acceptability. Nobody disputed her position, least of all the English. She was at once formally presented to the Queen. By mid-April of 1792 Sir William Hamilton coulcl tell Horace Walpole, just acceding to his earldom, that the Queen had been very kind, and treated his wife " like any other travelling lady of distinction." " Emma," he adds, " has had a difficult part to act, and has succeeded wonderfully, having gained by having no pretensions the thorough approbation of all the English ladies. . . . You cannot imagine how delighted Lady H. was in having gained your approbation in England. . . . She goes on improving daily. . . . She is really an extraordinary being."

Within a month of her arrival in the previous autumn, and in the midst of successes, she sat down to write to Romney. The tone of this letter deserves close attention, for no under-motive could colour a communication to so old and fatherly a comrade: " I have been received with open arms by all the Neapolitans of both sexes, by all the foreigners of every distinction. I have been presented to the Queen of Naples by her own desire, she [h]as shewn me all sorts of kind and affectionate attentions; in short, I am

the happiest woman in the world. Sir William is fonder of me every day, and I hope 'I [he ?] will have no corse to repent of what he [h]as done, for I feel so grateful to him that I think I shall never be able to make him amends for his goodness to me. But why do I tell you this ? You was the first dear friend I open'd my heart to; you ought to know me. 1 . . . How grateful then do I feel to my dear, dear husband that has restored peace to my mind, that has given me honors, rank, and what is more, innocence and happiness. Rejoice with me, my dear sir, my friend, my more than father; believe me, I am still that same Emma you knew me. -If I could forget for a moment what I was, I ought to suffer. Command me in anything I can do for you here; believe me, I shall have a real pleasure. Come to Naples, and I will be your model, anything to induce you to come, that I may have an opportunity to show my gratitude to you. . . . We have a many English at Naples, Ladys Malm[e]sbury, Maiden, Plymouth, Carnegie, and Wright, etc. They are very kind and attentive to me ; they all make it a point to be remarkably cevil to me. Tell Hayly I am always reading his Triumphs of Temper; it was that that made me Lady H., for God knows I had for five years enough to try my temper, and I am affraid if it had not been for the good example Serena taught me, my girdle wou'd have burst, and if it had I had been undone; for Sir W. minds more temper than beauty. He therefore wishes Mr. Hayly wou'd come, that he might thank him for his sweet-tempered wife. I swear to you, I have never once been out of humour since the 6th of last September. God bless you."

Romney, whose friend Flaxman, now in Rome,

1 Here follows the passage about her " sense of virtue" not being overcome in her earliest distresses, quoted ante in chap. ii.