Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; (27 page)

Nelson rejoined the Hamiltons at a critical moment. His wise forecast that unless Ferdinand and Maria coveted the fate of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, flight alone could save them, was fast being justified. The nobles, jealous of English influence, were now thoroughly disaffected. Gathering reverses incensed a populace that was only too likely to be frenzied should their King prefer escape Sicilyward to trust in their tried loyalty. As yet Naples had been free from the French, but the likelihood of invasion grew daily; and even in June Neapolitan neutrality had been known to be merely nominal. The proud Queen, as we shall find when the dreaded moment arrived, would rather have welcomed death than retreat. But Acton, at present in Rome, had slowly come to concur with the trio of the Embassy.

The melodrama of the actual escape, on which new manuscripts cast fresh lights, must be reserved for a separate chapter. " The devil take most Kings and Queens, I say, for they are shabbier than their subjects ! " had been Sir Joseph Banks's exclamation to Sir William Hamilton in 1795. At this present end of 1798 the devil (or Buonaparte) proved especially busy in this particular branch of his business.

CHAPTER VIII

FLIGHT

IT is clear all along that Emma chafed against vegetation. Tameness and sameness wearied her, and she longed for historical adventures. She had now lit on a thrilling one indeed. To aid in planning, preparing, deciding, and executing a royal escape in the midst of revolution, on the brink of invasion, and at the risk of life, was a task the romance and the danger of which allured her dramatic fancy. That it did not repeat the blunders of Varennes was largely owing to Nelson's foresight and her own indefatigable energy. And omens—for they each believed in them— must have appeared to both. Before the battle of the Nile a white bird had perched in his cabin. He and Emma marked the same white bird when the King was restored in the following July; and Nelson always declared that he saw it again before Copenhagen, though it was missed at Trafalgar. It was his herald of victory. Nor under the auspices of triumph was death also ever absent from the thoughts of the man, who accepted, as a welcome present from a favoured Captain, the coffin made from a mast of the ruined L'Orient.

For flight Emma had not influenced her friend: it was Nelson's project. " If things take an unfortunate turn here," she had written to Nelson two months be-

fore, " and the Queen dies at her post, I will remain with her. If she goes, I follow her."

The second week of December proved to the Queen that events were inexorable, and her selfish son-in-law cold and unmoved: he shifted with the political barometer. She had despatched her courier, Rosen-heim, to Vienna, but he only returned with ill tidings. Vienna would " give no orders." In vain she supplicated her daughter, " may your dear husband be our saviour." The Emperor flatly refused his aid. His subjects now desired peace, and the Neapolitans must " help themselves." If Naples were assailed, the Austrian treaty, it is true, would entitle reinforcements from Vienna. But even so, the poorness of their troops, and the grudging inclination of their ruler, left the issue but little mended. The Queen was in despair. The French excuse for war had been the alleged breach of their treaty by the watering of the British fleet. A threatening army of invaders was already known to be on its way; yet still she hoped against hope, and hesitated over the final plunge. She despatched Gallo to Vienna to beseech her son-in-law once more. She cursed the treaty of Campoformio, to which she attributed the whole sad sequel of disaster. She vowed that her own kinsfolk were leagued together in spite against " the daughter" and the grandchildren " of the great Maria Theresa." When the news fell like a thunderbolt that Mack's case was desperate, the French troops in occupation of Castel St. Angelo, and her husband about to scurry out of Rome, those children could only " weep and pray." The fact that the Jacobins—the " right-minded," as they already styled themselves—welcomed each crowning blow as a help to their cause, heightened the humiliation. The Queen, slighted and indignant, betook herself to Nelson and to Emma. They both pressed

anew the urgent necessity of flight; she disdained it. It was a " fresh blow to her soul and spirit "; h«*- original plan had been to have gone with her children elsewhere. Its bare possibility was difficult to realise; and, after her husband's ashamed return, the popular ferment seemed to bar its very execution. She dreaded a repetition of Varennes. In the midst of brawl and tumult the King returned, and, faltering, showed himself on his balcony. Lusty shouts of " You will not go! We will deal with the Jacobins! " burst from the surging crowd. A spy was knifed in the open streets, and the false nobles cast the blame on the Queen. She should be held blood-guilty. In bitter agony she apprised her daughter that death was preferable to such dishonour. She would die every inch a Queen. " I have renounced this world," wrote Maria Theresa's true offspring, " I have renounced my reputation as wife and mother. I am preparing to die, and making ready for an eternity for which I long. This is all that is left to me." Even when she had been brought to the last gasp of obeying her kind friends and her hard fate, her letters to Vienna sound the tone of one stepping to the scaffold. While the furious mob growled and groaned outside, her last requests to her daughter were for her husband and children. On the very edge of her secret start, the advices that General Burchardt had marched his thousand men, if not with flying colours, at least in fighting trim, so far as Isoletta, may have once more made her rue her forced surrender.

But meanwhile the Hamiltons, Nelson, and Acton were in determined and close consultation, with Emma for Nelson's interpreter. The establishment of the Ligurian Republic had for some time boded the certainty of Buonaparte's designs against the Two Sicilies. The General had at first written to Sir William with

some sang-froid of the " troublesome and dangerous circumstances " of the " crisis," but within a few days he was a zealous co-operator. Nelson, above all men, would never have counselled a base desertion. But he knew the real circumstances, the general perfidy, the Austrian weakness, both playing into the hands of the French. Already, to his knowledge, the aggressor's footfall was audible, and, after General Mack's fiasco, no resources were left at home. His firm resolve was to await the moment when he might deal a fresh death-blow to Buonaparte, and meanwhile to seize the first opportunity for crushing the Neapolitan Jacobins and reinstating the Neapolitan King. For him the cause symbolised not despotism against freedom, not the progress from law to liberty, but discipline and patriotism against license and anarchy. He had summoned ships to protect the Vanguard: the Culloden with Troubridge from the north and west coasts of Italy, the Goliath from off Malta, the Alcmene under Captain Hope from Egypt. After ordering the blockade of Genoa, he had ironically asked if the King was at war with its flag. He had foreseen that " within six months the Neapolitan Republic would be armed, organised, and called forth," that malingering Austria was herself in extremis.

They urged the Queen to prepare for the worst; and from December 17 onwards, while their measures were being concerted, Emma superintended the gradual transport from the palace of valuables both private and public. The process occupied her night and day for nearly a week, and required the strictest secrecy and caution. Some she may have fetched, some she received, many she stowed.

Criticism, biassed, may be, by anxiety to impugn Emma's latest memorial, makes much of evidence in a few isolated letters, indicating that the Queen for-

warded some of her effects by trusted messengers, and omitting that Emma caused any herself to be carried from the palace to the Embassy. The detail is not very material, since her assistance is evident, even if her memory enlarged it. The very bulk of the many chests and boxes to be removed was to cause a dangerous delay in the eventual voyage. They were conveyed in different ways, some on shipboard (among them the public treasure), others, including jewels and linen, by the hands of the servant Saverio; others again to be transported by Emma herself. The Queen, in one of her almost hourly notes, expressly hoped that she was not " indiscreet in sending these," thereby suggesting that various means of conveyance had been used for some of the rest. In another, too, she excused herself for her " abuse of your kindnesses and that of our brave Admiral." Nelson's official account to Lord St. Vincent stated that " Lady Hamilton " from December 14 to 21 " received the jewels, etc." Emma's own recital to Greville, less than a fortnight after the terrors of the journey were past, included as the least of her long fatigues that " for six nights before the embarkation " she " sat up " at her own house " receiving all the jewels, money and effects of the royal family, and from thence conveying them on board the Vanguard, living in fear of being torn to pieces by the tumultuous mob, who suspected our departure," but " Sir William and I being beloved in the Country saved us." Sir William himself informed Greville that " Emma has had a very principal part in this delicate business, as she is, and has been for several years the real and only confidential friend of the Queen of Naples."

In the pathos of the Queen's letters to Emma resides their true interest. Maria Carolina's anguish increased as the plot for her preservation thickened; she

clung piteously to the strong arms of Emma and Nelson, who really managed the whole business. Sobs and tears, paroxysms of scorn and sighs of rage more and more pervade them, as one by one the strongholds of her country yield or are captured. She is " the most unfortunate of Queens, mothers, women, but Emma's sincerest friend." It is to her " habitually " that she " opens her heart." Emma's indorsements may serve as an index:—" My adorable, unfortunate Queen. God bless and protect her and her august family." " Dear, dear Queen " — " Unfortunate Queen." More than a month earlier she had protested to Nelson her readiness, if need be, to accompany her to the block. One of these billets tristes of the Queen to her friend encloses a little blue-printed picture. It is an elegiac. A wreathed Amorino pipes mournfully beside a cypress-shadowed tomb, behind which two Cupids are carelessly dancing: on the tomb is inscribed " Embarque je vous en prie. M. C."—Emma's melancholy refrain to the would-be martyr.

Prince Belmonte, now chamberlain, acted as the King's agent with Caracciolo in effecting a scheme full of difficulty, owing to the great number of the refugees, the ridiculous etiquette of precedences, insisted on even at such an hour, the vast quantity of their united baggage, the avowed designs of the French Directory, the covert conspiracies of false courtiers in which the War Minister himself was implicated, the fierceness of popular tumult, and the Jacobin spies who kept a sharp lookout on Nelson, but were foiled by Emma's and the Queen's adroitness.

The plan originally concerted was as follows. The escape was to happen on the night of the 2Oth. After the last instalments of treasure and detachments of foreigners had been safely and ceremoniously deposited on board their several vessels, Count Thurn (an

Austrian admiral of the Neapolitan navy) would attend outside the secret passage leading from the royal rooms to the " Molesiglio," or little quay, to receive Nelson or his nominees. It is said that Brigadier Ca-racciolo had begged to convoy the royal party and float the royal standard on his frigate, but had been dryly denied; and this, perhaps, was the first prick to that treacherous revenge which six months later he was to expiate by his death.

But on a sudden, at the eleventh hour, the whole was put off till the next evening. The chests in which some of the treasure had been bestowed on the Alcmene were rotten; at least this was one of the pretexts which Nelson, who had already signed orders for safe conduct, one possibly referring to the royalties, evidently mistrusted. On this eventful day at least six communications passed between Hamilton and Acton (if the inclosures from the palace are included), and Nelson, prompt and impatient, was acutely irritated. In vain Acton expressed his acquiescence. He was " in hopes that these few hours will not exasperate more than at present our position." Nelson remained polite, but decided. The fact was that both King and Queen waited on Providence at the last gasp. The former dreaded to desert his people at the moment of defeat; the latter feared a step which, if futile, might irreparably alienate her husband, and must render her execrable to the faithful Lazzaroni.

By means of the old manuscripts the scene rises vividly before us. Within the precincts of the palace, flurry, dissension, wavering perplexity, confusion, a spectral misery. In its purlieus, treason. Outside, a seditious loyalty withholding the King from the Queen. In the council-chamber, Belmonte, serene and punctilious; Gallo, dainty in danger; Caracciolo, jealous and sullen; Acton, slow, doubtful, and stolid. At the

English Embassy alone reigned vigilance, resolve, and resourcefulness. Every English merchant (and there were many both'here and at Leghorn) looked to Nelson and Hamilton and Emma. Among phantoms these were realities. On them alone counted those poor " old demoiselles of France " who had sought asylum in the Neapolitan palace. On them alone hung the destinies of a dynasty threatened at home, forsaken abroad, and faced with the certainty of invasion. They stood for the British fleet, and the British fleet for the salvation of Europe.

The ominous morning dawned of the 2ist.

All that day General Acton pelted Nelson and Hamilton with contradictory announcements, of which no fewer than seven remain. At first he agrees that the moment has come when " no time should be lost," but the inevitable proviso follows—" If the wind does not blow too hard." He next writes that, in such a case, all had best be deferred afresh. The Alcmene, too, with the bullion on board—as much as two million and a half sterling—was off Posilippo, and its signals might alarm the angry crowds, clamouring for their King at Santa Lucia, and on the Chiaja. Another billet promises the " King's desire " as soon forthcoming. In another, once more, grave consideration is devoted to the usual retiring hour of the young princes, and to the " feeding-time " of the King's grandchild, the babe in arms of the heir-apparent and Princess Clementina, which had been so anxiously awaited in October; " a sucking child," says Acton in a crowning instance of unconscious humour, " makes a most dreadful spectacle to the eyes of the servant women and in the rest of the family." Nelson, pressing for expedition, must have been beside himself over the precious moments thus being squandered. What Acton remarks in one of these letters, once more in his peculiar Eng-