Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; (49 page)

1 Scott's account (cf. App., Part II. F. (2)) brings a striking detail into prominence. " He died," he says, " as the battle finished, and his last effort to speak was made at the moment of joy for victory."

1 Hardy, in a letter to Scott of March 10, 1807, protesting his continued esteem for Lady Hamilton, declares that Nelson's last words to him were, " Do be kind to poor Lady H." Cf. Life of Rev. Dr. Scott (1842), p. 212.

severed, around the distant dear ones, he dies. " Thank God," he " has done his duty "! Can man do more, or love more, than to lay down his life for his friends?

Bound up with Britain, the son who saved, ennobled, and embodied her, rests immortal. Ministers, who used him like a sucked orange, might disregard his latest breath. With such as these he was never popular. But wherever unselfishness, and valour, and genius dedicated to duty, are known and famed, there will he be remembered. " The tomb of heroes is the Universe."

Sad and slow plodded the procession of fatal victory over the waters homeward. Long before the flagship that formed Nelson's hearse arrived, Scott, his chaplain, broke the news to Emma at Clarges Street through Mrs. Cadogan:—" Hasten the very moment you receive this to dear Lady Hamilton, and prepare her for the greatest of misfortunes. . . . The friends of my beloved are for ever dear to me." Nine days elapsed before she realised the worst. She was stunned and paralysed by the blow. For many weeks she lay prostrate in bed, from which she only arose to be removed to Merton. Her nights were those of sighs and memories; her mother tended her, wrote for her, managed the daily tasks that seemed so far away. Quenched now for ever was

"The light that shines from loving eyes upon Eyes that love back, till they can see no more."

And when at length she revived, her first thought was to beseech the protection of the Government, not for herself, but for the Boltons. If George Rose could forward Nelson's wishes for them, it would be a drop of comfort in her misery. She kept all Nelson's letters—" sacred," she called them—" on her pillow."

She fingered them over and over again. Her heart, she told Rose, was broken. " Life to me now is not worth having. I lived but for him. His glory I gloried in; it was my pride that he should go forth; and this fatal and last time he went, I persuaded him to it. But I cannot go on. My heart and head are gone. Only, believe me, what you write to me shall ever be attended to." Letters purporting to be Nelson's regarding his last wishes had leaked out in the newspapers. She was too weak to " war with vile editors." " Could you know me, you would not think I had such bad policy as to publish anything at this moment. My mind is not a common one, and having lived as confidante and friend with such men as Sir William Hamilton and dearest, glorious Nelson, I feel superior to vain, tattling woman." She was desolate. She had lost not only the husband of her heart and the mainstay of her weakness, but herself—the heroine of a hero. She was " the same Emma " no longer, only a creature of the past. The receptive Muse had now no source of inspiration left, nor any commanding part to prompt or act. Yet her old leaven was still indomitable. She would fight and struggle for herself and her child so long as she had breath.

Messages of sympathy poured in from every quarter, but she would not be comforted. Among others, Hayley, writing with the new year, and before the funeral, entreated her to make " affectionate justice to departed excellence a source of the purest delight." He rejoiced in the idea that his verses had ever been " a source of good " to her, and the egotist enclosed some new ones of consolation. She told him she was most unhappy. " No," she " must not be so," added the sententious " Hermit " ; " self-conquest is the summit of all heroism." While Rose and Louis importuned her for mementoes—and Emma parted with all they

asked—the Abbe Campbell, writing amid the third overthrow at Naples, was more delicate and sympathetic. His " heart was full of anguish " and commiseration. " I truly pity you from my soul, and only wish to be near you, to participate with you in the agonies of your heart, and mix our tears together." Goldsmid sent philosophic consolation, and tried to get her an allotment in the new loan. Staunch Lady Betty Foster and Lady Percival were also among her consolers, and so too was the humbler Mrs. Lind. The Duke of Clarence—Nelson's Duke—inquired after her particularly. And later Mrs. Bolton wrote:—" For a moment I wished myself with you, and but a moment, for I cannot think of Merton without a broken heart, even now can scarcely see for tears. How I do feel for you my own heart can tell; but I beg pardon for mentioning the subject, nor would it have been, but that I well know your thoughts are always so. My dear Horatia, give my kindest love to her. The more I think, the dearer she is to me."

At length the Victory arrived at Spithead. Hardy travelled post-haste with his dearest friend's notebooks and last codicil to Rose at Cuffnells. Black-wood assured Emma that he would deliver none of them to any person until he had seen her; all her wishes should be consulted. Scott wrote daily to her all December, as he kept watch over the precious remains of the man whom he worshipped. He took lodgings at Greenwich, where they now reposed. Rooted to the spot, throughout his solitary vigil he was ever inquiring after Emma, whom Tyson alone had seen. From the Board Room of Greenwich Hospital the body was deposited in the Painted Chamber. It was the saddest Christmas that England had known for centuries. The very beggars, Scott wrote to Emma, leave their stands, neglect the passing crowd,

and pay tribute to his memory by a look. " Many " did he see, " tattered and on crutches, shaking their heads with plain signs of sorrow." The Earl had been there with young Horace, who shed tears:— " Every thought and word I have is about your dear Nelson. Here lies. Bayard, but Bayard victorious. ... So help me God, I think he was a true knight and worthy the age of chivalry. One may say, lui meme fait le siecle —for where shall we see another? " In all things she might command him; he only wished for her approval. He could not tear himself away; he was rowed in the same barge that bore the hero's Orient-made coffin to the Admiralty. He watched by it there, and thence attended it to St. Paul's. He bitterly resented being parted from it by his place, next day, in the procession. " I honour your feelings," he exclaimed in the tumult of grief, " and I respect you, dear Lady Hamilton, for ever."

Who can forget the scenes of that dismal triumph of January the loth? Not a shop open; not a window untenanted by silent grief. The long array of rank and dignity wends its funeral march with solemn pace. But near the catafalque draped with emblems and fronted with the Victory's figurehead, are ranged the weather-beaten sailors who would have died to save him.

Fashion and officialdom, as distasteful to Nelson living as he was to them, press to figure in the pomp which celebrated the man at whom they sometimes jeered, and whom they often thwarted and sought to supersede. Professed and unfeigned sorrow meet in his obsequies.

Every order of the State is represented. Yet as the deep-toned anthem—half-marred at first—swells through the hushed cathedral, two forms are missing —that of the woman whom certainly he would never

have forsworn had her wifehood ever meant real affection, and that of the other woman who beyond measure had loved and lost him. Can one doubt but that, when all was over, when form and ceremony were dispersed, Emma stood there, silent, their child's hand clasped in hers, and shed her bitter tears beside his wreaths of laurel, into his half-closed grave?

CHAPTER XIV

THE IMPORTUNATE WIDOW IN LIQUIDATION

February, 1806— July, 1814

WHILE the nation was to vote £90,000 and £5000 a year for the earldom of the clergyman whose brother died only a Viscount and Vice-Admiral, in receipt of an annual grant not exceeding £2000; while Lady Nelson, soon to wrangle over the will, received that same annuity, not only were Emma's claims disregarded, but the payment of Nelson's bequest to her depended on a fluctuating rental. She retired for a space to Richmond, and at once begged Sir R. Barclay to be one of a committee fof arranging her affairs and disposing of Merton. Not apparently until next November did she address Earl Nelson, urging him in the strongest terms, as his brother's executor, to legalise Nelson's last codicil; and nearly a year after he had received the pocket-book containing it from Hardy, he returned her a civil and friendly answer. Her finances were now more straitened than has been supposed. Her income from all sources (including Horatia's £200 a year) has been estimated as over some £2000. This estimate counts Hamilton's and Nelson's annuities, of £800 and £500 respectively, as if they were paid free of property-tax, her Piccadilly furniture as realised and invested intact at five per cent., together with Nelson's £2000 legacy, and Merton as rentable at £500 a year. The tax alone, however, seems to have been some ten per cent.,

the furniture should surely be reckoned at half-price, Merton was unlet, and with difficulty sold at last, while large inroads had been made by debt and interrupted Merton improvements. Her available capital must have been small. Her net income may be taken as under some £1200, apart from Nelson's annuity payable half-yearly in advance. Had this been so paid regularly from the first, another £450, after deducting property-tax, would have been hers. But I have discovered that Earl Nelson, on the excuse that the money he actually received from the Bronte estate up to 1806 was for arrears of rent accrued due before Nelson's death, never apparently allowed her a penny until 1808, and then, after consulting counsel, haggled over the payment in advance directed by the codicil, and in fact never paid her annuity in advance until 1814. The receipt for the first payment in advance still exists. This surely puts a somewhat different complexion on her " extravagance," since a year's delay in the receipt of income by one already encumbered would prove a dead weight. Imprudent and improvident she continued; embarrassed by anticipated expectations, eager, indeed, to compound with creditors she became much sooner than has hitherto been imagined. She remained absolutely faithful to Hora-tia's trust up to the miserable end. Within three years from Nelson's death Emma and Horatia were to become wanderers from house to house; treasure after treasure was afterwards to be parted with or distrained upon; and the Earl, who had flattered and courted Emma in her heyday, and still protested his willingness to serve her, and his hopes that Government would yield her " a comfortable pension," had joined the fair-weather acquaintances who left her and her daughter in the ditch. On the income, even apart from her variable annuity and the furniture proceeds,

she might have been comfortable, if she had been content to retire at once into decent obscurity. She could not bring herself to forfeit the flatteries of worthless pensioners and cringing tradesmen; and, moreover, I cannot help suspecting that Nurse Gibson may not have rested satisfied with the occasional extra guineas bestowed on her, and that whether by her or by servants who had guessed the secret of Horatia's birth, continual hush-money may possibly have been extorted.

From December 6, 1805, when he received his brother's " pocket-book " or " memorandum-book " (in the letters it is named both ways) from Hardy, the new Earl held in his hands the " codicil" on which hung Emma's fate and Horatia's.

Only once do Earl Nelson's papers cast direct light on its adventures, but two of them about his wishes for the national vote, hint his attitude, though I think that she misconstrued and exaggerated its motives.

From December 6 to December 12 it seems to have been kept in his own possession. He then took it to Lady Hamilton's friend, Sir William Scott, at Somerset House, where she was led by him to believe that its formal registration with Nelson's will was in favourable process. Before Pitt's death in the ensuing January it was determined that the memorandum-book should be sent to the Premier. Pitt died at an unfortunate moment, and Grenville became Prime Minister. After consultation with persons of consequence, the Earl resolved in February to hand it over to Lord Grenville, and in Grenville's keeping it actually remained till so late as May 30, 1806. If even, as is possible, the " pocket-book " and the " memorandum-book " mean two separate things, and what Grenville retained was only the latter, referring to the " codicil " in the first, still the undue delay was no less shabby; and Nelson's sisters agreed with Emma, whose warm

adherents {hey remained, in so entitling it. Grenville was the last person in the world to act favourably towards Emma, but of course it was for him to decide from what particular source, if any, Government could satisfy Nelson's petition.

]Jp to February 23, 1806, the Earl's letters were more than friendly, and even many years afterwards they professed goodwill and inclination to forwarci her claims for a pension, but in the interval a quarrel ensued.

Emma subsequently declared that, after so long withholding the pocket-book, the Earl, as her own guest at |ier own table, tossed it back to her " with a coarse expression." She then registered the codicil herself. She added that the reason for its detention was that the Earl desired nothing to be done until he was positive of the national grant to him and his family.

For such meanness I can see no sufficient reason. To put his motives at the lowest, self-interest would tempt him to fprward Emma's claims to some kind of Government pension. But I do think that his course was ruled solely by a wish for his own safe self-advantage. He did qot choose to risk offending Grenville. The codicil was not proved till July 4.

Earl Nelson certainly never erred on the side of generosity. Despite his assiduous court to Emma during Nelson's lifetime, and his present amicable professions, he himself, as executor, went ferreting for papers at that Merton where he had so often found a home, ancj whose hospitality his wife and children still continued gratefully to enjoy; though he was probably angered when the shrewd Mrs. Cadogan proved his match there and worsted him. With reluctance, and " with a bleeding heart," he conceded Emma's " right " to the " precious possession " of the hero's coat, as the docu-