Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; (52 page)

" Old Q.," her patron, now in the last year of his self-indulgent life, was busy making a new will every week. His friendship for Emma, however, had been truly disinterested, and even calumny never coupled their names together. When he died next year, he left her an annuity of £500, which, however—such was her persistent ill luck—she never lived to receive, for the old voluptuary's will was contested, it would seem, till after Lady Hamilton had paid the debt of nature. Even if she had survived the litigation, it would probably have absorbed a portion of the bequest.

The autumn of 1809 saw, too, the end of Greville. Since his mean and heartless treatment of her after Hamilton's death, Emma, save for the glimpse of reconciliation afforded by the remarkable communication of 1808 just quoted, had never so much as breathed his name in any of her surviving letters. The collector of stones had, till that moment of compunction, himself been petrified. In 1812 his crystals, for which he

had so long ago exchanged Emma, together with the paintings which his cult of beauty at the expense of the beautiful had amassed, were sold at Christie's. " The object of this connoisseur," writes M. Simond, an eye-witness of the auction, " was to exhibit the progress of the art from its origin by a series of pictures of successive ages—many of them very bad." And perhaps the faultiest of his pictures had been himself.

From 1810, when they left Richmond, onwards, Emma and Horatia owned no fixed abode. They moved from Bond Street to Albemarle Street, thence, after perhaps a brief sojourn in Piccadilly again, to Dover Street, thence to two separate lodgings at the two ends again of Bond Street, where Nelson for a brief space after Sir William's death had also lodged. Lady Bolton, with her daughter, the godchild Emma, who had failed to find her at the opening of the year, expressed their keen disappointment: " You cannot think how melancholy I felt when we passed the gate at the top of Piccadilly, thinking how often we had passed it together. . . . Emma sends her best love and kisses to you, and Horatia, and Mrs. Cadogan. When I told her just now how if we had gone two houses further we should have seen you, she looked very grave. At last she called out: ' Pray, Mama, promise me to call as we go back to Cranwich.' . . . My love to Mrs. Cadogan, Miss Connor, and my dear Horatia. . . . God bless you, my dear Lady Hamilton."

But the worst blow was yet to fall. By the opening of the new year her mother lay on her deathbed.

Her old admirer, Sir H. Fetherstonehaugh—and nothing is more curious in this extraordinary woman's life than the way in which the light lover of her first girlhood re-emerges after thirty years as a respectful

friend—began a series of sympathising letters. He was much concerned for her health, and ill as she was, she forgot her own ailments in the terrible trial of her mother's malady. " As I am alive to all nervous sensations," he wrote, " be assured I understand your language."—"I trust you will soon be relieved from all that load of anxiety you have had so much of lately, and which no one so little deserves."

Mrs. Cadogan died on the same day as the date of this letter, and Emma with. Horatia now drifted forlorn and alone in a pitiless world. Emma's mother had endeared herself to all the Nelson and Hamilton circle, as well as to her own humble kindred. " Dear Blessed Saint," wrote Mrs. Bolton to Lady Hamilton, " was she not a mother to us all! How I wish I was near you!" She was buried in that Paddington churchyard which she and Emma had known so well in the old days at Edgware Row.

Emma was paralysed by the blow. More than a year afterwards she wrote that she could feel " no pleasure but that of thinking and speaking of her." In sending to Mrs. Girdlestone—whose family still possesses so many relics of Nelson—the box which the Duke of Sussex had presented to Mrs. Cadogan in Naples, the bereaved daughter concluded a touching letter as follows: " Accept then, my dear Friend, this box. You that are so fond a mother, and have such good children, will be pleased to take it as a token of my regard, for I have lost the best of mothers, my wounded heart, my comfort, all buried with her."

" Endeavour," wrote Mrs. Bolton, " to keep up your spirits: after a storm comes a calm, and God knows you have had storm enough, and surely the sun must shine sometimes."

The sun was never to shine again. This very year two more staunch friends, to whom Emma had been

indebted for many kindnesses, made their exit, the old Duke and the generous Abraham Goldsmid, who, in despair at the failure of the recent Government loan, died by his own hand. It was a year of tumult. The din and riot of Burdett's election endangered the streets; abroad it was the year of Napoleon's second marriage, of the great battle of Wagram preluding the Russian campaign. Maria Carolina was an exile once more. Austria and the allies were worsted and rabid. Whichever way Emma's distraught mind turned, despair and misery were her outlook, and Nelson seemed to have died in vain.

The sum raised for her relief had been soon exhausted. In removing to Bond Street she intended really to retrench, but everything was swallowed up by the crowd of parasites who consumed her substance behind her back. Her landlady, Mrs.Daumier, pressed for payment. And yet Lady Hamilton's own requirements seem to have been modest enough. It was Mrs. Bianchi, Mrs. Billington, the person, whoever he may have been, who filched her papers from her afterwards, and the battening Neapolitans that rendered economy impossible and swarmed around her to the close. Nor would old dependants of Nelson believe that she was impoverished. One, " William Nelson," importuned her for another from Bethnal Green; Mr. Twiss, Mrs. Siddons's nephew, urged her influence for his solicitations to gain a " commissionership of Bankruptcy "— an ominous word for Emma. The Kidds, Reynoldses, and Charles Connor still lived on, the girl Connors with her. Their conduct ill contrasted with that of the once " poor little Emma "; for the unacknowledged Emma " Carew," after disdaining dependence on her prosperity, was now, in adversity, bidding her a last and loving farewell. Sir William Bolton still entreated her good offices with the royal dukes for " poor

Horace"; so did Mrs. Matcham with Rose. She could not even now refrain from maintaining appearances, and keeping open house. She could not bring herself to let those debonair royal dukes know that one whom they fancied all song and sunshine was on the brink of beggary. She could not hold the promise, repeated to her befrienders, of living in tranquillity and retirement. Nor would she desist from making presents. She still visited fashionable resorts like Brighton. She still enjoyed the friendship of Lady Elizabeth Foster, by now the new Duchess of Devonshire. She still flattered herself, and listened to the flatteries of others. She still trusted to chance—to her elusive claims and her elusive legacy.

The old Duke had left Miss Connor a legacy also, but all his bequests were long postponed. While Mrs. Matcham was congratulating Emma on accessions of fortune, while elderly, complimentary, Frenchified Fetherstonehaugh rejoiced at the Queensberry " mite out of such a mass of wealth," forwarded her " envoies de gibier" and promised her " a view of old Up Park dans la belle saison," the widow's cruse was wellnigh drained. Nor after Greville's death, was his brother, as trustee, always regular in his payments of her forestalled revenue. With reason, as well as with excuses, Lord Mansfield warned her not to increase her expenditure till her " affairs were settled." Sir Richard Puleston, inviting her from Wrexham to revisit the scenes of her childhood, could still gloat over her " fairy palace in Bond Street."

In extreme need, she revived her desperate petitions to the new Government. Her fashionable friends called her " a national blessing," and cried shame on the deniers of her suit. But Mrs. Bolton well said to her that she feared the friendly Rose was " promising more than he could procure "; and amid these dubious

hopes two tell-tale pieces of paper in the Morrison Collection speak volumes. They are bills drawn on Emma by Carlo Rovedino, an Italian, for £150 each.

Even Cecilia Connor, with whom she had quarrelled but who owed her everything, dunned " her Ladyship " for the salary due for such education as she had given " dear Horatia." This was the last straw.

The Matchams and Boltons invited her yet again, but she did not come. She concerted fresh petitions with a fresh man of the pen. He hastened at Emma's bidding from his " Woodbine Cottage " at Wootton Bridge. He worked " like a horse." During his absence his wife was ill. Emma could not rest for thinking of her. She inquired of her from a common friend. She wrote to her herself: " You do not know how many obligations I have to Mr. Russell, and if I have success it will be all owing to his exertions for me. Would to God you were in town. What a consolation it would be to me." All smiles to the world, full of wretchedness within, she could not, as she wrote so many years ago, " divest" herself " of her natural feelings." But her uniform love of excitement—of which these hazardous petitions were a form—peeps out at the close of this little note: " It must be very didl, alltho' your charming family must be such a comfort to you."

The crash came suddenly with the opening of the new year, and just as Miss Matcham was begging her to repose herself with them at Ashfield Lodge. Horatia had whooping-cough. Emma, who was never without a companion, had replaced Cecilia Connor by a Miss Wheatley. For the sixth time she had failed in moving the ministers, but her tenacity was inexpugnable. She owed it to her kind committee, to Nelson's memory, to Horatia, to herself. The creditors, however, at last perceived that the asset on which they had

built their hopes had vanished. In vain she prayed for time; the royal dukes would not see her draggled in the dust. Royal dukes, however, were not cash, thought the creditors, when they promptly arrested her for debt. It was the first time such a calamity had even entered her mind, but it was not to be the last, as we shall soon discover. She implored none of her grand friends. From the disgrace of prison she saved herself. Ill, with the ailing Horatia, she found a scant lodging at 12 Temple Place, within the rules of the King's Bench. To her old Merton friend, James Perry, afterwards proprietor of the Morning Chronicle, and through thick and thin her warm upholder, she addressed the following scrawl—

" Will« you have the goodness to see my old Dame Francis, as you was so good to say to me at once at any time for the present existing and unhappy circumstances you wou'd befriend me, and if you cou'd at your conveaneance call on me to aid me by your advice as before. My friends come to town to-morrow for the season, when I must see what can be done, so that I shall not remain here; for I am so truly unhappy and wretched and have been ill ever since I had the pleasure of seeing you on dear Horatia's birthday, that I have not had either spirits or energy to write to you. You that loved Sir William and Nelson, and feel that I have deserved from my country some tribute of remuneration, will aid by your counsel your ever affectionate and grate full. . . ." *

And to the Abbe Campbell, who had just left for Naples:—

". . . You was beloved and honour'd by my husband, Nelson, and myself; knew me in all my former splendours; you I look on as a dear, dear friend and relation. You are going amongst friends who love 1 Morrison MS. 1042, January 3, 1813.

you; but rest assured none reveres you nor loves more than your ever, etc. PS. —Poor Horatia was so broken-hearted at not seeing you. Tell dear Mr. Tegart to call on me, for I do indeed feil truly forlorn and friendless. God bless you. As glorious Nelson said, Amen, Amen, Amen."

Her stay in these purlieus was not long. Perry, and probably the Mertonite Alderman Smith, must have bailed her out. But during these few weeks of restricted liberty she slaved at new petitions, was visited by friends, and continued her correspondence with the Boltons and the Matchams, who begged hard for Horatia, whom they would meet at Reigate if Emma " could not manage to come " with her. They forwarded her presents of potatoes and turkeys from the country, and their letters evidently treat her just as if she were at large.

All her energies were bent on the two final memorials so often referred to in these pages—that to the Prince Regent, and that to the King. Rose now at last espoused her cause with real warmth, and Canning favoured her, despite his pique at her exaggerated account of what Nelson understood from their last interview. All, however, ended in smoke. Perceval, whom she had persuaded into benefiting one of Nelson's nephews, had been shot in the previous year, and Lord Liverpool trod in the footsteps of Lord Grenville.

Whither she repaired on liberation is unknown, though by the summer of the year she managed to reinstate herself in Bond Street. 1 There is no heading to the strange remonstrance which the distressed

1 No. 150. This is manifest from the inventory and sale catalogue of the following July sold at Sotheby's on July 8, 1905. It is dated " Thursday, July 8, 1813." Her last refuge was at Ful-ham with Mrs. Billington.

mother penned, in one of her fitful moods, to Horatia on " Easter Sunday " * of this year:—

" Listen to a kind, good mother, who has ever been to you affectionate, truly kind, and'who has neither spared pains nor expense to make you the most amiable and accomplished of your sex. Ah! Horatia, if you had grown up as I wished you, what a joy, what a comfort might you have been to me! For I have been constant to you, and willingly pleas'd for every manifestation you shew'd to learn and profitt of my lessons. . . . Look into yourself well, correct yourself of your errors, your caprices, your nonsensical follies. ... I have weathered many a storm for your sake, but these frequent blows have kill'd me. Listen then from a mother, who speaks from the dead. Reform your conduct, or you will be detested by all the world, and when you shall no longer have my fostering arm to sheild you, woe betide you, you will sink to nothing. Be good, be honourable, tell not falsehoods, be not capricious." She threatened to put her to school—a threat never executed. " I grieve and lament to see the increasing strength of your turbulent passions; I weep, and pray you may not be totally lost; my fervent prayers are offered up to God for you. I hope you may become yet sensible of your eternal welfare. I shall go join your father and my blessed mother, and may you on your deathbed have as little to reproach yourself as your once affectionate mother has, for I can glorify, and say I was a good child. Can Horatia Nelson say so? I am unhappy to say you cannot. No answer to this! I shall to-morrow look out for a school for your sake to save you, that you may bless the memory of an injured mother. PS. —Look on me as gone from this world."