Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; (53 page)

Six months later she again blamed her for her 1 April 18, 1813. Cf. Morrison MS. 1047.

" cruel treatment." It may well be that the poor young girl, bandied about with Emma's fortunes, and with her driven from pillar to post, complained of hard treatment. "If my poor mother," once more exclaimed Emma, who had, at any rate, been a most dutiful daughter, " If my poor mother was living to take my part, broken as I am with greif and ill-health, I should be happy to breathe my last in her arms. I thank you for what you have done to-day. You have helped me nearer to God and may God forgive you." In two days " all will be arranged for her future establishment." She will summon Colonel and Mrs. Clive, Colonel and Mrs. Smith, Mr. and Mrs. Denis, Dr. Norton, Nanny the old servant, Mr. Slop, Mr. Sice, Annie Deane, all the gossips from Richmond, to " tell the truth " if she " has used her ill." " Every servant shall be on oath." " The all-seeing eye of God " knows " her innocence."

Of these two ebullitions, it is impossible not to discern in the first a fear lest her own errors should be repeated in her daughter. And it should not be forgotten that, through the connivance of Haslewood, Nelson's solicitor, Horatia to the last refused to believe that Lady Hamilton, whom she tenderly nursed and comforted at the close, was her real mother. Some such denials of Emma's motherhood may have caused these outbursts, proportioned in their violence to the intense and unceasing love that Emma fostered for Nelson's child, on her real relationship to whom she here—and here only within four walls—laid such vehement stress.

She had been compelled to part with Horatia's christening-cup, Nelson's own gift, to a Bond Street silversmith. Sir Harris Nicolas declared that he had seen a statement in her handwriting to the effect that " Horatia's mother " was " too great a lady to be men-

tioned." It has been assumed that his ambiguous phrase pointed to the Queen of Naples, who so late as 1808 was in friendly correspondence with Emma. This, however, remains uncertain. Nelson's own action had constrained her to envelop their joint offspring in mystery, for Horatia's benefit as well as their own. It is just as probable that the words " too great a lady " were used of herself, for the same words are used of her by Mrs. Bolton in 1809.

Things went rapidly from bad to worse. The smaller fry of her creditors were emboldened by the complete neglect of her last " memorials" into renewed action. At the instance of an exorbitant coach-builder, with a long bill in his hands, she was re-arrested, and in Horatia's company she found herself, towards the end of July, 1813, for the second time in the bare lodgings at Temple Place. All her remaining effects in Bond Street were sold. The articles offered were by no means luxurious, and included the remnants of Hamilton's library; many of them were bought by the silversmith, whom she still owed, and by Alderman Smith, her most generous benefactor. The city remained her champion.

She could still see her friends, Coxe and George Matcham among them, and she was permitted, such was her miserable health, to drive out on occasion. But the game, spiritedly contested to the last, was now up. Mrs. Bolton's death in the preceding July added one more to the many fatalities that thronged around her. The Matchams, themselves poor, were unwearying in their solicitude, and three years earlier a small windfall had enabled them to contribute £100 to her dire necessities. Alderman Smith came for the second time to the rescue, and once more stood her bail.

But before even this alleviation was vouchsafed, and while she had been for three months confined to her

bed, a crowning trouble beset her. Through the perfidy of some dependant l Nelson's most private letters to her had been abstracted some years before, and were now published to the world. This is the invaluable correspondence on which these pages have so frequently drawn. It was not their revelation of the " Thomson " letters that prejudiced her: her enemies were always willing to insinuate even that she had foisted Horatia on Nelson. It was the revelation of the Prince of Wales episode of 1801, that scandalised the big world, and destroyed the last shred of hope for any future " memorials." It was insinuated that she herself had published the volume. " Weather this person," she told Mr. Perry, " has made use of any of these papers, or weather they are the invention of a vile mercenary wretch, I know not, but you will oblige me much by contradicting these falsehoods." " I have taken an oath and confirmed it at the altar," the much-harried Emma was to write to the press in the next September, after she had crossed the Channel, " that I know nothing of these infamous publications that are imputed to me. My letters were stolen from me by that scoundrel whose family I had in charity so long supported. I never once saw or knew of them. That base man is capable of forging any handwriting, and I am told that he has obtained money from the [Prince of Wales] by his impositions. Sir William Hamilton, Lord N., and myself were too much attached to his [Royal Highness] ever to speak ill or think ill of him. If I had the means I would prosecute the wretches who have thus traduced me." In still another of her last letters she is even more specific on this sore subject. " I again before God declare," she avers, " I know nothing of the publication of these stolen letters."

'Harrison; cf. Horatia's letter, Cornhill, June, 1906.

These statements point to Emma's truthfulness. All that she asserts is her ignorance of the contents of the volume, and how they came to be published. The Prince of Wales letters in this collection are undoubtedly genuine, corroborated, as they are, by many of their companions in the Morrison Manuscripts. The letters had been purloined by a rascal, and their publication blasted her last chances with the Prince whom in her will she had begged to protect Horatia after she was gone, while it also disclosed for the first time her dishonour of her husband.

Her sin had found her out; but her sin had been born of real devotion, and surely it should not harden us against her lovableness, or alienate us from charity towards the weight of temptation, and from pity for the tragedy of her lot.

She had abstained from reading the book. If she meant to deny the authenticity of these letters, then indisputably she must be taken to have lied. But even so, she was driven to bay and at the end of her tether. The perjury would have been exceptional. It would not have been Plato's " lie in the soul ": it would have been a lie in defence of the dead and the living.

"The lips have sworn: unsworn remains the soul."

CHAPTER XV

FROM DEBT TO DEATH

July, 1814— January, 1815

SHORT and evil were the few days remaining. " What shall I do; God, what shall I do! " had been her exclamation thirty-two years ago to Greville. As she began, so she closed.

Mrs. Bolton's death in the late summer of 1813 left her more desolate than ever at Temple Place. The Matchams resumed their warm invitations; alas! she could not leave; she was still an undischarged bankrupt. The Matchams themselves were breaking up the last of their many establishments. They all wished to join Emma and Horatia, when possible, in some " city, town, or village abroad." This proposal probably suggested the idea of retiring to Calais when her present ordeal in the stale air of stuffy Alsatia should come to an end.

But even in tribulation she had celebrated, as best she could, the " glorious ist of August." I have seen a letter inviting a few even then—not " pinchbeck," she calls them, " but true gold "—round that little table in Temple Place, to drink for the last time to the hero's memory.

The few surviving records unite in proving her genuine anxiety that through her no creditor should suffer. Though imprudence, as she confessed, had not a little contributed, her main disasters were due to a crowd of worthless onhangers whom she had reck-

lessly maintained. She herself had gone bail " for a. person" whom she thought " honourable." This " person " was probably one Jewett, a young friend of the Russells, in whom she had taken a warm interest. " I should be better," she had written to her " kind, good, benevolent Mr. and Mrs. Russell," " if I could know that this unfortunate and, I think, not guilty young man was saved. He has been a dupe in the hands of villains. ... I have never seen him, for I could not have borne to have seen him and his amiable wife and children suffer as they must." She employs the same phrase—" dupe of villains "—about herself in a long epistle of this very date to Rose.

All her property was surrendered; with the exception of a few sacred relics, everything unseized had been sold, even Nelson's sword of honour. Her just creditors lost not a penny. The sole extortioners she would not benefit were those annuitant Shylocks who had preyed upon her utmost need, and who had well secured themselves by insuring her life in the Pelican Insurance Company.

James Perry and Alderman Smith exerted themselves to the utmost on her behalf. A small further sum was collected for her in the city, and by the last week of June, 1814, her full discharge was obtained from Lord Ellenborough. She was now free—with less than fifty pounds in her pocket.

But she soon gleaned the fact that these merciless " annuitants " purposed her re-arrest. Without dishonour, she prepared for exodus to France.

It was a flight requiring management and secrecy to elude the new writs about to be issued: it was her last thrill. How different from that memorable flight to Palermo sixteen years earlier, which had earned the admiration of Nelson, the gratitude of a court, and the praise of Britain!

About the last day of June she and Horatia, unattended, embarked at the Tower. The stormy passage thence to Calais took three days. Her single thought was for Horatia's future, but she still buoyed herself up by believing that an ungrateful ministry would at length provide for her daughter. Sir William Scott, she wrote, assured her that there were " some hopes " for her " irresistible claims." She fancied, moreover, that she had some disposing power over the accumulations of arrears on her income under her husband's will, so long withheld and intercepted by greedy annuitants. "If I was to die/' she told Greville's brother and executor, imploring him at the same time for £100 on account, " I should have left that money away, for the annuitants have no right to have it, nor can they claim it, for I was most dreadfully imposed upon by my good nature. . . . When I came away, I came with honour, as Mr. Alderman Smith can inform you, but mine own innocence keeps me up, and I despise all false accusations and aspersions. I have given up everything to pay just debts, but [for] annuitants, never will."

She at first lodged at Dessein's famous hotel—the inn where Sterne (of whom Romney, his first por-trayer's pupil, must have often told her) started on his Sentimental Journey, by the confession over a bottle of Burgundy that there was " mildness in the Bourbon blood "; and where the " Englishman who did not travel to see Englishmen " first inspected, in his host's company, the ramshackle desobligeante which was to be the vehicle of his whimsies.

Dessein's, however, was expensive as well as sentimental. It was not long before she inhabited the smaller " Quillac's " and looked out for a still humbler abode. Her " Old Dame Francis " was soon to join her as housekeeper.

She thus describes their manner of life to George Rose:—

". . . Near me is an English lady, who has resided here for twenty-five years, who has a day-school, but not for eating or sleeping. At eight in the morning I take Horatia, fetch her at one; at three we dine; she goes out till five, and then in the evening we walk. She learns everything—piano, harp, languages grammatically. She knows French and Italian well, but she will still improve. Not any girls, but those of the best families go there. Last evening we walked two miles to a jete champetre pour les bourgeois. Everybody is pleased with Horatia. The General and his good old wife are very good to us; but our little world of happiness is ourselves. If, my dear Sir, Lord Sidmouth would do something for dear Horatia, so that I can be enabled to give her an education, and also for her dress, it would ease me, and make me very happy. Surely he owes this to Nelson. For God's sake, do try for me, for you do not know how limited I am. ... I have been the victim of artful, mercenary wretches."

Dis aliter visum; it was not to be. Nothing but the pittance of Horatia's settlement remained. Rose bestirred himself, but Lord Sidmouth continued impervious to the importunate widow, herself slowly recovering from the jaundice.

When " Dame Francis " arrived, they tenanted a farmhouse two miles distant in the Commune of St. Pierre—" Common of St. Peter's," as Lady Hamilton writes it—and from this farmhouse, not long afterwards, they again removed to a neighbouring one. It

1 Cf. Rose's Diaries, vol. i. p. 272; and cf. Morrison MS. 1055. " Horatia is improving in person and education every day. She speaks French like a French girl, Italian, German, English," etc. —September 21.

belonged to two ladies who had lost a large sum by the refusal of their sons to join Napoleon's invading army. Its rooms were large, its garden extensive. She could at length take exercise in a pony-cart. She and Horatia were regular in church attendance: the French prayers were like their own. Provisions were cheap: turkeys two shillings, partridges fivepence the brace; Bordeaux wine from five to fifteen pence. Occasionally a stray visitor passed their way. Lord Cath-cart, Sir William's old friend and relative, had visited them, and spied out the nakedness of the land. It was well known at Calais that the celebrated Lady Hamilton was in retreat: a real live " milord " must have fluttered the farmhouse dovecote. For a time there was a brief spell of cheerful tranquillity, but the gleam was transient. It was only a reprieve before the final summons. " If my dear Horatia were provided for," she wrote to Sir William Scott, " I should dye happy, and if I could only now be enabled to make her more comfortable, and finish her education, ah God, how I would bless them that enabled me to do it! " She was teaching her German and Spanish; music, French, Italian, and English she " already knew." Emma " had seen enough of grandeur not to regret it"; " comfort, and what would make Horatia and myself live like gentlewomen, would be all I wish, and to live to see her well settled in the world." It was of no avail that her illness was leaving her. " My Broken Heart does not leave me." " Without a pound in " her "pocket," what could she do?—"On the 2ist of October, fatal day, I shall have some. I wrote to Davison to ask the Earl to let me have my Bronte pension quarterly instead of half-yearly, and the Earl refused, saying that he was too poor. . . . Think, then, of the situation of Nelson's child, and Lady Hamilton, who so much contributed to the Battle of the