Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples;

Contents

CHAPTER PAGI

II. The "Fair Tea-maker of Edgware Row": 1782-1784 37

III. "What God, and Greville, pleases": To March 1786 60

Introduction

"Among the lovely faces that haunt history none, surely, is lovelier than that of Emily Lyon, who abides undying as Emma, Lady Hamilton. Yet it was never the mere radiance of rare beauty that entitled her to such an empire over the hearts and wills of several remarkable men and of one unique genius, or which empowered a girl humbly bred and basely situated to assist in moulding events that changed the current of affairs. She owned grace . and charm as well as triumphant beauty; while to these she added a masculine mind, a native force and sparkle ; a singular faculty, moreover, of rendering and revealing the thoughts and feelings of others, that lent an especial glamour to both beauty and charm."

Walter Sichel thus strikes the keynote to the remarkable life-story here presented — a story which transcends the bounds of romance and fascinates and baffles the reader by turns. Indeed, no two critics of this famous beauty and confidante of Lord Nelson have ever agreed as to her place in history. To one she is an adventuress, luring Nelson on by the sheer power of her physical charm; to another, she is his guiding star, his inspiration; while others see in her merely an astute politician, eager for power. To quote Mr. Sichel again:

"It will be found that Lady Hamilton, by turns fulsomely flattered and ungenerously condemned, was a picturesque power and a real influence. She owned a fine side to her puzzling character. She was never mercenary, often self-abandoning, and at times actually noble. Her courage, warm-hqartedness and gift of staunch friendship, her strength in conquering, her speed in assimilating circumstances, the firmness mixed with her frailty, were conspicuous; and it was the blend of these that, together with her genuine grit, appealed so irresistibly to Nelson. She must be largely judged by her capabilities. Her faults were greatly those of her antecedents and environment. She rose suddenly to situations and fulfilled them, while these again led her both to climax and catastrophe. She worked long and hard, and with success; she took a strong line and pursued it. She became a serious politician in correspondence with most of the leaders in the European death-grapple with Jacobinism. So far, as has been represented, from having proved the mere tool of an ambitious queen, it will appear that more than once she swayed that beset and ill-starred woman into decision. So far from having craftily angled for Nelson's love, it will be shown that the magnet of her enthusiasm first attracted his. She was indeed singularly capable of feeling enthusiasm, and of communicating and enkindling it. It is as an enthusiast that she must rank."

"The story of her wonderfully checkered career from her cradle to her grave," writes W. H. Long in an earlier edition of her Memoirs, "and her connection with the greatest naval commander the world has ever seen, is as attractive and thrilling as a romance, and will serve for all time 'to point a moral or adorn a tale.' " We find in these pages the life history of a girl of obscure but honest parentage beginning her career as a household servant, then practically cast adrift in the streets seeking a precarious living in doubtful ways; thence rising- from the very edge of circumstance by successive stages to become the inspiration of artists and Bohemians, the protegee of ministers, the wife of an ambassador, the trusted confidante of a queen, and the all-absorbing passion of a nation's hero. Rapid as this ascent to power was, the descent was no less swift, and the poverty which accompanied her early years again greets her at the end of the journey. The bare outline of such a career exhibits its remarkable contrasts of light and shadow. We can only explain it in part by a study of the woman herself — the same woman who, as an untutored girl of nineteen, sighed : "If I only had a good education, what a woman I might have been!"

Lady Hamilton rose to power not merely through beauty of face — many other women have been thus endowed — but through a combination of rare qualities which astounded such critics as Goethe, Sir Horace Walpole, the artists Romney and Madame Le Brun, and men and women in every walk of life. These qualities were a naturally fine mind, a magnetic personality, an overflowing sympathy and generosity, and a boundless enthusiasm. One may also characterize her as naturally theatrical. She did not pose, she was the living personification of the emotions she typified; and this natural adaptiveness became intensified by the scenes into which the untutored girl was so suddenly cast.

And what a theatre it was ! England, just recovering from the American War of Independence, was facing a conflict with France. The latter country had emerged from the throes of Revolution only to plunge into a Titanic struggle with every other European nation. Napoleon marched through Italy, overran Egypt and swept the Mediterranean with his ships, preparatory to wider conquests. The Mediterranean thus became a seething caldron, and in its very centre the kingdom of the Two Sicilies struggled for existence. It was at Naples, the capital of this kingdom, that Emma, Lady Hamilton, as wife of the English Ambassador spent the momentous years of her life, and here her peculiar genius found full scope. She stirred her sluggish ambassador husband to action. She became the real power behind the Sicilian throne, through the friendship of Maria Carolina the Queen (sister of the ill-fated Marie Antoinette of France). And when the fleet of Nelson drew near in pursuit of the French, she it was who procured water and provision for it, enabling Nelson to fight and win his famous Battle of the Nile. Upon the return of the victor began his remarkable intimacy with both the Hamiltons, which was to endure through the lifetime of each and all. And of the three, the chivalrous attitude of the elderly Sir William is alone meritorious. His regard for his wife and his friend never wavered ; while they, carried mutually onward by a wave of irresistible love, forgot the one his wife, the other her husband in the liaison so widely known to history.

That Lady Hamilton's influence upon Nelson was permanent and paramount is never disputed. He idealized her and strove to live up to the fond ideal which he cherished. His letters constantly attest his devotion, and his dying message confided her and her child to the care of his country — a charge which ungrateful England wholly neglected. Nelson, indeed, always hoped to have been able to legalise this union of hearts. Emma was his "wife before God," his "pride and delight." While to her, Nelson was "the dearest husband of her heart," her "hero of heroes," her "idol." They lived for each other, and died in the hope that they should meet again. "Nelson's unselfishness transfigured her to herself j she became capable of great moments. And she was born for friendship. 'I would not be a lukewarm friend for the world/ she wrote to him at the outset ; 'I cannot make friendships with all, but the few friends I have I would die for them/ She was always warm-hearted to a fault, as will amply appear as her character grows up in these pages. So far from numbing Nelson, she nerved him; nor did she debase any within the range of her influence." The earliest "Memoirs of Lady Hamilton" appeared shortly after her death, in 181 5, from the pen of an anonymous author, and were published by H. Colburn, London. They were widely read, a second enlarged edition appearing a few months later. Frequent printings were made, and finally W. H. Long brought out a revised edition in 1891. But other and more authentic memoir material meanwhile became available — all of which has been utilised by the present editor. The first of these sources is a volume of "Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton," published by Thomas Lovewell & Co., London, 1 8 14. The reader of the present book will note how these cherished letters were stolen from Lady Hamilton, while she was ill and in trouble, and how she stoutly denied any responsibility for their publication. Nevertheless, they are undoubtedly genuine, many of the originals having been preserved, and they furnish an important basis for these Memoirs. They include letters by Lady Hamilton, her husband, Greville, Bristol, but chiefly a long series of private letters from Nelson himself. The editor has also drawn upon various recent manuscript collections in the British Museum, such as the correspondence of Lady Hamilton with Nelson in the autumn of the year 1798, after the Nile Victory, and letters between Lady Hamilton and Mrs. William Nelson, during 1801, relative to the Prince of Wales episode which created such a scandal io INTRODUCTION

in officialdom. The latter collection was not obtained by the Museum until 1896, and has therefore not been available to preceding biographers. Besides the above there are other important sources, such as the Nelson family papers, the Acton-Hamilton correspondence, the manuscript letters of Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples, in the British Museum, and numerous state documents and private papers. Mr. Sichel has left no bit of evidence unturned, basing his story closely upon contemporary evidence, with the result that he has here given the first complete and accurate pen portrait of Lady Hamilton which has yet appeared.

"It is a career of widespread interest and unusual fascination," he finds, "a human document of many problems that well repay the decipherer and the discoverer. My aim throughout has been to quicken research into life, and to furnish a new study of her striking temperament and the temperaments which became so curiously interwoven both with each other and with history. I venture also to hope," he adds, "that Nelson's own character and achievements stand more fully revealed by the fresh lights and side-lights which serve to bring his extraordinary individuality into relief, to explain his policy, and to clear up some vexed passages both in his private and his public actions."

Whatever sentence the reader may pronounce on the evidence to be submitted, he cannot fail to mark the psychological problems of her being. In any case, with all her blots and failings, Lady Hamilton presents one of the most fascinating studies in the eternal duel of sex. To her may well be applied the line which her husband quoted in his book of 1772: — "The heroine of a thousand things."

Letter from Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton [See next page, also pp. 197-199]

NOTE ON NELSON'S LETTER (Reproduced on foregoing page)

The circumstances calling for this remarkable letter are given in full in Chapter VII. "Nelson was in chase of Buonaparte's fleet," it begins. The English admiral's instructions were to water and provide his fleet in any Mediterranean port, except in Sardinia, if necessary by arms. The success of his expedition absolutely depended upon it. The various ports, however, were so dominated by Napoleon, then at the height of his power, that they dared not welcome the English, even if willing.

At this critical juncture, the woman's hand succeeded where the mailed fist might have failed. Lady Hamilton's husband was Ambassador to Naples, and she herself exerted a vital influence in affairs of that little kingdom, not so much through her husband's position, as her own close friendship with Queen Carolina of Naples. She obtained secret permission from the Queen to obtain supplies for the fleet, in a personal note so jealously guarded that when it is forwarded to Nelson, Lady Hamilton entreats him to "kiss it, and send it back by Bowen, as I am bound not to give any of her letters."

The overjoyed Admiral hastened to kiss the precious missive; his ships were quickly supplied; and not long thereafter the news that the French fleet had been destroyed in the Battle of the Nile thrilled the world.

Chapter I The Curtain Rises — 1 765- 1 782

ON the morning of January 10, 1782, the punctilious and elegant Honourable Charles Francis Greville, gloomy still over the loss of his Warwick election, but consoled by a snug, if unsafe, post in the Board of Admiralty, much exercised, too, in his careful way, about minerals, animals, science, the fine arts, and the flickering out of the American war, was even more exercised by a missive from a poor young girl who had already crossed his path. Fronting him in the dainty chamber of his mansion in the new and fashionable Portman Square, hung the loaned " Venus " attributed to Correggio, and slightly retouched with applied water-colour. This over-prized picture had been for years the cherished idol of his uncle and alter ego, Sir William Hamilton, K.B., Fellow of the Antiquarian and the Royal Societies, member of the Dilettanti, the Tuesday, and other clubs, foster-brother of the now George III., and sometime both his and his brother's equerry; the busy man of pleasure, the renowned naturalist and virtuoso of Port- ■ land vase celebrity, and already for about eighteen years His Britannic Majesty's amiably-grumbling Ambassador at the Court of the King of the two Sicilies. Greville's natural sangfroid was not easily ruffled, but this letter almost excited him. It was franked by himself on a wrapper in his own neat handwriting, bore the Chester postmark, and contrasted strongly with the tasteful tone of the room and its superfine owner.

It ran as follows : " Yesterday did I receve your kind letter. It put me in some spirits for, believe me, I am allmost distracktid. I have never hard from Sir H.,1 and he is not at Lechster now, I am sure. I have wrote 7 letters, and no anser. What shall I dow? Good God what shall I dow. ... I can't come to toun for want of mony. I have not a farthing to bless my self with, and I think my friends looks cooly on me. I think so. O. G. what shall I dow? What shall I dow ? O how your letter affected me when you wished me happiness. O. G. that I was in your posesion or in Sir H. what a happy girl would I have been ! Girl indeed ! What else am I but a girl in distres — in reall distres? For God's sake, G. write the minet you get this, and only tell me what I am to dow. Direct same whay. I am allmos mad. O for God's sake tell me what is to become on me. O dear Grevell, write to me. Write to me. G. adue, and believe [me] yours for ever Emly Hart.

" Don't tel my mother what distres I am in, and dow afford me some comfort.

" My age was got out of the Reggister, and I now send it to my dear Charles. Once more adue, O you dear friend."

Who was this girl in " reall distres," what her past ? who were the friends who looked " cooly " on her, and for what reasons? These questions will shortly be answered so far as replies admit of real proof. But first a brief space must be devoted to Greville himself,

1 Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh, of Up Park, Sussex, who lived to correspond in middle age with her in terms of deferential friendship. His name is thus spelt in his letters.

since his individuality is as necessary to the coming plot as her own.

The Honourable Charles Francis Greville was now thirty-two.

The second son of the Right Honourable Francis, Earl of Brooke (afterwards Earl of Warwick), and of Elizabeth Hamilton, one of Sir William's sisters, he was born at Fulham on May 12, 1749, and baptised on June 8 following. He was born prematurely old, parsimoniously extravagant, and cautiously careless. His cradle should have been garlanded with official minutes, and draped with collectors' catalogues. From his earliest days he was prim, methodical, and pedantic beyond his years. The unlikelihood of surviving his eldest brother had been ever before his eyes, and he was set on the emoluments of a political career, promising much to one so highly connected. While still in his teens he began amassing v'rtu with discernment, and specimens of mineralogy on a " philosophical " system. Some years before his majority he had struck up a brotherly affection with his freehearted uncle, nearly twenty years his senior, who relied on a precocious judgment, invaluable to one compelled by long absences to entrust to others the management of his wife's Pembrokeshire property, indispensable also to both in the keen pursuit of their common tastes, the one in Italy, the home of art, the other in England, the nursery of science. From a very early date the student of beauty and curios, the investigator of shells, marine monsters, and volcanoes, " Pliny the Elder," as he came to be called, was always exchanging rarities with " Pliny the Younger," or commissioning him to buy, sell, or raffle Dutch and Italian pictures, Etruscan urns, Greek torsos, and Roman vases.

Hamilton was a true man of science, and a really great archaeologist. When he first came to Naples in 1764 he spent months in his Villa Angelica, on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, taking observations and excavating antiquities. He was far less a trafficker in objects of art and learning than his nephew. He presented both books and specimens of value to the British Museum. His aim, in his own words, was that of " employing his leisure in use to mankind." x Not quite so, however, was that of Pliny the Younger, who in his turn bought crystals and works of art with equal zest of connoisseurship. Greville was barely twenty-one when he went the Italian tour, stayed with his uncle at Naples, then in the full fever of unearthing buried chefs-d'oeuvre at Herculaneum and Pompeii, which were so soon to experience many fresh escapes from re-destruction by earthquakes and eruptions. From Rome, in this year, the nephew indited two of the most self-assured letters of grave gossip and counsel that any youngster has ever addressed to one nearly twice his age. They are so like himself that a small part of one must be given : " I begin with a subject that I have resolved every time I have wrote to mention, and now particularly I am under an obligation to remember, as for the first time my handkerchief

1 Observations on Mount Vesuvius, etc. (1772). The villa was probably called after the artist. Hamilton constantly ran great danger in observing and recording violent eruptions. He was indefatigable in superintending excavations, and he mentions being present at Pompeii when a horse with jewelled trappings and its rider were unearthed. He was a munificent patron alike of discoverers, travelers, scientists, and artists, including Flaxman and Wedgwood. He was a trustee of the British Museum, and a vice-president of the Society of Antiquaries. A big book on his Greek and Roman antiquities was written by D'Harcauville (Naples, 1765-1775; Paris, 1787). Besides the book already mentioned, supplemented in 1779, Hamilton wrote Campi Phlegrcei (Naples, 1776-77), and the famous work on Greek and Etruscan urns, etc., illustrated by Bartolozzi. A Life worthy of him ought to be written.

has been knotted on the occasion. It is to desire you to enquire for two books I left in my room at your house; 2 pocket volumes of Milton's works. I borrowed them, and left them with an intention they should be sent to Mrs. Harfrere to whom they belong. . . . The ink bottle has this moment oversett, but you see I am not disconcerted, so pray don't make observations, and the letter is as good as it was. Pray let me beg you to avoid every mention of prices, I have done so once before. Pray let me send and be favoured with the acceptance of some baubles. . . . I am in the best of humours. I received this morning a line from Lord Exeter, who informed me of the Douglas cause being decided in his favour. ... I am running about the antiquities from 9 to 11 with Byres, from n-12 with Miss A., so you see I gain Horace's happiness, omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci. . . . Pray let me lay on you a disagreeable task, choose me a handsome pattern for an applicee, have it wrought for me instantaneously, and sent to Rome. I wish an Etrusc vase could be introduced. It must be handsome and rich; as to its elegance, anything, particularly Etrusc, conducted by your taste cannot fail to be elegant. If a contrivance could be hit on for making it less regular and straight, ... I should be pleased. Yours is charming, but rather too much like a lace. . . . The spangles must be caution'd against and well fastened. There have been some fine conversations since the Emperor has been here. The Grand Duke asked after you of me. . . . The E. has lessened the talk about the D. However I like the D. best: more of engaging and gentlemanlike deportment, and more of the world. ... By the Bye if you can pick up any vases, of which you have duplicates, lay them aside for me, and don't buy them if not well conserv'd and good; nor many of a shape, a few elegant and good. Adieu my dear Hamilton."

Certainly Greville proved the Horatian mixer of pleasure with profit; and since he, like his far franker uncle, was ever complaining of a narrow purse tantalised by the temptations of virtu, that other trite Horatian maxim, Virtute me involvo, would also admirably fit them. Wrapped in their mantles of Virtu, they both bewailed means far too slender for their tastes. The richer Sir William, indeed, expending in antiquities what he retrenched elsewhere, seems in his correspondence all debt and Correggio; while Greville removed to his mansion under pretext of its size being a bargain. Each sought to serve the other, and Greville in his youth persistently charged his uncle to be his depute. As time proceeded, Sir William with an ailing wife and a buried daughter, his nephew ever on his watch-tower for an heiress, confided to each other their little gallantries, and peccadilloes also. As for Greville, just as in the case of the " applicee," " contrivances " were soon " hit on " for making him " less regular and straight." Already, in 1781, this solemn frequenter of new Almack's had acquired the Reynolds picture of " Emily in the character of Thais," which had been left on Sir Joshua's hands. His character was that of a free-living formalist, the reverse of austere, but with all austerity's drawbacks.

Yet there were some excellent points in this queer compound of the Pharisee and the Publican, something between a Charles and a Joseph Surface. If none was more prone to sin with self-righteousness, and to excuse to himself half-shabbiness as unselfish generosity, if none could write more glibly of a " good heart," he was not consciously a hypocrite ; though par excellence the man of taste rather than the man of feeling.

He displayed scrupulous honour in all money transactions, much dignity and reticence, with grace of demeanour (if not always of behaviour) ; independence too of mind, and a public-spirited industry that often kept him sitting on important committees six hours at a stretch. He was a steadfast friend, and the early death of his Pylades, the brilliant Charles Cathcart, was a real blow to him and an irretrievable loss. He was an ideal trustee. He could say with truth, "I am a good jobber for a friend, but an awkward one for myself." He was worthy of his uncle's confidence, and to the last superintended his affairs and those of others with integrity and tact. Nor did he neglect the welfare of Hamilton's tenants at Milford. He was capable of limited disinterestedness as well as of true patriotism. His father's death and his brother's accession to estates and title in 1773 reduced his allowance afresh, and all his resource was needed to repair the deficiency.

Socially a disciple of the old-fashioned Chesterfield, and affecting to flout the opinion of a world that he was far from despising, politically he was a trimming Whig, but an unbending supporter of all authority and establishment. He throve on coalitions, and lamented with reason the nearing end of that coalition ministry which was still in power when this chapter opened.

Such is an epitome of the man who still holds the soi-disant " Emily Hart's " letter in his hands. It is her origin and past that now demand re-investigation. In view of her instinctive independence and her native appetite for glory, the notion of which grew with her expanding horizon, these trivial beginnings are not unimportant, while some of her cousins played a prominent part in the later scenes of her life.

Emily (or " Emy ") Lyon was born on April 26 in 1765, the year of her baptism, unless, without reason, we are to assume her illegitimacy. The Neston parish registers prove the marriage of her parents to have taken place on June n, 1764. The rumours and fictions about her early adventures, seemingly requiring a longer space than her extreme girlhood affords, have impelled certain biographers to antedate her birth by so much as four years. But many references, both in Greville's letters and Hamilton's, with other evidence outside them, entirely tally with the date that I have assigned. She was christened " Emily " (of which " Emy " and not " Amy," as has been alleged, is the contraction), though from the "Emy" she may in childhood have been called " Amy " at times. The copy of the baptismal register sent to Greville is incorrect, as will be seen in the note below. Her marriage register, it is true, is signed " Amy Lyons " according to the Marylebone clerk's information, but this again seems a natural misreading of her rapid and often indistinct handwriting for " Emy Lyon."

Her father was Henry Lyon, " Smith of Nesse," and her mother Mary Kidd of Hawarden, Flintshire. In their marriage register both sign by marks, although her mother soon afterwards became " a scholar." Her father died, it is said, in the year of her birth; but there is no vestige of her mother's remarriage to one " Doggan " or " Doggin," to which has been attributed her after-name of Mrs. Cadogan from the present period in London to that when she became " La Signora Madre dell'Ambasciatrice," and the esteemed friend both of Hamilton and of Nelson. " Emy " has always been described as an only child, but she seems to have had a brother or half-brother, " Charles." Thomas Kidd, an old salt and cousin, writing from Greenwich in 1809, to thank for past and beg for future favours, observes : " I have to inform you that your brother Charles is in Greenwich College and has been here since the 6th inst. ;" but I can find no further trace of this " brother," nor is there any record of relatives on the father's side.1 This Thomas Kidd may well have been the son of a William Kidd, "labourer," who, as "widower" in September, 1769, in the Hawarden registers, married one " Mary Pova." And William Kidd is possibly Lady Hamilton's cousin or uncle, who was at one time a publican, and who used to complain that he was " never brought up to work." If this be so, something of the paternal strain seems to have descended to the son, who, in the letter just mentioned, excuses his remissness in calling, as requested, by the insinuating remark that " I declare my small cloaths are scandolous, and my hat has the crown part nearly off " ; while he speaks pointedly of the attentions of a " Mr. Ingram," who in turn refers to his " justifiable character " in " His Majesty's service," and suggests that, since both the porter of the west gate and the " roasting cook " of the college are infirm and ill, there is a choice of probable promotions awaiting him. In after years it was not only her humble kinsfolk, whom she never forsook, that were to importune Emma for advancements.

The Kidds were mostly sailors or labourers. Lady Hamilton's grandmother, with whom in girlhood she often stayed, and whom she always cared for and cherished, dwelt in one of some thatched cottages, two of which still remain. That Mary Lyon, nee Kidd, was a superior woman, is shown by her after-acquirements. Tradition associates her both with dressmaking and with domestic service. If tradition again is trustworthy, she may have been cook in the household of Lord Halifax, who is also reported to have educated both her and her child. But Lady Hamilton herself,

1 At the last moment I have been informed that Emma had a sister "Anna."

writing to Mr. Bowen of Portman Square (and of Merton?) in 1802 about Charlotte Nelson's education, declares that her own did not begin till she was seventeen— that is to say, under Greville's auspices. I have read none of her mother's letters before 1800, and it is not improbable that mother and daughter began their education together. She was always an energetic housekeeper and a most resourceful home-physician. Her letters to Emma, to George Rose, and others, seem neither ill-worded nor ill-spelt. At Naples and Palermo we shal,l find her visited by the Queen. The King of Naples was in the December of 1798 to call her an " angel " for her services during the hurricane attending the royal escape to Palermo, though he also, if we may trust the Marchioness of Solari, had before dubbed her " Rufiiana." The Duke of Sussex highly esteemed her. Nor can the accomplished Miss Cornelia Knight have found her intolerable, for on the return of Nelson, the Hamiltons, and herself to London after the ill-starred continental tour of 1800, she drove straight off and stayed with Mrs. " Cadogan " at the hotel in St. James's. There is no evidence as to how this homely and trustworthy woman came by her grand name. Doggin, her second husband, however, may not be a myth ; although the Marchioness of Solari mentions that " Codogan " was the name by which " Emma's reputed mother " caused her to be known at Naples before her marriage ; and at any rate it is a singular coincidence that Earl Nelson's companion when he went to Calais to fetch Horatia away, after Lady Hamilton's death in 181 5, was to be a Mr. Henry Cadogan, a relation of the late and wellknown Mr. Rothery.