NELSON'S RETURN FROM EGYPT TO NAPLES.--MEETING WITH LADY
HAMILTON.--ASSOCIATION WITH THE COURT OF NAPLES.--WAR BETWEEN NAPLES
AND FRANCE.--DEFEAT OF THE NEAPOLITANS.--FLIGHT OF THE COURT TO
PALERMO.
SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER, 1798. AGE, 40.
The voyage of Nelson's small division from Aboukir Bay to Naples
occupied between four and five weeks, owing partly to light and
contrary winds, and partly to the dull sailing of the "Culloden,"
which had a sail secured under her bottom to lessen the dangerous leak
caused by her grounding on the night of the battle. This otherwise
unwelcome delay procured for Nelson a period of salutary, though
enforced, repose, which the nature of his injuries made especially
desirable. His mind, indeed, did not cease to work, but it was free
from harassment; and the obvious impossibility of doing anything, save
accept the present easy-going situation, contributed strongly to the
quietness upon which restoration depended. Nor were there wanting
matters of daily interest to prevent an excess of monotony. Now that
frigates were no longer so vitally necessary, they and other light
cruisers turned up with amusing frequency, bringing information, and
being again despatched hither and yonder with letters from the
admiral, which reflected instinctively his personal moods, and his
active concern in the future military operations.
The distress from his head continued for some time with little
abatement, and naturally much affected his tone of mind. At the first
he spoke of his speedy return to England as inevitable, nor did the
prospect occasion the discouragement which he had experienced after
the loss of his arm; a symptom which had shown the moral effect of
failure upon a sensitive and ambitious temperament. "My head is ready
to split," he had written to St. Vincent before starting, "and I am
always so sick; in short, if there be no fracture, my head is severely
shaken." A fortnight after leaving the bay, he writes him again: "I
know I ought to give up for a little while; my head is splitting at
this moment;" and Nicolas remarks that the letter bears evident marks
of suffering, three attempts being made to spell the word "splitting."
Yet by this time the pain had become at least intermittent, for
Saumarez, whose squadron fell in with the admiral's division several
times, notes that on the 26th of August he spent half an hour on board
the flagship, and found him in perfect health; and on the 7th of
September Nelson himself writes to the British minister at Florence
that he felt so much recovered, it was probable he would not go home
for the present. A few days later he wrote to Hood, off Alexandria,
that he relied upon the thoroughness of the blockade to complete the
destruction of the French army. "I shall not go home," he added,
"until this is effected, and the islands of Malta, Corfu, &c.,
retaken."
It is to the furtherance of these objects, all closely allied, and in
his apprehension mutually dependent, that his occasional letters are
directed. His sphere of operations he plainly conceives to be from
Malta, eastward, to Syria inclusive. "I detest this voyage to Naples,"
he wrote to St. Vincent, two days before reaching the port. "Nothing
but absolute necessity could force me to the measure. Syracuse in
future, whilst my operations lie on the eastern side of Sicily, is my
port, where every refreshment may be had for a fleet." The present
necessity was that of refit and repair, to which Syracuse was
inadequate. "For myself," he sent word to Sir William Hamilton, "I
hope not to be more than four or five days at Naples, for these times
are not for idleness." Not long after his arrival this conviction as
to the movements requiring his personal presence underwent an entire
change; and thenceforth, till he left for England two years later, it
was only the presence of clear emergency, appealing to his martial
instincts and calling forth the sense of duty which lay at the root of
his character, that could persuade him his proper place was elsewhere
than at the Court of Naples. It is only fair to add that, upon the
receipt of the news of his great victory, the Admiralty designated to
St. Vincent, as first in order among the cares of the squadron within
the Mediterranean, "the protection of the coasts of Sicily, Naples,
and the Adriatic, and, in the event of war being renewed in Italy, an
active co-operation with the Austrian and Neapolitan armies." Long
before these instructions were received, the very day indeed that they
were written, Nelson had become urgently instrumental in precipitating
Naples into war. Next in order of interest, by the Admiralty's
letters, were, successively, the isolation of Egypt and of Malta, and
co-operation with the Russian and Turkish squadrons which, it was
expected, would be sent into the Archipelago, and which actually did
attack and capture Corfu. The letter thus summarized may be taken to
indicate the general extent of Nelson's charge during the two
following years.
It may be said, then, without error, that Nelson's opinion as to the
direction of his personal supervision underwent a decisive change
after his arrival in Naples. Before it, he is urgent with that Court
to support with active naval assistance the operations against Malta,
and to send bomb-vessels, the absence of which he continually
deplores, to shell the transports in the harbor of Alexandria. He
hopes, indeed, to find on his arrival that the Emperor and many other
powers are at war with the French, but his attention is concentrated
upon Bonaparte's army. To the British minister in Turkey he is yet
more insistent as to what the Sultan should undertake. If he will but
send a few ships-of-the-line, and some bombs, he will destroy all
their transports in Alexandria; and an army of ten thousand men may
retake Alexandria immediately, as the French have only four thousand
men in it. Subsequent events showed this forecast of Nelson's to be as
erroneous as those of Napoleon were at times in regard to naval
prospects. "General Bonaparte," he continues, "only wants a
communication opened by sea, to march into Syria, that the transports
with stores, &c., for the army, may go alongshore with him." This he
had learned from French officers who were prisoners on board, and we
know it corresponded with the facts. "If the Sultan will not send
anything, he will lose Syria." "Naples," he tells St Vincent, "is
saved in spite of herself. They have evidently broken their treaty
with France, and yet are afraid to assist in finishing the vast
armament of the French. Four hours with bomb vessels, would set all in
a blaze, and we know what an army is without stores." This
anticipation also proved deceptive; but the expressions quoted are
fair examples of the general tenor of his letters between Aboukir and
Naples, and show his feeling that the important points of his command
lay to the east of Sicily.
The same tendency was shown upon the appearance of a Portuguese
squadron of four ships-of-the-line, which entered the Mediterranean in
July with orders to place themselves under his command. He first
learned the fact upon this passage, and at once sent a frigate to
Alexandria to beg the Portuguese admiral, the Marquis de Niza, to
assume the blockade, as the most important service to be rendered the
common cause. When the frigate reached its destination, Niza had come
and gone, and Nelson then headed him off at the Strait of Messina, on
his way to Naples, and sent him to blockade Malta. It may be added
that this squadron remained under his command until December, 1799,
and was of substantial utility in the various operations. Nelson
professed no great confidence in its efficiency, which was not
subjected to the severest tests; but he made a handsome acknowledgment
to its commander when it was recalled to Lisbon.
On the 22d of September the flagship anchored at Naples. On the 15th
her foremast had been carried away in a squall, and the "poor wretched
Vanguard," as Nelson called her, having to be towed by a frigate, her
two crippled consorts preceded her arrival by six days. The news of
the victory had been brought three weeks before by the "Mutine," on
the 1st of September. The Court party had gone wild with joy, in which
the populace, naturally hostile to the French, had joined with
southern vivacity of expression. Captain Capel, who commanded the
brig, with Lieutenant Hoste, who was to succeed him when he departed
with the despatches for England, had been at once taken to Court and
presented. When they left the palace they were met by Lady Hamilton,
who made them get into her carriage, and with characteristic bad taste
and love of notoriety paraded them until dark through the streets of
this neutral capital, she wearing a bandeau round her forehead with
the words, "Nelson and Victory." "The populace saw and understood what
it meant," wrote Hoste, "and 'Viva Nelson!' resounded through the
streets. You can have no idea of the rejoicings that were made
throughout Naples. Bonfires and illuminations all over the town;
indeed, it would require an abler pen than I am master of to give you
any account but what will fall infinitely short of what was the case."
By Nelson's orders the "Mutine" sailed in a few days to meet him with
despatches, and on the 14th of September joined the division off
Stromboli. With more important information, and letters from persons
of greater consequence, she had brought also one from Lady Hamilton,
giving a vivid picture of the general joy, and in particular an
account of the Queen's state of mind, so highly colored and detailed
that Nelson could only hope he might not be witness to a renewal of
it, but which so impressed him that he quoted it at length to Lady
Nelson. When the "Vanguard" approached the town, crowds of boats went
out to meet her, and His Sicilian Majesty himself came on board when
she was still a league from the anchorage. He had been preceded by the
British ambassador with Lady Hamilton. The latter, having had only
three weeks to recover from the first shock of the news, was greatly
overcome, and dropped her lovely face and by no means slender figure
into the arms of the admiral, who, on his part, could scarcely fail to
be struck with the pose of one whose attitudes compelled the
admiration of the most exacting critics. "The scene in the boat was
terribly affecting," he wrote to his wife. "Up flew her ladyship, and
exclaiming, 'O God, is it possible?' she fell into my arm more dead
than alive. Tears, however, soon set matters to rights."
This was the beginning of an intimacy destined, in the end, to affect
profoundly and unhappily the future of Nelson. Although Sir William
Hamilton, in his own congratulatory letter by the "Mutine," called him
"our bosom friend," they do not seem to have met since the summer of
1793, when the young captain carried Hood's despatches from Toulon to
Naples; and Nelson, while acknowledging on the present occasion the
kindness of an invitation to take up his quarters at the embassy, had
expressed a preference for rooms at a hotel, on account of the
business to be transacted. This reluctance, however, was easily and
properly overruled, and immediately after anchoring he went to live at
the ambassador's house, which, under the management of the celebrated
woman who presided there, became the social centre of the welcomes
lavished not only upon himself, but upon all the officers of the
ships.
Emma, Lady Hamilton, the second wife of Sir William, was at this time
thirty-three years old, her husband being sixty-eight. Her name, when
first entering the world, was Amy Lyon. Born in Cheshire of extremely
poor parents, in the humblest walk of life, she had found her way up
to London, while yet little more than a child, and there, having a
beautiful face, much natural charm of manner and disposition, utterly
inexperienced, and with scarcely any moral standards,--of which her
life throughout shows but little trace,--she was speedily ruined, fell
so far, in fact, that even with all her attractions it seemed doubtful
whether any man would own himself responsible for her condition, or
befriend her. In these circumstances, when not yet seventeen, she was
taken up by a nephew of Sir William Hamilton, Mr. Charles Greville,
who recognized not merely her superficial loveliness, but something of
the mental and moral traits underlying it, which promised a capacity
for development into an interesting and affectionate household
companion. Upon her promises of amendment, in the matter of future
relations with men, and of submission to his guidance and wishes in
the general conduct of her life, he took her in charge, and the two
lived together for nearly four years.
Greville bestowed a good deal of pains upon her training, and was
rewarded, not only by gratitude and careful compliance with his
directions, but by her sincere and devoted affection. The girl became
heartily and fondly in love with him, finding both contentment and
happiness in the simply ordered home provided for her. Her education,
which hitherto was of the smallest, received attention,--her letters
showing a very great improvement both in spelling and mode of
expression by the end of their association. On the moral side, of
course, there was not much development to be expected from one whose
standards, with less excuse, were in no way better than her own. On
this side Greville's teaching was purely utilitarian. Her position
was considered as a calling,--success in which demanded certain
proprieties and accomplishments, only to be attained by the practice
of habitual self-control, alike in doing and in not doing.
The future Lady Hamilton was affectionate and impulsive, good-humored,
with generous instincts and a quick temper; but she was also ambitious
and exceptionally clever. She loved Greville warmly; but she took to
heart the hard truths of his teachings, and they sank deep in a
congenial soil. Under the influence of the two motives, she applied
herself to gain, and did gain, a certain degree of external niceness
and self-control. Her affection for Greville made her willing, for his
sake, because he was not rich, to live quietly, to accept modest
surroundings, and to discard whatever was coarse in associates, or
unbecoming in her own person or conduct. He, while relaxing none of
his requirements, repaid her with courtesy and increasing admiration,
than which nothing was dearer to her; for, if not appreciative of the
satisfaction of self-respect, she was keenly alive to the delights of
homage from others, though extorted by purely adventitious qualities.
Glory was to her more than honor. This love of admiration, fostered,
yet pruned, by Greville's shrewd precepts, was her dominant trait. To
its gratification her singular personal advantages contributed, and
they were powerfully supported by an unusual faculty for assuming a
part, for entering into a character and representing its external
traits. Thus gifted by nature, and swayed by vanity, her development
was for the time regulated and chastened by the disinterestedness of
her passion for her lover. Her worse qualities were momentarily kept
in abeyance. Naturally lovable, not only in exterior but in
temperament, she became more and more attractive. "Consider," wrote
Greville, referring to her surroundings before she passed into his
hands, "what a charming creature she would have been, if she had been
blessed with the advantages of an early education, and had not been
spoilt by the indulgence of every caprice."
Unfortunately the restraining influence, probably ephemeral in any
event, was about to be rudely removed, permitting to flourish in
unrestrained vigor the natural tendency to compel admiration and
secure advantage by the spell of physical beauty, and by the exertion
of natural aptitudes for pleasing in the only path to success open to
her. In 1782 Hamilton's first wife died, and in 1784 he came to
England on leave. There he met Amy Lyon, now known as Emma Hart, in
the house provided for her by Greville. His admiration of her was
extreme, and its tendency was not misunderstood by her. He returned to
his post at Naples at the end of the year. In the course of 1785
Greville, who was now in his thirty-sixth year, decided that the
condition of his fortune made it imperative for him to marry, and that
as a first step thereto he must break with Emma Hart. Hamilton's
inclination for her provided a ready means for so doing, so far as the
two men were concerned; but her concurrence was not sure. After some
correspondence, it was arranged that she should go to Naples in the
spring of 1786, to live there under Hamilton's care, with the
expectation on her part that Greville would join her a few months
later. Placed as she then would be, it was probable that she would
eventually accept the offers made her; though it would be less than
just to either Greville or Hamilton, to allow the impression that they
did not intend to provide sufficiently for her needs, whatever her
decision.
In this way she left England in the spring of 1786, reaching Naples on
the 26th of April. When the poor girl, after many of her letters to
her lover remained unanswered, fully realized, that the separation was
final, her grief was extreme, and found utterance in words of
tenderness and desolation, which, however undisciplined in expression,
are marked by genuine pathos. But anger struggled with sorrow for the
mastery in her soul. She was too keen-witted not to have had an
inkling of the possible outcome of her departure from England, and of
the doubtful position she was occupying at Naples; but her wishes had
made her willingly deaf to any false ring in the assurances given her
by Greville, and she resented not only the abandonment, but the deceit
which she, justly or unjustly, conceived to have been practised, while
her womanliness revolted from the cold-blooded advice given by him to
accept the situation. The conflict was so sharp that for a time both
he and Hamilton expected she would return to England; but Greville had
not labored in vain at what he was pleased to consider her education.
By the end of the year she was addressing Hamilton in words of very
fairly assumed affection, but not until she had written to Greville,
with a certain haughty desperation, "If you affront me, I will make
him marry me." The threat was two-edged, for Hamilton intended
Greville to be his heir; but the latter probably gave little heed to a
contingency he must have thought very unlikely for a man of fifty-six,
who had passed his life in the world, and held Hamilton's public
position.
To effect this, however, Emma Hart now bent her personal charms,
strong purpose, and the worldly wisdom with which Greville had taught
her to assure her hold upon a man. Love, in its unselfishness, passed
out of her life with Greville. Other men might find her pliant,
pleasing, seductive; he alone knew her as disinterested. She followed
out her design with a patience, astuteness, and consistency which
attest the strength of her resolution, and her acute intellectual
perception of the advantages at her disposal. Ambition, a natural
trait with her, had been trained to self-control, in order to compass
a lowly, colorless success. Unlooked-for opportunity now held before
her eyes, distant and difficult of attainment, but not impossible, a
position of assured safety, luxury, and prominence, which appealed
powerfully to the love of pleasure, still dormant, and to the love of
conspicuousness, which became the two most noticeable features of her
character.
With all her natural advantages, however, the way was hard and long.
She had to become indispensable to Hamilton, and at the same time, and
by the same methods, an object the more desirable to him because of
her evident attractiveness to others. Above all, she had to contend
with her own temper, naturally lively and prone to bursts of anger,
which the prolonged suspense of the struggle, acting upon a woman's
nerves, tended peculiarly to exasperate. Hamilton was of an age when
he might be enslaved by fondness, but not constrained by strength of
passion to endure indefinitely household tempests, much less to
perpetuate them upon himself by lasting bonds. In all this Emma Hart
showed herself fully equal to the task. Tenderly affectionate to him,
except when carried away by the fits of irritability which both he and
Greville had occasion to observe, she complied readily with all his
wishes, and followed out with extraordinary assiduity his plans for
her improvement in education and in accomplishments. The society which
gathered round them was, of course, almost wholly of men, who one and
all prostrated themselves before her beauty and cleverness, with the
same unanimity of submission as did the officers of Nelson's division
after the Battle of the Nile. But, while giving free rein to coquetry,
and revelling in admiration, she afforded no ground for scandal to the
world, or dissatisfaction to Hamilton. In the attitude of outsiders
towards her, he had reason to see only the general testimony to her
charms and to his own good fortune. At the end of 1787 he wrote to
Greville: "I can assure you her behaviour is such as has acquired her
many sensible admirers, and we have a good man society, and all the
female nobility, with the queen at their head, show her every distant
civility."
Thus she persisted, keeping her beauty, and growing in mental
acquirements and accomplishments, but making little apparent headway
towards the great object of her ambition. "I fear," wrote Hamilton
towards the middle of 1789, when she had been three years with him,
"her views are beyond what I can bring myself to execute; and that
when her hopes on that point are over, she will make herself and me
unhappy. Hitherto her behaviour is irreproachable, but her temper, as
you must know, unequal." He underrated her perseverance, and
exaggerated his own strength of reluctance, innate and acquired.
Impossible as it would seem, with his antecedents and with hers, his
friends and acquaintances became alarmed for the result, and not
without cause. "Her influence over him exceeds all belief," wrote a
mutual friend to Greville in March, 1791. "His attachment exceeds
admiration, it is perfect dotage." Shortly after this letter was
written the two went to England, and there they were married on the
6th of September, 1791. By the end of the year they were back in
Naples, and did not again leave Italy up to the time of Nelson's
arrival in 1798.
Lady Hamilton did not abuse the security of the place she had won with
so much pains, nor on the other hand did her ambition and love of
prominence permit her to settle down to inert enjoyment of it. The
careful self-restraint with which she had observed the proprieties of
her former false position facilitated the disappearance of prejudices
naturally arising from it. Many English ladies of rank, passing
through Naples, visited her, and those who refused to ignore the past
of the woman, in the position of the British minister's wife, were by
some sharply criticised. "She has had a difficult part to act," wrote
Hamilton, six months after their return, "and has succeeded
wonderfully, having gained, by having no pretensions, the thorough
approbation of all the English ladies. The Queen of Naples was very
kind to her on our return, and treats her like any other travelling
lady of distinction; in short, we are very comfortably situated
here." "We dined yesterday with Sir William and Lady Hamilton," wrote
Lady Malmesbury, whose husband was among the most distinguished
diplomatists of the day. "She really behaves as well as possible, and
quite wonderfully, considering her origin and education."
This last phrase, used at the culmination of Lady Hamilton's good
fortune and personal advance, was wholly good-natured; but it sums up
the best of the not very good that can be said of her during the
height of her prosperity, and in later years. Although, as has been
remarked, she did not at this time abuse the security which as a wife
she had attained,--for policy too clearly dictated the continuance of
her previous circumspection,--the necessity for strenuous
watchfulness, exertion, and self-restraint, in order to reach a
distant goal, no longer existed; and, although a woman of many amiable
and generous impulses, she had not a shred of principle to take the
place of the motive of self-interest, which hitherto had been so
peremptory in its exactions. What she was in delicacy in 1791, that
she remained in 1796,--five years after the disappearance of her
social disabilities; a pretty fair proof that what she possessed of it
was but skin deep, the result of a diligent observance of Greville's
proprieties, for her personal advantage, not the token of a noble
inner spirit struggling from excusable defilement to the light. "She
does the honours of the house with great attention and desire to
please," wrote Greville's correspondent of 1791, before quoted, "but
wants a little refinement of manners, in which, in the course of six
years, I wonder she has not made greater progress." "She is all Nature
and yet all Art," said Sir Gilbert Elliot, in 1796; "that is to say,
her manners are perfectly unpolished, of course very easy, though not
with the ease of good breeding, but of a barmaid; excessively good
humoured, and wishing to please and be admired by all ages and sorts
of persons that come in her way; but besides considerable natural
understanding, she has acquired, since her marriage, some knowledge of
history and of the arts, and one wonders at the application and pains
she has taken to make herself what she is. With men her language and
conversation are exaggerations of anything I ever heard anywhere; and
I was wonderfully struck with these inveterate remains of her origin,
though the impression was very much weakened by seeing the other
ladies of Naples." "I thought her a very handsome, vulgar woman,"
curtly commented the lieutenant of a frigate which visited Naples in
the summer of 1798, while hunting for Nelson in the game of
cross-purposes that preceded the Nile.[70] Allowing for difference of
observers, it is plain that the Lady Hamilton whom Nelson now met, had
not improved in essentials over the Emma Hart of a half-dozen years
before.
Two years afterwards, the verdict of these men was confirmed by Mrs.
St. George,[71] a lady in London society, who viewed her possibly with
something of the repugnant prejudice of a refined and cultivated
woman, yet evidently measured her words calmly, even in her private
journal. "I think her bold, daring, vain even to folly, and stamped
with the manners of her first situation much more strongly than one
would suppose, after having represented Majesty, and lived in good
company fifteen years. Her dress is frightful. Her waist is absolutely
between her shoulders." Nelson measured her by a different standard.
"In every point of view," he tells herself, "from Ambassatrice to the
duties of domestic life, I never saw your equal. That elegance of
manners, accomplishments, and, above all, your goodness of heart, is
unparalleled." The same lady describes her personal appearance, at the
time when his devotion had reached the height from which it never
declined. "Her figure is colossal, but, excepting her feet, which are
hideous, well shaped. Her bones are large, and she is exceedingly
_embonpoint_. The shape of all her features is fine, as is the form of
her head, and particularly her ears; her teeth are a little irregular,
but tolerably white; her eyes light blue, with a brown spot in one,
which, though a defect, takes nothing away from her beauty or
expression. Her eyebrows and hair (which, by the bye, is never clean)
are dark, and her complexion coarse. Her expression is strongly
marked, variable, and interesting; her movements in common life
ungraceful; her voice loud, yet not disagreeable." Elliot's briefer
mention of her appearance is at once confirmatory and complementary of
that of Mrs. St. George: "Her person is nothing short of monstrous for
its enormity, and is growing every day. Her face is beautiful."
To these opinions it may be not uninteresting to add the critical
estimate of William Beckford, uttered many years later. Beckford was
not an admirable character, far from it; but he had known good
society, and he had cultivated tastes. Nelson accepted his
hospitality, and, with the Hamiltons, spent several days under his
roof, about Christmas time, 1800. In reply to the question, "Was the
second Lady Hamilton a fascinating woman?" he said, "I never thought
her so. She was somewhat masculine, but symmetrical in figure, so that
Sir William called her his Grecian. She was full in person, not fat,
but _embonpoint_. Her carriage often majestic, rather than feminine.
Not at all delicate, ill-bred, often very affected, a devil in temper
when set on edge. She had beautiful hair and displayed it. Her
countenance was agreeable,--fine, hardly beautiful, but the outline
excellent. She affected sensibility, but felt none--was artful; and no
wonder, she had been trained in the Court of Naples--a fine school for
an English woman of any stamp. Nelson was infatuated. She could make
him believe anything, that the profligate queen was a Madonna. He was
her dupe. She never had a child in her life."[72] As to this last
assertion, Beckford was not in a position to have personal knowledge.
But along with this native coarseness, which, if not ineradicable, was
never eradicated, she possessed an intuitive and perfect sense,
amounting to genius, for what propriety and good taste demanded in the
presentation of an ideal part,--the gift of the born actress. Of her
powers in this way the celebrated "Attitudes" were the chief example,
and there is no disagreement among the witnesses, either as to their
charm or as to the entire disappearance of the every-day woman in the
assumed character. "We had the attitudes a night or two ago by candle
light," wrote Sir Gilbert Elliot in 1796. "They come up to my
expectations fully, which is saying everything. They set Lady Hamilton
in a very different light from any I had seen her in before; nothing
about her, neither her conversation, her manners, nor figure, announce
the very refined taste which she discovers in this performance,
besides the extraordinary talent which is needed for the execution."
"You never saw anything so charming as Lady Hamilton's attitudes,"
wrote Lady Malmesbury in 1791. "The most graceful statues or pictures
do not give you an idea of them." "It is a beautiful performance,"
wrote Mrs. St. George, who saw her in 1800, when the Hamiltons and
Nelson were travelling on the Continent, "amusing to the most
ignorant, and highly interesting to the lovers of art. It is
remarkable that although coarse and ungraceful in common life, she
becomes highly graceful, and even beautiful, during this performance.
It is also singular that, in spite of the accuracy of her imitation of
the finest ancient draperies, her usual dress is tasteless, vulgar,
loaded and unbecoming."
The stormy period of the French Revolution, which was about to burst
into universal war at the time she was married, gave Lady Hamilton
another opportunity to come yet more conspicuously before men's eyes
than she had hitherto done. It is not easy to say what degree of
influence she really attained, or what particular results she may have
effected; but she certainly managed to give herself so much the air of
a person of importance, in the political intrigues of the day in
Naples, as at the least to impose successfully upon a great many, and
to be accepted very much at her own valuation. The French ambassador,
writing to Bonaparte in 1798, says: "If the preponderance which the
French Republic ought to take here, removed hence Acton and the wife
of Hamilton, this country, without other changes, would be extremely
useful for the execution of all your projects in the Mediterranean;"
and Sir William himself, who should have known, speaks of her activity
and utility,--"for several years the real and only confidential friend
of the Queen of Naples." Nelson, writing to the Queen of Naples in
1804, after Hamilton's death, said: "Your Majesty well knows that it
was her capacity and conduct which sustained his diplomatic character
during the last years in which he was at Naples."[73] Certainly,
Nelson believed, with all the blindness of love, whatever his mistress
chose to tell him, but he was not without close personal knowledge of
the inside history of at least two of those last years; for, in 1801,
addressing Mr. Addington, then Prime Minister, he used these words:
"Having for a length of time seen the correspondence both public and
private, from all the Neapolitan ministers to their Government and to
the Queen of Naples, I am perfectly acquainted with the views of the
several Powers." For her success Lady Hamilton was indebted, partly to
her personal advantages, and partly to her position as wife of the
British minister and chosen friend to the Queen. Great Britain played
a leading part everywhere in the gigantic struggle throughout the
Continent, but to a remote peninsular kingdom like Naples, protected
by its distance from the centres of strife, yet not wholly
inaccessible by land, the chief maritime state was the one and only
sufficient ally. A rude reminder of his exposure to naval attack had
been given to the King of the Two Sicilies, in 1792, by the appearance
of a French fleet, which extorted satisfaction for an alleged insult,
by threatening instant bombardment of his capital.
Sir William Hamilton, who had been minister since 1765, thus found
himself suddenly converted from a dilettante and sportsman, lounging
through life, into a busy diplomat, at the centre of affairs of
critical moment. At sixty-two the change could scarcely have been
welcome to him, but to his beautiful and ambitious wife the access of
importance was sweet, for it led to a close friendship with the Queen,
already disposed to affect her, even in the notorious position she had
held before her marriage; and the Queen, a daughter of Maria Theresa
and sister to Marie Antoinette, was much more of a man than the King.
The intimacy became the talk of Naples, and the report spread, easily
believed, because in the nature of things very likely, that the
personal relations between the two women cloaked a great deal of
underhand work, such as often accompanies diplomatic difficulties. Nor
did Lady Hamilton lack natural qualifications for the position into
which she undoubtedly wished to thrust herself. She was a brave,
capable, full-blooded, efficient woman, not to be daunted by fears or
scruples; a woman who, if only nerve and intelligence were required,
and if distinction for herself was at stake, could be fairly depended
upon. There was in her make-up a good deal of pagan virtue. She could
appreciate and admire heroism, and, under the stimulus of excitement,
of self-conscious magnanimity, for the glitter of effective
performance and the applause of onlookers, she was quite capable of
heroic action. It was this daring spirit, coarsely akin to much that
was best in himself, and of which she made proof under his own eyes,
that Nelson recognized; and this, in the thought of the writer, was
the body of truth, from which his enthusiasm, enkindled by her charms
and by her tenderness towards himself, projected such a singular
phantasm of romantic perfections.
Such was the woman, and such the position in the public eye that she
had gained for herself, when to Naples, first in the European
continent, came the news which made Nelson for the moment the most
conspicuous man of the day. He had achieved a triumph the most
startlingly dazzling that had yet been gained, and over one who up to
that time had excelled all other warriors in the brilliancy and extent
of his victories. Bonaparte was not yet the Napoleon whom history
knows, but thus far he had been the most distinguished child of the
Revolution. That Lady Hamilton then and there formed the purpose of
attaching Nelson to her, by the bonds which have sullied his memory,
is most improbable; but it is in entire keeping with the career and
the self-revelations of the woman that she should, instinctively, if
not with deliberation, have resolved to parade herself in the glare of
his renown, and appear in the foreground upon the stage of his
triumph, the chief dispenser of his praises, the patroness and
proprietor of the hero. The great occasion should shed a glamour round
her, together with him. "Emma's passion is admiration," Greville had
written soon after they parted, "and it is capable of aspiring to any
line which would be celebrated, and it would be indifferent, when on
that key, whether she was Lucretia or Sappho, or Scævola or Regulus;
anything grand, masculine or feminine, she could take up."
Unhappily, Nelson was not able to stand the heady dose of flattery
administered by a woman of such conspicuous beauty and consummate art;
nor was his taste discriminating enough to experience any wholesome
revolt against the rankness of the draught she offered him. The quick
appreciation of the born actress, which enabled her when on the stage
to clothe herself with a grace and refinement that dropped away when
she left it, conspired with his simplicity of confidence in others,
and his strong tendency to idealize, to invest her with a character
very different from the true. Not that the Lady Hamilton of reality
was utterly different from the Lady Hamilton of his imagination. That
she ever loved him is doubtful; but there were in her spirit impulses
capable of sympathetic response to his own in his bravest acts, though
not in his noblest motives. It is inconceivable that duty ever
appealed, to her as it did to him, nor could a woman of innate
nobility of character have dragged a man of Nelson's masculine renown
about England and the Continent, till he was the mock of all
beholders; but on the other hand it never could have occurred to the
energetic, courageous, brilliant Lady Hamilton, after the lofty deeds
and stirring dramatic scenes of St. Vincent, to beg him, as Lady
Nelson did, "to leave boarding to captains." Sympathy, not good taste,
would have withheld her. In Lady Nelson's letters there is evidence
enough of a somewhat colorless womanly affection, but not a thrill of
response to the greatness of her husband's daring, even when
surrounded herself by the acclamations it called forth.
What Nelson had never yet found in woman Lady Hamilton gave
him,--admiration and appreciation, undisguised and unmeasured, yet
bestowed by one who had the power, by the admission of even unfriendly
critics, of giving a reality and grace to the part she was performing.
He was soon at her feet. The playful gallantry with which Ball,
Elliot, and even old St. Vincent[74] himself, paid court to a handsome
woman, greedy of homage, became in Nelson a serious matter. Romantic
in temperament, he was all day in flattering contact with her. Worn
out and ill from that "fever of anxiety," to use his own words, which
he had endured since the middle of June, she attended and nursed him.
"Lady Hamilton," he exclaimed to Lady Nelson, with enthusiasm
undiscriminating in more ways than one, "is one of the very best women
in this world; she is an honour to her sex." A week later he tells
her, with an odd collocation of persons: "My pride is being your
husband, the son of my dear father, and in having Sir William and Lady
Hamilton for my friends. While these approve my conduct, I shall not
feel or regard the envy of thousands." The matter was passing rapidly
into the platonic stage, in which Sir William was also erelong
assigned an appropriate, if not wholly flattering, position. "What can
I say of hers and Sir William's attention to me? They are in fact,
with the exception of you and my good father, the dearest friends I
have in this world. I live as Sir William's son in the house, and my
glory is as dear to them as their own; in short, I am under such
obligations as I can never repay but with my eternal gratitude."
"Naples is a dangerous place," he sagely tells Lord St. Vincent, "and
we must keep clear of it. I am writing opposite Lady Hamilton,
therefore you will not be surprised at the glorious jumble of this
letter. Were your Lordship in my place, I much doubt if you could
write so well; our hearts and our hands must be all in a flutter."
Matters progressed; within ten days the veteran seaman learned, among
other concerns of more or less official importance, that "Lady
Hamilton is an Angel. She has honoured me by being my ambassadress to
the queen: therefore she has my implicit confidence and is worthy of
it."
That such intimacy and such relations resulted in no influence upon
the admiral's public action is not to be believed. That he consciously
perverted his views is improbable, but that he saw duty under other
than normal lights is not only probable, but evident. His whole
emotional nature was stirred as it never had been. Incipient love and
universal admiration had created in him a tone of mind, and brought to
birth feelings, which he had, seemingly, scarcely known. "I cannot
write a stiff formal public letter," he tells St. Vincent effusively.
"You must make one or both so. I feel you are my friend, and my heart
yearns to you." Such extravagance of expression and relaxation of
official tone has no pertinent cause, and is at least noteworthy. The
Court, or rather the Queen through Lady Hamilton, took possession of
him. He became immediately one of the little coterie centring round
Her Majesty, and he reflected its tone and partisanship, which,
fostered probably in the intimate conversations of the two women, were
readily transmitted to the minister by the wife whom he adored. The
Queen, impetuous, enterprising, and headstrong, like her mother and
sister, moved more by feminine feelings of hatred and revenge against
the French than by well-balanced considerations of policy, not only
favored war, but wished to precipitate the action of the Emperor by
immediately attacking the French in the Roman territory. The decision
and daring of such a course was so consonant to Nelson's own
temperament that he readily sympathized; but it is impossible to admit
its wisdom, from either a political or military standpoint. It was an
excessively bad combination, substituting isolated attacks for
co-operation, and risking results upon the chance of prompt support,
by a state which would be offended and embarrassed by the step taken.
Under ordinary conditions Nelson might have seen this, but he was well
handled. Within three days he had been persuaded that upon his
personal presence depended the salvation of Italy. "My head is quite
healed, and, if it were necessary, I could not at present leave Italy,
who looks up to me as, under God, its Protector." He continually, by
devout recollection of his indebtedness to God, seeks to keep himself
in hand. "I am placed by Providence in that situation, that all my
caution will be necessary to prevent vanity from showing itself
superior to my gratitude and thankfulness,"--but the current was too
strong for him, and was swollen to a torrent by the streams of
adulation, which from all quarters flowed in upon a temperament only
too disposed to accept them. "Could I, my dearest Fanny," he writes to
Lady Nelson, "tell you half the honours which are shown me here, not a
ream of paper would hold it." A grand ball was given on his birthday,
September 29; and a rostral column was "erected under a magnificent
canopy, never, Lady Hamilton says, to come down while they remain at
Naples." Within a week the conviction of his own importance led him to
write to Lady Hamilton, evidently for transmission to the Queen, an
opinion, or rather an urgent expression of advice, that Naples should
at once begin war. It is only conjectural to say that this opinion,
which rested on no adequate knowledge of the strength of the
Neapolitan Kingdom, was elicited by the Queen through Lady Hamilton;
but the inference derives support from the words, "I have read with
admiration the queen's dignified and incomparable letter of September,
1796,"--two years before. That his views were not the simple outcome
of his own unbiassed study of the situation is evident enough. "This
country, by its system of procrastination, will ruin itself," he
writes to St. Vincent, the very day after drawing up the letter in
question; "the queen sees it and thinks"--not as I do, but--"as _we_
do." That Lady Hamilton was one of the "we" is plain, for in the
postscript to the letter he says: "Your Ladyship will, I beg, receive
this letter as a _preparative for Sir William Hamilton,_ to whom I am
writing, with all respect, the firm and unalterable opinion of a
British admiral," etc. Certainly these words--taken with those already
quoted, and written just a week afterwards, "Lady Hamilton has been my
ambassadress to the queen"--indicate that she was the intermediary
between Nelson and the Court, as well as between him and her husband.
There is no record of any official request for this unofficial and
irregular communication of the opinion of a British admiral; and, of
course, when a man has allowed himself, unasked, though not
unprompted, to press such a line of action, he has bound himself
personally, and embarrassed himself officially, in case it turns out
badly. Nelson very soon, within a fortnight, had to realize this, in
the urgent entreaties of the Court not to forsake them; and to see
reason for thinking "that a strong wish for our squadron's being on
the Coast of Naples is, that in case of any mishap, that their
Majesties think their persons much safer under the protection of the
British flag than under any other;" that is--than under their own.
They could not trust their own people; they could not, as the event
proved, trust their army in the field; and the veteran Neapolitan
naval officer, Caracciolo, whether he deserved confidence or not, was
stung to the quick when, in the event, they sought refuge with a
foreign admiral instead of with himself. That Nelson should not have
known all this, ten days after reaching Naples, was pardonable enough,
and, if formally asked for advice without such facts being placed
before him, he could not be responsible for an error thus arising; but
the case is very different when advice is volunteered. He is more
peremptory than the minister himself. "You will not believe I have
said or done anything, without the approbation of Sir William
Hamilton. His Excellency is too good to them, and the strong language
of an English Admiral telling them plain truths of their miserable
system may do good."
The particular position of Naples relatively to France was this.
French troops had for a year past occupied the Roman Republic, which
had been established by them upon the overthrow of the Papal
Government. Their presence there was regarded by Nelson as a constant
threat to the Two Sicilies, and this to an extent was true; but rather
because of the contagion of revolutionary ideas than from the military
point of view. From the latter, it should have been obvious to a man
like Nelson that the French must be deterred, under existing
conditions, from entering Naples unprovoked; because the farther they
advanced the more exposed was their army, in case war, which was
darkly threatening, should be renewed in Upper Italy. They dared not,
unless by folly, or because first attacked, prolong their already too
extended ex-centric movement into Lower Italy. This was true, taking
account of Austria only; but now that the British fleet was released
by the entire destruction of the French at the Nile, and could operate
anywhere on the coast, it would be doubly imprudent; and when the news
that it had been done reached Egypt, Bonaparte, who had himself felt
the weight of Naples as a possible enemy, remote and feeble as she
was, exclaimed, "Italy is lost!" That Naples should co-operate in the
general movement against France was right, although, as Nelson well
knew, she had never dared do so under much more favorable
conditions,--a fact which by itself should have suggested to him
caution; but that she should act alone, with the idea of precipitating
war, refusing to await the moment fixed by the principal states, was
folly. This, however, was the course determined, under the combined
impulse of the Queen, Lady Hamilton, and Nelson; and it was arranged
that, after visiting the blockade off Malta, he should return to
Naples to co-operate in the intended movement.
On the 15th of October Nelson sailed from Naples for Malta in the
"Vanguard," with three ships-of-the-line which had lately joined him.
He still felt, with accurate instinct, that Egypt and the Ionian
Islands, with Malta, constituted the more purely maritime interests,
in dealing with which the fleet would most further the general cause,
and he alludes frequently to his wish to attend to them; but he
promised the King that he would be back in Naples in the first week of
November, to support the projected movement against the French. He
remained off Malta, therefore, only one week, during which adequate
arrangements were made for the blockade of the island, which had been
formally proclaimed on the 12th of October, and was conducted for most
of the following year by the Portuguese squadron; the senior British
officer, Captain Ball, acting ashore with the insurgent Maltese. These
had risen against the French during the summer, and now held them shut
up in La Valetta. The adjacent island of Gozo surrendered to the
British on the 28th. Hood continued in charge off Alexandria with
three ships-of-the-line; while the Ionian Islands were left to
themselves, until a combined Russian and Turkish squadron entered the
Mediterranean a few weeks later.
On the 5th of November Nelson returned to Naples. "I am, I fear, drawn
into a promise that Naples Bay shall never be left without an English
man-of-war. I never intended leaving the coast of Naples without one;
but if I had, who could resist the request of such a queen?" He could
ground much upon the Admiralty's orders, given when he was first sent
into the Mediterranean, to protect the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies,
and he had understood that the Emperor also would give his aid, if
Naples attacked. This impression received strength from an Austrian
general, Mack,--then of high reputation, but afterwards better known
by his surrender to Napoleon at Ulm, in 1805,--being sent to command
the Neapolitan army. Sir William Hamilton, however, writing on the
26th of October, was more accurate in saying that the Emperor only
advised the King "to act openly against the French _at Malta_, as he
would certainly support him;" for, Naples having a feudal claim upon
the island, action there could be represented as merely resistance to
aggression. In consequence of this misunderstanding, great confusion
ensued in the royal councils when a courier from Vienna brought word,
on the 13th of November, that that Court wished it left to the French
to begin hostilities; otherwise, it would give no assurance of help.
Nelson was now formally one of the Council which deliberated upon
military operations. In virtue of this position he spoke out, roughly
enough. "I ventured to tell their Majesties that one of the following
things must happen to the King, and he had his choice,--'Either to
advance, trusting to God for his blessing on a just cause, to die with
_l'épée à la main_, or remain quiet and be kicked out of your
Kingdoms.'" Thus rudely adjured, the King decided to be a hero after
the pattern of Nelson.
On the 22d of November a summons was sent to the French to evacuate
the Papal States and Malta, and a Neapolitan army marched upon Rome,
commanded by Mack in person. At the same time Nelson took on board his
squadron a corps of five thousand, to seize Leghorn, the possession of
which, with control of the sea, was not unjustly considered
threatening to the communications between the centre of French power,
in Northern Italy, and the exposed corps at the foot of the peninsula.
After landing this body, Nelson again went to Naples, leaving
Troubridge in charge at Leghorn, with several ships; directing him
also to keep vessels cruising along the Riviera, and before Genoa, to
break up the coastwise traffic, which had resumed great proportions
since the absence of the British from the Mediterranean, and upon
which the French army in Piedmont and Lombardy now greatly depended.
On the 5th of December the "Vanguard" once more anchored at Naples.
Nelson's estimate of affairs as he now found them, is best told in his
own words. "The state of this Country is briefly this: The army is at
Rome, Civita Vecchia taken, but in the Castle of St. Angelo are five
hundred French troops. The French have thirteen thousand troops at a
strong post in the Roman State, called Castellana. General Mack is
gone against them with twenty thousand: the event in my opinion is
doubtful, and on it hangs the immediate fate of Naples. If Mack is
defeated, this country, in fourteen days, is lost; for the Emperor
has not yet moved his army, and if the Emperor will not march, this
country has not the power of resisting the French. But it was not a
case of choice, but necessity, which forced the King of Naples to
march out of his country, and not to wait till the French had
collected a force sufficient to drive him, in a week, out of his
kingdom." It is by no means so sure that no other course of action had
been open, though Nelson naturally clung to his first opinion. By
advancing, the King gave the French occasion, if they were seeking
one; and the Neapolitan army, which might well have deterred them, as
it had embarrassed even Bonaparte in his time, had its rottenness
revealed as only trial can reveal. When reviewed, it had appeared to
Mack and Nelson a well-equipped force of thirty thousand of the
"finest troops in Europe." Brought face to face with fifteen thousand
French, in a month it ceased to exist.
Upon Mack's advance, the French general Championnet had evacuated
Rome, into which the King made a vainglorious triumphal entry. The
French retired to Castellana, followed by the Neapolitans; but in the
campaign that ensued the latter behaved with disgraceful cowardice.
Flying in every direction, with scarcely any loss in killed, and
preceded in their flight by the King, the whole force retreated in
confusion upon the capital. There revolutionary ideas had spread
widely among the upper classes; and, although the populace both in
city and country remained fanatically loyal, and hostile to the
French, the King and Queen feared to trust their persons to the issue
of events. Powerless through suspicions of those around them,
apparently well founded, and through lack of any instrument with which
to act, now that their army was destroyed, their one wish was to
escape to Palermo.
To do this involved some difficulty, as the mob, like that of Paris,
was bitterly opposed to their sovereign leaving the capital; but by
the management and determination of Nelson, who was greatly helped by
the courage and presence of mind of Lady Hamilton, the royal family
was embarked on board the "Vanguard" on the evening of December 21st.
During several previous days treasure to the amount of two and a half
millions sterling was being conveyed secretly to the ship. "The whole
correspondence relative to this important business," wrote Nelson to
St. Vincent, "was carried on with the greatest address by Lady
Hamilton and the Queen, who being constantly in the habits of
correspondence, no one could suspect." On the evening of the 23d the
"Vanguard" sailed, and after a most tempestuous passage reached
Palermo on the 26th. The youngest of the princes, six years old, taken
suddenly with convulsions, died on the way in the arms of Lady
Hamilton, whose womanly helpfulness, as well as her courage, came out
strongly in this trying time. Nelson wrote to St. Vincent: "It is my
duty to tell your Lordship the obligations which the whole royal
family as well as myself are under on this trying occasion to her
Ladyship." These scenes inevitably deepened the impression she had
already made upon him, which was not to be lessened by her lapse into
feminine weakness when the strain was over. To use her own words, in a
letter to her old lover, Greville, "My dear, adorable queen and I
_weep together_, and now that is our onely comfort." "Our dear Lady
Hamilton," Nelson wrote again a few days later, "whom to see is to
admire, but, to know, are to be added honour and respect; her head and
heart surpass her beauty, which cannot be equalled by anything I have
seen." Upon himself the brief emergency and its sharp call to action
had had the usual reviving effect. "Thank God," he wrote to Spencer,
"my health is better, my mind never firmer, and my heart in the right
trim to comfort, relieve, and protect those who it is my duty to
afford assistance to."
In Palermo Nelson again lived in the minister's house, bearing a
large, if not a disproportionate, share of the expenses. When they
returned to England in 1800, Hamilton was £2,000 in his debt. The
intimacy and the manner of life, in the midst of the Neapolitan court,
whose corruptness of manners both Nelson and Troubridge openly
condemned, was already causing scandal, rumors of which were not long
in reaching home. "I am quite concerned," wrote Captain Ball to
Saumarez, when Nelson was about to quit the station, "at the many
severe paragraphs which have been put in the newspapers respecting him
and Lady Hamilton. I am convinced that there has not been anything
improper between them--his Lordship could not fail being delighted
with her accomplishments and manners, which are very fascinating."
Lady Nelson, uneasy as a wife could not fail to be at reports
affecting her husband's honor, and threatening her own happiness,
quickly formed, and for a time entertained, the thought of joining him
on the station; but, if she broached the idea to Nelson, he certainly
discouraged it. Writing to her on the 10th of April, 1799, he said:
"You would by February have seen how unpleasant it would have been had
you followed _any_ advice, which carried you from England to a
wandering sailor. I could, if you had come, _only_ have struck my
flag, and carried you back again, for it would have been impossible to
have set up an establishment at either Naples or Palermo."[75]
The scandal increased apace after his headquarters were fixed at
Palermo. Lady Minto, writing from Vienna to her sister, in July, 1800,
says: "Mr. Rushout and Colonel Rooke,[76] whom I knew in Italy, are
here. Mr. Rushout is at last going home. He escaped from Naples at the
same time as the King did in Nelson's ship, and remained six months at
Palermo; so I had a great deal of intelligence concerning the Hero
and his Lady ... Nelson and the Hamiltons all lived together in a
house of which he bore the expense, which was enormous, and every sort
of gaming went on half the night. Nelson used to sit with large
parcels of gold before him, and generally go to sleep, Lady Hamilton
taking from the heap without counting, and playing with his money to
the amount of £500 a night. Her rage is play, and Sir William says
when he is dead she will be a beggar. However, she has about £30,000
worth of diamonds from the royal family in presents. She sits at the
Councils, and rules everything and everybody." Some of these
statements are probably beyond the personal knowledge of the narrator,
and can only be accepted as current talk; but others are within the
observation of an eye-witness, evidently thought credible by Lady
Minto, who was a friend to Nelson. Mr. Paget, who succeeded Hamilton
as British minister, mentions the same reports, in his private letter
to Lord Grenville, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
Hamilton had asked to see his instructions. "I decided at once not to
do so, for he would certainly have been obliged to show them to Lady
Hamilton, who would have conveyed them next moment to the queen ...
Lord Nelson's health is, I fear, sadly impaired, and I am assured that
his fortune is fallen into the same state, in consequence of great
losses which both his Lordship and Lady Hamilton have sustained at
Faro and other games of hazard."[77]
The impressions made upon Lord Elgin, who touched at Palermo on his
way to the embassy at Constantinople, are worth quoting; for there has
been much assertion and denial as to what did go on in that
out-of-the-way corner of the world, Lady Hamilton ascribing the
falsehoods, as she claimed they were, to the Jacobinical tendencies of
those who spread them. "During a week's stay at Palermo, on my
passage here," wrote Elgin, "the necessity of a change in our
representative, and in our conduct there, appeared to me most urgent.
You may perhaps know from Lord Grenville how strong my impression on
that subject was."[78] Troubridge, a pattern of that most faithful
friendship which dares to risk alienation, if it may but save, wrote
urgently to his chief: "Pardon me, my Lord, it is my sincere esteem
for you that makes me mention it. I know you can have no pleasure
sitting up all night at cards; why, then, sacrifice your health,
comfort, purse, ease, everything, to the customs of a country, where
your stay cannot be long? I would not, my Lord, reside in this country
for all Sicily. I trust the war will soon be over, and deliver us from
a nest of everything that is infamous, and that we may enjoy the
smiles of our countrywomen. Your Lordship is a stranger to half that
happens, or the talk it occasions; if you knew what your friends feel
for you, I am sure you would cut all the nocturnal parties. The
gambling of the people at Palermo is publicly talked of everywhere. I
beseech your Lordship leave off. I wish my pen could tell you my
feelings, I am sure you would oblige me. I trust your Lordship will
pardon me; it is the sincere esteem I have for you that makes me risk
your displeasure."[79] To this manly appeal Nelson seems to have made
no reply; none at least is quoted.
FOOTNOTES:
[70] Colburn's United Service Magazine, 1847, part ii. p. 52.
[71] Afterwards Mrs. Trench, the mother of Archbishop Trench.
[72] Beckford's Memoirs, London, 1859, vol. ii. p. 326.
[73] Compare an equally strong assertion, Nicolas's Despatches, vol. vi. p.
99.
[74] St. Vincent at this time had not met her, at least as Lady Hamilton,
but they exchanged occasional letters.
[75] Pettigrew, vol. i. p. 220.
[76] Lord Minto was at this time ambassador to Vienna. Rushout and Rooke
were men well known on the Continent. Both are mentioned with some
particularity in the Memoirs of Pryse Lockhart Gordon, another continental
rambler.
[77] The Paget Papers, London, 1896, p. 185.
[78] The Paget Papers, London, 1896, p. 219.
[79] Clarke and M'Arthur, vol. ii. p. 355.