With the name of Lady Hamilton is ever associated the names of
England's most famous sailor and of one of her most famous painters.
Hers was a life redolent of ill-repute. Though her beauty was great,
it served her for ill purposes; but she came by her lack of character
by heredity. She was born in 1761, the daughter of a female servant
named Harte, and at the age of thirteen was put to service as a nurse
in the house of a Mr. Thomas of Hawarden, Flintshire. She found
tending children a tedious task, and forsook it. At sixteen, she went
to London, and became a lady's maid there. Her leisure time was spent
in reading novels and plays, which inspired a love for the drama. She
early developed a rare ability for pantomimic representation; and
this became a favorite form of entertainment in drawing-rooms and
studios. Her duties as a domestic agreed not with the drama, so her
next position was as barmaid in a tavern much frequented by actors and
artists. She formed the acquaintance of a Welsh youth, on whose being
impressed into the navy, she went to the captain to intercede for him.
The boy was liberated, but the comely intercessor was impressed into
the service of the captain. From him she went to live with a man of
wealth; but her extravagance and wilfulness induced him to forego her
company. Then followed a period of the lowest street degradation. From
this state she was taken by a Dr. Graham, who was a lecturer upon
health, and exhibited the finely-formed Emma as a perfect specimen of
female symmetry. She became the topic of the town. Painters,
sculptors, and others came to admire the shapely limbs shown under but
a thin veil of gauze. The young bloods of the time worshipped,--some
not afar off; and one of them, Charles Greville, of the Warwick
family, who had essayed to educate her to become a fit companion for
his elevated existence, maintained her for about four years. It is
recorded, that when he took her to Ranelagh's the sensation was
greater than had ever been produced by any other beauty there. Not the
winsome and witty Mrs. Crewe, nor her friend Mrs. Bouverie; not that
first flame of the amorous Prince of Wales, Mrs. Robinson, nor Anne
Luttrell, also beloved of royalty; not the Marchioness of Tavistock,
whose loveliness has been preserved to us by Sir Joshua, nor the
delightful Duchess of Buccleugh; not Lady Cadogan, and not even the
dashing Duchess of Devonshire herself,--caused the comment and
admiration this low-born unprincipled young woman now excited. Mr.
Greville would have married her had not his uncle, Sir William
Hamilton, interfered. It is variously stated that Sir William agreed
to pay his nephew's debts if he would yield up his mistress; and also
that, in endeavoring to free the young man, the old gentleman himself
fell into the snare of her charms. "She is better than anything in
Nature. In her own particular way she is finer than anything that is
to be found in Greek art," exclaimed this _savant_ on first seeing
her. She was a most enchanting deceiver, and a finished actress in the
parts of candor and simplicity, so succeeded in marrying Sir William,
in 1791. He was over sixty years of age, a man of much classical and
scientific erudition, and had been for many years ambassador at the
court of Naples, to which place he was soon accompanied by his bride.
She became a favorite with the queen, and a frequent visitor at the
palace, also somewhat of a social success among the British residents.
She sang well, and made a specialty of showing herself in "attitudes,"
or what we term now "living pictures," for the delectation of her
guests. "You never saw anything so charming as Lady Hamilton's
attitudes," wrote the Countess of Malmesbury to her sister, Lady
Elliot; "the most graceful statues or pictures do not give you an idea
of them. Her dancing the Tarantella is beautiful to a degree." It was
here began that intimacy with Nelson which became the great blot on
his fair fame. He was then commanding the Agamemnon, and she became
his constant companion, and was sometimes useful to him as a political
agent. After the victory of Aboukir Bay, when Naples went wild in its
enthusiastic reception of the naval hero, Lady Hamilton shared the
honors of the pageant. She accompanied him in a tour through Germany;
and most reprehensible was their conduct, at times, in defying the
decencies of polite life. After the Treaty of Amiens, Nelson,
accompanied by Sir William and Lady Hamilton, retired to his seat at
Merton, in Surrey, and on the death of the ambassador, in 1803, he
vainly endeavored to procure an allowance from the government for the
widow, on the pretext of the services she had rendered the fleet in
Sicily. Failing this, he himself granted her an annuity of twelve
hundred pounds. We all know how at Trafalgar, when the hero was dying,
he spoke of "dear Lady Hamilton, his guardian angel," and left to her
all his belongings, and recommended her to the grateful care of his
country. Notwithstanding this, she died almost in poverty, in 1815.
In 1813 she had been imprisoned for debt, and when out on bail she
fled to Calais, and there the career was closed. It was extraordinary
that this woman should subjugate and hold in thrall men of great force
of character. She had great loveliness of person; but physical beauty
alone is ineffectual to charm such as these. Though not regularly
educated, she acquired much general knowledge, and was tactful in the
display and use of it.
It was during the period of her posing for Dr. Graham, that Romney
became enamoured of her beauty, and painted for us more than a dozen
important pictures of her. Those were the days when ladies of rank and
beauty were deified; and, following this fashion, Romney rendered
"Fair Emma" in many guises. Her ability in acting made her a most
useful model. Her features had much mobility, and were capable of
expressing, with facility, all gradations of passion and niceties of
feeling. Emma took pride and pleasure in serving Romney. He repeated
to his friend, the poet Hayley, her request, that in the biography of
the painter, Hayley would have much to say of her. One of his earliest
classical conceptions painted from her, was a full length of Circe
with her wand. Following this was a "Sensibility," which became the
property of Hayley. Though we remember Romney chiefly in connection
with his Lady Hamiltons, yet he had acquired his reputation and much
fortune ere he met her. The great bulk of his portrayals of the
nobility preceded his classical subjects, which took form from his
superb model. She was Cassandra; she was Iphigenia, St. Cæcilia,
Bacchante, Calope, The Spinstress, Joan of Arc, The Pythian Princess
Calypso, and Magdalene,--the two latter subjects painted to order for
the then Prince of Wales.
Allan Cunningham has this to say in his sketch of Romney's life: "A
lady in the character of a saint. This sort of flattery, once so
prevalent with painters, is now nearly worn out: we have now no Lady
Betty's enacting the part of Diana; no Lady Jane's tripping it
barefoot among the thorns and brambles of this weary world, in the
character of Hebe. We have none now who either 'sinner it or saint it'
on canvas; the flattery which the painter has to pay is of a more
scientific kind,--he has to trust alone to the truth of his drawing
and the harmony of his colors."
Romney was a transgressor in this way at times; but Lady Hamilton's
form was used to impart correct form to the conceptions of the
painter,--not the theme used merely to exploit the beauty of the lady.
In the exhibition of fair women in the Grafton Gallery in London this
summer, she greeted us in the guise of Ariadne. In this the painter's
use of the title was apt and justifiable. Here is the lady wholly
clothed in the dress of the time,--a dress superb in its simplicity;
but her pose and mien is indicative of the forsaken, the forlorn,
despairing woman abandoned by her lover,--the fate of which the old
story of the Greeks is the eternal epitome. The pathos of the pose, it
may have been, as well as the classic face, allured the wanderer in
the galleries, and anchored him before this canvas.
The fame of Romney has steadily risen in the several generations from
the beginning to the end of the century. Though the painter of many
men of fame and ladies of fashion, his work was not held in the
greatest regard in his lifetime. Though often spoken of as the rival
of Reynolds, he had not the president's grasp of character or his
ability in giving classic grace to the dress of the period, and he was
never admitted as a member to the Academy.
When Lady Hamilton commenced posing for him, he, perhaps wisely for
his fame, reduced the number of his ordinary sitters, receiving none
until afternoon. The picturing of what he termed "her divine beauty"
became a passion with him; and the enthusiasm of the sitter was nearly
as great as that of the painter, and she enacted his classic
conceptions. The result is a superb series of pictures of faultless
female form, and loveliness of feature. Of the model's immoral career
we have naught now to do. Here is perpetual beauty, and it is ours to
enjoy.
[Illustration: MRS SHERIDAN by REYNOLDS]