LADY HAMILTON
PATRON SAINT OF DIME-NOVEL HEROINES
She was the mother of Gertrude the Governess, the granddam of Bertha
the Beautiful Sewing-machine Girl, the earliest ancestorette of Ione,
the Pride of the Mill; she was the impossibility that made possible
the brain daughters of Laura Jean. She was the patron saint of
all the dime-novel heroines; she was the model, consciously or
otherwise--probably otherwise--of all their authors. Because, at a
period when such things were undreamed of, even in fiction, she rose
from nursemaid to title.
Even in the books and plays of that age, the born serving wench did
not marry the heir. In the highest literary flights, Bridget's
crowning reward was to wed Luke, the gamekeeper, and become landlady
of The Bibulous Goat or The Doodlethorpe Arms. Goldsmith was eyed
askance for even making the heroine of "She Stoops to Conquer" pose
momentarily as a lady's maid.
Having thus tried to show how impossible was the happening, let me
work up by degrees to the happening itself.
She was a Lancashire lass, Emma Lyon by name. In mature years she
dropped the "Lyon" and called herself "Emma Harte." No one knows why.
Lyon was not her name; neither was Harte, for that matter. In fact,
she had no name; her careless parents having failed to supply her with
the legal right to one.
Her father was a rural farm hand. He died while Emma was a baby. Her
mother, an inn servant, moved later to Hawarden; and there a Mrs.
Thomas hired Emma as nursemaid. This was in 1777. Emma was thirteen.
She had already learned to read--a rare accomplishment in those days
for the nameless brat of an inn drudge. And, as nursemaid, she
greedily picked up stray morsels of her little charges' education, as
well as the manners and language of her employers. She learned as
quickly as a Chinaman.
There is a hiatus in the records, after Emma had served a year or so
in the Thomas family. One biographer bridges the gap with a line of
asterisks. Asterisks, in biographies as well as in sex-problem
fiction, may indicate either a lapse of time or a lapse of morals.
Emma reappeared from the asterisk cloud in London, where she was
nursemaid in the house of a Doctor Budd, one of the physicians at St.
Bartholomew's Hospital. Doctor Budd's housemaid at that time, by the
way, later became a Drury Lane star, under the name of "Mrs. Powell."
And in that bright afterday she and the even more apotheosized Emma
renewed their below-stairs friendship.
For some reason Emma left Doctor Budd's service rather suddenly and
found a job as helper in the shop of a St. James' Market mercer. She
was sixteen, and she was gloriously beautiful. Her figure was superb.
Already she had a subtle charm of her own which drew to her feet
crowds of footmen, shopboys, apprentices, and such small deer. There
is no record that they one and all were sent away disconsolate.
During her brief career as helper to the St. James' Market mercer,
Emma chanced to attract the notice of a woman of quality who one day
entered the shop. And forthwith she was hired as lady's maid. The girl
had picked up a smattering of education. She had scraped from her pink
tongue the rough Lancashire bur-r-r. She had learned to speak
correctly, to ape the behavior of the solid folk whose servant she had
been. Now, from her new employer, she was to learn at firsthand how
people in the world of fashion comported themselves. And,
chameleonlike, she took on the color of her gay surroundings.
Soon she could lisp such choice and fashionable expletives as "Scrape
me raw!" and "Oh, lay me bleeding!" and could talk and walk and
posture as did her mistress. Trashy novels by the dozen fell into her
hands from her mistress' table. Emma devoured them, gluttonously and
absorbed their precepts as the human system absorbs alcohol fumes.
Please don't for one moment get the idea that there was anything
profitable to a young girl in the novels of the latter eighteenth
century. Perhaps you have in mind such dreary sterling works as
"Pamela," "Clarissa Harlow," "Sir Charles Grandison," and others that
were crammed into your miserably protesting brain in the Literature
Courses. Those were the rare--the very rare--exceptions to a large and
lurid list, which included such choice classics as "Moll Flanders,"
"Roxana"--both of them by the same Defoe who wrote "Robinson Crusoe,"
and whose other novels would send a present-day publisher to States
prison--"Peregrine Pickle," "Fanny Hill," "The Delicate Distress,"
"Roderick Random," and the rest of a rank-flavored multitude.
Emma reveled in the joys of the local "circulating library," too; one
of those places that loaned books of a sort to cause even the kindly
Sheridan to thunder his famous dictum:
"A circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical
knowledge. It blossoms through the year. And, depend on't, they who
are so fond of handling the leaves will long for the fruit at last."
Much reading filled Emma with wonderful new ideas of life.
Incidentally, it made her neglect her work, and she was discharged.
Her next step was to become barmaid in a tavern. While she was there,
a young admirer of hers was seized by the navy press gang. Emma went
to the captain of the ship to beg for her swain's release. The captain
was John Willett Payn, afterward a rear admiral. Payne granted the
lovely girl's plea. He not only gave her what she asked, but his own
admiration as well. Her story as a heart winner had begun.
In fiction, the gallant captain would soon have tired of his lively
sweetheart and cast her aside. But Emma was not a lowly sweetheart.
She was a super-woman. She showed how much stranger than fiction truth
may be by deserting Payne for a richer man. First, however, she had
wheedled the captain into hiring tutors and music masters for her, and
she profited vastly by their teachings.
Her new flame was a sporting baronet, Sir Harry Featherstonhaugh, of
Up Park, Sussex. Sir Harry was an all-round athlete and a reckless
horseman. He taught Emma to ride--"a beggar on horseback?"--and she
became the most daring equestrienne of the century. He taught her to
spend money, too. And so splendidly did she learn her lesson that
inside of a year Sir Harry was bankrupt.
Perhaps ~all~ rats do not leave a sinking ship; but, for very good
reasons, one never hears anything further of the rats that don't. The
rat that wishes to continue his career wastes no time in joining the
exodus. And Emma Lyon did not disdain to take example from the humble
rodent.
There seemed no good reason for remaining longer at the side of the
bankrupt baronet, to add to his cares and expenses. So, with womanly
consideration, she left him.
She was alone in the world once more, without a shilling or a friend;
equipped with education, accomplishments, wondrous beauty, and charm,
but with no immediate market for those commodities. It was the black
hour that comes least once into the life of every adventuress.
And, in this time of need, she fell in with a beauty-culture quack,
Graham by name.
Graham had devised a rejuvenation medicine--from Doctor Faustus down,
the world has feverishly, piteously seized on every nostrum advertised
as a means of exchanging age for youth--and he vowed that it would
make its users not only young again, but maddeningly beautiful. As an
example of "after using," Graham exhibited Emma Lyon, who, he said,
had once been old and ugly, and who, by a course of his elixir, had
become youthful and glorious. He called his medicine "Megalanthropogenesis."
Women who heard his lecture took one look at Emma and then bought out
Graham's ready supply of the stuff. The charlatan was an artist in
gaining his effects, as witness a report of the exhibition in which
Emma posed:
He had contrived a "Bed of Apollo," or "Celestial Bed," on which,
in a delicately colored light, this exquisitely beautiful woman,
nearly naked, was gradually unveiled, to soft, soft music, as
Hygeia, goddess of health.
Presumably no effort was made by any eighteenth-century Comstock to
suppress this show, and all London flocked and thronged and jostled to
behold it. Apart from the normal crowd of idlers, came painters and
sculptors to gaze in delight on the perfect face and form revealed
through the shimmer of rose-colored light.
And foremost of these artists was a freakish genius toward whom was
slowly creeping the insanity that a few years later was to claim him,
and whose stealthy approach he was even then watching with horror. He
was George Romney, who, with Sir Joshua Reynolds, divided the homage
of England's art world. Romney had come to stare at Emma. He remained
to worship. He engaged her as his model, and, soon or late, painted no
less than thirty-nine pictures of her.
"I call her 'The Divine Lady,'" he once wrote. "For I think she is
superior to all womankind."
The black hour was past. Emma Lyon's fortune and fame were secure.
Thanks to Romney, she was the best-advertised beauty on earth.
Conquests came thick and fast, not treading on one another's heels,
but racing abreast.
Soon, out of the ruck and forging far ahead, appeared Charles Francis
Greville, wit, art connoisseur, and nephew and heir of the famed
antiquary diplomat, Sir William Hamilton. Greville cut out all rivals,
Romney among the rest, and won Emma for his own.
Theirs was an odd love affair. For here, too, Emma gave full rein to
her craving for education. And she showed for the first time just why
she was so eager to be highly educated. It was not for mere learning's
sake, but to enhance the charm that gave her a hold over men. She
cared nothing for any but the showy accomplishments. She already had a
fair groundwork in English and ordinary school studies. She made
Greville get her the best teachers in singing, in dancing, in acting.
Perhaps she looked forward to a stage triumph, but more likely to
outshining the colorless bread-and-butter women of her day.
Never did pupil better repay the pains of her teachers. Her voice
presently rivaled that of many a prima donna. Her dancing was a
delight. It was she who conceived the celebrated "shawl dance" that
was the rage throughout Europe for years thereafter, and that still is
used, in very slightly modified form, by ~premieres danseuses~.
But acting was Emma's forte. Says a contemporary writer:
With a common piece of stuff she could so arrange and clothe
herself as to offer the most appropriate representations of a
Jewess, a Roman matron, a Helen, Penelope, or Aspasia. No character
seemed foreign to her, and the grace she was in the habit of
displaying under such representations excited the admiration of
all who were fortunate enough to be present on such occasions.
Siddons could not surpass the grandeur of her style or O'Neil be
more melting in the utterance of deep pathos.
In this heyday of her prosperity, Emma hunted up her aged and
disreputable mother, bestowed on her the name "Mrs. Cadogan," and
settled a rich pension on her. At about the same time, too, Emma bade
a cheery farewell to the serviceable name of Lyon and took to calling
herself Emma Harte.
Then Greville went broke.
In his new-found poverty, he hit on a plan of life foreign to all his
old ideas.
He decided to ask his rich old uncle, Sir William Hamilton, to pay his
debts and settle a little annuity on him. With this sum as a means of
livelihood, he intended to marry Emma, and, with her and their three
children, settle down in some cheap suburb.
How this appealed to Emma history forgets to say. Judging by both past
and future, it is not unjust to suppose that she may have been making
ready once more to emulate the ship-deserting rat. But this time she
did not need to. The ship was about to desert her--for a
consideration.
Greville, full of his new hopes, went to Sir William Hamilton and laid
the plan before him. His nephew's derelictions from the straight and
narrow path had long distressed the virtuous old diplomat. And in
Greville's financial troubles Sir William thought he saw a fine chance
to break off his nephew's discreditable affair with Emma.
He offered to set Greville on his feet again if that luckless youth
would drop Emma's acquaintance. The enamored Greville refused. Sir
William insisted, raising his offer of financial aid, and pointing
out, with tearful eloquence, the family disgrace that a marriage to a
woman of Emma's desolute character must cause. It was all quite like a
scene from a modern problem play. But Fate, her tongue in her cheek,
was preparing to put a twist on the end of the scene worthy of the
most cynical French vaudeville writer.
Greville resented his uncle's rash judgment of his adored Emma, and
begged him to come and see her for himself, hoping that Emma's wonder
charm might soften the old man's virtue-incrusted heart. Reluctantly,
Sir William consented to one brief interview with the wicked siren.
At sight of Emma, Sir William's heart melted to mushiness. He fell
crazily in love with the woman he had come to dispossess. There was
another long and stormy scene between uncle and nephew; after which
Greville, for an enormous lump sum, transferred to Sir William
Hamilton all right and title and good will to the adorable Emma Harte.
And Sir William and Emma departed thence, arm in arm, leaving Greville
a sadder but a richer man. What became of the three children I don't
know. By the way, Emma had taught them to call her "aunt," not
"mother."
Will you let me quote a deadly dry line or two from an encyclopedia,
to prove to you how important a personage Sir William was, and how
true is the axiom about "no fool like an old fool"?
Hamilton, Sir William, British diplomatist and antiquary
(1730-1803), student of art, philosophy and literature. From 1764
to 1800 English ambassador to the Court of Naples. Trustee of
British Museum, Fellow of the Royal Society, vice president of the
Society of Antiquaries, distinguished member of the Dilettante
Club, author of several books. Sir Joshua Reynolds, his intimate
friend, painted his portrait, which hangs in the National Gallery.
Sir William, who was home on leave of absence when he met Emma, took
her back with him to Italy. But before they sailed she had prevailed
on him to marry her.
It was easy. He was old.
The marriage was kept secret until, in 1791, she led her husband back
to England on another leave of absence and up to the altar of St.
George's Church, where, on September 6th of that year, they were
married all over again; this time with every atom of publicity Emma
could compass. She was then twenty-seven; her husband was sixty-one.
In state they returned to the court of Naples--the most corrupt,
licentious, false, utterly abominable court in all Europe. If you will
glance at the annals of the courts of that period you will find this
statement is as true as it is sweeping. On her earlier visit, as the
supposed brevet bride of the ambassador, Emma had been warmly received
by Marie Caroline, Queen of Naples and sister to Marie Antoinette of
France. Emma and Marie Caroline were kindred spirits--which is perhaps
the unkindest thing I could say about either of them--and they quickly
formed a lasting friendship for each other.
Emma was glad to get back to Naples. Apart from her marriage, her
visit to England had not been a success. A certain element in London
society, attracted by her beauty, her voice, and her talent as an
actress, had taken her up. But Queen Charlotte had refused her a
presentation at the British court, and the more reputable element of
the nobility had followed royal example and given her a wide berth.
English society under George III. was severely respectable--at least
in the matter of externals; a quality it was soon to mislay, under
George IV. Hence Emma's joy at returning to a court where
respectability was a term to be found only in the dictionary.
The King of Naples was a fool. His wife was the little kingdom's
ruler. Emma, Lady Hamilton, became her chief adviser. Writes one
historian:
It is not too much to say of these two women that for years they
wielded the destinies of Naples, and seriously affected the
character of the wars that ended with the peace of Europe in 1815,
when both were dead.... Both were endowed with powers of mind far
above the average of their sex; both exhibited energy and
understanding that inspired them to bold and decisive, if not
always laudable, deeds; both were as remarkable for their personal
beauty as for their self-reliance, their knowledge of men, and
their determination to make the most of their information. To say
that Marie Caroline loved Lady Hamilton is to misstate a fact;
there was no love in the royal composition; but her ungovernable
and undying hatred of the French inclined her, no doubt, in the
first instance toward the wife of the English ambassador, and the
subsequent devotion of the favorite secured an attachment that is
confessed and reiterated through whole pages of a vehement and
overstrained correspondence.
Naples, just then, was between two fires. There was fear of a French
invasion--which arrived on schedule time--and there was also danger
that England would ruin Neopolitan commerce. Emma's white hands were
at once plunged, wrist-deep, into the political dough; and a sorry
mess she proceeded to make of it. For example, the King of Spain wrote
a confidential letter to his brother, the King of Naples, accusing the
English government of all sorts of public and private crimes and
telling of Spain's secret alliance with France. The king showed it to
his wife, who in turn showed it to Lady Hamilton. Emma stole and
secretly sent the letter to the British cabinet. The result was a
bloody war between England and Spain.
About two years after Emma's marriage, an English warship, the
~Agamemnon~, touched at Naples, and her captain called to pay his
respects to the British ambassador and to deliver a letter from the
admiral of the Mediterranean fleet. After a few minutes' talk with the
captain, Sir William insisted that the latter should meet Lady
Hamilton.
He bustled into the drawing-room to prepare Emma for the visitor's
arrival, saying excitedly to her:
"I am bringing you a little man who cannot boast of being very
handsome, but who, I pronounce, will one day astonish the world. I
know it from the very words of conversation I have had with him."
On the heels of Sir William's announcement, the "little man" came into
the room. At first glance, he scarcely seemed to justify Hamilton's
enthusiasm. He was clad in a full-laced uniform. His lank, unpowdered
hair was tied in a stiff Hessian queue of extraordinary length.
Old-fashioned, flaring waistcoat flaps added to the general oddity of
his figure.
Sir William introduced him as "Captain Horatio Nelson."
Lady Hamilton lavished on the queer guest no especial cordiality. It
is not known that she gave him a second thought. Nelson, little more
impressed by the super-woman, wrote to his wife in England an account
of the call, saying of Lady Hamilton--whose story, of course, he and
everybody knew:
"She is a young woman of amiable manners, who does honor to the
station to which she has been raised."
Yet Nelson had unwittingly met the woman who was to tarnish the pure
glory of his fame; and Emma had met the man but for whom she would
to-day be forgotten. So little does Fate forecast her dramas that, at
the first meeting, neither of the two immortal lovers seems to have
felt any attraction for the other.
Not for five busy years did Nelson and Emma Hamilton see each other
again.
Then Nelson came back to Naples, this time in triumph--a
world-renowned hero, the champion of the seas, Britain's idol. He had
become an admiral, a peer of England, a scourge of his country's foes.
Back to Naples he came. Part of him; not all--for victorious warfare
had set cruel marks on him. He had left his right eye at Calvi in
1794, and his right arm at Teneriffe in 1797. He was more odd looking
than ever, but he was an acclaimed hero. And Naples in general and
Emma Hamilton in particular welcomed him with rapture.
He was in search of the French fleet, and he wanted the King of Naples
to let him reprovision his ships in the Neapolitan harbor. Now, France
and Naples just then happened to be at peace. And, by their treaty, no
more than two English warships at a time could enter any Neapolitan or
Sicilian port. The king's council declared the treaty must stand. Lady
Hamilton decided otherwise.
She used all her power with the queen to have the treaty set aside. As
a result Marie Caroline issued an order directing "all governors of
the two Sicilies to water, victual, and aid" Nelson's fleet. This
order made it possible for Nelson to go forth reprovisioned--and to
crush the French in the Battle of the Nile.
In the first rumor of this battle that reached Naples, Nelson was
reported killed. Soon afterward he appeared, alive and well, in the
harbor. Here is his letter to his wife, telling how Lady Hamilton
received him on his return. Nelson, by the way, had been married for
nearly twelve years. He and his wife were devoted to each other.
Judging from this letter, he was lamentably ignorant of women or was
incredibly sure of Lady Nelson's love and trust. Or else his courage
was greater than that of mortal husband. He wrote:
Sir William and Lady Hamilton came out to sea to meet me. They, my
most respectable friends, had nearly been laid up and seriously
ill, first from anxiety and then from joy. It was imprudently told
Lady Hamilton, in a moment, that I was alive; and the effect was
like a shot. She fell, apparently dead, and is not yet perfectly
recovered from severe bruises. Alongside came my honored friends.
The scene in the boat was terribly affecting. Up flew her
ladyship, and, exclaiming: "Oh, God, is it possible?" she fell
into my arm, more dead than alive. Tears, however, soon set
matters to rights; when alongside came the king.... I hope, some
day, to have the pleasure of introducing you to Lady Hamilton. She
is one of the very best women in the world; she is an honor to her
sex. Her kindness, with Sir William's, to me, is more than I can
express. I am in their house, and I may tell you, it required all
the kindness of my friends to set me up. Lady Hamilton intends
writing to you. May God Almighty bless you, and give us in due
time a happy meeting!
France sought revenge for the help given to Nelson's fleet, and
declared war on Naples. The Neapolitans, in fury at being dragged into
such a needless conflict, rose against their dear king and adored
queen--especially against their adored queen--and threatened to kill
them. By Lady Hamilton's aid the royal family reached Nelson's
flagship and took refuge there from the mob. Sir William and Lady
Hamilton went along. The populace looted the British embassy and stole
everything of value Sir William owned--about one hundred and
ninety-five thousand dollars' worth of property in all. Thus, Hamilton
was the third man who had lost a fortune through Emma.
Meanwhile, Nelson had sailed to Palermo, taking the fugitives along.
There he made his home with the Hamiltons. And scandal awoke, even in
that easy-going crowd. Nor did the scandal die down to any appreciable
extent on the birth of Lady Hamilton's daughter, Horatia, a year or so
later.
Sir William's conduct in the matter is still a puzzle. He felt, or
professed to feel, that there was no occasion for jealousy. And so for
a long time the trio shared the same house.
One of the courtiers who had fled with the king and queen to Palermo
was Prince Caraccioli, Nelson's close friend and Lady Hamilton's
bitter enemy. Caraccioli asked leave to go back to Naples to look
after his endangered property. As soon as he reached the city, he
threw in his lot with the rebels and was made admiral of their navy.
Presently, by the aid of England's fleet, the royal family returned.
The rebellion was put down, and the king and queen were once more
seated firmly on their thrones. The rebel leaders were seized and
brought to trial. Nelson is said to have promised immunity to
Caraccioli if he would surrender. Relying on his friend's pledge,
Caraccioli surrendered. At Emma's request Nelson had the overtrustful
man hanged from the yardarm of his own flagship.
This is the darkest smear on Nelson's character, a smear that even his
most blatant admirers have never been able to wipe away. It is not in
keeping with anything else in his life. But by this time he belonged
to Lady Hamilton, body and soul.
She, by the way, had managed to acquire from her friend, the Queen of
Naples, a nice tendency toward blood-thirstiness; as witness the
following sweet anecdote by Pryne Lockhart Gordon, who tells of dining
with the Hamiltons at Palermo, in company with a Turkish officer:
In the course of conversation, the officer boasted that with the
sword he wore he had put to death a number of French prisoners.
"Look," he said, "there is their blood remaining on it." When the
speech was translated to her, Lady Hamilton's eyes beamed with
delight. "Oh, let me see the sword that did the glorious deed!"
she exclaimed. Taking the sword in her hands, which were covered
with jewels, she looked at it, then kissed the incrusted blood on
the blade, and passed it on to Nelson. Only one who was a witness
to the spectacle can imagine how disgusting it was.
Enshrined once more at Naples, hailed as savior of the realm,
acclaimed for her share in the Nile victory, the confidante of
royalty--it would be pleasant to say good-by here to Emma Lyon,
ex-nursemaid, ex-barmaid, ex-lady's maid, nameless offspring of a
Lancashire inn slavey. It was the climax of a wonderful life. But
there was anticlimax aplenty to follow.
Nelson went home to England to receive the plaudits of his fellow
countrymen and to settle accounts with his wife. Home, too, came the
Hamiltons, Sir William having been recalled.
Lady Nelson was not at the dock to meet her hero husband. Bad news
traveled fast, even before we boosted it along by wire and then by
wireless. Lady Nelson had heard. And Lady Nelson was waiting at home.
Thither, blithely enough, fared the man in whose praise a million
Englishmen were cheering themselves hoarse--and in whose
silver-buckled shoes perhaps no married Englishman would just then
have cared or dared to stand. But Nelson was a hero. He went home.
I once had a collie puppy that had never chanced to be at close
quarters with a cat. I was privileged to see him when he made his
first gleefully fearless attack upon one, ignorant of the potential
anguish tucked away behind a feline's velvety paws. Somehow--with no
disrespect to a great man--I always think of that poor,
about-to-be-disillusioned puppy when I try to visualize the picture of
Nelson's home-coming.
Just what happened no one knows. But whatever it was, it did not teach
Nelson the wisdom of husbandly reticence. For, a few weeks later, he
remarked at breakfast:
"I have just received another letter from dear Lady Hamilton."
"I am sick of hearing of 'dear' Lady Hamilton!" flared the
long-suffering wife. "You can choose between us. You must give up her
or me."
"Take care, Fanny!" warned Nelson. "I love you dearly. But I cannot
forget all I owe to dear Lady Hamilton."
"This is the end, then," announced Lady Nelson, and she left the
house.
Only once again did she and her husband meet.
Nelson cast off all pretense at concealment after his wife left him.
His affair with Lady Hamilton became public property. Their daughter,
Horatia, was openly acclaimed by him as his heiress. The English were
in a quandary. They loved Nelson; they hated the woman who had dragged
his name into the filth. They could not snub her without making him
unhappy; they could not honor him without causing her to shine by
reflected glory. It was unpleasant all around.
In 1805 the deadlock was broken. Nelson was again to fight the French.
He told Lady Hamilton and many others that this campaign was to end in
his death. He ordered his coffin made ready for him. Then he sailed
against the French fleet, met it off Cape Trafalgar, and annihilated
it. In the thick of the fight a musket ball gave him his death wound.
He was carried below, and there, the battle raging around him, he
laboriously wrote a codicil to his will, entreating his king and
country to repay his services by settling a pension on Lady Hamilton.
Then to his next-in-command he panted:
"I am going fast. Come nearer. Pray let my dear Lady Hamilton have my
hair and all other things belonging to me. Take care of my dear Lady
Hamilton--poor Lady Hamilton! Thank God I have done my duty!"
And so he died, this knightly little demigod--true lover, false
husband--who had fouled his snowy escutcheon for a worthless woman.
Now comes the inevitable anticlimax.
All England turned with loathing from Lady Hamilton. Her husband was
dead. Lovers stood aloof. Folk who had received her for Nelson's sake
barred their doors against her. She had followed the popular custom of
living in luxury on nothing a year. Now her creditors swarmed upon
her.
Her house was sold for debt. Next she lived in Bond Street lodgings,
growing poorer day by day until she was condemned to the debtor's
prison. A kind-hearted--or hopeful--alderman bought her out of jail. A
former coachman of hers, whose wages were still unpaid, threatened her
with arrest for debt. She fled to Calais.
There she lived in an attic, saved from absolute starvation by a
fellow Englishwoman, a Mrs. Hunter. Her youth and charm had fled. The
power that had lured Nelson and Greville and Hamilton to ruin was
gone.
In 1815 she died. She was buried in a pine box, with an old black silk
petticoat for a pall. No clergyman could be found to take charge of
her funeral. So the burial service was read by a fellow debt exile--a
half-pay Irish army captain.
One wonders--perhaps morbidly--if Nelson's possible punishment in
another world might not have been the knowledge of what befell his
"dear" Lady Hamilton in her latter days.
THE END.
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_By Nell Martin_
The Golf Course Mystery
_By Chester K. Steele_
The Million Dollar Suitcase
_By MacGowan and Newbury_
City of the Dreadful Night
_By Rudyard Kipling_
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
_By Edgar Allan Poe_
The Golden Bowl
_By Archie Joscelyn_
The Monk of Hambleton
_By Armstrong Livingston_
HISTORY
In the Old West
_By Geo. Fred Ruxton_
The Gold Hunters
_By J. D. Borthwick_
WESTERN
Don Coyote
_By Whitman Chambers_
BIOGRAPHY
Face to Face with Our Presidents
_By Joe Mitchell Chapple_
ROMANCE
The Girl He Left Behind
_By Helen Beecher Long_
Sins of the Children
_By Cosmo Hamilton_
Bed Rock
_By Jack Bethea_
Doubloons and The Girl
_By John Maxwell Forbes_
Quadrille Court
_By Cecil Adair_
The Lovely Malincourt
_By Helen Mathers_
Sem's Moroccan Love
_By Arthur Kay_
The Justice of the King
_By Hamilton Drummond_
The Star of Hollywood
_By Edward Stilgebauer_
Some Honeymoon
_By Charles Everett Hall_
Children of the Whirlwind
_By Leroy Scott_
Who Cares
_By Cosmo Hamilton_
The Man Who Lived in a Shoe
_By Henry James Forman_
The Enchanted Garden
_By Henry James Forman_
Cap'n Abe Storekeeper
_By James A. Cooper_
Unforbidden Fruit
_By Warner Fabian_
Mary Regan
_By Leroy Scott_
The Blindness of Virtue
_By Cosmo Hamilton_
Dancing Desire
_By Petronilla Clayton_
Why Marry
_By Farguson Johnson_
ADVENTURE
Letters of Marque
_By Rudyard Kipling_
Under the Deodars
_By Rudyard Kipling_
On Autumn Trails
_By Emma-Lindsay Squier_
Soldiers Three
_By Rudyard Kipling_
Tales of the Fish Patrol
_By Jack London_
When God Laughs
_By Jack London_
On the Highest Hill
_By H. M. Stephenson_
South Sea Tales
_By Jack London_
Wilbur Crane's Handicap
_By John Maxwell Forbes_
The Light That Failed
_By Rudyard Kipling_
Rainbow Island
_By Mark Caywood_
INTERNATIONAL FICTION LIBRARY
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