Nelson's Lady Hamilton by Meynell, Esther (surface ebook reader txt) 📕

kiss me and make it up, I took her on my lap and cried. Pray, do you blame me or not ? Pray tell me. Oh, Greville, you don't know how I love her. Endead I do. When she comes and looks in my face and calls me 'mother/ endead I then truly am a mother, for all the mother's feelings rise at once, and tels me I am or ought to be a mother, for she has a wright to my protection ; and she shall have it as long as I can, and I will do all in my power to prevent her falling into the error her poor miserable mother fell into. But why do I say miserable ? Am not I happy abbove any of my sex, at least in my situation ? Does not Greville love me, or at least like me ? Does not he protect me ? Is not he a father to my child ? Why do I call myself miserable ? No ; it was a mistake, and I will be happy, chearful and kind, and do all my poor abbility will lett me, to return the fatherly goodness and protection he has shewn. Again, my dear Greville, the recollection of past scenes brings tears in my eyes. But they are tears of happiness. To think of your goodness is too much. But once for all, Greville, I will be grateful. Adue. It is near bathing time, and I must lay down my pen, and I won't finish till I see when the post comes,

whether there is a letter. He conies in abbout one o'clock. I hope to have a letter to-day. . . . Greville, I am oblidged to give a shilling a day for the bathing horse and whoman, and twopence a day for the dress. It is a great expense, and it fretts me when I think of it."

It is a sufficient proof of Emma's real attachment to Greville that she was so exercised in her mind about economy. She loved Greville; she had an idea already that he was somewhat straitened for money; so the expenditure of even a few pennies a day fretted her—when they were his pennies—who was naturally so large and easy in her dealings. She retained this careful feeling about money for some years after she went to Italy, and then circumstances did their work, and the woman who had been distressed at spending twopence a day over a bathing-dress became a gambler who loved to play for high stakes, and would lose ^500 of Nelson's money at the faro-tables—so the story goes—with more indifference than she spent a shilling of Greville's.

But the Emma of Parkgate is not the Emma of Palermo ; instead, she is a somewhat pathetic, trustful creature, half woman and half child, whose whole existence hangs for the time on the coming of a letter from the forgetful Greville. Two days later she adds to the letter already quoted—

" With what impatience do I sett down to

44NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON

wright till I see the postman. But sure I shall have a letter to-day. Can you, Greville— no, you can't—have forgot your poor Emma allready ? Tho' I am but a few weeks absent from you, my heart will not one moment leave you. I am allways thinking of you, and cou'd allmost fancy I hear you, see you ; and think, Greville, what a disapointment when I find myself deceived, and ever nor never heard from you. But my heart wont lett me scold you. Endead, it thinks on you with two much tenderness. So do wright, my dear Greville. Don't you remember how you promised ? Don't you recollect what you said at parting ? how you shou'd be happy to see me again ? O Greville, think on me with kindness ! Think how many happy days weeks and years—I hope—we may yett pass. And think out of some that is past, there as been some little pleasure as well as pain; and, endead, did you but know how much I love you, you would freily forgive me any passed quarrels. For I now suffer for them, and one line from you would make me happy."

Greville's behaviour to Emma at this time is a forecast of his later behaviour to her when she had gone to Naples. His admiration and pleasure in her was that of the connoisseur and collector—she delighted his eyes, but she did not really stir that very self-contained heart of his. Absent from this woman, whom he considered

LADY HAMILTON

SKETCH. GEORGE ROMNEY

" as perfect a thing as can be found in all Nature," he was more or less indifferent to her appeals and her pathetic letters. He probably regarded the separation as salutary, not only for her health—• " You can't think how soult the watter is," Emma told him with artless amazement—but also as a mental discipline. Greville had a strong strain of the pedant in his character, and was particularly gifted in a style of lofty reproof.

After a considerable interval he replied to Emma's long missives; but his first letter could not have been agreeable, for in reply to his second she was moved to say, " I was very happy, my dearest Greville, to hear from you, as your other letter vex'd me; you scolded me so." Then she goes on to discuss the education and the future of little Emma. Her wish to have the child with her permanently at the house in Edgware Row had been negatived by Greville— he was willing to pay for the child's keep and schooling, but he did not intend to burden himself with her presence. So Emma, who was adaptable to his wishes, even when they so markedly crossed her own, wrote