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

the original as well as the "counterfeit presentment." Greville wrote to him at this time : " Emma is very grateful for your remembrance. Her picture shall be sent by the first ship. I wish Romney yet to mend the dog."

It is sad to think of the poor " Bacchante," smiling so gaily upon the little world that was her all, and that she thought loved and cared for her, while the whole time Greville was planning —with a nice regard for every one's feelings but Emma's—to hand her over to his uncle.

It is not necessary to go into all the plotting and counterplotting that went on for many months between the two. Greville was sufficiently sensible of the difficulty of getting rid of a girl so affectionate and devoted to him that she had already declined two offers of honourable marriage and at least one offer of a similar position considerably more gilded. She would only go to Naples if she was under a misapprehension as to the nature and duration of her visit. So Greville wrote to Sir William—

" If you could form a plan by which you could

' BACCHANTE"

GEOKGE KOMNEY

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have a trial, and could invite her and tell her that I ought not to leave England, and that I cannot afford to go on; and state it as a kindness to me if she would accept your invitation, she would go with pleasure. She is to be six weeks at some bathing place ; and when you could write an answer to this, and inclose a letter to her, I could manage it ; and either by land, by the coach to Geneva, and from thence by Vettu-rino forward her, or else by sea. I must add that I could not manage it so well later; after a month, and absent from me, she would consider the whole more calmly. If there was in the world a person she loved so well as yourself after me, I could not arrange with so much sangfroid; and I am sure I would not let her go to you, if any risque of the usual coquetry of the sex [were] likely to give uneasiness."

Sir William Hamilton himself, when in London, had painted to Emma in vivid colours the advantages and charms of Italy; how her beauty and her voice would alike expand and glow in that sunny atmosphere, promising that with Italian cultivation she might well become the first singer of her day. The people of Italy, impulsive and ardent, the radiant climate, the gorgeous scenery of the Bay of Naples, the gay, dirty, fascinating city itself, all were exactly suited to her temperament and character. Paddington Green must have seemed a little dull to Emma

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as Sir William drew his skilful contrasts. But then London and Paddington Green meant Greville, and so her affectionate heart swung the balance even.

It was something over a year from the time of the British Ambassador's return to Naples before Greville considered his plans sufficiently well laid and the occasion ripe to bring about Emma's transplantation.

So, according to arrangement, one day at the end of 1785 a letter arrived from Sir William Hamilton inviting Emma and her mother to pay him a visit of several months' duration, so that Emma might cultivate her fine voice in a congenial atmosphere, and Greville rearrange his financial affairs in England. At the end of the time Greville was to come out to Naples and fetch them home. At first Emma was all tears and protestations ; she could not endure to be separated from Greville, " whom you know I love tenderly," as she told Sir William. She found that six weeks at a watering-place away from him made her quite wretched; how could she contemplate calmly a separation of six months or more ?

But when Greville made it plain to her that she would be serving his interests with his uncle by consenting to go, that in no other way could she so please him and show her devotion, her protests were at an end—though not her tears.

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The day before she arrived in Naples, Sir William had written to his nephew : " You may be assured I will comfort her for the loss of you as well as I am able, but I know, from the small specimens during your absence from London, that I shall have at times many tears to wipe from those charming eyes." He, at any rate, did not make the mistake of under-valuing the strength of her attachment to Greville.

The excitement of the journey through Europe under the care of her mother and Mr. Gavin Hamilton, the enchantments of the Bay of Naples spread beneath her windows, could not divert her thoughts from the man she had parted from so reluctantly and sadly, even though she thought the parting only temporary. The day of her arrival, the 26th of April, 1786, was also her birthday; and a few days later she wrote to Greville—

" I dreaded setting down to write, for I try to appear as chearful before Sir William as I could, and I am sure to cry the moment I think of you. For I feel more and more unhappy at being separated from you, and if my fatal ruin depends on seeing you, I will and must at the end of the sumer. For to live without you is impossible. I love you to that degree that at this time there is not a hardship upon hearth either of poverty, cold, death, or even to walk barefooted to Scotland to see you, but

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