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

" I am now onely writing to beg of you for God's sake to send me one letter, if it is onely a farewell. Sure I have deserved this for the sake of the love you once had for me. Think, Greville,

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of our former connexion, and don't despise me. I have not used you ill in any one thing. I have been from you going of six months, and you have wrote one letter to me, enstead of which I have sent fourteen to you. So pray let me beg of you, my much loved Greville, only one line from your dear, dear hands. You don't know how thankful I shall be for it. For if you knew the misery I feel, oh! your heart wou'd not be intirely shut up against me ; for I love you with the truest affection. Don't let any body sett you against me. Some of your friends—your foes perhaps, I don't know what to stile them—have long wisht me ill. But, Greville, you never will meet with anybody that has a truer affection for you than I have, and I onely wish it was in my power to shew you what I cou'd do for you. As soon as I know your determination, I shall take my own measures. If I don't hear from you, and that you are coming according to promise, I shall be in England at Cristmas at farthest. Don't be unhappy at that, I will see you once more for the last time. I find life is insupportable without you. Oh! my heart is intirely broke. Then for God's sake, my ever dear Greville, do write to me some comfort. I don't know what to do. I am now in that state, I am incapable of anything. I have a language-master, a singing-master, musick, etc., but what is it for? If it was to amuse you, I shou'd be

LADY HAMILTON (EMMA HART)

GKORGE ROMNF.V

A BARGAIN AND ITS RESULTS 59

happy. But, Greville, what will it avail me ? I am poor, helpless, and forlorn. I have lived with you 5 years, [this is a mistake, it was four] and you have sent me to a strange place, and no one prospect but thinking you was coming to me. . . . Then what am I to do ? what is to become of me ?—But excuse me, my heart is ful, I tell you,—give me one guiney a week for everything, and live with me, and I will be contented."

At last Greville replied, but only to destroy her hopes and her faith in him utterly by telling her that he had handed her over to his uncle, and that she would best consult her own future and his pleasure by accommodating herself to Sir William's wishes. All Emma's scorned love and womanly feeling rose up enraged, she cried out upon him in bitter and furious words—surely at the moment a dagger would have come kinder to her outraged hand than a pen.

" As to what you write me to oblidge Sir William, I will not answer you. For oh, if you knew what pain I feel in reading those lines. . . . Nothing can express my rage! I am all madness! Greville, to advise me!— you that used to envy my smiles! . . . But I will not, no, I will not rage. If I was with you I wou'd murder you and myself booth. I will leave of and try to get more strength, for I am now very ill with a cold. . . . Nothing shall

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ever do for me but going home to you. If that is not to be, I will except of nothing. I will go to London, their go into every excess of vice till I dye, a miserable, broken-hearted wretch, and leave my fate as a warning to young whomen never to be two good ; for now you have made me love you, you made me good, you have abbandoned me; and some violent end shall finish our connexion, if it is to finish. But oh! Greville, you cannot, you must not give me up. You have not the heart to do it. You love me I am sure; and I am willing to do everything in my power, and what will you have more ? And I only say this is the last time I will either beg or pray, do as you like."

Again she tells him, " I always knew, I had a foreboding since first I began to love you, that I was not destined to be happy; for their is not a King or Prince on hearth that cou'd make me happy without you."

She would have saved herself much grief and humiliation of spirit if she had remembered and acted upon a saying of Greville's in one of his very earliest letters to her. " I have never seen a woman," he told her, " clever enough to keep a man who was tired of her." Not only was Greville somewhat tired of her—in spite of his protestations to the contrary—but she also interfered with his material interests, which were always paramount with him. Therefore her most pathetic

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letters, her tears, her reproaches, were all in vain, they made no impression upon the hard, clear surface of his self-love and self-satisfaction. He believed himself incapable of making a blunder in taste or good breeding—and taste and good breeding represented all his outlook, while they were a very small matter in Emma's.

Greville was capable