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

of his Sicilian Majesty had somewhat overstepped the bounds, and unpleasant rumours were getting back to England of the undue influence of Lady Hamilton and the extravagant scenes at Palermo. The impression made upon Lord Keith by the Hamilton household, of which Nelson was now a far more important member than Sir William, is shown by his writing early in 1800 to the Honourable Arthur Paget, who succeeded Sir William Hamilton as British Minister: "Anything absurd coming from the quarter you mention does not surprise me. The whole was a scene of fulsome vanity and absurdity all the long eight days I was at Palermo."

But Nelson had already reached the point at which he could see no wrong in anything that Emma said or did—she embodied perfection in his partial eyes.

His somewhat excessive devotion to the Sicilian royalties was, however, strained almost to breaking-point at times. Ferdinand was not a statesman, and would not see the force of the reasons Nelson urged for his return to Naples to once more take up the affairs of his kingdom. "My situation here is indeed an uncomfortable one," the admiral wrote to Earl Spencer, "for plain common sense points out that the King should return to Naples, but nothing can move

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him." And again, " Unfortunately the King and her Majesty do not at this moment draw exactly the same way ; therefore, his Majesty will not go at this moment to Naples, where his presence is much wanted." Later he cried impatiently, " We do but waste our breath." It was not a satisfactory Court to serve; the true Neapolitan shuffle took place on every occasion, and Nelson himself would have seen things sooner in their proper light had it not been for the glamour that Lady Hamilton cast over him. Troubridge had no Emma to blind his clear seaman's eyes, and he was furious that the Maltese should be left to perish for want of the corn which the Court could so well have supplied. He wrote to Nelson from Malta early in January, 1800, with passionate indignation—

" As the King of Naples, or rather the Queen and her party, are bent on starving us, I see no alternative, but to leave these poor unhappy people to starve, without our being witnesses to their distress. I curse the day I ever served the King of Naples. ... If the Neapolitan government will not supply corn, I pray your Lordship to recall us. ... Such is the fever of my brain this minute, that I assure you, on my honour, if the Palermo traitors were here, I would shoot them first, and then myself. . . . Oh, could you see the horrid distress I daily experience, something would be done."

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Nelson told General Graham that " I pray and beg, alas ! in vain. Corn is here for Malta, but the Vessels will not go to sea. . . . Nothing is well done in this Country."

Lady Hamilton, as might be expected from her sympathetic heart, was active in her endeavours to procure a supply of grain for the Maltese. She told Greville, " I have rendered some service to the poor Maltese. I got them ten thousand pounds, and sent them corn when they were in distress." For these services, at Nelson's request, the Czar, as Grand Master of the Maltese Knights, bestowed upon her the Grand Cross of the Order. She had the right to call herself, " Dame Chevaliere of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem," and was the only Englishwoman, as she was proud to think, upon whom the Cross had been conferred. Nelson was mud pleased, and wrote to Lord Minto : " The Emperoi of Russia has just granted my request for cross of Malta to our dear and invaluable Lad 1 Hamilton."

But Nelson's infatuation for the "dear an< invaluable Lady Hamilton" was fast becoming a scandal that threatened to darken his reputation, He and she at Palermo were making for themselves a dangerous paradise, and, shut up withii it, were determined to ignore the world's; censure —indeed, the outer world and the sane an< wholesome ideals in which he had been brought

LADY HAMILTON EN SYBILLE

MADAME LEI5RUN, PINX.

up at home must have seemed very far away to Nelson as he looked upon—

" The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams."

His early traditions of right and wrong in matters of the most delicate personal honour, the simple memories of his Norfolk home, his good father and his patient wife, all alike seemed forgotten under the spell of one woman's influence. It is not meant to imply that Emma Hamilton was a Circe who wilfully bewitched men to their undoing and degradation—in her early days it was always she who had suffered and been the victim of men's selfish passions. At her worst she was not immoral, but at her best she remained unmoral. Her easy standards were not simply the result of her early unfortunate circumstances and experiences, but also of her own nature— large, capacious, tolerant, devoted, but unrestrained and without spiritual sensitiveness. The side of life that is spiritual and unseen never touched her; she liked the things that she could take in both hands and taste and touch; she revelled in glitter and profusion, in the pride of the eye. There was an essential coarseness of grain in her which was glossed over in her youth by her radiant beauty, her abounding vitality, and her eager willingness to please and to be pleased. But as she grew older and more assured in her

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