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

position as the wife of the British Ambassador and the friend of a Queen, the surface bloom was visibly rubbed away, and she began to degenerate in a lax, loud-mannered woman, whose defiance of the conventions she outraged and the wife she had supplanted was of the most crude and vulgar description. But even to the end of her life her underlying coarseness was saved from being wholly objectionable by the generous impulses and ardours of her nature. To the last, to paraphrase Carlyle's saying of the French people, she was " A gesticulating, sympathetic creature, and has a heart, and wears it on its sleeve."

It is not surprising that with her excitable, pleasure-loving temperament she became a victim to a passion for gambling—even before she ever touched a card she had gambled unconsciously with her beauty and her reputation as the stakes ; she had the true gambler's nature. Nelson himself cared nothing for cards ; but the unattractive spectacle of a woman flushed by the excitement of false gains, did not disturb his steady admiration for Emma, though many of his friends were much distressed by it. The good Troubridge, who was, as Captain Mahan says, " a pattern of that most faithful friendship which dares to risk alienation, if it may but save/' wrote urgently to Nelson at the end of 1799—

" Pardon me, my Lord, it is my sincere esteem for you that makes me mention it.I

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know you can have no pleasure sitting up all night at cards; why, then, sacrifice your health, comfort, purse, ease, everything, to the customs of a country where your stay cannot be long ? . . . Your Lordship is a stranger to half that happens, or the talk it occasions; if you knew what your friends feel for you, I am sure you would cut all the nocturnal parties. The gambling of the people at Palermo is publicly talked of everywhere. I beseech your Lordship leave off. I wish my pen could tell you my feelings, I am

sure you would oblidge me. Lady H J s

character will suffer, nothing can prevent people from talking. A gambling woman, in the eye of an Englishman, is lost/'

People did talk, but neither Nelson nor Emma would take heed—the voice of friendship and the voice of censure alike fell on deaf ears. They seemed determined to believe that all must be well, because they wished it. Emma wrote to Greville in February, 1800—

"We are more united and comfortable than ever, in spite of the infamous Jacobin papers jealous of Lord Nelson's glory and Sir William's and mine. But we do not mind them. Lord N. is a truly vertuous and great man; and because we have been fagging, and ruining our health, and sacrificing every comfort in the cause of loyalty, our private characters are to be stabbed in the dark. First it was said Sir W.

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and Lord N. fought ; then that we played and lost. First Sir W. and Lord N. live like brothers; next Lord N. never plays: and this I give you my word of honour. So I beg you will contradict any of these vile reports. Not that Sir W. and Lord N. mind it; and I get scolded by the Queen and all of them for having suffered one day's uneasiness."

But though Emma might protest, she did not alter her habits. Lady Minto, writing to her sister in July, 1800, described some of the things that took place at Palermo.

"Nelson and the Hamiltons," she said, "all lived together in a house of which he bore the expense, which was enormous, and every sort of gaming went on half the night. Nelson used to sit with large parcels of gold before him, and generally go to sleep, Lady Hamilton taking from the heap without counting, and playing with his money to the amount of ^500 a night. Her rage is play, and Sir William says when he is dead she will be a beggar. However, she has about ,£30,000 worth of diamonds from the royal family in presents. She sits at the Councils, and rules everything and everybody."

There is a certain malice and exaggeration in this picture, but undoubtedly it was substantially true, and the spectacle of Nelson sitting half asleep while Lady Hamilton gambled away his gold, is sad enough without any additions—

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truly for him it was " the expense of spirit in a waste of shame."

But even in the toils of his unhappy passion, Nelson was still active and ardent at sea in the pursuit of what he regarded as his life's mission, and which he expressed in the words, " Down, down, with the French!" During the months that he was commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, he never let his infatuation interfere with his professional duties, except in that he made Palermo his headquarters. After Lord Keith returned at the beginning of 1800, and directed him to report himself at Leghorn, he wrote to Lady Hamilton, "To say how I miss your house and company would be saying little ; but in truth you and Sir William have so spoiled me, that I am not happy anywhere else but with you, nor have I an idea that I ever can be." And on another occasion he tells her petulantly, " Having a Commander-in-Chief, I cannot come on shore till I have made my manners to him. Times are changed." Some of his complaints to her have the simplicity and directness of a child seeking instant consolation for a hurt. " My head aches dreadfully," he says in one letter, "and I have none here to give me a moment's comfort."