Nelson's Lady Hamilton by Meynell, Esther (cheapest way to read ebooks .txt) 📗

to him: " I come into your whay athinking; hollidays spoils children. It takes there attention of from there scool, it gives them a bad habbit. When they have been a month and goes back this does not pleas them, and that is not wright, and the[y] do nothing but think when the[y] shall go back again. Now

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Emma will never expect what she never had." In the postscript of the same letter she adds, " I bathe Emma, and she is very well and grows. Her hair will grow very well on her forehead, and I don't think her nose will be very snub. Her eyes is blue and pretty. But she don't speak through her nose, but she speaks country-fied, but she will forget it. We squable sometimes ; still she is fond of me, and endead I love her. For she is sensible. So much for Beauty." One further extract from this Parkgate correspondence, in reference to Sir William Hamilton, is interesting in view of later events. Emma sends him her "kind love," and bids Greville "Tell him next to you I love him abbove any body, and that I wish I was with him to give him a kiss."

CHAPTER IV

A BARGAIN AND ITS RESULTS

EMMA returned to Edgware Row, all eager to begin her domestic life again, though already aware from Greville's "kind instructing letter," that he meant to rearrange things somewhat. She writes to him in a letter of this time—

" You shall have your appartment to yourself, you shall read, wright, or sett still, just as you please ; for I shall think myself happy to be under the seam roof with Greville, and do all I can to make it agreable, without disturbing him in any pursuits that he can follow, to employ himself in at home or else whare. For your absence has taught me that I ought to think myself happy if I was within a mile of you."

A week or two after Emma's return, when everything was in readiness in his little household, Greville himself came home. But he was not so eager as Emma to begin again the game which was her " whole existence" to the woman. His financial difficulties were pressing upon him.

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The " reasonable plan," as recommended by his relatives, was to marry an heiress, which he could hardly do while he had Emma on his hands ; and the impulse to get rid of her was heightened by the fact that Sir William had signified his willingness to become responsible for her.

In the whole of the cold-blooded transaction which eventually transferred the trusting Emma to Naples, the only good thing that can be said for Greville is that not even in the pursuit of the desirable heiress did he intend to turn Emma adrift as Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh had done. It was his intention to give her a little income of her own, and he begged Sir William also to settle something on her. In a letter to his uncle he says, with a very just appreciation of Emma's character at this time—

" She shall never want, and if I decide sooner than I am forced to stop by necessity, it will be that I may give her part of my pittance; and, if I do so it must be by sudden resolution and by putting it out of her power to refuse it, for I know her disinterestedness to be such that she will rather encounter any difficulty than distress me. I should not write to you thus, if I did not think you seem'd as partial as I am to her."

Another portion of this letter contains the gist of the business, put forth without any of

that subtle circumlocution which was generally so pleasing to the Honourable Charles Greville: " If you did not chuse a wife," he tells his uncle, " I wish the tea-maker of Edgware Rowe was yours, if I could without banishing myself from a visit to Naples. I do not know how to part with what I am not tired with : I do not know how to go on, and I give her every merit of prudence and moderation and affection."

Two of Greville's interests would be served by the transference of Emma to his uncle's care. Sir William would be less likely to marry if he had the " fair tea-maker " to amuse him, and as Greville had reason to regard himself as his childless uncle's heir, he did not wish Sir William to marry again. Also, once Emma was off his hands he could look round for the young lady of wealth and accomplishments who was to repair his fortunes. It may be said, in passing, that he never found her, which was, perhaps, in the phrase of the old country people who look directly for the hand of Providence in every event, " a judgment" on him.

But meanwhile Emma was unconscious of all the schemes to get rid of her; unconscious of all the nicely veiled transactions which were already turning the path of her life towards the point where she and Nelson met.

Romney was once more painting her portrait —this time for Sir William Hamilton. She was

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painted as a " Bacchante," with a dog who leaps and barks at her while she moves forward with archly smiling face, her unbound hair and her long skirts flowing behind her in fine, free lines ; it is one of the most exquisite of his pictures of the " divine lady." Sir William Hamilton might well desire to have