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

what I would undergo. Therefore my dear, dear Greville, if you do love me, for my sake, try all you can to come hear as soon as possible. ... I find it is not either a fine horse, or a fine coach, or a pack of servants, or plays, or operas, can make happy. It is you that as it in your power either to make me very happy or very miserable." Referring to the day of her arrival, she goes on, " It was my birthday, and I was very low-spirited. Oh God! that day that you used to smile on me and stay at home, and be kind to me—that that day I should be at such a distance from you! But my comfort is that I rely upon your promise, and September or October I shall see you/'

Sir William Hamilton had made all possible arrangements for her comfort and that of her mother, Mrs. Cadogan, who was to lend her easy chaperonage and throw a mantle of propriety over everything. The British Ambassador did not at first receive them in his own house, or lend them his carriages and liveried servants, so well known in Naples. To have done so would have exposed Emma Hart to misconstruction; so he fitted up for her an apartment of four rooms looking out on the Bay of Naples, he gave her a carriage and a boat of her own, and servants in her own livery. Besides these things, which she shared with her mother, he made her many personal gifts. She writes a

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delighted catalogue to Greville, diverted for the moment from her grief and dimly moving fears by the feminine pleasure in pretty things.

" Sir William as give me a camlet shawl, like my old one," she tells him. " I know you will be pleased to hear that, and he as given me a beautiful gown, cost 25 guineas (India painting on wite sattin) and several little things of Lady Hamilton's, and is going to by me some muslin dresses loose, to tye with a sash for the hot weather — made like the turkey dresses, the sleeves tyed in fowlds with ribban and trimd with lace. In short, he is always contriving what he shall get for me. The people admire my English dresses. But the blue hat, Greville, pleases most. Sir William is quite inchanted with it."

What a picture is conjured up by the artless little statement that "the blue hat pleases most"! One can almost see the pretty creature, with her English freshness of colouring, looking out from under the becoming brim of her blue hat— looking with young interest and pleasure at the Italians, who already frantically admired her; looking most of all, rather wistful and afraid under her smiles, at Sir William, whose manner already disturbed her. She liked admiration; she had enjoyed the ambassador's delight in her beauty when he was in London and Greville was at hand, but here in Naples alone it was not

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quite the same: he was less fatherly, more lover-like. She tells Greville, " He as never dined out since I came hear ; and endead, to speak the truth, he is never out of my sight. He breakfasts, dines, supes, and is constantly by me, looking in my face. . . . He thinks I am grown much more ansome then I was. He does nothing all day but look at me and sigh. 1 *

There are evidences of a tendency to panic in her letter; but she suppresses her fears as too bad for reality, and tells her distant and faithless "protector," "I respect Sir William, I have a very great regard for him, as the uncle and friend of you, Greville. But he can never be anything nearer to me than your uncle and my sincere friend."

The day following her alarm took more definite shape. Angry, puzzled, and panic-stricken, she adds this paragraph to her letter—

"I have only to say I enclose this I wrote yesterday, and I will not venture myself now to wright any more, for my mind and heart are torn by different passions, that I shall go mad. Only, Greville, remember your promise of October. Sir William says you never mentioned to him abbout coming to Naples at all. But you know the consequence of your not coming for me. Endead, my dear Greville, I live but in the hope of seeing you, and if you do not come hear, lett whatt will be the consequence, I will come

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to England. I have had a conversation this morning with Sir William, that has made me mad. He speaks—no, I do not know what to make of it. But, Greville, my dear Greville, wright some comfort to me. . . . Pray, for God's sake, wright to me and come to me, for Sir William shall not be anything to me but your friend."

Other letters followed this one, growing more passionate, more frightened, as the weeks of Greville's silence went on. She wrote to him fourteen times, entreating an explanation, advice, a word—anything but the blank negation of his silence. How strangely repeated was her situation when she wrote her seven despairing, unanswered letters to Sir Harry Fetherstone-haugh! And the old cry was yet on her lips— differently worded and better spelt, perhaps, but still the same at heart, " O, Grevell, what shall I dow? What shall I dow?"

She could not at first bring herself to believe the coldly treacherous part he had played to her —in spite of various "conversations" with Sir William Hamilton. She was too fond to be proud, and after many entreaties, many