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

" outlook from its corner window" was " unique." He admired the apartment, and, somewhat against his will, he was also compelled to admire and marvel at its mistress.

"The Chevalier Hamilton," he writes, "so long resident here as English Ambassador, so long, too, connoisseur and student of Art and Nature, has found their counterpart and acme with exquisite delight in a lovely girl—English, and some twenty years of age. She is exceedingly beautiful and finely built. She wears a Greek garb becoming her to perfection. She then merely loosens her locks, takes a pair of shawls, and effects changes of postures, moods, gestures, mien, and appearance that make one really feel as if one were in some dream. Here is visible complete, and bodied forth in movements of surprising variety, all that so many artists have sought in vain to fix and render.

MEDALLION PORTRAIT FROM LIFE

FREDERICK REHI5ERG

Successively standing, kneeling, seated, reclining, grave, sad, sportive, teasing, abandoned, penitent, alluring, threatening, agonised. One follows the other, and grows out of it. She knows how to choose and shift the simple folds of her single kerchief for every expression, and to adjust it into a hundred kinds of headgear. Her elderly knight holds the torches for her performance, and is absorbed in his soul's desire. In her he finds the charm of all antiques, the fair profiles on Sicilian coins, the Apollo Belvedere himself. . . ."

That is one of the earliest appreciations and descriptions of the famous " Attitudes " in which Emma expressed with plastic grace the dreams of artists, and proved herself " the heroine of a thousand things." All who ever saw those " Attitudes " were enchanted with them, however unfavourably they might regard Emma herself, and in later years, when her beauty had degenerated and her fame was somewhat too loudly noised abroad, she had many critics, especially of her own sex.

But these, her early triumphant years at Naples, were unmarred by criticism or calumny. Her position in Sir William Hamilton's house was apparent to all, but the easy Neapolitans were not concerned to trouble themselves about it, while many of the English visitors to Naples who did not wish to deny themselves the pleasure of visiting the Palazzo Sessa and there beholding

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the most famous beauty of the time and place, affected to believe that she was secretly married to the British Ambassador. Almost the only distinction which marked her position from that of a wife was that the Queen of Naples did not receive her at Court, though she admired her looks, and showed her "every distant civility." The King was frankly enchanted, followed her about, expressing a sort of dumb and animal-like amazement at her loveliness. "The king," wrote Emma in one of her letters, with not unnatural exultation (accompanied by a lamentable lack of h's) "as eyes, he as a heart, and I have made an impression on it." Neither the eyes nor the heart of Ferdinand were of much value, but Emma could not be expected to know this, and she may be forgiven if she was a little dazzled by the first royal smiles that had come her way. On one occasion she describes how on Sundays the King dines at " Paysilipo " (as she spells it), " and he allways come every Sunday before the casina in his boat to look at me. We had a small deplomatic party, and we was sailing in our boat, the K. directly came up, put his boat of musick next us, and made all the French horns and the wholl band play. He took of his hat, and sett with his hatt on his knees all the wile, and when we was going to land he made his bow, and said it was a sin he could not speak English." But the King's attentions did no more than

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lightly flatter her vanity. With a somewhat laughable air of prudence, she writes: " We keep the good-will of the other party mentioned abbove [the Queen], and never give him any encouragement."

In a difficult position and a dangerous society she really deserved the credit of acting with a sweetness that charmed all, and a prudence which repelled the unworthy. When at Sorrento, she had a slight encounter with one of the moth-like men who hovered round this particularly charming candle. "One asked me if I left a love at Naples, that I left them so soon. I pulled my lip at him, to say, ' I pray, do you take me for an Italian ? . . . Look, sir, I am English. I have one Cavaliere servente, and I have brought him with me/ pointing to Sir William."

Sir William Hamilton's devotion knew no bounds — save marriage. Everything that a woman who was content to forego the name Df wife could wish, was hers. And all was given .vith such kindness, such genuine admiration and lelight, such freedom from the lecturing and •eproving tone to which Greville had accustomed icr, that it is no matter for wonder if Emma's .usceptible heart and really affectionate nature >egan to sway the girl who had declared she ould not live without Greville into making Sir Villiam the genial sun of her hemisphere. In ime, he too was to pale into a minor luminary;

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but up to the year after the Nile, Emma revolved round him with grace and enthusiasm.

Her enthusiasm, her tremendous store of vitality, was one of the causes of her success, as it was also one of the reasons of her lack of ordinary moral standards. After such an experience as Greville's cold and