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

74 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON

leave his fair Emma often. She was so sweet and gay, such a joy to watch and to educate, that he could not tear himself away from her. She had masters of all sorts, to teach her Italian, to teach her singing; while the Palazzo Sessa was thronged with painters and sculptors, all occupied—by Sir William's orders—in perpetuating her beauty on canvas, in marble, in cameos. Inexhaustible good temper, as well as a considerable share of vanity, must have been necessary to enable her to endure the strain. In one of her letters of this period she says—

" The house is ful of painters painting me. He [Sir William] as now got nine pictures of me, and 2 a painting. Marchant is cutting my head in stone, that is in camea for a ring. There is another man modeling me in wax, and another in clay. All the artists is come from Rome to study from me, that Sir William as fitted up a room, that is calld the painting-room. Sir William is never a moment from me. He goes no where without me. He as no diners but what I can be of the party. No body comes without the[y] are civil to me. We have allways good company. . . . My old apartments is made the musick-rooms, where I have my lessons in the morning. Our house at Caserta is fitting up eleganter this year, a room making for my musick, and a room fitting up for my master, as he goes with ous. Sir William says he loves nothing but me, likes no

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person to sing but me, and takes delight in all I do, and all I say, to see me happy. ... It is a most extraordinary thing that my voice is totally altered. It is the finest soprano, you ever heard, so that Sir William shuts his eyes and thinks one of the Castratos is singing; and, what is most extraordinary that my shake, or tril, what you call it, is so very good in every note, my master says that, if he did not feil and see and no that I am a substance, he would think I was an angel/'

In another and earlier letter she had carefully detailed for the benefit of the admiring Sir William some of the compliments on her music that she received during his absence :—

"Mr. Hart went awhay yesterday with his head turned; I sung so well Handell's 3 songs , . that you never saw a man so delighted. He said it was the most extraordinary thing he ever knew. But what struck him was holding on the notes and going from the high to the low notes so very neat. He says I shall turn the heads of the English. . . . Galucci played solo some of my solfegos and you whold have thought he would have gone mad. He says he had heard a great deal of me. But he never saw or heard of such a whoman before. He says when he first came in, I frightened him with a Majesty and Juno look that I receved him with. Then he says that whent of on being more acquainted, and I enchanted him by my politeness and the

76 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON

maner in which I did the honors, and then I made him allmost cry with Handels; and with the comick he could not contain himself, for he says he never saw the tragick and comick muse blended so happily together."

Emma certainly did not mind " the butter spread too thick ! "

In the late summer of 1787 she commenced writing again to Charles Greville, keeping a sort of journal-letter for his benefit which gives a vivacious account of her doings for about four months. She allows herself the luxury of a few reproaches at the beginning, but it should be remembered that the generous creature never said or did anything that could injure the nephew's prospects with his uncle, though it was fully in her power to have done so had she cherished a taste for revenge.

"Altho' you never think me worth writing to," she says, " yet I cannot so easily forget you, and whenever I have had any particular pleasure, I feil as tho' I was not right tell I had communicated it to my dearest Greville. For you will ever be dear to me, and tho' we cannot be together, lett ous corespond as freinds. I have a happiness in hearing from you, and a comfort in communicating my little storeys to you, because I flatter myself that you still love the name of that Emma, that was once very dear to you."

After this little outburst, she tells him of her

visits and her singing, and how she draws pictures of Vesuvius—all with a charming simplicity and friendliness that Greville certainly did not deserve. Then she goes on—

" We was last night up Vesuvus [if she could draw the mountain she couldn't spell its name!] at twelve a clock, and in my life I never saw so fine a sight. The lava runs about five mile down from the top; for the mountain is not burst, as ignorant people say it is. But, when we got to the Hermitage, there was the finest fountain of liquid fire falling down a great precipice, and as it run down it sett fire to the trees and brushwood, so that the mountain looked like one entire mountain of fire. We saw the lava surround the poor hermit's house, and take possession of the chapel, notwithstanding it was covered with pictures of Saints and other religios preservitaves against the