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

anti-Jacobin severities—though the Lazzaroni remained faithful to the hearty, maccaroni-eating, coarse-grained King they liked and understood—she yet persisted in her efforts to oppose France, to root out the sans-culottes, whether French or Neapolitan, and to gain the good will and support of England—the one country that stood on a foundation of rock, while the rest of Europe seemed to quake on quagmires. Her own personal temper is shown by the way Robespierre, the " sea-green, incorruptible," haunted her. Of every aristocrat who showed symptoms of rebellion she cried with all the fury of fear, " We will not give him time to become a Robespierre."

Into this whirlpool Emma Hamilton plunged

with all her light-hearted love of excitement. She

might tell Greville that against her will she had

I "got into politicks," but in reality she rejoiced

I in the stir and movement, the thrill of big events,

and her natural courage was exalted by the

suggestion of danger.To her a world without

excitement was indeed " flat, stale, unprofitable."

CHAPTER VIII ENTER NELSON

ON the loth of September, 1793, Nelson, in the sixty-four-gun ship Agamemnon, sailed into the Bay of Naples bearing great tidings. He had left the blockade before Toulon on the very eve of the surrender of the French arsenal and dockyard. Lord Hood had sent him to Naples to seek a reinforcement of troops to garrison and hold it. He left with a certain regret at the crowning moment of the blockade, which had proved not a blockade, but a conquest. "I should have liked/' he told his wife, " to have stayed one day longer with the fleet, when they entered the harbour, but service could not be neglected for any private gratification."

Nelson had come from a station where he and his ship's company had to subsist on a diet of " honour and salt beef." At Naples he was received not only with honour, but with feasting and rejoicing. The news he brought, the sight of an English sixty-four, lifted the Neapolitan Court from a state of fear and indecision to one

of joyous excitement. Nelson, as the emissary of England and the inveterate foe of the French, was called the " Saviour of Italy ; M Maria Carolina was ardent in her praises. Troops were promised—though there was no guarantee against them " running away!" In the satisfaction of the moment the Neapolitan Prime Minister called Captain Nelson " Admiral "—not a very serious mistake, for it was but anticipating events.

Nelson, at this time, was close upon thirty-five years old. His face, though worn by sea-weather, was not yet lined and drawn by the griefs and strain and glorious hardships of his later years. As yet he bore no scars of battle upon him, both the eye and the arm which he lost in the service of his country were still his. There is a portrait of him, painted thirteen years earlier when he was a young captain of twenty-two, which gives some idea of his appearance at this time, if allowance is made for the greater maturity and assurance of bearing which something over a decade had brought him. Rigaud painted the picture, and he stands, a slender determined figure, with both hands on his sword-hilt, his wide cocked hat worn low on his brows, his steady level eyes looking out with some marked quality of searchingness, the mobile mouth sweet in expression, but already tending towards that sensitive, half-pouting look so characteristic in later years.

Even at twenty-two Captain Nelson had the

116 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON

air and bearing of a man who was assured of himself, who knew his own qualities and feared nothing destiny might bring, save the lack of opportunity. Since that portrait was painted, and up to the year of his coming to Naples, destiny had not been particularly lavish. He had but escaped from five years of half-pay—Admiralty coldness and deafness to his appeals for a ship had lasted so long that when, on the outbreak of war in 1793, My Lords suddenly smiled upon him he declared himself as much surprised as when they frowned.

But now war had come, the map of his destiny was unrolled. The first rays of fame had not yet touched him, though his comrades and superiors in the service were already beginning to realize that he was a man of no common stuff. Unimpressive though he was in outward aspect, there was something arresting in his personality and bearing. His qualities instantly struck Sir William Hamilton, who determined to entertain him at his own house, and returning to his wife told her, " The captain I am about to introduce to you is a little man and far from handsome, but he will live to be a great man. I know it from the talk I have had with him."

And so Nelson and Lady Hamilton met for the first time. Nelson was too much taken up with war and affairs to spare any special thought to the British Ambassador's wife. He comments

LADY HAMILTON AS EMMA

GEORGE KOMNEY

on her in a cool and detached manner to his wife : " She is a young woman of amiable manners, and who does honour to the station to which she is raised." He mentions that she has been "wonderfully good and kind" to his stepson, Josiah Nisbet. Nothing more.

In return for the hospitality and kindness he had received during his visit, Nelson purposed to give a luncheon party on board the Agamemnon to the King, the Queen, the British Ambassador and his " amiable" wife, Sir John Acton, and the Neapolitan Ministers. The date of this festivity was the 24th of September. When the morning came all was in readiness, the Agamemnon