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

board by midnight of December the 2ist, the Vanguard was not able to weigh anchor till seven o'clock on the evening of the 23rd. The two days' delay was caused by waiting for further consignments of treasure, and for the last of the refugees to fly to the ships before they up-anchored and sailed from the curving Bay of Naples—which Maria Carolina thought never to behold again. A favourable breeze had blown steadily from the 2ist to the 23rd, but when the squadron sailed it was with a dropping barometer and every sign of threatening weather. The next day a tremendous storm struck them, and as Nelson, with his very considerable experience, said, "It blew harder than I ever experienced since I have been at

sea."

Emma Hamilton was a good sailor, and when nearly all on board the Vanguard, with the exception of the regular ship's company, were prostrated with sea-sickness and fear, she kept up her spirit and her health, cheering, nursing, and waiting on everybody. In few of the varied and striking episodes of her life does she shine with a lustre so simple and unselfish. The royal children, deprived of their proper attendants,

188 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON

frightened and miserable, clung to her reviving kindness, and their unhappy mother not less so. Nelson was recording the unadorned truth when he wrote to St. Vincent—

"It is my duty to tell your Lordship the obligations which the Royal Family as well as myself are under on this trying occasion to her Ladyship. They necessarily came on board 1 without a bed, nor could the least preparation; be made for their reception. Lady Hamilton; provided her own beds, linen, etc., and became their slave, for except one man, no person belonging to Royalty assisted the Royal Family, nor did her Ladyship enter a bed the whole time they were on board."

The "poor wretched Vanguard? as Nelson once called her, seemed a special mark for storms and tempests. Nelson, it will be remembered, had been nearly wrecked in her off San Pietro earlier in the year, and in this, the worst gale of his recollection, her sails were split to ribbons, and it seemed at one time as though the masts would have to be cut away. In these stark circumstances, with the terrified Neapolitans calling on every saint in the Catholic calendar, Emma proved herself made of the true heroic stuff. Fear is contagious, but she did not catch it; and Sir John Macpherson, writing to Sir William Hamilton after this voyage to Palermo, had reason to congratulate the British Ambassador on

AS "MIRANDA"

GEORGE ROMNEY

THE FLIGHT FROM NAPLES189

laving a wife " of so good a heart and so fine a nind." Lady Betty Foster, when writing to Lady Hamilton on the 8th of February, 1799, wished to express " the universal tribute of praise ind admiration which is paid to the very great :ourage and feeling which you have shown on .he late melancholy occasion/'

But Lady Hamilton was not thinking of praise or admiration when, on the Christmas Day of 1798, Prince Albert, the youngest son of the King and Queen of Naples, yielded up his little spirit to the storm. The baby prince, she tells Greville, was "six years old, my favourite, taken with convulsions in the midst of the storm, and, at seven in the evening of Christmas day, ex-)ired in my arms, not a soul to help me, as the few women her Majesty brought on board were incapable of helping her or the poor royal children."

In the early morning of December 26th the Vanguard anchored at Palermo. The King anded publicly, with salutes and " every proper lonour" paid to his barge. The Queen, heartbroken and prostrate over the death of her little son, would not land till later; and then she did so privately, accompanied by Nelson, who wrote : " Her Majesty being so much affected by the death of Prince Albert that she could not bear to go on shore in a public manner." Maria Carolina was miserable and depressed; and she got little

190 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON

sympathy from the King, who was inclined regard her English sympathies as the cause their troubles. All Emma's generous ardoui were roused for the unhappy Maria Carolina, She wrote to Greville shortly after the landing at Palermo—

"The Queen, whom I love better than an; person in the world, is very unwell.We wee] together, and now that is our onely comfort. Sir William and the King are philosophers;' nothing affects them, thank God, and we are scolded even for shewing proper sensibility."

In the same letter it appears that the charms of Palermo, beautiful in her amphitheatre of mountains, with the two horns of the bay guarded by the threatening heights of Pellegrino to the north-west, and Zaffarano to the east, had little appeal for the exiles. Emma cries for " dear, dear Naples," and says, "we now dare not show our love for that place ; for this country is jelous of the other." Sir William Hamilton also wrote to Greville from Palermo in a tone of great dissatisfaction : "I have been driven from my comfortable house at Naples," he says, " to a house here without chimneys, and calculated only for the summer." He complains that this is hard upon a man who feels himself growing old, and suffering as he does both from bilious and rheumatic complaints. " I am still most desirous of returning home by the first ship that Lord Nelson

THE FLIGHT FROM NAPLES191

sends down to Gibraltar, as I am worn out and want repose." Another cause of distress to the artistic and antiquarian Sir William was