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

John Romney also said of her that " Her only resources were reading and music at home, and sitting for pictures."

Here was a discreet and transformed Emma! But the change, though genuine so far as it went,

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was more on the surface than fundamental. It was not that her nature—always expressive and struggling for expression—was altered, but that she had become much more accomplished and —imitative and susceptible as she was—had insensibly acquired a more refined restraint of manner from living with Greville, who all his life, put manners before morals and repressed unbecoming emotion. Greville would not have influenced Emma so strongly if it had not been that she was very deeply and truly devoted to him. In her grateful eyes he was a model of all the virtues, and though there were times when her impulsive temper chafed at the restraints of Greville's " system," times when there were little outbursts, quickly repented, she yet spent her days in trying to please him and follow his wishes.

When separated from him temporarily once, she wrote—

" Oh! Greville, when I think on your goodness, your tender kindness, my heart is so full of gratitude that I want words to express it. But I have one happiness in vew, which I am determined to practice, and that is eveness of temper and steadness of mind. For endead I have thought so much of your amiable goodness when you have been tried to the utmost, that I will, endead I will manege myself, and try to be like Greville. Endead I can never be like

! him. But I will do all I can towards it, and I am sure you will not desire more. I think if the

! time would come over again, I would be differant.

: But it does not matter. There is nothing like bying expearance. I may be happyer for it hereafter, and I will think of the time coming

; and not of the past, except to make comparra-sons, to shew you what alterations there is for the best. ... I will try, I will do my utmost; and I can only regrett that fortune will not put it in my power to make a return for all the kindness and goodness you have showed

me."

One little episode belonging to this time of her life with Greville shows what a natural and incurably impulsive creature she remained, in spite of his training and her own eager efforts after a demeanour fitted to his ideas. Greville one evening took the young beauty with him to Ranelagh Gardens, and the lights and the people, coupled with the excitement of being with her " dear Greville" (who was chary of taking her often to places of public amusement), were all supremely delightful to the volatile Emma. There was an open-air concert going on; she listened enchanted to the singing, and when it ceased, to the amazement of the people and the absolute horror of Greville, she suddenly broke into song herself—with all the joyous unconsciousness of an early morning lark pouring

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out her "full heart in profuse strains of unpremeditated art." She had a fine clear voice which had been under training for some time, and, like a very child, she stood up among the fashionable crowd at Ranelagh and sang the latest and the prettiest of her songs. She was applauded to the echo, but the only face there that mattered to her wore a look of severe displeasure. Greville hurried her out of the gardens and took her home, telling her that she had filled him with shame. Emma's spirits were easily dashed by those she loved, and she fled in tears to her room. She took off the finery which had given her such pleasure an hour or two ago and put on "a plain cottage dress." Then she went down to Greville and told him sadly that, as he was ashamed of her, he had better dismiss her, and she would go away as poor and as miserable as she came to him. Emma could play Beggar-maid or Ambassadress with equal charm.

She was very conscious of the defects of her own impulsive temper, and did what she could to curb it. She set great store by a didactic poem of Hayley's called " The Triumphs of Temper," and regarded its heroine, Serena, as an example of all that she herself vainly strove after. At this period of her life it might truly be said of her, as of Serena, that—

" Free from ambitious pride and envious care, To love and to be loved was all her prayer."

It was while living in Edgware Row with Greville that Emma and Romney became friends, and that she sat to him for the innumerable pictures and studies which have been such a joy to lovers of beauty ever since—for in her portraits she combines the double charm of art and nature. During the four years, from 1782 to 1786, Romney records nearly three hundred sittings given him by Emma—or " Mrs. Hart," as he called her. In his own words she was his "divine lady" and his "inspirer," and she certainly deserved these expressions—he found the purest joy and the utmost expression of his genius in painting her. It was not only the loveliness of her form and features that enraptured him, but also her warmth of heart and joyous disposition. Romney's son describes her as "a young female of an artless and playful character, of extraordinary elegance and symmetry of form, of a most beautiful countenance glowing with health and animation." This was the vision that two or three times a