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

The Honourable Charles Greville was curiously careful of the smaller proprieties, though he cared little for the larger ones, and either he or Mrs. Cadogan usually accompanied Emma on these visits to the painter. According to John Romney's account, " She always had a hackney-

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coach to bring and take her away ; and she never appeared in the streets without her mother." In the same "Life" of his father, he says, "In all Mr. Romney's intercourse with her, she was treated with the utmost respect, and her demeanour fully entitled her to it. In the characters in which she has been represented, she sat only for the face and a slight sketch of the attitude, and the drapery was painted either from other models or from the layman."

But there was a much deeper attachment between the artist and his lovely model than would be guessed from John Romney's careful sentences. Emma's warm heart went out to all who were good to her, and for Romney she soon felt a daughter's affection. She called him her friend, her " more than father;" she confided her little griefs and joys to him with the simplicity of a child, and in later years, as will be seen, wrote to him and spoke of him with sincere affection. There is, too, no doubt that his intense admiration of her beauty—in which she herself took the most naive and open pleasure—was very acceptable to her. But she gave quite as much as she received. Hayley, writing of Romney to her in 1804, said, "You were not only his model but his inspirer, and he truly and gratefully said, that he owed a great part of his felicity as a painter to the angelic kindness and intelligence with which you used to animate his

diffident and tremulous spirits to the grandest efforts of art."

So thus by intercourse with Romney and the cultured Charles Greville, by the aid of singing-masters and instructors, and the study of "The Triumphs of Temper," Emma was educated in all the graces and not a few of the virtues.

CHAPTER III

"PLINY THE ELDER"

TO the little household in Edgware Row came, in 1784, a new and most agreeable visitor, Greville's uncle, Sir William Hamilton. He was, in a superlative degree, " the man of taste, 1 and also—far more than his nephew—the " man of feeling." He was as well an antiquary and collector, not an idle dilettante, but one whose original research and genuine knowledge entitled him to the respect of the learned. In his youth he had been in the army, and served as an ensign in Holland under the Duke of Cumberland. " To the last," says Mr. Jeaffreson, " he retained the air and carriage of a man of arms." Soldier, man of letters, man of the world, philosopher, British Ambassador at Naples—such was the somewhat dazzling personality of the man who made Emma's acquaintance in the year 1784, and at once stepped into her favour as the admired uncle of her " dear Greville."

Sir William Hamilton's view of life is very completely expressed in a letter he wrote Emma

some years later. " My study of antiquities," he told her, "has kept me in constant thought of the perpetual fluctuation of everything. The whole art is, really, to live all the days of our life ; and not, with anxious care, disturb the sweetest hour that life affords—which is, the present. Admire the Creator, and all His works to us incomprehensible ; and do all the good you can upon earth; and take the chance of eternity without dismay."

Such was his philosophy, and he certainly lived up to it in the matter of taking freely of whatever enjoyment the present might offer him, whether it was a cameo, an Etruscan vase, an eruption of Vesuvius (he was a great authority on volcanoes), or the smiles of a charming girl.

His first wife had died two years before he met Emma. She was a good and noble-natured woman, though not beautiful, whom young William Hamilton had married "something against his inclination" when he was only twenty-seven, because she was an heiress. But however he may have fallen short of the higher motives in marrying her, he won and kept his wife's devoted attachment during all the years of their married life. He knew how to make a woman happy by the most graceful and constant little attentions. He was very much a man of the world, and by no means rigorous or lofty in his ideas of conduct; yet he had a certain sweetness of nature,

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a certain kindly charm, that never lost its power over his delicate and retiring wife. After many years of marriage, when she felt the shadow of coming death draw near her, she wrote to him with deep and passionate affection : " How shall I express my love and tenderness to you, dearest of earthly blessings ? My only attachment to this world has been my love to you, and you are my only regret in leaving it. My heart has followed your footsteps where ever you went, and you have been the source of all my joys. I would have preferred beggary with you to kingdoms without you, but all this must have an end— forget and forgive my faults and remember me with kindness."

The first Lady Hamilton is merely a shadow, a ghost, in the many-coloured story of her successor ; but, as she moves for a moment through it, she breathes a nobler and serener atmosphere than often came near Emma.

Sir William Hamilton and his nephew Charles Greville were attached to