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

}f to you is, that Mr. Canning may possibly :>n some favourable opportunity propose to the Duke of Portland to recommend to the King i small pension to the child."

Thus Emma Hamilton's hopes dwindled, as Ministers grew more cautious and more cold, and :he " favourable opportunity" receded yet further nto the grey distance of things undone. But if :here was caution in official quarters, there was ilso some justification for it. Lady Hamilton's :ase was undoubtedly a difficult one to deal with ; ler connection with Nelson was not one that :ould be publicly and officially acknowledged; ler services to the country rested more on her )wn and the dead hero's assurances than on any Dapers which could be tabulated and pigeon-loled in a satisfactory official manner: altogether, i thorny and awkward matter.

But if the behaviour of British Ministers was ndifferent, that of Earl Nelson was cruel and :ontemptible. When his great brother was iving, when Emma was the dispenser of patron-ige and the fount of power, he fawned upon her. Though a clergyman, he chose to shut his eyes :o the manner of her life ; he let her bring up his laughter Charlotte, and be the intimate friend of lis wife; he accepted everything she had to offer, 'ind was not above asking for more. He flattered ler fulsomely, and when he wished to get any-;hing from his generous and unsuspicious sailor

brother, would choose Lady Hamilton as his envoy. " I leave it to your Ladyship (my best and truest friend)," he wrote to her in 1801, " to say everything to him, for and from me: it will come best from your lips, and adorned with your eloquence."

Yet when Nelson was dead, and the title and the power and the money—far more than had* ever belonged to his heroic brother—had fallens to his share, Emma Hamilton received nothing; save fair words and promises from him, and later not even those.He kept the codicil to Nelson's Will out of her possession till his own prospects were fully assured, and then, Emma says, he tossed it back to her " with a very coarse expression/' telling her to do what she liked with it

Many years later, when poor and exiled at Calais, she wrote bitterly of the conduct ol Nelson's brother: " Earl and Countess Nelson lived with me seven years. I educated Lad) Charlotte and paid at Eton for Trafalgar. . . , They have never given the dear Horatia a frock or a sixpence."

On the other hand, Nelson's sisters, Mrs Bolton and Mrs. Matcham, were faithful in thei: attachment to Lady Hamilton, though owing t( her pecuniary embarrassments and the variouj shifts to which she was driven, they necessaril) saw less of her in later years. At first, however after Nelson's death, things went on very mucl

the same as before at Merton and in London. Before Trafalgar debt had already begun to cast its dark shadow over Emma's horizon of ample worldly prosperity. Nelson had left Merton to her and an annuity of ^500 from his Bronte estates, as well as the interest from the ^4000 settled upon Horatia, and a gift of ^2000 to Herself. Besides this she had ^700 or ^800 a ;j/ear left her by Sir William Hamilton, and his •legacy of ^800. But Emma, who used to keep liccounts so carefully, even down to the halfpenny given to a " poor man/' had long lost the habit of Economy. She was involved in a large way of

iving, and the restraint and effort needed in brder to pull up had become not only most distasteful to her, but almost impossible. Her

noral fibre was permanently slackened, her in-jjpiration and her youth were alike gone, she

:ould never again be strung up to the old brave

Ditch. She still remained excitable and emotional ever ; the grief for Nelson, which she described " sacred," must, nevertheless, be indulged full

n the public eye. Professor Knox Laughton Lays that night after night she attended the

heatre to hear Braham sing the "Death of

kelson;" weeping at the recitative—

" O'er Nelson's tomb, with silent grief opprest, Britannia mourns her hero now at rest; But those bright laurels will not fade with years, Whose leaves are watered by a nation's tears,"

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354 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON

and fainting at the concluding verse. It cannot be denied that Lady Hamilton was capable of doing such a thing, though it shocks every idea of dignity and reticence, and savours of the tricks of the stage; but it must also be remembered that such actions on her part were not necessarily insincere, though they are obviously shallow.

To the end of her life Emma went under the delusion that her fate and her fortunes were a national affair. Perhaps the most amazing of all her many claims was her expressed wish to be buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. " If I can be buried in St. Paul's, I should be very happy to be near the glorious Nelson, whom I loved and admired," she said, with a paralyzing unconsciousness as to the outrageous nature of her request.

The whole history of her last years is a series of petitions and memorials, none of which were ever heeded, though they were less wild than her request for burial in St. Paul's. The parts of her Prince Regent Memorial referring to her actions before the Battle of the Nile have been quotec in an earlier chapter. But in 1809, under the guidance of Mr. Rose, she stated her claim* in a reasonable and unexaggerated manner " My case is plain and simple," she said; ". rendered a service of the utmost importance t< my country, attested in the clearest and mos