Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; (22 page)

EMMA, LADY HAMILTON

and urgent necessities to Lord St. Vincent.—" Their Majesties observe the critical moment for all Europe, and the threatens of an invasion even in England. They are perfectly convinced of the generous and extensive exertions of the British nation at this moment, but a diversion in these points might operate advantage for the common war. Will England see all Italy, and even the two Sicilies, in the French hands with indifference?" The half-hearted Emperor had at last consented to think of assisting his relations, though only should Naples be assailed; this perhaps might " hurry England." Seventeen ships of the line would soon be ready; there were seventy in Genoa, thirty at Civita Vecchia. These could carry " perhaps 8000 men." But the French at Toulon could convey 18,000. " With the English expedition we shall be saved. This is my communication from their Majesties."

Hamilton's reply must have been bitterly cautious, for Acton in his answer observes, " We cannot avoid to expose that His Sicilian Majesty confides too much in His Britannic Majesty's Ministry's help."

And all this time Emma is never from Maria Carolina's side; writing to her, urging, praising, heartening, caressing the English. The Queen is all gratitude to her humble friend, whose enthusiasm is an asset of her hopes:—" Vous en etes le maitre de mon cceur, ma chere miledy," she writes in her bad and disjointed French; " ni pour mes amis, comme vous, ni pour mes opinions [je] ne change jamais." She is " impatient for news of the English squadron." But she is still a wretched woman, disquieted by doubts and worn with care, as she may be viewed in the portraits of this period. She had deemed herself a pattern of duty, but had now woke up to the consciousness of being execrated by her victims; while the loyal Lazzaroni, al-

ways her mislikers, visited each national calamity on her head. Gallo, Acton, Belmonte, Castelcicala, Di Medici—all had been tried, and except Acton, who himself had wavered, all had been found wanting. It is the Nemesis of despots, even if enlightened, to rely successively on false supports, to fly by turns from betrayed trust to treachery once more trusted. Emma at all events would ndt fail her, and never did. :< You may read," says Thackeray, " Pompeii in some folks' faces." Such a Pompeii-countenance must have been the Queen's.

The English squadron was at last a fact. On March 29, 1798, Nelson hoisted his flag as Rear-Admiral of the Blue on board the Vanguard. On April 10 he sailed on one of the most eventful voyages in history.

And meanwhile Maria Carolina, with Emma under her wing, might be seen pacing the palace garden, and eagerly scanning the horizon from sunny Caserta for a glimpse of one white sail.

Sister Anne stands and waits on her watch-tower, feverish for Selim's arrival, while anguished Fatima peers into Bluebeard's cupboard, horror-stricken at its gruesome medley of dismembered sovereigns—martyrs or tyrants—which you please.

CHAPTER VII

TRIUMPH 1798

NELSON was in chase of Buonaparte's fleet. Napoleon's Egyptian expedition was, perhaps, the greatest wonder in a course rife with them. He was not yet thirty; he had been victorious by land, and had dictated terms at the gates of Vienna. In Italy, like Tarquin, he had knocked off the tallest heads first. Debt and jealousy hampered him at home. It was the gambler's first throw, that rarest audacity. For years his far-sightedness had fastened on the Mediterranean; and now that Spain was friends with France, he divined the moment for crushing Britain. But even then his schemes were far vaster than his contemporaries could comprehend. His plan was to obtain Eastern Empire, to reduce Syria, and, after recasting sheikhdoms in the dominion of the Pharaohs, possibly after subduing India, to dash back and conquer England. Italy was honeycombed with his republics. To Egypt France should be suzerain, a democracy with vassals; as for Great Britain, if she kept her King, it must be on worse terms than even Louis the Bourbon had once dared to prescribe to the Stuarts. This, too, was the first and only time when he, an unskilled mariner, was for a space in chief naval command. Most characteristic was it also of him—the encyclopaedist in action—to have remembered science in this enterprise against science's home of origin. That vast

Armada of ships and frigates, that huge L'Orient, whose very name was augury, those forty thousand men in transports, did not suffice. An -array of savants, with all their apparatus, swelling the muster on board their vessel to no less than two thousand, accompanied the new man who was to make all things new. It was nigh a month after Nelson started when Napoleon sailed. Sudden as a flash of lightning, yet impenetrable as the cloud from which it darts, he veiled his movements and doubled in his course.

It was on Saturday, June 16, that Hamilton first sighted Nelson's approach. The van of the small squadron of fourteen sail was visible as it neared Ischia from the westward and made for Capri. He at once took up his pen to send him the latest tidings of the armament which, eluding his pursuit, had now passed the Sicilian seaboard. The glad news of Nelson's arrival spread like wildfire. The French residents mocked and. scowled. The people cheered. The solemn ministers smiled. The royal family, in the depths of dejection, plucked up heart; the Queen was in ecstasy. But Gallo and the anti-English group were suspicious .and perplexed. They and the King still waited on Austria. On Spain they could no longer fawn.

Nelson's instructions were to water and provide his fleet in any Mediterranean port, except in Sardinia, if necessary by arms. It was not that for the moment he needed refreshment for those scanty frigates, the want of which, he wrote afterwards, would be found graven on his heart. But he had a long and intricate enterprise before him. He was hunting a fox that would profit by every bend and crevice, so to speak, of the country. He could not track him without the certainty that, apart from the delays that force must entail, all his requirements, perhaps for two months x

would be granted on mere demand. Even so early as June 12 he had requested definite answers from Hamilton as to what precise aid he could count upon from a pseudo-neutral power trifling over diplomatic pedantries with the slippery chancelleries of Vienna; while some days before, Hamilton received from Eden at Vienna a despatch from Grenville emphasising the " necessity," as it was now regarded at home, for ensuring the " free and unlimited " admission of British ships into Sicilian harbours, and " every species of provisions and supplies usually .afforded by an ally." Hamilton had tried in vain to surmount an obstacle important alike to France, to the King, and to Austria. Nelson also knew too well the barrier set against compliance by the terms of the fatal Franco-Neapolitan pact of 1796. Not more than four frigates at once might be received into any harbour of Ferdinand's coasts. He knew that the Queen and her friends were in the slough of despond. He knew too—for the Hamiltons had been in continual correspondence—that Austria was once more shilly-shallying. While Naples was longing to break her neutrality, Austria, for the moment satisfied with shame, was now secretly negotiating, with all the long and tedious array of etiquette, preliminaries to a half-hearted arrangement. Even in deliberation she would, as we have seen, only succour Naples if Naples were attacked. Against this Napoleon had guarded: so far as concerned him and the present, Naples should be left in perilous peace. He was content with the seeds of revolution that he had stealthily sown. Even as he passed Trapani on his way to Malta, which already by the loth of June he had invested (and whose plunder he had promised to his troops), he pacified the Sicilians with unlimited reassurances of good-will. And Nelson knew well also that Maria Carolina and Emma chafed under the fet-

ters of diplomacy and of treaty that shackled action. If only he could obtain some royal mandate for his purpose, either through them—for the Queen had rights in Council—or from Acton, rather than the King still swayed by Gallo, he felt convinced of success. Otherwise, should emergencies arise within the next few 1 weeks, as arise they must, he would perforce hark back to Gibraltar; and in such a water-hunt of views and checks as he now contemplated, delay might spell failure, and failure his country's ruin.

About six o'clock by Neapolitan time, on a lovely June morning, Captains Troubridge and Hardy landed from the Mutine, which, together with the Monarch, on which was Captain T. Carrol, lay anchored in the bay, leaving Nelson in the Vanguard with his fleet off Capri. Troubridge, charged with important requests by Nelson, at once proceeded to the Embassy.

Lady Hamilton's after-allegations have been much criticised, and, step by step, stubbornly disputed, while even these, as will be urged, have perhaps been misread ; nor has her simpler account in her " King's Memorial " been taken, still less Nelson's repeated assurances about her " exclusive interposition " to Rose, Pitt's favourable consideration, Canning's own acknowledgment, the neutrality at any rate of Grenville, and a statement by Lord Melville, afterwards to be mentioned.

Emma and her husband were awakened by their early visitors, who included Hardy and, perhaps, Bowen. Hamilton arose hurriedly, and took the officers off to Acton's neighbouring house. Some kind of council was held, probably at the palace. In that case Gallo, as foreign minister, may well have been present. Troubridge, as Nelson's mouthpiece, stated his requirements. Gallo, we know, was hesitating and hostile. The whole arrangement with the court of

Vienna now lagging under his procrastination, would be spoiled if Naples were prematurely to break with France, and an open breach must be certain if succour for the whole of Nelson's fleet were afforded at the Sicilian ports in contravention of the burdensome engagement with the French Directory; while it would further be implied that the British fleet was at the Neapolitan service. Recourse to the King would not only be dangerous, but probably futile; the more so, since the French minister at Naples was now citizen Garat, a pedant, pamphleteer, and lecturer of the strait-est sect among busybodying theorists. Such a man, Gallo would urge, must be the loudest in umbrage at even the appearance of pro-British zeal. Acton could have rebutted these objections by observing that the " order " need not be signed by Ferdinand, but merely informally by himself "in the King's name"; as, in fact, a sort of roving " credential "; that it could be so worded as to imply no breach of treaty, but only the refreshment of four ships at a time; that the governors of the ports might be separately instructed to offer a show of resistance if more were demanded of them; that Garat need never know what had transpired till the moment came when Austria had signed her pact with Naples, and France might be dared in the face of day; Troubridge's reception could be (and was) represented as no more than a common civility which Acton paid not only to English visitors, but even to French officers. All must be " under the rose," and thus far only could Nelson be obliged. To Nelson's further requisition for frigates a polite non possumus could be the only answer. Pending these delicate Austrian negotiations, and until an open rupture with France was possible with safety, Naples was in urgent need of a permanent fleet in the Mediterranean, and this, quid pro quo, Nelson naturally would

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not bind himself to concede, though, so far as his instructions and the situation warranted, he was ready, even eager, to do so.

This half-formal but scarcely effectual " order " was obtained.

There exists an original draft of Hamilton's official recital of what passed to Lord Grenville. One of its interlineations is perhaps significant. He first omitted, and afterwards added that the order was in Acton's handwriting as well as in the King's name. Nelson had wanted a quick royal mandate. He received a ministerial order involving further instructions and diplomatic delays. Moreover, five days after Trou-bridge's visit, Acton thanked Hamilton for his " delicate and kind part " " under all the circumstances." It may not have been quite such a plain-sailing affair as it has seemed.

" We did more business in half an hour," wrote Hamilton in a final despatch to the same minister, " than we should have done in a week in the usual official way. Captain Troubridge went straight to the point. ... I prevailed upon General Acton to write himself an order in the name of His Sicilian Majesty, directed to the governors of every port in Sicily, to supply the King's ships with all sorts of provisions, and in case of an action to permit the British seamen, sick or wounded, to be landed and taken proper care of in their ports." The draft, however, contains a telling supplement. " He expressed only a wish to get sight of Buonaparte and his army, ' for,' said he, 'By God, we shall lick them.'" Before Nelson's officers departed, they received also from Hamilton's hands Gallo's fatuous replies to their Admiral's questions of five days before.

Troubridge was " perfectly satisfied," he could even be called perfectly happy. But meanwhile that may

have passed which Emma afterwards maintained. Fate was at stake. She may have rushed to the Queen, for they both knew how little such a conclave would probably achieve; and Gallo's attitude might well deter Acton from straightforward compliance. Nelson might fancy this council's " order " a quick passport to his desires. But they knew its formal flourishes to be doubtful. In the result, it would hardly seem to have acted with speed or unaided. Emma's owu after-story is that she besought Maria Carolina, with tears and on bended knees, to exercise her prerogative and supplement the mandate by the promise of direct instructions. From after events and from inveterate habit the dramatic scene is probable. According to Emma (and Pettigrew), Hamilton wrote forthwith to Nelson, " You will receive from Emma herself what will do the business and procure all your wants." One can see this impulsive woman clapping her hands for joy, and singing aloud with exultation. In some two hours Troubridge and Hardy had rowed back to the Mutiny and set sail towards Capri.

Within a few hours at any rate Emma, throbbing with excitement, penned two hasty notes to Nelson himself, both included in her newly found correspondence of this year. Each — and they are brief — must be repeated here, for the second of them disposes of the version, hitherto accepted, that Nelson never received that from the Queen which his famous letter to Lady Hamilton represents him as " kissing "; while the first suggests a likelihood that this thrilling day did not close before Emma had managed to see Nelson himself at Capri. Both these letters are scrawled in evident haste.