Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; (43 page)

Both Sir William and Emma cheered him under de-

presssion. He had now done enough, wrote Sir William. It was the ne plus ultra. He quoted Virgil:—

"Hie victor caestus artemque reponam."

As for Emma, let Sir William's words depict her :— " You would have laughed to have seen what I saw yesterday. Emma did not know whether she was on her head or her heels—in such a hurry to tell your great news, that she could utter nothing but tears of joy and tenderness." Once more she is " the same Emma "—the Emma after the battle of the Nile.

Nelson responded with avidity to his now " dearest, amiable friend." As her birthday neared he reminded her of those happy times a year gone by, and contrasted them with the present—" How different, how forlorn." His body and spirit, like his ships, required refitting. His " dearest wife " alone could nurse him, and only her generous soul comfort the " forlorn outcast." He half hoped that the Admiralty wanted to replace him. He would willingly have re-commanded in the Baltic, should emergencies re-arise, if only they would concede him his needed interval of rest. He " would return with his shield or upon it."

With his shield the Pacificator of the North at length landed at Yarmouth on the ist of July. He repaired first to Lothian's hotel, as usual, but he was soon ensconced with the Hamiltons. He was not suffered to remain long. While the King and Queen of Naples —still Emma's amie sceur —were besetting him with lines of sympathy in the hope that he might re-emancipate them from renewed distress in the Mediterranean, Nelson was ordered, at the end of July, to baffle Buonaparte once more in the Channel. The meditated invasion of England terrified the nation. Consols tumbled, panic prevailed; all eyes were fixed on the one man who could save his country.

But an unheroic interlude happened before his worn frame was again called upon to bear the strain. Emma it was who took him out of town. Their first ramble was to Box Hill; and thence they went to the Thames. Sir William, as angler, frequented the " Bush Inn " at Staines—" a delightful place," writes Emma, " well situated, and a good garden on the Thames." " We thought it right to let him change the air and often." She had been ill at ease, chafing at the doubtful predicament in which devotion to the lover and care for the husband increasingly placed her; this little trip might afford a breathing-space. " The party," relates Emma, " consisted of Sir William and Lady Hamilton, the Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Nelson, Miss Nelson and the brave little Parker, who afterwards lost his life in that bold, excellent and vigorous attack at Boulogne, where such unexampled bravery was shown by our brave Nelson's followers."

"Old Q." and Lord William Douglas, detained with a sigh in town, forwarded their apologies in verse:—

" So kind a letter from fair Emma's hands, Our deep regret and warmest thanks commands,"

and so forth. It satirises the parson's gluttony and banters his chatterbox of a wife. It depicts " Cleopatra " rowing " Antony " in the boat. It dwells on the old " Cavaliere" and his " waterpranks," his " bites," his virtu, his memories of excavation, and his stock of endless anecdotes. It holds up to our view poor, fatuous Hamilton as a prosy raconteur.

" Or, if it were my fancy to regale My ears with some long, subterraneous tale, Still would I listen, at the same time picking A little morsel of Staines ham and chicken; But should he boast of Herculaneum jugs, Damme, I'd beat him with White's pewter mugs ";

while little red-cheeked, sloe-eyed Charlotte, rod in hand, yet shuddering at the fisherman's cruelty towards " the guileless victims of a murderous meal," is adjured to

" Heave a young sigh, and shun the proffered dish."

Emma's life was now wholly Nelson's; it is a relief to pass to a worthier scene. The main toils of the Channel defence were over. So was Nelson's keen disappointment in the deferred arrival of the Hamil-tons to visit him at Deal on the Amazon. Sir William had been with Greville to look after the Milford estate. It was mid-September, and that second " little Parker," the truest friend of the man who felt that " without friendship life is misery," lay dying. Nelson had styled himself Parker's father. The death of one so young, promising, and affectionate, desolated him, and he would not be comforted. It was Parker who had looked up to him with implicit belief and absolute self-forget fulness; Parker who had addressed his letters and run his and Emma's errands; Parker who, he had recently told her, " Knows my love for you; and to serve you, I am sure he would run bare-footed to London"; he had been called her " aide-de-camp." Together Nelson and Emma sat in the hospital and smoothed the pillows of the death-bed. Together they listened to his last requests and bade him still be of good cheer: for a few days there was " a gleam of hope." On September 27 he expired, and Nelson could say with truth that he " was grieved almost to death." The solemnity of that moment can never quite have deserted Emma.

Sad, but not hopeless, Nelson was purposely kept hovering round the Kentish coast until his final release towards the close of October. Yet Emma spurred him to his duty. " How often have I heard you say," he

wrote to her at this very time, " that you would not quit the deck if you came near a Frenchman?" He made use of his time to forward Hamilton's interests with Pitt, on whom he called at Walmer, but found " Billy " " fast asleep." As he walked back, a scene with Emma of the previous spring rose again before him: " The same road that we came when the carriage could not come with us that night; and all rushed into my mind and brought tears into my eyes. Ah! how different to walking with such a friend as you, and Sir William, and Mrs. Nelson." In her anxiety for his return, Emma actually upbraided him with being a " time-server." The Admiralty would not yield even " one day's leave for Piccadilly." It was the I4th before he could tell her with gusto " To-morrow week all is over—no thanks to Sir Thomas." Just before he struck his flag he wrote, in pain as usual, " I wish the Admiralty had my complaint; but they have no bowels, at least for me."

He was now at length to possess a homestead and haven of his own. " Whatever Sir Thomas Trou-bridge may say," he wrote to his " guardian angel " in August, " out of your house I have no home." Soon after the Copenhagen conquest, he and his " dearest friend," at this moment with poor Mrs. Maurice Nelson, the widow of Laleham, had been mooting to each other projects for such a nest. He would like, he wrote, " a good lodging in an airy situation." A house in Turnham Green and others had been rejected, but at last one suitable had been found. Like almost everything connected with them both, difficulties and a dramatic moment attended its acquisition. The preliminaries of the Peace of Amiens were yet a secret, but Nelson had informed himself of the coming truce, so acceptable to him. Before its ratification had been divulged, Merton Place was bought—in the general de-

pression—for the low sum of about six thousand pounds. But even this amount of capital was not easy for Nelson to raise, and the enthusiastic Davison —one of the few friends to whom Nelson would ever lie under the slightest obligation—lent him the money. Sir William seems to have objected to Emma's town hospitality to her relations. Nelson found in this an additional reason for purchasing a roof-tree which he desired her to treat as her own. " I received your kind letters last evening," he wrote to her on this and other heads, " and in many parts they pleased and made me sad. So life is chequered, and if the good predominates, then we are called happy. I trust the farm will make you more so than a dull London life. Make what use you please of it. It is as much yours as if you bought it. Therefore, if your relative cannot stay in your house in town, surely Sir William can have no objection to your taking to the farm [her relation] : the pride of the Hamiltons surely cannot be hurt by settling down with any of your relations; you have surely as much right for your relations to come into the house as his could have."

The whole affair was left entirely to Emma's management. She beset Nelson's solicitor, Haslewood, with letters, begging him to hurry forward the arrangements, and pressing the proprietor, Mr. Graves, to oblige Lord Nelson's " anxiety." Builders and painters were in the house immediately, to fit it for the hero's reception. The indispensable Mrs. Cado-gan, now in charge of Nelson's new " Peer's robe," bustled in and out, covered to the elbows with brick-dust. Emma set to work with a will, organising, ordering, preparing: in rough housework she delighted. She and her mother set up pigstyes, arranged the farm, stocked with fish the streamlet, spanned by its pretty Italian bridge. She procured the boat in which Nel-

son had promised she should row him on that miniature " Nile," which was really the Wandle. Day after day they slaved—glad to be quit of the artificial life in Piccadilly—so that all might be spick and span within the few weeks before the 22nd of October, the great day of Nelson's arrival. The whole village was eager to greet him. All the neighbours, the musical Goldsmids, the rustic Halfhides, the literary Perrys, the Parratts, the Newtons, the Pattersons, and Lan-casters, were proud of the newcomers. Never had Merton experienced such excitement since one of the first Parliaments had there told Henry III. that the " laws of England " could not be changed. There, too, the same sovereign had concluded his peace with the Dauphin—a good augury for the present moment. Nelson wanted to defray all the annual expenses, but Sir William insisted on an equal division, and rigorous accounts were kept which still remain.

" I have lived with our dear Emma several years," he jests in a letter to Nelson, " I know her merit, have a great opinion of the head and heart God Almighty has been pleased to give her, but a seaman alone could have given a fine woman full power to choose and fit up a residence for him, without seeing it himself. You are in luck, for on my conscience, I verily believe that a place so suitable to your views could not have been found and at so cheap a rate. For, if you stay away three days longer, I do not think you can have any wish but you will find it compleated here. And then the bargain was fortunately struck three days before an idea of peace got about. Now, every estate in this neighbourhood has increased in value, and you might get a thousand pounds for your bargain. ... I never saw so many conveniences united in so small a compass. You have nothing but to come and to enjoy immediately. You have a good mile of pleasant dry

walk around your farm. It would make you laugh to see Emma and her mother fitting up pigstyes and hencoops, and already the Canal is enlivened with ducks, and the cock is strutting with his hen about the walks."

Hamilton still retained the house in Piccadilly; he was now living above his means; as fast as money came in, the " housekeeping draughts " drew it out. His grand entertainments had proved a bad investment. One cannot help smiling when Nelson tells Emma during her Merton preparations, " You will make us rich with your economies."

When Nelson at length drove down from London in his postchaise to this suburban land of promise, it was under a triumphal arch that he entered it, while at night the village was illuminated. Here at last, and in the " piping " times of peace, the strange Tria juncta in uno were re-united; what Nelson had longed for had come to pass. Here, too, the man who loved retirement and privacy might hope to enjoy them; " Oh! how I hate to be stared at! " had been his ejaculation but two months before. And, above all, here he hoped to have Horatia with them in their walks, and to see her christened.

One of the first visitors was his simple old father, who maintained a friendly correspondence with Emma. By the close of the year the William Nelsons also stayed at Merton to rejoin their " jewel" of a daughter.

How smoothly and pleasantly things proceeded at first may be gleaned from Emma's further new letters to Mrs. William Nelson (then staying in Stafford Street). Emma occasionally drives into London for " shopping parties " (shops she could never resist) with Nelson's sister-in-law.

No sooner had Nelson returned, than they all went

together to beg a half-holiday for Charlotte.—" All girls pale before Charlotte"; and her classmate, a Miss Fuss, is " more stupid than ever, I think."—> Charlotte came for her Exeat and fished with Sir William in the " Nile ": they caught three large pike. She helped him and Nelson on with their great-coats, " so now I have nothing to do." " Dear Horace," whose birthday Nelson always remembered, must soon come also. Nelson was proud of Charlotte and of her " improvement" under Emma's directions. Emma, too, was proud of her role as governess. Charlotte turned over the prayers for the great little man in church. They were all regular church-goers. (Had not Nelson sincerely written to her earlier that they would do nothing but good in their village, and set " an example of godly life "?) Nelson and Sir William were the "greatest friends in the world." (Did he ever, one wonders, call him "my uncle"?) The " share-and-share alike" arrangement answered admirably—" it comes easy to booth partys." They none of them cared to visit much, though all were most kind in inviting them. " Our next door neighbours, Mr. Halfhide and his family, wou'd give us half of all they have, very pleasant people, and Mr. and Mrs. Newton allso; but I like Mrs. Halfhide very much indeed. She sent Charlotte grapes." As for Nelson, he was " very happy ":—" Indeed we all make it our constant business to make him happy. He is better now, but not well yet." " He has frequent sickness, and is Low, and he throws himself on the sofa tired and says, ' I am worn out.'' She hop«s " we shall get him up "—a phrase reminiscent of the laundry.

Hamilton himself averred to Greville that he too was quite satisfied. The early hours and fresh air agreed with him: he could run into town easily for his hob-

bies; he was cataloguing his books; he still hoped against hope that Addington would help him.

Eden at length without a serpent—at least so Nelson and Emma imagined. Merton idyllicised them. "Dear, dear Merton!" If only baby Horatia could be there (and soon she was) it would be perfect. As she was to express it in the last letter she could ever forward to him, and which he was never able to read —" Paradise Merton; for when you are there it will be paradise."