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CHAPTER XI.
NELSON'S RETURN FROM EGYPT TO NAPLES.—MEETING WITH LADY HAMILTON.—ASSOCIATION WITH THE COURT OF NAPLES.—WAR BETWEEN NAPLES AND FRANCE.—DEFEAT OF THE NEAPOLITANS.—FLIGHT OF THE COURT TO PALERMO

SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER, 1798. AGE, 40

The voyage of Nelson's small division from Aboukir Bay to Naples occupied between four and five weeks, owing partly to light and contrary winds, and partly to the dull sailing of the "Culloden," which had a sail secured under her bottom to lessen the dangerous leak caused by her grounding on the night of the battle. This otherwise unwelcome delay procured for Nelson a period of salutary, though enforced, repose, which the nature of his injuries made especially desirable. His mind, indeed, did not cease to work, but it was free from harassment; and the obvious impossibility of doing anything, save accept the present easy-going situation, contributed strongly to the quietness upon which restoration depended. Nor were there wanting matters of daily interest to prevent an excess of monotony. Now that frigates were no longer so vitally necessary, they and other light cruisers turned up with amusing frequency, bringing information, and being again despatched hither and yonder with letters from the admiral, which reflected instinctively his personal moods, and his active concern in the future military operations.

The distress from his head continued for some time with little abatement, and naturally much affected his tone of mind. At the first he spoke of his speedy return to England as inevitable, nor did the prospect occasion the discouragement which he had experienced after the loss of his arm; a symptom which had shown the moral effect of failure upon a sensitive and ambitious temperament. "My head is ready to split," he had written to St. Vincent before starting, "and I am always so sick; in short, if there be no fracture, my head is severely shaken." A fortnight after leaving the bay, he writes him again: "I know I ought to give up for a little while; my head is splitting at this moment;" and Nicolas remarks that the letter bears evident marks of suffering, three attempts being made to spell the word "splitting." Yet by this time the pain had become at least intermittent, for Saumarez, whose squadron fell in with the admiral's division several times, notes that on the 26th of August he spent half an hour on board the flagship, and found him in perfect health; and on the 7th of September Nelson himself writes to the British minister at Florence that he felt so much recovered, it was probable he would not go home for the present. A few days later he wrote to Hood, off Alexandria, that he relied upon the thoroughness of the blockade to complete the destruction of the French army. "I shall not go home," he added, "until this is effected, and the islands of Malta, Corfu, &c., retaken."

It is to the furtherance of these objects, all closely allied, and in his apprehension mutually dependent, that his occasional letters are directed. His sphere of operations he plainly conceives to be from Malta, eastward, to Syria inclusive. "I detest this voyage to Naples," he wrote to St. Vincent, two days before reaching the port. "Nothing but absolute necessity could force me to the measure. Syracuse in future, whilst my operations lie on the eastern side of Sicily, is my port, where every refreshment may be had for a fleet." The present necessity was that of refit and repair, to which Syracuse was inadequate. "For myself," he sent word to Sir William Hamilton, "I hope not to be more than four or five days at Naples, for these times are not for idleness." Not long after his arrival this conviction as to the movements requiring his personal presence underwent an entire change; and thenceforth, till he left for England two years later, it was only the presence of clear emergency, appealing to his martial instincts and calling forth the sense of duty which lay at the root of his character, that could persuade him his proper place was elsewhere than at the Court of Naples. It is only fair to add that, upon the receipt of the news of his great victory, the Admiralty designated to St. Vincent, as first in order among the cares of the squadron within the Mediterranean, "the protection of the coasts of Sicily, Naples, and the Adriatic, and, in the event of war being renewed in Italy, an active co-operation with the Austrian and Neapolitan armies." Long before these instructions were received, the very day indeed that they were written, Nelson had become urgently instrumental in precipitating Naples into war. Next in order of interest, by the Admiralty's letters, were, successively, the isolation of Egypt and of Malta, and co-operation with the Russian and Turkish squadrons which, it was expected, would be sent into the Archipelago, and which actually did attack and capture Corfu. The letter thus summarized may be taken to indicate the general extent of Nelson's charge during the two following years.

It may be said, then, without error, that Nelson's opinion as to the direction of his personal supervision underwent a decisive change after his arrival in Naples. Before it, he is urgent with that Court to support with active naval assistance the operations against Malta, and to send bomb-vessels, the absence of which he continually deplores, to shell the transports in the harbor of Alexandria. He hopes, indeed, to find on his arrival that the Emperor and many other powers are at war with the French, but his attention is concentrated upon Bonaparte's army. To the British minister in Turkey he is yet more insistent as to what the Sultan should undertake. If he will but send a few ships-of-the-line, and some bombs, he will destroy all their transports in Alexandria; and an army of ten thousand men may retake Alexandria immediately, as the French have only four thousand men in it. Subsequent events showed this forecast of Nelson's to be as erroneous as those of Napoleon were at times in regard to naval prospects. "General Bonaparte," he continues, "only wants a communication opened by sea, to march into Syria, that the transports with stores, &c., for the army, may go alongshore with him." This he had learned from French officers who were prisoners on board, and we know it corresponded with the facts. "If the Sultan will not send anything, he will lose Syria." "Naples," he tells St Vincent, "is saved in spite of herself. They have evidently broken their treaty with France, and yet are afraid to assist in finishing the vast armament of the French. Four hours with bomb vessels, would set all in a blaze, and we know what an army is without stores." This anticipation also proved deceptive; but the expressions quoted are fair examples of the general tenor of his letters between Aboukir and Naples, and show his feeling that the important points of his command lay to the east of Sicily.

The same tendency was shown upon the appearance of a Portuguese squadron of four ships-of-the-line, which entered the Mediterranean in July with orders to place themselves under his command. He first learned the fact upon this passage, and at once sent a frigate to Alexandria to beg the Portuguese admiral, the Marquis de Niza, to assume the blockade, as the most important service to be rendered the common cause. When the frigate reached its destination, Niza had come and gone, and Nelson then headed him off at the Strait of Messina, on his way to Naples, and sent him to blockade Malta. It may be added that this squadron remained under his command until December, 1799, and was of substantial utility in the various operations. Nelson professed no great confidence in its efficiency, which was not subjected to the severest tests; but he made a handsome acknowledgment to its commander when it was recalled to Lisbon.

On the 22d of September the flagship anchored at Naples. On the 15th her foremast had been carried away in a squall, and the "poor wretched Vanguard," as Nelson called her, having to be towed by a frigate, her two crippled consorts preceded her arrival by six days. The news of the victory had been brought three weeks before by the "Mutine," on the 1st of September. The Court party had gone wild with joy, in which the populace, naturally hostile to the French, had joined with southern vivacity of expression. Captain Capel, who commanded the brig, with Lieutenant Hoste, who was to succeed him when he departed with the despatches for England, had been at once taken to Court and presented. When they left the palace they were met by Lady Hamilton, who made them get into her carriage, and with characteristic bad taste and love of notoriety paraded them until dark through the streets of this neutral capital, she wearing a bandeau round her forehead with the words, "Nelson and Victory." "The populace saw and understood what it meant," wrote Hoste, "and 'Viva Nelson!' resounded through the streets. You can have no idea of the rejoicings that were made throughout Naples. Bonfires and illuminations all over the town; indeed, it would require an abler pen than I am master of to give you any account but what will fall infinitely short of what was the case."

Emma, Lady Hamilton

By Nelson's orders the "Mutine" sailed in a few days to meet him with despatches, and on the 14th of September joined the division off Stromboli. With more important information, and letters from persons of greater consequence, she had brought also one from Lady Hamilton, giving a vivid picture of the general joy, and in particular an account of the Queen's state of mind, so highly colored and detailed that Nelson could only hope he might not be witness to a renewal of it, but which so impressed him that he quoted it at length to Lady Nelson. When the "Vanguard" approached the town, crowds of boats went out to meet her, and His Sicilian Majesty himself came on board when she was still a league from the anchorage. He had been preceded by the British ambassador with Lady Hamilton. The latter, having had only three weeks to recover from the first shock of the news, was greatly overcome, and dropped her lovely face and by no means slender figure into the arms of the admiral, who, on his part, could scarcely fail to be struck with the pose of one whose attitudes compelled the admiration of the most exacting critics. "The scene in the boat was terribly affecting," he wrote to his wife. "Up flew her ladyship, and exclaiming, 'O God, is it possible?' she fell into my arm more dead than alive. Tears, however, soon set matters to rights."

This was the beginning of an intimacy destined, in the end, to affect profoundly and unhappily the future of Nelson. Although Sir William Hamilton, in his own congratulatory letter by the "Mutine," called him "our bosom friend," they do not seem to have met since the summer of 1793, when the young captain carried Hood's despatches from Toulon to Naples; and Nelson, while acknowledging on the present occasion the kindness of an invitation to take up his quarters at the embassy, had expressed a preference for rooms at a hotel, on account of the business to be transacted. This reluctance, however, was easily and properly overruled, and immediately after anchoring he went to live at the ambassador's house, which, under the management of the celebrated woman who presided there, became the social centre of the welcomes lavished not only upon himself, but upon all the officers of the ships.

Emma, Lady Hamilton, the second wife of Sir William, was at this time thirty-three years old, her husband being sixty-eight. Her name, when first entering the world, was Amy Lyon. Born in Cheshire of extremely poor parents, in the humblest walk of life, she had found her way up to London, while yet little more than a child, and there, having a beautiful face, much natural charm of manner and disposition, utterly inexperienced, and with scarcely any moral standards,—of which her life throughout shows but little trace,—she was speedily ruined, fell so far, in fact, that even with all her attractions it seemed doubtful whether any man would own himself responsible for her condition, or befriend her. In these circumstances, when not yet seventeen, she was taken up by a nephew of Sir William Hamilton, Mr. Charles Greville, who recognized not merely her superficial loveliness, but something of the mental and moral traits underlying it, which promised a capacity for development into an interesting and affectionate household companion. Upon her promises of amendment, in the matter of future relations with men, and of submission to his guidance and wishes in the general conduct of her life, he took her in charge, and the two lived together for nearly four years.

Greville bestowed a good deal of pains upon her training, and was rewarded, not only by gratitude and careful compliance with his directions, but by her sincere and devoted affection. The girl became heartily and fondly in love with him, finding both contentment and happiness in the simply ordered home provided for her. Her education, which hitherto was of the smallest, received attention,—her letters showing a very great improvement both in spelling and mode of expression by the end of their association. On the moral side, of course, there was not much development to be expected from one whose standards, with less excuse, were in no way better than her own. On this side Greville's teaching was purely utilitarian. Her position was considered as a calling,—success in which demanded certain proprieties and accomplishments, only to be attained by the practice of habitual self-control, alike in doing and in not doing.

The future Lady Hamilton was affectionate and impulsive, good-humored, with generous instincts and a quick temper; but she was also ambitious and exceptionally clever. She loved Greville warmly; but she took to heart the hard truths of his teachings, and they sank deep in a congenial soil. Under the influence of the two motives, she applied herself to gain, and did gain, a certain degree of external niceness and self-control. Her affection for Greville made her willing, for his sake, because he was not rich, to live quietly, to accept modest surroundings, and to discard whatever was coarse in associates, or unbecoming in her own person or conduct. He, while relaxing none of his requirements, repaid her with courtesy and increasing admiration, than which nothing was dearer to her; for, if not appreciative of the satisfaction of self-respect, she was keenly alive to the delights of homage from others, though extorted by purely adventitious qualities. Glory was to her more than honor. This love of admiration, fostered, yet pruned, by Greville's shrewd precepts, was her dominant trait. To its gratification her singular personal advantages contributed, and they were powerfully supported by an unusual faculty for assuming a part, for entering into a character and representing its external traits. Thus gifted by nature, and swayed by vanity, her development was for the time regulated and chastened by the disinterestedness of her passion for her lover. Her worse qualities were momentarily kept in abeyance. Naturally lovable, not only in exterior but in temperament, she became more and more attractive. "Consider," wrote Greville, referring to her surroundings before she passed into his hands, "what a charming creature she would have been, if she had been blessed with the advantages of an early education, and had not been spoilt by the indulgence of every caprice."

Unfortunately the restraining influence, probably ephemeral in any event, was about to be rudely removed, permitting to flourish in unrestrained vigor the natural tendency to compel admiration and secure advantage by the spell of physical beauty, and by the exertion of natural aptitudes for pleasing in the only path to success open to her. In 1782 Hamilton's first wife died, and in 1784 he came to England on leave. There he met Amy Lyon, now known as Emma Hart, in the house provided for her by Greville. His admiration of her was extreme, and its tendency was not misunderstood by her. He returned to his post at Naples at the end of the year. In the course of 1785 Greville, who was now in his thirty-sixth year, decided that the condition of his fortune made it imperative for him to marry, and that as a first step thereto he must break with Emma Hart. Hamilton's inclination for her provided a ready means for so doing, so far as the two men were concerned; but her concurrence was not sure. After some correspondence, it was arranged that she should go to Naples in the spring of 1786, to live there under Hamilton's care, with the expectation on her part that Greville would join her a few months later. Placed as she then would be, it was probable that she would eventually accept the offers made her; though it would be less than just to either Greville or Hamilton, to allow the impression that they did not intend to provide sufficiently for her needs, whatever her decision.

In this way she left England in the spring of 1786, reaching Naples on the 26th of April. When the poor girl, after many of her letters to her lover remained unanswered, fully realized, that the separation was final, her grief was extreme, and found utterance in words of tenderness and desolation, which, however undisciplined in expression, are marked by genuine pathos. But anger struggled with sorrow for the mastery in her soul. She was too keen-witted not to have had an inkling of the possible outcome of her departure from England, and of the doubtful position she was occupying at Naples; but her wishes had made her willingly deaf to any false ring in the assurances given her by Greville, and she resented not only the abandonment, but the deceit which she, justly or unjustly, conceived to have been practised, while her womanliness revolted from the cold-blooded advice given by him to accept the situation. The conflict was so sharp that for a time both he and Hamilton expected she would return to England; but Greville had not labored in vain at what he was pleased to consider her education. By the end of the year she was addressing Hamilton in words of very fairly assumed affection, but not until she had written to Greville, with a certain haughty desperation, "If you affront me, I will make him marry me." The threat was two-edged, for Hamilton intended Greville to be his heir; but the latter probably gave little heed to a contingency he must have thought very unlikely for a man of fifty-six, who had passed his life in the world, and held Hamilton's public position.

To effect this, however, Emma Hart now bent her personal charms, strong purpose, and the worldly wisdom with which Greville had taught her to assure her hold upon a man. Love, in its unselfishness, passed out of her life with Greville. Other men might find her pliant, pleasing, seductive; he alone knew her as disinterested. She followed out her design with a patience, astuteness, and consistency which attest the strength of her resolution, and her acute intellectual perception of the advantages at her disposal. Ambition, a natural trait with her, had been trained to self-control, in order to compass a lowly, colorless success. Unlooked-for opportunity now held before her eyes, distant and difficult of attainment, but not impossible, a position of assured safety, luxury, and prominence, which appealed powerfully to the love of pleasure, still dormant, and to the love of conspicuousness, which became the two most noticeable features of her character.

With all her natural advantages, however, the way was hard and long. She had to become indispensable to Hamilton, and at the same time, and by the same methods, an object the more desirable to him because of her evident attractiveness to others. Above all, she had to contend with her own temper, naturally lively and prone to bursts of anger, which the prolonged suspense of the struggle, acting upon a woman's nerves, tended peculiarly to exasperate. Hamilton was of an age when he might be enslaved by fondness, but not constrained by strength of passion to endure indefinitely household tempests, much less to perpetuate them upon himself by lasting bonds. In all this Emma Hart showed herself fully equal to the task. Tenderly affectionate to him, except when carried away by the fits of irritability which both he and Greville had occasion to observe, she complied readily with all his wishes, and followed out with extraordinary assiduity his plans for her improvement in education and in accomplishments. The society which gathered round them was, of course, almost wholly of men, who one and all prostrated themselves before her beauty and cleverness, with the same unanimity of submission as did the officers of Nelson's division after the Battle of the Nile. But, while giving free rein to coquetry, and revelling in admiration, she afforded no ground for scandal to the world, or dissatisfaction to Hamilton. In the attitude of outsiders towards her, he had reason to see only the general testimony to her charms and to his own good fortune. At the end of 1787 he wrote to Greville: "I can assure you her behaviour is such as has acquired her many sensible admirers, and we have a good man society, and all the female nobility, with the queen at their head, show her every distant civility."

Thus she persisted, keeping her beauty, and growing in mental acquirements and accomplishments, but making little apparent headway towards the great object of her ambition. "I fear," wrote Hamilton towards the middle of 1789, when she had been three years with him, "her views are beyond what I can bring myself to execute; and that when her hopes on that point are over, she will make herself and me unhappy. Hitherto her behaviour is irreproachable, but her temper, as you must know, unequal." He underrated her perseverance, and exaggerated his own strength of reluctance, innate and acquired. Impossible as it would seem, with his antecedents and with hers, his friends and acquaintances became alarmed for the result, and not without cause. "Her influence over him exceeds all belief," wrote a mutual friend to Greville in March, 1791. "His attachment exceeds admiration, it is perfect dotage." Shortly after this letter was written the two went to England, and there they were married on the 6th of September, 1791. By the end of the year they were back in Naples, and did not again leave Italy up to the time of Nelson's arrival in 1798.

Lady Hamilton did not abuse the security of the place she had won with so much pains, nor on the other hand did her ambition and love of prominence permit her to settle down to inert enjoyment of it. The careful self-restraint with which she had observed the proprieties of her former false position facilitated the disappearance of prejudices naturally arising from it. Many English ladies of rank, passing through Naples, visited her, and those who refused to ignore the past of the woman, in the position of the British minister's wife, were by some sharply criticised. "She has had a difficult part to act," wrote Hamilton, six months after their return, "and has succeeded wonderfully, having gained, by having no pretensions, the thorough approbation of all the English ladies. The Queen of Naples was very kind to her on our return, and treats her like any other travelling lady of distinction; in short, we are very comfortably situated here." "We dined yesterday with Sir William and Lady Hamilton," wrote Lady Malmesbury, whose husband was among the most distinguished diplomatists of the day. "She really behaves as well as possible, and quite wonderfully, considering her origin and education."

This last phrase, used at the culmination of Lady Hamilton's good fortune and personal advance, was wholly good-natured; but it sums up the best of the not very good that can be said of her during the height of her prosperity, and in later years. Although, as has been remarked, she did not at this time abuse the security which as a wife she had attained,—for policy too clearly dictated the continuance of her previous circumspection,—the necessity for strenuous watchfulness, exertion, and self-restraint, in order to reach a distant goal, no longer existed; and, although a woman of many amiable and generous impulses, she had not a shred of principle to take the place of the motive of self-interest, which hitherto had been so peremptory in its exactions. What she was in delicacy in 1791, that she remained in 1796,—five years after the disappearance of her social disabilities; a pretty fair proof that what she possessed of it was but skin deep, the result of a diligent observance of Greville's proprieties, for her personal advantage, not the token of a noble inner spirit struggling from excusable defilement to the light. "She does the honours of the house with great attention and desire to please," wrote Greville's correspondent of 1791, before quoted, "but wants a little refinement of manners, in which, in the course of six years, I wonder she has not made greater progress." "She is all Nature and yet all Art," said Sir Gilbert Elliot, in 1796; "that is to say, her manners are perfectly unpolished, of course very easy, though not with the ease of good breeding, but of a barmaid; excessively good humoured, and wishing to please and be admired by all ages and sorts of persons that come in her way; but besides considerable natural understanding, she has acquired, since her marriage, some knowledge of history and of the arts, and one wonders at the application and pains she has taken to make herself what she is. With men her language and conversation are exaggerations of anything I ever heard anywhere; and I was wonderfully struck with these inveterate remains of her origin, though the impression was very much weakened by seeing the other ladies of Naples." "I thought her a very handsome, vulgar woman," curtly commented the lieutenant of a frigate which visited Naples in the summer of 1798, while hunting for Nelson in the game of cross-purposes that preceded the Nile.⁷⁰ Allowing for difference of observers, it is plain that the Lady Hamilton whom Nelson now met, had not improved in essentials over the Emma Hart of a half-dozen years before.

Two years afterwards, the verdict of these men was confirmed by Mrs. St. George,⁷¹ a lady in London society, who viewed her possibly with something of the repugnant prejudice of a refined and cultivated woman, yet evidently measured her words calmly, even in her private journal. "I think her bold, daring, vain even to folly, and stamped with the manners of her first situation much more strongly than one would suppose, after having represented Majesty, and lived in good company fifteen years. Her dress is frightful. Her waist is absolutely between her shoulders." Nelson measured her by a different standard. "In every point of view," he tells herself, "from Ambassatrice to the duties of domestic life, I never saw your equal. That elegance of manners, accomplishments, and, above all, your goodness of heart, is unparalleled." The same lady describes her personal appearance, at the time when his devotion had reached the height from which it never declined. "Her figure is colossal, but, excepting her feet, which are hideous, well shaped. Her bones are large, and she is exceedingly embonpoint. The shape of all her features is fine, as is the form of her head, and particularly her ears; her teeth are a little irregular, but tolerably white; her eyes light blue, with a brown spot in one, which, though a defect, takes nothing away from her beauty or expression. Her eyebrows and hair (which, by the bye, is never clean) are dark, and her complexion coarse. Her expression is strongly marked, variable, and interesting; her movements in common life ungraceful; her voice loud, yet not disagreeable." Elliot's briefer mention of her appearance is at once confirmatory and complementary of that of Mrs. St. George: "Her person is nothing short of monstrous for its enormity, and is growing every day. Her face is beautiful."

To these opinions it may be not uninteresting to add the critical estimate of William Beckford, uttered many years later. Beckford was not an admirable character, far from it; but he had known good society, and he had cultivated tastes. Nelson accepted his hospitality, and, with the Hamiltons, spent several days under his roof, about Christmas time, 1800. In reply to the question, "Was the second Lady Hamilton a fascinating woman?" he said, "I never thought her so. She was somewhat masculine, but symmetrical in figure, so that Sir William called her his Grecian. She was full in person, not fat, but embonpoint. Her carriage often majestic, rather than feminine. Not at all delicate, ill-bred, often very affected, a devil in temper when set on edge. She had beautiful hair and displayed it. Her countenance was agreeable,—fine, hardly beautiful, but the outline excellent. She affected sensibility, but felt none—was artful; and no wonder, she had been trained in the Court of Naples—a fine school for an English woman of any stamp. Nelson was infatuated. She could make him believe anything, that the profligate queen was a Madonna. He was her dupe. She never had a child in her life."⁷² As to this last assertion, Beckford was not in a position to have personal knowledge.

But along with this native coarseness, which, if not ineradicable, was never eradicated, she possessed an intuitive and perfect sense, amounting to genius, for what propriety and good taste demanded in the presentation of an ideal part,—the gift of the born actress. Of her powers in this way the celebrated "Attitudes" were the chief example, and there is no disagreement among the witnesses, either as to their charm or as to the entire disappearance of the every-day woman in the assumed character. "We had the attitudes a night or two ago by candle light," wrote Sir Gilbert Elliot in 1796. "They come up to my expectations fully, which is saying everything. They set Lady Hamilton in a very different light from any I had seen her in before; nothing about her, neither her conversation, her manners, nor figure, announce the very refined taste which she discovers in this performance, besides the extraordinary talent which is needed for the execution." "You never saw anything so charming as Lady Hamilton's attitudes," wrote Lady Malmesbury in 1791. "The most graceful statues or pictures do not give you an idea of them." "It is a beautiful performance," wrote Mrs. St. George, who saw her in 1800, when the Hamiltons and Nelson were travelling on the Continent, "amusing to the most ignorant, and highly interesting to the lovers of art. It is remarkable that although coarse and ungraceful in common life, she becomes highly graceful, and even beautiful, during this performance. It is also singular that, in spite of the accuracy of her imitation of the finest ancient draperies, her usual dress is tasteless, vulgar, loaded and unbecoming."