LONDON and triumph—so dizzy and dazzling that Emma might have almost repeated her favourite saying that she did not know whether she was on her head or her heels. Almost, only, for success had given her a confidence so robust that she foresaw none but glittering vistas. “Alone I did it!” was her pride. Not to Greville, not to Hamilton, but to her own conquering personality was the victory due, and looking about her she saw none to rival her and therefore none to fear. There might be one or two women as beautiful in the eyes of men whose taste was on a lower plane than Sir William’s, she thought, but that was beauty only expressing itself in feature, whereas in herself it overflowed into such song, such pose, that Gallini, the famous impresario, offered her £2000 a year and two benefits if she would engage with him, whereupon Sir William gaily retorted that he had engaged her for life. Was it wonderful that she should see herself laurel-crowned, almost divine?
For life! and Greville had to bear this amazing result of his plot with what fortitude he could muster. The shock was so great that it was really not fortitude but the stoicism of good breeding which alone carried him through. Could he ever forget that first meeting with the lovers at Sir William’s hotel? Even his frosted heart beat a little quicker as he climbed the broad shallow stairs. He could not for the life of him tell what Emma would be at when the door opened. Would she have changed, grown distant and formidable, less or more beautiful? Would she triumph vulgarly? (He could imagine that very well.) Would all the plotting facility which had placed her where she was be turned mercilessly against his interests henceforward! And would his dear Hamilton look the fool which in every fibre Greville felt him to be? The contradictions so confused him that at last he could only say within himself—“Emma! Good God!”—almost stupefied at the work of his own hand, and abandon himself to fate.
The door opened. Hamilton was in an armchair reading a letter to her, she perched on the arm like a child, one hand about his neck. Greville bowed at the door and advanced with cordial haste.
“My dear Emma, my dear Hamilton!” unpleasantly conscious of a flush which seemed to pervade his whole being and not his face alone.
She ran forward with the prettiest grace imaginable and caught his outstretched hand, looking back for Hamilton as he came up behind her.
“Oh, Greville, and do we see you once more? Sir William and me was longing for this hour. Take his other hand, Sir William, and then it will be the three of us again.”
She put his hand in his uncle’s, and beamed upon both as gay and innocent as a lamb in a May meadow. There was no speck of cloud in the untroubled deeps of the eyes he remembered so well, nothing but happiness. He took the hand and kissed it.
“What am I to call your Lady Hamilton?” said he, smiling at his uncle.
“Emma—what else? She is not changed in heart, Greville. But look at her and see what Italy has done!”
“What you have done!” she corrected gravely, and stood with dropped hands at attention to be viewed.
But Greville’s keen eyes had already drawn their conclusion. “More beautiful,” they told him, “more womanly; dignity and elegance at her command to be used like her cachemire when necessary, and laid aside for the old free-and-easy when she relaxed. Younger looking than even her four and twenty years—the bud unfolded into perfect beauty, the blossomed rose.”
Sir William looked much older. The journey had wearied him and the wild round of gaiety in London teased him. He wanted respite and could not get it, for every fashionable in the town was wild to see the coming Ambassadress, and it is possible that even Emma herself might have been daunted if she could have guessed the stories with which the blank if not the virgin pages of her early life were adorned. Hamilton knew them. Despairing friends plucked at the skirts of his garment at the last moment, with these legends, to save him from a fate impossible for an ambassador. He sickened of London and longed for Naples and the sunshine.
“You have seen the King?” Greville asked, when they had talked a while.
“Certainly. He was most gracious. I am given a privy councillorship. Emma, my love, have you forgot your appointment with Romney?”
She hesitated a second, invisibly, to all but Greville’s keenness, then stooped and kissed Sir William’s cheek.
“Why, of course! I was so glad to see Greville I had all but forgot poor Romney. Only two hours, and then when I come back we dress for the Duke of Queensberry’s reception. The Prince of Wales will be there.”
She challenged Greville, with her bright bold smile, to injure her! Fear to leave him alone with Sir William? Not she! and so presently tripped out of the room in her big hat all plumes and the white silk cloak about her shoulders. Greville attended her to the carriage, and stood bareheaded, reminiscent of many past hackney coaches on the same errand, as it bore her away to Romney’s studio. She had forgotten to ask concerning little Emma, now a fine buxom girl of nine, whose last school bill lay receipted in his pocket. He turned and went slowly up the stair, reflecting.
“And what do you think of her?” was the first eager question. It seemed that Hamilton could think of nothing else. He looked even older now she was gone; it was as when the sun dies off a landscape.
“Most beautiful,” Greville answered with his carefully regulated enthusiasm. “Immensely, unspeakably improved.”
“Worth a little sacrifice, eh?”
“Certainly. If worth a great one no one but yourself can tell. I suppose you had great difficulties with the King about his consent?”
“On the whole, not so bad as I expected. I won’t hide from you, who have all my confidence, that he was extremely reluctant. I could see the Queen had primed him. He leaned chiefly on difficulties with the Neapolitan Court and I could honestly reassure him there. Indeed, I was able to show him a letter that Marie Caroline wrote me before leaving, expressing her warm interest and kindness for Emma. It went a long way. He agreed finally, and offered the privy councillorship.”
Greville reflected.
“A great honour. Did you see the Queen?”
“No. But I have no doubt that Emma will win her way when we are married. No one can resist her. I may say her life is one triumphal progress.”
“It promised to be long since,” said Greville politely. “Has she acquired more placidity of temper than we used to remark in her?”
“Undoubtedly. Sometimes I have seen the little struggle, for she is naturally impetuous, but it is instantly suppressed. She owes much to your instruction, my dear Greville.”
“You are too partial. Tell me—does she cherish any resentment against me? Be candid. Women are unreasonable, and though it has crowned her happiness and yours, still she may be sore on that point—you understand?”
“Perfectly. But no, not in the least. She speaks of you with just the calm affection I desire. One of her chief pleasures in looking forward was to see you. I believe I express the truth in saying she mourned sincerely over Miss Middleton’s folly and would do all in her power to aid you in any way.”
Of that Greville believed what he pleased, but when he and Sir William proceeded arm in arm to the club he was at least assured that for the present the sword was sheathed.
The truth was, she was in such an Elysium that she thought little of him and was as ready to be cordial to overflowing as she would have been with Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh or any other reminder of a past which might never have existed as far as she was concerned. Incapable of bearing ill-will to any man, and to few women, she credited all the world with as happy-go-lucky a forgetfulness as her own. Reserve and delicacy were qualities unknown to her except as Attitudes, and they troubled none of her relations with Greville in the new rôle of aunt and nephew.
But Romney! He had seen in the Gazette that Sir William had arrived, but knew not the great tidings as yet not publicly announced. How should he? He had shrunk into his shell more than ever and except for his art the world went its way and left him stranded on the beach. Would she send for him? Come? A little shiver like the turn of the sap in spring in the cold veins of trees seemed to stir feebly about his heart because she was near.
A little tap at his door. It opened very slowly. The white fold of a woman’s dress fluttered in like a butterfly on the breeze from the opened door without. He saw the gleam and swung his chair right about. The door was pushed back, and, framed in the darkness behind, he saw her.
Yes, but he could not move. He could not speak. He stared at her, hollow-eyed. Was it real? So often in dream and waking vision that door had stirred and she had stood, still, smiling, exactly as she stood now, living, with glowing lips and cheeks, sweet, sweet, inexpressibly, and yet had melted away into emptiness and distance as he looked. It would be that and no more this time also. He looked down with a long sigh on his knotted empty hands, and dreaded to be cheated into joy.
She could not bear it a moment longer. Her warm heart overflowed, and quick as a sunbeam she danced along the floor and caught him about the neck, forcing his face upwards.
“Mr. Romney—oh, Mr. Romney, I’ve come back to you. Are you glad? I’m so glad I don’t know what to do. Look up, or I’ll run away again!”
He felt the loving living arms about him. In no dream had he heard her voice—that voice of heart’s music—no dream had kissed his cheek with rose-warm lips.
“Emma? Emma?”—he said at last, in a thick muffled voice that made its way through a long-heaped silence; and then the life she brought with her flowed quicker through his blood and woke him to her sunshine.
“Is it true?” he asked at last, and she, her heart almost overflowing at her eyes, assured him it was Emma—“the same, same Emma that can never change to you. No, not if she lives to be a hundred.”
She calmed him after that. She had two hours—two whole golden hours! And see! They would have their meal together, just the same as in the old dear days. Was there a loaf in the cupboard; and eggs?
No, not one. Then what did he mean? Was he going to starve? No, wait, wait! She had her plan.
She caught up her old basket in a dusty corner, itself all dusty and cobwebbed, but still preserved, and down the stair with her, and off to the nearest shop she could find; and that was near for she had not forgotten a step of the way. And presently she returned, with her little parcels, to find him at the front door staring bewildered lest she should be flown off to Naples like a witch on a broomstick; and so up the stairs, and to the little stove where he had his lonely kettle a-boil and all his rusty, dusty materials for tea; and tucked up her sleeves and made her buttered toast and fried her sausages and sat him down to eat with her while she ate also with her hearty young appetite and talked with a full mouth and a fuller heart of the Neapolitan triumphs.
That was Emma at her best and loveliest. It is arguable, nor can I refute it, that let who will possess her, Romney had the most of her after all. He drew some divine essence from her that the others could not—no, not even Nelson, though he came nearest. He saw the soul in her freed from all contradictions and flaws—pure essence, spiritual beauty. And whether he was wrong or immortally right, God only knows, who made her so beautiful.
So he listened, elbows propped on the table, and greedy eyes devouring every play of light and dark across her face—worshipping once more at the altar of the Divine Lady.
But now she must come near the central truth of her strange, eventful history—her marriage. And that would wing a dart, she knew full well, for what have poor painters to do with ambassadresses rising in apotheosis into rosy clouds of flattery and grandeur?
“Sir William loves me beyond all you could imagine, Mr. Romney”—she said, delaying a little.
“What else could he do? What else can any of ’em do? Tell me news, Emma. Tell me he stays in England now he’s here.”
“Alas, no, my dear, dear friend. His duties take him back to Naples.”
“And you with him?”
“And I with him. As his wife.”
She sat half frightened, half triumphant, with the man looking at her open-mouthed, fixed. She answered the beseeching in his face.
“Yes, it’s true. His wife.”
“But not yet—not yet?”
“In a few days. But then we stop here awhile. Oh, Mr. Romney, you shall paint me on my wedding day.”
“Your wedding day. No. He’ll want you with him.”
“Then he shan’t have me; but he’s good, he’ll understand. Would I not be with my friend that happy day? Dear sir, you shall paint the Ambassadress, and it shall be—oh, better than Circe, than Cassandra, than them all!”
She caught him up in her own joy and whirled him away, leaving not a moment for thought or grief. All centred on the picture. And so it remains—immortal, for he threw his great heart, his great brain into it, and the colours were mingled with his life-blood in that most noble portrait. She sits, little hands with the new wedding ring clasped upon the arm of her chair. Some one has disturbed her meditation—her Excellency the Ambassadress is needed; she turns her face, the lovely oval chin and curved lips upon the happy beholder. The eyes under the long arched brows are full of gentle reserves and soft dignity. Not any Circe nor Cassandra now, but Emma Hamilton, herself at last. We may believe that Hamilton loved that picture, for it represented her as all he wished and believed her—worthy indeed of the great gifts he had given.
But the world went on its way, and from that day onward the fribbles of fashion crowded about her. She swept them away also in the strong current of her marvellous vitality. Mr. Horace Walpole wrote wittily enough that the Nymph of the Attitudes had conquered—“Sir William Hamilton’s pantomime mistress, who acts all the antique statues in an Indian shawl.” So he said, burning to see the sight like the rest of them. He favoured the Duke of Queensberry’s reception that night at Richmond with a chosen few that he might see her with Sir William glowing with pride to display his conquering Beauty. Let us hear the Arbiter of Fashion and of Taste.
“On Saturday evening I was at the Duke of Queensberry’s (at Richmond s’entend) with a small company, and there were Sir W. Hamilton and Mrs. Hart, who on the 3rd of next month, previous to their departure, is to be made Madame l’Envoyeé à Naples, the Neapolitan Queen having promised to receive her in that quality. Here she cannot be presented, where only such over-virtuous wives as the Duchess of Kingston and Mrs. Hastings, who could go with a husband in each hand, are admitted. I had only heard of her Attitudes, and those, in dumb show, I have not yet seen. Oh, but she sings admirably; has a very fine strong voice; is an excellent buffa and an astonishing tragedian. She sung ‘Nina’ in the highest perfection, and there her attitudes were a whole theatre of grace and various expressions.”
So Mr. Walpole’s world was conquered (with reservations) and she thought it conquered wholly.
They were married at Marylebone church on the 6th September, 1790, in the twenty-fifth year of her age, and the witnesses were my Lord Abercorn, Sir William’s cousin, and Mr. Dutens, and fashion laughed at Sir William as it had never laughed yet. Indeed, it had believed he might escape the adventuress at the last moment—the dotard! And Mr. Walpole wrote again to his Miss Berrys that “Apropos, Sir W. Hamilton has married his Gallery of Statues, and they are set out on their return to Naples.”
And Emma spent that eventful day with her friend and gave him the last sitting of so many; the last forever.
That friendship and Sir William’s true affection stand out as the sole and touching realities of the unreal froth and laughter and slighting jest with Mr. Walpole’s aged cynicism leading the rabble rout. He may have been right in his valuation—he would have declared that after years proved him immaculately so, had he lived to jest when that time came—but his light cruelties hover, a malarial glitter of corruption, above the Lethe where all dead things roll to their doom in the sullen flood; and Romney’s adoration and her husband’s fidelity shine like fixed stars in every memory of her fair face, and will illuminate her with tenderness until her beauty is forgotten.
Her gratitude to her husband! She could never make him amends for his goodness. What did it matter that the cold Queen of England refused to receive her? He had restored her to all a woman could value. She wrote to her faithful Romney:
“I am the happiest woman in the world. Sir William is fonder of me every day, and I hope he will have no corse to repent of his goodness to me. But why do I tell you this? You know me enough. You was the first dear friend I opened my heart to. You ought to know me, for you have seen and discoursed with me in my poorer days. How grateful then do I feel to my dear, dear husband, that as restored peace to my mind, that as given me honours, rank, and what is more, innocence and happiness. Rejoice with me, my dear sir, my friend, my more than father. Believe me, I am still that same Emma you knew me. Tell Hayley I am always reading his ‘Triumphs of Temper,’ it was that that made me Lady H. for God knows I had for five years enough to try my temper and I am afraid if it had not been for the good example Serena taught me, my girdle would have burst, and if it had I had been undone for Sir W. minds more temper than beauty. He therefore wishes Mr. Hayley would come that he might thank him for his sweet-tempered wife. I swear to you I have never once been out of humour since the 6th of last September. God bless you.”
Her dear warm heart! He kissed that letter as he laid it aside, and dreamed of a visit to Naples to bask in her sunshine, a dream that melted into nothing.
So they set out to Naples, Ambassador and Ambassadress of England, visiting on the way the sad, foreboding Marie Antoinette of France, and bearing with them in Emma’s bosom her last letter to her sister Marie Caroline of the Two Sicilies. To such honour is the once forlorn Emma come! It would have been much to witness the meeting of those two beautiful creatures, on whom the hand of Destiny was so strangely laid.
And they returned to the Palazzo Sessa. To live happy ever after? At least it began with all due splendour. Marie Caroline redeemed her promise and broke, in Lady Hamilton’s favour, the rule which forbids any sovereign to receive a woman who cannot be presented at her native Court. Not only so—Mrs. Hart was forgotten. That lady had, for social purposes, never existed, and the daughter of the Hapsburgs took the daughter of the blacksmith to her bosom on the footing of closest, most intimate friendship. Her keen eyes were fixed steadily on the storm blackening in France, rolling up the sky and slowly extinguishing the sun. Let who would doubt its coming, she would be prepared. She could not do enough for the representatives of England, and all the world followed her example. Surely the past was buried under the radiant present as the drowned corpses lie beneath the blue Mediterranean, and if a memory, like a white face, ever floated up to the sparkling surface, it was easy for Emma Hamilton to forget it when the next ripple carried it out to sea. All the English ladies, even their young daughters, were at her feet now. Perhaps she did not quite realize that the English in foreign countries live by a different code from the English in England. She was to understand that later.
It was for the first time worth Hamilton’s while to train her in politics, for the quick wit that aided him at every turn could be made useful in his diplomatic work also. It grew more irksome as he grew older, and as France, sinister, menacing as Vesuvius itself, threatened to break forth in ruining flames and lava. Emma could spare him a little here and there on the lighter side, he thought. Certainly she could and did copy and rewrite some of his despatches and was developing into a capable secretary.
It puzzled her, wearied her a little at first, but when she understood that it helped him, that even the Queen’s chance words to her repeated to him (but were they ever chance?) were of interest and value, she caught up that rôle of stateswoman, and played it as she did all the others. After all, an ambassadress should be in the secrets of her trade. She would show them that there too she was at home. Not for nothing had Greville written to Sir William in the early days of the plot against her, “Emma’s passion is admiration, and it is capable of aspiring to any line which will be celebrated, and it would be indifferent when on that key whether she was Lucretia or Sappho or Scævola or Regulus, anything grand, whether masculine or feminine she could take up.”
She could, indeed. She would show them now, King, Queen, Hamilton, Greville, the World, that there was nothing beyond her, and the more difficult the better. She would win the Royal admiration, and with it under the Queen’s and Hamilton’s tuition she studied her new rôle—the politics of Europe. There, too, she would be prima donna, and Marie Caroline, used to the choice of instruments, tested this one in little things, and her heart rejoiced within her. For the day of great things was drawing on.