THE terror and chaos which dominated the France of the Revolution had at last overflowed her coasts, and the vision of Marie Caroline was realized before the eyes of all the world. Driven by fear and hatred and a nascent sense of power, the young tiger that had tasted blood and mastery was not only standing at bay as formerly, but now making alarming springs on neighbouring territory. Here and there his swift paw struck and left its bleeding scores. What hope was there for Europe but a coalition, not only against the armed forces of France but also against her new and frightful gospel of Death to Despotism, to the Aristocrats, to the Kings? Death also to God—no peace until the last king had been strangled in the bowels of the last priest. One after another, silently, tremblingly, rallying, led by Austria whose royal daughter was in the hands of the murderers, the European nations herded together as frightened cattle herd when the howl of the wolf is heard at midnight.
It is easy now for armchair philosophers to trace the features of liberty behind the mask of the Medusa and to hold to the belief that the root of democracy was watered by the blood that drenched the soil of France—not only royal blood, be it remembered, but the blood of the people also. It was more difficult at the end of the eighteenth century when, to most sober men, France had become a madness drunk with abominations, wild with bloody and sexual license, a shame to look upon, the enemy of God and man.
The Queen of the Two Sicilies certainly made that view her religion and conscience. It was not wonderful. Every fragment of her mother’s, the great Empress Maria Theresa’s, policy, was being trampled to pieces by the French republicans before her eyes. Her doomed sister was in their hands, tortured daily and nightly with every fiendish cruelty the mind of man and woman could conceive—widowed by the guillotine, discrowned, and drawing daily nearer to the same fate. For, as Danton cried in his tremendous image: “The coalized kings threaten us; we hurl at their feet, as gage of battle, the head of a king.”
And the reply of the kings and peoples was to ring the French about with fire as enemies of all the harvest that painful ages have brought to mankind. They had sown the tares, they should reap them. And it may be that the historian of the twentieth century may write that that sowing and reaping are not even yet finished for the world.
And besides all these universal concerns, Marie Caroline, as Queen of the Two Sicilies (for her husband counts for nothing save as the sand in the machinery of her rule), had her own cruel anxieties. She doubted the strength of Austria and the policy of her brother the Emperor, she was aware that her husband’s brother, the miserable King of Spain, was angling for French favour at the instance of a wife who would have sold Spain’s honour in exchange for the crown of the Two Sicilies for her son. She looked out into the world with almost hopeless eyes, and saw but one star of hope—England.
Could England unmoved behold Italy and Sicily in French hands, coldly withdrawing herself from European intrigues and bloodshed? If she could do this, all was over.
England, as usual, hesitated and temporized. The quality of swift decision has never been national, though many a great Englishman has flashed it out in emergency. She acted with a caution so cold that to many English hearts it appeared weakness. Advice was sent from the English Cabinet to the Queen to make peace while yet she could with France—the rising star of war. She could not if she would. Daily the position grew worse as the doctrines of mob-anarchy filtered along the Mediterranean coasts and among their inflammable southern peoples. The inaction of England drove her almost frantic. What! England, Mistress of the seas, Ruler of India, was it possible for her to behold unmoved the Mediterranean become a French lake, and Antichrist enthroned in every European capital but London? And yet it seemed that this very thing might be.
And then the last weight was thrown into the peace scale of English patience and it dropped. Marie Antoinette was guillotined, and even in Marie Caroline’s anguish she realized that her sister had not died in vain. That event touched the conscience of Europe with horror—that and all the cruel circumstances involved. By itself alone it could not have effected it, but as the last snowflake fluttering on the massed snow tilts its equilibrium until it rushes down in roar and ruin, so that horror, perhaps no worse than many precedent, called England to arms. War was declared, and the great arsenal of Toulon seized by the British Admiral Lord Hood. The day that news reached the Queen her wearied eyes flashed dominant once more. “We have them!” she said.
But not yet. There was much, much yet to be done before the guns of Trafalgar should open a conquering road for those of Waterloo, and with the grim dogged patience of her ancestry Marie Caroline settled down to the long struggle. Who could hope that the interests of a little kingdom like the Two Sicilies should loom large in the councils of a power like England? What would the English care if the Bourbon Royalties were driven from Naples? They were but a name to the islanders.
With trembling but resolute care she surveyed her hopes and weapons, Acton was a clear-headed man, but somewhat of a lath painted to look like iron. No one knew that better than the Queen now, whatever had been her opinion at first. Still, though an Irishman, he was strongly pro-British and imbued with the necessary hatred of the French and all their works, Hamilton was old—too much of the dilettante, his interest keener in an unearthed statue, a strayed gem from the Medici collections, than in all the protocols of Europe—clear-headed certainly, life-practised in the tortuous ways of diplomacy; but old; lacking in zest and fire. Yet, considering all this with the frigid judgment of a statesman, Marie Caroline felt his value still. He belonged to one of the ruling families of England, he was connected with the King by ties which had not broken even in the strain of his marriage with Emma, and was universally respected as a man of high character—the English type of the great gentleman, self-possessed and cool in dangerous times. Nor had his marriage injured him except with a few scandalous old women of both sexes. Emma, supported by the Queen, had worn her honours excellently, without either flaunting or shame. Quick as lightning to assimilate even the unspoken hint, and to take colour from the society about her, she filled her post to perfection. The Queen and Hamilton between them modelled and drilled her into the Ambassadress and by 1793 the work was finished. The born great lady, cold and dignified, could never have suited the Neapolitans from the Queen downward so well as this warm-hearted, kindly, eager, beautiful creature who yet could dazzle the world with her graces and again chill it, if necessary, with the “Majesty and Juno air,” of which she had written to Greville years before. And in this emergency it was to Emma the Queen’s mind chiefly turned.
To Emma! Amazing stroke of fate! Emma herself might have hesitated to believe it possible in spite of all her self-confidence, if it had not come so gradually.
First, the Queen’s exceeding graciousness, the private receptions, the long intimate talks ranging from embroidery silks to English manners and customs, to the talk of the Lazzaroni—that curious population peculiar to Naples—basking about the piers in sunshine. Then the open favour—the Royal horses at Emma’s disposal, the Royal grooms to attend her when her Excellency the Ambassadress rode abroad; not now madcap and gay as on the Sussex Downs, but sedately as becomes a great lady. A very great lady, worthy to be courted by the others of the kind who frequented Naples.
“Emma,” wrote Hamilton to Greville, “has had a difficult part to act, and has succeeded wonderfully, having gained by having no pretensions, the thorough approbation of all the English ladies. She goes on improving daily. She is really an extraordinary being.”
Did not the quick Queen know that even better than Hamilton? She had seen it years before. Very gradually, and without any very clear understanding on her part, Emma was pushed into the centre of an English party at the Court of Naples. What more natural and proper in her position? And so where neither the Queen nor her influence could appear, Emma could, and openly.
It became Marie Caroline’s amiable custom to send little messages to the English Ambassador through his charming wife, whom she saw almost daily. Acton, too, was often of the party, and the Queen and he would discuss political matters before Emma; matters in which her interest soon awakened and which she could discuss intelligently. She had always responded to education from the Greville days onward, and the Queen and Acton were educating her carefully now for a rôle she little suspected. It amused and pleased Hamilton, who did his share of the work at home.
But it was not her advice they wanted at first. It was the co-operation of an unsuspected intermediary, ardent, devoted, full of boundless energy. And they secured it. Tact also. There, too, the Queen could trust her Emma. See how she writes to the friendly Greville, who is rigidly all that is courteous and kind to his uncle’s childless wife:
“I have no pretensions nor do I abuse Her Majesty’s goodness, as she observed at Court at Naples (when) we had a drawing-room in honner of the Empress having brought a son. I had been with the Queen the night before alone, en famille, laughing, singing, etc., etc., but at the drawing-room I kept my distance and payd the Queen as much respect as tho’ I had never seen her before, which pleased her very much. She showed me great distinction that night and told me several times how much she admired my good conduct. You may imagine how happy my dear, dear Sir William is. We live more like lovers than husband and wife, as husbands and wives go nowadays. Lord deliver me! and the English are as bad as the Italians some few excepted.”
Greville smiled his little bitter smile which aged more quickly than he did, as he read Emma’s moralities. Women! He wondered whether a sense of humour would save Emma from her absurdities. And to him!—to him, of all men! But like many beauties she never had a sense of humour, scarcely even of fun. She had many other gifts, however, and used them.
Certainly Sir William was satisfied, and with reason. It was Emma now for the exact degree of attention to be shown to a Princess travelling incognita, the exact degree of discouragement to ladies whose rank was impeccable but reputations a little too damaged even for Neapolitan easiness. Emma withdraws herself with dignity from revels which are over-rompish for her newly-refined taste, and Sir William applauds.
“Let them all roll on the carpet—provided you are not of the party. My trust is in you,” he writes.
And safely. Emma, the Ambassadress, is more inclined to magnify her office than to roll on the carpet with it. Great ladies, the truly great, do not commit such faux pas. She mused often over the unspoken lessons in demeanour of the sweet Gunning Duchess, now gone to rejoin her lost and lovely sister. Emma had studied that soft dignity to some purpose, and if the original Eve broke forth sometimes primitive and unashamed, who can blame her?
She sat one day in her room of the mirrors dressed in her white morning negligée and looked out upon the blue bay, with many thoughts of public anxiety. It was dawn, and a golden calm subdued the water into a peace so exquisite that it quieted her into a serene delight. They were to spend the day alone, and she was glad; a little tired of unceasing anxiety and the long uneasy talks with the Queen and Acton. The air was full of trouble; she hankered sometimes for the good old days when all was gaiety and gladness by the blue sea that has seen so many revellers come and flit away into the darkness for ever. And as she leaned and watched in pleasant idleness, a ship hove in sight, far-off but drawing in slowly and steadily with white sails set to catch every drift of the faint morning breeze—a great ship with yawning ports along her chequered sides, with the English ensign flying; English, therefore, and certainly a news-bearer.
She started up and caught at Sir William’s glass, steadying it against a flower-stand and kneeling while she looked. Yes—English.
Good God! Sir William must know.
He was not in his room and she sent Teresa flying all over the house to search for him. No—His Excellency was out. He had dressed and gone hastily down to the water’s edge. Then he knew—he had known before she did. She knelt down and resumed her glass. Presently, their own boat pulling off from the pier. That would be Sir William in the stern and one of the secretaries. Which, she could not be sure. Now they were nearing the big ship as she turned, rounded broadside on to the windows, and Emma, through the slid-back panes, could hear the great rattle when the mighty anchor loosed from the catheads sent blue water flying as it sought its home below. And then the thunder of the Royal salute to the flag of the Two Sicilies flying on Uovo and Nuovo. Twenty-one guns. She put her hands to her ears, laughing for pride and pleasure as the roar of the Lion sent the wild echoes flying. These Neapolitans—they should see the might of her own people at last; the floating battlements which alone stood between them and the French devils. She clapped her hands when gun after gun thundered along the Bay, and Uovo and Nuovo responded with feebler, crackling honours.
What! The Royal Barge putting out to the ship, and at this early hour! And that was the King in the stern if ever she saw him. Then that was Marie Caroline’s doing; a special honour to the ship representing the friend of the Two Sicilies. She saw her husband’s boat draw back politely, and the Royal barge gained the rope ladder first with Sir William’s hovering attendant, and the boatswain’s shrill pipe cut the morning air, and the officers gathered at the gangway, and she could see the King laboriously ascending the rope ladder, Sir William following, and a bright bugle call was heard, and then, for watchers ashore, the scene was closing unless one cared to watch the boats making off hot-foot from the shore with cargoes of fruit and vegetables very acceptable to men so long afloat as the bluejackets of the English Fleet.
Emma did not. With Teresa she made such a careful toilette as a beautiful young woman of twenty-seven would naturally achieve with hospitalities of importance to come. The Captain and all the officers on leave would be entertained at the Embassy. Indeed, the Queen might send for her any moment to discuss the news, whatever it might be. Word had already reached the Embassy that the ship was the Agamemnon—detached from the English fleet blockading Toulon. Good God! What was the news? But no one was sure, though wild rumours were flying about and nearly all the population on the quays. She lived at the window that morning, and watched the Royal barge return with all the honours, and received a messenger who came from Sir William with news that preparation must be made for the guests she expected. She was half frantic with suspense.
An hour went by. Evidently long private discussions between the Ambassador and the Captain. Good Heavens! Why couldn’t they talk as well ashore? And then again the boatswain’s piercing call, and the Embassy boat at the ladder, and Sir William clambering down slowly hand under hand, and a slight man in uniform taking the descent as to the manner born. She had heard, but could not for the life of her remember, who commanded the Agamemnon.
She hurried into the great reception room where the morning sun was darting bright rays through the jalousies, and lighting up the low broad settees, the polished tables with Sir William’s articles of virtu displayed upon them, the glassed cabinets where yet more precious treasures lurked, and the huge pottery bowls full of the glorious flowers which poured into the house summer and winter alike. A gracious setting for any woman.
Steps. Voices—Sir William’s a little excited; she knew that note! A strange voice answering. A group of uniformed men at the door, the Ambassador leading and waving the Captain to precede him.
“Emma, my love. Captain Horatio Nelson of the Agamemnon. Lady Hamilton, sir. He brings the news that Toulon is in our hands.”
She had started to her feet to curtsey ceremoniously, when the last words caught her ear, and then, radiant, rejoicing, the Ambassadress caught his hand in both her own.
“Toulon ours? Oh, sir, you are God’s messenger as well as our King’s. Thank God. Thank God.”