IT appeared to Nelson in the anxious days coming on that Heaven itself had sent him the destined helper in his war against French domination. Two things were clear as noonday to the perception of his military genius: that Buonaparte if unchecked must rule the world, and that the theatre of Armageddon would be in the Mediterranean and lands adjacent.
And presently there was a fresh and cruel anxiety about Malta. And to all these matters, the miserable intriguing kingdom of the Two Sicilies was the key from its natural position and its harbours. Then to whom could he turn but to the marvellous woman who divined his thoughts even as he thought them, who used her unique position in the Court solely to aid his views, and who so believed in him, inspired him, that he could not say where the one blended with the other nor whether a thing was his own doing or hers?
It is easy to believe what falls in with one’s own hopes and wishes, and it became a creed with the lovers that the interests of England and the Two Sicilies were one and that together they must stand and fall. If that were so then duty, honour, alike bound him to the service of that puny court and people. For him, Europe stood or fell with Mediterranean policy, and Emma, quick as intuition and quicker, saw it with him, and undertook to imbue the Queen with the Nelsonic doctrine.
He wrote perpetually to her and to Sir William. He drew up a paper outlining his policy, which she must study. Can the imagination at all paint what it must have been to Emma—the Emma of the ghastly memories—to find herself the trusted counsellor of such a man, at such a time? It flattered her pride and ambition as they had never been flattered yet. She saw herself the very arbitress of Europe, and in those days, nothing, nothing seemed impossible to her powers. She flung all her exuberant energies into his service, for what they dreamed together he could execute, and who was to set a bound to their achievement?
And some day—here the baser elements stirred in her—some day—well, Sir William was old, ageing daily. There might be a future, splendid beyond all hopes—no, no, gratitude, everything, forbade her even to imagine such a thing. The present was enough. She had never known such a man—how could she? And he not only loved her but saw in her his guiding star, the inspiration deprived of which his own ardours must flag.
Sir William also fanned her flame. His long and hereditary experience of diplomacy had given him a remarkable insight and he saw the European problem as Nelson saw it. Every word he wrote to England played Nelson’s game and emphasized the strategic consequence of the Two Sicilies. If Revolution raised its head there, good-bye to hope for Europe. Sir William indeed so devoted himself to the single task of rousing intelligence at home that Emma may be said to have presided at the Embassy.
It was well enough known along the Mediterranean coasts. The French intelligencers wrote to their home government that unless “Hamilton’s wife” was removed, there was little hope of gaining Naples. They were right. “Le roi Caroline” was the true ruler, and she was Emma’s mouthpiece. Day in, day out, Emma’s mouth was opened to show forth Nelson’s praise, and the echo of the guns of Aboukir thundered Amen.
She wrote long diary letters to her hero setting forth all their hopes and fears and lulling him and herself with references to Lady Nelson. That was a part of the compact. Truth to their respective bonds, and outside that, perfect comradeship.
She wrote: “The Queen yesterday said to me, ‘The more I think on it, the greater I find it. My respect is such that I could fall at his honoured feet and kiss them.’ You that know us both and how alike we are in many things, that is, I as Emma Hamilton, she as Queen of Naples, imagine us both speaking of you! I told Her Majesty we only wanted Lady Nelson to be the female tria juncta in uno for we all love you, and yet all three differently, and yet all equally, if you can make that out.”
So she protested her loyalty to herself and him. She wrote to Lady Nelson again, congratulating her on Nelson’s recovery, and his great deeds. In part, the common desire of the woman who is stealing the husband’s allegiance, to stand well with the wife, to spare her any cruelty but the one; in part, surely, a nobler aim. If Lady Nelson would but respond, would enlist Emma’s warm heart on her own behalf as well as his! That would be a safeguard—if they could be friends. But no; Fanny had heard the stories that were flying across the sea. She believed that a more dangerous than Circe herself lurked in her den strewn with men’s bones in Naples.
She replied coldly, briefly, and Emma knew that the watch-dog Suspicion was guarding that gate with wary eye. It was not wonderful. Fanny knew well there was a change in Nelson’s letters. She could set down something to work, to wounds, and the presence of anxieties. But yet—he had been in danger and anxiety many a day and oft, and there had been time for tender protestations. There were none now. She began to perceive what had never been pressed in upon her before, the grievous danger of the long separation of husband and wife. Hitherto it had made him cling more fondly to the thought of home. Now—she doubted—doubted.
She might well doubt. Every day of absence from Emma endeared her to Nelson. It was home now where she was; not only the actual walls and sweetness of daily intercourse, but heart’s home, where every word and look was understood and re-echoed. He missed her horribly at every turn. His very genius seemed to dwindle in her absence.
And in Naples things grew steadily worse. The French had been busy sowers and their grain was ripening for harvest. It became gradually clear to Emma and therefore to the Queen that the horrors of France might very well repeat themselves for the Royal Family. Always the face of her doomed sister Marie Antoinette hung before Marie Caroline, the piteous decapitated head, grey and discrowned, with deep tear-channels worn down the hollow cheeks. Neither royalty nor beauty, nor all the kings of all the world had availed to save her from that fate. And could Marie Caroline look at her own children, happy, unconscious, in the gardens of Caserta without remembering the sin crying aloud to God and man of the torture and degradation of soul and body deliberately inflicted on her nephew, the Royal child of France, the Dauphin, by the French Republicans? It is no wonder that even her courageous spirit darkened into ashes sometimes and might have been quenched but for Emma’s confident energy and the white overshadowing wings of Nelson’s Fleet.
For in November he returned to Naples. He could make the excuse that his orders were to protect the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, but though he stifled his knowledge as far as possible, he knew in his own soul what influence drew him. What was a foreign queen to an English Admiral? Yet he wrote: “I am, I fear, drawn into a promise that Naples Bay shall never be left without an English man-of-war. I never intended leaving the coast of Naples without one; but if I had, who could resist the request of such a queen?”
He was perpetually with the Hamiltons during that visit, and every impulse drew Emma to conquer his whole heart—if any of it were left unconquered. He still confused his passion for her with his passion for glory and that was her most powerful aid. It reacted in every way. It made her private interests one with the politics of the Two Sicilies. It made her indispensable to him at every turn of events.
There were the strangest moments of confidence between them in the half hours they could snatch together in the room of the mirrors when Hamilton was toiling in his office downstairs—moments of self-deception on Nelson’s part which Emma half prayed might always continue, half longed to break into reality as her life had taught it to her.
“My Emma, my own true comrade, never was such a friendship as ours in all the world. We will prove that a man and woman may be friends, with the deepest love to bind them and yet loyal as brother and sister to every obligation of honour.”
And this with her warm hand clasped in his, her violet-grey eyes glowing on him! She smiled, responsive.
“Yes, yes, it is true. We are not made of common clay, Nelson, you and me. What others cannot do, we can. See, I kiss your dear eyes with never a thought that your wife would scorn if she could know. I wish with all my soul she were here that I might serve her and show her that Emma’s heart is true as steel to her and hers. You know it is true. I would have her know it also. What does she say of me in her letters?”
“She writes calmly but kindly. It is not her way like yours, my beloved, to expend her heart in writing or speaking, but indeed she is a good, good woman, and may Heaven desert me the day I cause her a pang that could be spared.”
“Would she comprehend our friendship, do you think? Does she understand how great and commanding is your genius? Would she despise your poor Emma for her adoration of the gifts that have brought the world to your feet?”
“I have never known Fanny despise a living soul. She is all that is humble and kind,” Nelson said gravely, “and I hope beyond expression that in days to come you and she may be friends and live in harmony which will make us indeed tria juncta in uno, to use your own dear words.”
“She answered my letters coldly,” says Emma with a moisture on her flower-soft lashes. “It cut me to the heart. Oh, if she could but know my heart’s true friendship.”
“She will. She shall. I have assured her of it in letter after letter. But let us talk of the Queen.”
The subject was painful to him, until Fanny should indeed be brought to comprehend all his motives. But Nelson’s simplicity blinded him to much he had better have realized. Those who knew him best knew it and feared. A vague rumour of what was called “the flirtation” spread along the Mediterranean and reached old St. Vincent. He, knowing Nelson, dismissed it with a shrug of his shoulders and the dictum that Nelson and Emma were a couple of silly sentimental fools, no worse, but he began to be on the alert nevertheless concerning the Vanguard’s visits to Naples, to be impatient of the Sicilian imbroglio and to wish that Nelson would put the matter in Troubridge’s or some other such man’s capable hands and there leave it. Nelson and Emma were born romantics, he thought. They fed each other’s flame foolishly. It was all very well for himself, old and seasoned, to write to her that he was her knight errant. It was a very different and more dangerous matter for Nelson to play the part in earnest. He wished Lady Nelson would come out and look after him.
Lady Nelson wished it very much more eagerly herself. She scented danger—danger. She wrote and proposed it in tenderest wifely terms. They had been so long apart. She craved to see him. He answered hurriedly—impossible. She little realized the state of affairs out here, or she could never make such a proposal. The only result was to strengthen her suspicions of Emma and all her works.
The night before he sailed again, recalled by the commander in chief, he told Emma this episode, conscious himself of a half disloyalty in the very telling.
“She could not have come!” he said wistfully. “It was impossible. Yet how natural to wish it. It touched me.”
“No woman who really considered your immense anxieties should wish to hamper you for one instant. Oh, my Nelson, what is the gratification of being together compared to doing your glorious duty? It half breaks my heart to part with my soul’s friend. Yet I bid you go. I urge you. I would not keep you with me if even my life depended on it, for what is life without glory to souls like yours and mine? You have taught me this. I owe it to you, and I won’t fail. I’ll never fail.”
He put his arm about her, so that her head rested quietly on his shoulder.
“Brave Emma! Good Emma! My friend of friends. The only one in the world that understands me. My soul is too great for them. They wound and bruise it because they cannot understand. I should be given a free hand in the Mediterranean to do what I would, and here am I kept in leading strings like a sucking captain. Your Nelson has that in him that should make the world crawl before him, if it could find vent.”
“And it shall—it will!” she whispered. “And I’ll help. They should make you head of the Navy and put up a statue of pure gold to you in London if I had my way. Ignorant fools! They are not worthy of you. Who is?”
“Nor of you, nor of you!” he answered fondly.
Lovers’ bombast, but the worst thing in the world for a man of his temperament and a woman of hers.
They could not do without the atmosphere of adulation that each provided for the other. They both grew more impatient, irritable, tyrannous, to all outside that enchanted ring. The Queen’s rank protected her, but Sir William often had reason to remember Greville’s dicta concerning Emma’s “little spurts of temper,” and Nelson on board his Vanguard was more impatient of the contradictions of events, more captious than his officers had ever known him. It might be that terrible blow on the head at the battle of the Nile, they thought, but certainly it made difficulties. It was unlucky, too, that St. Vincent, who knew him through and through, was already talking of relinquishing the command and returning to England, and of Lord Keith succeeding him; a man of colder, dryer nature; a martinet; the last man, in any case, to understand Nelson’s complexities and give him rein where needful.
So the Vanguard sailed from Naples, and Nelson felt the world cold and inhospitable without her sweet flatteries and clinging yet inspiring adoration. He wrote more and more briefly to Fanny. The wound on his head, the pressure of business, were natural excuses. He felt himself in a maze of thoughts and feelings she could never understand. Poor Fanny!
But he wrote incessantly to Emma after leaving, letters which contained a meaning between the lines which only she could read; the stain of kisses the sweeter because secret. No violent scandal had as yet arisen, for half the Fleet was in love with her courage, gaiety, and the gallant spirit enshrined in the fairest face that ever dazzled a sailor’s eyes. She was the comrade of all; at their beck for any service she could render; and from Lord St. Vincent down to the midshipmen, they swore by her. It was still easy for men to believe that Nelson thought as they did and no more.
But Emma knew better. She who, in Greville’s words, had always needed a master and must have the bit in her charming mouth and the bridle and whip to direct her, had now found a slave, and a slave who had conquered the coming master of Europe. She knew it as every woman knows her power, and her head swam with the knowledge. Good God! what should she do with him? The wrong thing—inevitably the wrong thing.
Nelson’s judgment in naval matters was infallible, but set him on shore and he was a man like another; and the more fallible because his prejudices were so strong and the self-esteem the world and Emma combined to flatter was stronger daily. How could he ever think himself in the wrong? He and Emma knew the inmost facts of the situation. Who should contradict them? They went their own way.
They flung the Two Sicilies into helpless war with France in the Roman territory, and when the Army and the miserable King fled routed, there was nothing for it but a flight for the Royal Family to Palermo.
She lived a romance in those days and throve exceedingly on the sparkle and bubble of it. One may see her at the Royal Palace, daily with the Queen, exhorting, almost commanding. Nelson had advised her of Buonaparte’s design on the Two Sicilies. In Austria was no help; no, not even though Marie Caroline’s daughter was Empress-Consort in Vienna. Palermo, Palermo and patience, had become the only hope for Neapolitan Royalty in these hard times.
“But I cannot, I cannot!” the pale Queen protested. “My dear friend, you may see for yourself that a King who flees is lost. Never again shall we regain our throne and Buonaparte has already a creature of his own to occupy it. I will die here. I will face my sister’s fate from the Jacobins.”
“If you die at your post, madam, I will remain and die with you,” cried the impassioned Emma. “But Nelson advises flight, and did you ever know the saviour of Europe wrong?”
“But how, how can it be done if I assent—which I will not do unless compelled? You know, my beloved, my only friend, that we are watched night and day. We cannot fly without our jewels, treasures, necessaries. It cannot be done.”
Emma, who knew from the Queen’s lips all the particulars of the flight of the unhappy King and Queen of France to Varennes and its miserable failure, recalled here how all was near lost by Marie Antoinette’s insistence that Royalty could not flee without little queenly furnitures which attracted suspicion. But she was not there to arrange it! That and all else if one were Emma. Her magnificent self-confidence carried her forward.
“Remember Varennes!” the Queen added sadly, her face sinking into utter lassitude as she looked out on the bright Palace gardens.
“Remember, madam, that Her Majesty of France had no Nelson—and may I add, no Emma.”
The Queen clasped her hand silently. There was a long pause.
“Madam, Your Majesty has not heard our plans. We hear almost daily from Nelson. Can you suppose that he cannot carry all the treasures and all the needs of Your Majesty and the Royal Family?”
“If he were at our disposal, yes!” said the Queen languidly. “But why discuss the impossible, chère Miladi? Imagine our possessions conveyed through the Jacobin mob? Imagine ourselves—no, no, we should be torn to pieces. If I could risk it for myself, how could I risk it for my children?”
Emma drew nearer, her quick eyes surveyed the room, the doors, for listeners. The Queen sat by the window, leaning her elbow on it and her chin on her hand; an attitude of utter dejection.
“We have no star. All fails with us,” she said. Emma stood, leaning slightly against the window and as if idly gathering a rosebud or two from the lavish growth outside. Her voice was so lowered that it carried to the Queen’s ear, and no farther.
“Let us suppose, madam, when we recall the history of your sainted sister the Queen, that Paris had been on the sea. That an English Fleet could have come and gone at its will. That the Admiral had been devoted to Her Majesty’s service. That he had had a friend in the Queen’s confidence and his own who could act as intelligencer between them. Does Your Majesty think the flight could have succeeded then?”
“Not even then,” said the Queen wearily. “The true difficulty lies in conveying so many people, so many possessions between the Palace and the ship. Do you suppose the Jacobin watch sleeps at night?”
“Suppose there had been a secret passage between the Palace and the sea, madam, known only to those who could be trusted. What would Your Majesty say then?”
The Queen fixed her bright haggard eyes on her.
“Is it true?”
Emma nodded, and gathered another rose or two and flung them down to the Royal children below, calling to them and laughing, until the women in attendance looked up at her bright face. Then she resumed, still leaning, so that those below could see her careless attitude. She and the Queen might be discussing the last news of the ballet at San Carlo.
“Madam, the great Nelson would never suggest a plan of which he could not foresee the end. This secret passage exists. It leads from below the Royal apartments to the Molesiglio, the small pier where boats can wait. And Nelson will have his flagship, the Vanguard, in waiting, and another vessel, the Alcmene for stores. On my knees I assure Your Majesty that there is no danger, if you will leave it fearlessly to him and to me. And from their capital of Palermo, guarded by the British Fleet, the King and Queen can dictate terms to the Jacobins in Naples.”
Another long silence. Then the Queen broke into a thunderstorm of tears and sobs.
“I am the most unfortunate of queens, mothers and women. I have nothing left in the world. All has failed.”
Emma knelt beside her and ventured to clasp the hand which lay helpless on her knee.
“Madam, you have not lost all. You have life. You have power, and Nelson—who cannot fail you. There was a queen more unfortunate by far—your beloved, unhappy sister of France. Oh, my adorable, unhappy Queen, act while there is yet time, lest your name should be added to hers—as most miserable.”
The Queen agreed faintly, exhausted with grief, and the next day retracted her promises. So it went on for days, with Nelson urging and Emma pleading—pleading with reinforcement from Acton—until at last, when Emma was almost worn out herself, the Queen consented to the gradual removal of the Royal treasures and jewels as a beginning. Possibly, she said, if they were removed out of danger she herself would face the storm in Naples.
Even that was something gained, and Nelson wrote that the logic of events would convince the Queen, for the French power in Italy was gradually drawing southward.
On the fifth of December he returned with the Vanguard and Alcmene and the great event was at hand. And at last the Queen realized that the time for decision was upon her.
Every day Emma was with her at the Palace. Every day priceless jewels, part of the old heritage of Austria, the new glories of the Neapolitan kingdom, were carefully inventoried, and carried off in her bosom, or the innocent bag she wore in the prevalent fashion secured to her wrist with a slender golden chain. She was perfectly fearless and it is probable she had never enjoyed her position so much in her life. Every day made her of more consequence. She was the pivot on which turned the whole conspiracy of flight.
It must be here owned that the English daughter of the people had the true English adoration of rank and consequence, and that her own experiences had steadily convinced her that rank and power are the indispensables of life. Who had cared for Emma Hart with all her beauty and gifts? Who did not care for my Lady Hamilton, her Excellency, the adored friend of the daughter and mother of sovereigns? The queendom of the Queen became an obsession with her.
She began to believe that the English Fleet, England itself, should pause from all other concerns to safeguard this princess whose favour meant everything to the Ambassadress. The contact vulgarized her mind daily. All was subordinated to the Queen—who in turn was to be guided entirely by her.
The work of packing proceeded in secrecy and haste, and Nelson might have been alarmed if he had seen the mountainous cargo being prepared for his ships. Valuable works of art, treasures small and great, were secured in chests and conveyed into the subterranean passage for embarkation. During the seven nights between the fourteenth and twenty-first, of December, under Emma’s own supervision, treasures of almost inestimable value in more than money were carried off. Nelson himself wrote to his commander in chief, Lord St. Vincent:
“Lady Hamilton from this time to the twenty-first, every night received the jewels of the Royal Family, etc., etc., and such clothes as might be necessary for the very large party to embark, to the amount, I am confident, of full two millions, five hundred thousand pounds sterling.” There should be no booty left for the Jacobins.
She had, on Nelson’s instructions, also warned all the British merchants in Naples that there was a refuge for them on board any of the ships of the Fleet now in the Bay of Naples.
But all was conducted in perfect security, owing to the advantages of the secret passage, and only the vaguest rumours got abroad. Day by day the King and Queen showed themselves on the balcony of the Palace, bowing to the people, calm, smiling, happy. And the mobs dispersed content, and the preparations went on steadily.
The great night came, and still Emma supported the Queen’s resolution. Surely a more extraordinary page in history scarcely exists.
It was the twenty-first of December, the Alcmene loaded with treasure, waiting off Posilippo; the Vanguard prepared for the Royal Family and their crowding attendants, Sir William half frantic at the prospect of abandoning the Palazzo Sessa and the Villa Emma to the plundering of the Jacobins, and Emma heedless of that and all else in her preoccupation with Nelson and the Queen.
She had vouchsafed a little consideration with Nelson to Sir William’s art treasures, the collection of a lifetime, and a part had been embarked on board the Colossus, but that was all the thought she could spare from her more pressing duties.
It was a night of storm and rain, possibly the safer on that account, but infinitely terrifying to fair-weather travellers. Marie Caroline had written her last farewell letter from the Palace, to her daughter, the Empress of Austria. “Once on board, God help us!” she wrote, “Saved, but ruined and dishonoured.”
Yet no way out, for every hour Naples grew more dangerous. Afterwards she wrote again to the Empress:
“We descended, ten in number, with the utmost secrecy in the dark, without our ladies in waiting, or other attendants. Nelson was our guide.”
But even the Empress was not told all the particulars. Emma wrote them to Greville, and it is permissible to imagine the feeling with which the cool, the sedate Greville would read the heights to which his heroine had soared. Emma—Good God!
“On the twenty-first, at ten at night, Lord Nelson, Sir William, mother and self went out to pay a visit, sent all our servants away and ordered supper at home. When they were gone, we set off, walked to our boat, and after two hours went to the Vanguard. Lord Nelson then went with armed boats to a secret passage adjoining to the palace, got up the dark staircase that goes into the Queen’s room and with a dark lantern, cutlasses, pistols, etc., brought off every soul, ten in number to the Vanguard at ten o’clock. If we had remained to the next day we should all have been imprisoned.”
It was done, and as the last boat reached the Vanguard, and the Royal fugitives ascended from the tossing waves, pale, terrified, rain-wet and wind-blown, Emma, leaning over the side, to watch their reception, felt her heart beat high with pride and triumph. Glory, even more glorious than her imaginations, was gained. She had saved a King and in so doing had proved her own courage and address to all the world.
The famous flight to Varennes of the unhappy Marie Antoinette and the King of France had failed for want of courage and address like her own. She had not failed. She had triumphantly rescued them and not only themselves but all their family and treasures. No half successes for her. It could not have been better accomplished. Nelson had been her instrument; without him it could not have been done; but she had been the brain, the soul of the enterprise. She triumphed, triumphed, as the Queen clasped her in her arms, seasick already, half fainting, and the terrified Royal children clung to her skirts. She led them to their cabins; she provided for every want.
She bestowed Sir William in such comfort as was possible, and had then one word with Nelson on the heaving rain-swept deck.
“Emma, my angel, my wonder; there is none like you—none. Thank God for your courage and wisdom.”
She clasped his hand, and he saw her face white and beautiful in the tossing light of a lantern. Then she sped away to her duties, and he to his. But together they had done it—a world’s wonder.