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."
The stormy period of the French Revolution, which was about to burst into universal war at the time she was married, gave Lady Hamilton another opportunity to come yet more conspicuously before men's eyes than she had hitherto done. It is not easy to say what degree of influence she really attained, or what particular results she may have effected; but she certainly managed to give herself so much the air of a person of importance, in the political intrigues of the day in Naples, as at the least to impose successfully upon a great many, and to be accepted very much at her own valuation. The French ambassador, writing to Bonaparte in 1798, says: "If the preponderance which the French Republic ought to take here, removed hence Acton and the wife of Hamilton, this country, without other changes, would be extremely useful for the execution of all your projects in the Mediterranean;" and Sir William himself, who should have known, speaks of her activity and utility,—"for several years the real and only confidential friend of the Queen of Naples." Nelson, writing to the Queen of Naples in 1804, after Hamilton's death, said: "Your Majesty well knows that it was her capacity and conduct which sustained his diplomatic character during the last years in which he was at Naples."[73] Certainly, Nelson believed, with all the blindness of love, whatever his mistress chose to tell him, but he was not without close personal knowledge of the inside history of at least two of those last years; for, in 1801, addressing Mr. Addington, then Prime Minister, he used these words: "Having for a length of time seen the correspondence both public and private, from all the Neapolitan ministers to their Government and to the Queen of Naples, I am perfectly acquainted with the views of the several Powers." For her success Lady Hamilton was indebted, partly to her personal advantages, and partly to her position as wife of the British minister and chosen friend to the Queen. Great Britain played a leading part everywhere in the gigantic struggle throughout the Continent, but to a remote peninsular kingdom like Naples, protected by its distance from the centres of strife, yet not wholly inaccessible by land, the chief maritime state was the one and only sufficient ally. A rude reminder of his exposure to naval attack had been given to the King of the Two Sicilies, in 1792, by the appearance of a French fleet, which extorted satisfaction for an alleged insult, by threatening instant bombardment of his capital.
Sir William Hamilton, who had been minister since 1765, thus found himself suddenly converted from a dilettante and sportsman, lounging through life, into a busy diplomat, at the centre of affairs of critical moment. At sixty-two the change could scarcely have been welcome to him, but to his beautiful and ambitious wife the access of importance was sweet, for it led to a close friendship with the Queen, already disposed to affect her, even in the notorious position she had held before her marriage; and the Queen, a daughter of Maria Theresa and sister to Marie Antoinette, was much more of a man than the King. The intimacy became the talk of Naples, and the report spread, easily believed, because in the nature of things very likely, that the personal relations between the two women cloaked a great deal of underhand work, such as often accompanies diplomatic difficulties. Nor did Lady Hamilton lack natural qualifications for the position into which she undoubtedly wished to thrust herself. She was a brave, capable, full-blooded, efficient woman, not to be daunted by fears or scruples; a woman who, if only nerve and intelligence were required, and if distinction for herself was at stake, could be fairly depended upon. There was in her make-up a good deal of pagan virtue. She could appreciate and admire heroism, and, under the stimulus of excitement, of self-conscious magnanimity, for the glitter of effective performance and the applause of onlookers, she was quite capable of heroic action. It was this daring spirit, coarsely akin to much that was best in himself, and of which she made proof under his own eyes, that Nelson recognized; and this, in the thought of the writer, was the body of truth, from which his enthusiasm, enkindled by her charms and by her tenderness towards himself, projected such a singular phantasm of romantic perfections.
Such was the woman, and such the position in the public eye that she had gained for herself, when to Naples, first in the European continent, came the news which made Nelson for the moment the most conspicuous man of the day. He had achieved a triumph the most startlingly dazzling that had yet been gained, and over one who up to that time had excelled all other warriors in the brilliancy and extent of his victories. Bonaparte was not yet the Napoleon whom history knows, but thus far he had been the most distinguished child of the Revolution. That Lady Hamilton then and there formed the purpose of attaching Nelson to her, by the bonds which have sullied his memory, is most improbable; but it is in entire keeping with the career and the self-revelations of the woman that she should, instinctively, if not with deliberation, have resolved to parade herself in the glare of his renown, and appear in the foreground upon the stage of his triumph, the chief dispenser of his praises, the patroness and proprietor of the hero. The great occasion should shed a glamour round her, together with him. "Emma's passion is admiration," Greville had written soon after they parted, "and it is capable of aspiring to any line which would be celebrated, and it would be indifferent, when on that key, whether she was Lucretia or Sappho, or Scævola or Regulus; anything grand, masculine or feminine, she could take up."
Unhappily, Nelson was not able to stand the heady dose of flattery administered by a woman of such conspicuous beauty and consummate art; nor was his taste discriminating enough to experience any wholesome revolt against the rankness of the draught she offered him. The quick appreciation of the born actress, which enabled her when on the stage to clothe herself with a grace and refinement that dropped away when she left it, conspired with his simplicity of confidence in others, and his strong tendency to idealize, to invest her with a character very different from the true. Not that the Lady Hamilton of reality was utterly different from the Lady Hamilton of his imagination. That she ever loved him is doubtful; but there were in her spirit impulses capable of sympathetic response to his own in his bravest acts, though not in his noblest motives. It is inconceivable that duty ever appealed, to her as it did to him, nor could a woman of innate nobility of character have dragged a man of Nelson's masculine renown about England and the Continent, till he was the mock of all beholders; but on the other hand it never could have occurred to the energetic, courageous, brilliant Lady Hamilton, after the lofty deeds and stirring dramatic scenes of St. Vincent, to beg him, as Lady Nelson did, "to leave boarding to captains." Sympathy, not good taste, would have withheld her. In Lady Nelson's letters there is evidence enough of a somewhat colorless womanly affection, but not a thrill of response to the greatness of her husband's daring, even when surrounded herself by the acclamations it called forth.
What Nelson had never yet found in woman Lady Hamilton gave him,—admiration and appreciation, undisguised and unmeasured, yet bestowed by one who had the power, by the admission of even unfriendly critics, of giving a reality and grace to the part she was performing. He was soon at her feet. The playful gallantry with which Ball, Elliot, and even old St. Vincent[74] himself, paid court to a handsome woman, greedy of homage, became in Nelson a serious matter. Romantic in temperament, he was all day in flattering contact with her. Worn out and ill from that "fever of anxiety," to use his own words, which he had endured since the middle of June, she attended and nursed him. "Lady Hamilton," he exclaimed to Lady Nelson, with enthusiasm undiscriminating in more ways than one, "is one of the very best women in this world; she is an honour to her sex." A week later he tells her, with an odd collocation of persons: "My pride is being your husband, the son of my dear father, and in having Sir William and Lady Hamilton for my friends. While these approve my conduct, I shall not feel or regard the envy of thousands." The matter was passing rapidly into the platonic stage, in which Sir William was also erelong assigned an appropriate, if not wholly flattering, position. "What can I say of hers and Sir William's attention to me? They are in fact, with the exception of you and my good father, the dearest friends I have in this world. I live as Sir William's son in the house, and my glory is as dear to them as their own; in short, I am under such obligations as I can never repay but with my eternal gratitude." "Naples is a dangerous place," he sagely tells Lord St. Vincent, "and we must keep clear of it. I am writing opposite Lady Hamilton, therefore you will not be surprised at the glorious jumble of this letter. Were your Lordship in my place, I much doubt if you could write so well; our hearts and our hands must be all in a flutter." Matters progressed; within ten days the veteran seaman learned, among other concerns of more or less official importance, that "Lady Hamilton is an Angel. She has honoured me by being my ambassadress to the queen: therefore she has my implicit confidence and is worthy of it."
That such intimacy and such relations resulted in no influence upon the admiral's public action is not to be believed. That he consciously perverted his views is improbable, but that he saw duty under other than normal lights is not only probable, but evident. His whole emotional nature was stirred as it never had been. Incipient love and universal admiration had created in him a tone of mind, and brought to birth feelings, which he had, seemingly, scarcely known. "I cannot write a stiff formal public letter," he tells St. Vincent effusively. "You must make one or both so. I feel you are my friend, and my heart yearns to you." Such extravagance of expression and relaxation of official tone has no pertinent cause, and is at least noteworthy. The Court, or rather the Queen through Lady Hamilton, took possession of him. He became immediately one of the little coterie centring round Her Majesty, and he reflected its tone and partisanship, which, fostered probably in the intimate conversations of the two women, were readily transmitted to the minister by the wife whom he adored. The Queen, impetuous, enterprising, and headstrong, like her mother and sister, moved more by feminine feelings of hatred and revenge against the French than by well-balanced considerations of policy, not only favored war, but wished to precipitate the action of the Emperor by immediately attacking the French in the Roman territory. The decision and daring of such a course was so consonant to Nelson's own temperament that he readily sympathized; but it is impossible to admit its wisdom, from either a political or military standpoint. It was an excessively bad combination, substituting isolated attacks for co-operation, and risking results upon the chance of prompt support, by a state which would be offended and embarrassed by the step taken.
Under ordinary conditions Nelson might have seen this, but he was well handled. Within three days he had been persuaded that upon his personal presence depended the salvation of Italy. "My head is quite healed, and, if it were necessary, I could not at present leave Italy, who looks up to me as, under God, its Protector." He continually, by devout recollection of his indebtedness to God, seeks to keep himself in hand. "I am placed by Providence in that situation, that all my caution will be necessary to prevent vanity from showing itself superior to my gratitude and thankfulness,"—but the current was too strong for him, and was swollen to a torrent by the streams of adulation, which from all quarters flowed in upon a temperament only too disposed to accept them. "Could I, my dearest Fanny," he writes to Lady Nelson, "tell you half the honours which are shown me here, not a ream of paper would hold it." A grand ball was given on his birthday, September 29; and a rostral column was "erected under a magnificent canopy, never, Lady Hamilton says, to come down while they remain at Naples." Within a week the conviction of his own importance led him to write to Lady Hamilton, evidently for transmission to the Queen, an opinion, or rather an urgent expression of advice, that Naples should at once begin war. It is only conjectural to say that this opinion, which rested on no adequate knowledge of the strength of the Neapolitan Kingdom, was elicited by the Queen through Lady Hamilton; but the inference derives support from the words, "I have read with admiration the queen's dignified and incomparable letter of September, 1796,"—two years before. That his views were not the simple outcome of his own unbiassed study of the situation is evident enough. "This country, by its system of procrastination, will ruin itself," he writes to St. Vincent, the very day after drawing up the letter in question; "the queen sees it and thinks"—not as I do, but—"as we do." That Lady Hamilton was one of the "we" is plain, for in the postscript to the letter he says: "Your Ladyship will, I beg, receive this letter as a preparative for Sir William Hamilton, to whom I am writing, with all respect, the firm and unalterable opinion of a British admiral," etc. Certainly these words—taken with those already quoted, and written just a week afterwards, "Lady Hamilton has been my ambassadress to the queen"—indicate that she was the intermediary between Nelson and the Court, as well as between him and her husband.
There is no record of any official request for this unofficial and irregular communication of the opinion of a British admiral; and, of course, when a man has allowed himself, unasked, though not unprompted, to press such a line of action, he has bound himself personally, and embarrassed himself officially, in case it turns out badly. Nelson very soon, within a fortnight, had to realize this, in the urgent entreaties of the Court not to forsake them; and to see reason for thinking "that a strong wish for our squadron's being on the Coast of Naples is, that in case of any mishap, that their Majesties think their persons much safer under the protection of the British flag than under any other;" that is—than under their own. They could not trust their own people; they could not, as the event proved, trust their army in the field; and the veteran Neapolitan naval officer, Caracciolo, whether he deserved confidence or not, was stung to the quick when, in the event, they sought refuge with a foreign admiral instead of with himself. That Nelson should not have known all this, ten days after reaching Naples, was pardonable enough, and, if formally asked for advice without such facts being placed before him, he could not be responsible for an error thus arising; but the case is very different when advice is volunteered. He is more peremptory than the minister himself. "You will not believe I have said or done anything, without the approbation of Sir William Hamilton. His Excellency is too good to them, and the strong language of an English Admiral telling them plain truths of their miserable system may do good."
The particular position of Naples relatively to France was this. French troops had for a year past occupied the Roman Republic, which had been established by them upon the overthrow of the Papal Government. Their presence there was regarded by Nelson as a constant threat to the Two Sicilies, and this to an extent was true; but rather because of the contagion of revolutionary ideas than from the military point of view. From the latter, it should have been obvious to a man like Nelson that the French must be deterred, under existing conditions, from entering Naples unprovoked; because the farther they advanced the more exposed was their army, in case war, which was darkly threatening, should be renewed in Upper Italy. They dared not, unless by folly, or because first attacked, prolong their already too extended ex-centric movement into Lower Italy. This was true, taking account of Austria only; but now that the British fleet was released by the entire destruction of the French at the Nile, and could operate anywhere on the coast, it would be doubly imprudent; and when the news that it had been done reached Egypt, Bonaparte, who had himself felt the weight of Naples as a possible enemy, remote and feeble as she was, exclaimed, "Italy is lost!" That Naples should co-operate in the general movement against France was right, although, as Nelson well knew, she had never dared do so under much more favorable conditions,—a fact which by itself should have suggested to him caution; but that she should act alone, with the idea of precipitating war, refusing to await the moment fixed by the principal states, was folly. This, however, was the course determined, under the combined impulse of the Queen, Lady Hamilton, and Nelson; and it was arranged that, after visiting the blockade off Malta, he should return to Naples to co-operate in the intended movement.