Mrs. Hunter was in the habit of ordering meat daily at a butcher’s for a little dog, and on one of these occasions was met by Monsieur de Rheims, who followed her exclaiming, ‘Ah, Madam!—ah, Madam! I know you to be good to the English. There is a lady here who would be glad of the worst bit of meat you provide for your dog.’ When questioned as to who the lady was, and promising that she should not want for anything, he declined telling, saying that she was too proud to see anyone, and that besides he had promised her secrecy. Mrs. Hunter begged him to provide her with everything she required, &c., as if coming from himself, and she would pay for it. This he did for some time, until she became very ill, when he pressed her to see the lady who had been so kind to her; and, upon hearing that her benefactress was not a person of title, she consented, saw her, thanked her, and blessed her.
Shortly after this her infirmities increased, and ultimately she died at Calais of water on the chest, on January 15, 1815. Dr. Pettigrew gives no credence to the report of an anonymous foreign writer that she had been converted to the Romish faith, and had received the sacrament from a Romish priest as long before as during her confinement in the King’s Bench. That she died, as the same anonymous author reported, in the bosom of the Catholic Church, and received its sacraments on her death-bed, can be as little confirmed. The Romish Church would have buried a convert with willing ceremony: as it was, the method of the sad solemnity was thus ordered for one who, even in death, remained, as described by Mrs. Hunter, exceedingly beautiful:—
Mrs. Hunter was anxious to have her interred according to English custom, for which, however, she was only laughed at; and poor Emma was put into a deal-box without any inscription. All that this good lady states that she was permitted to do was to make a kind of pall out of her black silk petticoat stitched on a white curtain. Not an English Protestant clergyman was to be found in all Calais or its vicinity; and, so distressed was this lady to find some one to read the burial service over her remains, that she went to an Irish half-pay officer in the Rue du Havre, whose wife was a well-informed Irish lady. He was absent at the time; but, being sent for, most kindly went and read the service over the body. Lady Hamilton was buried in a piece of ground in a spot just outside the town, formerly called the gardens of the Duchess of Kingston, which had been consecrated and was used as a public cemetery till 1816. The ground, which had neither wall nor fence to protect it, was some years since converted into a timber-yard, and no traces of the graves now remain. Mrs. Hunter wished to have placed a head or foot-stone, but was refused. She, therefore, placed a piece of wood in the shape, as she describes it to me, of a battledore, handle downwards, on which was inscribed ‘Emma Hamilton, England’s friend.’ This was speedily removed—another placed and also removed; and the good lady at length threatened to be shot by the sentinel if she persisted in those offices of charity. A small tombstone was, however, afterwards placed there, and was existing in 1833.
To the latter assertion we may remark that no tombstone was existing there in the month of August of the latter year. We searched the field very narrowly for the purpose, and found but one record of the decease of an English sojourner. The grave itself was pointed out to us by a Calaisian, but its locality was only traditionary. About nine pounds’ worth of effects, twelve shillings in money, a few clothes, and some duplicates of pawned plate were all that was left by the companion and friend of queens. Little as it was, the Reverend Earl Nelson hastened to Calais to claim it. He expected more, and in his cupidity wished to take the pledged trinkets without paying the necessary expenses for getting them out of pawn; he would not even discharge the few debts incurred by her death. These were discharged by Mr. Cadogan, to whom Horatia was entrusted (Mrs. Matcham, Nelson’s sister, receiving her after Lady Hamilton’s decease), and to whom, as to Alderman Smith, the forlorn creature was indebted for much aid ere death placed her beyond the need of requiring it.
This tale bears with it its own moral: retribution followed offence: the commission of sin reaped its usual reward; the wanderer from virtue was visited with terrible affliction; and the penalty awaited not its commencement till the knell of the offender had summoned her to judgment. Thus much man knows, but with thus much he has not condescended to rest satisfied; and the sons of the seducers have been eager to cast stones at her whom their fathers enticed to sin. In the remembrance of her faults they make no account of her services, of her suffering, or of her sorrows; they have no idea that, if there was guilt, there might have been reconciliation, and that the dark season of her long last agony might have been passed in
Owning her weakness,
Her evil behaviour,
And leaving with meekness,
Her sins to her Saviour.
No: man who bore part in the offence constituted himself the judge of this poor daughter of frailty, and she met with such mercy at his hands as man is accustomed to give.