When Emma was thirteen years old, she had learned to read, and could "print"; that is, she could write a letter, a feat her mother never learned to do.
At this time the girl waited on table and acted as nurse-maid in the family of Sir Thomas Hawarden. Doubtless she learned by listening, and absorbed knowledge because she had the capacity. When Sir Thomas moved up to London, which is down from Hawarden, the sprightly little girl was taken along.
Her dresses were a little above her shoe-tops, but she lowered the skirt on her own account, very shortly.
Country girls of immature age, comely to look upon, had better keep close at home. The city devours such, and infamy and death for them lie in wait. But here was an exception—Emma Lyon was a child of the hedgerows, and her innocence was only in her appearance. She must have been at that time like the child of the gypsy beggar told of by Smollett, that was purchased for two pounds by an admiring gent, who made a bet with his friends that he could replace her rags with silks and fine linen, and in six weeks introduce her at court, as to the manner born, a credit to her sex. All worked well for a time, when one day, alas, under great provocation, the girl sloughed her ladylike manners, and took on the glossary of the road and camp.
Emma Lyon at fifteen, having graduated as a scullion, went to work for a shopkeeper, as a servant and general helper. It was soon found that as a saleswoman she was worth much more than as a cook. A caller asked her where she was educated, and she explained that it was at the expense of the Earl of Halifax, and that she was his ward.
The Earl fortunately was dead and could not deny the report. Sir Harry Featherston, hearing about the titled girl, or at least of the girl mentioned with titled people, rescued her from the shopkeeper and sent her to his country seat, that she might have the advantages of the best society.
Her beauty and quiet good sense seemed to back up the legend that she was the natural child of the Earl of Halifax; and as the subject seemed to be a painful one to the child herself, it was discussed only in whispers. The girl learned to ride horseback remarkably well, and at a fete appeared as Joan of Arc, armed cap-a-pie, riding a snow-white stallion. Romney, the portrait-painter, spending a week-end with Sir Henry, was struck with the picturesque beauty of the child and painted her as Diana. Romney was impressed with the plastic beauty of the girl, her downcast eyes, her silent ways, her responsive manner, and he begged Sir Harry to allow her to go to London and sit for another picture.
Now Sir Harry was a married man, senior warden of his church, and as the girl was bringing him a trifle more fame than he deserved, he consented.
Romney writing to a friend, under date of June Nineteenth, Seventeen Hundred Eighty-one, says:
"At present, and the greater part of the summer, I shall be engaged in painting pictures from the Divine Lady. I can not give her any other name, for I think her superior to all womankind.