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.