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.