The Divine Lady: A Romance of Nelson and Emma Hamilton

by L. Adams Beck

The dissolute Prince of Wales invited himself to Sir William’s house to hear the enchanting Emma sing with the famous Banti, and Sir William, with an eye on the governorship of Malta, was most anxious to oblige him. Nelson was driven almost mad at the bare thought of it. A shrieking self-torture runs through every word he wrote:

“Do not sit long at table. Good God! He will be next you and telling you soft things. If he does, tell it out at table and turn him out of the house. O God, that I was dead. I am gone almost mad, but you cannot help it. His words are so charming that I am told no person can withstand them. If I had been worth ten millions I would have betted every farthing that you would not have gone into the house knowing he was there, and if you did, which I would not have believed, that you would have sent him a proper message by Sir William and sent him to hell. Hush, hush, my poor heart, keep in my breast. Emma is true. They say he sings well. I have eat nothing but a little rice and drank water. But forgive me. I know my Emma, and don’t forget you had once a Nelson, a friend, a dear friend, but alas! he has his misfortunes. He has lost the best, his only friend, his only love. Don’t forget him, poor fellow. He is honest. Oh, I could thunder and strike dead with my lightning. I dreamt it last night, my Emma.”

And so on through many pages—a cruel heart-piercing mixture of Lear and Ophelia and as mad as either.

“Do not let him come downstairs with you, or hand you up! Perhaps my head was a little affected. No wonder, it was such an unexpected, such a knock-down blow, such a death.”

Was this happiness? Was it ever happiness? That question may well be asked but hardly answered. He trembled always on the edge of terrors of one sort or another. His own child he could but see by stealth, his “wife in the eyes of God” was the wife of another—a man bound to him by closest, most trusting ties of friendship. He was reduced to counting on that man’s death and hoping for it—“When your uncle [Sir William] dies”—then all would be well. And yet not even then. There was his wife, and she in her dumb suffering must be vilified as a hard self-seeking woman that the beloved Emma might be justified, and his passion for her. And when all this failed to convince his own unhappy soul, then God must be called to justify him—God in whose eyes love is all. He must pity and understand what to human eyes must appear hideous. He threw himself on the Divine sympathy, knowing there could be none on earth for a fall so complicated.

But amid all these griefs there stood out starry clear one joy unmixed and perfect—England. He had served her as none other, and the time was not past. He could serve her again—his frail breast her bulwark in the terrible days he foresaw—and before God and man that duty should be flawlessly done. There was his reparation, if such were needed. That should uplift his name to the snowy heights of honour and Emma’s shine with it as his inspiration. He fought for her and for himself in every blow he struck for the country he loved as well as he loved her—or better.

So he sailed sorrowful, but with a great hope before him, to the north. And Frances Nelson made once more a simple dignified appeal for reconciliation; but Emma was omnipotent. It was not even answered. At all events, all hope was over when he returned from Copenhagen, for Emma, with his commission, had bought the charming house of Merton Place in Surrey which he was henceforth to share by a most extraordinary arrangement with the Hamiltons.

Emma’s way was growing clear before her, and in her own mind there was now no doubt as to the future. Sir William’s life could not be long. He had told her so himself and the doctors confirmed it, and the duty, fast growing irksome, of pretending to place his interests before Nelson could not trouble her much longer. She would do her utmost for him while he lasted. Her natural good-nature prompted her there and was backed by the motive of self-interest, if it needed backing, for on his will much might depend. Nelson was far from rich and the allowance he felt compelled to make his wife, sorely and openly grudged by Emma, made her the more anxious about her own resources. With two incomes at her disposal and her own bent that way, she had grown terribly extravagant. Though Merton might please Nelson and Sir William, London pleased her, and not for a moment would she hear of surrendering the house in Piccadilly and its gaieties. Both there and at Merton she was surrounded by the Bohemian and masculine society which was nearly all that her reputation left her with the exception of Nelson’s sisters and their families; and in such an environment all that Greville had checked in her character reappeared now and with the added force of long repression. Her easy manner was now familiarity, her outbursts of temper were almost unbearable, her very kindness affronted. She prejudiced Nelson at every turn against his wife—“Tom Tit,” as she nicknamed her—and she tossed over the poor woman’s wardrobe which Nelson had commissioned her (of all people!) to pack and return. She never wearied of cruel jokes about her with his sisters, who flattered her by joining in her humour. She wrote to one of them:

“Tom Tit is at Brighton. She did not come nor did he go. Jove [Nelson], for he is quite a Jove, knows better than that! It is such a pain to part with dear friends and you and I liked each other from the moment we met; our souls were congenial. Not so with Tom Tit, for there was an antipathy not to be described! Tom Tit does not come to town. She offered to go down but was refused, she only wanted to go to do mischief to all the great Jove’s relations. ’Tis now shown, all her ill treatment and bad heart. Jove has found it out.”

And the cara amica wrote back: