With the name of Lady Hamilton is ever associated the names of England's most famous sailor and of one of her most famous painters. Hers was a life redolent of ill-repute. Though her beauty was great, it served her for ill purposes; but she came by her lack of character by heredity. She was born in 1761, the daughter of a female servant named Harte, and at the age of thirteen was put to service as a nurse in the house of a Mr. Thomas of Hawarden, Flintshire. She found tending children a tedious task, and forsook it. At sixteen, she went to London, and became a lady's maid there. Her leisure time was spent in reading novels and plays, which inspired a love for the drama. She early developed a rare ability for pantomimic representation; and this became a favorite form of entertainment in drawing-rooms and studios. Her duties as a domestic agreed not with the drama, so her next position was as barmaid in a tavern much frequented by actors and artists. She formed the acquaintance of a Welsh youth, on whose being impressed into the navy, she went to the captain to intercede for him. The boy was liberated, but the comely intercessor was impressed into the service of the captain. From him she went to live with a man of wealth; but her extravagance and wilfulness induced him to forego her company. Then followed a period of the lowest street degradation. From this state she was taken by a Dr. Graham, who was a lecturer upon health, and exhibited the finely-formed Emma as a perfect specimen of female symmetry. She became the topic of the town. Painters, sculptors, and others came to admire the shapely limbs shown under but a thin veil of gauze. The young bloods of the time worshipped,—some not afar off; and one of them, Charles Greville, of the Warwick family, who had essayed to educate her to become a fit companion for his elevated existence, maintained her for about four years. It is recorded, that when he took her to Ranelagh's the sensation was greater than had ever been produced by any other beauty there. Not the winsome and witty Mrs. Crewe, nor her friend Mrs. Bouverie; not that first flame of the amorous Prince of Wales, Mrs. Robinson, nor Anne Luttrell, also beloved of royalty; not the Marchioness of Tavistock, whose loveliness has been preserved to us by Sir Joshua, nor the delightful Duchess of Buccleugh; not Lady Cadogan, and not even the dashing Duchess of Devonshire herself,—caused the comment and admiration this low-born unprincipled young woman now excited. Mr. Greville would have married her had not his uncle, Sir William Hamilton, interfered. It is variously stated that Sir William agreed to pay his nephew's debts if he would yield up his mistress; and also that, in endeavoring to free the young man, the old gentleman himself fell into the snare of her charms. "She is better than anything in Nature. In her own particular way she is finer than anything that is to be found in Greek art," exclaimed this savant on first seeing her. She was a most enchanting deceiver, and a finished actress in the parts of candor and simplicity, so succeeded in marrying Sir William, in 1791. He was over sixty years of age, a man of much classical and scientific erudition, and had been for many years ambassador at the court of Naples, to which place he was soon accompanied by his bride. She became a favorite with the queen, and a frequent visitor at the palace, also somewhat of a social success among the British residents. She sang well, and made a specialty of showing herself in "attitudes," or what we term now "living pictures," for the delectation of her guests. "You never saw anything so charming as Lady Hamilton's attitudes," wrote the Countess of Malmesbury to her sister, Lady Elliot; "the most graceful statues or pictures do not give you an idea of them. Her dancing the Tarantella is beautiful to a degree." It was here began that intimacy with Nelson which became the great blot on his fair fame. He was then commanding the Agamemnon, and she became his constant companion, and was sometimes useful to him as a political agent. After the victory of Aboukir Bay, when Naples went wild in its enthusiastic reception of the naval hero, Lady Hamilton shared the honors of the pageant. She accompanied him in a tour through Germany; and most reprehensible was their conduct, at times, in defying the decencies of polite life. After the Treaty of Amiens, Nelson, accompanied by Sir William and Lady Hamilton, retired to his seat at Merton, in Surrey, and on the death of the ambassador, in 1803, he vainly endeavored to procure an allowance from the government for the widow, on the pretext of the services she had rendered the fleet in Sicily. Failing this, he himself granted her an annuity of twelve hundred pounds. We all know how at Trafalgar, when the hero was dying, he spoke of "dear Lady Hamilton, his guardian angel," and left to her all his belongings, and recommended her to the grateful care of his country. Notwithstanding this, she died almost in poverty, in 1815. In 1813 she had been imprisoned for debt, and when out on bail she fled to Calais, and there the career was closed. It was extraordinary that this woman should subjugate and hold in thrall men of great force of character. She had great loveliness of person; but physical beauty alone is ineffectual to charm such as these. Though not regularly educated, she acquired much general knowledge, and was tactful in the display and use of it.
It was during the period of her posing for Dr. Graham, that Romney became enamoured of her beauty, and painted for us more than a dozen important pictures of her. Those were the days when ladies of rank and beauty were deified; and, following this fashion, Romney rendered "Fair Emma" in many guises. Her ability in acting made her a most useful model. Her features had much mobility, and were capable of expressing, with facility, all gradations of passion and niceties of feeling. Emma took pride and pleasure in serving Romney. He repeated to his friend, the poet Hayley, her request, that in the biography of the painter, Hayley would have much to say of her. One of his earliest classical conceptions painted from her, was a full length of Circe with her wand. Following this was a "Sensibility," which became the property of Hayley. Though we remember Romney chiefly in connection with his Lady Hamiltons, yet he had acquired his reputation and much fortune ere he met her. The great bulk of his portrayals of the nobility preceded his classical subjects, which took form from his superb model. She was Cassandra; she was Iphigenia, St. Cæcilia, Bacchante, Calope, The Spinstress, Joan of Arc, The Pythian Princess Calypso, and Magdalene,—the two latter subjects painted to order for the then Prince of Wales.
Allan Cunningham has this to say in his sketch of Romney's life: "A lady in the character of a saint. This sort of flattery, once so prevalent with painters, is now nearly worn out: we have now no Lady Betty's enacting the part of Diana; no Lady Jane's tripping it barefoot among the thorns and brambles of this weary world, in the character of Hebe. We have none now who either 'sinner it or saint it' on canvas; the flattery which the painter has to pay is of a more scientific kind,—he has to trust alone to the truth of his drawing and the harmony of his colors."
Romney was a transgressor in this way at times; but Lady Hamilton's form was used to impart correct form to the conceptions of the painter,—not the theme used merely to exploit the beauty of the lady. In the exhibition of fair women in the Grafton Gallery in London this summer, she greeted us in the guise of Ariadne. In this the painter's use of the title was apt and justifiable. Here is the lady wholly clothed in the dress of the time,—a dress superb in its simplicity; but her pose and mien is indicative of the forsaken, the forlorn, despairing woman abandoned by her lover,—the fate of which the old story of the Greeks is the eternal epitome. The pathos of the pose, it may have been, as well as the classic face, allured the wanderer in the galleries, and anchored him before this canvas.
The fame of Romney has steadily risen in the several generations from the beginning to the end of the century. Though the painter of many men of fame and ladies of fashion, his work was not held in the greatest regard in his lifetime. Though often spoken of as the rival of Reynolds, he had not the president's grasp of character or his ability in giving classic grace to the dress of the period, and he was never admitted as a member to the Academy.
When Lady Hamilton commenced posing for him, he, perhaps wisely for his fame, reduced the number of his ordinary sitters, receiving none until afternoon. The picturing of what he termed "her divine beauty" became a passion with him; and the enthusiasm of the sitter was nearly as great as that of the painter, and she enacted his classic conceptions. The result is a superb series of pictures of faultless female form, and loveliness of feature. Of the model's immoral career we have naught now to do. Here is perpetual beauty, and it is ours to enjoy.