Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson, Volume 1 (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

LADY HAMILTON AND LORD NELSON

VOLUME 1

JOHN CORDY JEAFFRESON

This 2011 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

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ISBN: 978-1-4114-5384-5

PREFACE

NINE years have passed since I wrote Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson under difficulties, arising from the disappearance of the originals of the Thompson letters, including the Now, my own dear wife letter, which Doctor Pettigrew produced in his Life of Nelson, in evidence that Horatia was the admiral's daughter by Lady Hamilton, and which the biographer's defamers discredited by declaring them forgeries.

In the absence of these original letters, of whose genuineness I had no doubt, I was constrained to show in a long argumentative essay that, apart from the testimony of the missing and discredited letters, there was conclusive evidence that Horatia was the offspring of the naval hero and the notorious adventuress. Though it did good service by convincing all critical readers of the accuracy of Pettigrew's principal assertion respecting Horatia's parentage, this argumentative essay failed to produce much effect on the hasty general readers of my book, who preferred the old romantic fiction that Nelson's affection for Emma Hamilton was a platonic attachment, and the even wilder story that Horatia was his daughter by Maria Caroline of Naples, or some other great lady, whose acquaintance he made during his first long term of Mediterranean service.

The first edition of this book was still in the hands of its earliest readers, when, in an additional accumulation of Nelson-Hamilton papers, which came into Mr. Alfred Morrison's possession after Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson had passed through the press, there came to light the Now, my own dear wife letter, and nearly all the other Thompson letters, which Pettigrew used in his Life of Nelson, and his enemies denounced as spurious fabrications. On examination all these letters were found by cautious and acute record experts to be indisputably genuine epistles, in Nelson's handwriting. Some of the experts would have preferred to find these letters what Pettigrew's defamers declared them. But the evidence of handwriting, ink, paper, and postal marks was irresistible to all persons competent to speak authoritatively as to the nature of the writings; and Mr. Morrison has rendered yet another important service to literature, by causing the contents of the compositions to be displayed in his privately printed Hamilton and Nelson Papers.

The world having thus been put in possession of the conclusive testimony, in Nelson's handwriting, that his association with Lady Hamilton was not a platonic friendship, and that Horatia proceeded from their too familiar intercourse, I withhold from the present edition my argumentative demonstration of the child's parentage, as the paper is no longer needful for the guidance of historical inquirers.

The tardy disclosures, that have at length dispelled all doubt respecting Horatia's parentage, are most fortunate for Nelson's reputation; because had his attachment to Emma Hamilton been a mere platonic friendship, and had Horatia been his daughter by any other woman than Lady Hamilton, history would have been unable to produce even the shadow of an excuse for the affectionate entanglement, that was no less injurious to his social reputation than cruel to his exemplary wife. By the light of these disclosures, the admiral's conduct to Lady Nelson may still remain a matter for grave regret; but it was less than shameful. Readers of this work, who would account for Nelson's action throughout the unfortunate affair, should remember that he was exceptionally combative, that he was passionately chivalric, that his extravagant delight at Horatia's birth, and subsequent delight in her existence, show him to have been a man in whom the parental instinct was phenomenally powerful, and that his strong yearning for offspring had not been gratified by Lady Nelson, whose fruitlessness in her second marriage may have been a result of some injury she sustained at her son's birth.

As soon as he heard what ill the world said of Sir William Hamilton's wife, Nelson was quick to support her, as he remarked to Miss Cornelia Knight in December 1800; and from that date he fought for her with an energy that was proportionate to the increasing fervour with which her enemies in society fought against her. It was a consequence of his constitutional combativeness, which wrought so powerfully for England's good at sea, that he supported so vehemently her claims to a pension, and on finding ministers set on denying her a pension, first bequeathed her £500 a year out of the revenue of Brontë, and still later in the so-called eighth codicil to his will required England to provide handsomely for her and her child. Cognisant of the state of her health, as they returned to London in the same carriage, in November 1800, the chivalric Nelson could not move away from Lady Hamilton at the journey's end, as though she were a mere compagnon de voyage, when his conscience was reproaching him for having put her in a condition, which two or three months later might result in her death, or, still worse, in her utter social disgrace. Ere he set sail for the Baltic, he was passionately grateful to her for having gratified his long yearning for offspring. Had he been absolutely faultless in all his domestic relations, he would not have been a greater benefactor to England, nor would he at the present hour have a stronger hold on the affectionate and grateful admiration of all sorts and conditions of Englishmen. It is conceivable that he would never have won so high a place in England's regard, or risen to be her darling naval hero, had he been capable of moving away from his child's mother and leaving her to slide, as soon as he saw she would be an embarrassing and injurious associate of his growing splendour and greatness.

JOHN CORDY JEAFFRESON.

134 Portsdown Mansions,

Portsdown Road, Maida Vale, W.

CONTENTS

I. CHILDHOOD

II. FIRST YEARS IN LONDON

III. A MATTER OF CONTROVERSY

IV. FROM FLINTSHIRE TO PADDINGTON GREEN

V. EMMA'S HOME WITH MR. GREVILLE

VI. THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE GREEN

VII. OUT OF TOWN

VIII. FROM LONDON TO NAPLES

IX. SENSATION IN NAPLES

X. SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S VICTORY

XI. A COLD JANUARY AT NAPLES

XII. FROM FRIENDSHIP TO LOVE

XIII. SOCIAL RECOGNITION

XIV. EMMA IN ENGLAND AGAIN

XV. THE QUEEN'S FAVOUR AND FAVOURITE

XVI. HIGHER YET AND HIGHER

XVII. SECRET INTELLIGENCE

XVIII. THE KING OF SPAIN'S THIRD LETTER

CHAPTER I

CHILDHOOD.—1761—CIRC. 1777 A. D.

INSTEAD of being a native of Preston in Lancashire, as successive writers have represented, and as she used to assert in her later time, Emma, Lady Hamilton, was born 26th April [? 1761] at the hamlet of Denhall, in the township of Nesse, in the parish of Great Neston in the hundred of Wirral, co. Chester, and was the only child of Henry Lyon, a blacksmith of Denhall, by his wife Mary Lyon née Kidd, a native of Hawarden, co. Flint. The hundred of Wirral, usually styled Wirral, without any mention of Hundred, by the folk of Chester and Liverpool, is the promontory of Cheshire, twenty miles long, that lies between the mouth of the river Mersey and the mouth of the river Dee.

When Amy Lyon (in later time known as Emma, Lady Hamilton) made an expedition from Hawarden to Great Neston, in order to get a copy of her baptismal record, she obtained from the Reverend R. Carter, curate of Great Neston, an inaccurate copy of the following entry in a baptismal register of the church of that parish, to wit, Emy, Dr. of Henry Lyon, smith of Nesse, by Mary his wife. Bap. 12 May 1765. To account for this peculiar spelling of Amy's baptismal name, it is well to observe that in the last century the people of Wirral used to pronounce e like the a in fate, and to make the first letter of the alphabet sound like Ah. The blacksmith's daughter was named Amy at her baptism, after her aunt Amy Moore, of Liverpool; but spelling by sound rather than by etymological rule, the Wirral peasant, who in 1765 acted as parish clerk and parish registrar at Great Neston, spelt the name with an initial E instead of the initial A.

Amongst the records of burials at Great Neston in the same year appears this memorandum of Henry Lyon's interment, to wit, Henry Lyon of Denhall, smith. Bur. 21 June 1765. From which record, it appears that just five weeks and five days after Amy Lyon's baptism, the Denhall blacksmith, his labours at forge and anvil ended, was committed to his last resting-place in Great Neston churchyard.

But though research has put an end to all misconceptions respecting her parentage and the place of her birth, the precise year in which Amy Lyon entered this life is not known with absolute certainty. There is superabundant evidence that the anniversaries of her birthday fell on 26th April, but the evidence as to the particular year of her birth is less than conclusive. In the first edition of this work I set forth the grounds for thinking that she was born at least as early as the 26th of April 1763, and, whilst saying it would not surprise me to come upon proof that she was a year or two years older, encouraged my readers to regard her as having breathed her first breath in that year. But upon thoughtful reconsideration of all her clearly ascertained experiences and adventures in time prior to the Christmas of 1781, I have come to think it improbable that she entered this world in any year later than 1761, the year to which the contemporary, but anonymous, author of the Hamilton Memoirs ascribes her birth. Consequently, in this revised edition of Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson, she is regarded as two years older at the moment of her death in 1815 than the Calais registrar represented her to have been. It follows that, according to this new view of her age, Amy Lyon was something over four years old on her baptismal day.

Nothing is known of Henry Lyon, the Denhall blacksmith, beyond what has been already said of him in this chapter, but a good deal is known of Amy Lyon's people on her mother's side, and a few particulars about them may be offered to the readers of this chapter, to aid them in getting a view of the circumstances of the girl's childhood.

Mary Lyon, née Kidd, was a native of Hawarden, co. Flint, a parish famous throughout Great Britain as Mr. Gladstone's place of abode. Though they were of a humble stock, the Hawarden Kidds were in their social status superior to the mere agricultural labourers, and were not the sort of folk who in old age or hard seasons fall upon the parish, as a matter of course. Some of them seem to have begun life with so fair a prospect that they were not trained to manual labour in their childhood. Writing to Lady Hamilton on November 27, 1807, about a certain old and destitute male Kidd,—probably one of the famous beauty's uncles,—a lady of Hawarden remarked of the aged wastrel, I believe he has been much distressed for some time back, as at this time of the year there is no employment suitable to him, for, as he observes, he was not brought up to work.

Whilst some of the male Kidds had, in their earlier time, no need to work in the lowest ways of industry, the female Kidds were superior domestic servants, or plied their needles as village dressmakers until they married creditably in their humble state of life. Amy's mother was an especially clever cook before she mated with the Denhall blacksmith. An intelligent nurse, she was a shrewd and competent housekeeper. In a time when the daughters of well-to-do farmers often signed their marriage lines with a mark, this capable woman enjoyed her newspaper, and could write a fairly good letter—at least, as good a letter as Lady Hamilton wrote after she had become a woman of quality. In village parlance, Mary Lyon née Kidd was a scholar and had learning, and in this respect she does not appear to have differed from her nearest kindred.

There is no reason to be enthusiastic about Amy Lyon's mother, who after taking for her second husband a man named Dogan, improved his name into Cadogan, and so came to be known as Mistress Cadogan. She has no title to admiration. Had she been a person of gentle birth and training, one would use strong expressions of disesteem for the woman who lived so amicably with her only child, whilst the latter played the part of ringless bride to Mr. Charles Greville, then to Sir William Hamilton, and after Sir William's death to Nelson. But people should be judged with charitable reference to the ethical tone and standard of their class and period. The woman, who was only a superior female servant, scarcely deserves to be pilloried forever as a crafty trafficker in her child's dishonour, because she held staunchly to her daughter after the latter had in one respect gone very wrong, in spite of her mother's pains to make her go right. There must have been good in the woman, whom the Hon. Charles Greville regarded as the best possible female friend for her giddy daughter; the woman whom Romney held in high esteem; the woman to whom Sir William Hamilton left a contingent legacy of £100 a year for life, in consideration of her good service to him as housekeeper and nurse; the woman whom Nelson used to style his madre, in sympathetic letters written from sea; the woman to whom Mrs. Thomas, of Hawarden, and her daughters used, after Nelson's death, to send messages of respect and best love.

On the death of her husband, when Amy was still of tender age, Mrs. Lyon withdrew from Great Neston, and carrying the child over the mouth of the Dee, returned to her native district of Flintshire, where she established herself near her mother, if she did not find a home in her mother's cottage, either in the town of Hawarden or in one of the townships of that wide and far-reaching parish. It was in the parish of Hawarden that Amy Lyon grew from a lovely nursling to a tall, straight, shapely, singularly agile, and marvellously beautiful girl.

One of the pleasant features of Emma Hamilton's story is the affectionate intercourse she maintained with her mother in every stage of her adventurous life till they were separated forever by the great breaker of all human ties. It was rare for the mother and daughter to be away from one another for several months at a time. During the several years of Emma's residence in Edgware Row, near Paddington Green, under Mr. Charles Greville's protection, Emma's mother, if not a regular resident in the Edgware Row house, was so frequent a visitor there that she may be fairly rated as one of that gentleman's domestic establishment. On going for the first time from London to Naples, Emma had her mother for her travelling companion. On becoming the wife of his Britannic Majesty's minister at the Neapolitan court, she kept her mother by her side. However stately the house of which the daughter became mistress, one of its best rooms was assigned to the mother. However exalted the daughter's friends, the mother was introduced to them as a person with a title to their esteem and affectionate consideration. On taking Lady Hamilton to her confidence, the Queen of Naples rendered Mrs. Cadogan the courtesies appropriate to a woman of honourable degree. That the mother and daughter maintained this close association, was the more creditable to the latter, because the brilliant woman of the world was alive to her mother's defects of style, and aware that the great and high-born English ladies, who made Mrs. Cadogan's acquaintance in her daughter's salon, saw at a glance that Lady Hamilton's mother was not, in the conventional sense of the term, a gentlewoman. At Dresden, in October 1800, after taking a first view of the Nelson party, Mrs. Richard Trench (the late archbishop's mother) wrote in her diary, And Mrs. Cadogan, Lady Hamilton's mother, is—what one might expect. Conscious that this was the way in which English gentlewomen regarded Mrs. Cadogan, and in confidence spoke of her to one another, the daughter never felt ashamed of her mother, but at all times and in all scenes, delighting in her society, loved her completely and passionately.

At the same time, while bearing herself thus affectionately to her parent, Emma Hamilton, in the brightest and most intoxicating passages of her long term of social triumphs, was never wanting in thoughtfulness for her old grandmother in Flintshire, so long as the aged dame remained in this life. Writing from Caserta to the Hon. Charles Greville on the 4th December 1792 (when she had been Sir William Hamilton's wife just upon fifteen months), she said:

"I will trouble you with my own affairs, as you are so good as to interest yourself about me. You must know, I send my grandmother every christmas twenty pounds, and so I ought. I have 2 hundred a year for nonsense, and it would be hard [if] I could not give her twenty pounds, when she has so often given me her last shilling. As Sir William is ill, I cannot ask him for the order; but, if you will get the twenty pounds and send it to her, you will do me [the] greatest favour; for, if the time passes without [her] hearing from me, she may imagine I have forgot her. And I would not keep her poor old heart in suspense for the world, and as she [h]as heard of my circumstances (I don't know how), but she is prudent, and therefore, pray, lose no time, and Sir Wm. will send you the order. You know her direction—Mrs. Kidd, Howerden [i. e. Hawarden], Flintshire. Could you not write her a line from me, and send [it] to her, and tell her by my order, and she may write to you, and send me her answer? For I cannot divest myself of my original feelings. It will contribute to my happiness, and I am sure you will assist to make me happy. Tell her, every year she shall have twenty pounds. The fourth of November last, I had a dress on that cost twenty-five pounds, as it was Gala at Court; and, believe me, I felt unhappy all the while I had it on. Excuse the trouble I give you, and believe me, Your sincere

EMMA HAMILTON.

Emma Hamilton was less than just to herself in speaking of the allowance of two hundred a year as an allowance for mere trifles and nonsense. Her entire income for her personal expenses, it was the whole of the sum on which she was required by Sir William Hamilton to clothe herself (already in frequent attendance on the Queen of Naples) and also to clothe Mrs. Cadogan, besides being the only fund she had at her command for gifts to friends, gratuities to the many people having claims on her bounty, and all the various incidental expenses of herself and her mother. No doubt Sir William Hamilton was wont to make her handsome additional presents, but this two hundred a year was all the income of money, with which his wife had to meet the manifold charges of a lady playing a notable part at a luxurious court.

It may be inferred, from Emma Hamilton's strong affection for her mother and grandmother, that, so long as she remained under their gentle and sympathetic government, the child, whose health was excellent and whose temper was cheerful, though somewhat too fervid, passed a happy childhood at Hawarden.

As Mary Lyon née Kidd had learning, it would have been strange had she, so well able to read, write, and cast accounts, omitted to teach her only child with horn-book and primer, to carry her through the usual course of pot-hooks and hangers, and to put her early in the way to read, write, and cast accounts like the other young people of her mother's stock. One may dismiss the story that Amy learnt her letters from her first mistress as a harmless exaggeration of Mrs. Thomas's goodness in allowing and encouraging the maiden to make herself a better scholar.

After the grand people at the castle, and the reverend people at the rectory, the Thomases were the principal and politest people of all Hawarden. A gentleman of moment in that parish, where he was a medical practitioner and a considerable farmer, Mr. Thomas was a brother-in-law of the Mr. Boydell, who, in due course, became Mr. Alderman Boydell of the city of London. The father of several children, Mr. Thomas had a son of bright promise, who (also in due course) became Mr. Honoratus Leigh Thomas, the eminent surgeon of Leicester Place. In the regard of the Hawarden commonalty Mrs. Thomas was an important lady, and her house was a place of service to which only the choice and pick of the Hawarden serving-girls could hope to be admitted. That in her thirteenth or fourteenth year Amy Lyon was taken off her mother's hands, and admitted within the lines of this superior family, is evidence both of the child's goodness and her mother's respectability. Such a woman as Mrs. Thomas of Hawarden does not take a village girl into her house in the capacity of an assistant nursemaid, without first satisfying herself of the damsel's general goodness. Had Amy's mother been aught less than a reputable person, the Thomases would have decided to "have nothing to do with the child of such a woman." In connection with this testimony to the character they bore in their Flintshire parish, it may be remarked that Mrs. Thomas soon came to regard Amy with affection, and held Amy's mother in respect, long after the child had gone up to London.

Amy Lyon seems to have kept her first place in domestic service till she was sixteen years old, when she took leave of Mrs. Thomas, and, turning her back on Hawarden, became a nursemaid with higher wages and greater responsibility in London.

CHAPTER II

FIRST YEARS IN LONDON.—CIRC. I777–I781 A. D.

FLOUTING the heralds, Beauty, like Genius, confounds the simple people, who are wont to speak of the higher types of personal attractiveness as indications of aristocratic extraction, and the fruit of ancestral nobility. The homes of our earls would have been sought in vain for a girl so lovely in feature and form, so brightly delicate in colour, so irresistibly captivating in address and style, as the damsel with auburn hair who on leaving a Flintshire cabin went to London, where she became a nursery maid in a household of good credit.

On taking her second place, Amy Lyon had not attained to the perfection of her girlish charms. She was still only coming into her heritage of historic beauty; but already she had the