Kate Williams Read online

  In pride of place were the portraits of Emma: Romney’s Bacchante of her in pink, the Emma Hart in Morning Dress, and the Reynolds Bacchante. He soon bought even more portraits—there were eventually fourteen adorning the walls of the Palazzo. A visitor in 1787 was impressed.

  It is furnished with many pictures by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Angelica Kauffmanfn]; a fine crucifix by Vandyke, and a most capital naked boy by Leonardo da Vinci in fine preservation. I could not but smile to hear what pains Sir William has been at to get commodious sash windows, in the English style.2

  Emma marveled at Sir William’s “pack of servants.” Benefiting from the low wages caused by massive unemployment, he employed around fifty men, as well as a large band of musicians to entertain him. Since men did the domestic work, the only females would probably have been Emma’s and Mrs. Darner’s maids. Senior staff lived out or had their own rooms, and the rest slept in the corridor or on the floor in the kitchens. They were fully occupied in cleaning the house and ornaments, tending to the visitors, assisting at the regular parties, and caring for the four or five carriages and fleets of fine horses. Like most eighteenth-century men, Sir William kept his servants busy buying new carriages, trading old ones, repainting, and trying to improve speed and suspension.

  Sir William shared his government’s disparaging attitude toward the politics of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Bickerings with Rome were, he complained, “the only occurrences in this remote corner of the World.“3 His letters to the foreign secretary in London described the life of a medieval courtier rather than a modern diplomat: he listed the sniffles of the princesses, glamorous parties, and the exact number of boars killed by the king and court.4 He hardly ever needed to write in code. Sir William was bored, but he was grateful for the opportunity to develop his interests. Instead of competing with other envoys at dreary trade talks, he studied the volcano, hunted with Ferdinand, flattered Maria Carolina and her ever-growing band of belligerent children, and became the world’s best tourist guide. Hoping to make an easy million, he collected cheap antique vases and cleaned them up in the hope that there would soon be a demand (the market for statues and paintings was so inflated that they could no longer be bought and resold for a profit). After a few years in Naples, he was a man of culture, the acknowledged English expert on both classical vases and Vesuvius.

  From spring 1786, Sir William had a new hobby: Emma. Devoted to his beautiful new distraction, he put off writing to the government, and his letters to the foreign office dwindled from around May. English visitors chivvied to see the gorgeous lady herself. The Duke of Gloucester, younger son of the king, arrived and straightaway desired to meet the envoy’s “little friend.”

  Feeling guilty that he had plotted with Greville, Sir William showered Emma with gifts. He gave her a beautiful horse, treated her to fine dinners, took her to plays and operas, and to her amazement and delight ordered her a new painted carriage and a staff of liveried footmen and a coachman to match. He also bought her a whole new wardrobe. Gleefully stuffing her sober Edgware Row outfits at the back of the closet, she delighted in his present of a white satin gown (costing twenty-five guineas) and muslin dresses with “the sleeves tyed in fowlds with ribban & trimmed with lace.” On top of this, she received a luxurious camel shawl and some of Catherine’s jewelry and ornaments. Sir William had realized that if he wanted to please Emma and perhaps win her heart, he would have to court her with kindness and presents.

  In July, Emma wrote to Greville, eager to share the excitement of her summer holiday. They had visited Pompeii and Posillipo and planned to sail to the islands of Ischia and Capri. She has been bathing daily and her “irruptions” were gone, leaving her, as she claims, “remarkably fair.” Sir William had invited every artist and sculptor in Naples (apart from Mrs. Damer) to portray her. One, possibly Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, was painting her in “a Bacchante setting, in a turbin, a turkish dress,” and she was modeling for another in a blue silk gown and a black feathered hat. The young Swiss-German Angelica Kauffman, and two others planned to paint her, and the cameo maker Marchmont would soon carve her head into a stone that could be set into a ring. Sir William already had five portraits, and he had asked for more from Romney

  Every evening, Emma proudly paraded with Sir William along the Chi-aia and past the royal palace. As they did so, up to six hundred gilt carriages jammed along the seafront while actors, singers, dancers, and even preachers performed to the gathered crowd.5 Each of the splendid carriages was led by a footman carrying a flambeau and pulled by up to eight horses wearing ornate costumes of blue silk and silver, adorned with white ostrich feathers and strewn with flowers. The nobles waved graciously, dressed up in gold and silver lace and heavy gold jewelry. One traveler grumbled that the multitude of footmen, flambeau, and carriages looked like a “grand funeral procession,” but Emma was deeply impressed and spent hours preparing herself6 Excluded from the court and aristocratic gatherings, she aimed to catch the eye of the Neapolitan elite on their public outings. She quickly found a little circle of admirers. The debauched English aristocrat Lord Hervey became her devoted fan and the royal courtier Prince Dietrichstein begged for a portrait, promising he passed his time telling the queen about Mrs. Hart’s amazing beauty.

  The king soon spotted Sir William’s new friend and began sending her lecherous looks and bowing to her whenever he saw her out walking or sailing. On one occasion when she was accompanying her host in his boat, Ferdinand came beside her and “took off his hat & sett with his hat on his knees all the wile & when we was going to land, he made his bow & said it was a sin he could not speak English.” Maria Carolina was recovering from childbirth at the palace, and the full force of his schoolboy seduction efforts were directed at Emma. “We are closely besieged by the K. in a round about manner,” she reported, sighing that he came to Posillipo every Sunday to ogle her. She declared she would “never give him any encouragement,” for she was hoping to “keep the good will” of the queen, who punished those of his lovers she could by banishing them. Deterring the king was not easy: he expected to get what he wanted. Emma decided to pretend she was too innocent to understand what the king desired, which was a delicate matter considering she was neither married nor Sir William’s mistress and could not claim that she had to be faithful. Still, her efforts were successful, and when Maria Carolina heard about her pains to fend off her husband’s advances, she declared Emma a pattern of virtue.

  “The great heats are but just set in,” complained Sir William in July7 Emma had still not heard from Greville, although she wrote to him that she had written fourteen times. The letters do not survive; perhaps she wrote and never sent them. She was desperate for a reply.

  I have a language master, a singing master, musick etc etc, but what is it for, if it was to amuse you I should be happy, but Greville, what will it avail me. I am poor, helpless & forlorn. I have lived with you 5 years and you have sent me to a strange place & no one prospect, me thinking you was coming to me; instead of which, I was told I was to live, you know how, with Sir W No. I respect him, but no, never, shall he peraps live with me for a little wile like you & send me to England, then what am I todo?

  Finally, in August, Greville replied and her illusions were shattered.

  “You have made me love you, made me good,” wrote Emma in consternation, and now “you have abbandoned me.” In his reply, Greville instructed her to be Sir William’s mistress. “If you knew what pain I feil in reading those lines whare you advise me to oblidge Sir Wm…. nothing can express my rage, I am all madness, Greville, to advise me, you that used to envy my smiles, now with cooll indifferance to advise me to go to bed with him, Sir Wm.” Feeling as if she could “murder you and myself boath,” she could not believe that she had turned down offers from other men and struggled to obey Greville’s rules, only for him to pimp her out. She threatened that she would return to the streets: “I will go to London, their go in to every exess of vice, tell I dye a miserable broken h
earted wretch & leave my fate as a warning to young whomin never to be two good.”

  Emma could not believe his hypocrisy. Exploited from the age of fourteen, she had thought that Greville had saved her, and she had grown proud of her hard-won respectability. As she knew, mistresses tended to be passed on to progressively poorer protectors, and she expected that Sir William would keep her for no longer than a year and then pass her on.

  Oh Greville, you cannot, you must not give me up, you have not the heart to do it, you love me I am sure & I am willing to do everything in my power that you shall require of me & what will you have more and I onely say this the last time, I will either beg or pray, do as you like.

  How could he treat in such a way “a girl that a King etc etc is sighing for”? She begged him to let her “live with you on the hundred a year Sir Wm will give me.” “I have ever had a foreboding, since I first begun to love you, that I was not destined to be happy with you,” she wrote. As she cried in her room, Sir William began to regret his part in the whole affair. He admitted to Joseph Banks that he thought it was a “bad job to come from the Nephew to the Uncle.“8

  By November, Greville realized he had underestimated his mistress. After six months, Emma was still refusing to become Sir William’s mistress. Unable to admit to himself that Emma was distressed by his cavalier behavior, Greville decided she considered Sir William too old. He instructed his uncle to find her a middle-class protector, no “boy of family,” but a gentleman from “25 to 35, & one who is his own master,” which implied married, rather than subject to parental control. He was willing for her to return home and live off a hundred pounds a year, but only if she lived nowhere near him. Emma’s choices looked bleak. She knew very well that pensions promised by men tended to dry up when the woman had no male relatives to pursue the debt. Greville’s cruel treatment finally induced Emma to fall out of love with him. Deciding herself “poor, helpless and forlorn,” she understood that she could never win him back, however much she promised to be good.

  In the months that followed Greville’s brutal August letter, Emma saw Sir William anew. He comforted her and tried to distract her from her sadness, and she became more dependent on him as a shoulder to cry on. She already had affectionate feelings toward him as a friend, and soon she found herself increasingly attracted to him. He was interesting, kind, and still handsome, and he treated her with tact and respect. In even her most vehement letters, she had never suggested she found him unattractive or unlovable, but stressed that she was not looking for another man since she was a faithful mistress to Greville. Now that her first lover had abandoned her, there was a vacancy in her heart. Emma was always looking for someone to love, and she longed to be needed—and lonely, Sir William seemed to need her so much. It would not be the first time a woman fell in love with a friend she knew desired her.

  Sir William courted Emma intensely, and just before Christmas their friendship developed into a full-blown affair. Almost as soon as they became intimate, Emma fell heavily in love with Sir William, surprising herself with the strength of her feelings. “I love you & sincerely,” she confessed to him on Boxing Day. On Christmas night, Sir William had left her in Caserta and traveled to Naples to attend court, and she was missing him dreadfully. “Yesterday, when you went a whey from me,” she told him, “I thought all my heart and soul was torn from me.” She was intent on becoming the type of woman he desired. “If sometimes I am out of humer,” she entreated, “forgive me, tell me, put me in a whey to be grateful to you for you[r] kindness to me.” She pledged that “in a little time all faults will be corrected” and promised, “you will have much pleasure to come home to me again, and I will setle you and comfort you.“9

  In January, she returned to Naples and he followed the king and queen to Caserta. She wrote regularly to him throughout the month and made strenuous efforts to prove that she spent her days in worthwhile occupation. From nine until ten she had a singing lesson, from ten until twelve she was sitting for a portrait for Constanza Coltellini, from twelve to one she took lessons in Italian, then she had lunch from two to three. After one similarly exhausting day, she collapsed into bed at eight. She was particularly pleased with Coltellini’s portrait, noting that it will not “be two naked,” for then “those beautys that only you can see shall not be exposed to the common eyes of all, and wile you can even more than see the originals, others may gess at them, for they are sacred to all but you.” In her letters, as she confessed, “everything flows from my heart, and I cannot stop it.”

  Affection for Sir William spills from her letters. She teased him that she “will bite your lips nor fingers no more,” and promised, “How I wish’d to give you some warm punch, and settle you in my arms all night, to make up for your bad day.” She even made a joke about playing on “all fours.“10 When she received a kind letter from him, she was thrilled: “Oh, what a happy creature is your Emma!—me that had no friend, no protector, no body that I could trust, and now to be the friend, the Emma, of Sir William Hamilton!” “One hour’s absence is a year, and I shall count the hours and moments till Saturday, when I shall find myself once more in your kind dear arms.” “I owe everything to you,” she declared.

  Gossip about the new relationship reached London. One of Sir William’s dealers was telling anyone who would listen that the envoy had “lately got a piece of modernity from England which I am afraid will fatigue and exhaust him more than all the volcanoes and antiquities in the Kingdom of Naples.” Emma was being approached for favors. Even though the relationship had only just begun, she, as the Neapolitans and the visiting English could see, had influence over Sir William.

  Sir William had forgotten his plans to take Mrs. Hart only as a temporary mistress. “His domestic hours have many charms to interest him,” joked his niece. He had become so lackadaisical about writing to the Foreign Office that he had to dash off an apology to the foreign secretary in November, lying that he had “rather chosen to be silent than take up your time relating the trifling intrigue of this Court.“11 He loved Emma’s enthusiasm for new experiences and interest in the court gossip Catherine had reviled. Most pleasingly of all, she seemed to appreciate his love of hunting. Sir William considered almost daily bouts of slaughter as essential to maintaining relations with the court, and he reported the catches to the Foreign Office. Emma’s time at Uppark had taught her that a man’s love of hunting could never be overestimated, and she was careful always to praise her new lover’s haul.

  Delighted by her efforts to please and by her maturity, he lavished praise on his mistress. All things considered, the “experiment” had worked out rather well. Emma, he wrote to Greville in February, “improves daily, & is universally beloved. She is wonderfull considering her youth and beauty.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Sparing No Expense

  Even though Greville had discarded her, Emma continued to write C_^ to him, anxious to prove to him how successful she was in her new home. “Sir Wm says he loves nothing but me, likes no person to sing but me and takes delight in all I do and all I say so we are happy,” she enthused. As well as devoting herself to being his perfect helpmate, she was practicing her music. A scurrilous memoir later gossiped that Greville had sent her to Sir William to put her to the opera. Emma was still hungry for stardom, and she had dreams of becoming a singer.

  Emma spent the first months of 1787 in Sir William’s drafty, fifty-room hunting lodge at Caserta, twelve miles outside Naples. There she dwelled on her good fortune. Only six months earlier, she had thought that her happiness had ended, but now she found herself more contented and more secure than she could have ever dared imagine. Sir William had promised not to cast her off. Even though she was so much younger, Emma had taken to mothering Sir William, worrying about whether he was eating enough and keeping warm while hunting. She wanted terribly to win his approval and good opinion by appearing to be exactly the type of woman who would be a fit companion to an ambassador: elegant, accomplished, and well educ
ated. While Sir William rode around Caserta, she tried to improve herself.

  The Neapolitan court frittered away spring and autumn at the royal palace at Caserta and spent the rest of the time at Portici, near Pompeii, or on Capri, returning only to Naples for galas or urgent political business. Built to rival Versailles, the palace at Caserta was set in nearly three hundred acres of ornate parkland, with twelve hundred rooms, its own fullscale theater, and 171 steps up its lavish staircase. More than three thousand servants and courtiers awaited royal commands, and hundreds of dogs hurtled over the marble floors. The fountains crossing the lawns stemmed from a fake “Grande Cascata” that poured down from a height of seventy-eight feet. The nearby pond was so large that real ships were put on it to stage mock sea battles, and the playhouse for the royal children was the size of a large family home. Goethe found the palace excessively large and out of human scale, and other visitors were shocked by its florid mass of buildings. One thought the cascade looked like “linen hanging to dry.“1