NELSON'S EVIL STAR.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13835, 23 February 1907, Page 5

NELSON'S EVIL STAR.

Miss Hallam Moorliouse's interesting and exquisitely illustrated "Nelson's Lady Hamilton'/ (Methuen and Co.) leav<s you in no doubt of the justice of Ciptain Italian's judgment of Nelson's Egevia:— "Love in its unselfishness passed out of Lady Hamilton's life with Greville. Other men might find her pliant, pleasing, seductive ; he alone knew her as disinterested." No woman who loved Nelson as Emily Lyon had once loved Charles Greville would have tried to persuade the world after Trafalgar that it was site who sent the unwilling Nelson hero to fight this last battle for his country; nor would she, night after night, have attended the theatre' to' hear Braham sing "The Death of Nelson," that the public might see her weep at each verse, 'and'faint at the close of the_ song, The truth is, Emily Lyon, or Emma Hart, or Lady Hamilton, was what her early lovers had made her; • and three more heartless wretches than Captain John WilletPayne,' Sir Harry Fcatherstonehaugh, and Charles Greville never broke a girl's heart. As men liad played with her, so would she henoeforward play with men, and one of these men, unfortunately, happened to be Nelson.

—Betrayed Through Kindness.—

It was Emily, Lyon's very kindness of heart which betrayed her into the hands of the first of these "gentlemen." "It was an odd coincidence," says Miss Hallam. iloorhouse, "that the girl who later on was to be called the 'Patroness of the Navy' by grim old Lord Jervis liimself, and who was always the friend of Nelson's seamen,, should have got into her first troublethrough a naval officer and in the effort to help a sailor. The press-gang had seized a young man whom she had known during liei Flintshire days, and had carried him off to a ship lying in the Tliames. Sympathy for distress always marked Emma, and this news, and the thought, of lus poor wife's anguish of mind, so worked upon her that she was moved to an impulsive action. She went to see Captain WilletPavne, and pleaded with tears and all her native eloquence and feeling for the release of the ' pressed' man. lie susceptible captain could not resist her charm and her entreaties; but neither could be let her pas 3 out of his life as easily a& she had come into it. Thus Emma's generous impulse, coupled with her ignorance and easy temper,. was the cause of her undoing. , The sailor left her after a few months and went away to sea, and the unhappy girl was cast out upon the world, friejjdless and scorned,"

—The Lion in Love.— By the time she had passed through the heartless hands of Sir Harry Fcatherstonchaugh and of Charles Greville, Lady Hamilton had no lovo left except a love of power, of praise, of presents, of gambling, and of good tilings. "I don't think Nelson altered in tho least," writes Lady Minto after meeting him. iu Vienna, whither Emma had trailed him .after her. ''110 has the same shock head and the same honest, simple manners; but lie is devoted to Emma; he thinks her quite an angel, and talks of her as such to her face and behind her back, and she leads him 'about like a keeper with a bear." —Her Greediness.— "Lady Hamilton's ruling passions," says Mrs St. George, "seem to me vanity, avarice, and love for the pleasures of the table. Slip shows a great avidity for presents, and has actually obtained some at Dresden by the comnion artifice of admiring and longing." And here is a night at Palermo, described by |Lady Minto in a letter to her sister:—"Nelson and tho Hamiltons all lived together in a house of which Nelson bore the expense, which was enormous, and every sort of gaming went on half the night. Nelson used to sit with large parcels of gold before him, ■and generally go to sleep, Lady Hamilton taking from the heap without counting, and playing with his money to the amount of £500 a night. Her rage is play, and Sir William says when he is dead she will be a beggar. However, she has about £30,000 worth of diamonds from tho Neapolitan royal family in presents. She sits at the councils and ru'.es everything and everybody." —Catspaws.— As a matter of fact, Lady Hamilton, while flattering herself that she was "ruling everything and everybody," was tho catspaw of tho cruel and . crafty Queen of Naples, who used her successfully as an instrument to recover, through Nelson, her rickety throne. It is humiliating to find Nelson, who, as Lord Minto said, was "at once a, great man and a baby," allowing himself and a British fleet to be tied to Lady Hamilton's apron-strings, to be towed withersoever these two women chose. "Lord Keith," writes Lady Minto in another letter to her sister, "told the Queen of Naples that 'Lady Hamilton had had command of the fleet long enough.' Tho Queen is very ill with a sort of convulsive fit, and Nelson is staying at Leghorn to nuise her; lis does not intend going home till he has escorted her back to Palermo. His zeal for the public service seems entirely lost in his love and vanity, and all three sit and flatter each other all day long." —An Unflattering Portrait.— "Dined at Mr- Elliot's," writes Mrs St. George in her journal, " with only the Nelson party. It is plain that Lord Nelson thinks of nothing but Lady Hamilton. who is totally occupied by the same object. Sh'e is bold, forward, coarse, assuming, and vain. Her figure is colossal, but, excepting her feet, which are hideous, well shaped. Her bones are large, and she is exceedingly embonpoint. She resembles the bust of Ariadne; the shape of all her features is fine, as is the form of her head, and particularly her ears; her teeth aro a little irregular, but tolerably white; her eyes light blue, with a brown spot in one, which, though a defect, take 6 nothing away from her beauty and expression; her eyebrows and hair are dark, and her complexion coarse; her expression is strongly marked, variable, and interesting; her movements in common life ungraceful; her voice loud, yet not disagreeable. Lord Nelson is a little man, without any dignity, who must resemble what Smvarrow was in his youth,- as he is lileo all the pictures I have seen of that general."

—Moral Insensibility.— What Swinburne says of Mary Stuart applies to the moral insensibility of those " tria juncta in uno," to use Lady Hamilton's favourite phrase for that extraordinary, menage, her hysband, Nelson, and herself. "That there are fewer moral impossibilities than would readily be granted by the professional' moralist those students of human character-who are not professional . moralists may very readily admit." In his will Sir William, who could not possibly have been ignorant of the relations between his wife and Nelson, thus beqijeaths her picture to him: "The copy of Madame Lb Brunn's picture of Emma in enamel by Bone I give to my dearest friend, Lord Nelson, Duke of Bronte, a very small token of the great regard I have for his lordship, the most virtuous, loyal, and truly brave character I ever met with. Gotl bless him, and shame fall on all 'those who do not say ' Amen.' " Nor did Lady Hamilton nor Nelson seem to think 'the tria juncta in uno menage dishonouring either to each other or to Sir William. It is edifying to read Lady Hamilton's indignation expressed to her third seducer, Charles Greville, at the "desolute life" led by the Ladies of tho Queen of Naples's Bedchamber; yet this is less confounding than Nelson's anxiety about the church (and their behaviour therein) which Lady Hamilton, Sir William, and himself were to attend at Merton. " Have we a nice church at Merton?" h© writes to ask Lady Hamilton. '"We will set an example of goodness to the under parishioners." —Last Stage of All.— After Nelson's death, Lady Hamilton was always in difficulties, and would always have been in difficulties—such was her incurable extravagance—even if the Government had conccded her exorbitant demands. Her daughter by Nelson, Horatia, thus describes the last 6cene : of all: "At the time of her death she was in great distress, and had I not, unknown to her, written to Lord Nelson (the hero's brother) to ask a loan of £10 and to another kind friend of hers, who immediately sent her £20, she would not literally have had one shilling till her next allowance became due. Latterly she was hardly sensible. I imagine that her ! illness originally began by being bled whilst labouring under an attack of jaundice. From that time she never was well, and added to this the baneful habit she had of taking spirits and wine to a fearful degree brought on water on the chest. Latterly her mind became so irritable by drinking that I had written to Mr Matcham, and he desired that I would lose no time in getting some respectable person to take me over."