NELSON'S EVIL STAR.

Otago Witness, Issue 2761, 13 February 1907, Page 79

NELSON'S EVIL STAR.

Mi&s Hdll.im Moorhou.<-e"s interesting and exquisitely illustrated Lady Hamilton" (Methuen and Co.) leaves you in no doubt of the justice of Captain Mahan's judgment of Nelson's Egeria: —

'Love in its unselfishness passed) out of Lady Hamilton's life with Greville. Other men might find her pliant, pleasing, seductive ; he alcne knew her £*&~'/)fiiki&£: terested." No woman who-ibikaif'S^ojt- , as Emily Lyon had onco^ lowdi-Ghailas . Greville would have triet to persuade the* world after Trafalgar tlmt it was <>lie who sent the unwilling Nelson hero to light this last battle for his country ; nor vouid she, night after night, have 'attended the theatre to hear Braham sLng "The Death of Nelson," that the public might see her weep at each vtrse, and faint at tLe do3e of the song. The truth is Emily Lyon, or Exauud Hart. oc La*dj Harail-

ton, was what her early lovers had made her ; and three more heartless wretches than Captain. John Willet - Payne, Sir Harry Featherstonehaugh, and Charles Greville never broke a girl's heart." As men had played with her, so would she henceforward play w ith men, and one of these men, unfortunately, happened to be Nelson.

— Betrayed Through Kindness —

It was Emily Lyoii's very kindness of heart which betrayed her into the hands of the first of these "gentlemen." "It was an odd coincidence," says Miss Hallami Moorhouns, "that the girl who later on was to be called the ' Patroness of the Navy' by grim old Lord Jervis himself, and who was always the friend of Nelson's seamen, should have got into her first trouble through"* naval officer and in the effort to help a sailor. The press-gang had seized a- young man whom she had known during her Flintshire days, and had carried him oif fco ii shift, lying in the Thames. Sympathy for qfsttess always marked Emma, and this ne*s£j|nd the thought of his poor wife's angOisJi'of mind, so worked upon her that.j&f- 5*5 * was moved to an impulsive action. She went to see Captain WilletPayne, and- pleaded with tears and all her native" eloquence and feeling for the release of the ' pressed ' man. The susceptible captain could not resist her charm andgj^j&'entreatieß ; but neither could he let Tra&£pass>6ut of his life as easily as- she hadFiKjin* into it. Thus Emma's generous impulse^ coupled with her ignorance and ?asy temper, was the cause of her undoing. The Fa.ilor left her after a few months and went away to *ea, and the unhappy girl was cast out upon the world, friendless and scorned."

— The Lion in Love. —

By the- time she had passed through the heartless hands of Sir Harry Featherstonehaugh and of Charles Greville, Lady Hamilton had no love left except a love of power, of praise, of presents, of gambling, and of igood things. "I don't think Nelson altered in the least," writes Lady Minto after meeting him, in Vienna, whither Emma had trailed him after her. "He has the same shock head and the same honest, simple manners ; but he 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. She shows a great avidity for presents, and has actually obtained some at Dresden by the common artifice of admiring and longing." And here is a nighfc «it Palermo, described by Lady Minto in a letter to her sister: — "Nelson and the Hamilt-ons 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 pluy, and Sir William- says when he is dead she will be a beggar. However, she has lbout £30,000 worth of diamonds from the Neapolitan royal family in presents. She sits at the councils and rules everything and everybody."

— Cat spa ws? —

As""a matter of fact, La-ly Hamilton, while flattering herself that she- was "ruling everything and everybody," was the catspaw of the cruel and crafty Queen of Naples, who used hsr successfully as an instrument to recover, through Jfelson, 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 aBritish 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 Quee«^ oi Naples that ' Lady Hamilton had had command of the fleet long enough.' The Queen is very ill with a sort of convulsive fit, and Nelson is staying at Leghorn to nurse her; he 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 eacb 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 think* of nothing-*nt Lady Hamilton, who is totally occupied by the~same object. She 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 sh« ia exceedingly embonpoint. She resembles the bust ol Ariadne ; the shape of all her features is fine, as is the form of her head, and particularly her ears; her teeth are a little irregular, but tolerably white ; her eyes light blue, with a brown spot in one, which, though a defect, takes nothing away from het 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 Suwairow \vr& in hij youth, as he is like all the pictures 1 nave seen of that genera)."

■ — Moral Insensibility. —

I^Wiat Swinburne ays of -Maiy Stuart 'applies to the moral insensibility of those juncta in uno," to use Lady Hamilton's fa\onrite phrase for that extraordinary menage, her husband, Nelson, and herself. " That there are fewer moral impossibilities than would readily be 1 granted by the professional moralist those students of human character who arc not professional moralists may very readily, admit." In his will Sir William, who. could not possibly have been ignorant ol the relations between his wife and Nel-

son. thus bequeaths her picture to him : "The copy of Madame Le 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, loya,l, and truly brave character I ever met with. God 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 indio nation oxpressed to her third seducer, Charles Greville, at the " desoluts life" led by tne Ladies of the Queen of Napless 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?" he 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 conceded her exorbitant demands. Her daughter by Nelson, Herat ia, thus describes the last scene 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 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 feaiful 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."