LORD NELSON’S WIFE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 58, Issue 4192, 2 June 1939, Page 6

LORD NELSON’S WIFE

A WRONGED WOMAN. Many books have been written about Lord Nelson in which Lady Hamilton plays a leading role and Lady Nelson is a minor figure; but at last in “Nelson’s Wife,” by E. M. Keats, Lady Nelson is the subject of a full length biography. Apologists for Nelson’s infatuation for the beautiful Emma Hamilton, which led to the separation of Nelson and his wife, have tried to put much of the blame on Lady Nelson. It is 1 said that she was a commonplace woman, who had little feminine charm, and even dressed badly. It is indisputable, however, that she was a good woman and a good wife, and that when Nelson separated from her in order to live with Lady Hamilton she bore that trial with dignity. It has been cynically suggested that Nelson’s only complaint against her 1 was that she would not accept her husband’s attachment to another man’s wife with the same indifference that Emma’s husband showed. “It is not right to blame Lady Nelson, as has been too often done, for failing to hold Nelson’s affection,” wrote E. Hallam Moorhouse in his book, “Nelson’s Lady Hamilton.” According to the light that was given her, she was a good and patient wife. As Sir Harry Nicolas says: “The exemplary character of this amiable woman is little known to the world, and it is only justice to her to state that her letters, which in their style are perfectly simple and unaffected, are filled with expressions of warm attachment to her husband, great anxiety for his safety, lively interest in his fame and entire submission to his wishes.” Nelson’s great friend Captain Thomas Hardy, who was in command of Nelson’s flagship Victory at Trafalgar, sympathised with Lady Nelson as a wronged woman. He took her side in the quarrel that led to the separation of husband and wife, and continued on terms of friendship with her after Nelson had left her. In one of his published letters he wrote: “I breakfasted this morning with Lady Nelson. I am more pleased with her, if possible, than ever; she is certainly one of the best women in the world.” Sir William Hotham, who knew Lady Nelson until her death in 1831, said: “She continually talked of him (Nelson), and always attempted to palliate his conduct towards her, was warm and enthusiastic in her praise of his public achievements, and bowed down with dignified submission to the errors of his domestic life. She re tained the warm affection of Nelson’s father, and nursed him in his last illness. A YOUNG WIFE. Lady Nelson’s maiden name was Frances Woolward. She was the daughter of William Wool ward, senior judge of the island of Nevis, in the West Indies. In 1779, when she was in her nineteenth year, she married Dr Josiah Nisbet, who became insane and died within 18 months of the wedding day, leaving her with an infant son. The young widow and child were given a home by her uncle, John Richardson Herbert, president of the Council of Nevis. It was while living with her uncle that she made the acquaintance of Nelson, who was captain of the Boreas. They were married on March 12, 1787, the bride being in her 26th year and the bridegroom two years older. When the Boreas was paid off in December of that year, Nelson and his wife lived with his father, Rev. Edmund Nelson, rector of Burnham-Thorpe, in Norfolk. In 1793 he joined the Mediterranean fleet, and during his absence 1 husband and wife corresponded in affectionate terms. When he returned home after losing his arm at Teneriffe, and being as he considered “a burthen to my friends and useless to my country,” she nursed him back to health. THE ENCHANTRESS. It was in 1798, after his great victory in the battle of the Nile, that Nelson, then in his 41st year, became infatuated with Lady Hamilton, wife of Sir William Hamilton, the British Ambassador at Naples. “Emma Hamilton is assured of a double remembrance not only because she was loved by Nelson, but because she was painted by Romney,” writes Mr E. Hallam Moorhouse. “Through the medium of his pictures, as of her own letters, it will be seen that her personality is one of the most vivid that ever graced the • stage of fame. The lively lines of her face and form are perpetuated on so many 'canvasses that she still seems to be dancing and smiling and meditating through the ‘Attitudes’ that were the delight of all who beheld them during her lifetime. “It is impossible to look at her many portraits and believe her the mere adventuress she has been so often called. There is no hard and scheming worldliness in that face; the worst fault is that it is a little soft and sensuous; but it is also gay, tender, appealing, and always has a look of innocent radiance, a fleeting wildwmd air, a touch of the eternal child —which she never entirely outgrew in spite of het manifold and mixed experiences.

“Emma’s expressive face is typical of her character. Its very mobility was the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual weakness. She had not a trace of real badness in her, only a fatal adaptability,* a perfectly chameleon capacity for taking the colour of her surroundings. It was not design of worldly advantage that led her astray, bu her impulsive heart, a heart as warm and kind as ever lived, but without any moral strength to guide and keep her in the paths of virtue. Her colouring was of the pure and perfect kind that goes With warm auburn hair, and this same hair was almost the greatest of her many beauties, growing in delicious lines from the broad low forehead, and flowing almost to her heels.” SORDID BACKGROUND. The beautiful Emma was tho daughter of humble parents, and experienced much of the seamy side of life before she married Sir William Hamilton. Her father was a blacksmith at Nesse, Cheshire, and could neither read nor write. Her mother was equally illiterate when Emma was born, but she possessed brains and ability, and eventually made good use of them. As the mother of the wife of the British Ambassador at Naples, and a member of the Ambassador’s household, she met Italian royalties and great ladies, and by her sound sense and unassuming simplicity won respect and affection. At the age of 12 Emma entered domestic service at Hawarden, and about two years later she went to London. There her beauty evoked admiration, and she had a succession of lovers. She became the mistress of Sir Harry Featherstonehaugh, a young squire of the sporting breed, who had a town house and a country seat, Up Park, in Essex. He turned her adrift a few months before their child was born. She took refuge with her grandmother at Hawarden, and from there she wrote appealing letters to' Sir Harry Featherstonehaugh, without receiving a reply or any money to help her through the trial that lay before her. At Up Park she had met the Hon. Charles Greville, then a young man in the thirties with a minor post in the Board of, Admiralty. Greville was the second son. e of the Earl of Warwick and was hoping to find an heiress who would marry him and establish him in comfortable circumstances. Emma, in her poverty and distress, appealed to Greville, and after her child was born he installed her as his mistress in a quiet little house in Edgware Row, London. Her mother, who had assumed the name of Mrs Cadogan, was installed as housekeeper and cook. Emma was very

happy with Greville 1 , and her letters show that she was sincerely devoted to him. It was as Greville’s mistress that she met the famous artist George Romney, who was fascinated by her beauty, and painted more than twenty portraits of her in different roles, such as a Bacchante, Circe, Ariadne, Miranda, Cassandra, St. Cecelie and a nun. To Edgeware Row came Greville’s uncle, Sir William Hamilton, and he also succumbed to the charms of Emma. Greville wanted to get rid of her so that he could devote his attention to marrying an heiress, so he* and his uncle entered into a plot against her. Sir William invited her and her mother to visit him at Naples and stay for some months, ostensibly to cultivate her voice as a singer. Greville was to go to Naples later and bring her back to England. She liked Sir William and had a sincere affection for him, but as he was 55 years old, and she was barely 20, she regarded him as an old man. She was heartbroken when, after she had been at Naples some time, she learned that Greville had cast her off, and she indignantly refused to fall in with the plan to become the mistress of Sir William. But in the end she gave way, and she wrote to Greville that she would be revenged on him by making Sir William marry her, and so deprive him of the prospect of becoming his uncle’s heir. She became the centre of an admiring throng of men and women at Naples—she hinted to some that she was secretly married to Sir William Hamilton—and on returning to London in 1786 with the Ambassador on a visit she fulfilled her threat to Greville by making Sir William marry her. A COMPLACENT HUSBAND. Her intimate association with Nelson began apparently in 1800 after Nelson accompanied the Hamiltons on a tour of Europe on their way back to England. At Naples Emma had flaunted public opinion by the way in which she had paraded Nelson as the captive of her charms. When the party reached England and Nelson was publicly welcomed everywhere as a naval hero, it was Emma who stood by his side and shared in the honours bestowed on him, while his wife remained in seclusion in London. It seems incredible that Sir William Hamilton was unaware of his wife’s infidelity, but all the available evidence indicates that he was. He was an experienced man of the world and he knew his wife’s past history, but apparently he trusted her implicitly with Nelson. And he was easily deceived. He was unaware of the fact that his wife gave birth to a daughter

of whom Nelson was the father, although this “by no means trifling incident” took place in his own home in London. Nelson lived with the Hamiltons at their house in Piccadilly, and after he bought Merton Place in Surrey the Hamiltonians went to live with him, and Emma, as hostess, entertained lavishly in Nelsons name. Sir William Hamilton died at his house in Piccadilly on April 6, 1803, in his 73rd year. His wife was in attendance on him, and Nelson held his hand as he passed away. “In all the curious drama of Emma’s life,” writes E. Hallam Moorhouse, “there is surely no episode so inexplicable as this of Sir William dying in the arms of his weeping and faithless wife, while Nelson soothed his last moments. Whether Sir William Hamilton suspected anything of the truth must remain a mystery. It seems impossible to believe that he, very much of a man of the world and not ignorant of his wife’s upbringing, should have been so blind to a situation at which many people were broadly hinting. Yet never by word or sign did he display the least doubt of either his friend or his wife, and in his last will he left a miniature of Emma to Nelson: “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, loyal and truly brave character I have evet met with. God bless him, and shame fall on all those who do not say Amen.”