Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; by 1855-1933 Walter Sydney Sichel Read Free Book Online Page B

lightly into scrapes that caused him infinite trouble, and prompted his humorous regret that Magna Charta contained no clause forbidding Britons to emigrate. It was not till Emma dawned on his horizon that he woke up in earnest to the duties of his office. His wife made every effort, so far as her feeble health admitted, to grace his hospitalities. She shared his own taste for music, and sang to the harpsichord before the Court of Vienna. The sole regret of her unselfish piety was that he remained a worldling. She studied to spare him every vexation and intrusion; and while he pursued his long rambles, sporting, artistic, or sentimental,

    she sat at home praying for her elderly Pierrot's eternal welfare. Her example dispensed with precepts, and hoped to win- her wanderer back imperceptibly. How little she deserved the caricature of her as merely " a raw-boned Scotchwoman " may be gleaned from some of the last jottings in her diary and her last letters to her husband:—
    " How tedious are the hours I pass in the absence of the beloved of my heart, and how tiresome is every scene to me. There is the chair in which he used to sit, I find him not there, and my heart feels a pang, and my foolish eyes overflow with tears. The number of years we have been married, instead of diminishing my love have increased it to that degree and wound it up with my existence in such a manner that it cannot alter. How strong are the efforts I have made to conquer my feelings, but in vain. . . . No one but those who have felt it can know the miserable anxiety of an undivided love. When he is present, every object has a different appearance; when he is absent, how lonely, how isolated I feel. ... I return home, and there the very dog stares me in the face and seems to ask for its beloved master. . . . Oh ! blessed Lord God and Saviour, be Thou mercifully pleas'd to guard and protect him in all dangers and in all situations. Have mercy upon us both, oh Lord, and turn our hearts to Thee."
    " A few days, nay a few hours . . . may render me incapable of writing to you. . . . But how shall I express my love and tenderness to you, dearest of earthly blessings. My only attachment to this world has been my love to you, and you are my only regret in leaving it. My heart has followed your footsteps where ever you went, and you have been the source of all my joys. I would have preferred beggary with you to kingdoms without you, but all this must have

    an end—forget and forgive my faults and remember me with kindness. I entreat you not to suffer me to be shut up after I am dead till it is absolutely necessary. Remember the promise you have made me that your bones should lie by mine when God shall please to call you, and leave directions in your will about it."
    That promise was kept, and the man of the world sleeps by the daughter of heaven, re-united in the Pembrokeshire vault. A possibly adopted daughter — Cecilia—who is mentioned in the greetings of early correspondents, had died some seven years before.
    Could any Calypso replace such pure devotion ? Yet Calypsos there had been already—among their number the divorced lady who became Margravine of Anspach, the " sweet little creature qui a I'honneur de me plaire," and whom he pitied; a " Madame Tschudy "; a " Lady A.," contrasted by Greville in 1785 with Emma; and, perhaps platonically, those gifted artists Diana Beauclerk, once Lady Bolingbroke, and Mrs. Darner, who was to sculpture one of the two busts of Nelson done from the life. In England as well as Naples flirtation was the order of the day. Yet about Sir William there must have been a charm of demeanour, a calm of ease and good nature, and a certain worldly unselfishness which could fasten such spiritual love more surely than the love profane. He was a sincere worshipper of beauty, both in art and nature; while Goethe himself respected his discriminating taste. He was a Stoic-Epicurean, a " philosopher." His confession of faith and outlook