acknowledge her as her mother. From the most unpromising beginnings, she had risen to become not only wealthy but the most famous and glamorous woman of her age—only to lose it all in a mess of drink, debt, and bitter disappointment.
Emy Lyons was born in a hovel in Ness, a miserable coalmining hamlet in the Wirral peninsula in Cheshire, England. Her father, Henry, was a violent, heavy-drinking blacksmith who died within a month of her birth. During a drunken argument with her mother, he fell—or was pushed—fatally and Mary Lyons fled with her baby back to Hawarden in North Wales, where her family lived. The house, already full to overflowing, stank permanently of dung. The family horse provided the fuel they were too poor to buy. Emy slept with her mother on a straw pallet and as the youngest, and a girl, was always the last to be fed. She probably owed her life to the fact that Mary was having an affair with an unidentified man of means—probably a high-ranking servant at the local stately home—who would slip her food and money. As a result, Emma grew up tall, strong, and with lustrous black hair and a clear complexion.
Mother and daughter were very close, and although neither of them had ever been to school, they were both highly intelligent and resourceful. Throughout Emma’s golden years, her mother was always there in the background, acting as her confidante and personal assistant. When she left the claustrophobia of Hawarden to follow her lover to London, she took Emy with her and found her a suitable position in the capital. Though only twelve, Emy began work as a nursemaid to the children of a respectable doctor’s family in Blackfriars. It was here that she met Jane Powell, an aspiring actress, and the two became close friends. Then as now, the lure of the West End was strong, and when Emy was sacked for staying out all night in Covent Garden, she turned her back on domestic service to pursue a career in the theater. Starting on the lowest rung, as a maid to a wardrobe mistress in Drury Lane, she soon found something altogether more to her liking.
Late eighteenth-century London was the largest sex resort in the world. In the square half mile of St. James’s alone there were 900 full-blown brothels and 850 lesser whorehouses providing “entertainment for gentlemen.” Even in this broad-minded neighborhood, Dr. James Graham’s Temple of Health caused something of a stir. He was an unqualified, charismatic Scottish con man who, though remarkably enlightened on social issues such as slavery and women’s education—and a vegetarian to boot—knew that the serious money was in sex. The centerpiece of his business was the Celestial Bed, a huge ornate couch raised up on eight brass pillars, which looked (and sounded) like an unholy cross between a Greek temple and the orgasm-inducing Excessive Machine in Roger Vadim’s 1968 film
Despite all the publicity, Graham proved to be a poor businessman. After running out of money he became a born-again Christian, convinced that human health (and God) were best served by fasting and “earth bathing.” He delivered public sermons in Charing Cross, buried up to his neck in a vat of soil. Emma moved on to Madame Kelly’s, the most prestigious whorehouse in St. James’s, where her erotic dancing bewitched the MP for Portsmouth and notorious brothel frequenter, Sir Harry Featherstonehaugh. Sir Harry bought her freedom and installed her as his mistress in a cottage near his huge country estate Uppark, in Sussex. Still only fifteen, Emma worked as a maid during the day and danced naked on the table for his friends in the evening. It was one of these friends, the Honorable Charles Greville, MP for Warwick, who stepped in after the oafish and intolerant Featherstonehaugh threw her out when, to her horror, she found she was with child. Greville was mesmerized by Emma and offered to take her on as his permanent mistress, as long as she refused to see other men. Pregnant and destitute, she leaped at the chance. She moved into his London house in Paddington as “Emma Hart” and was joined by her mother, who now called herself Mrs. Cadogan. The baby—a girl, also called Emma—was hurriedly fostered and her existence kept a secret.
This domestic arrangement worked well for a while, but Greville couldn’t help showing off Emma’s beauty to others. A connoisseur of painting and sculpture, he arranged for her to pose as an artist’s model. Her loveliness and poise so enchanted his friend, the rising portrait painter George Romney, that he became obsessed, producing more than sixty paintings of her in various poses until her image was famous all over Britain. She is still, in fact, the most painted Englishwoman of all time. But Emma was not only pretty, she was spirited, bright, and altogether delightful. Greville’s plans to keep her as his private mistress were swept away by the arrival of a social sensation, whose exquisite good looks were matched by a direct and witty sensuality. Emma Hart was soon lusted over by gentlemen from London to Leeds.
This was a disaster for Greville. He was not a wealthy man—he had started hiring Emma out as a model for pocket money—and he needed to find a wife with a substantial dowry. That wasn’t going to happen with Emma hogging the limelight on every social occasion. She had become particularly matey with Greville’s uncle, Sir William Hamilton, the British ambassador to Naples, whom she called Pliny because of his passion for antiquities, and he called her the fair tea-maker of Edgware Row in return. Greville hatched a plan to transfer his mistress to his uncle in return for his wiping out a considerable debt. Telling Emma she was to visit Sir William for a holiday, he packed her off to Naples and several months later wrote, making it clear he didn’t want her back. She was devastated, writing him a stream of angry and imploring letters until, once more, she succumbed to pragmatism. Life in Naples, after all, was civilized and glamorous and she was feted for her beauty wherever she went. Sir William was sweet natured and devoted; his household was renowned for its lavish hospitality and aristocratic good taste. She soon became his mistress and then in 1791, much to the surprise of his friends, his wife.
“Am I Emma Hamilton? It seems nearly impossible!” The pauper-turned-prostitute, who still spoke with a pronounced northern accent, was now the wife of an ambassador. Hamilton, thirty-four years her senior, was delighted. “It has often been remarked that a reformed rake makes a good husband. Why not vice versa?” Emma became both a favorite of Queen Maria Carolina of Naples (the sister of Marie Antoinette) and a fixture in the highest echelons of Neapolitan society. She had reached the very top of the social ladder, mixing with royalty and many of the great artists and thinkers of the day. This stirred Emma’s ambition: She wasn’t content merely to fulfill her role as hostess and dutiful wife. She was a performer at heart and wanted to create something new, something only she could do. She succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. Calling on her experience as a model for George Romney and Sir Joshua Reynolds, she developed what she called her “Attitudes,” a series of evolving tableaux in which she transformed herself into great women from history. With Sir William providing a narrative and accompanied by music, she began her performances draped in Indian shawls, gradually divesting herself till she was revealed in only a figure-hugging “chemise of white muslin, her fine black hair flowing in ringlets over her shoulders.” Ariadne would merge into Medea, Medea into Cleopatra, and so on. For some it was little more than a classy striptease; for others, it was as if the history of Western painting had come to life. In his
The spectator can hardly believe his eyes. He sees what thousands of artists would have liked to express realized before him in movements and surprising transformations, standing, kneeling, sitting, reclining, serious, sad, playful, ecstatic, contrite, alluring, threatening, anxious, one pose follows another without a break…. As a performance it’s like nothing you ever saw before in your life.
Lady Hamilton’s “Attitudes” caused a sensation. The grace and presence that had distinguished her from the other tarts capering around the Celestial Bed in London’s red-light district propelled her to international stardom. She became one of Europe’s most popular tourist attractions, inspiring copycat performances all over the Continent. Even her critics were impressed: The society diarist Mrs. St. George noted how “graceful and beautiful” Emma’s costumes were, though she couldn’t help adding caustically, “her usual dress is tasteless, loaded, vulgar and
