unbecoming.” Vulgar or not, back in London, Lady Hamilton fever took hold. Her trademark white crepe and satin dresses were all the rage. The
She met Horatio Nelson by chance in 1793. He was forty, already renowned for his leadership and tactical flair, but not yet a commander of the fleet. Europe, still reeling from the shock of the French Revolution, was on the brink of war. Captain Nelson had been sent to recruit troops from King Ferdinand IV of Naples to reinforce the port of Toulon, then held by the British but threatened by a French force that included a young artilleryman called Napoleon Bonaparte. Nelson hit it off splendidly with the Hamiltons and Emma flirted with him as she did with everyone else. But a definite impression was made on both sides.
They weren’t to meet again for five years. By then, Emma had grown seriously porky. In 1796 Sir Gilbert Elliott, the Viceroy of Corsica, remarked: “Her person is nothing short of monstrous for its enormity, and is growing every day.” The famous hostess Lady Elgin was crisper: “She is indeed a Whapper!” A Swedish diplomat was distinctly undiplomatic: “She is the fattest woman I’ve ever laid eyes on, but with the most beautiful head.”
When Nelson returned to Naples in 1798, he was a hero. His victory at the Battle of the Nile had saved the city from a French invasion. Emma wrote to him in breathless anticipation:
I walk and tread in the air with pride, feeling I was born in the same land with the victor Nelson…. For God’s sake come to Naples soon…. My dress from head to foot is alla Nelson…. Even my shawl is in Blue with gold anchors all over. My earrings are Nelson’s anchors; in short, we are be-Nelsoned all over.
The “be-Nelsoning” grew ever more fervent as the victor approached, and the outpouring of joy as his ship entered harbor was close to hysterical. Nelson’s travails had aged him visibly; one eye was damaged beyond repair and he was suffering from the effects of a head injury. If Nelson noticed that Emma was plumper than he remembered, he never mentioned it. She assumed the role of his nurse, Sir William threw him parties, and the three of them quickly became inseparable. So began a menage a trois (they preferred the more sophisticated Latin,
By the end of 1798 King Ferdinand’s Neapolitan army had disintegrated in the face of French aggression, and Nelson was charged with escorting the royal family and their friends to safety in Sicily. On the way, they sailed into the worst storm Nelson could remember. He was amazed by Emma’s courage, in contrast to the complete panic of his other distinguished passengers. As Sir William prepared to shoot himself rather than drown, Emma gently tended the king’s young son, who had gone into convulsions and later died in her arms. By the time they reached Palermo, the flirtation had become a torrid affair. Emma and Nelson dropped all pretense of decorum, entering into a nonstop round of drinking, gambling, and late-night partying that only ended with Nelson’s recall to London.
By early 1800 Emma was pregnant with his child and Nelson had formally separated from his wife, Fanny, leaving her to fend for herself in Norfolk. He bought Merton Place, a ramshackle property on the outskirts of Wimbledon, and Emma started doing it up. She designed it as a home fit for a hero—as well as a hero’s mistress, a hero’s mistress’s husband, and a hero’s mistress’s mother. Emma’s taste wouldn’t have looked out of place in
The whole house, staircase and all, are covered with nothing but pictures of her and him, of all sizes and sorts, and representations of his naval actions, coats of arms, pieces of plate in his honour.
The vulgarity and brazenness of it all provided an unprecedented feast for the popular press. Everything was avidly dissected in minute detail. In January 1801, Emma gave birth to twins, but only one survived. To avoid any doubt over the girl’s origins, the proud parents named her Horatia. Then, in a halfhearted attempt at discretion, they added the surname Thompson, the nom de plume used by Nelson in his secret correspondence with Emma. Polite society was shocked: “She leads him about like a keeper with a bear,” commented one affronted hostess. Even Nelson’s closest friends were traumatized. Sir Gilbert Elliot, now Lord Minto, wrote angrily:
Nothing shall ever induce me to give the smallest countenance to Lady Hamilton…. She is high in looks, but more immense than ever. She goes on cramming Nelson with trowelfuls of flattery, which he goes on taking as quietly as a child does pap. The love she makes to him is not only ridiculous, but disgusting.
Nelson and Emma were oblivious, busy making the most of their brief moments together. As she wrote to a friend:
I love him, I adore him, my mind and soul is now transported with the thought of that blessed ecstatic moment when I shall see him, embrace him…. I must sin on and love him more than ever. It is a crime worth going to Hell for.
Eventually, even the gentle, indulgent Sir William lost patience. By the end of 1802, he was warning Emma that he might have to consider a separation if things continued as they were. But in the spring of the following year, he died, much as he had recently lived, in his wife’s arms, holding Nelson’s hand. More or less at once, the war with France demanded Nelson’s attention again and he was on the high seas when little Emma, his second daughter, was born. She lived only a few days and her grief-stricken mother had to pay double for the undertaker to keep the details out of the press. The loneliness and the long separations from Nelson began to tell on Emma. She took to drinking heavily again, and gambling, and the debts soon mounted up. Nelson knew nothing of all this. He was fired by his love for her. “If there were more Emmas,” he wrote, “there would be more Nelsons.”
In September 1805, after barely a month’s leave, the newly created Viscount Nelson left home for the last time. Five weeks later, he fell at Trafalgar in the midst of his greatest victory. He was already the most famous man in England, and the deluge of public grief at his death was like nothing the country had ever seen. Emma retired to bed for three weeks, utterly bereft, but the powers that be had done with her and took their revenge. Ignoring Nelson’s specific requests in his will and on his deathbed for the nation to “look after Lady Hamilton” and to allow her to sing at his funeral, they didn’t even invite Emma to the ceremony.
Worse was to come. Emma had inherited Merton Place and a small annual income for its upkeep, but already spending more than she earned, she felt duty-bound to continue decorating it obsessively. Pursued by creditors, blackmailed by family members and former servants, shunned by many of Nelson’s friends, her facade of wealth quickly began to crumble. Within three years of the admiral’s death, she owed ?15,000, about $1.5 million at today’s value. The house went up for sale, but the market was at its worst point in a generation and buyers were put off by the bizarre nautical decor.
On January 14, 1809, Emma’s mother died. Apart from being an emotional body blow, the funeral costs stretched her credit to breaking point. Then her private correspondence with Nelson was stolen and published, destroying the last vestiges of support from public opinion. A few remaining friends rallied around with gifts, loans, and advice but it was never enough. In 1813 she was arrested and taken to the King’s Bench Debtors’ Prison in Southwark. Granted parole to live in nearby lodgings, Emma and Horatia escaped to France. They arrived in Calais in August 1814, with just ?50 to their names. They found a shabby two-room apartment in the center of town, where Emma went back to bed and methodically drank herself to death. Horatia, then just thirteen, was smuggled back to England dressed as a boy and fostered by a family in Burnham Market in Norfolk, barely a mile from where her father had been born. She lived out the rest of her life uneventfully, marrying the handsome local vicar and raising a large family. The children’s mysterious grandmother was never mentioned.
Emma was not without her faults, but she didn’t deserve the vilification and neglect she endured after Nelson’s death—or after her own. Doing her best to survive a succession of self-regarding lovers, she was no mere gold digger. By the time she met Nelson, Emma was already famous, and the intensity and depth of their relationship went far beyond sexual intoxication. Nelson had lost his mother young. Emma, increasingly maternal in shape, was warm, witty, and endlessly adoring. She filled the emotional hole his mother’s death had left and gave him the solid platform he needed. A happy Nelson was an unbeatable naval commander, as the nation came to
