Nelson's Lady Hamilton Read Online Free

mighty ravishment of spring." Her terrified question, " Good God, what shall I dow ?" was not so much a voice from the depths, as the cry of a child in the dark—a child who is ready to smile again the instant the light returns, though the tears are yet wet on her lashes.
    Greville's patronizing, kindly, immoral letter

    was the light in the night of her distress. She came up to London from Flintshire as he advised her, and early in the spring of 1782 Greville had settled her and himself in a quiet little house in Edgware Row, with Emma's mother, now calling herself Mrs. Cadogan, to look after them generally. Mrs. Cadogan was an excellent woman, in spite of the complacent way in which she joined her daughter's different establishments when she was living first with Mr. Greville and afterwards with his uncle, as the wife of neither. She was a first-rate housekeeper and cook; Greville, as usual, knew what he was about when he told "his Emily" that "I would not be troubled with your connexions (excepting your mother) for the universe."
    Edgware Row calls up an unattractive vision at the present day, but one hundred and twenty-five years ago it was quite a pretty country neighbourhood, close to Paddington Green—a region of " fresh woods and pastures new " to Emma, who spent some of the happiest, simplest, and most care-free years of her life there. The house was small and unassuming. Mr. J. C. Jeaffreson describes its interior minutely :—
    " To visit this house, at any time of its tenancy by Mr. Greville, was to see he was a connoisseur. Together with fine examples of the Dutch school, the collector's choicest treasures comprised a few works by the best English

    22 NELSON'S LADY HAMILTON
    painters. In the drawing-room, there was a portrait of Emily Bertie, in the character of Thais, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds for Mr. Greville, and re-touched in certain points by the famous artist before it left the easel, to put it altogether in harmony with the young connoisseur's conceptions of the beautiful and true. In this salon might also be seen folios of rare engravings and unsurpassably fine mezzotints, bits of sculpture in marble and bronze, the cabinet of antique coins which Mr. Greville had brought together with infinite trouble and pleasure, and the fine collection of mineralogical specimens, which showed that the gentleman, who was very much of a connoisseur, was also something of a savant."
    But without doubt the " choicest treasure " of Mr. Greville's collection was neither the Sir Joshua nor the minerals, but Emma herself. At this time she was close upon eighteen years old, and her beauty was blossoming towards its most exquisite period—a beauty radiant and fresh as the lilies of the field, the kind of beauty that " so draws the heart out of itself as to seem like magic," in the words of Richard Jefferies. She had that rare loveliness which is at once classic in outline yet sensitively mobile and changing in expression. No wonder Sir William Hamilton said of her that she was " finer than anything in antique art. 1 ' Her gift for dramatising emotion in her famous "Attitudes" will be referred to

    later; but it is sufficiently proved by the extraordinary variety and expressiveness of her poses in Romney's pictures: she personifies all the moods, and not as is done in so many conventional paintings, where an " Allegro " can hardly be distinguished from a " Penseroso," but with real feeling and exquisite adaptability. Hayley, who knew Emma well, says in his " Life of Romney," " The talents which nature bestowed on the fair Emma led her to delight in the two kindred arts of music and painting; in the first she acquired great practical ability; for the second she had exquisite taste, and such expressive powers as could furnish to an historical painter an inspiring model for the various characters, either delicate or sublime. . . . Her features, like the language of Shakespeare, could exhibit all the gradations of every