Nelson's Lady Hamilton Read Online Free Page A

passion with a most fascinating truth and felicity of expression. Romney delighted in observing the wonderful command she possessed over her eloquent features."
    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—the hair of a true " Bacchante." Her eyes were grey—the " colour of genius," as it has been called, and in her own way Emma certainly was

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    a genius ; but her eyes must have been the kind of grey that was capable of deepening and brightening, for they have been described as both violet and blue. Some critics considered her " beautiful and uncommon mouth " the most exquisite of her features. Take her all in all, and it will be admitted that the old Bishop of Derry was right, if not particularly reverent, when he said that the Creator was in a " glorious mood" when He made Emma.
    It was this radiant creature that Greville established in the retirement of Paddington Green. Pettigrew speaks of the "splendid misery" of her life at this time, but the words are singularly ill-chosen. Her life was neither splendid nor miserable, but probably as complete an example of simple domestic happiness, in spite of the lack of the proper domestic tie, as could be found in the London of that day. Only good management kept the household running, as Greville insisted it must be run, on about a hundred a year, while Emma's own allowance for dress, charity, and amusements, was some ^30 yearly. She had two maidservants, whose wages were £8 and £g a year— wages, it must be remembered, were much lower then than now. " Splendid misery " hardly fits this modest establishment and this strictly limited income. Some of the household account-books in Emma's handwriting remain, and the sums

    AS A "BACCHANTE
    GEORGE ROMNKY

    spent are amusingly small: apples, 2\d. ; mangle, 5^f. ; cotton and needles, gd. ; coach, is. ; poor man, \d.
    After living with her for three years, Greville was able to say of the girl whose wildness and extravagance had been too much for Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh, " She does not wish for much society, but to retain two or three creditable acquaintances in the neighbourhood she has avoided every appearance of giddiness, and prides herself on the neatness of her person and the good order of her house; these are habits both comfortable and convenient to me. She has vanity and likes admiration; but she connects it so much with her desire of appearing prudent, that she is more pleas'd with accidental admira-' tion than that of crowds which now distress her. In short, this habit, of three or four years' acquiring, is not a caprice, but is easily to be continued/' And a little later he says, " She never has wished for an improper acquaintance. She has dropt every one she thought I could except against, and those of her own choice have been in a line of prudence and plainness, which, tho' I might have wished for, I could not have proposed to confine her." John Romney also said of her that " Her only resources were reading and music at home, and sitting for pictures."
    Here was a discreet and transformed Emma! But the change, though genuine so far as it went,

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    was more on the surface than fundamental. It was not that her nature—always expressive and struggling for expression—was altered, but that she had become much more accomplished and —imitative and susceptible as she was—had insensibly acquired a more refined restraint of manner from living with Greville, who all his life, put manners before morals and repressed unbecoming emotion. Greville would not have influenced Emma so strongly if it had not been that she was very deeply and truly devoted to him. In her grateful eyes he was a model of all the virtues, and though there were times when her impulsive temper chafed at the