England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [116]
While she had him prostrate before her, Emma exerted all her seductive powers to encourage Nelson to protect Maria Carolina and the kingdom of Naples. Nelson had other missions in the Mediterranean—namely, to warn France away from Egypt and protect Malta—but Emma aimed to ensure he focused on her.1 She pulled out her glamorous muslin dresses from the closet, wearing every item that could be even vaguely "alia Nelson." When two of his captains had arrived in Naples with the news of the victory of the Nile, she accompanied them to the opera wearing a headband embroidered with "Nelson and Victory" in gold. Since then, she had turned herself into a living tribute.
Nelson had been excited to receive such an inviting letter from the famous sex bomb. Indeed, he had written to Sir William rather weakly offering to lodge in a hotel.2 Now he could hardly believe that she was tending to him so closely in her home. He was soon wrapped around her little finger, dazzled by her warm attentions. Beautiful, flirtatious, sexy, witty, and young, as well as frank and not easily offended, she was a great contrast to the dreary, stiff wives of ambassadors and other superiors who usually dismissed him as a vulgar little man. "She is an honour to her sex," he wrote to Fanny, whom he had seen for seven months in the last seven years, and "one of the best women in this world." To Earl St. Vincent, his commander, he was more honest. "I am writing opposite Lady Hamilton, therefore you will not be surprised at the glorious jumble of this letter," he admitted, describing his heart as fluttering with confusion. "Naples is a dangerous place, and we must keep clear of it."
Unlike sybaritic, rank-obsessed playboys at the Neapolitan court, Nelson's charisma inhered in his passion for his work and his serious ambition. He radiated blunt honesty, and he was probably the least cynical guest the palazzo had ever entertained. Unlike every other person in Emma's social circle, he was from a humble background, and his education was patchy. He was a man of action: he could not play music, sing, or dance, and he was a terrible dresser. Neapolitans and English aristocrats cut a dash in pastels, exotic pink suits, and gold shoes, but out of his impressive dress uniform, gaudy with medals, Nelson wore dull black, gray, and brown wool, and his hair was unstyled and unpowdered. He was smaller than most men, so thin as to seem emaciated, and he had a large bald patch where he had cut his head at Aboukir, which he tried to hide by combing over some of his unruly ginger hair. Covered with scars and wrinkles from sun exposure, he was neither attractive nor suave. Emma didn't care.
Emma worked hard to bring Josiah out of his shell. Rebellious and unhappy, convinced that others mocked him for not being up to his job, Josiah drank heavily and refused to obey his stepfather's commands. He was sullen and defensive, and Nelson, who had no patience with depression or anxiety, was simply infuriated. But Emma was soon working wonders with her pimply-faced teenage guest. "He likes Lady Hamilton more than any female," boasted Nelson to Fanny. His bluster that Emma would "make more of Josiah than any woman" and that she would "fashion him in 6 months in spite of himself" was hardly calculated to win over his wife. Fanny was deeply worried about the tense relationship between father and stepson, and Emma's breezy promise that although she and Josiah might "quarrel sometimes, he loves me and does as I would have him" only twisted the knife. Fanny had to read lashings of praise about Emma. "How few could have made the turn she has," Nelson marveled to his wife, "proof that even reputation may be regained, but I own it requires a great soul." Nelson knew Emma's history—everyone did—and he hardly cared. Thanks to his humble upbringing, he was sympathetic toward women who had to make their own way,