England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [134]
It was chaos all the way as the fourteen carriages and three baggage wagons rumbled through the pretty valleys and mountains of Slovenia and Hungary. At every place they stopped, everybody came out to goggle at the hero of the Nile and his glamorous mistress, as well as the queen and her ninety-two horses. Usually quiet roads were jammed with traffic as carts and horses tailed along the roads behind them. Almost every evening, Emma had to assemble her finery from a trunk and sparkle at a dinner and play or concert put on by local dignitaries in Nelson's honor. She always wore a "Nelson outfit" or converted one of the fine court dresses Maria Carolina had given her by accessorizing with anchor earrings or necklaces, and she never tired of praising him and singing about him. Everyone watched her lead her lover, take hold of his hand, or whisper into his ear. In public she cut his food, opened doors, and held items he wished to see, and in private she arranged his hair and trimmed the nails on his fingers and toes. She now understood the price of falling in love with a public hero. No longer able to control her own exposure through stage-managing her parties and appearances, she had to smile through dinners and walkabouts during which people grabbed at her clothes. She had to be ready at any time to play the role of Lady Hamilton, Nelson's heroine. Left behind at the hotels as her daughter dazzled, Mrs. Cadogan continued to let out the waists of the queen's old dresses.
After a musical celebration commemorating the Battle of the Nile and a sumptuous commemorative dinner at Laibach, the Hamiltons and Nelson set off north after a few hours' sleep for the Karawanken mountain range, a rocky route notorious for its bloodthirsty bandits. They walked to the top, to save the horses. After another four days of travel, they arrived in Graz. Crowds of people had been waiting for hours to welcome Nelson, many on the brink of tears. "The manifestation of esteem and affection so moved the hero," gushed Graz's local newspaper, "that he not only invited many people into his own room but even went into the street amongst the crowd—with the beautiful Lady Hamilton on his arm," pressing hands, kissing babies, and accepting little presents.1 After they had recovered from the shock of realizing that the great man was tiny, pale, and scrawny, Graz's journalists decided they had never seen such a hero. To their delight, Emma staged her own personal walkabouts, playing to the image of her as Cleopatra, flanked by her glamorous Nubian maid. "The respect which the hero universally inspired was equalled by the admiration for Lady Hamilton's beauty."
Before dawn, the Nelson and Emma show departed for Gloggnitz, intending to meet up with the queen in order to enter Vienna in a triumphal progress. They burned into the quiet town only to be bitterly disappointed: she had already left. Her nephew and son-in-law, Emperor Leopold of Austria, was afraid of offending Napoleon, and he had instructed her to come alone. Nelson was infuriated by the queen's decision to hurry on without them, and when they arrived at the luxury spa resort of Baden Baden, he decided they had no time to bathe, even though his hernias were giving him pain and Emma's limbs were swollen.
Despite the emperor's attempt to play down the hero's arrival, the Viennese treated Nelson and Emma as the biggest stars they had ever seen, covering themselves in Nelson memorabilia. Portraits of the hero seemed to hang over half of the city. The Viennese ladies were resplendent in the latest look, a “bonnet a la Nelson,” which resembled a crocodile, and muslins embroidered in gold and silver to commemorate his victories. “A la Lady Hamilton” led fashion: short haircut, no bonnet, light muslin dress, earrings in the shape of anchors, and a replica Maltese