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By Root 1495 0

of Queensberry, Fanny arrived, accompanied by Nelson's father, the seventy-eight-year-old Edmund Nelson. Realizing from the newspapers that Nelson had first been to Roundwood, she was almost paralyzed by nerves. Every print shop she passed was selling images of Emma, and the newspapers were churning out jokes about her Attitudes and the same old story about her meteoric rise to fame. Fanny shrank from meeting the tabloid celebrity. Forty-two and conscious that she was aging, she had lain awake through long, lonely nights seething with hatred for her younger rival. She was painfully aware that she had put herself at a terrible disadvantage by missing the chance to receive Emma on home ground.

The meeting was even worse than Fanny had feared. Emma swept in, overexcited and effusive, her dress outlining the now resplendent swell. Fanny finally saw what everybody had kept from her. Lady Hamilton had succeeded where she had failed. She could hardly retain her composure. Nelson received her politely but, although they had been apart for three years, he refused to retire and see her alone. He could not bear to leave Emma, the woman pregnant with the child he had longed for almost as much as he desired glory. Fanny withdrew into herself and seemed cold, and Emma claimed her eyes were icy, with an "antipathy not to be described." In Sir William's favorite hotel, surrounded by cheering crowds wielding flags, Fanny was faced with the bitter truth: she had lost her husband.

Emma was comforted to see that Nelson's ardor for her never faltered, but she knew she had to press her advantage. Lady Nelson joined the Hamiltons and Nelson for dinner at Nerot's at five o'clock. Emma talked enthusiastically, making sure to attract all the attention, even though she had to let Fanny sit by Nelson's side. He left in the early evening to report to Lord Spencer, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and Fanny followed him in her carriage, tormented that Nelson's commanders had underplayed the affair as a mere crush.

Nelson had hoped that his wife would behave like Sir William, recognizing that their marriage had ended and stepping back to allow the lovers to pursue their mutual adoration. But Fanny, disgusted by Sir William's placid acceptance of the affair, had decided to fight. She was Lady Nelson, Baroness Nelson, and Duchess of Bronte, and she was not about to let her husband go. To the delight of the newspapers, the women began a contest for his heart under an increasingly flimsy mien of polite friendship.

William Beckford offered the Hamiltons use of his mansion, 22 Grosvenor Square, and Nelson and Fanny took an expensive furnished house a comfortable walking distance away at 17 Dover Street. Relations between him and his wife rapidly deteriorated. As Fanny knew, if she had been the mother of his children, he would have treated her with greater respect, and more journalists would have taken her side. Childless, she was in a weak position. Nelson visited Emma daily and praised her endlessly to his wife and to anyone else who called at Dover Street. Fanny was too unhappy to pretend to be sweet and forgiving, and in retaliation Nelson refused to behave as her husband in public. He came to hate the sight of her. He tried to dispel his anger and frustration by walking for hours around London late at night before arriving at Emma's house in Grosvenor Square. The autumn of 1800 was such a strain that he declared the following spring that "sooner than live the unhappy life I did when last I came to England, I would stay abroad forever."

Meanwhile, Emma was winning the media war. There were around fifty daily newspapers in circulation, and Emma, looking ever more resplendent, was the toast of every one. Many newspapers had a print run of over four thousand, and as editions were usually shared (Robert Southey estimated that every paper had five readers), we might make a conservative estimate that over a quarter of a million people read about her antics over their meals. Journalists followed her everywhere. The Morning Herald extolled Emma's "singularly