• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1498 0

his. On November 18, the windows of the print shops exploded with a new caricature by Isaac Cruikshank, Smoking Attitudes, in which Emma, Sir William, Prime Minister Pitt, Nelson, and the lord mayor are smoking pipes, following Nelson's recent attendance at the lord mayor's reception. Smoking was a particularly exotic habit of the upper classes, associated with the East, and the pipes suggest that they are louche and extravagant. Hamilton's pipe is conspicuously unlit, and Emma, dressed in muslin and assuming an Attitude, effuses to Nelson that her husband's "pipe is always out but yours burns with full vigour." Her lover's reply is characteristically blunt: "I'll give you such a smoke I'll pour a whole broad side into you.†

Every time they opened a newspaper, Sir William's family, friends, and ex-colleagues were shocked to see him represented as a cuckolded, bamboozled, out-of-touch old antiquarian. They were even more scandalized by his sanguine acceptance of the situation. Sir William ignored their complaints, perhaps because he thought them too concerned about whether he would leave his money to Emma. Lady Frances Harpur, Charles Greville's sister, visited Grosvenor Square with every resolution to disapprove, but admitted, "She appears much attached to Sir Wm & He is in much admiration & I believe She constitutes his Happiness." Lady Frances acknowledged that Emma was treating Sir William kindly, but had to “lament this Idolatory.”5 William's motives in forgiving the affair were complex. He owed Nelson more than £2,000 for expenses accrued in Naples, Palermo, and the journey home. Unable ever to pay it back, he hinted that Emma was responsible for the expenses by complaining in front of her lover that she gambled too much and would make herself a pauper. He was also genuinely fond of Nelson; furthermore, he knew their friendship gave him social consequence.

∗ The Prince had renounced Mrs. Fitzherbert to marry Caroline, but not his many mistresses or his reputation as a ladies' man.

† Broadside was a term for a cheap printed song or pamphlet, as well as a naval term describing the moment when a battleship fired all its guns (from one side) into the enemy. Partly a comment on the outpouring of satiric material the publicity-seeking pair inspired, it was a very rude joke about Nelson's virility.

Isaac Cruikshank's Smoking Attitudes. The Lord Mayor, Sir William, and Prime Minister Pitt enjoy tobacco together. Nelson and Emma are, as ever, utterly absorbed in each other.

Society commentators found Emma's behavior bewildering, although they hardly blinked when a man kept both mistress and wife (such as the setup at Devonshire House, where the duke lived with both his wife and Bess Foster, her friend and his mistress). Sir William excused his wife because he loved her, valued her companionship, and welcomed not having to be her sole support. And, as he knew, his only alternative was being alone. “A man of my age ought not to be attach'd to any worldly thing too much,” he wrote, “but certain it is the greatest attachment I have is the friendship and society of Lrd N. and my dear Emma.” He also felt a little guilty for asking her to sacrifice her desire for children. Because Emma was happy with Nelson, she was kinder and more solicitous to him than she had been for some time. He always defended his wife and told everyone how much he loved her. He could have sought to harm the relationship by telling Nelson about Emma Carew, but he never disclosed the secret.

The Nelsons and the Hamiltons spent most evenings together at parties, dinners, or theater trips. Fanny sat bolt upright with misery as she watched her husband in ecstasies over Emma's singing and dancing. At his box in Covent Garden, after a musical performance of The Mouth of the Nile, Nelson forced his wife to sit on his left, with Emma on his right, so that, as everybody saw, his mistress could help him eat when he wanted to enjoy a snack in the interval. As one newspaper put it, "Lady Hamilton sat on that side of Lord Nelson on which he is disarmed." The