England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [148]
I have just got your letter, and I live again. DO NOT let the lyar come…. May God Blast him! Be firm!… Do not, I beseech you, risk being at home. Does Sir William want you to be a whore to the rascal? Forgive all my letter; you will see what I feel, and have felt. I have eat not a morsel, except a little rice, since yesterday morning, and till I know how this matter is gone off. But I feel confident of your resolution and thank you 1,000,000 of times. I write you a letter, which may be said as coming from me, if you like, I will endeavour to word it properly. Did you sit alone with the villain for a moment? No, I will not believe it! Oh, God! oh, God! keep my sences. Do not let the rascal in.
Later, when Greville invited her to attend a soiree with the prince at the house of another aristocrat, probably the Duke of Devonshire, Nelson thundered, "Tell the Duke that you will never go to the house," and he added, "Mr G must be a scoundrel; he treated you once ill enough, & cannot love you, or he would sooner die."
He hardly ate, abandoning himself to lurid fantasies. "I might be trusted with 50 virgins naked in a dark room," he raved. Nelson suspected that Sir William was using Emma as bait to encourage the prince's assistance in his efforts to gain a pension and some compensation for his losses. After all, if Sir William had turned a blind eye to Nelson's frantic courting of Emma in Palermo, he was hardly about to start playing the jealous husband about visits from the Prince of Wales.
Emma was deeply hurt by Nelson's accusations. She had been unfaithful to Sir William only once—with him. It was rumored that King George's madness was returning, and everybody believed the prince might soon be regent. All London wanted to invite him for dinner. Nelson was being naive: if Emma did manage to become friendly with the prince, it would also assist his position. Infuriated that he had called her a whore, Emma accused him of cruelty, and suggested that he was the one with the wandering eye. Nelson wrote, "I am alone with your letters, except the cruel one, that is burnt, and I have scratched out all the scolding words, and have read them 40 times over… again I in treat you never to scold me, for I have never deserved it from you, you know." But he had— Emma was his faithful lover, struggling to keep life together without him, and she did not deserve to be called "a whore to the rascal."
Emma was flattered by the prince's attentions. He courted women intensively. Lady Bess Foster reported that he writhed on the floor in front of her, sobbing and vowing eternal love, promising to break with all his other ladies and that she "should be his sole confidante, sole advisor— private or public."3 Most women responded to his pleas, flattered by such emotional attentions from the heir to the throne. Emma might sing for him, show him her Attitudes, flirt, and allow him to tease her that he had been her client at the Temple, but it went no further.
As 23 Piccadilly was bombarded with Nelson's letters, Sir William grew concerned about Emma. Then Nelson hit a new level of frenzy when he ranted, "Rather let the lowest wretch that walks the streets dine at his table than that unprincipled lyar…. Sir William never can admit him into his house, nor can any friend advise him to it unless they are determined on your hitherto unimpeached character being ruined. No modest woman would suffer it. He is permitted to visit only houses of notorious ill fame." Emma was devastated by his comparison of her house to one of "ill fame." Even the man who claimed to love her more than life seemed obsessed with her background. She wept so violently that she gave herself a migraine. It was the last straw for Sir William.
Whether Emma will be able to write to you today is a question, as she has got one of her terrible sick