England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [152]
"I see clearly, my dearest friend, you are on SALE," Nelson agonized to Emma. "I am almost mad to think of the iniquity of wanting you to associate with a set of whores, bawds, & unprincipled lyars." He was wretched at the thought of his darling exposed to the crowds at Christie's. "I am really miserable, I look at all your pictures, at your dear hair, I am ready to cry." He begged Davison to remove one portrait from the auction, the notorious Bacchante by Vigée-Lebrun, in which Emma reclines on a leopard-skin rug. Vigée-Lebrun's works sold for spectacular prices, particularly because she had painted few English subjects. Christie's demanded £300, but Nelson would have paid any sum. Exhilarated by his catch, Nelson wrote to Emma that if it "had cost me 300 drops of blood I would have given it with pleasure." "If you was single and I found you under a hedge, I would instantly marry you. Sir Wm has a treasure, and does he want to throw it away? That other chap [Greville] did throw away the most precious jewel that God Almighty ever set on this earth." The sudden disappearance of one of the most celebrated paintings set tongues wagging— and made Emma even more notorious. While Nelson was away, she cut her hair to match the latest Paris fashion for short hair. When she revealed her new look, a boyish cut curling around the ears that left the neck enticingly bare, women dashed to hairdressers to follow her lead.
A visit to 23 Piccadilly was the hottest ticket in town, particularly thanks to the patronage of the royal brothers and the Whig circle of the Duchess of Devonshire. Everyone expected luxurious entertainment from Britain's biggest celebrity. Nelson was gratified she was courting London's fashionable set and welcoming his family and friends, but he had no clue about the costs of being a grand hostess. Emma was borrowing heavily, but this time she was doing so against the prospect of Nelson's next win, receiving credit by presenting herself as his mistress.
On March 12, Nelson departed for the Baltic. As the Morning Herald joked, "A celebrntedfemale attitudinarian ever since our Northern Squadron has put to sea has thrown aside all the lighter airs, and positions of gaiety, confining her imitative talents to those of a graver cast. Cleopatra arrayed in mournful graces is now the model that she daily copies."7
"I burn all your dear letters because it is right for your sake," Nelson hinted to Emma. "I wish you would burn all mine. They can do no good and will do us both harm if any seizure of them, or the dropping even one of them would fill the mouths of the world."8 But Emma kept every letter, lovingly dwelling on his every word, although perhaps not when he wrote to her that he saw her crying, dressed in black, and then "I dreamt last night that I beat you with a stick on account of that fellow [the Prince of Wales] and then attempted to throw over your head a tub of Boiling hot water, you may believe I awoke in agony"9
The jealous hero soon had fighting to distract him. The government suspected the Danes might ally with the Tsar of Russia and the French, and sent Nelson to Copenhagen to look threatening and do some saber rattling. He ended up engaged in a full-scale attack on a country with which England was not officially at war. The Battle of Copenhagen was an equivocal victory and a public relations disaster. Nelson's enemies claimed he had proposed a truce because he could no longer fight and that he had in fact capitulated. Three hundred and fifty of his men were killed and a thousand injured. The English government advised citizens to spend their money not on celebratory flags but on donations to the many widows and orphans of the dead seamen.
Emma heard the news on April 15 and celebrated with a dinner party for a Neapolitan duke, the actor John Kemble, and various socialites. She entertained the guests