England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [155]
"I am in silent distraction," wrote Nelson to Emma at the end of September, looking despondently around his cabin. "The four pictures of Lady Hn are hung up, but alas! I have lost the original…. How can I bear our separation?"6 His mood was so fragile after the debacle at Boulogne that Emma worried that he might be disappointed. Sir William aimed to buoy her confidence and wrote to Nelson to extol Merton as a superb bargain: "perfect retirement" only an hour from Hyde Park, requiring only cosmetic improvements and full of excellent furniture. "I never saw so many conveniences united in so small a compass." He promised Nelson he would "enjoy immediately." If all this was not enough, since the purchase, it had become public knowledge that Napoleon was unlikely to invade, so the house had increased in value by at least £1,000. With Sir William's help, Emma promoted herself to Nelson as the antithesis of Fanny: efficient, shrewd, and indomitable. "Well done farmer's wife!" the hero bubbled. "You will make us rich with your economy." Nelson the publicity lover paid her his ultimate compliment: he imagined her turned into a caricature to be sold in the print shops. He decided "the Beautiful Emma rowing the one-armed Admiral in a boat" around the grounds "should certainly be caricatured." But Emma would need all her energy to turn ramshackle Merton into a home for a hero.
Merton Place was built around the beginning of the eighteenth century. A heavy, symmetrical Queen Anne-style square, it was rather like a smaller, much cheaper version of Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh's Uppark. Similar homes dotted all of Britain, but Nelson's was bigger and far more chaotic. Off the large entrance hall, there was a dining room to the left and a drawing room to the right. Behind the drawing room were a breakfast room and a ramshackle room that Emma would transform into a library, then pantries and servants' quarters.7 Upstairs was the main drawing room, five large bedrooms, and a sizeable attic space. Divided by a road that is now Merton High Street were seventy acres of overgrown land. The offshoot of the River Wandle running through the grounds was, according to the anguished surveyor, a "broad ditch, which keeps the whole place damp."
Nelson described the house as the "farm," and he wanted the fashionable country life. Emma planned to turn the land around the house into expensive landscaped gardens, and use the rest as pasture for animals. She set about discussing plans with gardeners, buying shrubs and trees, filling the stream and ponds with fish, and populating the grounds with chubby pigs, poultry, and sheep. Sir William conjured a bucolic image of “Emma and her mother fitting up pig-sties and hen-coops, & already the Canal is enlivened with ducks & the cock is strutting with his hens about the walk.” Emma renamed the “ditch” the Nile and built an Italian bridge over it. She arranged to rent the nearby fields and granary for £55 per annum so that Nelson could control the land he saw from his window.8 Emma was soon growing vegetables and brewing beer, although their milk, cheese, and meat, as well as fruit, came from neighborhood farmers. Merton was not far from Marie-Antoinette's fantasy of playing shepherdess: it looked like a pretty farm, but it was neither self-sufficient nor economical. The rustic vision depended on Emma buying animals ready grown and putting fish in ponds into which they would not breed.
Emma planned to transform the house into a spectacular celebration of Nelson's genius, lavishly stuffed with mirrors, thick carpets, gold trimmings, and memorabilia. She obeyed Nelson's command to spare no expense and decided it should be an imposing double-fronted mansion atop a long sweep of drive and graceful gardens. They would build an enormous