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modern kitchen, suitable for extravagant entertaining, and develop a cubby into a proper cellar for their vintage wines. The bedrooms would be completely remodeled—fit to house the most eminent guests—and she planned to add a dressing room and modern water closet to the master bedroom, as well as put the eight servants' rooms in the attic to house her visitors' staff. Ambitious to make the house as light as possible, she resolved to add glass doors at the front, a long passage with glass doors opening into the lawn behind, and mirrored doors on the principal rooms. Large mirrors were a great luxury, and this was a crazily expensive innovation. Although the house was Nelson's, Emma used her husband's credit, as well as borrowing money herself, to pay for the extravagant alterations. She wished to turn Merton Place into a representation of her overwhelming love affair with Nelson and to cancel every trace of Fanny from his life.

The interior was soon transformed into a temple to kitsch. Along with mirrors and gold, Emma adorned it with Nelson memorabilia. Her lover instructed her to take from Piccadilly only the portrait of her and a painting of the Battle of the Nile, and to buy the rest. Remembering the chill dreariness of his home with Fanny, Emma adorned Merton Place with Nelson-themed curtains, tea sets, draperies, and hangings, as well as paintings of him, swords, and relics, such as pieces of his ships. Bursting with brand-new goods, souvenirs of Nelson, and tributes to his great career, her home was a snub to those who decreed that interior decor should be restrained. Giant A.'s festooned the walls, windows, crockery, and ornaments, as well as Emma's dresses. After spending her youth in Sir Harry's Uppark, which was covered wall to ceiling with pictures of the Fether-stonhaughs and their horses, she wanted to show that she owned Merton. Sixteen trunks of Emma's belongings and dresses were still floating around Europe (they ended up back in Naples), but she no longer needed her old things. One early visitor, Lord Minto, the ex-envoy to Vienna who had entertained them on their visit to the city, was struck dumb by the decoration. Minto, who came from a class who inherited houses ready-furnished, goggled: "Not only the rooms, but the whole house, staircase and all, are covered with nothing but pictures of her and him, of all sizes and sorts, and representations of his naval actions, coats of arms, pieces of plate in his honour, the flagstaff of L'Orient etc." He dubbed the house a "mere looking-glass to view himself all day."9

Lady Hamilton's taste in decoration set the tone for a nation deep in the throes of a Nelson cult. Thousands of women expressed their fervent admiration for the hero by stocking their homes with Nelson dinner plates, drawer pulls, plant pots, chests, and pictures. Fashion plates showed whole rooms decorated in the style of Nelson and offered suggestions on how to decorate windows to pay tribute to him—blue curtains with anchors, gold ties with anchors, and a red swagging. In decorating their homes "alia Nelson," Emma and the thousands of other Britons who followed her were displaying their political loyalties for all to see. Since there were no restaurants in which to entertain clients, friends, and family, nearly all social occasions from board meetings to job interviews, secret business coups and meetings with lawyers to firing employees, and christenings to marriage proposals were carried out in the home. The way in which a couple decorated their house directed the way in which they were perceived by friends, relations, colleagues, and clients. Led by Emma, British homes in the period of the Napoleonic Wars were a riot of brand-new glitz and color. Very far from the modern vision of the eighteenth century as the age of elegance and taste, homes were gaudy and cluttered, covered in bright clashing colors, the ornaments a mishmash of souvenirs and impulse buys.

Emma's taste chimed perfectly with the desire of those of the middle classes, many newly rich, to display their wealth and show themselves