England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [164]
Emma threw herself into arranging the funeral and hung a hatchment depicting Sir William's armorial bearings outside 23 Piccadilly to inform everyone of his death. Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun visited and could hardly see the widow under her vast black veil. Nelson had moved from Emma's home to lodge nearby at 19 Piccadilly—with Greville, to the awkward dismay of both men—and Sarah Nelson came to assist Emma. Sir William was buried next to his first wife in the chapel of Slebech Castle in Pembrokeshire, their graves looking out to sea. Almost immediately after Sir William's death, Emma's creditors closed in. She begged Greville to tell her if he would pay her debts and how much he would give her of Sir William's estate, so that she could, in her words, "reduce her expences and establishment immediately." Greville instructed her to vacate 23 Piccadilly directly but gave no answer about the debts. For the sake of respectability, Emma needed her own residence separate from Merton, which was officially Nelson's home, so she took another house in an only slightly less expensive location, 11 Clarges Street, just off Piccadilly, still near Green Park and the Duchess of Devonshire's London home. The street was heavily bombed during the Second World War and number 11 was finally demolished in the early 1960s, but there are still some surviving examples like the graceful four-story house in which Emma once lived.
"I hope she will be left properly, but I doubt," Nelson wrote gloomily. Emma had previously complained to Sir William that the will left her to "poverty and distress," and she had no pleasant surprises when it was read. She received £300—hardly enough for three weeks of entertaining at Merton—and an £800 annuity, out of which £100 had to be given to Mrs. Cadogan. In a codicil, Sir William asked that when the Treasury paid out compensation for his losses, Emma should receive £450 to pay her debts. As the Morning Herald put it, Lady Hamilton "had not been left in independent circumstances."11 Emma's debts far exceeded £450 and the Treasury was unlikely to pay, even if Greville had been willing to press her claim. Sir William had kept to the usual eighteenth-century principle of wills: keeping estates intact. Charles Greville finally had what he had desired and for which he had, in effect, exchanged Emma and broken her heart so long ago. He also inherited the paintings of Emma that Sir William had not sold: Romney's Emma Hart in Morning Dress and the Bacchante that he had made Romney paint over and over until he thought it perfect enough to sway his uncle to adopt his lover as mistress.
Sir William's kindest act was to bequeath to Nelson an enamel version by Henry Bone of the portrait by Vigée-Lebrun of Emma as a bacchante. Pained to see erotic images of Emma on sale, he had sent Alexander Davi-son to buy the original from Christie's in 1801. Sir William was well aware that Nelson was wildly jealous of Greville and would detest the thought of Emma's ex-lover possessing such a portrait of her or even worse, selling it. Nelson treasured the enamel, and it now hangs on the walls of the sumptuous Wallace Collection in Manchester Square, London.
Charles was infuriated to find that his uncle had squandered his inheritance and amassed debts of over £5,000. As both executor and sole beneficiary, he was not about to give his old mistress any more money than she had already received. Quickly realizing that Greville was too angry about the debts to do much for her, and newly poor, since Sir William's pension from the government ceased at his death, Emma redoubled her efforts to extract money from the government for services rendered at Naples. It was usual to give a pension to the wife of an ambassador, but the government was proving reluctant to accept Emma's claim, still infuriated that the envoy and Nelson had been dragged