England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [167]
Emma had to pay an undertaker double the usual fee to keep quiet and remove the body from Clarges Street without attracting the attention of the press. The child's burial is not recorded either in her parish of St. George's Hanover Square or in the Marylebone parish of Mrs. Gibson. Little Emma lay in an unmarked grave, probably outside London, for church grounds were reserved for declared parishioners. Emma usually found some consolation in expressing her emotions extravagantly, but now she had to stifle her pain and mourn in silence. She tried to focus instead on Horatia's recovery, but her daughter was too weak to visit Clarges Street. In despair, she longed for Nelson to understand and sympathize. He received a bundle of her letters in April and replied as soon as he heard.
I opened—opened—found none but December and early January. I was in such an agitation! At last, I found one without a date, which thank God! told my poor heart that you was recovering, but that dear little Emma was no more! and that Horatia had been so very ill—it all together upset me. But it was just at bed time, and I had time to reflect and be thankful to God for sparing you and our dear Horatia. I am sure the loss of one—much more both—would have drove me mad.
Nelson had his work to occupy his thoughts, but Emma could not forget, and nothing dulled the pain. As she confessed to Sarah Nelson, "I have not been out these 3 weeks, so very ill I have been." Infant mortality was high in the early nineteenth century, but few women had to endure such sorrow with almost no support from friends and family. Although Nelson's siblings and her friends knew of her loss, she downplayed her distress to them, for she was terrified of anyone suggesting that she might lose her hold on Nelson's heart because she had failed to give him the large family he so wanted. At nearly forty, she knew she was unlikely to have another child. She yearned to travel out to visit him, but he discouraged her.
Always bad at being alone, Emma found it increasingly difficult to cope with the death of the baby without Nelson's passionate love or Sir William's supportive companionship. Previously, she had been less of a drinker and gambler than most high-society women. In the early months of 1804, she succumbed to binges of heavy drinking and eating, followed by days in bed, destroying her constitution with frantic dissipation. Society feted her, but in private she was racked with pain and misery. Crippled by fevers, sickness, stomachaches, and migraines, she took laudanum to ease the pain and to comfort her sleepless nights. She longed to be with Nelson again.
I am anxious and agitated to see him. The disappointment would kill me. I love him, I adore him, my mind and soul is now transported with the thought of that blessed ecstatic moment when I shall see him, embrace him. My love is no common love. It may be a sin to love I say it might have been a sin when I was anothers but I had merit then in trying to suppress it. I am now free and I must sin on and love him more than ever. It is a crime worth going to Hell for.7
CHAPTER 46
Money Is Trash
The thought of seeing him again agitates me and makes me mad with joy, then fear comes across me that he may not come." Emma had just received a bundle of Nelson's letters and she was reading fifty-four pages of news, protestations of love, and advice on improving their home, veering between "different feelings that elate and oppress me." "Your resemblance is never far from my mind," he wrote in one. "I hope very soon that I shall embrace the substantial part of you instead of the Ideal, that will I am sure give us both real pleasure and exquisite happiness.8 His romantic letters lifted her heart but others brought back the raw pain of losing her baby. Every woman in England wanted to be Lady Hamilton, but no one understood her difficulties. She was spending heavily to try to stifle her grief Urgently attempting to keep up appearances, all the