England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [172]
Emma had changed, however. She remained as vivacious as ever, but losing her daughter had taken away some of her intense appetite for life. In believing that Nelson's homecoming would solve her spiraling debts, allay her worries, and chase away her inner pain, her expectations were impossibly high.
Nelson was nearly fifty, and everybody expected he would be retired from active service after one or two more battles. Emma looked forward to turning Paradise Merton into the home of a retired hero, heavily decorated after his victories. She thought she could tell him about the expense when he returned triumphant, dripping with medals, and fabulously rich.
Emma accompanied Nelson on every visit she could and sat in on all his interviews. A young Danish journalist, J. A. Andersen, left entranced, gushing praise for "elegant" Merton and the lobby packed with hundreds of Nelson paintings, objets d'art, and a bust. Although Nelson was standing at the entrance wearing a uniform emblazoned with different orders of knighthood, he only had eyes for his hostess. When "ushered into a magnificent apartment, where Lady Hamilton sat at a window. I at first scarcely noticed his Lordship."4
Nelson loved to watch his Emma, high queen of Paradise Merton, welcoming a dozen or more for dinner at his table. She was always performing. One visitor was startled when she pronounced in front of the whole table, "I would wish with all my heart to die in two hours, so I might be your wife for one." Nelson was similarly willing to play to his adoring audience, flirting outrageously with the ladies, cadging kisses, and telling them stories. Flirtatious, amoral Bess Foster was a frequent visitor to Merton and she simply adored Nelson. Her friends poked fun at her efforts to win him—when sharing a carriage away from Merton, another visitor, Lady Percival, declared that had Nelson kissed her good-bye but not kissed Bess, she should never "otherwise have ventured to have got into the same carriage." Dozens of guests joked about catfights over him. Nelson soaked up all the adulation, and Minto thought him "remarkably well and full of spirits."
The happy summer break was not to last. Within a fortnight of Nelson's return, Captain Blackwood arrived at the house to inform Nelson that Admiral Villeneuve and the French fleet had been detected at Cadiz. He drove to London to receive his orders from the Admiralty. He came away knowing he was to command the fleet in its assault against Villeneuve as soon as Victory was ready. By September 10, Nelson knew he would be leaving three days later. "Again he is obliged to go forth," sighed Emma. She arranged a ceremony to celebrate their relationship, probably at Merton Church. As one witness reported, "Nelson took Emma's hand and facing the priest, said, ‘Emma, I have taken the sacrament with you this day to prove to the world that our friendship is most pure and innocent, and of this I call God to witness.’ "5 Emma still dreamt of more. "I should like to say—how pretty it sounds—Emma Nelson," she wrote wistfully6
Nearly everyone who knew Nelson claimed that they saw him in the few days before he departed for Trafalgar. Most of them were lying, for he was almost permanently occupied with government business. He received a last-minute invitation from the Prince of Wales to visit him in London on the twelfth, and then visited Lord Castlereagh, the secretary for war. In the waiting room, he had his first and only meeting with Arthur Wellesley later Duke of Wellington, then a youngish major general recently arrived from India. The future conqueror of the French at Waterloo was decidedly unimpressed by the Nile hero's nervous chatter. Nelson returned home to dine with Lord Minto and some other neighbors. Emma tried hard to be happy and festive, but she could hardly eat or drink.
She knew that Nelson hated it when women cried, but she could not help it. On the morning of the thirteenth,