England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [178]
The funeral cost the state £14,000. The Morning Herald derided the descent of Nelson's body into the crypt as a tasteless "stage trick," and the Morning Chronicle disdained the "meagre and monotonous music." Many judged the cost obscene, considering the dire poverty of so many injured veterans and sailors' widows and orphans.
More than anything, the funeral was an opportunity for hundreds to make a profit. Guests sold their invitations for a fortune, both before and after the event. The vergers at St. Paul's earned more than £40 a day allowing visitors to have a peep before the service, and accrued £300 a day after the funeral by charging a shilling to view the catafalque. London tradesmen sold special carriages, jewelry, and clothes to guests. Pie shop and tavern owners made massive takings from the crowds watching the procession. Thousands bought commemorative jewelry, prints, or boxes. Nelson relics—many fake—were changing hands for ridiculous prices. Emma, however, refused to sell any of her possessions. She was determined to be the keeper of Nelson's dignity and maintain his heroic reputation for the rest of her life. It was not going to be easy.
Nelson's death and his funeral fired a spectacular market in out-landishly expensive fashions aimed at women. Embroiderers worked overtime sewing Nelson's name onto drapery for tearful fine ladies to wear while they mourned the great hero. A sumptuous fashion plate in the February 1806 edition of Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine illustrated a "Trafalgar Dress," which was another version of Emma's habitual costume: a white satin gown trimmed with gold, silver, or lace along with a turban embroidered with "Nelson" and topped with feathers. According to the March edition, the Bronte hat and muff were ideal for the "higher order of fashionables."1 Trafalgar even became the name of an embroidery stitch—perhaps a cross formation—which proved so newfangled and difficult that even experienced needlewomen (including Jane Austen's sister-in-law) found it tricky. William Tassie, one of the foremost cameo makers of the day, worked feverishly to satisfy the demand for heads of Nelson for jewelers to set in rings and brooches. Shopkeepers could not stock up fast enough with black-edged, sentimental commemorative tablecloths, napkins, clocks, boxes, trunks, plant pots, and door handles. Emma was the heroine of most of the items. She starred in prints as chief mourner, and lockets, boxes, and other decorated items were painted with her figure, a dark-haired woman, weeping and dressed in white.
Magazine stories and novels exploiting Nelson's love life poured off the presses. In them, a virginal, beautiful heroine named Amelia, Amy, or Ellen was courted by a brave sea captain, Horace or Horatio, the affair often sponsored by older characters called Sir William and Lady Frances. In A Soldier's Friendship and A Sailor's Love (1805) by Anna Maria Porter, the lovely young musical heroine (who has a very common mother) is adopted by a Lady Frances and educated by her neighbor the aged Sir William Hereford, then courted by the handsome naval captain. In the second half of the book, another Nelson and Emma pair appears, but the hero may marry his beloved, Amelia, only after he meets a very rich widow with a young son in the West Indies, because she dies and leaves her money to him—an intriguing revision of Nelson's marriage.
Eliza Parsons's The Navy Lieutenant (1806) was the most blatant attempt to support Horatia and extol Nelson. Parsons's Henry Thompson, the "third son of a country curate" (Nelson was the fifth son, but two elder brothers died), goes to sea at eleven and is promoted to lieutenant, but although loved by his men, he offends his superiors and is retired on half pay. When he returns to sea, he meets a young woman, Ellen, who has suffered at the hands