England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [182]
Charlotte's exit did not reduce Emma's expenses. The Boltons and the Matchams deposited their adolescent daughters with her to educate, clothe, and introduce into society. Incensed that Earl Nelson had refused to give them anything, they inundated her with begging letters. Emma handed over more cash she did not have and implored the government and her famous friends for money on their behalf. Susanna Bolton thought that Emma's “affairs were drawing to a crisis” and encouraged her to focus on her own needs. “With or without the child, if you are well provided for, she can never want,” she pressed. “Depend on it she will marry well.”3 But she continued to ask for favors. She shied from begging for further help from the Prince of Wales, declaring, “You must deliver the message in your own name, we are not in the habit of sending & speaking to such great personages.” Since Nelson's will was published in the newspapers, every one of them should have realized that Emma had little to give, but it suited them to believe her act of being a wealthy woman. “I only wish you had fortune equal to your generosity,” Susannah sighed, but by then she had helped herself to a large amount of Emma's “fortune.”
Emma moved from Clarges Street to cheaper lodgings in 136 New Bond Street. But she could not relinquish the monument to Nelson's glory she had so lovingly created, and Merton creaked on, guzzling every penny from her purse. By February 1806, the unpaid bills had reached £1,300. Struggling to borrow and scrimp, Mrs. Cadogan had no spare money for her relations, so they began to blackmail Emma. Her older brother, feckless, hard-drinking William Kidd, was nearly seventy and wanted to live out the rest of his life in ease, thanks to his famous niece. He had plenty of ammunition: details about Emma's early adulthood and, most terrible of all, insinuations about the mysterious death of her father. Emma had paid him off before, but she could no longer meet his demands. He threatened to come and occupy Merton until she gave him the hundreds he required. Mrs. Cadogan vowed to bar the door against him, staunchly declaring that she would never let him under her roof, "never does he sleep in the house where I do."
Ann, the youngest daughter of Mrs. Cadogan's sister, Mrs. Connor, was proving equally troublesome. She felt she deserved some of her aunt's riches, since Emma had adopted her elder sisters, Cecilia and later Sarah, as nursery governesses on huge salaries, and Nelson had bought her brother, Charles, a commission in the navy. Ann whipped herself up into a state of furious resentment, soon so angry with her mother for holding her back (as she saw it) that she convinced herself she was not her parents' child. In the autumn, she wrote blackmailing notes, threatening to expose Lady Hamilton as her mother and, as Emma despaired, "persecuted me by her slander and falsehood."4 Emboldened to bully Emma for money because she had no male protector, Emma's family was battering at her door. After Emma Carew came on a short summer visit in late June, Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh sent £500 for the benefit of mother and daughter (perhaps as a bribe to ensure Emma kept his parentage a secret), but few others showed her any generosity.
By September 1806, it was clear that the government was ignoring Nelson's last request. "It seems that those that truly loved him are to be victims to hatred, jealousy and spite," Emma lamented. Sir William's old secretary, Francis Oliver, had solicited her help for his journalist friend James Harrison and his large family. She invited them to live at Merton and paid their expenses for at least six months while she employed Harrison to write a two-volume Life of Nelson. Published at the end of 1806, Harrison's Life ran rapturous on the virtuous nature of her affair with Nelson,