England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [190]
Merton remained unsold until Abraham Goldsmid's brother, Asner, agreed to buy it in April 1809. At the news that Lady Hamilton had come into money, more creditors pressed forward, and the money from the sale disappeared into their pockets. In the same month, Charles Greville died at his home in Paddington Green, just a few weeks short of his sixtieth birthday, beaten down after a year of sickness. On his walls were the Romney portraits he had inherited from Sir William, the sophisticated Emma Hart in Morning Dress and the glamorous Bacchante, in which Emma is draped in pink and gauze. After devoting his life to becoming Sir William's heir, he had never married or had children, and ended his days in the place where he had been young and happy with Emma, so many years before.
Emma mourned Greville deeply. The estate went to his brother, Robert, who refused to pay her annuity until he had sorted out his brother's affairs. The Duke of Queensberry gave Emma money through Goldsmid to bridge the gap, but on condition that she was not "informed of his interference on this occasion," guessing that Emma would have been distressed to find that the duke had helped her once again. A few months later, Greville's belongings were put up to auction. Sir William's fabulous library went on sale at Christie's on June 8 and 9 and raised more than £1,000. On June 10, all the paintings of Emma were sold, including Romney's St. Cecilia, and Cassandra, Thais, and Angelica Kauffman's wedding portrait as the Comic Muse.1
Meanwhile the Connors were making trouble. In her will of 1808, Emma complained, “I have the mother and six children to keep, all of them, except two, having turned out bad…. This family having by their extravagance almost ruined me, I have nothing to leave them.” When she heard they had been spreading rumors that Emma had been miserly, she responded by making Mrs. Connor sign a document acknowledging that “she and her children have been generously supported for many years by the bounty of Lady Hamilton, who has expended on her account, as she believes, little less than Two Thousand pounds,” as well as benefiting from Mrs. Cadogan's generous assistance.2
Weakened by the catalogue of deaths and debts, Mrs. Cadogan became very ill in 1809. She managed to struggle feebly through Christmas but died on January 14, 1810. Emma had lost an invaluable friend and essential support. Many had dismissed Mrs. Cadogan as no better than a servant or a brothel madam, but few women had a mother as strong as Emma's. Only in her early forties when she arrived in Naples, she contentedly took a backseat, intent on helping her daughter to shine. She nursed the royal family as they traveled to Sicily, and she withstood the exhausting journey to England. Her loyalty may have stemmed from her guilt at abandoning Emma as a child, but she soon became her daughter's greatest defender and staunchest ally.
“I have lost the best of Mothers,” Emma grieved. “My wounded Heart, my Comfort all buried with her. I can now not feel any pleasure but that of thinking and speaking of her.” She buried her at the church on Paddington Green six days after her death, possibly in one of the vaults that held many coffins below the church floor. Presumably she chose the area because Mrs. Cadogan had lived there happily with Emma and Gre-ville. Greville, Sir William, Nelson, and all those who had loved Mrs. Cadogan were dead, so it was a small funeral. Since the register notes her residence as in the parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, Mary had probably died in Emma's Bond Street apartment, and it would have cost substantially more for Mrs. Cadogan to be buried in the church near her old home. The funeral expenses inflated Emma's debts. Mary's death was also a practical disaster for her. Emma no longer knew what groceries