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By Root 1397 0

with anticipation, declaring her husband wanted to place a bet on the sum and “Anne dances; Tom says he is as nervous as my Lady to hear the contents… we are full of hopes.” But Queensbury died in a bed strewn with begging letters from famous beauties, and he had already been more than generous to Emma. He left her only £500 a year. His family immediately contested his will, and she never received a shilling. Shrugging that the duke was always “a little capricious throughout,” Sir Harry consoled her by suggesting the Prince of Wales might soon ascend the throne.

After attacks of sickness and stomach pain, Emma was losing weight. Susanna Bolton worried, “I should be sorry to see you grow any thinner than you were when I last saw you in Town.” Under increasing pressure, Emma had begun to pledge future payments of her annuity in return for amounts of ready cash.

Everyone was trying to extract money before they made the final break with Emma. Susanna besieged Emma with letters on behalf of herself, "invalids" in her family, and distant relations, such as Bob Nelson, who needed £100. Dr. Beatty still hoped to become surgeon to the Prince of Wales. "I am all anxiety for the result of your friendly exertions on my behalf, which alone can bring me near you, and my prayers are offered up daily, even hourly, for the speedy success of your endeavours."7

Since her credit was bad, Emma had to pay huge interest rates for loans and high prices for even basic goods and services. Sarah Connor was shocked to find her cousin had paid a landlady astronomical sums for accommodation and food, even when she hardly occupied the rooms.8 By 1810, there was no money to pay the bread bill, let alone two expensive governesses for Horatia. An argument over a foreign visitor—possibly Melesina Trench—who declared that Mrs. Cadogan had been a prostitute, was finally an excuse to let Sarah go. Begging Emma to change her mind, Sarah wrote she had been the "happiest Girl in the World in living with you" and promised "everything in my power to serve and please you," claiming she would love her "until the last hour of my existance."9 Soon afterward Emma asked Cecilia to leave. She could no longer afford her high salary. Emma also tried to dismiss Fatima, but her old maid was unemployable and had to be boarded at a workhouse for ten shillings a week. There she suffered a breakdown and had to be taken by Cribb the gardener to St. Luke's madhouse.

Emma was drifting between cheap lodgings in Piccadilly and Bond Street. Although she was squandering her money, it was impossible for her to flee to the country to live in quiet retirement. With Queensberry and Goldsmid dead, she had realized she needed a protector for herself and Horatia, and she was trying to encourage herself to hunt for a rich husband. Emma's love for Nelson ruined her twice over: she ran up debts improving his house and supporting his relations, and she was too faithful to his memory to find another husband within a few years of his death. Unless they were elderly or very rich, all women began hunting for a second husband soon after the death of the first. In trying to live independently, Emma had made a fatal mistake.

An eager reply from one of the men she tried to fascinate survives. Her invitation must have conjured a heavenly scenario, for it set Sir Richard Puleston chomping at the bit to pay tribute to her:

Many thousand thanks for your kind invitation to your fairy palace in Bond Street, where I shall be most happy to pay my earliest respects when I get to town…. How soon do you return there? How delighted I shall be next year to escort you & ramble with you over your almost native mountains, & to tell you, which is true, that we have met before.

Daringly, she invited Sir Puleston to come to her house alone. Her “fairy palace” would have been expensive: lovely decorations, candles, food, and wines. Desperate to make him her protector, she even offered to accompany him on a tour to Sicily.

Beckford expressed his pleasure that “you are recovering a little of those charming spirits