England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [196]
∗ Debtors were arrested in public and the officers chose a place the accused frequented regularly, usually church.
Emma invited everyone she could think of to dinner. One guest, Sir William Dillon, an admiral who had known Nelson, remarked afterward that he had not seen her for three years, but it did not strike him that she needed his help. He was amazed to find that his fellow guest was the Duke of Sussex with his mistress, Mrs. Buggin (Lady Cecilia Letitia Buggin, daughter of the Earl of Arran and later his second wife), and startled by the rich silver dishes on the table and the luxurious food. Dillon gaped at the main course, a giant goose—without a servant to carve it. Emma had no knife, and she prevailed upon him to pull it apart with his fingers, which he did, doling out the portions between the illustrious guests, to much hilarity. Dillon trotted home, full of good food and satisfied "after a very sociable and agreeable entertainment." In the midst of despair, Emma could still retrieve her old vivaciousness to charm her guests. Despite her efforts, she spent the freezing winter as she had the previous one, in Temple Place. Still, as she knew, most of her friends were indignant on her behalf and she had the sympathy of the public. All that was about to change.
CHAPTER 55
Reading the Herald
To my great surprise," Emma wrote to James Perry on April 22, 1814, "I saw yesterday in the Herald that Lord Nelson's letters to me were published. I have not seen the book, but I give you my honour that I know nothing of these letters. I have been now nine months in Temple Place, & allmost all the time I have been very ill with a bilious complaint, brought on by fretting and anxiety, & lately I have kept my bed for nearly twelve weeks." Perry believed her protestations of innocence, but few others were so generous. The most sensational book to be published in decades, the Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton scandalized the nation.
The publishers chose the perfect time. Ten days before, the war with France had been declared over. London lit up in celebration at the news that Napoleon had abdicated and retreated to exile on the island of Elba. Fireworks exploded every night. Central London was so crowded that the St. James cows dashed in a panic out of Green Park. The city was crammed with visitors with money to burn—and everybody was buying the Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton.
Nelson's adoring populace lapped up the book, shocked by his complaints about the Admiralty, greedily appalled by his jealousy of the Prince of Wales, and outraged that he had wanted to dally with Emma rather than carry out his duty at sea. Almost overnight, the image of Emma in the public imagination as the adoring mistress of Nelson and the mother of his child was shattered. If she had ever had any chance of a pension, the book crushed it for good. The prince—even though he had sold the king's fraught letters to him to three newspapers in 1803—seized the excuse to reject her petitions. The government followed suit. The royal brothers, aristocrats, and Nelson's family welcomed the opportunity to turn their backs on her.
Emma implored James Perry to defend her, declaring she had once left her papers in a case with a friend she thought she "cou'd depend on." Emma and Horatia believed the culprit was James Harrison, who had stayed in her house while working on his Life of Nelson. She had allowed him to look at her