England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [197]
Emma had not helped herself by being chronically disorganized through the chaos of moving between homes and taking frequent holidays. She was a compulsive hoarder, and by 1810, having lost her mother and her more reliable maids, she was drowning in a confusion of memorabilia and belongings. In 1811, Dr. Beatty was entreating her to return a letter from Nelson to a friend that he had sent her in 1806, but she never found it.1 She had failed to keep track of her letters—and now she was paying the penalty.
The sale of Nelson's letters would have brought her a sizable injection of cash, but her finances only declined from 1805 onward. If she had wanted to sell them, it would have made sense to do the deal via James Perry, but he was ignorant of the affair and the Herald, his rival paper, had the scoop. Unlike mistresses who had extorted money from aristocrats by threatening to publish their letters, Emma had never contemplated her love letters as some kind of pension. She expected the government would recompense her for her services.
As her last friends turned their backs on her and the newspapers feasted on the remnants of her reputation, she frantically beseeched Earl Nelson for the £500 a year pension from Bronte that Nelson had left her.2 When he reluctantly paid over £200, it was a drop in the ocean. Emma's health had declined rapidly. Suffering from crippling stomach pain, she was so weak, dizzy, and sick that she could not leave her bed. She believed she was dying and begged Joshua Smith and James Perry not to leave her to live out her last days in prison. But they knew that if they bailed her out, she would only be arrested once more at the behest of another creditor. Smith and Perry hatched a plan. As they told her, she could not be arrested in a foreign country and now that the war was over, travelers could visit France.
Smith and Perry sold her remaining valuables, including the silver dishes that had pleased Sir William Dillon, and raised further cash from other friends. Smith put up bail on June 22, and the next day, after a year living under the Rules of the King's Bench, Emma was free. Perry and Smith arranged for her and Horada to escape. Emma's discharge certificate is still in a box in the Public Record Office, along with those for hundreds of other debtors released in the same month. For the clerk writing out paper after paper, the poignant decline of Nelson's mistress was just one story of self-delusion and bad luck among many. She was anxious to leave the country immediately, but she risked being arrested again if she traveled on a normal cross-Channel ferry. To put her creditors off the scent, she and Horatia hid in England for a week as Perry and Smith worked frantically to arrange her escape. On July 1, Emma and her daughter boarded a small private boat from London Bridge, bound for Calais, on France's northern coast. She was exhilarated to be free but had only £50 in her purse.
CHAPTER 56
"A Chance I May Live"
After a miserable "three days sickeness at sea," Emma was relieved to be on dry land. "I managed so well with Horada alone that I was at Calais before any new writs could be issued out against me," she reported in delight. With Napoleon in exile on Elba, Calais was retrieving its prewar swing as one of the most fashionable and expensive resorts in Europe, crowded with pleasure seekers on their way to Paris or nearby spas. Emma hoped to prevail on some of those who had enjoyed her hospitality in the past and to regain her old glitter.
Emma knew only one way of raising her profile: to spend money. She took apartments in the expensive Dessein's Hotel, the only place for traveling luminaries. Aristocrats supped