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By Root 1386 0

one contemporary, was “not a man to control any Inclination that he can gratify.” Twenty-six, tall, and athletic, he had a thin face, sandy hair, blue eyes, and a typically English complexion, made more florid by heavy drinking of wine and spirits. An only child, he soaked up attention from his friends as he had from his doting parents. The exercise book he used as a teenager is beautifully inscribed with signatures in large looping script, but the work is sporadic and soon tails off: he begins to write out some Anglo-Saxon history in French and manages to list all the counties of England, but gives up on a mathematics diagram and then discards the book altogether.3 Sir Harry was lazy, unreliable, and selfish, but he was tremendous fun, with a voracious appetite for late-night drinking, dogs, and gambling, and bags of charisma to charm the ladies. He expected to be forgiven his bad behavior—and he always was. While visiting Naples as part of his grand tour, he tempted the young Duke of Hamilton into a debauched spree. A genteel woman fell pregnant and Sir Harry fled, leaving Sir William Hamilton, the English ambassador to Naples and the duke's distant relation, to pay off the woman with £300, a "loan" Sir Harry would never repay4 The duke's disgruntled tutor described Sir Harry as "good natured, formal, effeminate, and obliging, without violent Passions or Ambition, a negative character who will rather be acted upon than act for himself." Solely motivated by the love of an easy life, fluff-headed Sir Harry avoided anyone who might challenge him in any way.

Despite being preoccupied chiefly with hunting and drinking, Sir Harry was MP for Portsmouth, a nearby town on the south coast, and the surrounding area. Like many of the younger MPs, he allied himself with the Whig set (against the Tory incumbents), a group who advocated wider representation in Parliament. He supported Charles James Fox, the de facto leader of the group. Most of the guests at Upparkwere Fox's supporters. Despite his jowly, slovenly appearance and aversion to baths, the gadabout Fox was wildly charismatic, with the appeal of a young Bill Clinton, and commanded fervent loyalty from his followers. So spoiled as a child that he was allowed to paddle in bowls of cream, as an adult he was addicted to gambling and fun. Fox and his friends focused their hopes on the accession to the throne of the Prince of Wales, for he supported them and promised to further their goals when king.5 To his exhilarated supporters, Fox was the young, vibrant leader of a radical Whig faction, the harbinger of a new social order based on ambition and riches rather than birth and blood.

In London, Emma could hardly see the sky for smog, but the Uppark windows surveyed the radiant South Downs. Deer, foxes, and rabbits thrived on the nine hundred acres of land, and thousands of sheep grazed the sloping grounds. The house recently suffered a severe fire, but it has been restored and it is still possible to appreciate how it would have appeared to Emma. Uppark was initially built by Ford Grey, Earl of Tankerville, notorious for seducing his young sister-in-law in 1682, a scandal exploited by Aphra Behn in Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister. The libertine earl dedicated his later life to home improvements, demolishing the original Tudor structure of the house and rebuilding it in a Queen Anne style.

Sir Harry's grandfather became rich through trade and marriage to a merchant's daughter, and he instructed his son, Matthew, to buy a grand house and a baronetcy. When Matthew bought Uppark from the Tankervilles in 1747, he used the money earned from factories and warehouses to create aristocratic splendor, then traveled to Italy to buy matching furniture. Sir Harry inherited Uppark on the death of his father in 1775, but he had just recently returned from Europe to enjoy his prize. Only three years before Emma arrived, Sir Harry's mother found he had spent more than £3,000 in three months. Their stately home in Northumberland was sold the following year, possibly to fund Harry's