• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1375 0

contraceptives by post from Madam Kelly or when she and Harry visited London, but perhaps she had not used them. Men hated the uncomfortable, ill-fitting condoms and complained that contraceptive sponges felt as big as apples. They also found the ritual of douching unromantic. Emma was not in a position to make any demands of Sir Harry. But perhaps—since she was careful never to fall pregnant again until she met Nelson—Emma had, even if only subconsciously, hoped that a child might encourage Sir Harry to formalize their arrangement, perhaps even to marry her. More eminent men than he had wed demimondaines. Sir Harry's reactions, however, could be hard to predict. Initially, Emma kept her suspicions about her condition a secret. In the autumn of 1781, Sir Harry made plans to return to London for the season and to attend Parliament. Feeling vulnerable, Emma probably promised to be sweet and uncomplaining, and in return Harry decided to make her his permanent mistress and to set her up in lodgings in London, presumably after paying a large release fee to Madam Kelly. Emma's efforts had been rewarded. She would never have to return to St. James. The Uppark records show that Fetherstonhaugh's estate included a number of large houses in the Strand, which rented for between £20 and £60 per half year.1 He may well have allocated Emma an apartment in one of these. There she would have to wait, looking out onto the bustling street that had been her first sight of London only a few years ago. Emma yearned for the city, but now that she was a kept mistress, she was permitted to see it only with Sir Harry or an elderly female chaperone.

Harry threw himself into his parliamentary social life and London nightlife and gradually his visits to her dwindled. Instead he dallied away time at Kelly's and other brothels. Emma did not know it, but he was in deep financial trouble. His mother, Lady Fetherstonhaugh, and the Up-park steward had recorded his refusal to disclose the extent of his debts in the accounts, and they were now demanding that he confess what he owed. He had failed to pay back a £3,000 loan to his mother for so long that she was charging him interest and he had to stave her off with £90.2 Emma, entirely unaware, waited for him every evening, dressed in the new outfits he had bought her, perfumed and carefully made up, despondent when he failed to appear. She relied on his visits to give her the money she needed for washing, food, clothes, and rent. Frustrated by her situation and in terrified denial about her pregnancy, she began to creep out to see Charles Greville and, it would seem from his letters, other old flames, too.

When Sir Harry did visit, Emma's clinginess lashed him to fury. Her pregnancy, now in its third month, made her tearful and panicky about his behavior. In September or October, she confessed the truth. Sir Harry was furious. It was not the first time he had been in trouble (it was rumored that he was sent on the grand tour after getting a village girl pregnant). He accused Emma of having affairs and trying to trap him, but the baby was his. Even if she had had other lovers, she would have used protection, and a woman tends to conceive with the man with whom she has intercourse most often. Refusing to listen to reason, Sir Harry reacted like a spoiled child. He saw her behavior as treachery: he'd paid out to release her from Kelly's and this was how she had rewarded him. Only sixteen, Emma was too frightened to pretend to be apologetic or humble, the only way to prompt his sympathy. Angrily, he told her that their relationship was over. She was to leave the lodgings, and he never wanted to see her again.

After she had sold the trinkets and some of the dresses Sir Harry had given her, Emma was once more nearly destitute. She knew that Kelly would not take her back, for Fetherstonhaugh was a valued customer. She could have returned to Dr. Graham in 1781 in his new Temple at Pall Mall, where he was promoting the therapeutic benefits of mud bathing. However, she needed more money than Graham could pay her,