England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [47]
Mary, only in her late thirties, was hardly older than Greville, but he relegated her to the position of unpaid housekeeper. Perhaps she felt guilty for abandoning Emma in her childhood, or maybe she simply saw that Emma was successful and wanted to hitch herself to her daughter's star. Although he was almost twice Emma's age and lacked Harry's looks, charisma, and wealth, Greville was still the second son of the Earl of Warwick. Emma had secured the protection of a scion of one of the country's most influential aristocratic families.
Charles Greville was born in May 1749 (on the same date Emma was christened sixteen years later). His father, Lord Brooke, was made Earl of Warwick in 1759 when Greville was ten. His mother, Elizabeth Hamilton, was the daughter of Lord Archibald and Lady Jane Hamilton, and the elder sister of Sir William Hamilton. After a stormy marriage, his parents divorced. Shy and awkward, Greville delighted in his collection of rare minerals and jewels and, like most men of his class, lived beyond his means, spending his money on expensive girls of the town. When he visited Naples, his interest in the local courtesans astonished his host, his uncle Sir William Hamilton, who was himself a renowned hedonist. Greville had secured a cheap deal in Emma: the toast of the Temple of Health, Kelly's, and Uppark, his own beautiful courtesan, without having to foot a payoff to Madam Kelly.
Greville needed to hunt down bargains. In 1773, his father died and left him merely £100. His elder brother gave him nothing, the allowance from his father of £200 a year ceased, and he had to subsist on only £500 a year, an inheritance from his mother. He took the seat for Warwick in the House of Commons and assumed his brother's position at the Board of Trade. Not a natural politician, he failed to join a faction in the Commons or network other positions or kickbacks at the Board, and consequently his income remained insufficient. Sir William Hamilton advised him to seek a rich wife, and Greville attempted to present himself as a man of substance to the papas of rich young women by building an expensive house in the new and fashionable Portman Square (a strategy so common that Tobias Smollett satirized it in his novel, Peregrine Pickle). Greville required a wife who could bring in around £20,000 per annum. But hundreds of younger and richer gentlemen were similarly ambitious. His passion for keeping mistresses did not enamor him to the fathers of genteel girls, many of whom had raised their daughters to expect love and companionship rather than the typically distant aristocratic marriage, in which a man gained children and social respectability from his wife but took a mistress for sexual gratification and affection.
By the time Greville met Emma, he had burned fingers. An impoverished second son for over ten years, he had failed to find a wife or a lucrative position at court and had wasted his money on women of the town. In 1780, he had gained a job with the Admiralty, which brought a rent-free house in King's Mews (now covered by Trafalgar Square), where he lived. The house at Portman Square still unsold, he rented a small house for Emma on a discreet side road off Edgware Row, the main street running through Paddington Green. Since he had Mrs. Cadogan to carry out the domestic drudgery, he only needed to appoint a few extra maids. Trapped in the country, Emma would not require clothes