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By Root 1434 0

the role of an ambassador but denied the name and the salary because the British government considered the kingdom irrelevant to English trading and military interests and dismissed it as a close ally of Spain. Hamilton devoted himself to childish King Ferdinand and demanding Queen Maria Carolina in order to aggrandize his own position by developing closer ties between England and Naples. A natural hedonist, he flourished in the Neapolitan court, where decisions were made on the hunting field and in the ballroom. The only way to infiltrate the inner circle was by spending huge amounts of cash, and so it was fortunate that he had married a splendidly wealthy Welsh heiress, Catherine Barlow. Thanks to the peasants planting wheat on her Pembrokeshire estates, he spent unrestrainedly on sumptuous horses and carriages, hosted lavish dinners, and ordered fittingly grand outfits of gold, silver, and silk.1 As the fashion for the grand tour expanded, the English flocked to Naples, attracted by its party-mad reputation, and Sir William expended vast sums on their accommodation and entertainment. Since the recent discovery of the ruined classical city of Pompeii, he had also earned a reputation as one of the biggest collectors in Italy, spending thousands of Catherine's pounds on statues, artifacts, vases, and art.

Emma's new friend had grown up in the royal court with the future King George III. His mother, Lady Jane Hamilton, had been the mistress of Frederick, Prince of Wales, from about 1736 until 1745. Frederick appointed her his wife's lady of the bedchamber. Then, dizzy with lust, he also made her the queen's mistress of the robes—not even the poor queen's clothes were free from her rival's claws. Lady Jane possessed the highest position open to a woman in the royal household and held absolute sway over Frederick and his family throughout her son's early life. Sir William called King George his foster brother, boasting that "my Mother reared us and the same nurse suckled us."2 With this he hinted what many suspected: he was the Prince of Wales's son. Archibald Hamilton, fifty-eight at his birth, was neglected by Jane and, according to the wickedly accurate Lord Hervey, long reduced to the "passive character his wife and the Prince had graciously allotted him."3 It may have been that Lady Jane achieved such spectacular influence over Frederick because William was his child.

Sir William mixed with the highest aristocrats in England—and some of London's most colorful men. He was a focal member of the Society of Dilettanti, a circle of genteel libertines fascinated by foreign sexual cults, led by Richard Payne Knight, a sensualist masquerading as a scholar. A more levelheaded friend was Sir Joseph Banks, celebrated naturalist and president of the Royal Society of Science. Sir William was attracted to wealthy eccentrics, and one of his closest friends was his second cousin William Beckford, novelist, collector, and the richest man in England, famous for his sybaritic lifestyle and profligate spending. Greville fitted in well with his uncle's raffish, cultured set. When Greville had visited Naples at the age of twenty, Sir William had been pleasantly surprised to find he was a man after his own heart, interested in both art and demimondaines. They were immediately friends, and Greville was soon asking for money and favors.

Although he made extravagant use of her wealth, Sir William neglected Catherine. Quiet and accomplished, she reviled the shallow Neapolitans along with their boorish king and hypocritical queen. Sir William admired his wife's musical talents and prized her spotless reputation, but he found her company insipid and he was irritated by her frequent bouts of low spirits and illness. Dejected by Hamilton's boundless enthusiasm for everything but her, Catherine found comfort in a Neapolitan orphan she adopted as a daughter. After the child's death, probably from malaria, in 1775, she suffered further depression and her health deteriorated. In May 1782, Sir William realized that the city he loved had wrecked "Lady