England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [75]
The Neapolitan court frittered away spring and autumn at the royal palace at Caserta and spent the rest of the time at Portici, near Pompeii, or on Capri, returning only to Naples for galas or urgent political business. Built to rival Versailles, the palace at Caserta was set in nearly three hundred acres of ornate parkland, with twelve hundred rooms, its own fullscale theater, and 171 steps up its lavish staircase. More than three thousand servants and courtiers awaited royal commands, and hundreds of dogs hurtled over the marble floors. The fountains crossing the lawns stemmed from a fake "Grande Cascata" that poured down from a height of seventy-eight feet. The nearby pond was so large that real ships were put on it to stage mock sea battles, and the playhouse for the royal children was the size of a large family home. Goethe found the palace excessively large and out of human scale, and other visitors were shocked by its florid mass of buildings. One thought the cascade looked like "linen hanging to dry."1
At Versailles, Marie-Antoinette built the Petit Trianon, a little palace surrounded by a Jardin Anglais. Not to be outdone, her sister Maria Carolina planned an even larger English Garden on fifty acres near the royal playhouse, and she asked Sir William to organize it for her.2 Joseph Banks recommended a British garden designer John Andrew Graefer to oversee the project, and he arrived with his family just after Emma. Maria Carolina had never visited England, but she desired the ultra-fashionable landscaped garden of paths, flower beds, hedges, and shrubs, and spent thousands of pounds on erecting an elaborate waterfall and a small valley, as well as nearly a million exotic plants that had to be imported and then watered in shifts by hundreds of servants. Now the most popular attraction in Caserta, the English Garden is a shady alternative to the exposed main grounds. At the time, its construction was a headache for Sir William, for the queen could not understand why it all seemed to be taking so long.
Nowadays, Italian families enjoy ice cream near the fountain and travel around the gardens on a special bus. Then, ordinary Neapolitans could not enter, and no foreigner could attend court functions before he or she had been presented to his or her own sovereign. Emma waited at Sir William's lodge until he returned from his hunting parties, covered in blood. As Sir William reported to the Foreign Office, the king's "Hunting and Shooting Parties are carried on with all the usual Ardour and Success."3 The royal army, gangs of peasants, and around four hundred dogs flushed out the animals, and Ferdinand and his chums killed on average forty or fifty of the "largest and fiercest boars" every day, as well as deer, hares, birds, foxes, wolves, and bears. Twelve dogs died or were wounded every day4
Caserta was then a straggling poor town, and Sir William's lodge was freezing in winter, sweltering in summer, and plagued by mosquitoes. Emma, knowing that Sir William had been disappointed in Catherine Hamilton's aversion to the house, was determined not to complain. Instead, she set about "fitting it up eleganter" with a music room. Sir William paid for the costly alterations and encouraged her to invite her singing master to stay.
Sir William also summoned friends to keep her company while he was at court in the evenings. John Graefer, struggling with his poor Italian and Maria Carolina's confusing demands, visited to play whist or cribbage, along with the German painter, Philip Hackert, then the court artist. Playing the role of respectable hostess, Emma