England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [77]
Sir William had persuaded Vigée-Lebrun to meet Emma by extolling her ability to assume different poses. Marie-Antoinette's portraitist was as eager as Romney had been for a model willing to portray moods. She wrote, "I painted Mme Hart as a bacchante, reclining by the side of the sea holding a cup in her hand. She had a beautiful, very lively face and voluminous tresses of fine chestnut, which could cover her body completely, so she looked wonderful." The most exotic portrait of Emma ever produced, her Bacchante of Emma reclining on a leopard-skin rug, was one of Sir William's favorites, and he hung it in a central place in his magnificent reception rooms.
Vigée-Lebrun invited duchesses and princesses to watch Emma sit while he painted her as a sibyl, swathing her head in a turban.6 The Sibyl made painter and subject famous. Vigée-Lebrun sold Sir William one copy, auctioned others off to local grandees, and then took the painting on show around Europe, displaying it in Italy, Vienna, Russia, and Germany, keen to prove she could produce historical paintings as well as portraiture. Women demanded to be portrayed similarly to Emma in the Sibyl, and aristocrats in every city begged for copies. Emma, as the sibyl, confirmed the turban as one of the most modish trends, soon satirized by Jane Austen as a fashion for self-obsessed young women.
In an effort to improve her minimal education, she browsed Sir William's extensive library in English and, making rapid progress with her tutor, soon began to try to read in Italian. She tried hard to retain a light, engaging manner with the daunting nobles who visited the palazzo. "Her behaviour," Sir William wrote, "is such as has acquired her many sensible admirers"; he declared that she had won over the city's male aristocrats, and even "the female nobility, with the Queen at their head, shew her every distant civility." Eager to see her dress in the opulent style befitting Neapolitan high society, he bought her satin and silk, lace from Paris, and feathers. He also gave her £200 a year for clothes, although she sent some of it secretly to her uncle, William Kidd, who was already demanding money. She found an excellent hairdresser, requested her hats and dresses from Greville, and prepared her outfits days in advance. To attend a royal gala at the opera house, she "had the finest dress made upon purpose as I had a box near the K & Queen. My gown was purple sattin, wite sattin petticoat trimmd with crape & spangles, my cap lovely from Paris, all wite fethers."
When Emma visited the ostentatious San Carlo Opera adjacent to the palace in Naples, she saw the stardom she desired. The house was a brilliant spectacle, dazzling with glasses, mirrors, and thousands of candles. At the back of the theater, the king and queen were splendidly arrayed in their royal box (now reserved for the Italian prime minister). Every box contained a mirror, so the audience could follow the king's signs of appreciation. The opera was a social occasion for the benefit of a small group of nobles, and they behaved in the same way as we do when watching TV with friends—they chattered, ate, and drank constantly, stopping only at particularly dramatic moments.7 The same opera would play for weeks in the expectation that the audience would talk through it but attend most nights. Performances could last up to five hours, and although the audience gossiped, they were still acutely sensitive to the slightest change in repertoire or a mistake. Singers able to produce impeccable solos were highly feted.
Emma thought Greville had forgotten her. He had not. As he confessed to Romney, the "separation from the original of the Spinstress has not been indifferent to me, and I am but reconciled with it, from knowing that the beneficial consequences of acquirements