England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [78]
In summer the Naples aristocracy and the most fortunate English travelers fled the desiccating heat to Posillipo, to the west of the city. Sir William kept a summer villa on a rock jutting onto the Mediterranean, near the modern-day Palazzo Donna Anna, now a grand apartment block. Emma's summer home was surrounded with poplars and vines; trees bowed with figs, peaches, and nuts; and crimson cyclamen and honeysuckle.8 She spent hours gazing at the marvelous view of Vesuvius over the islands of the bay. "You have no idea of the beautes of it," she wrote to Greville. "From this little Paridise, after breakfast we vewd the lava running down 3 miles of Vesuvua and every now and then black clouds of smoak rising in to the air, had the most magnificent appearance in the world." She so loved the house that Sir William soon called it the Villa Emma for her.
At Posillipo, Emma had a lesson in singing or Italian, then rode on horseback about the country, and dined at three. In the afternoon she sailed and swam, using the bathing machine Sir William brought from England to protect her complexion, and she usually sang in the evening. They traveled to visit a duchess friend of Sir William on the island of Is-chia, packing the sailboats for the short trip with Sir William's entire band of musicians, her harpsichord, her music master, four servants, and her lady's maid, as well as trunks of luggage. When Sir William paid calls, he always took his musicians with him, so intent was he that Emma's singing should be heard.
Emma's greatest adventure was a ride up Vesuvius one evening, reaching the top by dark. She was bubbling with excitement beforehand, writing, "I fancy we shall have some very large eruption," noting how already "the lava runs down allmost to Porticea; the mountain looks beautiful. One part their is nothing but cascades of liquid fire, lava I mean, red hot, runs in to a deep cavern that is beautiful." The usual procedure was to ride as far as possible and then walk, with a sturdy Neapolitan guide fastening a rope to a girdle around the visitor and then pulling him or her along (it took five men to haul the fattest travelers to the summit, two in front and three pushing from behind).
Unlike most other English travelers, Emma neither complained about the climb nor expressed fear. The final ascent was, as a guidebook advised, "very fatiguing to ascend it; for you sink up to the knees, and go two steps backward for every three," for the ground was covered with loose ash and cinders.9 Boswell was more succinct: "on foot to Vesuvius. Monstrous mounting. Smoke; saw hardly anything."10 Only the bravest were able to admire the view from the top—one lady was too shocked by the "dreadful chasms, through which appear gulphs of liquid fire billowing sulphurous smoke, throwing up stones as large as clothes-presses."11
Sir William had compiled his studies of the volcano into a book that every English traveler consulted, so Emma was in excellent hands. After her climb, she wrote, "In my life I never saw so fine a sight. The lava runs a bout five mile down from the top… when we got up to the Hermitage there was the finest fountain of liquid fire falling down a liquid precipice & as it run down it sett fire to the trees and brush wood so that the mountain looked like one entire mountain of fire. We saw the lava surround the poor Hermits house & take possession of the chapel, not withstanding it was coverd with pictures of saints & other religios preservitaves against the fury of nature." Although less hackneyed than many other accounts, her description is exaggerated—the hut survived and the hermit continued to cook his famous omelettes for travelers, usually over the stream of lava.
Emma was enjoying herself, but she was also making plans. Resentful that guests left