England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [8]
The Kidds hardly had the money for candles, boots, or clothes. Sarah was disappointed in Mary for burdening them with yet another hungry mouth. Even if Henry Lyon had died of natural causes, there would have been gossip about the demise of a man so soon after marriage. News traveled fast across the Dee, and if the Hawarden villagers had picked up rumors that his death had been suspicious, they would have ostracized Emma and her mother. Emma claimed that her grandmother brought her up, but Sarah had a full-time job and a large family. It is more likely Emma was farmed out to neighbors and a cheap wet nurse, then later bundled in the back of Sarah's cart and quieted with sugared milk and a little gin. The aristocrats she later charmed were raised by armies of nannies, governesses, and tutors, but Emma had no one to stimulate her senses, structure her play, or teach her reading or sewing, and there was no institution to educate her. Fatherless children were usually the targets of bullies, and Emma probably struggled to make friends. She grew up hungry to be the center of attention.
Parents often control their children by telling them to behave or not behave like someone they know. "You'll turn out like your mother" rang in Emma's ears throughout her childhood. A daughter in Mary's position had to be a patient servant and accept insult, for many families would not allow a widow to return. Emma would have seen the Kidds and their neighbors humiliate and disparage her mother, and it would have been difficult for her not to align herself with them against Mary.
William Kidd left Ness for Hawarden not long after his troubled sister and niece. Never one to take responsibility for his actions, he probably claimed that gossip about Mary had driven him away. Initially, he and his one-year-old son, Samuel, crammed into the cottage, along with Mary and her baby and the other Kidd children, Anne, Sarah, Amy, Thomas, and John. William's first wife had died—possibly giving birth to another baby—and he married a Mary Pova in Hawarden in 1769, giving his profession as laborer. He had a daughter in the same year, and then Mary in 1771 and Thomas in 1773. Anne married one Richard Reynold in 1774. Until William and then Anne moved out, the house was full to bursting. It is possible that Sarah had to look after William's children after he married. Perhaps remembering the strain, the adult Emma kept in touch with some of her aunts' families but tried to avoid most of her other relations, particularly feckless William.
Full names were only infrequently used, as children were often called nicknames or a combination of their own and their father's names, as in Sarah o' John. Amy o' Lyon could soon become Emily, the name that she seems to have used as a young adult. From the very first, she was made aware that she was a Lyon in a family of Kidds.
CHAPTER 3
Growing Up Poor
Emma later claimed that she had lived in “very rough lodgings” in her youth. She was right: her home in Hawarden was a country slum, just like the hundreds of thousands that dotted Britain's struggling rural districts. Constructed from bricks made of mud mixed with straw, her new house was covered in damp thatch. Like the other cottages, it would have comprised two rooms, one that served as a living room and kitchen and another for sleeping. Windows were stuffed with rags or closed with cheap shutters. Sarah Kidd had