England's Mistress_ The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton - Kate Williams [95]
She begged him to ask for "anything I can do for you." "Come to Naples, and I will be your model, anything to induce you to come, that I may have an opportunity to show my gratitude to you." Emma offered her services and solicited his pity because she wanted him to keep her secrets now that she had new "innocence and happiness."9 Although there had been jokes about her life as a courtesan and a prostitute in Covent Garden, Romney was the only person who could confirm the rumors without impugning himself, and he could also provide information about her daughter. Emma wanted to sustain good relations with the English aristocracy, but she also had a bigger prize in view. She wanted to win Queen Maria Carolina.
CHAPTER 26
Loving Maria Carolina
Maria Carolina was the most influential queen in Europe. Although her room was adorned with a tapestry depicting Innocence and Ferdinand's room was bedecked with one portraying Conjugal Fidelity, her husband was a lascivious layabout and she was a sharp political operator. In aiming to supplant the Marchesa di San Marco, the queen's longtime friend who had controlled the court indirectly for years, Emma was aiming high.
Charismatic and ruthless Maria Carolina was ten years Emma's senior. She had arrived in Naples at 1768, at the age of fifteen, eighteen months younger than her royal bridegroom. Stately and mature beyond her years, she had been raised in the backbiting Austrian court, while her mother, Queen Maria Theresa, ruled the country. She grew up accustomed to seeing women obeyed. Maria Theresa demanded that her daughter be allowed a place on the Neapolitan state council after she gave birth to a son, and when she took her position in 1777, Maria Carolina quickly assumed power over her childish husband and the hidebound court. Napoleon mocked the monarchs of Europe as useless puppets but made an exception for her, praising her intelligence and vigorous appetite for work. She knew, as Sir William put it, that "unless she applied to the business which the King avoids, the whole state would fall into confusion," and she gave "the greatest part of her time in looking minutely into every paper."1 She had little help other than from John Acton, the stolid English general and de facto prime minister. Her aim was to ensure she controlled the distribution of patronage, favors, and positions in the Neapolitan court and that Europe continued as it always had: reigned over by her relations and offspring. It was the type of absolute monarchy Britain had endured in the Tudor period, in which ritual took the place of decision and the only way to achieve any influence in government was to flatter the king or queen.
The queen was no great beauty, but she embodied majesty in every sense of the word, awing courtiers with her terrifying grandeur. Her exquisitely jeweled silk dresses made the most of her abundant pale chestnut hair, brilliant blue eyes, and famously white and delicate hands. Underneath her glamour, she was often suffering. She went through eighteen pregnancies and was often sick with migraines, and endured the pain of what the surgeon decided was a benign tumor in her breast. Her children were weak, and many died in early childhood. Ferdinand hunted every day, leaving her alone, and she relied on her female confidantes for support. The wives of ambassadors and daughters of powerful families fought bitterly for the position of Maria Carolina's favored female friend. Sir William was close to the king and John Acton, but his relationship with the queen was uneasy and tainted with distrust—she hated the intimacy he gained with her husband through hunting with him.2 He encouraged his new wife to win the queen's favor. Catherine Hamilton had been reluctant to fawn over Maria Carolina, but Emma, adaptable as ever, jumped to refashion herself as a courtier.
Emma had a significant advantage over her rivals, for she was feminine and warmly emotional, as the queen