Bride of Dreams, page 15
Amanda was always grateful for these crumbs of information about the fleet, but doubtful of the motive behind them. Did Lady Hamilton intend to comfort or to tease her? She could never be sure, but in fact the comfort of knowing that John was still alive, still on board the Agamemnon, far outweighed her embarrassment at the Ambassadress's free handling of the subject.
The thing she found so hard to bear was that no word ever came directly from John himself. At first, she had consoled herself with the thought that it was his solicitude on her account that prevented him from embarking on a correspondence with her immediately after the scandal in which they had been involved. But when months and then years slipped by and still she had no word from him, she began to fear that her husband's taunts might be well-grounded. John must scorn her for having yielded to him and was making it clear that he intended to have nothing more to do with her. It was a bitter thought, but what else could account for his not having even written to congratulate her on the birth of a child he must surely half suspect to be his?
If it had not been for little Peter those would have been wretched years for Amanda, but it was impossible to be quite in despair when every day was variegated by some new instance of his progress. Amanda had never known a baby well before, and scandalized friends and servants alike by the amount she insisted on doing, herself, for her son. Only Julia delighted her by agreeing that playing with little Peter was an infinitely more satisfying pastime than boring oneself at dress parties or going to concerts when the music was drowned with chatter. For Julia, who had begun by suffering acutely because her beloved cousin was immured in Sant' Elmo was now beginning, as the slow years passed and still there was no sign of his or his friends' release, to suffer because she did not suffer enough.
This did not surprise Amanda, who had always disliked Antonio Vespucci and suspected him of paying his court to his pretty cousin simply because she was the heiress to the family estates, but it would have been heartless to suggest this to Julia. She had been shaken enough by the discovery that his revolutionary sentiments were so much more than mere talk. It was impossible ever for her altogether to sympathize with someone who had planned the cold-blooded murder not only of the King and Queen, but of all their children as well. Besides, Julia like Amanda had heard enough stories, now, from the Neapolitans who had returned from Toulon, of the massacre with which the French revolutionaries had celebrated its recapture . . . But then, there were other stories, equally distressing, about the sufferings of the young aristocrats in Sant' Elmo . . . The world had gone mad, it seemed . . . Whichever way you looked, there was nothing but suffering and wickedness. The two girls tacitly agreed not to talk – to try not even to think of politics, and distracted themselves by vying with each other in their devotion to little Peter. Their other comfort was in the idea of England. There, Amanda had convinced Julia, was the happy place to live. There was a monarchy without tyranny, a liberty without license. If only they could get there . . . Julia had now come round to the idea that her best hope of happiness in life lay in reconciliation with her English relations and had swallowed her pride and written them a friendly letter with that end in view. For though she had been effectively cured of her republican leanings, she remained deeply suspect with the Neapolitan court. Her existence in Naples could never be anything but precarious, and Amanda, who knew that she had narrowly escaped arrest with her cousin and his friends, lived in constant dread that a new Jacobin alarm might send her too to prison.
But as the years passed and little Peter learned first to crawl and then to fall and then, at last, to walk, their chances of getting to England seemed increasingly slender. Julia had received no answer from her relations there and had turned bitterly against them – and England – as a result. And, besides, the news went from bad to worse. The young Lieutenant Bonaparte who had distinguished himself at Toulon had risen now to command the French army of Italy and lead it to victory there. In the north, the French had conquered Holland and Amanda's letters from her mother told of England trembling in fear of invasion. In Europe, morale dwindled and, one by one, the Allied powers began to make their peace with the all-conquering French. Even in Naples, there were rumours of peace feelers. Bonaparte's lightning campaign through the north of Italy had caused Neapolitan loyalists to shake in their shoes, while the Jacobin party – those of them who were not in prison – were coming more and more out in the open again. The English colony was swollen by a steady stream of refugees from the north of Italy, each with a new tale of French atrocity, or of young Bonaparte's diabolical skill as a general. Amanda, increasingly anxious for little Peter's safety, consoled herself with the thought that if Bonaparte should invade Naples, the English Navy was pledged to evacuate its British residents.
Calling, one hot September morning, at the Palazzo Sessa to make a formal enquiry after Lady Hamilton, who had been mildly indisposed for a few days, Amanda was surprised to be summoned upstairs to her presence. She found her reclining à la Recamier on a chaise longue, every inch the invalid, in a swansdown-trimmed négligé of a blue that matched her famous eyes. Greeting her, Amanda could not help a side-thought that if the lovely Emma continued to indulge her passion for good food and champagne it would soon be impossible to describe her ample curves as anything but corpulent. The beautiful girl who had entranced her three years before was gradually disappearing under layer upon layer of fat.
But the charm was as compelling as ever, even if some of the beauty's mannerisms might seem a little girlish for her girth. She greeted Amanda with her usual endearing warmth: "You are come in the very nick of time," she went on. "I was boring myself to distraction here. Sir William is gone to Caserta, to pay his respects to His Majesty, my mother is busy about her housekeeping, and I have not had a soul to talk to this livelong day. But tell me, love, what is the news in town? I am got, you know, quite against my will, into politics and must have some news for the letter I should write to my adorable Queen. She sends, you know, daily, to ask after my health and is always eager for the latest news."
"Yes," said Amanda dryly, "I am sure she is. But surely no one is better informed than she about what goes on in her dominions."
"Oh, pshaw," said the beauty, "have you been listening to the gossip about my beloved Queen too? You will tell me next that you believe all the lies that wicked Frenchman told of her in his vile book. As for the talk of her sala oscura it is all malicious gossip, I promise you, arisen from the fact that she is gracious enough to see some of her closest friends, such as myself, with something less than the usual court ceremony. The rest is nothing but wicked slander by those filthy Jacobins."
"Well," said Amanda mildly, "most of them are in no case to slander anyone. They hardly have much opportunity in Sant' Elmo. But tell me," it was time to change this dangerous subject, "is there, do you think, any truth in the rumours that Naples is about to make peace with France?"
"Not the slightest, and you may tell the world that I, Emma Hamilton, said so. My adorable Queen would no more make her peace with that canaille than—" she paused, at a loss for a parallel and was saved, in mid-sentence, by the appearance of a page-boy with a letter on a silver salver. Lady Hamilton snatched it eagerly. "From the Queen herself," she said. "Now you will see. Excuse me, love, while I read it; Her Majesty's words are too precious to wait on mere chatter."
Amanda smiled and was silent. It was strange to think that this opulent creature who corresponded with a Queen had once been a servant-girl – and worse. It was a far cry from the days when Amy Lyon had been the prime attraction in Dr Graham's Temple of Hymen with its celestial Bed and Electrical Throne. Looking up suddenly, the beauty must have caught some betraying glint of expression in her guest's face, for though Lady Hamilton's grammar might still, sometimes, fail, her instinct for people seldom did.
"You are thinking me a strange correspondent for a Queen, are you not, love?" she said. "Well, it is true enough, but at least I am a more faithful one than most of the rascals and whores who surround my beloved Queen. All I wish is to serve her: after all, thanks to my dear Sir William, I have everything my heart could desire, and, of course, in serving her," her voice rose, "I serve my husband, and my country too. And now," with one of her lightning changes of mood to the practical, "you must excuse me, love. This is news of the highest importance. I must send at once to Sir William. But stay – I know you for discretion itself; I will not be so brutal as to keep the news from you – though it is bad enough in all conscience. See, Her Majesty encloses a letter from the King of Spain to his brother, her husband. Sir William will decipher it, but the Queen tells me enough . . . Spain is to join France and declare war on England: now England and Naples face the tyrant alone."
She had sprung up from her chaise longue, her indisposition forgotten, and now struck a heroic pose worthy of Britannia herself.
"Good God!" Amanda was appalled at this piece of news and could not, like Lady Hamilton, distract herself by dramatizing her own reaction to it. "Do you not think that now the Court of Naples will feel itself compelled to make peace with France?"
"Never," said Lady Hamilton. "I know my beloved Queen better than that. Do you not know of her vows of vengeance for her sister's death? Do you not know that she has her picture always beside her, with a cry for vengeance inscribed on it? No, no, she'll never make peace; she has told Sir William so a thousand times."
Amanda was not convinced, but thought it best to change the subject. "And how is Sir William?" she asked.
"Well enough," said the beauty carelessly. "He has never, you know, enjoyed robust health since his last illness. He told me then that he would surely have died if it had not been for my devoted nursing. But," she paused, "he is not so young as he was."
It was true. Amanda had noticed, of late, that the spry and gallant Ambassador was no longer so active as he had been. A yellowish tinge to his cheek, and an occasional tremor in the graceful hand hinted at the inevitable toll of years of hard living. Amanda was not the only one to wonder how the robust Ambassadress bore this diminution of vigour in her husband.
Once again, Lady Hamilton seemed to read her thoughts: "But fonder of me than ever," she went on. "And says I make all his happiness, as, indeed, he is mine."
Did it ring quite true? Amanda was not sure, then chid herself for reading the bitterness of her own marriage – also to a much older man – into Lady Hamilton's. In a lax and gossiping society, Lady Hamilton, for all her dubious past, had kept remarkably clear of scandal. Amanda certainly, she told herself, had no right to think ill of her. She rose to take her leave and readily gave the promise of deepest secrecy over the news that was demanded of her.
Events were to prove that Amanda had been right, and Lady Hamilton, for all her boasted intimacy with the Queen, wrong in her predictions. By November, Naples had made peace with France and this, combined with Spain's declaration of war compelled the British Navy to evacuate the Mediterranean. Those were bitter days for the British in Naples, and most particularly for Amanda. Once more, Jacobins and Frenchmen flaunted their uniform of short hair and scarlet waistcoats in the narrow Neapolitan streets and once more Amanda's nerves were all at a stretch for news of John. Captain Nelson was a full commodore now, and had shifted his broad pennant to the Captain, but he had taken several of his junior officers with him, John perhaps among them. Nelson was busy, much against his will, in the unhappy task of evacuating British troops and nationals from the Mediterranean. Obeying his orders, he wrote angrily: 'They at home do not know what this Fleet is capable of performing; anything and everything . . . I lament our present orders in sackcloth and ashes . . .'
But the evacuation of the Mediterranean continued. Nelson, Amanda presently learned, had shifted his flag to La Minerve and was occupied with the evacuation of Elba. Surely he would come to Naples before he left the Mediterranean entirely? Even under the galling terms of the Neapolitan peace with France, four English men-of-war at a time were allowed to enter the famous bay.
Christmas came, and instead of La Minerve, the Inconstant, Captain Thomas Fremantle, sailed into the bay. He, too, had been busy with the evacuation of British nationals from the Italian cities threatened by the rapid advance of the French armies, and he brought with him an English family called Wynne, whom he had rescued first from Leghorn and then from Elba. Lady Hamilton, hurrying in from Caserta at the news of an English ship in harbour, soon called on Amanda with romantic news. Captain Fremantle and the Wynnes' daughter Betsy were to make a match of it, and she, of course, was to arrange it all. Prince Augustus would give the bride away; her beloved Queen would take care of the little difficulty arising from the fact of the bride's being a Roman Catholic. And Amanda must come to the ball with which she proposed to celebrate the wedding.
Amanda did so and was immensely taken with vivacious Betsy Wynne – or rather Fremantle, who seemed, however, incredibly young to be setting up housekeeping on a man-of-war. She admitted to nineteen, her new husband teased her with being at least three years older, but Amanda could hardly believe her even nineteen. As for Fremantle, he won her heart, without knowing it, by some warm words about John Purvis, who was, it seemed, still with Nelson. "A coming man, that Purvis," Fremantle had concluded, and been amazed at the warmth with which this pretty young Lady Meynel urged him and his bride to use her house as their own while they remained in Naples. It was a bitter disappointment to Amanda when the Inconstant sailed two days later. She had hoped for so much more news about John.
Betsy Fremantle and Amanda had struck up an immediate friendship, and agreed to correspond, but Betsy's rare letters, when they came, brought small cheer for Amanda. The little details of her life on board ship Amanda found hard to bear . . . So, if only things had been different, might she be living . . . It might be John who was giving up snuff for her sake, installing her harpsichord, or fitting out two little cabins for them below decks. And as Betsy's letters came from further away, Amanda's jealousy increased. She wrote from Gibraltar and then from off Cadiz, where the Inconstant had joined the British fleet under Sir John Jervis, who treated her, she said with his usual gallantry. There, too, they had met her husband's friend, Captain Nelson, now covered with glory by his independent action at the Battle of Cape St Vincent. Luckily, said Betsy, Sir John was a generous enough man so that he had taken no offence at having his orders disobeyed to such glorious effect. More important, to Amanda, than any of this was Betsy's comment on the officers who had accompanied Captain Nelson to dinner on the Inconstant. 'That friend of yours, Mr Purvis, was there, and in high favour, Fremantle says, with Captain Nelson for his behaviour at Cape St Vincent.'
Her next letter told a very different story. It was ill-written, hurried and almost frantic. Her husband had been wounded. The Inconstant, had joined Nelson's Theseus for an attack on the island of Teneriffe. But for once Commodore Nelson's luck had failed him. He had been wounded in the arm at the very beginning of the attack, and might have been killed had it not been for the devotion of his stepson, Josiah Nisbet. He had lost his arm, and there was danger that Fremantle, also wounded, might lose his. And this time, in her distraction, Betsy Fremantle made no mention of Amanda's friend, Mr Purvis. If both the leaders of the expedition were wounded, what might not have happened to him?
It was lucky for Amanda, that distracted summer, that little Peter could walk and talk and get into a thousand scrapes to distract her and his honorary aunt Julia. Lord Meynel grumbled, when he was at home, about the attention the child received and talked of spared rods and spoiled children, but then he very seldom was at home these days, having settled down now, in half public domestic bliss, with his Grassi, who had presented him with two daughters in rapid succession. Condoled with by kind friends, Amanda put a brave face on this: "If the royal dukes can do it," she would say, "why not my husband?" This was unanswerable, but she found herself appallingly weary, these days, of Naples and its English colony. If only they could go home . . . She had tried to persuade her husband to accept Captain Fremantle's offer of a passage on the Inconstant, but he continued terrified of the sea voyage, and anyway proclaimed himself perfectly happy where he was. "What," he asked, "return to England and have to pay these new-fangled taxes they talk of, on powder, and income, and lord knows what else?"
Increasingly bad news from England merely confirmed his decision. To invasion terrors and commercial panic had been added the last horror of mutiny in the fleet. Reading of officers held at pistol point by their own men, Amanda feared once again for John Purvis . . . But Nelson, she reminded herself, had always been adored by his crews. There would be no mutiny on any ship he commanded. And she heard, at long last, in the autumn of 1797, from Miss Purvis, who wrote in an old lady's hand so shaky as to be almost indecipherable. But John's name, with Miss Purvis's unmistakable slanting 'J' recurred several times and at last Amanda was able to make it all out. John had indeed been wounded in the attack on Teneriffe, but not seriously. Best of all, he had been commended for his part in the battle and was now at home in England recovering. 'I hope to see him promoted Captain before he is fit to sail again,' wrote Miss Purvis. And then, significantly, 'Promotion comes quick these days.' After this, the letter turned to indifferent subjects: the high cost of bread, the bad news from Ireland, bad news, indeed, from everywhere. Then, at the very end, closing with fondest love, Miss Purvis added a sentence worth all the rest of the letter to Amanda. 'I fear I am but a poor correspondent these days,' she wrote. 'To tell truth, John put me in mind to write to you. He asks me to send you his kind regards, and tell you he hopes all goes well with you in Naples.' They were hardly passionate words, and second-hand at that, but Amanda cried herself to sleep that night with the letter under her pillow. Had John forgiven her – and himself, at last? Might she, one day, be able to tell him that Peter was his child?
