trysail
Catch Me Who Can
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2005
- Posts
- 25,593
...The person she thought she could depend on was of course James Harrison, the scribe she had employed in 1806. The mercenary wretch was probably Oliver, with whom she had quarrelled in 1809. Perry did not publish her denial, and the two volumes were duly published in May. Emma should properly have asked Earl Nelson, as heir to his brother's copyright, to apply to the court for a common-law order restraining publication on grounds of copyright breach. The letters which Nelson had enjoined Lady Hamilton to burn, which had been her comfort after Nelson's death, were now available for all to read. The book was a fine illustration of the old saying: "Do right to men, do not write to women." Emma's despair at seeing Nelson's letters to her made public seems to have manifested itself in an outbreak of rage of stupendous proportions. How else to account for a bill for "breakages," mostly china, for £13.4s.11d, which Alderman Smith paid her landlord in July?
-Flora Fraser
Emma; Lady Hamilton
New York, N.Y. 1987.
As one with a longstanding interest in naval history, I was well aware of Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson's scandalous relationship with Emma Hamilton but never knew much about her. As is so often the case, by pure chance, I spied this book on the shelf and couldn't resist its call to me. It was a very pleasant surprise to discover that the author is none other than a daughter of the highly accomplished Lady Antonia Fraser ( biographer and historian extraordinaire and one-time panelist on the sui generis BBC radio program[me] My Word! ).
The book is praiseworthy for its thorough research, fascinating subject and lively prose. I had absolutely no idea of just how humble Emma's origins were, having always assumed that she was a social equal of her diplomat husband, Sir William Hamilton; nothing could could have been further from the truth. Were a novelist to attempt to construct a tale that would contain all the elements of the ultimate Georgian scandal, the actual facts would suffice— in this case, truth was undeniably stranger than fiction. It had been such a long time since I read a biography of Nelson that I'd completely forgotten the sequence of events that caused Nelson and Lady Hamilton to meet. My memory of my first acquaintance with the tale was one of mild surprise that now stands in stark contrast with the astonishment that remains following Fraser's account.