Читать книгу Patriotic Lady - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 32

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When Emma had been eighteen months in Naples, Sir William ventured to take her on a tour to some of the great country-houses, where the owners would be gracious enough to receive her. In a gorgeous villa at Sorrento Emma sang her songs and struck her attitudes to the admiration of a glittering crowd of Italian nobility. There was sea-bathing every morning and breakfast in a delicious little gazebo which, on a jutting rock, commanded a superb panorama of the Bay of Naples. Vesuvius was in action, its smoke darkened half the azure of the sky, and again Emma's facile pencil ran over the outlines of the rich landscape.

There was now a professor of music as well as a teacher of Latin in her train, and every evening there were singing lessons in the great painted salon which was lit by wax tapers and opened on to the purple night, the scene of every concert, where Emma with her heap of auburn hair, her classic robe, her rich bravura, sang to Sir William Hamilton's orchestra, arias from operas, buffos, some of the folk-songs of Naples; she, dressed in character, with tambourine and coloured scarf.

By then Mr. Greville had been forgiven, and she was pleased to jot down for his benefit all these triumphs, adding perhaps a little touch of exaggeration, for she wrote: "In short, I left the people of Sorrento with their heads turned, I left some dying, some crying and some in despair. Mind you, these were all nobility and proud as the Devil, but we humbled them."

The trip was in every way a success. At Ischia, an obliging Countess covered her with kisses and admired the muslin chemise with the blue sash which the English beauty had made famous. There was also a priest, who lost his wits for love of Emma, and had to be comforted with her portrait on a snuff-box. Emma, mounted on a donkey, also went some way up Vesuvius, and viewed with the complacency of one entirely self-absorbed the red-hot lava pouring down the sides of the mountain, licking up pine-trees into sheets of fire and destroying, against all precedent, a hermit's grotto in which hung several precious relics.

That same summer, while the volcano was providing an exciting background to the frivolous pleasure-makers of Naples, Emma was taken to Sir William's villa at Caserta, where he had at great expense redecorated apartments for her and provided her with a music room. Her triumphs continued and the eruption of the volcano seemed but a detail compared to the importance of Emma and Emma's beauty. She was then entertained on board a Dutch man-of-war, which came into the bay. She was given a salute of twenty cannon and a banquet, and took the seat of honour at the board, where Mrs. Cadogan also found a place; the Dutchmen were overwhelmed by this vision of English beauty—the famous white muslin gown, blue sash, straw hat and auburn curls, which Emma, a little over-excited on this occasion, described "as curling round her heels" when she wrote an account of the triumph to Greville.

She had hoped to attend the Opera that night at San Carlo, when the King and Queen were to be present, but there had been so many compliments paid, so many healths drunk, and so many salvos let off that when she at last landed on the quay and got into the State coach which was to take her and the Dutch officers to Sir William's box, she found there was no time to put on the elaborate gown she had provided.

This had lately come from Paris and was a white and purple satin with spangles, and a turban with a cluster of white feathers such as the Queen of France wore. In it, Emma would have lost all distinction and looked rather like a servant-girl in her mistress's finery.

Arriving late at the Opera in the muslin and the blue sash with the flowing curls, she made, of course, a sensation.

There were other excitements to relate to Greville; "I must tell you I had great offers to be first woman in the Italian Opera at Madrid, where I was to have #6,000 for three years, but though I have not been persuaded to make a written engagement, I certainly shall sing at the Pantheon and Hanover Square except something particular happens. Sir William says he will give me leave to sing at Hanover Square. It's the most extraordinary thing that my voice is totally altered, it is the finest soprano you ever heard, and what is most extraordinary is that my shake or trill, what you call it, is so very good in every note my master says that, if he did not feel that I was a woman he would think I was an angel. Sir William is enraptured with me. He spares neither expense nor pains nor anything." It is only right, Emma added seriously, that after all this work with her singing and languages and drawing, she should have exercise, so she went out for two hours a day in Sir William's carriage.

Signora Banti, first soprano at San Carlo, had come to one of Emma's concerts and thrown herself into appropriate raptures. "Just God! What a voice! I would give a good deal for your voice!"

"In short," said Emma frankly, "I met with such applause that it almost turned my head. Banti sung after me and I assure you everyone said I sung in a finer style than her. Poor Sir William was so enraptured with me."

She had forgotten the idyll of Paddington; she was quite on good-natured terms with Charles Greville to whom, after all, she owed the introduction to Sir William. He sent her, too, charming presents, which he put down to Sir William's account. He purchased shawls, hats and gloves, for her attitudes and posing; she ended her letters with gay postscripts. "I send to you a kiss on my name. It is more than you deserve. Tell your brothers to take care of their hearts when I come back. As for you, you will be utterly undone, for Sir William already is distractedly in love, and indeed I love him tenderly. He deserves it. God bless you."

Mr. Greville was not much moved by these epistles which probably were exactly as he thought they would be. He was still, in a leisurely and patient fashion, settling his affairs. The portrait of Emma as she sat for him still stood in George Romney's studio; another connoisseur had made an offer for it; Romney asked Greville if he would care to buy it, but the Honourable Charles regretted that his purse would not run to this luxury. Circumstances, he remarked sententiously, alter and control feelings, "though it gave me some pain to part from the original of the Seamstress, I do not feel myself in a position to buy her picture."

But with unabated zest Emma continued to write to her former lover of the delicious life she was leading under the care of her new protector. In letters full of gusto and bad grammar she told him again and again of all her triumphs. When Sir William was out hunting she did the honours at the Embassy—"and they are all enchanted with me." She emphasized the point that "Sir William is really in love with me, more and more. He says he cannot live without me. In short, I am universally beloved." She sang tender arias that made everybody cry, the first tenor of the Opera accompanied her in melting, romantic duets, but when she was crossed Emma quickly reverted to the mood of Up Park. A certain Mrs. Stratford wished to come and stay at the Embassy, but Emma soon stopped that, and inspired Sir William to write that, if the lady wished to come to Naples, she might stay at an inn; then, Emma quickly made herself mistress of a letter which proved Mrs. Stratford to be by no means discreet, at which Emma was not slow in at once giving the lady a coarse name which might very well have been applied to herself by the ill-natured or the prudish.

Her self-assurance became overwhelming. "Sir William tells me I am necessary to his happiness and I am the handsomest, loveliest, cleverest, best creature in the world and no person shall come to disturb me."

In the spring of 1789 Emma accompanied the British Minister on a long excursion into Calabria, where Emma played at being a good, obliging girl, who did not mind a little hardship, and quickly acquired a reputation for good-humour by not grumbling at the mean accommodation of the Italian inns. These poor chambers were, no doubt, at least as comfortable as had been those in the cottage at Hawarden.

On her return Sir William did up her apartment for her at the cost of #4,000. He was beginning to spend money very freely. Emma cost him a good deal more than she had cost Mr. Greville; large sums went in portraits and statues to commemorate her exuberant charms; Madame Le Brun received #100 for painting Emma with a wine-cup and an enormous quantity of chestnut hair which completely covered her.

Emma's own allowance was not large, no more than #200 a year for herself and her mother, but then, everything was paid for her, and hardly a day passed but that she received presents. Much as she valued these there was one splendour for which she was constantly sighing. She often coaxed and pleaded with Sir William to give her diamonds, and in 1790 he gratified her longing by an offering of these precious stones, which he had bought at a bargain price of #500 and which made Emma supremely happy for quite a long while.

The old man was now completely in her toils—he could no more escape from his Emma than the fly can escape from the jar of honey into which it falls. After nearly five years as his mistress, Emma was living as his wife and doing the honours of the Embassy, presiding at concerts, balls and entertainments; the lucky young woman had the sense to try to behave herself: "I wish to be an example of good conduct, to show the world that a pretty woman is not always a fool," she wrote to Greville. In the same letter she apprised him of an approaching visit she and Sir William were paying to London; Greville need not be afraid of her behaviour in England. She was used, she said, to fine society: "On Monday last we gave a concert and ball at our house. I had near four hundred persons, all the foreign ministers and their wives, all the first ladies of fashion, foreigners and Neapolitans. Sir William dressed me in white satin, no colour about me, but my hair and cheeks; I was without powder. As it was the first great assembly we had given publicly, all the ladies strove to outdo one another in dress and jewels. Sir William said I was the finest jewel among them." The letter ended complacently. "We shall be with you in the spring and return here in November, and the next year you may pay us a visit. We shall be glad to see you. I shall always esteem you for your relationship to Sir William, and as having been the means of me knowing him. As for Sir William, I confess to you I dote on him, nor can I ever love any person but him."

Greville was not impressed by this letter with its rather impertinent air of patronage, and its complete change of front. Since the day she had written: "All must be as God and Greville pleases," he had not understood what lay behind her excitement, what serious purpose was concealed by these flourishes of pretty vanity.