Nelson & His World

Discussion on the life and times of Admiral Lord Nelson
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 Post subject: The Many Faces of Emma Hamilton
PostPosted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 10:10 pm 
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I apologise in advance for the length of this post. I jotted down these observations in my notebook soon after Mira’s identification of the author of the notorious 1815 Memoir of Lady Hamilton, which set me thinking about some of the biographies of Emma that have appeared over the years and the varied treatment (or mistreatment) she has received at the hands of biographers during the two centuries or so that she has been a public figure. They are a source not only of information about (or misrepresentation of ) Emma but also interesting indicators of the way contemporary cultural winds were blowing. Kate Williams’ recent biography drew much criticism for its inaccuracies of content and inelegance of style, but an acquaintance with earlier biographies confirms that the book is not unique in either of those regards. In the past 200 years there have been many biographies of Lady Hamilton that contain wild claims and speculations, or are written in execrable prose, or whose purposes are malevolent.

First, the notorious 1815 ‘Memoirs’: alas, I spent several hundred pounds on a copy of this rare book only to find that it is full of the preening self-regard characteristic of the sanctimonious: an unfortunate concoction brimming with the worse excesses of eighteenth century grandiosity, hypocrisy and narrow-minded vulgarity masquerading as propriety. Its malevolence is so blatant that any unpleasant truths (and there may be a lot here) are subsumed by malice, spite and self-righteousness. The writer’s sources may well be sound; however, rather like Marjorie Bowen’s ‘Patriotic Lady’ (1936), a much later book which has some excellent and original material, the biased and vindictive tone, and the venom poured into the interpretations, horribly taint the sources and undermine the reader’s willingness to accept their conclusions. Both are reminders that, in biography at least, restraint and circumspection may prove better servants of persuasive argument than calumny and vituperation.

The argument over the authenticity of Nelson’s intimate letters to Emma rumbled on throughout the nineteenth century and continued even after the apparently conclusive proof of Horatia’s parentage with the publication of Morrison’s volumes in 1893. A little earlier, but much later than Pettigrew’s convincing exposition, G. Lathom Browne (1891), anxious to re-inforce the image of Nelson, the stainless hero lured to folly by a scheming woman, and to traduce Emma, convinces himself, if not his readers, that Nelson's love letters to her were forged by the lady herself on the bizarre assertion that Nelson's handwriting and Emma's are similar – or so he affirms, without adducing any information in support.

Hilda Gamlin on the other hand, who convinced herself, and energetically sought to convince others, that Nelson and Emma had a platonic relationship, insists that Nelson's love letters must have been created by a malevolent third party. Her evidence? Nelson is a hero; and failing entirely to acknowledge that letters from the same hand, but intended for different audiences can differ markedly in style and tone, Gamlin concludes that the intensely emotional and revealing private love letters are ‘vulgar’ and therefore could not have been written by Nelson. Gamlin has much interesting material and her sources are unimpeachable; and in a way, her loyalty and willingness to see only the best in both Emma and Nelson are sweetly touching. But her convoluted interpretations, and her resolute inversions of obvious truths, border on the comic.

Colin Simpson opens his biography with a tale of Emma's paternal grandfather that is totally fanciful : ‘a lone horseman rode down to Parkgate. His name was George Henry Lyons: a widower of sixty-five, a gentleman and a landowner……..to see his lawyer…to disinherit his only son Henry Lyons, then a consumptive youth of eighteen….’

I mention too, en passant, that the great Harris Nicolas, the editor of Nelson's correspondence, carefully excised sentences from published letters and suppressed others entirely in order to conceal as well as he could the true nature of Nelson’s relationship with Emma Hamilton when he was in possession of evidence to the contrary. He was under the combined, powerful influences of the oppressive Victorian attitude to sexuality in general and personal concern for Horatia Nelson Ward in particular; but should we regard the manipulation and/or deliberate suppression of evidence in a work of reference, for whatever reason, as a greater or lesser crime against scholarship and truth than the fanciful speculation, inaccuracies and occasional silliness in biographies?

We are able, with the passing of time, to look at these earlier works and see them in their historical and social context. Their inaccuracies, false deductions, malevolence, pretentiousness, obfuscations and/or deliberate untruths, known to modern readers, are nevertheless interesting in that they often reflect the preoccupations of their time.

When Nelson was appropriated by the establishment as the model of a Christian hero, Emma had to be portrayed in biographies of the Hero as either:

a) a scheming adventuress who lured the otherwise stainless hero into the one great folly of his life; or

b) a peripheral figure in his life. Frederick Lloyd's 1806 biography, for example, merely mentions one or two social engagements that she and Sir William undertook with Nelson; or

c) a platonic friend whose virtue matched his own.

As the prim and censorious Victorian era drew to a close, and at nearly a hundred years’distance from Emma’s lifetime, biographers were kinder to her, even though the true nature of her relationship with Nelson was acknowledged. Jeaffreson, writing elegantly and sympathetically in a book which nevertheless contained numerous inaccuracies identified later by Sichel, reflected the Victorian pre-occupation with social class and advancement through education, and found an explanation for Emma’s sexual looseness in her low birth and lack of early schooling in morals and manners as well as in formal learning. Another sympathetic biographer, and quite a good one, E. Hallam Moorhouse, writing in 1911, just as the movement towards more equitable treatment of women was growing, is far less condemnatory of Emma’s early escapades, and points out that the men involved in these are more deserving of censure than Emma herself who was barely more than a child at the time; and indeed, today their exploitation of a minor would have them behind bars.

Nowadays, in an age obsessed by celebrity where apparent tolerance of sexual excess is accompanied by salivating prurience, and in an academic climate where 'relevance' is sought, it is unsurprising, if disappointing, that Kate Williams, though full of sympathy for her character and enthusiastic about the period, chooses to ape the style and language of the popular press and draw parallels between ‘Emma the Megababe’, who was lampooned in the contemporary press, and the ‘slebs’ of our own day, the paparazzi victims who provide copy for the scandal sheets and ‘celebrity’ mags.

Many a biographer, then, has elaborated speculatively on the salacious details of Emma Hamilton's life and made interpretations, sometimes tendentious, influenced by contemporary social preoccupations; or has drawn inferences purely on the basis of authorial prejudice without substantive evidence; or has suppressed, or wilfully misinterpreted material.

It is interesting, fifty, a hundred, two hundred years after they were written, to dust off the many narratives of Emma’s life and see them not only as biographies but as historical curiosities, couched in the language, and reflecting not only the personal viewpoint of the author but also the pre-occupations of the age in which they were written. Some are in the best tradition of biography, honest, fair and respectful of evidence; there are others that are less so, but all, to a greater or lesser degree, reflect the attitudes of their age. If Emma’s earliest biographer mirrored the hypocrisy and self-righteousness of one stratum of eighteenth century society, then it is unsurprising and unremarkable that her latest biographer mirrors certain unsavoury aspects of our own age, including a preoccupation with the intellectually reductive and the sensationally fashionable. The author of the 1815 Memoirs and Kate Williams’ book are merely the earliest and latest examples of this. Neither is uniquely unfortunate, but part of a continuing literary phenomenon.

Biography, if it is to be more than an arid chronicle, will always rely, justifiably, on inference, supposition and speculation where it encounters the unknown or unknowable, otherwise the result is mere chronicle rather than biography. Provided these are rooted in evidence, and a clear distinction is drawn between fact and speculation, it seems to me to be harmless at worst, and at best, intriguing and/or enlightening. (Claire Tomalin’s treatments are always brilliant examples of how the biographer should manage and explore those areas of a subject’s life that are not susceptible to categorical proof.) Many authors, unfortunately, have resorted to fiction and unsubstantiated and easily-refuted supposition which can elicit a range of reactions from irritation to anger or mirth. Even acclaimed authors fall into this trap occasionally. I observe that Martyn Downer, in ‘Nelson’s Purse’, his justifiably praised factual account of the discovery of the Davison treasure – not quite a biography, but a spectacular post-script to Nelson’s life – resorts to the devices of fiction in his work. I find them jarring, intrusive and totally inappropriate in an otherwise elegantly structured book; though I don’t recall, and would be interested to hear of, any criticism of him for this cavalier conflation of literary genres.

. As David Constantine has observed, biography resembles translation: there are no definitive versions; it will always need doing again. And it is unsurprising that anyone who undertakes the writing of a biography will reflect, in their comments and interpretations, not only his or her personal view of the subject but also, consciously or unconsciously, the social attitudes of the age in which they write.


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