I believe she
was still distraught.
I believe we're seeing how an alcoholic compulsive spender tries to cope with her grief and fear: by partying. Maybe her behavior is not so inexplicable after all, if we accept that she was already alcohol dependent, and now widowed by war. Either condition might evoke seemingly incongruous behavior. Both at once would almost guarantee it.
She's in big financial trouble. She has a child whom she cannot acknowledge as her own and whom she now must raise alone. Her partner, an extraordinary man who loved her unconditionally, is dead. She's a de facto war widow feeling all the emotions unique to that experience, a situation made even more stressful by the fact that she isn't
legally the widow.
The American Widow Project is a non-profit organization formed by women widowed by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and was created "to help others in our shoes." After visiting the website I wondered if it might describe some of what Emma was going through.
Quote:
What to Expect
0-6 Months
The first six months are often a time when we find ourselves dealing with the shock of our loss. While the pain is great, we often find ourselves quite numb. Feeling numb in a time of great pain can be confusing.
6 Months to 1 Year
The numbness that helped us cope often begins to wear off around this time and reality begins to sink in.
The 2nd Year
[One widow writes]
“I have now found out exactly how rough the second year really was. The obvious of this is the lifting of the ‘widow fog’, becoming very well aware of my situation and turning into a blubbering idiot at the drop of a hat. With this also came the desperate need to numb the pain. There are many that will not admit they turned to some sort of substance to aid in this quest...”
“Oh the things I did and said in that second year are at times astonishing to me...”
All Alone
[Here are a few of the]
Things You Should Know...to Survive
Expect to feel weak, strong, suicidal, angry, happy, euphoric, glad, sad, guilty, alone, lonely, trapped, free, tired, bored, overworked, overwhelmed, silly, puzzled, like you don't belong.
Expect to wish you were dead.
Expect to smile when you feel like crying.
Expect to not focus.
Expect no one to understand. Though they say, "I understand." They can't. They don't. They never will. Not even another widow. Grief is personal. It's just like a thumb print, no two alike. Expect to make mistakes.
This kind of mental and emotional state might in itself be enough to explain Emma’s urge to throw such a party. Maybe she felt that staging a grand event in Horatia’s honor would by extension honor Nelson himself. Mark and Kester, as you point out, it was about a week after the first anniversary of Nelson’s death. So for Emma, it’s the beginning of “The 2nd Year.”
Sadly, there’s even more to it. She already had a compulsion to spend money, even before Trafalgar. She already drank too much. The evening was a manifestation of these afflictions.
The anguish of losing a partner may - or may not - get better with time. The disease of alcoholism, untreated, only gets worse, as it did with Emma; and I believe it killed her. I think her pathological spending and her alcohol dependency account for and illuminate much that people find mystifying and disconcerting in her behavior, both before and after Nelson's death. Unfortunately, even relatively recent biographies haven't really discerned the clinical picture of disease here. The word "alcoholism" has been used occasionally, but with little or no real understanding of it, no understanding of diseases of addiction, their symptoms and progression, their toll on the mind, body and spirit.
Tycho, I'm reminded of your "Many Faces" post and I thank you for it. I'm right there with you and others in waiting for something genuinely insightful to be written about Emma. Insightful. About Emma. I feel as if I've simply been reading about the Anna Nicole Smith of 1800. There are many who believe that's all she was, which is perhaps understandable based on what we’ve been given so far. A careful and informed reappraisal is due and might at least challenge and perhaps change our existing ideas of who she was and what she did, and why.
http://americanwidowproject.org/
(My deepest thanks to Taryn Davis, Founder/President of the American Widow Project, and Proud Military Widow of Cpl. Michael Davis, for permission to quote from the website.)
Gretchen