And then she met the one... But it did not start out as expected.
Amy Lyon had accepted to be called Mrs. Emma Hart while the Mistress of Charles Greville, who wanted to remake her into a meeker and more conservative woman - the "virtuous housewife" which meant repressing her true self and acting. He had banished the daughter she bore with another man as a sixteen year old, rented her a house on the outskirts of London and installed her mother to keep her company. Emma aimed to please him and keep his patronage and told him he made her happy and that she loved him; maybe she did.
Greville had status in English society as a second son in the historical Warwick family but he had not attracted a wife who would bring her inheritance into the marriage. Perhaps for a time he thought that being known to have a Mistress might give him a desirable reputation among men. But his search for a wife did not end with having Emma and nor did it prevent him from having an affair with Elizabeth, Lady Craven. He was out of love for Emma and sought to find a way to send her on her way without drama.
The newly widowed Sir William Hamilton was a relative that Greville wished to court for money. He fifty-five years old - much older than Emma - and as the fourth and youngest son of Lord Archibald Hamilton, worked as a diplomat assigned top Naples. He came to visit and they delighted each other but Lord Hamilton knew that Greville would soon get rid of Emma. Emma was ignorant of Greville's plans and continued to tell the man that she missed him and belonged to him and could only go so far in entertaining Hamilton.
Excerpt page 103 : Emma's new friend had grown up in the royal court with the future King George III. His mother, Lady Jane Hamilton, had been the Mistress of Frederick, Prince of Wales, from about 1736 until 1745. Frederick appointed her his wife's lady of the bedchamber. Then, dizzy with lust, he also made her the queen's Mistress of the robes - not even the poor queen;s clothes were free from her rival's claws. Lady Jane possessed the absolute sway over Frederick and his family thought her son's earl;y life. Sir William called King George his foster brother, boasting that "my Mother reared us and the same nurse suckled us. With this he hinted what many suspected: he was the Prince of Wales's son....
Greville negotiated for Sir William Hamilton to take on Emma. He was calculating. He claimed that having a Mistress was preventing him a good marriage, that he admired her and was attracted to her but that she was in love with Sir William. He said she had become obedient and of "good humor" and that considering all the advantages she might bring into a relationship, she was not one to demand a man spend on her. By pushing his lover Emma on Hamilton, he reasoned he was not abandoning her and she accepted the opportunity to travel and visit with Hamilton without knowing. It took him two years to move Emma and her mother on, beginning with six weeks of tourist travel.
1786
Avoiding the problems in France that would result a couple years later in the French Revolution, they traveled to Geneva first and then Naples where the mother and daughter were to live at Palazzo Sessa, Hamilton's estate. Emma turned twenty-one. Also there was Mrs. Anne Damer, a sculptress who Sir William Hamilton was thinking of marrying and twice Emma's age. Hamilton quickly decided in favor of Emma, and he began to treat her like a princess but began to treat her mother like a servant.
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