"MRS. EMMA HART'S" EXTRAVAGENT HOLIDAY IN NAPLES : EMMA IS SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON's NEW HOBBY and SHE LEARNS THE TRUTH THAT GREVILLE IS OVER HER

1786

Naples was the third largest city in Europe after London and Paris and a playground for the rich. There were glamorous parties, operas, exclusive shopping areas and amazing cuisine. A sort of boom town, it was also considered to be built quickly, with gorgeous but controversially colorfully painted architecture. Author Kate Williams compares it to an "eighteenth century Las Vegas" also because people gambled stayed up all night, drank, and womanized. It was a place to let go and get loose, to swim nude or forgo stiff protocols. Emma became Sir William's new hobby, showering her with gifts including a new wardrobe and a horse, and showing her off. However she continued to write to Greville, as though she were only aware of being on a vacation.

Excerpt page 127 : In July, Emma wrote to Greville, eager to share the excitement of her summer holiday.  They had visited Pompeii and Posillipo and planned to sail to the islands of Ischia and Capri.  She has been been bathing daily and her 'irruptions" were gone, leaving her, as she claims, "remarkably fair." Sir William had invited every artist and sculptor in Naples (apart from Mrs. Damer*) to portray her.  One, possibly Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, was painting her in a "Bacchante setting, in a turban, a Turkish dress," and she was modeling for another in blue silk gown and a black feathered hat. The young Swiss-German Angelica Kauffman, and two others planned to paint her, and the cameo maker Marchmont would soon carve her head into a stone that could be set into a ring.  Sir William already had five portraits, and he had asked for more from Romney.

Finally in August, Greville told the truth and she was shattered and both admonished him and begged him to take her back. He urged her to be Sir William Hamilton's mistress. Six months later she was still refusing to do so. She was faithful to Greville, her first lover. (The men she had sex with as a sex worker were not.)

Excerpt page 129 : Emma could not believe his hypocrisy. Exploited from the age of fourteen, she had thought that Greville had saved her, and she had grown proud of her hard-won respectability.  As she knew, mistresses tended to be passed on to progressively poorer protectors, and she expected that Sir William would keep her for no longer than a year and then pass her on.

But Sir William also proved to be a good shoulder to cry on. And by Christmas their relationship was an affair. Her letters were full of love and lust for him. He forgot his plan to also have her as a temporary mistress. She found herself more secure than ever but he, like Greville, aimed to make her over and improve her. Emma learned to sing, dance, and play the harpsichord and guitar and her coaches were those who taught the highest in society.

She was often asked to sing at dinners and even received an offer to sing at the opera in Madrid. Exposed to his extensive library of English literature, she read and then began to try to learn Italian. Sir William was proud of her.

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*Mrs. Damer was the sculptress who Sir William Hamilton was considering marrying after the death of his wife and whom Emma met when she first visited with Sir William while with the Honorable Charles Greville.