England's Mistress is a beautifully written book by Kate Williams that was a delight to read, beginning with the descriptions of life in 18th century England for the poorest of the poor. I began to see the sights and smell the smells.
As I read the story of Emma Hamilton, I was reminded that she had much in common with other women - Courtesans and Mistresses - who rose up from humble or even devastating beginnings through beauty and intellect, to a more adventurous and unconventional life. I'm also reminded that it was and is possible to be shunned from acceptable society but never the less eventually prevail to be esteemed by it and also, finally, that a hard past doesn't excluded someone from love and marriage.
As I read the books about women's lives in previous centuries, I'm also glad that we women have more choices. Overall, we have been able to be more independent, to become educated, to volunteer, to hold jobs and have careers, to own our own money and property, to choose to be unmarried or not ...
EMMA HAMILTON
Amy Lyon
Mrs. Emma Hart
Lady Emma Hamilton
1765 - 1815
Born into extreme poverty in the coal mining village not far from Liverpool, Amy Lyon had one great advantage - her mother Mary. Though her husband, Amy's father, died when Amy was an infant, somehow Mary provided for her daughter without remarriage. There was some mysterious scandal associated with Amy's father's death - alcohol poisoning or suicide perhaps, maybe mining accident or murder. Or perhaps the scandal was that Mary had become a Mistress. After all, her mother was widowed at only twenty- two and Amy was fatherless - by those days standards, an orphan.
Neither mother or daughter lived up to the expectations of suspicious and hateful neighbors. Were they witches? Mary moved the two of them in with relatives who weren't happy about it and navigated a class structure that intended to keep people in the position of their birth. The story was that Mary was Mistress to Sir John Glynne or Lord Halifax but that would be some stretch. It was probably one of Glynne's estate employees who kept Mary, someone who provided her with little extras.
Excerpts pages 18 - 19 : Mary was surely lover to a man with money for a sustained period of time, perhaps throughout Emma's childhood. It is unlikely that Emma survived on potatoes and old cheese that made up the diet of her neighbors. Like all country people, Hawarden villagers were stunted and sunken- eyed through malnutrition. They suffered from rickets, and their hair, teeth, and skin betrayed their lack of protein. Emma grew tall, strong, and beautiful, with a thick mane of hair and strong white teeth. She had sparking eyes, clear skin, voluptuous good health, and bounding energy. In the 1760's and 1770's, England was racked with famines, a smallpox epidemic, and sweeping influenza, but Emma appears to have suffered no severe childhood illnesses. Thomas Pettigrew, one of Lord Nelson's early biographers (Lord Nelson being important to Emma's story...) who knew Emma's London employer, Dr. Budd, noted that when she worked as a servant she had no "means to cultivate her intellectual faculties," so she must have learned to read, write, and do simple addition as a child. Somehow, Mary found money that protected Emma from the worst of village hardship and helped her grow into a beauty.
After Sir John Glynne's death, perhaps because the estate employees had to move on, Mary and Emma traveled to London. Emma was twelve years old, the age poor girls then became domestic servants, and she obtained employment with Dr. Honorotus Leigh Thomas. She was likely an unpaid child laborer and may have done hard physical labor such as hauling coal, pumping water, and splitting firewood as she was at the very bottom of servility.
Excerpts: page 21 and 22 : ... Within a few months, the hands of most young maids were scarred with burns, and the most common cause of death for eighteenth century girls was burns or scalds.... Families such as the Thomases burned over a ton of coal every six weeks, and the walls, floors, ceilings, and furniture needed regular scrubbing to remove the black dust. It could take a whole day to clean a room properly... Worst of all, like all girls in her position, Emma had to feign servility and respectful admiration for her employers ...
Perhaps the worst plight of servant girls was what we call sexual harassment and rape today.
Excerpt page 22 : Masters saw their young servants as easy prey. Since most, like Emma, spent much of their day cleaning isolated rooms alone, they were easy to trap and grope. At night there was even more opportunity, for they slept in unlocked rooms or on the floor. The master usually beat the servants (women were not legally permitted to punish them) and often backed up his physical violence with harassment - thinking it a good way to keep the girls in check... The typical eighteenth century man simply seduced his servants and fired them when he was bored of them.
Emma found herself unemployed after a few months with the Thomases and perhaps it was only that she could not keep up with the work. At the time servant girls were supposedly ones to fall in love with their masters (despite such treatment*) and to live on fantasies of becoming married. In Emma's case, escape to London, 180 miles south, was her dream and the coach ride was probably only possible because her mother gave her the fair. This ride in itself would have been rough, extremely uncomfortable, and shared with others. Hundreds came to London with hopes of a better life every day. There was an anti-immigrant sentiment and many were soon locked up into jails through innocent though there were criminals among them. Girls were procured for brothels by "motherly" types. Luckily Emma was hired by a middle class couple, the Budd's, who might have, like many of their status, hoped a country girl would be more easily manageable and accept lower or no pay. Servants for aristocrats were hired only through personal recommendations.
London was teeming with people who were desperate. It was filthy, and often on fire. London also had the royal, the rich; exclusive shopping and luxury living. So the new townhouse owned by the Budds and implied better status of servitude must have been a relief. But Emma was not to remain there for long and would bounce around from employers and brothels.
Stick with me as the story of this Mistress of the Month, who became beloved in England's late 18th century, as I unfold her story!
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* My opinion as this statement by the author leads me to think the girls were masochists.
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