Lady Hamilton & Lord Nelson as Cleopatra & Mark Antony (detail)
In 1786, a stunning young lady was sent to Sir William Hamilton by his nephew, Charles Greville, in exchange for him settling Greville’s debts. Like most of the men who wandered into her orbit, Sir William was smitten with Emma Hart, who performed dances inspired by classical elements for himself and his guests, including Goethe, while wearing no undergarments. However, he made no advances until she was ready to accept him. They married on 6 September 1791 at St Marylebone Church, London. He was 60; she was 26. As wife of the British Envoy, Emma welcomed Horatio Nelson in 1793, when he came to gather reinforcements against the French. Nelson returned to Naples five years later, on 22 September 1798, a living legend, after his victory at the Battle of the Nile in Aboukir. Emma and Sir William escorted Nelson to their home - the Palazzo Sessa. Lady Hamilton nursed Nelson under her husband’s roof, and arranged a party with 1,800 guests to celebrate his 40th birthday. They soon fell in love and their affair seems to have been tolerated, and perhaps even encouraged, by the elderly Sir William, who showed nothing but admiration and respect for Nelson, and vice-versa. Emma Hamilton and Horatio Nelson were by now the two most famous Britons in the world. They were not only in love with each other, but admired each other to the point of adulation. They were, so to speak, also in love with both their own fame, and that of their lover. - In A Cognocenti contemplating ye Beauties of ye Antique (1801), James Gillray caricatured both Hamilton’s antiquarian pursuits and his attitude toward the affair between his wife and Nelson. Emma is the portrait of “Cleopatra” in the upper left, Nelson is the adjacent “Mark Antony” and Hamilton himself is portrayed in the character of Claudius.
