Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 24.djvu/163

 80). She was refined by her intimacy with Romney [see ], to whom she was introduced by Greville in the summer of 1782, and who almost at once conceived for her a passion of the best and purest kind, though mixed with a wild adoration, presaging the future darkness of his intellect. During these years she repeatedly sat to Romney; but it is not true that she was Romney's mistress, that she was a professional model, or that she sat for various ‘studies from the nude,’ more than realising ‘a naked Leda with a swan’ (, The Most Eminent British Painters, Bohn's edit. ii. 186). There is no trace of indelicacy in any picture for which she sat; she was painted by Reynolds, Hoppner, and Lawrence in England, and afterwards by numerous artists in Italy (, Life of George Romney, pp. 181–3).

In the summer of 1784 Greville's maternal uncle, Sir William Hamilton, ambassador at Naples, came to England on leave, and at his nephew's house saw and was greatly impressed by his mistress. ‘She is better,’ he is reported to have said, ‘than anything in nature. In her particular way she is finer than anything that is to be found in antique art.’ Greville seems to have had no scruple in the following year, when the state of his affairs compelled him to break up his establishment, in asking his uncle to take the girl off his hands. Hamilton readily acquiesced, and, though there was probably no actual bargain, became more willing to help his nephew pecuniarily. Sir William had sportively invited the girl to visit him at Naples; it was now arranged between him and Greville that the invitation should be formally repeated, and that she should come out as if to pursue the study of music and singing. Accordingly she and Mrs. Cadogan left England on 14 March 1786, travelling as far as Rome under the escort of Gavin Hamilton (1730–1797) [q. v.], the painter. Four days after her arrival she wrote to Greville: ‘I have had a conversation this morning with Sir William that has made me mad … Greville, my dear Greville, write some comfort to me … Sir William shall not be anything to me but your friend’ (, Lady Hamilton, i. 153). But Greville, after many other letters, coldly advised her to accept Sir William's proposals. To this she answered passionately (1 Aug. 1786): ‘If I was with you I would murder you and myself both,’ concluding with: ‘I never will be his mistress. If you affront me, I will make him marry me’ (ib. i. 167–8). In November, however, she became Hamilton's mistress.

At Naples, as the mistress of the English minister, possessed of a wondrous beauty, singing divinely, speaking Italian—which she picked up with marvellous quickness—with a remarkable turn for repartee, she became a great social power, without much assistance from hints of a secret marriage. Artists, poets, musicians raved about her; and a series of so-called ‘attitudes,’ or tableaux-vivants, which she was in the habit of giving, at once achieved an almost European celebrity (, Italienische Reise, 16, 22 März 1787). Through all it would appear that she never lost sight of her original purpose of marrying Hamilton. In May 1791 she returned with him to England, and on 6 Sept. they were married in Marylebone Church, where she signed the register ‘Amy Lyon,’ though in the published announcements of the marriage she was spoken of as ‘Miss Harte’ (Gent. Mag. 1791, vol. lxi. pt. ii. p. 872). During her further stay in England the queen refused to recognise her, but in passing through Paris she was received by Marie Antoinette; and on her return to Naples was presented to the queen, Maria Carolina, and became within a short time her confidante and familiar friend. The hatred which the French sympathisers freely lavished on the queen was extended to the confidante, and their friendship was made the subject of the vilest calumnies, which have been accepted without a title of evidence (, Storia di Napoli, lib. v. cap. i.;, p. 31). Lady Hamilton was, during the whole of her residence at Naples, one of the leaders of society, and even respectable English visitors were glad to be admitted to her receptions (, Lady Hamilton, i. 282). ‘You never saw anything so charming as Lady Hamilton's attitudes,’ wrote the Countess of Malmesbury to her sister, Lady Elliot (11 Jan. 1792); ‘the most graceful statues or pictures do not give you an idea of them. Her dancing the Tarantella is beautiful to a degree’ (Life and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot, first Earl of Minto, i. 406). A few years later, when her figure had already lost its sylphlike proportions, Sir Gilbert Elliot wrote to his wife (6 Nov. 1796): ‘She is the most extraordinary compound 1 ever beheld. Her person is nothing short of monstrous for its enormity, and is growing every day. She tries hard to think size advantageous to her beauty, but is not easy about it. Her face is beautiful.’ He adds that she is very good-humoured, and ‘she has acquired since her marriage some knowledge of history and of the arts.’ She shows, however, the ease of a barmaid not of good breeding, and ‘her language and conversation (with men) are exaggerations of anything I ever heard anywhere’ (ib. ii. 364). He is,