England's Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton Hardcover – October 24, 2006

This book was a very good read. The life of Emma Lady Hamilton is really amazing. To come from the lowest and poorest of English society and to raise herself up as she did is unbelievable. She must have been a remarkable woman.The Author keeps a brisk pace, and the story of humble Amy Lyon unfolds without dragging in any area.We meet Amy as child of a poor Blacksmith who lives in one of the most depressing places on Earth, let alone England. She goes into service, that doesn't last long, and before you know it 12 or 13 year old Amy is a "lady of the town", works in a high class brothel, becomes a spoiled nobelman's mistress, gets pregnant, becomes another nobelman's mistress,a famous artist's favorite model, winds up going to Naples becoming the Ambassador's mistress, and ultimatley his wife..Her husband, Sir William Hamilton was the English Ambassador to Naples, really not a big important assignment, but a really fun one. Emma bloomed in this environment, and was a great help to her husband. She became bff's with the Queen of Naples, Maria Carolina, a Hapsburg Archduchess, and sister to the tragic French Queen Marie Antionette. As the Queen's confidant and friend, she was able to assist her husband with the most delicate of political situations that developed with the fall of the French monarchy and the rise of Bonaparte.Then along comes Nelson. She and he really hit it off, but at first it's mutual admiration, then liking turns to lust and then love. Emma was very desirable to 18th Century men, although looking at her pictures, she looks like a very big woman. There's one portrait of her reclining seductivley on a leoapard skin and she looks enormous, even her feet look fat. Men were driven crazy with desire by her. She used to do an entertainment called "Attitudes" where she posed as women from the past, draping herself in shawls, showing side boob with a come hither look on her face. It's hard to imagine in this day and age that such things would be so wildly popular, but of course, it was a much simpler time. According to the Author, her detractors claimed she learned these "skills" when she worked in the brothel, where the ladies struck sexy poses for the clients.She and Nelson had a big scandalous love affair that resulted in a daughter, Emma's second child. They also lived 'atrois with her husband when they returned to England. Descriptions of Admiral Nelson, do not paint a picture of a very attractive person either physically, (he was a tiny man with one eye missing as well as an arm and most of his teeth gone) or personality wise, (nervous, needy and attention starved). But regardless, he was the rock star of his day, so Emma had really landed a trophy. They really seem to have been madly in love.Then comes Trafalgar, and that it. It's all downhill for poor Emma she dies almost friendless and destitute in Calais, buried in a pauper's grave. Unfortunatly for Emma, neither she, her deceased husband or her lover had any common sense regarding money. All three of these individuals had no concept of effective money management, and neither of the men in her life did anything to ensure that Emma would have financial stability. As a result, the end of her life was terrible.The only thing I didn't like about this book was the Author's propensity to make unprovable facts actual facts. She turns too many things that no one really knows are true into historic facts. Like things about her father and her early life. There is really no way to ever know the facts there, the poor were undocumented, faceless masses. Also, she says that Emma worked in the famous Temple of Health, but according to other sources, Emma would have been too young. The Author also claims that ladies of the aristocracy thought posing as goddesses or women from the classical past was immoral. This statement is contradicted later, and at any rate is untrue. Example, the famous Duchess of Devonshire. Things like that are annoying, but this really is a very enjoyable book.

Very enjoyable read - learned a great deal. I would give it 5 stars except that in a book which on almost every page talks about this lady sitting for portraits, describing her portraits, the public's reaction to them, etc., it is unthinkable to have no photographs of the portraits (at least in the Kindle version). Thank goodness for Google, where I was constantly going back and forth from book to the internet, trying to look up the various portraits referred to. Otherwise, I loved the book. The storyline was wonderful, the writing excellent. As they say, fact is stranger than fiction, and in this case, it truly is.

Born into utter poverty in the coal mining town of Ness, near Cheshire, Amy Lyon, the future Emma Hamilton, seemed to beat the odds. While one in five children died by the age of five in the smoky, wretched atmosphere of a coal town, Emma seemed to flourish like the green bay tree. What kept her going perhaps was more bravado than bravery sandwiched in with a great deal of chutzpah. Emma knew she was beautiful. She had an ambition to be famous.Emma took off alone for London when she was about thirteen. It is very possible that she immediately joined the 50,000 prostitutes in the city, with the biggest concentration in Covent Garden. If they were lucky and attractive enough the girls could be attached to a tavern that gave them some protection and also brought in the men. Others worked abominable hours as artists' models, required to pose nude for hours on end with small breaks every two hours. There are early paintings by both Joshua Reynolds and George Romney which reveal women looking remarkably like Emma, but Emma would certainly never admit to posing in the nude. There were virtually no legitimate jobs for young women with no connections and no money (think the Bronte sisters). They took to the streets out of pure necessity.Emma evolves. She learns a great deal about society as she climbs up the social ladder. Her ascent is greatly helped by the portraits of her by George Romney. She becomes Romney's muse and almost his raison d'etre. Paintings of her numbered in the hundreds although many have been lost. Eventually she becomes the mistress of the Honorable Charles Greville who later wants to get rid of her so he can marry a socialite who can replenish his dwindling resources. He introduces Emma to his Uncle William Hamilton, the English ambassador to Naples, which was in those days the world's largest city behind London and Paris. Sir William, almost forty years older than Emma, was entranced and against his better judgment, he married her.Emma was in her element, entertaining their guests with her "attitudes" in which with various props and disguises accompanied by postures, dancing and acting, she morphed herself into various classical personages. The guests, similar to charades, tried to guess the personage Emma was portraying. Circe? Athena? Cleopatra?When Horatio Nelson sailed into Naples harbor after winning the Battle of the Nile, Emma threw herself into his arms (arm, actually) and Naples went bonkers with joy as did England As theVanguard pulled into harbor, hundreds of prostitutes were rowed out to accommodate the sailors left aboard who ranged in age from thirteen to nineteen. They were often drunk as each was provided with one GALLON of beer a day. Officers went ashore to meet expensive courtesans.Author Williams takes Nelson down a few pegs, perhaps. A man not quite five feet six and cadaverously thin, he was "covered with scars and wrinkles from the exposure to the sun, he was neither attractive or suave." Williams in one instance calls Nelson the "little sailor" Seeing his daughter by Emma, little Horatia, for the first time Nelson "burbles." Nelson burbling is hard to imagine.After the complex evacuation of the Naples royal family to Sicily, engineered by Nelson with considerable help from Emma, since Napoleon is threatening to invade Naples, the three of them, Emma, Horatio and Sir William, eventually settle in England. But England is very anxious to get Nelson away from Emma Hamilton- everybody knows who she is, and even the Prince of Wales has his eye on her. Nelson is sent back to sea, the commander of the Victory, the ship that would go after Napoleon's navy and win the Battle of Trafalgar.Nelson refuses to take of his admiral's jacket with its medals as he paces the deck and shouts orders. He's a sitting duck for an enemy sniper and sure enough one gets him in the back. He falls mortally wounded and his officers carry him below. His famous last words to his first mate, Hardy "Kiss me, Hardy" probably, according to the author, are more likely "Kiss Emma for me, Hardy!" "The Admiral murmurs as he expires "Thank God that I have done my duty!" His is a death worthy of the gods.It is October 21, 1805.Back in England Emma desperately tries to make her home Merton Place a monument and a shrine to Nelson but her money is soon depleted. Nelson had asked the government to provide for Lady Hamilton and his daughter Horatia but the request was ignored. Honors are showered on Nelson's brother and Emma is left out in the cold. With creditors snapping at her back and having spent a year in debtor's prison, Emma and Horatia escape to Calais where they live in poverty. Emma dies in January1815. Horatia will grow up refusing to acknowledge Emma as her mother. How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child. Don't miss this beautifully written story of a woman like no other.

This is an excellent biography of Emma Hamilton, it also includes interesting accounts of the life and times of her contemporaries. She was renowned for her beauty and was by acccounts, a much sought after London Hostess, performing 'attitudes' and singing at her parties, which delighted the male guests. Apparantly we owe a debt of gratitude to Emma H. she saved the English fleet from near starvation by arranging food and drink to be sent out from Italy to the ships moored in the Bay. One of the great love stories of the century, she was devoted to Lord Nelson no doubt loving to bathe in his victories as she was very happy in the spotlight. Nelson had an unhappy marriage and it was love at first sight for him, he loved his Emma until his untimely death, by a sniper's bullet on the deck of his ship, very sad.

I thoroughly enjoyed this fast paced account of the life of Emma Hamilton, who rose from poverty, and living off her beauty, to becoming the most famous, most painted, woman in England. As the wife of Sir William Hamilton she became a close confidante of the Queen of Naples, and later the love of Admiral Nelson's life, before cast aside by the establishment following Nelson's death. She lived and died in relative poverty in France, almost 50 years old.As well as being an account of Emma Hamilton's life, this is also an account of age - an age filled with hypocrisy in which everything was accepted so long as not publicly acknowledged, and in which women had almost no legal rights. It was also an age when the rich spend vast sums on their entertainment and public profile. Vast sums that, like Emma, they often could not afford.This is all described in a very entertaining manner by Kate Williams, in what is a very sympathetic biography

Kate Williams has more than succeeded in this excellent biography. The true story of passionate love and loss that we thought we all knew, but with many surprising, even shocking twists and turns that reflect the tribulations of many women of that era. Williams' offered view on events is invaluable. It was a moving and pleasurable experience to soak up the atmosphere of the life and times of Lady Hamilton with help from the continuous flow of brilliantly researched detail. We can feel we are really there living her life but knowing the characters and how they and events often helped to hinder her destiny. After reading this book, which didn't take long as i was compelled to read it night and day, i could feel nothing but sympathy and admiration for Emma, so cruelly exploited in her childhood and who then went on to thankfully have a mostly happy and comfortable life although an upsettingly sad end. Needless to say, the love of Nelson and Emma is the highlight of this book as it was the highlight of their short lives, a universally relevant and timeless story of romantic love that will go on forever. Fascinating, beautifully written, memorable.

I must confess I knew absolutely nothing about Emma Hamilton (other than that she existed) before starting this book, so I cannot compare it in terms of depth or accuracy to any other accounts of her life. All I can say is that it is a fascinating page-turner and a shocking reminder of the total lack of status of women at that time.A major snag with the Kindle edition is that there are no illustrations - even though there is a list of illustrations in the contents at the front - and this made me feel cheated. The story stands by itself without the illustrations but nowhere in the description of the Kindle edition does it say that you won't be getting the pictures. So beware if you are getting the Kindle version.

This is an enthusiast and clearly thoroughly researched investigation into the life of an extraordinary woman. Kate Williams has made a clear and mainly succssful effort to strike that difficult balance in such a book between accessibility for the wider public and the historical accuracy. It is a good read and my only criticism is that her own admiration for Emma and her belief that hitherto, history had been cruel to her, became to forthright in places. That said, it would have been hard for any researcher not to have been captured by Emma Hamilton's charisma, after all she captured the hearts of pretty much the entire nation in her time.