Memoirs of Emma, lady Hamilton, the friend of Lord Nelson and the court of Naples; Read Online Free PDF Page A

which he quoted profusely in those curious " lectures " combining puff with literary, satirical, scriptural, philanthropic, and scientific allusion. His brother had married the " historian," Mrs. Catharine Macaulay, who often figures in his florid catalogues of cures. That authoress is depicted in mezzo-tints as a sickly-looking lady, pen in hand, with a row of her volumes before her, trying apparently to draw inspiration from the ceiling. He was never tired of assuring the public that she was own sister to " Mr. John Sawbridge, M.P. for London." He posed as a sort of prayerful alchemist, eradicating and healing at once the causes of vice, and its consequences. His advertisements are a queer union of cant earnestness, travestied truth, sensible nonsense, humour and the lack of it, effrontery and belief— especially in himself. After he had closed his costly:

    and ruinous London exhibitions, he turned " Christian Philosopher " at Bath and Newcastle, anticipated the modern open-air . cure, " paraphrased " the Lord's Prayer for the public, the Book of Wisdom for the Prince of Wales, and hastened to lay on the pillow of the suffering George III. one of his numerous "prayers." His specialty in 1780 (and throughout his career) was the then derided but now accepted electricity and mud-baths. By their means he claimed to restore and preserve beauty, to prolong existence, to enable a decayed generation to repair its losses by a vigorous, comely, and healthful progeny. He had opened a pinchbeck palace enriched with symbolical paintings, gilt statues, and coloured windows, where up to ten o'clock nightly he advertised his wares to the sound of sweet music, in his " Temple of yEscu-lapius " at the Royal Terrace, Adelphi. His pamphlets, sermons, hymns, exhortations, and satires, were rained on the town. In one of these pieces of fulsome reclame he describes his museum of elixirs as Emma may have viewed it in 1780 or 1781. Over the porch stood the inscription " Templum ./Esculapio Sacrum." There were three gorgeously decorated rooms with galleries above, and pictures of heroes and kings, including Alfred the Great. Crystal glass pillars enshrined the costly electrical apparatus for reviving youth and strength. The third chamber was the tinsel " Temple of Apollo " with its magnetic " celestial bed," with its gilt dragons, overarching " Pavilion," and inscription, " Dolorifica res est si quis homo dives nullum habet domi suse successorem." " But on the right of the Temple," he says, " is strikingly seen a beautiful figure of Fecundity," holding her cornucopia and surrounded by reclining children; and above all, an " electric" " celestial glory," which, mellowed by the stained windows, shed a dim and solemn light. Strains of

    majestic melody filled the air; and here also were sold his " Nervous Balsam " and " Electrical ^Ether "; while in the mornings this reverse of " seraphic " doctor punctually attended consultations in the dwelling-rooms adjoining.
    Whether such ambrosial tomfoolery yielded Emma an intermittent livelihood at all, and whether before she loved Willet-Payne or after, remains doubtful; the latter is more probable. The blatant novelty-monger offered prizes for emblematic pictures, and it is possible that Tresham, or even his friend Romney, might have been pressed into his service. It may well be, too, that here the young blood and baronet, Sir Henry Fetherstonehaugh, became her admirer. As we see him in his letters some thirty years afterwards, this worthy appears as a silly old beau and sportsman, indulging in compliments pompous as his political reflections, and interlarding his correspondence with superfluous French. In his old age he educated and married a most worthy peasant girl, and brought her sister (also educated in France) to reside with them at Up Park, while from Lady Fetherstonehaugh the estate passed into that sister's possession.
    Up Park (like Willet-Payne) was fraught with dreams of the fleet, for from its