Emma Hamilton's Attitudes

In this post I get to talk about one of my heroines, a woman who captures my imagination and inspires me. This, Ladies and Gentleman, is the story of Emma, Lady Hamilton and her magnificent attitudes!

Emma as Circe (1782) George Romney

I want to concentrate on Emma's performance art, her attitudes especially in this post as there is so much to say about the woman herself that it would be a travesty to squash it all into one post.  However, here is a little potted history to begin with.  Once upon a time there was a beautiful girl called Amy Lyon, born up in Cheshire in the north west of England in 1765.  She was the daughter of a blacksmith, and was sent into service by the time she was twelve years old.  Whilst in service with a family in London, she met a maid who wanted to be an actress and to poor Amy this sounded far more fun than scrubbing floors and emptying chamber pots.  She attended a theatre and started working there, ironically not as an actress but as a maid to the actresses, but still, I bet it was more interesting work than a house...

Emma in a Straw Hat (1782-84) George Romney

She didn't remain at the theatre for long, gaining employment at a 'goddess of health' where she danced and posed in something that passed for a hospital.  The lovely Emma Hart (as she became) was there as a model of physical perfection as the patients were assisted with predominantly sexual problems, on electrified beds.  Emma posed as 'Hebe Vestina', daughter of Zeus and the goddess of youth.  Seeing as she was only around 14 years old, she certainly personified youth.  Whilst it sounds a little shady to modern ears, the focus of the treatment was married couples who got to use the 'Grand Celestial Bed' for £50, together with real turtle doves.  Heavens.

Emma as a Bacchante (1785) George Romney

It was whilst she was a mistress of Charles Francis Greville (1749-1809) that Emma found herself in Naples, in 1783.  She had been sent off by Greville to keep his uncle, Sir William Hamilton, company whilst Greville found himself a rich wife.  While Greville was in love with Emma, he had commissioned the artist George Romney to paint portraits of her and she had posed as various muses - a bacchante, the tragic Cassandra, all beautiful and graceful.  Taking this further, Emma struck poses or 'attitudes' for the entertainment of Sir William and his guests, like a beautiful sculpture.  Whilst in Italy, the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe described how Sir William had a black box 'frame' in which Emma posed.  It was probably no different for her to pose for an audience than to pose for an artist, both a mere extension of her previous ambitions towards the stage.

Emma as Cassandra (1780s) George Romney

It was during her stay in Italy that Emma found herself surrounded by the mass of antiquities that Sir William had collected.  She was also given an education of sorts, studying languages, history, art, together with singing and other skills that would make her a good companion for her older benefactor.  Sir William was a diplomat, a learned man, archaeologist and vulcanologist, and lonely.  After it became apparent that Greville was not returning to her, Emma pinned her colours well and truly to Sir William and her role as hostess at his gatherings involved her posing, moving gracefully between characters.  If Romney's paintings of Emma had made her famous, her attitudes swiftly made her a superstar.

Emma Hamilton's Attitude (1891-4) Friedrich Rehberg (engraved: Tommaso Piroli)

When a folder of engravings was published of 'EH' (Emma Hart/Hamilton) was published it added to the accounts of her performances by Goethe.  In his Italian Journey of 1787, Goethe described her thus: 

"She lets down her hair and, with a few shawls, gives so much variety to her poses, gestures, expressions, etc. that the spectator can hardly believe his eyes. He sees what thousands of artists would have liked to express realised before him in movements and surprising transformations - standing, kneeling, sitting, reclining, serious, sad, playful, ecstatic, contrite, alluring, threatening, anxious, one pose follows another without a break . . . This much is certain: as a performance it is like nothing you ever saw before in your life."

The twelve attitudes portrayed in the portfolio of engravings would have been familiar to those on the 'Grand Tour', connoisseurs of antiquities, acquirers of statuary and vases.  Emma personified those flimsily clad maidens, her youth and beauty displayed in passive, static pose for the enjoyment and enlightenment of a predominantly male audience.

Emma as the attitude of 'dance' from the above portrfolio

Emma Hamilton as a Bacchante (1791-2) Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun

 Such was Emma's fame by this point that even though her attitudes had only been performed for a select audience, on the publication of the portfolio, the Morning Post commented in much excitement 'LADY HAMILTON'S attitudes are at last made public'.  By the time that the portfolio was published, plain Emma Hart had indeed become Lady Hamilton, wife of a diplomat and one of the most sought after hostesses in Europe.  In many ways the publication of the portfolio was a forerunner to something like Kim Kardashian's 2015 opus Selfish, a bound copy of all her selfies over 352 pages.  There are quite a few similarities between Emma Hamilton's early career and that of Miss Kardashian, who both used clever manipulation and exploitation of their image to gain fame, although I have yet to come across the engraving of Emma with a champagne glass on her bottom.

Lady H- Attitudes (c.1800) Thomas Rowlandson

It's hardly surprising that Emma became an easy target for satire and mockery.  The above image is fairly typical, showing a rather grotesque Sir William showing off the beautiful, naked Emma to an artist, whilst statues take on rather amorous aspect around them.  This is no doubt a reference to her previous career as a goddess of health, but also has hints of prostitution about it.  Sir William is seen as pimping out his young wife, who seems to have her foot in a chamber pot. Charming.

Caricature of Emma from A New Edition of Attitudes Faithfully Copied from Nature
and Humbly Dedicated to all Admirers of the Grand and Sublime (1807)

Oddly, various caricatures of Emma at the height of her fame show her as enormously fat (and indistinguishable from the Prince Regent's bride Caroline about a decade later).  For a woman who had built her fame on her looks I suppose it is inevitable that mockery would stem from the destruction of that fame and a way of mocking the famous men who worshipped her.  The artist of these works, attributed to James Gillray, was possibly hinting that previous artistic devotees of Emma were utilizing 18th century Photoshop and portraying her as far more attractive than she was. It's comforting to know that the English propensity for tearing down harmless celebrities for no good reason has been going on for years.  Apparently, it's traditional.

As a conclusion to this rambling piece, I found it delightful that the publicity shots of the movie That Hamilton Woman (1941), Vivian Leigh reproduced the poses that made Emma famous. The attitudes of Lady Hamilton still had the power to express beauty and grace to a twentieth century audience, a century and a half after they were conceived.  In many ways, Emma was the sum of her art, and in no way is that meant to belittle her.  By transforming an uneducated, cast-off mistress into an educated society star, Sir William Hamilton had performed the role of Pygmalion creating his perfect woman in statue form.  By allowing that statue life, he also gave her fame and in that fame she found other men who also thought she was their perfect woman.  In many ways, Emma Hamilton's fame is based on her art and her art is herself, which today would be viewed with the levels of cynicism that is afforded Ms Kardashian.  However, Lady Hamilton and her attitudes found not shallow fame of a fleeting selfie moment, but the lasting fame of centuries.