Letters of a Hindoo Rajah in 1796. Soon after, with her sister Mrs Blake, she settled at Bath, where she published in 1800 the Memoirs of Modern Philosophers, a satire on the admirers of the French Revolution. In 1801–1802 appeared her Letters on Education. After travelling through Wales and Scotland for nearly two years, the sisters took up their abode in 1803 at Edinburgh. In 1804 Mrs Hamilton, as she then preferred to be called, published her Life of Agrippina, wife of Germanicus; and in the same year she received a pension from government. The Cottagers of Glenburnie (1808), which is her best-known work, was described by Sir Walter Scott as “a picture of the rural habits of Scotland, of striking and impressive fidelity.” She also published Popular Essays on the Elementary Principles of the Human Mind (1812), and Hints addressed to the Patrons and Directors of Public Schools (1815). She died at Harrogate on the 23rd of July 1816.
Memoirs of Mrs Elizabeth Hamilton, by Miss Benger, were published in 1818.
HAMILTON, EMMA, Lady (c. 1765–1815), wife of Sir William Hamilton
(q.v.), the British envoy at Naples, and famous as
the mistress of Nelson, was the daughter of Henry Lyon, a
blacksmith of Great Neston in Cheshire. The date of her birth
cannot be fixed with certainty, but she was baptized at Great
Neston on the 12th of May 1765, and it is not improbable that
she was born in that year. Her baptismal name was Emily.
As her father died soon after her birth, the mother, who was
dependent on parish relief, had to remove to her native village,
Hawarden in Flintshire. Emma’s early life is very obscure. She
was certainly illiterate, and it appears that she had a child in
1780, a fact which has led some of her biographers to place her
birth before 1765. It has been said that she was first the mistress
of Captain Willet Payne, an officer in the navy, and that she
was employed in some doubtful capacity by a notorious quack
of the time, Dr Graham. In 1781 she was the mistress of a
country gentleman, Sir Harry Featherstonhaugh, who turned
her out in December of that year. She was then pregnant, and
in her distress she applied to the Hon. Charles Greville, to whom
she was already known. At this time she called herself Emily
Hart. Greville, a gentleman of artistic tastes and well known
in society, entertained her as his mistress, her mother, known
as Mrs Cadogan, acting as housekeeper and partly as servant.
Under the protection of Greville, whose means were narrowed
by debt, she acquired some education, and was taught to sing,
dance and act with professional skill. In 1782 he introduced
her to his friend Romney the portrait painter, who had been
established for several years in London, and who admired her
beauty with enthusiasm. The numerous famous portraits of
her from his brush may have somewhat idealised her apparently
robust and brilliantly coloured beauty, but her vivacity and
powers of fascination cannot be doubted. She had the temperament
of an artist, and seems to have been sincerely attached to
Greville. In 1784 she was seen by his uncle, Sir William
Hamilton, who admired her greatly. Two years later she was
sent on a visit to him at Naples, as the result of an understanding
between Hamilton and Greville—the uncle paying his nephew’s
debts and the nephew ceding his mistress. Emma at first
resented, but then submitted to the arrangement. Her beauty,
her artistic capacity, and her high spirits soon made her a great
favourite in the easy-going society of Naples, and Queen Maria
Carolina became closely attached to her. She became famous
for her “attitudes,” a series of poses plastiques in which she
represented classical and other figures. On the 6th of September
1791, during a visit to England, she was married to Sir W.
Hamilton. The ceremony was required in order to justify her
public reception at the court of Naples, where Lady Hamilton
played an important part as the agent through whom the queen
communicated with the British minister—sometimes in opposition
to the will and the policy of the king. The revolutionary
wars and disturbances which began after 1792 made the services
of Lady Hamilton always useful and sometimes necessary to
the British government. It was claimed by her, and on her
behalf, that she secured valuable information in 1796, and was
of essential service to the British fleet in 1798 during the Nile
campaign, by enabling it to obtain stores and water in Sicily.
These claims have been denied on the rather irrelevant ground
that they are wanting in official confirmation, which was only
to be expected since they were ex hypothesi unofficial and secret,
but it is not improbable that they were considerably exaggerated,
and it is certain that her stories cannot always be reconciled
with one another or with the accepted facts. When Nelson
returned from the Nile in September 1798 Lady Hamilton made
him her hero, and he became entirely devoted to her. Her
influence over him indeed became notorious, and brought him
much official displeasure. Lady Hamilton undoubtedly used
her influence to draw Nelson into a most unhappy participation
in the domestic troubles of Naples, and when Sir W. Hamilton
was recalled in 1800 she travelled with him and Nelson ostentatiously
across Europe. In England Lady Hamilton insisted on
making a parade of her hold over Nelson. Their child, Horatia
Nelson Thompson, was born on the 30th of January 1801. The
profuse habits which Emma Hamilton had contracted in Naples,
together with a passion for gambling which grew on her, led her
into debt, and also into extravagant ways of living, against which
her husband feebly protested. On his death in 1803 she received
by his will a life rent of £800, and the furniture of his house in
Piccadilly. She then lived openly with Nelson at his house at
Merton. Nelson tried repeatedly to secure her a pension for
the services rendered at Naples, but did not succeed. On his
death she received Merton, and an annuity of £500, as well as
the control of the interest of the £4000 he left to his daughter.
But gambling and extravagance kept her poor. In 1808 her
friends endeavoured to arrange her affairs, but in 1813 she was
put in prison for debt and remained there for a year. A certain
Alderman Smith having aided her to get out, she went over to
Calais for refuge from her creditors, and she died there in distress
if not in want on the 15th of January 1815.
Authorities.—The Memoirs of Lady Hamilton (London, 1815) were the work of an ill-disposed but well-informed and shrewd observer whose name is not given. Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson, by J. C. Jefferson (London, 1888) is based on authentic papers. It is corrected in some particulars by the detailed recent life written by Walter Sichel, Emma, Lady Hamilton (London, 1905). See also the authorities given in the article Nelson. (D. H.)
HAMILTON, JAMES (1769–1831), English educationist, and
author of the Hamiltonian system of teaching languages, was
born in 1769. The first part of his life was spent in mercantile
pursuits. Having settled in Hamburg and become free of the
city, he was anxious to become acquainted with German and
accepted the tuition of a French emigré, General d’Angelis.
In twelve lessons he found himself able to read an easy German
book, his master having discarded the use of a grammar and
translated to him short stories word for word into French. As
a citizen of Hamburg Hamilton started a business in Paris, and
during the peace of Amiens maintained a lucrative trade with
England; but at the rupture of the treaty he was made a prisoner
of war, and though the protection of Hamburg was enough to get
the words effacé de la liste des prisonniers de guerre inscribed upon
his passport, he was detained in custody till the close of hostilities.
His business being thus ruined, he went in 1814 to America,
intending to become a farmer and manufacturer of potash;
but, changing his plan before he reached his “location,” he
started as a teacher in New York. Adopting his old tutor’s
method, he attained remarkable success in New York, Baltimore,
Washington, Boston, Montreal and Quebec. Returning to
England in July 1823, he was equally fortunate in Manchester
and elsewhere. The two master principles of his method were
that the language should be presented to the scholar as a living
organism, and that its laws should be learned from observation
and not by rules. His system attracted general attention, and
was vigorously attacked and defended. In 1826 Sydney Smith
devoted an article to its elucidation in the Edinburgh Review.
As text-books for his pupils Hamilton printed interlinear translations
of the Gospel of John, of an Epitome historiae sacrae, of
Aesop’s Fables, Eutropius, Aurelius Victor, Phaedrus, &c., and
many books were issued as Hamiltonian with which he
