Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1884-07-06
ApRoFEssIoNAL BEAUTY.
The Marvellous Career of Emma Lyon,
Lady William Hamilton.

7
Strange as is the flight of the Cummings
career, the romance Of Emma Lyons is a
hundredfold more marvellous. Born Of
peasant parents, brought up in the most
abject poverty by widowed mother, de-
priyel of the means of the c0mmonest
education. and placed at the age of II as
nurserymaid in a physicians family, this
wonderful girl found the means Of IN
structing herself at least in the more SUI
perficial branches Of a lady's education.
She cultivated the rare gift of a musical
voice with which nature had endowed
her, and after going through the various
vicissitudes Of reigning as the petted IA
vorite of two gentlemen Of good position,
consequently shining as the most graceful
of hOrsewomen upon the valuable mounts
of Sir Harry FeatherstOnhaugh In the
county of Sussex, figuring in the nude as
an illustration of the beauty of health IN
the show of a quack doctor, posing to the
painter Geo. ROmneY for all his most beau
tiful pictures, she positively succeeded in
duping a gentleman of the name OF Gre
Vile into believing her an innocent little
seamstress, and accepted his offer Of edu-
eating her to be a worthy companion Of
his cultured existence.
And so fifty did he form and tutor that
gifted nature that, as years ripened the
0irlish loneliness into womanly grace and
beauty, the native genius Of most re-
ceptiye mind was developed so we'll in
every direction that the laborer's daugh-
ter became a lady able to compete with
the shrewdest intellects in the land. Nor
was her education neglected in the more
special departments OF her own musical
and dramatic gifts. One evening Rane-
lagh-the scene Of so many strange con-
quests and wonderful pictures-was con-
vulsed as it had perhaps never been be-
fore, even in the days of its favorite belle,
the lovely and simple Maria.
Later on. after her separation from Mr..
Greville, Emma Lyon was married to SIR
William Hamilton, His MaJesty's Ambas-
sador at Naples. For a short year society
shut its eyes to whispered tales, and well
coined the fair one to its arms, that her
matchless beauty, her rare dramatic and
musical gifts, her winning and DIS
tinguished manners, might draw adj
miring and curious crowds to their assem-
blies.
All the bellies of the season were eclipsed
for the moment. Lady Cadogan's pert
prettiness made no way, and even the
brilliant Duchess of DevonshIre herself
had, we may fancy, to give way for short
space to this turbulent rush of wonderful
notoriety: while, as for the fashionable
scandals of the hour, such as the Prince
of Wales secret marriage with comedy
Mrs. FitZherbert, they were fairly smoth-
cred by this tar more marvellous mesalli-
ance. But the new belle was fortunately
not to risk living through her success into
the cold region of bad memories revived
that lay beyond.
| Little more than a year after her mar
riage, Lady Hamilton returned to Naples,
laden with the Lamentations of fashion
able Iife,: and with her departure ends
our consideration of her as a society belle.
| OF her strange and uncanny friendship
with the Queen of Naples, of her undeni-
| able influence on the politics of the Nea-
| pOlitan court, of the services she is sup
! posed to have rendered to the English ma
! ton by her efforts to assist Lord Nelson's
enterprises, and last, but not least, of her
romantic amours with the great Admiral
and the almost magical fascination which
she exercised upon him, we have little to
| do, for they are matters of history and not
/ of society talk. A few years after Lord
Nelson's death Lady Hamilton herself
| died at Calais, whittier she had fled from
her London creditors,