1808. Woven into the narrative are various reminiscences of her early Stirling days. Her Mrs. M'Clarty, with her inevitable ‘I canna be fash'd,’ is still a figure of interest for Scottish readers. Mrs. Hamilton gave help in the establishment of the Female House of Industry in Edinburgh, and for the inmates she wrote in 1809 ‘Exercises in Religious Knowledge.’ In 1812 she continued the subject of her education letters in ‘Popular Essays on the Elementary Principles of the Human Mind.’ After a three months' visit to Ireland she returned to Edinburgh, and in 1815, influenced by a study of Pestalozzi, published ‘Hints addressed to the Patrons and Directors of Public Schools.’ From 1812 her health had been very uncertain, and now a disease of the eyes, added to other weakness, necessitated change of climate. She went to England, and died at Harrogate 23 July 1816. She was buried in Harrogate Church, and a monument was erected to her memory.
Mrs. Hamilton was much appreciated by her contemporaries. Miss Edgeworth wrote a eulogistic notice at her death. Lord Woodhouselee, in ‘Life of Lord Kames,’ ii. 282, praises the philosophical spirit of her writings on education. Mrs. Grant of Laggan (Memoir and Correspondence, ii. 16, 129) alludes to the substantial value of her essays, and speaks warmly of her qualities as a friend and a social factor.
[Memoirs, with a Selection from her Correspondence and other Unpublished Writings, of the late Mrs. Eliz. Hamilton, by Miss Benger (1815); Tytler and Watson's Songstresses of Scotland.]
HAMILTON, EMMA, Lady (1761?–1815), wife of Sir William Hamilton (1730–1803) [q. v.], ambassador at Naples, was the daughter of Henry Lyon of Nesse, in the parish of Great Neston, Cheshire, and of his wife, Mary, people in the humblest circumstances. She was baptised in the church of Great Neston on 12 May 1765. In the official record of her death in January 1815 she is described as fifty-one, which, if we may allow her own statement that her birthday was 26 April, would place her birth in 1763. This document, however, contains inaccuracies, and there are strong reasons for supposing that she was born earlier, not improbably in 1761, the date given by a contemporary but anonymous writer (Memoirs, p. 16). She was christened Amy, but, after trying the various changes of Amyly, Emly, Emyly, and Emily, finally adopted the name of Emma. Shortly after her baptism her father died, and her mother returned to her native place, Hawarden in Flintshire, where she and her child lived with her mother, Mrs. Kidd. While still quite young Emma is said to have been nurse-girl in the family of Mr. Thomas of Hawarden, and to have come to London a year or two after, apparently in the course of 1778, as nursemaid in the family of Dr. Richard Budd [q. v.] She is said on various and doubtful authority to have been afterwards a shop-girl, a lady's-maid, a barmaid, mistress of Captain John Willet Payne and mother of his child, a street-walker, and the representative of the goddess of health in the more or less indecent exhibition of John Graham (1745–1794) [q. v.], a quack-doctor (Memoirs, pp. 20, 30, 35; Gagnière, p. 4; Angelo, Reminiscences, ii. 237–8). It is certain that about the beginning of 1780 she gave birth to a child, afterwards known as ‘little Emma;’ and that towards the end of the same year she accepted the protection of Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh of Up Park in Sussex, where she lived in a dissolute set till December 1781, when Fetherstonhaugh, apparently offended by what she mildly called her ‘giddy’ ways, abruptly dismissed her, although on the point of becoming a mother, giving her barely sufficient money to enable her to reach Hawarden. She was kindly received by old Mrs. Kidd, and gave birth to a second child, which, as nothing more is heard of it, was probably stillborn. She was at this time in great pecuniary distress, for Mrs. Kidd was almost, if not quite, a pauper, and Fetherstonhaugh refused even to answer her letters. She then wrote anxiously to the Hon. Charles Greville, with whom she had been apparently on terms of ‘giddy’ intimacy, and who was possibly the father of the expected child. Her letters at this time are signed Emily Hart, and are those of a person utterly illiterate. Greville brought her to London, where for the next four years she lived with him in a small house near Paddington Green, her mother, who now called herself Mrs. Cadogan, acting as cook and housekeeper. The style of life seems to have been curiously modest and economical. Greville was an earl's son and member of parliament, but his income was only 500l. a year, and that was encumbered; 20l. was all that he allowed his mistress for dress and pocket-money; and his retirement from society seems to have been mainly a measure of retrenchment. The girl seems to have been really in love with him, and content with her secluded life. Greville's attachment was not of the romantic sort, but he was kind to her, provided for her child, gave her masters in music and singing, encouraged her to read poetry or novels, and ‘taught her to take an intelligent interest in such things as his ancient coins, choice engravings, and mezzotints’ (Jeaffreson, Lady Hamilton, i.
