Emma Hamilton: Seduction and Celebrity
Stunning exhibition at the National Maritime Museum looking at the life of Emma Hamilton. The exhibition was beautifully laid out and took you through Emma’s life like walking through a novel. I’d obviously known about her later life with Nelson and a bit about her time in Naples but I hadn’t realised her humble beginnings, she early life and a servant and possibly a prostitute in London, her various ‘protectors’ and that she had been a muse to the artist Romney. Even when we got the Naples section (and I have to mention the lovely panorama of the city along the walkway to the section with sea noises and a projection of waves on the floor) I hadn’t realised that she had basically been given to Lord Hamilton by his nephew. She turned a horrid situation around, eventually marrying him and gaining a classical education. I’d known nothing about her performances to his friends and visitors to Naples of dances she called “The Attitudes” and the influence that had. I was entrance