Emma Hart

It isn’t great to be the second son of an earl.  The first born gets it all; the estate, the title, and the income. After that, a small annuity was all Charles Greville received. After his father, the 2nd Earl of Warwick died, that annuity only got smaller. So when faced with rising debts and a lifestyle beyond his means, a man of the upper crust as Lord Greville definitely was did what men and women did in that position; marry into fortune. It is not easy to shop for a wife with a mistress in tow, and so it was that Emma Hart was shipped off to Charles’ uncle William, his mother’s brother ,who held the position of Ambassador in Naples.  For Charles, his uncle paid the nephew’s debts, saving the family from some amount of disgrace. For Emma, it was a chance to further her schooling in the classics. For Sir William, it was the chance to grace his parlor with a beauty comparable to some of the Greek statues he collected. As time went by and Charles did not find a wife or fetch Emma back, a fondness grew whereupon Emma and Sir William were married subsequent to Sir William’s wife’s death. Thus Emma Hart became Lady Emma Hamilton, but that is still not the entire story of Emma.