Hayley, and is rewarded
with eighty-eight glowing lines by her husband, who calls to his aid
Eolus, Orion, Boreas, Auster, Zephyr, Eurus, Famine, and Ceres for the
better decoration of his verse. He paints a portrait of Miss Seward, and
the lady's gratitude gushes forth in eulogy of
....the pleasures of the Hayleyan board,
Where, as his pencil, Romney's soul sublime
Glows with bold lines, original and strong, etc.
'Beloved and honoured Titiano!' she wrote, some years later; 'how that
name recalls the happy, happy hours I passed with you at Eartham; when
by the title 'Muse' you summoned me to the morning walk!' Amongst the
drossy twaddle which passed current as poetry at Eartham, a sonnet in
Romney's honour by a true poet--William Cowper--may be counted as pure
gold.
In the beginning of 1782 Emma Lyon, then known as Mrs. Hart, afterwards
as Lady Hamilton, first sat to Mr. Romney. Painters and poets enough had
already been busy celebrating her loveliness, the lady nothing loth. She
took pleasure in the full display of her charms: holding probably that
her beauty was not given her for herself alone, but that the whole
world, if it listed, might at least look on it and adore. At one time
indeed she was rumoured to have personated the Goddess of Health, when
the 'celestial' Doctor Graham was giving his strange and indecorous
lectures in Pall Mall; but that scandal has been contradicted. Certain
it is, however, that her witcheries effectually subjugated Romney and
Hayley. The painter went fairly mad about her; could not see her often
enough; was restless and miserable out of her presence; reduced the
number of his sitters, and admitted no visitors until noon, that he
might have time sufficient to devote to the beautiful Emma and her
portraits. This infatuation endured for years. 'At present,' he wrote to
Hayley, in 1791, 'and the greatest part of the summer, I shall be
engaged in painting pictures from the _divine lady_. I cannot give her
any other epithet; for I think her superior to all womankind.' For a
long time he seemed to be able only to paint Emma Lyon. His son
enumerates some two dozen portraits, in which she appears as Circe,
Iphigenia, St. Cecilia, Sensibility, a Bacchante, Alope, the Spinstress,
Cassandra (for the Shakespeare Gallery), Calypso, a Pythoness, Joan of
Arc, a Magdalen, etc.; some of these were left unfinished. But at one
time the form and features of his beautiful model appeared upon the
painter's canvas, let him try to paint what he would. The fair Emma had
absolutely enthralled him. Absent from the object of his adoration, he
was reduced to despair. He writes to Hayley, complaining that he has
discovered an alteration in his Emma's conduct: 'a coldness and neglect
seemed to have taken the place of her repeated declaration of regard.'
Hayley sends up some verses for the painter to copy and sign, beginning
'Gracious Cassandra,' and asking pitifully,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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