The Mary Hamilton Papers : Letter from Francis Napier, 8th Lord Napier, to Mary Hamilton

Napier, Francis Scott, 8th Lord

The Mary Hamilton Papers

<p style='text-align: justify;'>Letter from Francis Napier, 8th Lord Napier, to Mary Hamilton, concerning Sir William and Emma Hamilton. Napier plans to stay in London until Easter and he has not yet decided whether he will visit her on his return North although he confesses that seeing her daughter and her husband is an inducement to visit Leighton House. He continues on the subject of Hamilton's uncle, Sir William Hamilton, and returns to her Sir William's letter. He notes that he does not intend visiting Sir William and that there is little chance of Sir William feeling it worth his while to visit him. He writes that he is old fashioned ‘and cannot easily reconcile my ideas to the propriety of approving and countenancing the fair Emma. Had he been a Boy of sixteen, such a set might have been pardonable. But, really at his time of Life, to espouse the mistress of his nephew, picked up in the streets, seems such an intolerable piece of folly [...] that I quite despise him for it’. Napier dined at Lord Mansfield's the previous night and expected to see Emma there but did not and his ‘curiosity to behold this prodigy remains ungratified’. He understands that the Queen will not receive her and he applauds her for it.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>He continues to note that his (and Hamilton's) cousins [the Cathcarts or the Mansfields?] are being unexpectedly civil to him. More so than they have been previously but as he cannot afford a carriage and as Hamilton knows such things are important among their relations, they may ‘hold me cheap’.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Dated at St James's Street [London].</p>