Sir William Hamilton’s life at Naples (from 1764 to 1798) coincided not only with one of the most turbulent periods of Neapolitan history, but also with a series of natural upheavals which stimulated the curiosity of that enlightened Englishman and led him to study the phenomena of Vesuvius (and other volcanic areas surrounding Naples). Hamilton’s studies, reported in a series of letters to the Royal Society (afterwards collected and published in the two volumes of the famous Campi Phlegraei),[1] can be considered the basis of the modern science of volcanology.

 

The presence of Hamilton in Naples, where he spent half of his life, was important for many reasons. He was interested in every significant aspect of local life and culture, and established a unique relationship with that singularly lovable, easily misunderstood, and often desecrated Campanian city. His sense of humour, and the knowledge he acquired of the local dialect, gave him the capacity to appreciate the sharp wit and somewhat impertinent cordiality of the populace.

1) The Embassy of Palazzo Sessa. There Hamilton kept his celebrated collections of paintings, ancient Greek vases, and minerals. Hamilton was, first of all, a collector. His pictures included many fine works by old masters, both Italians and Flemish, and a number of (then) contemporary artists whom he had himself encouraged; notably Pietro Fabris, Philipp Hackert and the ungrateful Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (who, after having been commissioned to paint a portrait of Emma and having been generously rewarded, made in her Memoirs several malicious remarks about the diplomat’s greediness).[2]

 

Situated on the hill of Pizzofalcone, one of the most fashionable areas of the capital, the Palazzo Sessa was not only the ambassador’s official residence but also his home and private museum. Sir William kept there his large collection of paintings, and an extensive and wonderful assortment of antiquities, which subsequently formed the initial nucleus of the Roman and Greek section of the British Museum. At the Palazzo Sessa Hamilton felt at home. So much so that on a wall of his bedroom, he affixed the Latin motto: “Ubi bene, ibi patria” (where I am at ease, there is my homeland).[3] The view from the bow window of the palazzo (now spoiled by the presence of new constructions)[4] was at that time spectacular. Fortunately we can still admire it, reproduced on a large (102 by 272 cm.) colour painting (in a mixed technique: pen, ink, gouache and water) by Titta Lusieri, which is now in the Malibu Getty Museum. This shows the western part of the Naples coast with the church of S. Maria della Vittoria in the foreground and the hill of Posillipo in the distance. The very same view which Goethe will have admired and described in 1787. After defining it as “perhaps unique”, Goethe’s comment was: “It is most unusual, in Europe at least, to find such a place; and even more so in the centre of such a large and densely-populated area”.[5]

2) “The little cabin at Caserta”. Hamilton had a passion for shooting, which was also King Ferdinand’s main pastime. For this reason the ambassador kept a casino in the country, at Caserta, where the nearby area of the Mounts Tifatini offered an abundance of game. We don’t know the exact whereabouts of this “little cabin at Caserta”, as one of Hamilton’s best friends and frequent guests, the Earl of Bristol, used to call it.[6] But the fact that while the King was at Caserta the ambassador and his wife were often invited to dine at the Royal Palace,[7] indicates that Hamilton’s casino must not have been too distant from the “Neapolitan Versailles”.

In 1780 William Beckford, a very wealthy young man and a distant relative of Hamilton’s (seven years later the celebrated author of the “Gothic” novel Vathek), was also a guest at the “little cabin”. Beckford spent there the entire autumn and, while Sir William was away on his hunting expeditions, he was comforted by the company of Catherine Barlow, the first Lady Hamilton. The young man, who apparently was in need of maternal affection, “found in this elder woman someone in whom he could confide with frankness”.[8] Corresponding with his friend the painter Alexander Cozens, Beckford told him how much he enjoyed his life at Caserta: “I still remain here, quiet and happy, with Lady Hamilton, who is perfectly in our way – we see nobody. Sir William hunts all day long with the King upon the Mountains, whilst we indulge our imaginations at home and play strange dreams upon the pianoforte and talk in a melancholy visionary style which would recall your ancient ideas and fill you with pleasant sadness”.[9]

 

We must not let ourselves be misled by the nickname “little cabin”. The house could not have been so small if Emma could in 1793 inform Greville that they had fifty guests.[10] Indeed it must have been quite a comfortable residence, since the Hamiltons every year could spend there eight months, going however to Naples twice a week to entertain guests and give large banquets.[11]

3) The Villa Angelica. The “sweet house at Portici”, or Villa Angelica, which Hamilton leased at the foot of Vesuvius, was instead mainly his vulcanological observatory. The musicologist Charles Burney, who visited this Vesuvian dwelling with Captain Forbes in October 1770, discovered it to be “a small house” with “a large garden, or rather vineyard, with most excellent grapes”.[12] The evening that Burney and Forbes spent in Hamilton’s company proved exceptionally pleasant: “After dinner we had Music […]. As soon as it was dark , the Musical entertainment was mixed with the sight and observation of Mount Vesuvius, then very busy. Mr Hamilton had glasses of all sorts, and every convenience of situation etc. for these observations, with which he is much occupied. […] Though at three miles distance from the mouth of the mountain, we heard the reports of the several explosions before we saw the stones and red-hot matter thrown up by them […]. The sight was awful and magnificent, resembling on a large scale the most ingenious and splendid fireworks I ever saw […]. After supper we had a long dish of musical talk […]. Music was not wanting, as Mr Hamilton has two pages of his household who are excellent performers, one on the violin, and the other on the violoncello”.[13]

 

Indeed music represented more than a simple pastime for Hamilton. The diplomat had learned to play the violin in London under the composer performer Felice Giardini, and kept a box at the Teatro San Carlo (for which he paid 77 ducats annually). Emma had a good soprano voice, and loved to sing; and his first wife Catherine was a fine harpsichord player. After attending a musical evening, and referring to Catherine, once Lady Anne Miller noted: “Mrs. Hamilton’s musical assembly, which she gives once a week, is rendered perfect by her elegant taste and fine performance. It is called an Accademia di Musica, and I suppose no country can produce a more complete band of excellent performers”.[14] Other members of Hamilton’s “Accademia di Musica”, whose payment chits have survived,[15] included the violinist and composer Emanuele Bardella and a certain Gennaro Alessandro. On another occasion Hamilton confided to his nephew: “I supped in private en famille with the King and Queen of Naples lately, after having accompanied His Sicilian Majesty’s singing, and charming harmony we made. The Queen laughed, for she really sings well”.[16] A scène de genre by Pietro Fabris, now in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery of Edinburgh, portrays a similar scene. In the Neapolitan residence of Lord Fortrose, in May 1770, a very special chamber concert is in progress. The host, standing with his back to us, is listening to William Hamilton and the musician Gaetano Pugnani, both playing the violin, while the guests Leopold Mozart and his very young son Wolfgang Amadeus accompany the two gentlemen on the harpsichord.[17]

4) The Villa Emma. Hamilton’s Posillipo casino which, unlike Palazzo Sessa, enjoyed a full view of Vesuvius, served him mainly for sea-bathing in summer, and also made it possible to keep an eye on the behaviour of the volcano at all times. Writing in 1780 to his nephew, Hamilton gave him a lively description of his Neapolitan life: “I roll luxuriously in the sea every morning and we dine at our Casino at Pausilipo every day, where it is as cool as in England. Spring and autumn we inhabit our sweet house at Portici,[18] which you remember, and in winter I follow the King to Caserta and the Appennines after wild boars, etc.”.[19]

 

Sea-bathing was a favourite sport among the English visitors to Naples in the eighteenth century. The traveller Patrick Brydone, writing in 1780, tells us in detail how such entertainment was practised: “Sea-bathing we have found to be the best antidote against the effects of the sirocco; and this we certainly enjoy in great perfection. Lord Fortrose, who is the soul of our colony here, has provided a large commodious boat for this purpose. We meet every morning at eight o’ clock, and row about half a mile out to sea, where we strip and plunge into the water […]. My lord has ten watermen, who are in reality a sort of amphibious animals, as they live one half of the summer in the sea. Three or four of these generally go in with us, to pick up stragglers and secure us from accidents. They dive with ease to the depth of forty, and sometimes of fifty feet, and bring up quantities of excellent shell-fish […]. After bathing we have an English breakfast at his lordship’s, and after breakfast a delightful little concert, which lasts for an hour and a half”.[20]

Hamilton also had his watermen, “amphibious animals” ready to perform and entertain his guests. Tischbein, writing to Goethe in July 1787, told him: “Day before yesterday I went with Cavaliere Hamilton to Posillipo, to his villa. It is impossible to see anything more splendid. After dinner a dozen boys flung themselves into the sea: a very beautiful spectacle, with the many groups and various positions they assume in play among themselves. The Cavaliere pays them specially, to provide this entertainment every afternoon”.[21] A similar amusement had been previously offered by the Prince of Francavilla in his “Casino di S. Lucia” to a group of foreigners which included Sir William Hamilton and the Duchess of Kingston. Giacomo Casanova, who happened to be among the guests, left in his Memoirs the following description of the show: “ […] Le Prince donna à la Duchesse [de Kingston] un spectacle très intéressant : il fit plonger à la fois ses pages, jeune gens de quinze a dix sept ans, beaux comme des Amours, et ces plongeurs sortant presque simultanément du sein des ondes, vinrent nager sous nos yeux, développant leur forces et leur grâces et faisant mille évolutions. Tous ces jeunes Adonis étaient les mignons de ce prince aimable et magnifique”.[22]

 

Lord Herbert, the son of the Earl of Pembroke, when he visited Naples, made the following entry in his diary:

 

August 24^th, 1779 […] “I dined with Sir William Hamilton and Lady Hamilton at their Cassino [sic] (consisting of three rooms and a kitchen) to-day as I have done every day that I have not been otherwise engaged.

Note. August 24^th. Sir William Hamilton’s Cassino is at Pausilippo and is the last house a carriage can arrive at. It is built on small rock and consists of three rooms and a kitchen, with a very diminutive garden. There are two flight of stairs to come up to it. When the weather is fine, a small terrass [sic] before the building constitutes the Setting [sic] Room, with a large Venetian blind to guard it from the heat of the sun. Sir W. generally dines here, for at two the sun is off, and while everybody is broiling at Naples he is enjoying the cool of the said Cassino. You may judge from this that the owner, not of this book but of the Cassino is a man of sense. The next house in ruins is said to have belonged to Queen Joan”.[23]  

 

It is surprising that, in spite of such a clear description, until about twenty years ago the Villa Emma was considered vanished. Fothergill had speculated in 1969 that the construction had in Hamilton’s times been located “somewhere in the neighbourhood of Capo di Posillipo”, and reported the tradition according to which “the villa was destroyed during the period when Murat was King of Naples, when a new road was being built”.[24] Fothergill’s somewhat sad conclusion was: “Its exact position is now unknown”.

That was the situation in 1980 when, starting to write an essay on Hamilton’s Neapolitan house,[25] I had the good luck to solve the puzzle. Lord Herbert’s words: “The next house in ruins is said to have belonged to Queen Joan” seemed to me clear enough. The casino must have been in close proximity to the Palazzo Donnanna, an historic building mentioned by all the Neapolitan guide books. Then I found corroboration of the said propinquity in another source: a booklet by Francesco Alvino, describing the coast of Posillipo as it was in 1845.[26] Alvino said that, proceeding westward along the coast, before reaching Palazzo Donnanna could be found “the old house of Hamilton”. And added: “After the house of Vietri [previously called “Casino di Caserta”] there is on the beach the small house once inhabited by the famous Hamilton, which still keeps his name”. The next step was to make a verification on an eighteenth century Neapolitan map, the Mappa topografica di Napoli e dei contorni [1775] of Giovanni Carafa Duca di Noja, which showed near the sea, between the Casino di Caserta and the Palazzo Donnanna, only a small construction called “Casino di Mappinola”. Could this “Casino di Mappinola” have been the Villa Emma? The doubt was eliminated when I discovered at the Victoria and Albert Museum the existence of a drawing by William Pars, with the following annotation: “Sir William Hamilton’s casino at Posillipo”. A few days later I went to the spot and I found out, much to my surprise, that – although much spoiled – the remains of the Villa Emma were still there, ignored and disregarded by all.

 

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