"Lady Hamilton Regrets," a poem by Charles Rammelkamp

I came a long way from being 
the daughter of a Blacksmith in Cheshire, 
who died when I was only two months old,
never getting any formal education, 
to being the model for all of the artists of the day,
but especially George Romney, who painted me
as Miranda, Cassandra, The Magdalene, Titania and Bacchante.

I’d come to London at thirteen or fourteen,
and by fifteen I’d met Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh,
dancing nude on his dining room table
at his South Downs estate, became his mistress
before moving on to Charles Greville, 
another English aristocrat, but only on condition
I foster out Fetherstonhaugh’s bastard baby.

Then I married Sir William Hamilton
when Greville pawned me off to his uncle 
so he could marry Henrietta Middleton and her money;
eighteen when I married the fifty-five-year-old 
Sir William, then British Envoy in Naples; it felt like
the father I missed out on, the father I never had.

I’d go on to have an affair with Admiral Nelson himself,
the scandal of London promoted by all the newspapers.
Sir William didn’t seem to mind, always doting on me
like a kindly old father,
but Nelson’s wife Fanny didn’t take it well at all.
Thirty-six when I had Nelson’s daughter Horatia.

I was bereft when he died at the Battle of Trafalgar.
The Nelsons all abandoned me then,
and soon I was in serious debt.
Even Sir William turned a cold shoulder.
Fearing the creditors, I fled to France,
dying in Calais at forty-nine,
hopelessly addicted to laudanum.

But even in death I was the subject
of a 1919 British silent film,
a 1926 German opera,
and in 1994 my memorial, The Lady Hamilton Stele,
unveiled in Parc Richelieu, Calais.
Still, I wish I’d died in other circumstances.
You know, a little more comfortably.