We are persuaded, in fact, that the foregoing views of Lady Hamilton’s personal appearance are not correct.  They give the impression that the opinions of her critics are based on the woman’s lowly origin, and that they assume that because she was the offspring of poor parents she ought to be described as a fat hoyden with the manners of the kitchen.  The people who knew her intimately do not make her out to be a stout, unwholesome, East-End Palestiner.  The sister of Marie Antoinette, be it remembered, was her close companion, and many English ladies living in Naples and visiting there were scarcely likely to associate with a person who could not display better looks and manners than those set forth.  Nelson, the Prince of Wales, and her many other men admirers, were hardly likely to tumble over each other in competition for her smiles and favours if “her dress was frightful,” “her waist between her shoulders,” “her hair dirty,” “her feet hideous,” “her bones large,” “her complexion coarse,” and “her person monstrous for its enormity, growing every day.”

We are inclined to place little dependence on the accuracy of people who seem to have described her according to their moods or perhaps according to the manner of her admirers towards themselves.  That she was clever and attractive there can be no doubt, and it is equally certain that she won for herself the mortal enmity of many ladies who saw her powerful influence over prominent men and women whom they themselves bored.  Some importance must be given to her husband’s position as British representative; his influence must have been great, especially in Neapolitan circles.  This would help her natural gifts of fascination, even though her breeding and education did not reach the standard of her blue-blooded critics.  She had something that stood her in greater stead than breeding and education:  she had the power of enslaving gallant hearts and holding them in thrall with many artful devices.  They liked her Bohemianism, her wit, her geniality, her audacious slang, and her collection of droll epithets that fittingly described her venomous critics of a self-appointed nobility.  When she could not reach the heights of such superior persons she proceeded to ridicule them with a tongue that rattled out vivid invective which outmatched anything they could say of her.  It probably made her more enemies, but it satisfied her temper and pleased her admirers.  She never appears to have been conscious of any inferiority in herself.  We are inclined to agree with the opinion expressed by the naval lieutenant at Naples, who said “She was a very handsome, vulgar woman.”  All her portraits confirm what the sailor says about her beauty, and the most reliable records are confirmatory so far as his view of her vulgarity is concerned.