igate queen was a Madonna. He was
her dupe. She never had a child in her life."[72] As to this last
assertion, Beckford was not in a position to have personal knowledge.

But along with this native coarseness, which, if not ineradicable, was
never eradicated, she possessed an intuitive and perfect sense,
amounting to genius, for what propriety and good taste demanded in the
presentation of an ideal part,--the gift of the born actress. Of her
powers in this way the celebrated "Attitudes" were the chief example,
and there is no disagreement among the witnesses, either as to their
charm or as to the entire disappearance of the every-day woman in the
assumed character. "We had the attitudes a night or two ago by candle
light," wrote Sir Gilbert Elliot in 1796. "They come up to my
expectations fully, which is saying everything. They set Lady Hamilton
in a very different light from any I had seen her in before; nothing
about her, neither her conversation, her manners, nor figure, announce
the very refined taste which she discovers in this performance,
besides the extraordinary talent which is needed for the execution."
"You never saw anything so charming as Lady Hamilton's attitudes,"
wrote Lady Malmesbury in 1791. "The most graceful statues or pictures
do not give you an idea of them." "It is a beautiful performance,"
wrote Mrs. St. George, who saw her in 1800, when the Hamiltons and
Nelson were travelling on the Continent, "amusing to the most
ignorant, and highly interesting to the lovers of art. It is
remarkable that although coarse and ungraceful in common life, she
becomes highly graceful, and even beautiful, during this performance.
It is also singular that, in spite of the accuracy of her imitation of
the finest ancient draperies, her usual dress is tasteless, vulgar,
loaded and unbecoming."

The stormy period of the French Revolution, which was about to burst
into universal war at the time she was married, gave Lady Hamilton
another opportunity to come yet more conspicuously before men's eyes
than she had hitherto done. It is not easy to say what degree of
influence she really attained, or what particular results she may have
effected; but she certainly managed to give herself so much the air of
a person of importance, in the political intrigues of the day in
Naples, as at the least to impose successfully upon a great many, and
to be accepted very much at her own valuation. The French ambassador,
writing to Bonapar