Bride of Glory

By Bradda Field $3.00 GREYSTONE PRESS

EMMA or Emy Lyon was the daughter of a blacksmith and a superior domestic servant. Beginning as a servant herself, she became in turn the mistress of Captain John Willett Payne of the Royal Navy, Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh, Charles Francis Greville, and Sir William Hamilton. These names represent the steps of the ladder of her ascent, but she was to climb still higher, for she became the intimate friend of Queen Maria Carolina of Naples and — the reader who knows his history has already guessed it—the mistress of Lord Nelson. The part she played in the destiny both of the Kingdom of Naples and of the great hero is a long-standing subject of debate; but it is the least interesting episode in this novel. Nelson was an unsatisfactory hero except when he was in battle, and Miss Field has been unable to make him live. In fact, he talks like a book and acts like a stick. And he has a regrettable effect upon Emy, for after he appears (on page 508 which is the middle of the tale) she grows steadily less fascinating. Nevertheless, the first 700 pages or so are really delightful. Emy, whose only fault is, as she says, that ‘everything flows from my heart and I cannot stop it,’ moves blithely and innocently through riots, intrigues, battles, and loves, amid some five hundred and thirty characters (all, the publisher assures us, historical), fairly faithful to each new protector and winning her way by her courage and beauty. The people she meets and the English and Italian scenes in which she moves are always vivid and often brilliant. They represent an amount of research truly astonishing. The reader will end the book with a freshened sense of a past time and of the resourcefulness of the human will. R. M. G.