French connection
Andrew Lambirth assesses the first exhibition to unite Nelson and Napoleon
Much trumpeted as the first exhibition to explore together the lives of Horatio Nelson and Napoleon Bonaparte, Nelson & Napoleon at once raises the double question of was it a good idea and does it work? This crowded display is a qualified success, with an audiovisual presentation which re-enacts the Battle of Trafalgar every five minutes or so in blips of light and moderate sound effects, and is curiously unconvincing as a centrepiece. Two upper floors of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, are given over to this large and ambitious exhibition, which is the highlight of SeaBritain 2005, a yearlong festival of events around the UK (for more information consult the website: www.seabritain2005.com), celebrating our special relationship with the sea.
The exhibition’s designers, Ralph Appelbaum Associates UK, modestly describe their efforts as ‘an important milestone in UK exhibition design’. RAA UK are apparently renowned for their storytelling style, which ‘ensures moments of searing clarity’, while their aim is to ‘encourage visitors to emotionally connect’ with Nelson and Napoleon. Heaven forfend! Will our schools be subsequently heaving with smooth-talking adulterers and megalomaniacal dictators? Insane asylums have always had their quotas of inmates claiming to be reincarnations of the great dead, and even the dying Henry James thought he was Napoleon. Perhaps there will be many more Napoleons of crime in the near future to rival Moriarty, and not a few rabble-rousers with the Nelson touch. It may be important to apply an admixture of the Iron Duke by way of antidote. For Wellington, to whom is attributed the pungent remark, ‘I don’t care a twopenny damn what becomes of the ashes of Napoleon Bonaparte’, scarcely gets a look-in at the Maritime Museum. Although the overall effect of the exhibition is rather depleting, I enjoyed several moments of ‘searing clarity’ in the prevailing gloom among the more than 300 exhibits. One of the first items the visitor encounters is a Phrygian cap, in red wool and blue linen, the Ancient Roman symbol of liberty and freedom, in this case worn by active supporters of the French Revolution. In a very minor way, I’d always thought I wanted to wear a Phrygian cap, if only on ceremonial occasions, so discovering it wouldn’t suit me was the first moment of ‘éclaircissement’. (The labels are catchily bilingual, by the way. I quite liked the presence of the French texts; it made the whole enterprise seem more fair-spirited, and not simple a Nelson-fest.) This dual-nationality exhibition did indeed seem to be patronised by a good sprinkling of French visitors, who clicked their tongues loudly at the Trafalgar exhibit, but whether from disgust at its cybernetic limitations or at the French defeat, I couldn’t tell. Another heavily symbolic object was the lump of iron labelled ‘Key to the Bastille’, now in the collection of Madame Tussaud. Put that with a French drum (no fife), and a small iron-bound wooden travelling barrel with tap — a wine canteen or ‘tonnelet’ — and you have a portrait of the age and the country in miniature. A guillotine blade used on Guadeloupe displayed in a cabinet nearby is almost over-egging the pudding. But many of the objects are not so declamatory. Historians rely on documents (will there be no social history of the mobile-phone age?), and letters and papers constitute a fair few of the key exhibits, along with uniforms, weapons, jewellery and portraits. An early depiction of Emma Hart in a cavern by George Romney introduces one of the principal players. In an adjacent cabinet hangs Gillray’s later etching ‘A Cognocenti contemplating ye Beauties of ye Antique’, a caricature commenting on the notorious affair Emma, now Lady Hamilton, was conducting with Nelson. Her husband Sir William is the elderly art-loving party in the foreground, while the pictures on the wall above him depict Nelson as Mark Antony and Emma as Cleopatra.
Indeed, one of the pleasures of the exhibition is the regular appearance of a satirical note injected by Gillray; another is the degree to which Turner is featured. In fact, painting is refreshingly well treated for an historical exhibition. There is, for instance, a magnificent full-length Ingres portrait of Bonaparte as First Consul in crimson velvet. Nelson doesn’t fare quite so well. He is represented by a copy of Sir William Beechey’s rather less inspired portrait commissioned by the Drapers’ Company after the Battle of Trafalgar. To give an example of the heady juxtaposition of objects, next to a French-inspired sheer muslin court dress embroidered with little flowers and gold spangles is one of Turner’s sketchbooks (from 1802) copying Guercino’s ‘Mars and Venus’ in the Louvre, while a hand-coloured Gillray etching entitled ‘The First Kiss this Ten Years’ celebrates the Peace of Amiens.
Other exhibits which caught my eye: a gilt-bronze Imperial eagle of the 5th Infantry Regiment, a pair of sugar nippers (to break chunks from the solid loaves sugar was then sold in) and a Coalport sugar bowl from Nelson’s own collection; an 1803 broadsheet ‘Let Englishmen keep a watchful eye upon French Spies who are employed to pull down or deface all Loyal and Patriotic Papers’; the gold necklace given by Nelson to his daughter Horatia, with a silhouette of a dog at the centre of an oval (she had written reminding him that he’d promised her a dog); the blue and gold Egyptian Sèvres service, originally made as a divorce gift from Napoleon to the Empress Josephine; various exquisitely made model ships, maps and drawings, including an image of Mortella Tower, an ancient edifice in Corsica which guarded the anchorage of San Fiorenzo Bay, and was difficult to get past. This so impressed the British that it inspired our own coastal defences against Napoleon, the martello towers.
In many ways it’s a glorious assembly of objects clearly laid out; yet I’m not sure how much these things without a commentary would convey to the average visitor. (Most people are glued to their audioguides, which take them on a very selected tour of the exhibition’s treasures, but do at least attempt to explain them.) There is a useful timeline stencilled near the ceiling, with events dated by month and year. For example, under 1798 we have ‘August: Nelson defeats the French at the battle of the Nile.’ ‘December: An alliance between Britain and Russia forms the basis for the Second Coalition against France.’ I don’t know how much basic history people possess nowadays, or why they attend exhibitions such as this. Is it a way of mingling entertainment and education? I’ve always hoped so. In which case, we can only trust that this extended history lesson was not too confusing.
For those who might prefer the meditative comfort of an armchair at home, I can recommend two publications, both of them novels: Barry Unsworth’s Losing Nelson (1999) and Napoleon Symphony by Anthony Burgess (1974). To return to this exhibition, it does seem somewhat inappropriate to be staging a tribute to Napoleon, a military hero, in the Maritime Museum. Perhaps a slightly more neutral territory would have served the exhibition’s purpose better. Somerset House might have made a good venue, given its long career of hosting exhibitions and its role as one-time home of the Navy Office. The show claims to challenge some of the myths about the Battle of Trafalgar, as well as about Nelson and Napoleon, and to offer new insights based on ‘the very latest research’. I’m afraid much of this passed me by in a blur of exhibition fatigue, but are shows which are consciously designed to be popular the best vehicles for new research and scholarship? Probably not. Admission costs £9 for an adult, £4 per child. There’s also a wide range of Nelsonlinked merchandise for those with high disposable incomes.
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