Napoleon and Nelson</H1

Thursday, July 29, 2004

In life, Horatio Nelson and Napoleon Bonaparte came no closer than a few sea miles, but they will meet next year in a major exhibition celebrating the bicentenary of the battle of Trafalgar.

And, to mark the occasion, their hats and their descendants came together this week at the shop where Nelson had his hats made.

At James Lock & Co in London, where Nelson settled his final bill on his last morning in England, the families of the two men mingled.

There were two descendants of Napoleon, through a mistress: Hugo de Salis and his father Bernard, who managed to conceal his ancestry throughout 20 years in the navy.

And there were two descendants of Nelson, through his mistress Lady Hamilton and their daughter Horatia: Anna Tribe and her daughter Mary Arthur, who is the spitting image of her great great great great grandfather.

A private collector brought Napoleon's cocked hat from Paris - for which the insurance was enormous. And there were two of Nelson's hats: one, worn at the battle of Copenhagen in 1801, from the National Maritime Museum, and another that has been with his effigy in Westminster cathedral since his death in 1805.

The hats disprove one of the most cherished myths of British history, repeated endlessly in paintings, prints, posters and films - that Nelson wore an eye patch. "He did not lose one eye, he lost the sight of one eye, and if he were in this room now you would not be able to tell which was which," said the historian Colin White, who will co-curate the exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, next summer.  

"He never, ever wore an eye patch."

The eye was damaged by flying stone chips in a skirmish on land in 1794. Nelson, already a naval hero who had been awarded a £1,000 annual pension for the loss of his arm, bought his first hat from Locks in 1800.

It was made of beaver fur with a black silk cockade, and cost £1.11.6d.

He bought several more in the following years, including one in black silk for an unnamed lady, almost certainly his mistress Emma Hamilton. She also bought a hat for a cousin on his account.

In 1803 he came to the shop again, worried about his eyesight. The glare of reflected light from the sea and the inevitable battle hazards of smoke and grit, were affecting his good eye, and he was terrified about losing its sight as well.

He asked if the shop could make him a hat with a built-in shade, protecting both eyes.

The drawings produced on the spot by the workshop foreman survive in the firm's archives.

Both the surviving hats, which will be in the exhibition, have silk eyeshades, one in green and one in blue.

Mr White says that Nelson and Napoleon had much in common, and might have got on well if they had met.

"They came from respectable but relatively humble origins, they were both extremely ambitious, they both had difficult private lives, and there is no doubt that they had a common touch - they were both genuinely loved by their men," he said.

The exhibition will include many treasures from museum and private collections. The paintings, documents, jewellery and personal possessions include a drawing that Nelson carried with him until his death, of Horatia as a toddler dwarfed by her rocking horse.