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A new nelsonian cult? part II (little naval content)
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PMarione
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Post Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2008 2:00 am    Post subject: A new nelsonian cult? part II (little naval content) Reply with quote

"Billet d'humeur"

In 2001, attracted by the word Nelson in the title, I bought a copy of Nelson speaks, Admiral Lord Nelson in his own words, Chatham Publishing, by Joseph F. Callo.

I can't remember the price I paid but today on amazon it's worth up to 117.81 GBP + shipping.

This is one of the most useful book I own.

It's used to straighten a wobbly table.
The unspeakable biography is too thick and I already use it to wedge the garden door in summer.

It qualifies today as used or well worn) but I offer it for free in exchange of something 2.1 cm thick.

De imitatione Christi (The Imitation of Christ) is attributed to Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471).
The original manuscript is kept at the Bibliothèque Royale in Brussels and it's a number one top bestseller of all times: counted editions exceed 2,000 (1,000 different editions are at the British Library) and you can find it on the web in various translations.

So Callo, in the hope to sale as many copies or at least to compete with Ron Hubbard's Dianetic, decided to apply the same recipe to poor HN: extracts from his letters with unctuous, pompous, slimy, silly comments.
Quote:
"They have done for me at last, Hardy... my backbone is shot through."
At Trafalgar, Nelson paid the ultimate price in combat.
His words at the moment of his lethal wound, as those in earlier circumstances, strongly suggest he anticipated that death was imminent.
For example, in October of 1803, he wrote to Lady Hamilton, "[S]ome ball may soon close all my accounts with this world of care and vexation!"
Even under the stress of the situation he was calm and behaved in accordance with what he had preached during his career: death comes to all, and those who go into combat must be prepared for it.
In a different context five years before Trafalgar, he had cited a homespun phrase that summed up his fatalism: "[T]he pitcher never goes often to the well, but it comes home broke at last."
Nelson came "home broke at last" on the quarterdeck of Victory.
The spot where the musket ball felled him is marked with a small but evocative brass plaque that reads, "Here Nelson Fell-21st October 1805."

As many clichés as words.
And you have more than 200 pages of such non-sense.

So here we have the prayer book of the nelsonian cult, next step: canonization of the hero.

He was a protestant but they can always say that EH converted him to popery during his last stay in England.
His epiphany is a good point.
He hated the French (not a cardinal virtue) but everybody does and Carla is not French.
He couldn't keep his breeches zipped but among the saints there are bishops and popes aplenty and after all he was no US president.
Seasickness is a good point: he did suffer for his job.
Losing a lot body pieces is good too: makes him a martyr.
He was vain but that makes him the more human.
Kiss me Hardy: not good, makes bad jokes for schoolboys, Kismeth is better.
He was a very bad politician: can be good or bad, depends.
He was drinking and gambling but it was due to the bad influence of EH.
He misbehaved in Naples but again EH bad influence and he had had a knock on his head.

But alas for the sect there is a major problem: HN will never qualify.
The canon law is absolute: you need at least one miracle after death for beatification and two for sanctification.
Alas again, the canons of St Paul have closed the access to the sarcophagus behind a rail and it will be very difficult to be miraculed in the middle of the cafetaria near at hand, amongst the smell of French fries (shame on them) and hamburgers at the sound of rap and hiphop.
The cultists can always buy a postcard.

Back to Callo.
He had already commited a Legacy of leadership, lessons from Admiral Lord Nelson in 1999 (61.02 GBP on amazon).
A useful book too: only 1.4 cm if your table is less wobbly.

You can find great toughts like:
Quote:
It would be interesting to get answers to that question from Admiral Nelson himself.
Perhaps stretching the imagination to envisage an interview with a modern TV reporter would produce something along the following lines.
Reporter: [...]
Nelson: [...]

That's stretch!

When I was a boy, not being a miscreant like today, I was an altar boy (you could fetch some money at marriages and a gulp of wine if the vicar was not looking) and I received a missal. Most of it was in latin and as such of no great interest but the last part was full of lives of saints. That was real good reading: all those poor chaps eaten by wild beasts, beheaded, mutilated, crucified on various crosses, all those young virgins roasted on pits, cut in pieces...

So Rear Admiral Joseph F. Callo (retired), please no more books on Nelson!
Try something more juicy like Britney Spears in her own words or the Legacy of Paris Hilton.

Or try an anthology of Victorian nelsonian patriotic poetry. To paraphrase Poincaré: patriotic poetry is to poetry what military music is to music.

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ionia



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Post Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 9:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
The unspeakable biography is too thick and I already use it to wedge the garden door in summer.



What is the biography referred to?
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PMarione
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Post Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2008 10:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here is a post that I made in 2006 on another forum.
It paved the way to a very hot discussion.

Quote:
I just received the new biography of Emma Hamilton by Kate Williams (England's Mistress, the infamous life of Lady Hamilton) which was announced as a new important book based on new research etc.
I was impatient to read it as there is a long time that there was no new biog of Emma.
Its at the same time the funniest book I have read for years and the worst Emmas biography ever (including the French ones that had the lead before now).
In the prologue you learn that poor Nelson exhausted from his victory at the Nile and suffering from his lost eye and arm (no mention of his wound) fainted in the generous arms of Emma on arriving in Naples. A good start.

In the 1st chapter Mrs Williams deals with the birth of Amy. To my knowledge all the known facts are the marriage cert of her parents, the baptism cert of Emma and the death cert of his father. From that Mrs Williams can write 10 pages where you learn that Mary Kidd married Henry Lyon because she was unhappy at home, that Emma was certainly conceived before there marriage (a current practice at the time to ensure that the bride to be was fertile) and that the greatest mistery in the life of Emma is the death of his father. Then to your amazement you learn that he either commited suicide (by alcoholic intoxication because at the time all the men working in the coal pit spent all their money in gin of a far potent sort than today and Henry was very unhappy in his marriage) or was discreetly expedited by his unhappy wife who had after that to leave the village quickly as all the widows at the time were believed to be witch. The rest is in the same vein.

We have an expression in French for people who write such kind of fantasies: fumer la moquette (literally smoking the carpet) meaning that the person as used such strange substances that her brain is starting to melt. Mrs Williams has not only smoked the carpet but also some camel hair.

This is not the infamous life of Lady Hamilton but the infamous biography.

If like me you collect books on Emma Hamilton, you'll probably have to buy it (or better steal it) for the sake of completion but range it on the back of the shelf with the other fictions with Sontags' "Volcano Lover" and Unswoth's "Losing Nelson" which are good book but clearly labelled as novels.

If you just are interested in reading a biography of Lady Hamilton, buy Flora Fraser's "Beloved Emma" then wait for the book of Mrs Williams to come in paperback and have some fun.


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