At Viscount Nelson’s lavish funeral,
While the mob milled and yelled about St Paul’s,
A General chatted with an Admiral:
“One of your colleagues, Sir, remarked today
That Nelson’s exit, though to be lamented,
Falls not inopportunely, in its way”
“He was a thorn in our flesh”, came the reply—
“The most bird-witted, unaccountable,
Odd little runt that ever I did spy”.
“One arm, one peeper, vain as Pretty Poll,
A meddler too, in foreign politics
And gave his heart in pawn to a plain moll.
“He would dare lecture us Sea Lords, and then
Would treat his ratings as though men of honour
And play leap-frog with his midshipmen!
“We tried to box him down, but up he popped,
And when he banged Napoleon on the Nile
Became too much the hero to be dropped.
“You’ve heard that Copenhagen ‘blind eye’ story?
We’d tied him to Nurse Parker’s apron-strings—
By G-d, he snipped them through and snatched the glory!”
“Yet”, cried the General, “sic-and-twenty sail
Captured or sunk by him off Trafalgar—
That writes a handsome finis to the tale.”
“Handsome enough. The seas are England’s now.
That fellow’s foibles need no longer plague us
He died most creditably, I’ll allow.”
“And Sir, the secret of his victories?”
“By his unServicelike, familiar ways, Sir,
He made the whole Fleet love him, damn his eyes!”
It was the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar the other day, so here is an appropriate poem, 1805 by Robert Graves. This is a humorous look at how the Royal Navy actually thought of Nelson before his exploits made him a national hero and beyond criticism.
It’s a reminder that history always depends on who is writing it, an idea explored in another Graves poem, The Persian Version.
The admiral in this poem is rather more concerned with the navy’s way of doing things, than with its true purpose. That concern for the institution above all else seems quite modern.
Now, as then, an unconventional genius is always going to trouble those who look at things in a more hidebound way.
The Good Reader 