Editorial This day, my dearest Emma, which gave me birth, I consider as more fortunate than common days, as, by my coming into this world, it has brought me so intimately acquainted with you, who holds most dear. I well know that you will keep it, and have my dear Horatia to drink my health. Forty-six years of toil and trouble! How few more the common lot of mankind leads us to expect; and, therefore, it is almost time to think of spending the few last years in peace and quietness! Victory, 29 September 1804 Inevitably – indeed, quite properly – the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Horatio Nelson’s birth is a keynote of this year’s Trafalgar Chronicle. Whilst this presents an opportunity to remind ourselves there once was a living, breathing Nelson equally we remember that it is his enduring legacy that is also of vital interest to a variety of historians and researchers. We are encouraged to concentrate on his varied achievements than solely on the manner of his triumphant death. Sooner a christening than a wake, and, best of all, a birthday! It is ironic therefore, at least according to the evidence of his letters and dispatches, that Nelson rarely saw 29 September as ‘more fortunate than common days’. Indeed, he seldom if ever remarked upon it; it was just another day upon which to carry out his duty. A notable exception to this rule however can be found in the letter he addressed to Emma Hamilton on his birthday in 1804 and which forms the preface to this editorial. He recounts various diplomatic movements, he describes the weather, he sends a kiss to his dear Horatia. He also looks forward to the time he may see his beloved again, perhaps ‘next summer; when, I hope, we shall have peace, or such a universal war as will upset that vagabond, Buonaparte’. Yet, it reads very like a memento mori. Of course, Nelson knew his days were numbered, and this letter seems written with mortality in sight; but beyond death his good eye is focused on posterity. How keen his vision was. In a recent television broadcast the writer Margaret Atwood, with reference to the fateful Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin, cited a book by Marcus Greil entitled Dead Elvis. In it the author suggests that far more things have happened to Elvis post mortem than ever did before he left the proverbial building. In death – recalled in the memories of their fans, in the ways that they are written about, or portrayed in art, in popular song, on television – the famous departed lead lives as miraculous, perhaps even more eventful, than when they were alive. Never mind Franklin, the parallel with Nelson pre- and post- his apotheosis is blindingly obvious. The subtitle of Greil’s book was A Chronicle of Cultural Obsession. Strong stuff, but is it not something very similar, perhaps even more potent, which has kept the vi
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