attitude may be due to his being nearly seventy
years old at the time, but another clue to his particular
128
interests may lie in a 1787 letter from the
artist Johann Tischbein to Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe (himself quite a fan of Emma Hamilton
and her “attitudes”):
The day before yesterday I visited Lord Hamilton
at his villa near Posillipo. One cannot imagine a
more glorious sight on God’s green earth. After
our meal, a dozen youths swam in the sea—that
was a beautiful sight. The many groups they
formed and the poses they struck while playing!
He pays them to do this, so that he might have this
pleasure every afternoon.7
Nelson’s wife, Fanny, was less understanding,
eventually refusing to either see him or divorce
him. Undaunted, Emma and Nelson’s sister-inlaw,
Sarah, found a furnished country house
called Merton Place near what is now Wimbledon,
which Nelson purchased in 1801, expending
virtually all the funds he had available.8
Thenceforth, whenever he was in England, he
lived there with Emma, Horatia to a greater or
lesser degree, and sometimes Hamilton, who
also had a Piccadilly apartment. Hamilton died
in 1803, reportedly with Nelson and Emma by
his side. Merton Place was the only home Nelson
ever owned that he actually lived in (he had
previously bought a small house for Fanny), and
his passionate relationship with Emma continued
until his death at Trafalgar in 1805.
Returning at last to our penu, from what we
know of his interests combined with the other objects
that bear his name as provenance, it stretches
the imagination to think that Nelson would
have acquired such an object of his own volition.
Hamilton is certainly the most likely source for it,
and he and Nelson were close enough that there
would have been ample opportunity for it to pass
from one to the other during the decade between
the time they fi rst met in 1793 and Hamilton’s
death in 1803. As noted above, Hamilton’s nephew
Greville had close connections with Joseph
Banks, and Banks with Cook, but less well remembered
is that Hamilton was also a close friend
of Banks. Their surviving letters demonstrate that
they carried on an active correspondence on a variety
of subjects for many years. As president of
the Royal Society, Banks encouraged Hamilton
to contribute papers to the society’s Philosophical
Transactions, and they were both members of the
infl uential Society of Dilettanti, as was Greville
(fi gs. 13 and 14).9 Thanks to Ezio Bassani’s meticulous
research, we know that Banks was the
source for a collection of forty-three Cook objects
that Hamilton gave to Ferdinand IV of Naples
around 1784 (fi g. 15) and now held in the collection
of the Pigorini in Rome.10 A number of these
can be identifi ed in illustrations of Cook material
by Sydney Parkinson (fi gs. 16 and 18) and by
John Frederick Miller.11 Whether Hamilton acquired
these artifacts directly from Banks or via
Greville, this date places these artifacts squarely
with Cook, since at that time there was no other
source. It also incontrovertibly places Cook objects
in Hamilton’s hands, and, inveterate collector
that he was, it would have been odd for him
to have given everything to Naples and retained
nothing for himself.
It should be noted that Nelson was directly
in touch with Banks by letter on July 9, 1803,
in the context of his capture of a French corvette
that had in its cargo “cases of I know not
what, but I suppose things as choice as Lord
Elgin’s …” (fi g. 19).12 He indicates that he is
forwarding these cases of Greek antiquities to
Banks for possible purchase by the Royal Society
or the museum. Nelson’s tone is cordial
but businesslike, and the letter does not reference
any prior acquaintance. We know of no
follow-up to this letter.
Bearing in mind that, at the time in question,
there was very little Pacifi c material available in
Europe for personal ownership,13 the Nelson/
Hamilton/Banks/Cook connection (with or without
Greville) is so prominent that the prospect
of other routes becomes vanishingly small. The
circles in which such objects moved were also extremely
limited (fi g. 20). In terms of timing, the
greatest likelihood would have been during their
time at Merton Place between 1801 and 1803,
the only time that Nelson actually had a place to
easily keep such an object, and also when Hamilton
would have been reorganizing his collection
following his permanent return to England.
Emma decorated Merton Place before Nelson
arrived there, clearly using part (or all) of Hamilton’s
collection of portraits of her. That Nelson
OBJECT HISTORY