Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Admiral Horatio Nelson (1758-1805) and Emma, Lady Hamilton
(1761-1815)
While the Duke of Wellington fought Napoleon on land (the final victory at Waterloo,
near Brussels, 1815), Admiral Nelson battled France at sea (Battle of Trafalgar, off Spain,
1805).
At Nelson's side is Emma, Lady Hamilton, dressed in white, with her famously beau-
tiful face turned coyly. She first met dashing Nelson on his way to fight the French in
Egypt. She used the influence of her husband, Lord Hamilton, to restock Nelson's ships.
Nelson's daring victory at the Battle of the Nile made him an instant celebrity, though the
battle cost him an arm and an eye. The hero—a married man—returned home to woo, bed,
and impregnate Lady H., with sophisticated Lord Hamilton's patriotic tolerance.
• Go to Room 18.
The Romantics
Not everyone worshipped industrial progress. Romantics questioned the clinical detach-
ment of science, industrial pollution, and the personal restrictions of modern life. They
reveled in strong emotions, non-Western cultures, personal freedom, opium, and the beau-
ties of nature.
•
Scattered around the room, you'll see...
John Keats
(1795-1821) broods over his just-written “Ode to a Nightingale.” (“My
heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains/My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk.”)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772-1834), at 23, is open-eyed, open-mouthed, and
eager. (“And all should cry, Beware! Beware!/His flashing eyes, his floating hair!/...For
he on honey-dew hath fed,/And drunk the milk of Paradise.”—“Kubla Khan”)
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
(1797-1851), in telling ghost stories with husband
Percy Shelley and friend Lord Byron, conceived a tale of science run amok—
Franken-
stein
—imitated by many. (“Ahhhhhhh, sweet mystery of life, at last I've found you!”)
William Wordsworth
(1770-1850): “The world is too much with us.../Little we see
in Nature that is ours;/We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”
