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Nelson 250: A celebration founded on the hero’s optimistic spirit
Issue number: 21 – March 2008 (KA 21)
Friday, 29 September 1758. One can only imagine how Catherine Nelson felt giving birth to her sixth child – a son; her first two sons had died within a few months of being born and this boy was considered small and fragile. Yet it was a still, ‘very fair’ day, and as Carola Oman wrote in her much-loved biography Nelson, ‘The auspices were propitious. The birthplace was lavishly picturesque’. Certainly, the father and local Rector felt reassured by ‘the air from our light gravell soil, impregnated with the sweet Farinæ of the field, is as healthy as any spott whatever.’
But, what were they to call him? They had naturally called their first born Edmund. The second they had christened a more fashionable Horatio, after Catherine Nelson’s great uncle, Horatio Walpole, who had stood godfather to the child. Dare they use this name again or would it be too heroic for this frail little boy? They were brave and named him Horatio, even though they preferred to call him Horace. Little could they have guessed that the name would eventually fit perfectly England’s finest hero.
