Diary of Mary Berry, 13 January 1806

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

309–311

text excerpt

I had determined immediately after seeing it, to mark down the effect Lord Nelson's funeral should have on my mind, and that of the people about me. I had certainly hopes that it would have been more considerable than it was, although I had little hope of its being conducted with any real taste or solemn effect, knowing that its conduct had not been entrusted to any persons of approved taste themselves, or who would have summoned artists to their assistance. On the water it was a crowd of boats, in which the immense city barges only were conspicuous. It is much easier to set down upon paper the regulations of a ceremony, such as that the boats of the river fencibles are to line each side of the procession, &c., than to give the effect of a procession so lined on the water in the foggy atmosphere of the Thames. The distance of time between the minute guns fired by these river fencibles was too long to command continued attention, and therefore, I think, failed in their effect. The music, too, was not sufficiently loud to have any effect at all; and the barge which contained his honoured remains was neither sufficiently large nor sufficiently distinguished to command the eye and the attention of every spectator, which by some means or other it ought to have done. I was looking over the wall of Lord Fife’s garden, which forms one side of Whitehall Stairs, so that I saw the coffin in the very act of being landed; saw it placed on the bier on which it was borne to the Admiralty. […]

On shore the whole ceremony was still less calculated to gratify the feelings it naturally inspired, and in which (to do them justice), not one of the thousands collected as spectators but seemed to participate. Never was there so decent, so quiet, so serious, so respectful a mob. […] [The] sailors [of the Victory], instead of being allowed to surround the coffin from which they had proved themselves so unwilling to separate, were marshalled by themselves in another part of the procession, without music, without officers, without any naval accompaniments whatsoever. […] What a deep and lasting impression would the whole of this ceremony have made on the minds of the spectators, had the naval part of the procession, as well as the military, been conducted on foot; had the companions of his glory and his danger, exposed to the regards of their grateful and admiring country, immediately surrounded the car which bore his remains; had the whole been accompanied by appropriate music—one band taking up the melancholy strain when another dropped it; and had the passage of the procession been marked by the solemn tolling of the different bells.

excerpt from 'Diary of Mary Berry, 13 January 1806' pp. 309–311 (462 words)

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