THE VARDON NELSON FUNERAL SCROLL: QUERIES AND CLARIFICATIONS

My post on the Vardon scroll depicting Nelson's Funeral procession to St Paul's in 1806 (see post of 25 January) has generated quite a lot of interest and some further reflection as to what it exactly might be.  The website Nelson and His World - http://www.nelsonandhisworld.co.uk/ - picked up the debate very quickly. 

There was some reluctance in the Nelson and His World discussion thread to accept that a ten year could have been sufficiently competent to do the work.  I have no doubt that John Vardon was.  I have a passing interest in English drawings and watercolours of this period and the execution of the scroll is well within the competence of as ten year old at the time.  Training was much more focused, high standards were expected and, quite frankly, a world with fewer distractions meant that work was done much more thoroughly.

Also doubt was cast about the genuineness of the lump of fossilised soup that the Vardons stated to have been preserved from a batch prepared on HMS Victory on 21 October 1805.  As it has now completely disappeared, I think the odds are long that it has survived at Buckingham Palace or some other royal palace, we will never know with certainty.  All I was doing as a blogger was to report a family tradition.  It is one I find quite credible.  There was an immediately reverential interest in anything connected with the Battle of Trafalgar as soon as it was clear what a great victory had been achieved linked to the poignant fact that Nelson had been killed in the hour of his greatest triumph.  Preserving a lump of soup in such circumstances seems quite understandable.  What is of greater interest is quite it lasted so long without modern methods of preservation such as freezing or rapid dehydration.

The Toy Lord Nelson Funeral Panorama.  Thin paper sheet 12x7.5 inches. Published 25 January 1805 priced at one shiiling and sixpence.  The sheet would have been cut up and the procession glued together as a roll.  It would then be drawn across the scene on the bottom left to animate it.  Sold for £920.  With acknowledgements to the 1805 Club.

The remaining area of debate has been the influences on, and possible purpose of, the scroll. Penny Fussell, our archivist, has I think found the complete answer. The Kedge Anchor, the newsletter of the 1805 Club has a useful section reviewing sales of naval memorabilia.  In the March/April 2010 edition - number 27 - there is the record of a toy Lord Nelson Funeral Panorama sold on eBay by a seller in Bristol.  It is almost certainly the inspiration of Paul Vardon's home-made copy.

I can remember playing with similar paper cut-outs drawn across a small cardboard box proscenium stage.  They were often processions of circus animals. There was also a variation where cut outs were passed in front of a light source to create a shadow show.

Incidentally the 1805 Club was founded in 1990 to care for the memorials of the Georgian sailing navy.  For more details go to http://www.1805club.org/

ST PAUL'S CATHEDRAL SCHOOL CHORISTERS: 1 FEBRUARY

St Paul's choristers with their Director of Music.  One of the boys said during a question and answer session that he found the ruffs a little uncomfortable.

St Paul's Cathedral School is the school nearest to the Hall.  It is an independent co-educational school for children 4-13 and is situated in New Change close by the cathedral.  It is also the choir school for the cathedral and there are 34 choristers who board in a house near the school.  We have traditionally supported one of them.  For more details go to http://www.spcs.london.sch.uk/

On Tuesday there was a recital in the choir of the cathedral at six in the evening.  The atmosphere of St Pauls on a winter evening is a sublime amalgam of grandeur and peace; a great building anchored on its hill with only faintest hum of the City intruding.

The recital not only included some moving and delightful pieces of choral church music but also interviews with various choristers describing their life at the School.

This was followed by a reception in the Crypt around Nelson's tomb.  A post of 25 January noted that Nelson's funeral took place at St Paul's on January 9th, 1806.  I did not realise that in a curious piece of re-cycling, and I suppose desire for economy, he was interred beneath the black sarcophagus originally made for Cardinal Wolsey in the early 16th century.  The crypt is a very British place where memorials and tombs to British heroes, generally military,  are jumbled up with those of the lesser known.

Afterwards I was invited out to supper by the Master Girdler, Lord Strathalmond and his clerk, Ian Rees.  Ian is an old friend from my days in the Army.  They both looked after me very well..

A pitfall I managed to avoid was one that occurred to a most distinguished Master Draper a decade ago.  As he entered the Choir at St Pauls the Draper chorister, whom he had interviewed prior to entry a few months previously, gave him an enormous wink of welcome quite expecting one in return.

PRESENTATION OF THE VARDON MEMORIAL OF LORD NELSON'S STATE FUNERAL



Johanna Vardon presenting the John Vardon scroll of Nelson's State Funeral Procession to the Company in the Drawing Room.  Herbert Draper's increasingly well known painting,  Gates of Dawn, painted to symbolise the beginning of the twentieth century in the background.

Following the Court of Wardens, and the admission of Edward Chalk - see previous post, there was a short ceremony to thank Freeman Johanna Vardon MBE for her generous and interesting gift to the Company of a scroll painted by her forebear John Vardon (1796-1869) depicting Admiral Nelson's state funeral. 

 

Sir William Beechey's portrait of Nelson in the Court Room. This is one of a number that Beechey painted of Nelson at the time.  It is particularly interesting as it shows Nelson in an admiral's uniform late in his career.  The Court paid Beechey 200 guineas for the portrait in 1805.

Nelson is one of the very few individuals who have been made members of the Company honoris causa. This was after the Battle of the Nile 1798 and there is a letter in the archives accepting the offer of freedom.  He describes it as a great honour and promises that he will make it, 'The study of my life to preserve their (the Drapers' Company) good opinion.'

Not a particularly good picture but one that gives a reasonable impression of the work.  Nelson's funeral carriage drawn by six black horses is the large black square on the bottom row on the left.  Also it shows, as was indeed the case, very few sailors in the procession.  For some reason the Army provided most of the escorts. 

Assuming the scroll was painted shortly after Nelson's funeral in 1806 John would have been 9 or 10.  It is a charming procession of carriages, military figures and other participants.  It was probably not painted from life but inspired or copied from one of the many depictions of the funeral procession that appeared at the time.  But our records show that John lived in Gracechurch Street, London at the time so he might have observed the procession that made its way from the Admiralty in Whitehall to St Paul's Cathedral on 9 January 1806.

The Vardons are a family long associated with the Company. It was John Vardon's father, another John, who began the association with the Company in the late eighteenth century.  Johanna noted the two Vardon Court Assistants whose shields are displayed in the decoration of the Court Dining Room when it was remodelled in 1869.  Past Master Sir Peter Bottomley MP and Liveryman Philip Beddows, both Johanna's nephews, also attended.  At present there are twelve members of the Company with Vardon links.

Johanna is well known in the equestrian world for having founded the National Foaling Bank.  Since she started in 1965 her drive and enthusiasm has united thousands of orphan foals with foster mares who have lost their own foal.  Additionally every year hundreds of owners also call the Bank for help and advice on difficult foaling cases, twenty-four hour nursing, and information about colestrum, milk replacements, and special dietary requirements.  For more details go to www.nationalfoalingbank.com/

On handing over the scroll Johanna recalled that it had been stuffed into a tin in the kitchen for many years and it was a matter of good fortune that it had survived with only minimal damage.

One final anecdote is that amongst other Nelson memorabilia owned by the Vardons was a lump of fossilised soup that had originally been served on HMS Victory on the day of the battle of Trafalgar.  Johanna said she had surreptitiously tasted a flake of it when a child and said that it was still remarkably chewy but rather salty. 

Eventually in 1947 the Vardon family decided to break up the lump with the major chunk being presented to Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip as a wedding gift.  Some years later an enquiry to the Palace about the fate of the soup was, perhaps surprisingly, met with a response from the Private Secretary to the Duke of Edinburgh that it could not be found.

Afternote: For further comment on Paul Vardon's painting abilities, the fossilised soup and the almost certain inspiration and purpose of the scroll see a further post of 27 February.