Nelsons Purse

This scholarly volume is both a major addition to Nelson studies and a biography of Nelson's friend and man of business, Alexander Davison. Davison began as a merchant's apprentice in London in the 1760s and eventually met Nelson in Canada, where he was procuring supplies for the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars. He loaned money to Nelson, acted as prize agent for his fleet after the Battle of the Nile, and generally provided the financial acumen that Nelson singularly lacked. (At one point, Davison was a trusted confidant of Nelson, his mistress Lady Hamilton and Nelson's estranged wife.) But Davison was flexible--so flexible, in fact, that he was imprisoned twice, once for corrupt electioneering and once for not paying interest on money borrowed from the government. He eventually lost his fortune, but the purse (Davison's gift) that Nelson was wearing when Nelson was killed at Trafalgar ended up with Davidson's heirs, along with a perfect treasure trove of long-lost Nelson relics. Downer presided over their auctioning at Sotheby's for more than two million pounds, and while he has an antiquarian bent, he is an indefatigable researcher and master of the details of life in this era. He writes fluently enough to make this an absorbing book for the serious student of the era, but an action-adventure for sleuthing aficionados it is not.