Nelson & His World

The story of Collingwood and the Plum Cake is told here:

http://www.archive.org/stream/footprintsoffamo00edga

The book is a true mid-Victorian 'uplift-and-example' hagiography, 'Footprints of Famous Men: designed as incitements to intellectual industry' by J.G. Edgar.

The story was first told by Collingwood's son-in-law and first biographer, G.L. Newnham-Collingwood, and is repeated in Max Adam's biography of 2005.

I haven't read Denis Orde's biography but I am told by a fellow enthusiast that he dismisses the plum cake story. Shame.

If you have Geordie friends, you will find they usually have a simmering resentment that Collingwood has been overshadowed by Nelson. In expiation, I will be posting a poem written in honour of Collingwood and the men of Northumberland on the poetry thread.

[For overseas readers: A 'Geordie' is someone from the North east of England, as was Collingwood.]

I wouldn't worry too much about Denis Orde's dismissal of the story. He is totally inconsistent in his reasoning. He says "Significantly, in Collingwood's account there is no mention of sobbing for home and family in those first days on board ship or of sharing a plum cake which his mother had baked...". Yet it is clearly not significant that Collingwood himself made no mention of it. Of the account Orde earlier says that Collingwood "eventually surrendered to Gold's request [for a memoir to publish in the Naval Chronicle] and reluctantly composed some sort of history in January of the year 1806. But the result was no more than a short perfunctory, summary account, shorn of any detail...". An anecdote of his early homesickness is the very last thing that Collingwood himself would have included in such an account. He would have divulged it only to close family.

How right you are! I feel much better now.

I've just clicked on the link and it shows only the cover of the book. Sorry. The illustration of Collingwood sharing his plum cake (and I'm confident now that he did!) is on page 130.