sion to wind up his pioneering venture, and he wrote numerous But there is one final, touching strand to this tale: the hisheartfelt letters to numbers of influential people expressing his tory of the NMRN, from its beginnings as a pioneering center of sorrow at the fate which had befallen his great enterprise, and British naval heritage to the grand, modern enterprise of today, pleading with a great sense of wounded pride for a reprieve. His also represents a small, rather obscure but fascinating expression pleas fell on deaf ears, and although the replies were all respect- of what we in Britain like to call our "special relationship" with fully sympathetic to his predicament and acknowledged his sterling the United States. Within the unfolding story of this institution is contribution to naval heritage in Portsmouth, the matter was ef- to be found what can only be described as a one-sided love affair fectively closed. Frost continued to feel let down and bitter, but at between Britain's most famous sea warrior, Admiral Lord Nelson, the opening of the new Victory Museum, and an American citizen born into the gilded in July 1938, the chairman of the SNR life just after the outbreak of the First World delivered a generous tribute to the man and War, Mrs. Lily Lambert McCarthy. The young his achievement. Lily's heart was opened to the life and career The new Victory Museum opened of the great man through the influence of her in 1938 and closed almost immediately in father, Gerard Barnes Lambert, the retired 1939 with the outbreak of the Second World chief executive of the Lambert Pharmacal War, and it did not reopen until the end of Company, maker of the immensely successful hostilities. Listerine antiseptic product. The wealthy GeThroughout the early 1950s and rard Lambert became an eminent art collector thereafter, under the auspices of the SNR, and international yachtsman. He not only the Victory Museum was able to fund a introduced his daughter to the sea and ships, modest expansion of the premises, maintain but to the "Immortal Memory." a full-time curator, improve the quality of In her memoir, Remembering Nelson the accommodation and the environmen(1995), Lily tells how her "first enchantment" tal conditions in which the collections with Heinrich Friedrich Fuger's striking were stored and, critically, expand them portrait of the admiral, painted in Vienna through such accessions as the Sucklingin 1800 and purchased by her father around Ward collection of Nelson relics. These 1926, persuaded her to read Southey's Life and other initiatives did much, nor only to of Nelson. From this early encounter, Lily extend the popular appeal of HMS Victory, developed a deep and abiding fascination Portrait of Lord Horatio Nelson whose visitor numbers by the mid-1960s with Admiral Nelson, his fleet , and the by Heinrich Friedrich Fuger amounted to some 275,000 per annum, history of British naval mastery in the Age but also helped to establish the Victory Museum as a major inter- of Sail. Over time, she became in her own right a distinguished national center for the study of the great admiral and his career. In collector of Nelson memorabilia and other tangible mementoes of more recent times, through high-quality scholarship, publications, his career, a lifelong devotion to our greatest naval figure, which and the opening of new modern galleries devoted to Nelson and was to culminate in her making a gift of her private collection to related themes, these claims have been greatly reinforced and the the Royal Navy in 1972. The aforementioned Fuger painting is NMRN in Porrsmouth is now recognized to be a world authority the undoubted gem of this assemblage, which also includes an in this field. impressive and extensive range of pottery and porcelain, incised glass, snuffboxes and enamels, prints, drawings, engravings and HMS Victory at her berth at the Dockyard with the paintings-including major works by Carmichael and Luny-and museum buildings in the background. all manner of commemorative souvenirs, produced in dizzying numbers for a triumphant nation, as well as memorials of every description. The range is satisfyingly wide and splendidly diverse, the fruits of a lifetime of painstaking research and close and superlatively well-informed scrutiny of sale room and art house catalogues in the United States, Europe, and in Great Britain. Not only did Mrs. McCarthy present her collection to the Royal Navy, but she also supervised-and contributed to the cost of-its installation in a handsome new exhibition of Nelsoniana in Portsmouth, first opened to the public in 1972. At the same time, importantly, it was agreed that the older Victory Gallery and its collections, including those formerly part of the original Dockyard Museum (since 1938, vested in the ownership of the SNR), and the new Nelson material in the Lambert McCarthy Gallery should be quickly brought within the administrative ownership of the Ministry of Defence. Concurrently, the Portsmouth Royal Naval Museum was established through a deed of trust to provide
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