The handwriting is very difficult to decipher and the transcription that follows is extremely uncertain:
Can Howard ask in vain to view the Block
Graced with the verse [?] of Nelson
On the [...?] of Nelson Britain’s rock
When all around [...? vain stretched around]
[... ?] the Eye and struck at [... ... ...?]
Full in the [... ... ...?] light
Stands the first Earls [?] monument both upon eyes [???]
While modest Charles now so modest grown
[...] in the corner Nelsons [...?] stone
Saved others the [...?] yields the [...?]
Yields the doubtful ..ife
And spares [...?] and clings to life
Not transcribed in full by Finberg these lines were first read for this catalogue. The names of Howard, Nelson, Charles and the ‘first Earl’ leave no doubt that they were written for and presumably inscribed in their original, complete version on the Nelson monument at Castle Howard, east Yorkshire. Turner must have visited the estate en route to or from the coast. The monument, a twenty-foot obelisk decorated with the prows of four ships, was erected by the fifth Earl of Carlisle in front of the centre of the north front of the house. Based on designs published in 1803 by the architect Charles Heathcote Tatham for a pillar to honour Admiral Lord Nelson it was built as a memorial after the naval hero’s death at Trafalgar in 1805. It was dismantled later in the nineteenth century.
David Hill
September 2008
Revised by David Blayney Brown
February 2014
