Owner of Napoleon Bone-apart's Penis Goes Stiff

The owner of Napoleon's penis died this month in Englewood, N.J. John K. Lattimer, who'd been a Columbia University professor and a collector of military (and some macabre) relics, also possessed Lincoln's blood-stained collar and Hermann Goering's cyanide ampoule. But the penis, which supposedly had been severed by a priest who administered last rites to Napoleon and overstepped clerical boundaries, stood out from the professor's collection of medieval armor, Civil War rifles and Hitler drawings.

At the time of Bonaparte's death, the physical remains of celebrities held a strong attractions. Many of Shakespeare's belongings were sought out and preserved, as well as the wood from trees that stood outside the bard's former homes. After Napoleon's capture at Waterloo, his possessions toured England. His carriage, filled with enticing contents like a gold tongue scraper, a flesh brush, "Cashimeer small-clothes" and a chocolate pot, drew crowds and inspired the poet Byron to covet a replica. When Napoleon died, the trees that lined his grave site at St. Helena were slivered into souvenirs.

The belief that objects are imbued with a lasting essence of their owners, taken to its logical extreme, led to the mindset that caused Mary Shelley to keep her husband's heart, dried to a powder, in her desk drawer.

Napoleon's penis was not the only Napoleonic body part that became grist for the relic mill. Two pieces of Napoleon's intestine, acquired by the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1841, provoked a long-simmering debate beginning in 1883. That year, Sir James Paget called the specimens' authenticity into question, contrasting their seemingly cancerous protrusions to the sound tissue Napoleon's doctor had earlier described. In 1960, the dispute continued in the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, long after the intestine pieces had been destroyed during a World War II air raid.

Lattimer, a urologist, could claim a professional interest in Napoleon's genitalia. Not so its previous owner, the Philadelphia bookseller and collector A.S.W. Rosenbach, who took a "Rabelaisian delight" in the relic, according to his biographer, Edwin Wolf. When Rosenbach put the penis on display at the Museum of French Art in New York, visitors peered into a vitrine to see something that looked like a maltreated shoelace, or a shriveled eel.

Whether the object prized by Lattimer was actually once attached to Napoleon may never be resolved. Some historians doubt that the priest could have managed the organ heist when so many people were passing in and out of the emperor's death chamber. Others suggest he may have removed only a partial sample. See the article by Judith Pascoe for more details.