Chapter XIV: Some Special Missions

I was sent as a very young Lieutenant to a little fishing village called Heppens in Oldenburg. It is now Wilhelmshaven, chief Naval Port of Germany. Its river, the Jahde, was then a shallow stream. The occasion for my visit was the cession to King William of Prussia, as he was then, of this place, Heppens, by the Grand Duke of Oldenburg; and there I met King William, to whom I sat next but one at lunch, and Bismarck and von Moltke and von Roon were there. We had a very long-winded speech from the Burgomaster, and Bismarck, whom I was standing next to, said to me in the middle of it: “I didn’t know this was going to happen, or I would have cut him short.” The King asked me at lunch why I had been sent, and if there was no one else who knew about torpedoes. Well, I don’t think there was. It was an imposing and never-to-be-forgotten sight, that lunch. They all wore their helmets and great-coats at lunch--so mediæval--and telegrams kept coming to Bismarck, who would get up and draw the King aside, and then they would sit down again. Von Roon I thought very _débonnaire_, and Moltke was like an old image, taciturn and inscrutable, but he talked English as well as I did.

Years after this, Prince Adalbert’s Naval Aide-de-camp, who was a great friend of mine, told me that on the day of mobilization in the war with France he was sent to von Moltke with a message from Prince Adalbert, who was King William’s brother and Head of the Navy, to ask him whether he could see Prince Adalbert for a few moments. To his astonishment, my friend found Moltke lying on a sofa reading “Lady Audley’s Secret,” by Miss Braddon, and he told him he could see the Prince for as long as he liked and whenever he liked. The word “Mobilize” had finished all his work for the present.

On the occasion of my visit I imagined and reported what Heppens would become, and so it did. I never can make out why I didn’t get a German decoration. I think perhaps they thought me too young. However, I had the honour of an empty sentry-box placed outside the little inn where I was staying; and if I had been of higher rank there would have been a sentry in it. The little inn was very unpretentious, and when the landlord had carved for us he came and sat down at table with us. Some days after, at a very exclusive Military Club in Berlin, I met the King’s two illegitimate brothers. They were exactly like him; also I breakfasted with the Head of the German Mining School. I remember it, because we only had raw herring and black bread for breakfast. He was very poor, although he was exceeding clever, and had as his right-hand man a wonderful chemist. So far as I know, the present German mine is nearly what it was then, and the sea-gulls rested on the protuberances as they do now, for I went to Kiel Bay to see them. There was a lovely hotel at Kiel, where they treated me royally. I recommended the adoption of these German mines, and it’s a pity we didn’t. They hold the field to this very day. However, the First Sea Lord of that date didn’t believe in mines or torpedoes or submarines, and I was packed off to China in the old two-decker “Donegal,” as Commander of the China Flagship. Long afterwards Sir Hastings Yelverton, who became First Sea Lord, unburied my Memorandum headed “Ocean Warfare,” and supported the views in it. It enunciated the principle of “Hit first, hit hard, and keep on hitting,” and discoursed on Submarines and Mines.

REVAL

You are remarking to me of a charming letter written to me by the late Emperor of Russia’s youngest sister--the Grand Duchess Olga. She is a peculiarly sweet creature. Her nickname amongst the Russians was “Sunshine.” Stolypin, the Prime Minister, told me that, and he also said to me that she was a kind of life-buoy because if you walked about with her you would not get bombed by an anarchist. All loved her.

I made her acquaintance first at Carlsbad. On my arrival at the hotel I found King Edward’s Equerry waiting in the hall. I had written to tell the King, who was at Marienbad, in answer to his enquiry, as to the day I should arrive and what time; and he came over to Marienbad from Carlsbad. I went then and there and found him just finishing lunch with a peculiarly charming looking young lady, who turned out to be the Grand Duchess Olga, and her husband, the Grand Duke of Oldenburg, from whom happily she is now divorced (I didn’t like the look of him at all). The King, having satisfied himself that I had had lunch, and he then smoking a cigar as big as a capstan bar, after talking of various things which interested him, told me that his niece, the Grand Duchess Olga, did not know anyone in Carlsbad, and he relied on me to make her time there pleasant, so I promptly asked her if she could waltz. She said she loved it, but she somehow never got the step properly, whereupon I asked the King if he had any objection to getting into the corner of the room while I moved the table and took the rugs up to give her Imperial Highness a lesson. He made some little difficulty at first, but eventually went into the corner; and when the lesson began he was quite pleased and clapped his hands and called out “Bravo!” The best waltz tune in the world is one of Moody and Sankey’s hymns. I don’t know whether Sankey originated the saying that he didn’t see why the Devil should have all the good music. I don’t by that implicate that the waltz was the devil’s; but, without any doubt, there is a good deal of temptation in it, and when you get a good partner you cleave to her all the evening.

This dancing lesson was an unalloyed success, so I asked her to a dance the next night at the Savoy Hotel; and after some more words with the King I left, and walking down the stairs to go to my hotel, I thought to myself: “How on earth are you going to get up a dance when you don’t know a soul in the place?” when who should I meet but a friend of mine--a Spanish Grandee, the Marquis de Villa Vieja, and he arranged what really turned out to be a ball, as he knew everybody, and I having some dear American friends at Marienbad I telegraphed them to come over and dine with the Grand Duchess and stay the night for the ball, and they did. When the dance had begun, and the Grand Duchess was proving quite equal to her lesson of the day before, suddenly an apparition of extraordinary grace and loveliness appeared at the door. Villa Vieja took on the Grand Duchess and I welcomed the beautiful Polish Countess and danced with her many waltzes running in spite of a hint I received that her husband was very jealous and a renowned duellist. Next day, by telegram from the King, I was told by His Majesty that Isvolsky, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, was to be asked by me to lunch on his arrival that day from St. Petersburg. I invited him; and just as we sat down to lunch the Polish angel of the night before came through the door and petrified Isvolsky, and the more so as she kissed her hand to me. He never took his eyes off her, and as she walked to her table I heard him breathe a sigh, and say _sotto voce_, “Alas, in heaven no woman!” I said to him: “Monsieur Isvolsky, pray pardon me; perhaps you did not intend it to be heard, but if it be true what you say, it takes away much of the charm which I had anticipated finding there.” He turned to me and said--quoting chapter and verse in the Revelations, “There was silence in heaven.”

So when I met the Grand Duchess Olga again, when I accompanied King Edward on that memorable visit to Reval--when, as Prince Orloff, the Emperor’s principal aide-de-camp, said to me, King Edward changed the atmosphere of Russian feelings towards England from suspicion to cordial trust--there was quite an affectionate meeting, and we danced the “Merry Widow” waltz--a then famous stage performance--with such effect as to make the Empress of Russia laugh. They told me she had not laughed for two years. At the banquet preceding the dance the Grand Duchess and I, I regret to say, made such a disturbance in our mutual jokes that King Edward called out to me that I must try to remember that it was not the Midshipmen’s Mess; and my dear Grand Duchess thought I should be sent to Siberia or somewhere. We sailed at daylight, and I got a letter from her when I arrived in England saying she had made a point of seeing Uncle Bertie and that it was all right, I was not going to be punished. Then she went on to describe that she had had a very happy day (being her birthday) picnicking in the woods; the only drawback was, she told me, that the gnats would bite her ankles. Being, at that period, both a courtier and a sycophant, I telegraphed to her at some Palace she was at in Russia to say “I wished to God I had been one of the gnats.” It was weeks before she got the telegram, as the Russian Secret Department believed it was from some anarchist, and was a cypher for bombing the Emperor or something of the sort, and there was a lot of bother to trace out who had sent it.

I find among my papers another charming letter which I received from the Grand Duchess Olga. It runs:

PETERHOF.
_11/25 July, 1909._

DEAR ADMIRAL,

I have been going to write to you for ever so long and now is a
chance to send you a few lines.

How are you getting on? We speak of you very often. I suppose
you’ll be going to Carlsbad this automn--and I am very sorry that
we are not going--so as to meet you there!

I have a great favour to ask you--but as I believe and think
you _can_ grant it--I shall ask: Lieutenant ---- of your Royal
Navy--whom we got to like very much two years ago at Sorrento--is
willing to come this automn and spend a month with us at our
country place--_if_ he gets leaves of course; I write all this to
you as I don’t know who else can help and give him leave.

We should like to have him about the middle of your September (the
very beginning of ours). If you think he can get leave just then
would you kindly telegraph to me--then I could write and ask him
(I suppose he will be at Cowes?). Today is my namesday, and having
received any amounts of presents--we are going to Church--as one
always does--on such occasions and then there will be a rather big
lunch and the band will play--All this glorious occasion is not
only for me--but also for my niece Olga.

My sister Xenia--who does not know you--says she is sorry not to
have that honour and pleasure!

My husband sends his best love (or whatever one says). Goodbye dear
Admiral. I wish I was going to see you soon it would be awfully
amusing. Write to me later on when you will be free please!

Much love and good wishes.

OLGA.

P.S. Mrs. Francklin sends lots of kind messages and love. Mama
sends her best love too.

That visit of King Edward to Russia was really quite remarkable for the really eloquent speech the King made, without a note of any sort. I said to him at breakfast the next morning, when they brought in a copy of what they thought he had said, that I wondered on such a momentous occasion he didn’t have it written out. “Well!” he said to me, “I did try that once, when the French President Loubet came to visit me, and I learnt the speech off by heart in the garden of Buckingham Palace. When I got up to say it, I could not remember it, and had to keep on beginning again at the beginning. So I said to myself, ‘Never again’!” And I must say I share his conviction that there is no such eloquence as when out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Emotion and earnestness will do much more than move mountains; they will move multitudes--and that was what King Edward was able to do.

I have spoken elsewhere of what I deemed was a suitable epitaph for him--those great words of Pascal: “le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.” The heart has reasons that the mind knows nothing about.

God bless him!

Stolypin, when we met him at Reval on King Edward’s visit to the Czar, was described to us as the greatest, the bravest and most single-minded Prime Minister that Russia had ever possessed. He spoke English fluently, and certainly was very pro-English. He was beyond deception. His only daughter, he told me, had been killed by a bomb while he was walking with her in the garden, and one of his hands was greatly mutilated by the same explosion. He was murdered at the theatre at Moscow not very long afterwards. We had many conversations together. He said it was criminal folly having the capital of Russia elsewhere than inland, as at Moscow, for that Petersburg was open to German attack by sea. He seemed to have a prophetic view of England’s imbecility as regards using her enormous sea supremacy to prevent the Baltic becoming a German lake, as it became in the war, though we were five times stronger than the German Fleet. So it passed by as an idle dream, any idea of England’s interference, and alas! he remembered our betrayal of Denmark when the Germans took Kiel and Schleswig-Holstein.

Stolypin repeatedly said to me the German frontier was his one and only thought, and he was devoting all his life to make that frontier impregnable against Germany, both in men and munitions, and strategic arrangements. But he did not live long enough to carry out his scheme.

CARTAGENA

I also went with King Edward to Cartagena, when he returned the King of Spain’s visit. King Alfonso, whom I had previously met in England, was very cordial to me because we had seven “Dreadnoughts” ready before the Germans had one. In fact, when I told him this piece of news, as we were walking up and down the deck, with King Edward and Queen Alexandra watching us from two deck-chairs, King Alfonso was so delighted that he threw his arms round my neck, cried “You darling!” and kissed me. Then he put his hand in his waistcoat pocket, took out a chocolate and popped it into my mouth. He gave me the highest Spanish Order he could. But when the box came on board containing it, it turned out to be the Order of Isabella the Catholic, which is only given to Roman Catholics; but the interesting thing is that when I was a little Midshipman I had been reading “Ferdinand and Isabella,” and I remember saying to my messmates that I intended some day to have the Order of Isabella the Catholic. And when, some years after, as a Lieutenant it was the fashion to wear medal ribbons in a rosette, upon some supercilious officer asking me what “that thing” was in my button-hole, I quite remember saying, by way of pulling his leg, that it was the Spanish Order of Isabella the Catholic. However, I got the proper Order in time to wear at the banquet.

The banquet was a very fine sight, as King Alfonso had brought down the tapestries, pictures and other ornaments from the Escurial. The Spanish Admirals were a grand sight. They wore the ancient uniform, and each had a great Malacca cane with a big gold top. They all came on board to call on King Edward in an old-fashioned pulling barge, and the sailors wore crimson and gold sashes. That rowing barge and the splendid uniforms lay at the root of one occasion when King Edward was really angry with me. I had been arranging for him the details of the great Naval Review and was summoned to Buckingham Palace to discuss them with him. I found no Equerries in attendance, no one about, and the King white with anger. “So!” he cried out to me, “I’m to go by such and such a train, am I? And I’m to embark at such and such a time, am I? And I’m to use your barge because it’s a better barge than mine, is it? Look here, _am I the King or are you?_” The upshot of the interview was that he threw the papers on the floor, with “Have it your own way!” But the secret cause of his anger was that he had made up his mind to go off in a rowing-boat like the Spanish Admirals, forgetting that there is no tide at Cartagena, whereas the tide at Cowes runs many knots, and it would have taken a rowing-boat hours to do what the barge could do in a few minutes.

KIAMIL PASHA

One of the most pleasurable incidents of my holding the appointment of Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet was going to Smyrna to do honour to that splendid old Turk, Kiamil Pasha. He was then Vali, or Governor, of the Province of Smyrna. He was most hale and vigorous. He so delighted me with his conversations and experiences that it’s a sincere joy to me now to recall, even in this humble way, what a magnificent old man he was, and how he had so often placed his life in jeopardy for the sake of right and for the good of his country, which last, he said (he spoke most fluent English), had been “imperishably bound up with England’s righteous work in the East.” He had been many times Grand Vizier, and he knew all the secret incidents following and preceding the Crimean War. And he said fervidly that England was the only nation that never asked and never schemed to get anything out of Turkey. And he said it was only the insensate folly of the English Authorities that could ever have dislodged England from her wonderful supremacy over the minds of the whole Turkish people. I told him, in return, that the English treatment of Turkey was only on a par with the English folly of giving up Heligoland, Corfu, Tangier, Minorca, Java, Sumatra, Curaçoa (the key of the Panama Canal), Delagoa Bay (the only harbour in Africa), and so on, and so on, and explained, to his delighted amusement, that we were a nation of Lions led by Asses. He pretty well foretold all that has happened since 1902.

With respect to Tangier, which was the dowry of Henrietta Maria, I diverge a moment to mention that a great Spaniard in high office once said to me that it was a curious fact that whenever Spain had left the side of England she had inevitably come to grief.

Following on Kiamil’s wonderful prescience, I found on my visit to the Sultan, who had invited me to Constantinople, that all I had heard from him about Bulgaria was confirmed at Constantinople. One and all said that Bulgaria was the fighting nation, and that Bulgaria was the Key of the East. I was so saturated with the importance of this fact that I spoke to Kitchener about it when the War commenced, but we did not give Bulgaria what she wanted, and when, a year afterwards, she was offered the same terms it was too late.

A great Bank always, I believe, has a travelling inspector who visits all the branches. We want such a personage to visit all our representatives in foreign lands, and see what they have done for England in the previous year.