Chapter I: Early Years

Of all the curious fables I’ve ever come across I quite think the idea that my mother was a Cingalese Princess of exalted rank is the oddest! One can’t see the foundation of it!

“The baseless fabric of a vision!”

My godfather, Major Thurlow (of the 90th Foot), was the “best man” at my mother’s wedding, and very full of her beauty then--she was very young--possibly it was the “Beauté du diable!” She had just emerged from the City of London, where she was born and had spent her life! One grandfather had been an officer under Nelson at Trafalgar, and the other a Lord Mayor! He was Boydell, the very celebrated engraver. He left his fortune to my grandmother, but an alien speculator (a scoundrel) robbed her of it. My mother’s father had, I believe, some vineyards in Portugal, of which the wine pleased William the Fourth, who, I was told, came to his counting house at 149, New Bond Street, to taste it! Next door Emma, Lady Hamilton, used to clean the door steps! She was housemaid there.

I don’t think the Fishers at all enjoyed my father (who was a Captain in the 78th Highlanders) marrying into the Lambes! The “City” was abhorred in those days, and the Fishers thought of the tombs of the Fishers in Packington Church, Warwickshire, going back to the dark ages! I, myself, possess the portrait of Sir Clement Fisher, who married Jane Lane, who assisted Charles the Second to escape by disguising his Majesty as her groom and riding behind him on a pillion to Bristol.

The Fishers’ Baronetcy lapsed, as my ancestor after Sir Clement Fisher’s death wouldn’t pay £500 in the nature of fees, I believe. I don’t think he had the money--so my uncle told me. This uncle, by name John Fisher, was over 60 years a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and told me the story of an ancestor who built a wing of Balliol at Oxford, and they--the College Authorities--asked him whether they might place some inscription in his honour on the building! He replied:

“Fisher--non amplius,”

(but someone else told me it was:--

“Verbum non amplius Fisher!”)

My uncle explained that his ancestor only meant just to put his name, and that’s all.

But the College Authorities put it all on:

“_Fisher!_ Not another blessed word is wanted.”

One of my ancestors changed his motto and took these words (I have them on a watch!):--

“Ubi voluntas--ibi piscatur.”
(We fish where we like).

A Poacher, I suppose! or was there a “double entendre”?

I’m told in the old days you could change your motto and your crest as often as you liked, but not your coat of arms!

A succession of ancestors went and dwelt at Bodmin, in Cornwall--all clergymen down to my grandfather, who was Rector of Wavendon, in Bucks, where is a tablet to his brother, who was killed close to the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo, and who ordered his watch to be sent to my uncle’s relatives with the dent of the bullet that killed him, and that watch I now have.

My uncle was telling this story at a _table d’hôte_ at Brussels a great many years afterwards, and said he had been unable to identify the spot, when an old white-haired gentleman at the table said he had helped to bury him, and next day he took him to the place.

I remember a Dean glancing at me in a Sermon on the Apostles, when he said the first four were all Fishers!

On the death of Sir Robert Fisher of Packington in 1739, a number of family portraits were transferred apparently to the Rev. John Fisher of Bodmin, born January 27th, 1708. The three principal portraits are a previous Sir Robert Fisher, his son Sir Clement Fisher, who died 1683, and Jane Lane, his wife. Another portrait is a second Sir Clement Fisher, son of the above and of Jane Lane. This Sir Clement Fisher died 1709, and was succeeded by his only brother, Sir Robert Fisher, who died A.D. 1739, one year before his niece, Mary Fisher, wife of Lord Aylesford. All these portraits were transmitted in direct inheritance to Sir John Fisher. The four generations of Reverend John Fishers of Bodmin, commencing with John Fisher born 1708, were none of them in a position to incur the heavy expenses involved for their assumption of the Baronetcy. They were descended from a brother of the Sir Robert Fisher who lived before the year A.D. 1600.

I was born in 1841, the same year as King Edward VII. There was never such a healthy couple as my father and mother. They never married for money--they married for love. They married very young, and I was their first child. All the physical advantages were in my favour, so I consider I was absolutely right, when I was nine months old, in refusing to be weaned.

“She walks in beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.”

These lines were written by Lord Byron of my godmother, Lady Wilmot Horton, of Catton Hall, Burton-on-Trent. She was still a very beautiful old lady at 73 years of age when she died.

One of her great friends was Admiral Sir William Parker (the last of Nelson’s Captains), and he, at her request, gave me his nomination for entering the Navy. He had two to give away on becoming Port Admiral at Plymouth. He gave the other to Lord Nelson’s own niece, and she also filled in my name, so I was doubly nominated by the last of Nelson’s Captains, and my first ship was the “Victory” and it was my last! In the “Victory” log-book it is entered, “July 12th, 1854, joined Mr. John Arbuthnot Fisher,” and it is also entered that Sir John Fisher hauled down his flag on October 21st, 1904, on becoming First Sea Lord.

A friend of mine (a yellow Admiral) was taken prisoner in the old French War when he was a Midshipman ten years old, and was locked up in the fortress of Verdun. He so amused me in my young days by telling me that he gave his parole not to escape! as if it mattered what he did when he was only four foot nothing! And he did this, he told me, in order to learn French; and when he had learned French, to talk it fluently, he then cancelled his parole and was locked up again and then he escaped; alone he did it by filing through the iron bars of his prison window (the old historic method), and wended his way to England. I consider this instance a striking testimony to the inestimable benefit of sending little boys to sea when they are young! What splendid Nelsonic qualities were developed!

But it was quite common in those days of my old yellow Admiral for boys to go to sea even as young as seven years old. My present host’s grandfather went to sea as a Midshipman at seven years old! Afterwards he was Lord Nelson’s Signal Midshipman, his name was Hamilton, and his grandson was Midshipman with me in two ships. He is now the 13th Duke of Hamilton! It is interesting as a Nelsonic legend that the wife of the 6th Duke of Hamilton (she was one of the beautiful Miss Gunnings; she was the wife of two Dukes and the mother of four) peculiarly befriended Emma, Lady Hamilton, and recognised her, as so few did then (and, alas! still fewer now), as one of the noblest women who ever lived--one mass of sympathy she was!

The stories of what boys went through then at sea were appalling. I have a corroboration in lovely letters from a little Midshipman who was in the great blockade of Brest by Admiral Cornwallis in 1802. This little boy was afterwards killed just after Trafalgar. He describes seeing the body of Nelson on board ship on its way to Portsmouth. This little Midshipman was only eleven years old when he was killed! This is how he describes the Midshipman’s food: “We live on beef which has been ten or eleven years in a cask, and on biscuit which makes your throat cold in eating it owing to the maggots, which are very cold when you eat them! like calves-foot jelly or blomonge--being very fat indeed!” (It makes one shudder!) He goes on again: “We drink water the colour of the bark of a pear tree with plenty of little maggots and weevils in it, and wine, which is exactly like bullock’s blood and sawdust mixed together”; and he adds in his letter to his mother: “I hope I shall not learn to swear, and by God’s assistance I hope I shall not!” He tried to save the Captain of his Top (who had been at the “Weather earing”) from falling from aloft. This is his description: “The hands were hurried up to reef topsails, and my station is in the foretop. When the men began to lay in from the yards (after reefing the topsails) one of them laid hold of a slack rope, which gave way, and he fell out of the top on deck and was dashed to pieces and very near carried me out of the top along with him as I was attempting to lay hold of him to save him!!!” Our little friend the Midshipman was eight years old at this time! What a picture! this little boy trying to save the sailor huge and hairy! His description to his mother of Cornwallis’s Fleet is interesting: “We have on board Admiral Graves, who came in his ten-oared barge, and as soon as he put his foot on shipboard the drums and fifes began to play, and the Marines and all presented their arms. We are all prepared for action, all our guns being loaded with double shot. We have a fine sight, which is the Grand Channel Fleet, which consists of 95 sail of the line, each from 120 down to 64 guns.”

That is the Midshipman of the olden day, and one often has misgivings that the modern system of sending boys to sea much older is a bad one, when such magnificent results were produced by the old method, more especially as in the former days the Captain had a more paternal charge of those little boys coming on board one by one, as compared with the present crowd sent in batches of big hulking giants, some of them. However, there is more to learn now than formerly, and possibly it’s impossible (all the entrance examination I had to pass was to write out the Lord’s Prayer, do a rule of three sum and drink a glass of sherry!); but one would like to give it a trial of sending boys to sea at nine years old. Our little hero tried to save the life of the Captain of his Top when he was only eight years old! Still, the Osborne system of Naval education has its great merits; but it has been a grievous blow to it, departing from the original conception of entry at eleven years of age.

However, the lines of the modern Midshipman are laid in pleasant places; they get good food and a good night’s rest. Late as I came to sea in 1854, I had to keep either the First or Middle Watch every night and was always hungry! Devilled Pork rind was a luxury, and a Spanish Onion with a Sardine in the Middle Watch was Paradise!

In the first ship I was in we not only carried our fresh water in casks, but we had some rare old Ship’s Biscuit supplied in what were known as “bread-bags.” These bread-bags were not preservative; they were creative. A favourite amusement was to put a bit of this biscuit on the table and see how soon all of it would walk away. In fact one midshipman could gamble away his “tot” of rum with another midshipman by pitting one bit of biscuit against another. Anyhow, whenever you took a bit of biscuit to eat it you always tapped it edgeways on the table to let the “grown-ups” get away.

The Water was nearly as bad as the Biscuit. It was turgid--it was smelly--it was animally. I remember so well, in the Russian War (1854–5), being sent with the Watering Party to the Island of Nargen to get fresh water, as we were running short of it in this old Sailing Line of Battleship I was in (there was no Distilling Apparatus in those days). My youthful astonishment was how on earth the Lieutenant in charge of the Watering Party discovered the Water. There wasn’t a lake and there wasn’t a stream, but he went and dug a hole and there was the water! However, it may be that he carried out the same delightful plan as my delicious old Admiral in China. This Admiral’s survey of the China Seas is one of the most celebrated on record. He told me himself that this is how he did it. He used to anchor in some convenient place every few miles right up the Coast of China. He had a Chinese Interpreter on board. He sent this man to every Fishing Village and offered a dollar for every rock and shoal. No rock or shoal has ever been discovered since my beloved Admiral finished his survey. Perhaps the Lieutenant of the Watering Party gave Roubles!

I must mention here an instance of the Simple Genius of the Chinese. A sunken ship, that had defied all European efforts to raise her, was bought by a Chinaman for a mere song. He went and hired all the Chinamen from an adjacent Sponge Fishery and bought up several Bamboo Plantations where the bamboos were growing like grass. The way they catch sponges is this--The Chinaman has no diving dress--he holds his nose--a leaden weight attached to his feet takes him down to where the sponges are--he picks the sponges--evades the weight--and rises. They pull up the weight with a bit of string afterwards. The Chinese genius I speak of sent the men down with bamboos, and they stuck them into the sunk ship, and soon “up she came”; and the Chinaman said:

“Ship hab Bamboo--
No hab Water!”

It’s a pity there’s no bamboo dodge for Sunk Reputations!

An uncle of mine had a snuff box made out of the Salt Beef, and it was french-polished! That was his beef--and ours was nearly as hard.

There were many brutalities when I first entered the Navy--now mercifully no more. For instance, the day I joined as a little boy I saw eight men flogged--and I fainted at the sight.

Not long ago I was sitting at luncheon next to a distinguished author, who told me I was “a very interesting person!” and wanted to know what my idea of life was, I replied that what made a life was not its mature years but the early portions when the seed was sown and the blossom so often blasted by the frost of unrecognition. It was then that the fruit of after years was pruned to something near the mark of success. “Your great career was when you were young,” said a dear friend to me the other day. I entered the Navy penniless, friendless and forlorn. While my mess-mates were having jam, I had to go without. While their stomachs were full, mine was often empty. I have always had to fight like hell, and fighting like hell has made me what I am. Hunger and thirst are the way to Heaven!

When I joined the Navy, in 1854, the last of Nelson’s Captains was the Admiral at Plymouth. The chief object in those days seemed to be, not to keep your vessel efficient for fighting, but to keep the deck as white as snow and all the ropes taut. We Midshipmen were allowed only a basin of water to wash in, and the basin was inside one’s sea-chest; and if anyone spilt a drop of water on the deck he was made to holy-stone it himself. And that reminds me, as I once told Lord Esher, when I was a young First Lieutenant, the First Sea Lord told me that _he_ never washed when he went to sea, and he didn’t see “why the Devil the Midshipmen should want to wash now!” I remember one Captain named Lethbridge who had a passion for spotless decks; and it used to put him in a good temper for the whole day if he could discover a “swab-tail,” or fragment of the swabs with which the deck was cleaned, left about. One day he happened to catch sight of a Midshipman carefully arranging a few swab-tails on deck in order to gratify “old Leather-breeches’” lust for discovering them! And as for taut ropes, many of my readers will remember the old story of the lady (on the North American station) who congratulated the Captain of a “family” ship (officered by a set of fools) because “the ropes hung in such beautiful festoons!”

There was a fiddler to every ship, and when the anchor was being weighed, he used to sit on the capstan and play, so as to keep the men in step and in good heart. And on Sundays, everyone being in full dress, epaulettes and all, the fiddler walked round the decks playing in front of the Captain. I must add this happened in a Brig commanded by Captain Miller.

After the “Victory,” my next ship was the “Calcutta,” and I joined it under circumstances which Mr. A. G. Gardiner has narrated thus:--

“One day far back in the fifties of last century a sailing ship
came round from Portsmouth into Plymouth Sound, where the fleet
lay. Among the passengers was a little midshipman fresh from
his apprenticeship in the ‘Victory.’ He scrambled aboard the
Admiral’s ship, and with the assurance of thirteen marched up
to a splendid figure in blue and gold, and said, handing him a
letter: ‘Here, my man, give this to the Admiral.’ The man in
blue and gold smiled, took the letter, and opened it. ‘Are you
the Admiral?’ said the boy. ‘Yes, I’m the Admiral.’ He read
the letter, and patting the boy on the head, said: ‘You must
stay and have dinner with me.’ ‘I think,’ said the boy, ‘I
should like to be getting on to my ship.’ He spoke as though
the British Navy had fallen to his charge. The Admiral laughed,
and took him down to dinner. That night the boy slept aboard
the ‘Calcutta,’ a vessel of 84 guns, given to the British Navy
by an Indian merchant at a cost of £84,000. It was the day of
small things and of sailing-ships. The era of the ironclad and
the ‘Dreadnought’ had not dawned.”

I think I must give the first place to one of the first of my Captains who was the seventh son of the last Vice-Chancellor of England, Sir Lancelot Shadwell. The Vice-Chancellor used to bathe in the Thames with his seven sons every morning. My Shadwell was about the greatest Saint on earth. The sailors called him, somewhat profanely, “Our Heavenly Father.” He was once heard to say, “Damn,” and the whole ship was upset. When, as Midshipmen, we punished one of our mess-mates for abstracting his cheese, he was extremely angry with us, and asked us all what right we had to interfere with his cheese. He always had the Midshipmen to breakfast with him, and when we were seasick he gave us champagne and ginger-bread nuts. As he went in mortal fear of his own steward, who bossed him utterly, he would say: “I think the aroma has rather gone out of this champagne. Give it to the young gentlemen.” The steward would reply: “Now you know very well, Sir, the aroma _ain’t_ gone out of this ’ere champagne”; but all the same we got it. He always slept in a hammock, and I remember he kept his socks in the head clews ready to put on in case of a squall calling him suddenly on deck. I learned from him nearly all that I know. He taught me how to predict eclipses and occultations, and I suppose I took more lunar observations than any Midshipman ever did before.

Shadwell’s appearance on going into a fight I must describe. We went up a Chinese river to capture a pirate stronghold. Presently the pirates opened fire from a banana plantation on the river bank. We nipped ashore from the boats to the banana plantation. I remember I was armed to the teeth, like a Greek brigand, all swords and pistols, and was weighed down with my weapons. We took shelter in the banana plantation, but our Captain stood on the river bank. I shall never forget it. He was dressed in a pair of white trousers, yellow waistcoat and a blue tail coat with brass buttons and a tall white hat with a gold stripe up the side of it, and he was waving a white umbrella to encourage us to come out of the bananas and go for the enemy. He had no weapon of any sort. So (I think rather against our inclinations, as the gingall bullets were flying about pretty thick) we all had to come out and go for the Chinese.

Once the Chinese guns were firing at us, and as the shell whizzed over the boat we all ducked. “Lay on your oars, my men,” said Shadwell; and proceeded to explain very deliberately how ducking delayed the progress of the boat--apparently unaware that his lecture had stopped its progress altogether!

His sole desire for fame was to do good, and he requested for himself when he died that he should be buried under an apple tree, so that people might say: “God bless old Shadwell!” He never flogged a man in his life. When my Captain was severely wounded, I being with him as his Aide-de-Camp (we landed 1,100 strong, and 463 were killed or wounded), he asked me when being sent home what he could do for me. I asked him to give me a set of studs with his motto on them: “Loyal au mort,” and I have worn them daily for over sixty years. When this conversation took place, the Admiral (afterwards Sir James Hope, K.C.B.) came to say good-bye to him, and he asked my Captain what he could do for him. He turned his suffering body towards me and said to the Admiral: “Take care of that boy.” And so he did.

Admiral Hope was a great man, very stern and stately, the sort of man everybody was afraid of. His nickname was composed of the three ships he had commanded: “Terrible ... Firebrand ... Majestic.” He turned to me and said: “Go down in my boat”; and everyone in the Fleet saw this Midshipman going into the Admiral’s boat. He took me with him to the Flagship; and I got on very well with him because I wrote a very big hand which he could read without spectacles.

He promoted me to Lieutenant at the earliest possible date, and sent me on various services, which greatly helped me.

My first chance came when Admiral Hope sent me to command a vessel in Chinese waters on special service. His motto was “Favouritism is the secret of efficiency,” and though I was only nineteen he put me over the heads of many older men because he believed that I should do what I was told to do, and carry out the orders of the Admiral regardless of consequences. And so I did, although I made all sorts of mistakes and nearly lost the ship. When I came back everyone seemed to expect that I should be tried by Court-Martial; but the Admiral only cared that I had done what he wanted done; and then he gave me command of another vessel.

The Captain of the ship I came home in was another sea wonder, by name Oliver Jones. He was Satanic; yet I equally liked him, for, like Satan, he could disguise himself as an angel; and I believe I was the only officer he did not put under arrest. For some reason I got on with him, and he made me the Navigating Officer of the ship. He told me when I first came on board that he thought he had committed every crime under the sun except murder. I think he committed that crime while I was with him. He was a most fascinating man. He had such a charm, he was most accomplished, he was a splendid rider, a wonderful linguist, an expert navigator and a thorough seaman. He had the best cook, and the best wines ever afloat in the Navy, and was hospitable to an extreme. Almost daily he had a lot of us to dinner, but after dinner came hell! We dined with him in tail coat and epaulettes. After dinner he had sail drill, or preparing the ship for battle, and persecution then did its utmost.

Once, while I was serving with him, we were frozen in out of sight of land in the Gulf of Pechili in the North of China. And there were only Ship’s provisions, salt beef, salt pork, pea soup, flour, and raisins. Oliver Jones was our Captain, or we wouldn’t have been frozen in. The Authorities told him to get out of that Gulf and that’s why he stayed in. I never knew a man who so hated Authority. I forget how many degrees below zero the thermometer was, and it was only by an unprecedented thaw that we ever got out. And with this intense cold he would often begin at four o’clock in the morning to prepare for battle, and hand up every shot in the ship on to the Upper Deck, then he’d strike Lower Yards and Topmasts (which was rather a heavy business), and finish up with holystoning the Decks, which operation he requested all the Officers to honour with their presence. And when we went to Sea we weren’t quite sure where we would go to (I remember hearing a Marine Officer say that we’d got off the Chart altogether). Till that date I had never known what a delicacy a seagull was. We used to get inside an empty barrel on the ice to shoot them, and nothing was lost of them. The Doctor skinned them to make waistcoats of the skins--the insides were put on the ice to bait other seagulls, and a rare type of onion we had (that made your eyes water when you got within half a mile of them) made into stuffing got rid of the fishy taste.

On the way home he landed me on a desert island to make a survey. He was sparse in his praises; but he wrote of me: “As a sailor, an officer, a Navigator and a gentleman, I cannot praise him too highly.” Confronted with this uncommon expression of praise from Oliver Jones, the examiners never asked me a question. They gave me on the spot a first-class certificate.

This Captain Oliver Jones raised a regiment of cavalry for the Indian Mutiny and was its Colonel, and Sir Hope Grant, the great Cavalry General in the Indian Mutiny, said he had never met the equal of Oliver Jones as a cavalry leader. He broke his neck out hunting.

When I was sent to the Hythe School of Musketry as a young Lieutenant, I found myself in a small Squad of Officers, my right hand man was a General and my left hand man a full Colonel. The Colonel spent his time drawing pictures of the General. (The Colonel was really a wonderful Artist.) The General was splendid. He was a magnificent-looking man with a voice like a bull and his sole object was Mutiny! He hated General Hay, who was in Command of the Hythe School of Musketry. He hated him with a contemptuous disdain. In those days we commenced firing at the target only a few hundred yards off. The General never hit the target once! The Colonel made a beautiful picture of him addressing the Parade and General Hay: “Gentlemen! my unalterable conviction is that the bayonet is the true weapon of the British Soldier!” The beauty of the situation was that the General had been sent to Hythe to qualify as Inspector-General of Musketry. After some weeks of careful drill (without firing a shot) we had to snap caps (that was to get our nerves all right, I suppose!); the Sergeant Instructor walked along the front of the Squad and counted ten copper caps into each outstretched hand. At that critical moment General Hay appeared on the Parade. This gave the General his chance! With his bull-like voice he asked General Hay if it was believable after these weeks of incessant application that we were going (each of us) to be entrusted with ten copper caps! When we were examined _vivâ voce_ we each had to stand up to answer a question (like the little boys at a Sunday School). The General was asked to explain the lock of the latest type of British Rifle. He got up and stated that as he was neither Maskelyne and Cooke nor the Davenport Brothers (who were the great conjurers of that time) he couldn’t do it. Certainly we had some appalling questions. One that I had was, “What do you pour the water into the barrel of the rifle with when you are cleaning it?” Both my answers were wrong. I said, “With a tin pannikin or the palm of the hand.” The right answer was “_with care_”! Another question in the written examination was, “What occurred about _this_ time?” Only one paragraph in the text-book had those words in it “About _this_ time there occurred, etc.”! All the same I had a lovely time there; the British Army was very kind to me and I loved it. The best shot in the British Army at that date was a confirmed drunkard who trembled like a leaf, but when he got his eye on the target he was a bit of marble and “bull’s eyes” every time! So, as the Scripture says, never judge by appearance. Keble, who wrote the “Christian Year,” was exceedingly ugly, but when he spoke Heaven shone through; so I was told by one who knew him.

It’s going rather backwards now to speak of the time when I was a Midshipman of the “Jolly Boat” in 1854, in an old Sailing Line of Battleship of eighty-four guns. I think I must have told of sailing into Harbour every morning to get the Ship’s Company’s beef (gale or no gale) from Spithead or Plymouth Sound or the Nore. We never went into harbour in those days, and it was very unpleasant work. I always felt there was a chance of being drowned. Once at the Nore in mid-winter all our cables parted in a gale and we ran into the Harbour and anchored with our hemp cable (our sole remaining joy); it seemed as big round as my small body was then, and it lay coiled like a huge gigantic serpent just before the Cockpit. Nelson must have looked at a similar hemp cable as he died in that corner of the Cockpit which was close to it. All Battleships were exactly alike. You could go ashore then for forty years and come on board again quite up to date. On our Quarter Deck were brass Cannonades that had fired at the French Fleet at Trafalgar. No one but the Master knew about Navigation. I remember when the Master was sick and the second Master was away and the Master’s Assistant had only just entered the Navy, we didn’t go to Sea till the Master got out of bed again. There was a wonderfully smart Commander in one of the other Battleships who had the utmost contempt for Science; he used to say that he didn’t believe in the new-fangled sighting of the guns, “Your Tangent Sights and Disparts!” What he found to be practically the best procedure was a cold veal pie and a bottle of rum to the first man that hit the target. We have these same “dears” with us now, but they are disguised in a clean white shirt and white kid gloves, but as for believing in Engineers--“Sack the Lot”!

It is very curious that we have no men now of great conceptions who stand out above their fellows in any profession, not even the Bishops, which reminds me of a super-excellent story I’ve been told in a letter. My correspondent met by appointment three Bishops for an expected attack. Before they got to the business of the meeting, he said, “Could their Lordships kindly tell him in the case of consecrated ground how deep the consecration went, as he specially wanted to know this for important business purposes.” They wrangled and he got off his “mauvais quart d’heure.” My correspondent explained to me that his old Aunt (a relation of Mr. Disraeli) said to him when he was young “Alfred, if you are going to have a row with anyone--_always you begin_!”

I come to another episode of comparatively early years.

Yesterday I heard from a gentleman whom I had not seen for thirty-eight years, and he reminded me of a visit to me when I was Captain of the “Inflexible.” I was regarded by the Admiral Superintendent of the Dockyard as the Incarnation of Revolution. (What upset him most was I had asked for more water-closets and got them.) This particular episode I’m going to relate was that I wanted the incandescent light. Lord Kelvin had taken me to dine with the President of the Royal Society, where for the first time his dining table was lighted with six incandescent lamps, provided by his friend Mr. Swan of Newcastle, the Inventor in this Country of the Incandescent light, as Mr. Edison was in America (it was precisely like the discovery of the Planet Neptune when Adams and Leverrier ran neck and neck in England and France). After this dinner I wrote to Mr. Swan to get these lamps for the “Inflexible,” and he sent down the friend who wrote me the letter I received yesterday (Mr. Henry Edmunds) and we had an exhibition to convert this old fossil of an Admiral Superintendent.

Here I’ll put in Mr. Henry Edmunds’s own words:--

At last we got our lamps to glow satisfactorily; and at that
moment the Admiral was announced. Captain Fisher had warned me
that I must be careful how I answered any questions, for the
Admiral was of the stern old school, and prejudiced against
all new-fangled notions. The Admiral appeared resplendent in
gold lace, and accompanied by such a bevy of ladies that I was
strongly reminded of the character in “H.M.S. Pinafore” “with
his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts.” The Admiral
immediately asked if I had seen the “Inflexible.” I replied
that I had. “Have you seen the powder magazine?” “Yes! I have
been in it.” “What would happen to one of these little glass
bubbles in the event of a broadside?” I did not think it would
affect them. “How do you know? You’ve never been in a ship
during a broadside!” I saw Captain Fisher’s eye fixed upon me;
and a sailor was dispatched for some gun-cotton. Evidently
everything had been ready prepared, for he quickly returned
with a small tea tray about two feet long, upon which was a
layer of gun-cotton, powdered over with black gun-powder. The
Admiral asked if I was prepared to break one of the lamps over
the tray. I replied that I could do so quite safely, for the
glowing lamp would be cooled down by the time it fell amongst
the gun-cotton. I took a cold chisel, smashed a lamp, and let
it fall. The Company saw the light extinguished, and a few
pieces of glass fall on the tray. There was no flash, and
the gun-powder and gun-cotton remained as before. There was
a short pause, while the Admiral gazed on the tray. Then he
turned, and said to Lord Fisher, “We’ll have this light on the
‘Inflexible.’”

And that was the introduction of the incandescent light into
the British Navy.

Talking about water-closets, I remember so well long ago that one of the joys on board a Man-of-War on Christmas Day was having what was called a “Free Tank,” that is to say, you could go and get as much fresh water as ever you liked, all other days you were restricted, so much for drinking and so much for washing. The other Christmas Joy was “Both sides of the ‘Head’ open”! What that meant was that right in the Bows or Head of the Ship were situated all the Bluejackets’ closets, and on Christmas Day all could be used! “all were free.” Usually only half were allowed to be open at a time. It was a quaint custom, and I always thought outrageous. “Nous avons changé tout cela.”

When I was out in the West Indies a French Frigate came into the Harbour with Yellow Fever on board. My Admiral asked the Captain of the English Man-of-War that happened to be there what kindness he had shown the French Frigate on arrival? He said he had sent them the keys of the Cemetery. This Captain always took his own champagne with him and put it under his chair. I took a passage with him once in his Ship, he had a Chart hanging up in his cabin like one of those recording barometers, which showed exactly how his wine was getting on. When he came to call on the Admiral at his house on shore, he always brought a small bundle with him, and after his Official visit he’d go behind a bush in the garden and change into plain clothes! All the same, this is the stuff that heroes are made of. Heroes are always quaint.