My time in the Minotaur was one of the happiest of the whole of my service afloat. She flew the flag of Vice-Admiral Charles Fellowes, one of the most popular admirals in the Navy. My Souakim employer, John Fellowes, was Flag-Captain, and amongst the lieutenants were my old friend, Jimmy Startin, previously alluded to, and an old Red Sea comrade, Oliver Young by name. Oliver was a great character. Very good-looking, standing well over six feet, and of gigantic strength, he was passionately fond of fighting whenever a decent opportunity occurred; but at the same time he was no bully, and never exercised his great skill and strength except in a good cause. There were many amusing stories about him, and one of the best was the following:—
At one period of his career he was appointed as Junior Lieutenant to a gunboat in the Mediterranean, whose First-Lieutenant had the reputation of being the most disagreeable Commanding Officer in the Service,[145] and one who always made life as unpleasant as possible to the unfortunate beings who were compelled to serve under his orders. Oliver, when he joined, was perfectly aware of this fact. On joining the gunboat, when pacing the deck with his new Commanding Officer, who, of course, had not yet had time to show the cloven hoof, Oliver began to expatiate on the joys of serving on a small craft, to his mind the only life in the Navy that was really agreeable. He went on to say that as long as everybody lived in harmony no life could be pleasanter. He mentioned that he had been received in the most charming way by his new messmates, and felt certain that he was going to be extremely happy in his new post. Then he pensively added: “Of course, it is only one’s own fault if anybody on board makes himself disagreeable; nothing is easier, on a dark night, than to catch hold of the delinquent and just drop him overboard, and that settles the matter.” The First-Lieutenant said nothing, but being a little man, hardly reaching up to Oliver’s shoulder, he thought a great deal, and for the rest of the commission treated his big subordinate with the greatest consideration.
Not long after the Minotaur days, Oliver left the Service and went into Parliament. But he never really recovered from a bad sunstroke that laid him low at Souakim, and, to the great regret of his many friends, both ashore and afloat, he died at a comparatively early age. Another old Minotaur friend was Sir Charles Cust, then a midshipman, now Naval Equerry to His Majesty.
[146]
We were extremely well off for lieutenants in the flagship, so the watch-keeping was far less onerous than in the Superb, the result being, that leave ashore was much easier to obtain. Nearly the whole winter was spent up the Tagus, and of Lisbon and its surroundings I have the most pleasant recollections. We had a wonderful Opera Season, with those incomparable artists, Mesdames Patti and Scalchi as prima donna and contralto, the primo tenore being the great Massini, one of the finest tenors of his days. We arranged a very comfortable omnibus box at the Opera for ourselves, and as an enterprising native had started an establishment where roulette was nightly played for the special benefit(?) of the officers of the Fleet, and as there was pigeon-shooting at the Sporting Club every Sunday, we certainly had plenty of distractions. It was at the Sporting Club there, that I first had the honour of making the acquaintance of King Carlos, who was so foully murdered years afterwards in the streets of his capital. He was a fine pigeon shot, and I was destined later on to see him shooting in Norfolk, where his skill with the gun became quite a topic of conversation.
But perhaps the happiest recollections of all were of the frequent visits we used to pay to Cintra, where we were treated by the English hotel-keeper and his family with the greatest kindness, and, moreover, on what can only be described as the “most favoured nation” terms. Among the many beautiful gardens in which we were allowed to stroll about was that belonging to the Villa of Monserrate, which had originally belonged to Beckford, the author of Vathek. It had been sub[147]sequently acquired by the family of the present Sir Frederick Cook. The present baronet, I believe, still retains the title of Vicomte de Monserrate. I remember the guide always used to explain: “Dis de villa of Vicomte de Monserrate, Mr. Cookey English!”
But there is no need for me to write at length on the beauties of Cintra. Many have written about it; many more have seen that lovely mountain of verdure that springs from what is apparently an absolutely arid plain. To me it simply remains as one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, and one where I spent many happy days.
But life on board the Minotaur was very far from consisting entirely of amusement. Although we continued to use Lisbon as our headquarters, the Squadron constantly went to sea for short cruises and firing-practice. Moreover, sail-drill went on with almost the same regularity as when I joined the Service. The Minotaur had three full-rigged masts, to say nothing of two light masts further aft, and I, to my great delight, was in charge of one of the three. She also possessed a very fine clear upper deck, so, when not competing with other ships of the squadron, we could compete one mast against the other, to our great satisfaction. My mind still dwells with pleasure on the days of the old sailing frigates, and even on those of the rigged iron-clads that succeeded them. The Minotaur was to end sail-drill so far as I was concerned, as, after leaving her, I never served in a rigged ship again.
After a very pleasant winter, we started on a cruise,[148] the first port of call being Gibraltar. Our Admiral had latterly been far from well, and on the way to Gibraltar was taken seriously ill. Shortly after we arrived at Gibraltar there was a sudden collapse, and he died, deeply to the regret of the officers and men of his squadron. The Minotaur was lying alongside the Mole, and for the first time since the Victory lay there with the mortal remains of Nelson on board, an admiral’s flag was to be seen flying half-masted in that historic bay. His funeral having been ordered to take place in England, the Minotaur proceeded to Portsmouth with the utmost dispatch. The funeral of a Flag-Officer, dying on service, is an impressive affair, as becomes the rank of the deceased and the extreme rarity of the occasion, there is something moving in the spectacle of the hoisting out of the coffin, while the flag flutters slowly down, not to be hoisted again until a successor comes on board to take over the command.
Our new Admiral turned out to be Sir William Hewett, V.C., a very distinguished officer, who had won his Victoria Cross as a mate in the Crimea. He had been lately commanding the naval forces on the East Indian Station, and during the first Egyptian campaign had been responsible for the occupation of Suez and the operations that were terminated by the middle of August 1882 to complete our occupation of the Canal. In February 1884, after Baker’s defeat at El Teb, he had landed a Naval Brigade at Souakim for the protection of the town, and had accompanied Sir Gerald Graham when he fought a successful action[149] there, a fortnight later. Greatly to our satisfaction, Captain Fellowes remained on with him as Flag-Captain.
In the days of which I am writing the ignorance of the British public of everything regarding the Navy can only be described as colossal. Of course at great naval ports, such as Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth, the Navy was well known, but outside those three areas lived a huge public who had never seen a man-of-war, and hardly ever seen a sailor unless he happened to be on leave, and in plain clothes. The public took not the slightest interest in anything that concerned that Force, which (in the words of the special prayer that is read daily on the quarter-deck of every ship in the Service) enables the British public—in other words “the inhabitants of our Island”—to live in such security that they “may in peace and quietness serve Thee our God.” I am completely unaware if it is generally known that the insertion of this Prayer amongst other forms of prayer to be used at sea, in our Liturgy, was due to the action of the Long Parliament. The gorgeous language and rhetorical style of the whole Prayer is worthy of those great days, when England was so mighty abroad. Oliver Cromwell, one of the finest soldiers of the world, was keenly alive to the importance of Sea Power, and always maintained a strong Navy.
I suppose the Admiralty thought it was nearly time that the public should see something of one of the Forces for which they paid taxes, and consequently the Channel Squadron was ordered to cruise round the[150] coasts of England and Scotland, besides which it was conveyed to those in command that every facility was to be given to enable sight-seers to visit the various ships of the Fleet to their hearts’ content. At some ports, Glasgow in particular, the tourists came literally in thousands, and of course converted the ships into temporary pigsties and bear gardens; but any trifling inconvenience of that sort was more than amply repaid by the universal kindness and hospitality that we received everywhere. The officers were invited to shoot over moors, of which, up to that time, they had only dreamt, and the men were lavishly entertained by all sorts of municipal authorities, and kind people in the neighbourhood.
I personally, was in luck’s way, as the shooting part of the business was generally put into the hands of the Flag-Captain, and, being an old friend, perhaps I got rather more than my fair share. Anyhow, I can remember a first-rate grouse drive over one of Sir Michael Shaw Stewart’s best beats at Ardnagowan, and, later on, when the Fleet lay at Cromarty Firth, a party of us stayed with Ross of Cromarty, at Cromarty House, and had a capital day’s mixed shooting. The Fleet was also magnificently entertained at a ball during our stay in the Firth, the great magnates of the district, including the then Duke of Sutherland, the grandfather of the present Duke, figuring amongst the hosts. Later on, whilst lying in the Firth of Forth, a party of us went to Selkirk, staying a night at the hotel there, for the purpose of shooting over one of the low-lying moors that the Duke of Buccleugh had placed at our disposal.[151] Without exception it was the best mixed day’s shooting in which I have ever taken part. It was early in October, and towards the end of the day we were just off the moor itself, beating a small cover for pheasants, and then I saw a sight which personally I have never seen since. The beaters had included in their drive not only the cover before mentioned but also a large stubble field. Being late in the evening, the black game and grouse from the moors had got down to the stubble to feed on the stooks. The result was that, driven to the guns, and all in the air at the same time, were to be seen black game, pheasants, grouse and partridges.
A little later on we were anchored off the Norfolk coast, and the last shoot of the trip was from Yarmouth, where that splendid old sportsman, Mr. Fellowes of Shotesham, provided the sport. The Flag-Captain was a relative of Mr. Fellowes, and once more I was fortunate enough to be of the party. We were given a fine day’s partridge-driving by the Squire of Shotesham, and personally I am glad to have known, if only for a few hours, a man who, in his day, was not only one of the best shots in the kingdom, but who also had the reputation of being able to ride a half-broken three-year-old that was in the process of learning its future business as a hunter, better than any one else in this country.
The visit to Yarmouth having terminated, the squadron was presently back at Portsmouth again, and during the winter certain changes were made among the officers, notably in the case of the Captain. It had been arranged that Captain Fellowes was to go out to the Mediterranean as Flag-Captain to Admiral H.R.H.[152] the Duke of Edinburgh, who had been selected for the important post of Commander-in-Chief of that Station. So, at the end of 1885, he left, much to our regret, and was succeeded by Captain Bouverie-Clark. On board the Minotaur we soon found out that, sorry as we might be to lose our old Captain, we had really lost nothing by the exchange, for his successor was one of the most charming men I ever served with.
Vice-Admiral Sir Bouverie-Clark, as he now is, had managed to see as much active service as had been possible in the days of his youth, for, as a midshipman, he had been present at the bombardment of Sveaborg in the Baltic during the Crimean war, had later on greatly distinguished himself by his gallantry when employed on the East Coast of Africa in the suppression of the Slave Trade, and was also an officer in the Naval Brigade that was landed during the New Zealand War in the early ’sixties. He was finally Director of Transports at the Admiralty for a period of five years, from 1906 onwards.
The remaining six months which I spent in the Minotaur were uneventful, but another change was about to be made, as in July 1886 I was appointed as First-Lieutenant to H.M. Dispatch Vessel Surprise, then a brand-new ship.
GROUP ON BOARD H.M.S. “SURPRISE”
The Surprise and her sister ship, the Alacrity were built to replace respectively the old dispatch boats Helicon and Vigilant, which had been serving for years on the Mediterranean and China Stations. Commander Charles le Strange, a very old friend of the Sultan days, was in command of the Surprise. He had recently[153] become an Equerry to H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh, who had already taken over the command of the Mediterranean Station.
The Surprise was a fairly useful vessel in many respects and could have been made much better had not the Admiralty thought fit to arm her with four or five 4?-inch guns, which she really was unfit to carry; the weight might well have been utilised in other directions. The accommodation aft for distinguished passengers was very good, and when in harbour, as far as they were concerned, she was a very nice yacht; but at sea, when steaming at any speed, the vibration was so terrific, that very few of them could stand being aft, and they generally used to come on the bridge and camp out there, which was not always very convenient to the officers who were carrying out their duties. However, the sea trips were generally short, and on the whole she answered very well, and only disappeared from service a few years ago. Having commissioned her, I was of course on board during her steam trials. With picked coal, and, moreover, with (what is more important still) picked stokers, she succeeded in going about eighteen knots on the measured mile, and under the same favourable circumstances did quite well on her six hours’ full-speed trial, averaging nearly sixteen knots. But we were to be bitterly disappointed in her performances later on. Without adventitious aids she turned out to be a very moderate steamer and not the best of sea boats. The first distinguished passenger we were ordered to embark was the Duke of Connaught. His Royal Highness[154] was about to start for India, and wishing to curtail the length of his journey, decided to travel to Marseilles overland, from thence to be conveyed to Malta in the Surprise, where he could hit off the P. & O. steamer which was to take him to his destination. It became a question of accurate timing, as the P. & O. boats were in the habit of staying but very few hours at Malta. Consequently, the question arose of the number of hours it would take the Surprise to go from Marseilles to Malta. The Captain and I put our heads together, and though we were much too old hands at the game to place very implicit reliance in full-speed trials as conducted by the Admiralty, we thought we could safely guarantee an average speed of thirteen knots, which seemed to leave a very fair margin up our sleeves. About the end of August we left the port of Marseilles with our Royal passenger on board, steaming gaily some fourteen and a half knots. The heat was very great, and the stokers, though very willing, were mostly young hands, the coal was very far from being picked, so the speed of the ship, in spite of every effort, gradually got lower and lower, and we finally crawled into Malta at the ignoble speed of about ten knots, a good many hours late. It was a very mortifying début to make on our station, and it was a long time before we heard the last of it.
People interested in the Navy, who read the official accounts of the trials of new ships that always used to be published in The Times, may gather from this sad experience what a difference there is in actual practice between the performances that are published,[155] and what is apt to be realised later on under normal conditions. (Eye-wash again!)
From 1886 to 1888, during my term of service on board the Surprise, the Mediterranean Station was at its zenith as regards strength and importance. It had been looked upon for many years as the Blue Ribbon of the Navy, and as regards the person of the Commander-in-Chief, it naturally gained additional éclat from the fact that no less a personage than H.R.H. Vice-Admiral the Duke of Edinburgh, the second son of Queen Victoria, was Commander-in-Chief, with the local rank of Admiral. His Royal Highness had hoisted his flag in February 1886 in the Alexandra, and in addition to her had seven of the most modern of our armour-clad ships under his command, with a considerable number of small craft, principally employed on service in the Red Sea. The Admiral and many of his Captains have joined the majority, but amongst others who are still with us, are the present Admiral Sir Compton Domville, then Captain of the Temeraire, and subsequently Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Station; Admiral Sir Henry Stephenson,[2] now Usher of the Black Rod, then commanding the Dreadnought, had under his orders our present King, serving as a Lieutenant on board that ship; Admiral of the Fleet Sir Hedworth Meux, then Commander Lambton, in command of the Dolphin sloop; another Admiral, now the Marquis of Milford Haven, was, as Prince Louis of Battenberg,[156] Commander of the Dreadnought; while prominent among the Lieutenants serving in the different ships were the late Admirals Sir George Warrender, and Sir Frederick Hamilton, and the late Captain the Hon. Hugh Tyrrwhitt. Admirals Sir Cecil Colville, Sir Colin Keppel and Sir James Startin, all of whose names have already occurred in these notes, Midshipman David Beatty of the Alexandra, now Admiral of the Fleet Earl Beatty, are still, I am rejoiced to think, very much alive.
Malta, where I was to spend a great deal of my life for the next two years, was very gay. The Duchess of Edinburgh passed the whole of the winter there. The Governor had temporarily made over the palace of San Antonio, with its wonderful orange gardens, to the Duke and Duchess during their stay at Malta, so it was there that I first had the honour of making the acquaintance of Her Imperial Highness and her children. Her two eldest daughters were then only about eleven and twelve years of age, but already gave promise of great beauty; indeed, the eldest, the present Queen of Roumania, was, and still is, one of the most beautiful and attractive women in the world. The Duchess herself, if I may take the liberty of saying so, was, and is, a very remarkable woman. For the only daughter of the Emperor Alexander (in those days the greatest potentate in the world), it was in some ways rather a step downwards to marry a second son, even though he was the son of Queen Victoria; and, moreover, to be in a certain sense merely the wife of an Admiral when the Duke was employed[157] on the duties of his profession; but she certainly succeeded, in her position as wife to the Commander-in-Chief, in making herself extremely popular with the Naval Officers at Malta. The dinners at San Antonio were infinitely more agreeable and less stiff than the sort of entertainments which were generally given at the various Admiralty Houses that I have known, and a command to dine there was not only an honour but a very distinct pleasure into the bargain.
Her Imperial Highness, like most of her compatriots, adored the South. She was devoted to Italian art, and lost no opportunity of seeing everything that was worth seeing in Italy and Sicily, and were I to catalogue all the interesting places that the Surprise visited in the course of two years, sometimes in company with the rest of the Fleet, and sometimes on detached cruises “on her own,” the result would be like nothing in the world so much as a portion of “Baedeker” on Italy.
But before saying anything more about trips, the main interest of which consisted in seeing some of the wonders of Italy, I must write of two or three cruises that were nothing if not official.
The first important duty which devolved on the Surprise, very shortly after her arrival on the station, was to convey the Admiral, in his dual capacity as a son of Queen Victoria and also as Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean, to pay an official visit to the Sultan. This visit was a very interesting one, and though I do not pretend to any inside knowledge of the motives which inspired it, or made its recurrence[158] necessary, the following year, I have a shrewd suspicion that what was evident to any spectator, was not very far remote from the truth. The late Sir Edward Thornton, who was then our Ambassador to the Sublime Port, had served his country with great distinction and held many important posts. He had been Ambassador both at Washington and Petersburg, but none the less it is possible that, being a remarkably straightforward English gentleman, that hotbed of intrigue and lies, the Turkish Capital, was not exactly the place for him. At any rate, it was noticeable, even to an outsider like myself, that the Duke’s reception was distinctly of a cold nature. The last function of the visit consisted in a dinner at the Yildiz Kiosque, at which the Duke was the guest of the evening, most of his officers, I being one of the number, being included in the dinner party. There was considerable delay when the Englishmen arrived at the palace, and finally the Sultan sent a message to say that he was unwell and unable to be present. There was nothing for it but to dine, and it certainly seemed to me as if the honours of the house were done by Monsieur Nelidoff, the Russian Ambassador, who was known to be all-powerful at that moment, and having been there for a good many years, was the natural doyen of the Corps Diplomatique. Apparently, the Government at home were distinctly dissatisfied with the reception that had been accorded to an English Prince, who was also holding a very high official position, and the upshot of it was that Sir Edward Thornton was withdrawn and Sir William White, to whom allusion[159] has already been made, was appointed in his place. The Duke, to make the outgoing Ambassador’s departure more dignified, placed the Surprise at his disposal, so, later in the year, towards the end of October, we found ourselves in Turkish waters again. The Ambassador was still at his summer residence at Therapia, and embarked from there with Lady Thornton and his daughters. His departure was certainly impressive enough, for all the “chers collègues” came in their state ca?ques to see him off, and the multitude of floral offerings reminded me of nothing so much as a very expensive funeral. Anyhow, one is glad to think that a very distinguished public servant, under such circumstances, had at any rate a more fitting conveyance than an ordinary mail steamer, though I am not sure that for the long passage, as it was to Marseilles, a mail steamer might not have been a more comfortable ship in which to travel.
Next year the Surprise again conveyed the Duke to Constantinople on a similar mission, and this time there was no mistake about the way in which he was received. We had hardly anchored in the Golden Horn, and the usual official callers had barely arrived on board when a huge ca?que, with one of the Sultan’s Aides-de-Camp, came alongside laden up with every sort of thing—sheep, Turkish sweetmeats, countless cigarettes and cases of champagne—with a message to say that not only was the Duke the Sultan’s honoured guest, but that His Majesty wished every officer and man serving on board the Surprise to consider himself as a guest as well. The Sultan was, on this occasion,[160] present at the dinner at Yildiz and all went well.
Sir William White had lived the greater part of his life in the Middle East and thoroughly understood how to handle the Turk. A diplomatist of that nation once told me the following story which I believe to be absolutely true. On one occasion, during Sir William’s reign at Constantinople, the Grand Vizier had come to see him on some business, and the interview had not been a very peaceable one. The Grand Vizier was insisting rather peremptorily on his point when he was suddenly interrupted: “Monsieur le Grand Vizier, je vous defends de me parler sur ce ton là—à la porte!”—and “à la porte” the Grand Vizier went, to return next day in a very chastened spirit to make his submission.
Some of the Surprise’s cruises are worth mentioning. One of the earliest, with the Duchess on board, after commencing at Naples extended itself to Leghorn and Genoa, from the first of which ports Florence could easily be reached. At Naples in those days the Consul was Mr. Neville-Rolfe. He was intended by Nature to be a Norfolk Squire and to live at his place, Heacham Hall, but fate and falling rents decreed otherwise, so he took up his residence at Naples, where he was Consul for many years. Naturally a keen lover of art, he had in addition made a close study of the late Greek, and early Roman periods, and a more delightful guide to Naples it was impossible to meet. Under his auspices, the Duchess, and we of the ship who were privileged to accompany her, saw Naples in[161] a most interesting way. Excavation work was going on (as indeed it nearly always is) at Pompei, and for the benefit of such a distinguished visitor a very promising portion of a Pompeian house was excavated. Talk about sport! Nothing is really more exciting than digging, and I can remember the breathless way we hung over the digger when his delicately handled trowel had obviously met with something worth exhuming. The something was generally a fragment of one of the inevitable amphor? that are dug up literally by the dozen, (as indeed befits vessels that once contained wine,) and are so common as to be valueless. The result of the investigation that we witnessed was very disappointing, like many another day’s sport. The only thing of the smallest interest that we discovered was an ivory make-up box that probably had belonged, some eighteen hundred years ago, to some Pompeian beauty. Bai? was also visited. It was easy for the Surprise to run round and anchor in the bay there, and in fine weather there was no difficulty in landing passengers on the beach in the immediate vicinity of that splendid series of temples.
It is difficult to imagine a more agreeable place for a ship to winter in than was Malta at that time, especially in the Surprise’s case when a long stay there could be broken by cruises to Sicily and the mainland of Italy. Polo was our principal amusement, and besides a number of keen naval players, among whom must be included our present King, then Prince George of Wales, there were the officers of two or three very sporting regiments, (the Gordon Highlanders in particular,) who[162] took an active part in the game, the result being that we were all hard at it two or three times in the week. Fortunately for me, the Surprise being looked upon as a sort of tender to the flagship, I generally made one of the Alexandra team in ship against ship, and fleet against garrison, matches. I am afraid in those days I was heathen enough to prefer polo to art, and so, much as I liked the cruises, I have to confess that it was a pleasure to get back to Malta and my ponies again. The pony racing, too, was capital fun. Hedworth Lambton, who had then, and still retains, his family’s love for the sport, had some good ponies, and many of the officers of the garrison went in for racing very seriously; any betting that was necessary, could be done on the Indian system of the selling lottery.
But in addition to ponies the Navy had a very valuable racing possession, which amounted almost to a monopoly, namely the best light-weight jockey in the island, in the person of Midshipman David Beatty, who, being of a riding family, had been well brought up by his father—the Major of that name. Major Beatty knew, and no man better, not only all about the animal, horse, but how he should be ridden, and his son had profited to the full by the lessons he had received as a small boy.
And so the winter slipped pleasantly away. The summer of 1887 was made memorable in England by the celebration of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. It was, of course, necessary for the Duke of Edinburgh to be present in England during the period of the festivities, so in June the Surprise conveyed him to Marseilles en[163] route to London. The Surprise was directed to remain at Marseilles until his expected return in a week’s time. Meanwhile, the Fleet was ordered to the Balearic Islands, where he could rejoin it and continue the summer cruise which had just begun. The port of La Joliette where we lay was somewhat malodorous and stuffy in the month of June, so, as soon as the Admiral had left the ship, the Captain and I decided to take a few days’ leave, he being bent on going to Paris, whilst I selected Monte Carlo. I duly returned the night before the Surprise was timed to sail, and, arriving on board heard, rather to my surprise, that the Captain had not yet appeared. However, as he had talked of going to Paris I came to the conclusion that he had arranged to meet the Duke there and would travel back with him. The Surprise was made ready for sea in the morning to move out the moment the Admiral was on board, and the officers were duly fallen in to meet him at the gangway, when it was noticed that the Captain was not in the boat. As he stepped on board the Admiral’s first question was the very natural one: “Where’s the Captain?” Of course no answer was forthcoming; the only things to do were to inform the Consul in case there had been any foul play, and to acquaint the Admiralty, both of which were done.
The Surprise at once proceeded on her way, and I received an acting-commission as Commander, pending the time when a new one could be appointed and join. Of course it was very pleasant to be in command, and I could only hope that the Admiralty would be a long[164] time considering who they could appoint to supersede me; but meanwhile we were all greatly distressed about our missing Captain. Personally, I was devoted to him. Clever and agreeable, with a strong artistic sense which he had inherited from his father, the Squire of Hunstanton, who had been himself no mean frescoist in his time, I am deeply indebted to him for giving me my first introduction to the great painters and sculptors of Italy, of whose work he had made an intimate study, and a more interesting and amusing cicerone never existed. It turned out that instead of going to Paris he had betaken himself to Avignon, to visit the numerous antiquities there. The weather was very hot, and a sunstroke had been followed by brain fever. Many days passed before his family succeeded in tracing him, and, though he recovered, and served again as Commander of an iron-clad in the Mediterranean, he was never quite the same man again. It was not many years later that I was one of the mourners at his graveside when he was buried in the churchyard that lay close to his beautiful old home in Norfolk.
The Admiral, having rejoined his Fleet and been transhipped to his flagship, continued the summer cruise; but the Surprise was ordered off to Cadiz to be placed at the disposal of our Ambassador to Spain, the late Sir Clare Ford. The King of Spain had decided to open a maritime exhibition which was to be held at Cadiz, and there being a tremendous run on all the hotel accommodation there, the Duke, with his usual kindness, lent his dispatch boat to the Am[165]bassador to be used as a temporary residence. Accordingly, Sir Clare and his son, Mr. Johnny Ford, took up their abode on board for a few days, while the festivities were taking place. The rest of the personnel of the Embassy had, I believe, billeted themselves on the many hospitable Englishmen connected with the Xeres wine trade, who lived in the neighbourhood. Sir Clare and his son were both very agreeable guests, and I continued to see a good deal of Johnny (as he was always called) until the time of his death, a short time ago. He served for some years in the Diplomatic Service, but his health broke down completely, owing, I have always heard, to some mysterious ailment which he was unfortunate enough to contract whilst serving at our Legation in Persia. He was very clever, and a well-known figure in the more artistic side of London Society. Sir Clare, at Madrid, was very much the right man in the right place, for he knew the country well; his father had lived there many years, and was responsible for that delightful book, Wanderings in Spain, which I have always heard was the precursor of all the Murray Guide Books. Would that all guide books were written with such a light and amusing pen.
The “Festa” at Cadiz came to an end like all other “Festas,” and so did my brief term of command, for in the first days of August our newly appointed Captain, Commander the Honourable Maurice Bourke, superseded me, and I reverted to my old duties of First-Lieutenant. Again Providence had been kind to the Surprise, as our new Captain was one of the most charming and beloved of men. At one time his career[166] was almost a synonym for good luck. Everything had gone well with him. Very good-looking, with all the charm of the best sort of Irishman, one of the smartest and ablest officers afloat, he seemed inevitably destined to hold in turn every high command that the Navy in those days could offer. And then came a run of the most persistent ill-fortune. Not long after I left the Surprise she was badly in collision with a merchant steamer. It was not in the very remotest way the fault of the Captain, but at the same time it was an unpleasant incident. A very few years afterwards he was Flag-Captain to Sir George Tryon, when that terrible Victoria and Camperdown collision occurred, which cost so much loss of life, and, moreover, so much loss of reputation. Again, poor Maurice Bourke could not be blamed, but none the less he was the Captain of the ship in fault. He was unlucky for the third time later on, when Senior Officer in the Newfoundland, though the mishap to his ship was trifling. Unfortunately, his health had suffered greatly by the long immersion he had undergone, and the shock he had sustained, at the sinking of the Victoria, and he died, alas! at a comparatively early age. If it is ever true to write of a man, that he died regretted by all who knew him, I think it might be written of him. To me he was the kindest of friends and captains, and I was one of the very many who mourned his loss sincerely.
AT VENICE, 1887"
GROUP ON BOARD H.M.S. “SURPRISE”
One of our new Captain’s earliest jobs was to convey the Duke and Duchess to Venice, and we lay, I think, for nearly a fortnight off the Lido. It really was an ideal way of visiting Venice, and though I had been[167] there before, and have seen it many times since, it certainly was one of my happiest remembrances of that most entrancing of cities. To begin with, the surroundings of the Lido make an ideal berth for a yacht. Being outside the mouth of the Grand Canal, there is plenty of air, and the open water is clearer and cleaner than that in the narrower parts of the canal system. It is not only a convenient place from which to go sight-seeing, but it is near the famous bathing-place. Moreover, there was a very pleasant party on board. The guests were Prince George of Wales, Princess Charlotte of Saxe Meiningen, and the late Duke of Argyll; Lady Monson, then the Honourable Mrs. Monson, being in attendance on the Duchess.
Another very delightful trip the Surprise made was to the Riviera, to enable the Duchess to see something of her numerous relations and friends who were wintering there. Cannes, Nice and Monte Carlo at that time literally swarmed with Russians. It seemed as if half the Imperial Family had quartered themselves on that sunny coast. The Russian aristocracy, like any other conglomeration of individuals, may not have been a faultless institution; but, individually and collectively, I have always found the members of it the most agreeable people in the world. Free from prejudice, very cosmopolitan, speaking every language with equal facility, and entirely (to use an American expression) “without frills.” No foreigners I have ever met are so easy to get on with, for they have the knack of putting even the shyest and most insular of Englishmen at his ease, and it is an additional comfort[168] to Englishmen, who, as a rule, know no language except their own, to be dealing with people who speak our language like natives. It was at Cannes that I first came much into contact with Russians, but since then I have been attached to several Russian Missions that have been in London, and even now I have a few good friends left who have managed to escape from the Bolsheviks. I remember being attached to the Russian suite of one of the Royalties who came on a Mission here. There being no room at Buckingham Palace, they were quartered at the hotel of that name, but of course were expected to take their meals at the palace, together with the suites of the other missions who were representing their various countries. I thought it my duty to go to the hotel every day to see if my friends required any attention, but I might just as well have saved myself the trouble. The invariable answer to my questions as to whether they would like to dine or take luncheon at the palace, or required carriages to take them about, was a polite one to the effect that they could quite well look after themselves, and as far as conveyances were concerned they infinitely preferred hansoms to royal carriages. The principal reason why the men of the upper classes in Russia are so easy to get on with, is, that they are, with rare exceptions, gentlemen, and it is as uncommon to meet a vulgar snob among them as it would be to meet a gentleman among the same number and class of Germans.
But I must return to Cannes. No sooner had the Duchess arrived at Cannes than she was surrounded by[169] her relatives, who not only entertained her, but were more than kind to the officers on board. I remember a dinner party given for her at the Villa Venden, then the property of the late Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, who had married the Grand Duchess Anastasie of Russia, sister to the Grand Duke Michael, who has lived for so many years in England, and is so well known and popular here. Among many other distinguished guests was the Duke of Mecklenburg’s sister, the Grand Duchess Vladimir, who is also very well known in London and Paris. The Duke of Mecklenburg, who was compelled by ill-health always to winter on the Riviera, was, though a German, a gentleman, an almost unique case so far as my experience is concerned. It has been my misfortune to meet a great many Boches in my time, but I can truthfully say that one of the only gentlemen that I ever met amongst them was our host of that evening.
After dinner there was dancing, which went on until very late, and eventually we, the officers of the Surprise, got on board our ship in the dawn, thinking that anyhow after three or four hours’ sleep there would be a lazy morning. But we were reckoning without our hosts. At eight o’clock in the morning the Duchess of Mecklenburg and her sister-in-law were alongside to tell us that they had persuaded our Duchess to take them all round to Monte Carlo in the Surprise, and that meanwhile they wanted some breakfast, so these undefeated ladies, who could not possibly have been in bed before four o’clock, were four hours later making themselves extremely agreeable to their guests of the[170] night before in the tiny wardroom of the Surprise. But apparently, however lightly Russians may take life (they perpetually use the word “nitschevo,” which corresponds exactly to the Spanish “ma?ana,” and practically means that “nothing matters”), they certainly do not waste it in sleep! Even now I can recall the luncheon party a few hours later at the H?tel de Paris. Besides the Royalties, there were present a number of agreeable people of every nationality, so what with the brightness of the surroundings, the gaiety of the party, and the number of different languages in which the general conversation was carried on, there resulted a sort of babel, that was very amusing and almost bewildering to the ordinary young naval officer.
On another occasion when the Surprise was in these waters the little ship was anchored in that lovely harbour of Ville-franche, midway between Nice and Monte Carlo, and for the moment we happened to have no distinguished visitors on board. Our Boatswain, Mr. Cunningham (he is such an old friend of mine that I am sure he will forgive me for relating a story about him), had, I thought, been cooped up too long on the ship, for so keen a worker was he that he would remain for months on board without ever going ashore. With great difficulty I persuaded him to come to Monte Carlo with me on the plea that he would see a new side of life that would enlarge his mind (this was certainly true!), and on the understanding that I would give him dinner and not desert him. I duly introduced him to the gambling-rooms[171] and gave him dinner, and then, as usually happens at Monte Carlo, we managed to miss each other and I lost sight of him. Of course he could not speak a word of anything but English, but somehow or another, after a series of adventures, he managed to find his way back to the ship just in time to get the anchor up next morning, and all was well. He was a splendid sailor, and it was a great pleasure to meet him again many years afterwards, first as Chief Boatswain of the Royal Yacht, and still later as Lieutenant Cunningham at Osborne College, where he directed the Seamanship Instruction of the Naval Cadets. But though he rose to those giddy heights I feel convinced that he never forgot his trip to Monte Carlo.
Yet another of the Surprise’s cruises to the Riviera has to be mentioned. Shortly after the New Year of 1888 our little ship anchored off San Remo, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh being both on board. They had come to visit (and unhappily their visit turned out to be a final one) the Crown Prince of Prussia who was spending the winter there. He left San Remo shortly afterwards to become German Emperor for a reign of three months. The Crown Prince was too ill to return the visit in person, but I can remember the Crown Princess arriving on board and the manifest pleasure that it gave her to find herself once more on board a British man-of-war. Well might the odious people with whom she had been fated to live, call her, in derision, the “Engl?nderin”; we English, who have grown to know the Germans better, can now appreciate the fact that what[172] was intended as an ill-natured sneer was, virtually, a compliment. By the middle of June her husband, the man who, had he lived, might possibly have changed the fate of Europe, was unfortunately dead; to be succeeded on the throne by his son, that half-megalomaniac, half-mountebank, who, as I write, has taken refuge in a foreign country from those who were once his subjects.
Before temporarily quitting the topic of the German Royal Family, I must mention that some time afterwards, when suffering acutely from one of the numerous German Invasions of Cowes which had become annual visitations during Regatta week, I prophetically offered to take ￡100 to ￡1 that I should live to see the German Empire broken up, and it is a lasting regret to me to feel that, now the cataclysm has come, I have altogether forgotten the layer of the bet, who, more than likely, is now not even alive!
Another Mediterranean summer was passed pleasantly enough in cruising, the greater part of the time in company with the Fleet, and then, in early September, I heard, to my great joy, that I had been appointed to the Royal Yacht Victoria and Albert. This meant not only certain promotion at the end of two years, but also a very pleasant time in England.