, . ,
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE
IN THE MAKING
1860 1903
Photo, by G. Vandyk Ltd., 41, Buckingham Palace Road
LADY POORE (CAPTAIN'S WIFE)
1893
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE
IN THE MAKING
1860 1903
BY
LADY POORE
Author of
' RECOLLECTIONS OF AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE '
With Portraits
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER & CO., 1 5, WATERLOO PLACE
1917
[All rights reserved.]
TO
R. P.
WHO MADE ME
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE
2066209
PREFACE
THE little people whose lives, unimportant enough
in themselves, have yet been packed with interest
and variety, have the leisure and the liberty often
denied to the great ones of the earth. They are lookers-
on or, at best, supernumeraries. Detail is their forte,
and their memories, unburdened with great matters,
can supply clothing for whole regiments of bare facts.
They can, by re-creating the atmosphere and recon-
structing the scenes of a bygone period with which
they were familiar, show the young folk of to-day how
their parents and grandparents were treated, how they
felt and acted, lived and loved. Sometimes the
readers of such recollections cannot see the wood for
the trees, but in the biographies and autobiographies
of the great it is not always possible to see the trees for
the wood.
To the indulgence of those who found something
to like in the " Recollections of an Admiral's Wife "
I commend these footnotes to history.
IDA POORE.
February, 1917.
CONTENTS
PART I
A DEAN'S DAUGHTER, 18601866
CHAPTER PAGE
I. EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS . . 3
II. THE UPPER CASTLE YARD . . 6
III. EARLY TRAINING .... 12
IV. DUBLIN PEOPLE . 18
PART II
A BISHOP'S DAUGHTER, 18661885
V. CHANGES 25
VI. TRANSPLANTED 28
VII. ALLEVIATIONS AND HUMILIATIONS' . 34
VIII. HOLIDAY MEMORIES .... 41
IX. A LITTLE GIRL IN ITALY ... 45
X. HlGHFIELD '. "' '. "' . . '. 50
XI. GROWN UP . . ' . ' -'; 53
XII. "OUT" . . . . % . 57
ix
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
XIII.
XIV.
XV
PARKNASILLA
FRIENDS IN KERRY ....
PAGE
60
68
72
./Y V .
XVI.
SPRING TRAVELS IN ALGERIA
/
7 8
XVII.
THE BISHOP'S GRANDCHILDREN
85
XVIII.
LAND LEAGUE DAYS
93
XIX.
LIMERICK IN THE 'EIGHTIES
95
XX.
ALEXANDRIA
101
XXI.
CAIRO
106
XXII.
HAPPY DAYS AND HOT WEATHER
no
XXIII.
RECKLESS IMPRUDENCE
117
XXIV.
BETSY . . ...
120
XXV.
H.M. NILE STEAMER NASSIF-KHEIR
123
XXVI.
LETTERS FROM THE CATARACTS .
126
XXVII.
MORE LETTERS FROM THE CATARACTS.
132
XXVIII.
FROM KORTI TO GUBAT AND BACK .
137
PART III
A
COMMANDER'S WIFE, 18851890
XXIX.
THE REWARD OF OBSTINACY .
147
XXX.
PARTINGS AND MEETINGS . ** .
152
XXXI.
VARIETY AND VICISSITUDES M . . .
158
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XXXII. TERRA FIRMA 162
XXXIII. H.M.Y. VICTORIA AND ALBERT . . 165
XXXIV. PARAME 171
PART IV
A CAPTAIN'S WIFE, 18901903
XXXV. HALF-PAY IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE 179
XXXVI. HALF-PAY AT SPEZIA . . .186
XXXVII. VlAREGGIO AND BAGNI DI LUCCA . 195
XXXVIII. H.M.S. APOLLO . . . .201
XXXIX. H.M.S. TOURMALINE . . . .205
XL. WESTWARD Ho ! 213
XLI. " BEAUTIFUL ISLE OF THE SEA " . 216
XLII. NEW VISITING CARDS . . . 222
XLIII. THE PRINCESS HOTEL . . . 224
XLIV. AN ESCAPADE .... 229
XLV. AMERICAN IMPRESSIONS . . . 232
XL VI. HALIFAX . . . . . . 240
XL VII. QUEBEC, MONTREAL, NIAGARA . . 244
XLVIII. BERMUDA AGAIN . .. . . 251
XLIX. PORT ROYAL AND KINGSTON . . 256
L. PORT HENDERSON .... 261
xi
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGE
LI. LAST WEEKS IN JAMAICA . . 267
LII. MIDSHIPMEN 271
LIII. HOME AND AWAY AGAIN . . . 281
LIV. FIRST WINTER AT MALTA . . 285
LV. VlLLEFRANCHE 2QI
LVI. AN OLD DREAM COMES TRUE . . 296
LVII. CRETAN COMPLICATIONS . . .303
LVIII. EGYPT . . . . . .3"
LIX. GOOD-BYE TO THE HAWKE . . 317
LX. COMMISSIONING THE ILLUSTRIOUS ' ,*, 320
LXI. ILLUSTRIOUS PLUS HAWKE . , . 325
LXII. PLEASANT DUTIES . '. ' .: < 329
LXIII. QUEER CAPTAINS ; : u; .- < 333
LXIV. " FAREWELL AND ADIEU " ,j , . 339
LXV. DEATH OF MY FATHER -u ' ..,-'. 341
LXVI. MY LAST WINTER AT MALTA .il . . 347
LXVII. DEVONPORT ' : . --yij jj ,* 354
LXVIII. PHILANTHROPIC EFFORTS . ;u i/. 360
LXIX. INTERNATIONAL COURTESIES .7. X. 363
LXX. H.M.S. JUPITER . . 4 / f>; 368
INDEX V- 371
xn
PORTRAITS
LADY POORE (CAPTAIN'S WIFE), 1893 . Frontispiece
COMMANDER RICHARD POORE (NAVAL
BRIGADE, NILE EXPEDITION), 1885 . Facing p. 137
xiu
PART I
A DEAN'S DAUGHTER, 18601866
A.W.
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE
IN THE MAKING
CHAPTER I
EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS
AN event which left a deep impression on my infant
mind was the departure of a much-loved German
governess. Stowed away in my memory I keep the
recollection of my farewell to Fraulein Wappner, and
can call up the picture of our leave-taking, the feeling
of the tear-wetted veil of brown gauze which brushed
my cheek as she kissed me, the sound of her words,
" Good-bye, darling child." It was at the " Gates
of Ballybog," as we called the twin humps of heather-
covered rock between which the high road ran, that
we said farewell in 1863 to this good friend. I was
then three years old, and whether I walked or was
carried or driven to this spot, three-quarters of a mile
from our own gates of Parknasilla in Kerry, I cannot
recall ; but I remember the wet brown veil. And yet
my elder brothers and sisters know that Fraulein
3 B 2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Wappner said good-bye to us in Dublin ! This dis-
crepancy puzzles me.
It must have been in the same year that my father's
eldest brother, John Graves, a barrister, came to stay
at Parknasilla, and his valet, a man of many accom-
plishments, pruned all the apple trees in our neglected
orchard, which fruited pleasingly in the following year.
I cannot remember Uncle John, nor yet his valet, but
I have never forgotten the toy cock and hen my uncle
brought me from Paris. They were seated side by
side, contrary to the usual practice of domestic fowls, in
a little basket-work nest lined with dyed moss. The
birds had real feathers on their hard bodies of what I
heard called " composition," and when they moulted
from much handling they looked very horrid and
naked, with patches of dry glue here and there where
their feathers had been stuck on. In those days
children had few expensive toys, and I found most of
my playthings in the debris of the house and garden.
Grouse and poultry feathers begged from the cook,
lobster claws from the same benefactress, fir cones,
horse chestnuts, laburnum pods, little bits of rock
containing what we called " Irish diamonds," sea
shells, and even empty pill boxes were my toys. We
were a large family, of which I was the youngest, and
at Christmas time or on my birthday a book or a doll
from my parents and some trifle from my elder brothers
and sisters appeared an adequate recognition of the
occasion. I was not very careful of my possessions,
but the doll my mother gave me when I was still quite
small inspired me with respect, if not affection. It
4
EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS
was impossible to take liberties with a personage so
large and so unbending. Her arms, legs, head and
neck were of china, and her features were severely
Grecian. Her dress was of bright blue cashmere with
clouded glass buttons and was trimmed with white
braid, and she had a hooded cloak to match. Her
boots, which were of china, and consequently fixtures,
were of a pinkish opalescent hue, with gold laces and
tassels, and on her head, which was thickly covered
with pale yellow china curls, she wore permanently
a golden coronal, high in front and diminishing towards
the sides and back. This piece of magnificence debarred
her from wearing a hat, but the hood of her blue
cloak, though scarcely in keeping with her classical
style, could be drawn over her head, tiara and all.
She was called, I do not know why, Alice Maud Mary,
after Queen Victoria's second daughter, Grand-
Duchess of Hesse, and she was so regal that it was
impossible to make a friend of her, so she was still
quite good when she was given away. I hope the
" poor little girl " who got her stood less in awe of
her than I did.
Our nursery fare was very simple. My breakfast
consisted of bread and butter, an egg, and milk or
weak tea ; but the bread was generally brown and
home-made in big flat loaves baked on what in Ireland is
called a griddle, in Scotland a girdle. I feel sure the
Irish form is the more correct, for it must be first
cousin to grill and gridiron. We three little ones
Charley, Bob, and I were separated from the elder
batch of six brothers and sisters by a gap of six years,
5
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
and escaped the Spartan regime of cocoa and porridge
(" stirabout," we called it) for breakfast by appearing
on the scene when the need for economy was less
pressing and a more varied diet at all meals was per-
mitted in the nursery and schoolroom. I had been a
wretchedly delicate baby, and my beloved nurse,
Betsy, often told me later that she feared she would
never rear me. " Let her die, Miss Robinson, let her
die. You'll never 'rare' that one," Thomas Halsey,
porter of Trinity College, Dublin, would say when
Betsy passed his gateway with me in her arms. But
Betsy insisted upon keeping me alive, though I lay
" on a weeshy little down pillow " for the first three
months of my life and " a body 'd be almost af eared "
to touch me.
CHAPTER II
THE UPPER CASTLE YARD
MY father, a Fellow of Trinity College, had become
Dean of the Chapel Royal in 1860, and we lived in the
Upper Castle Yard opposite the viceregal quarters.
The first tune I remember was the " Salute " which
announced the entrance or exit of the Lord Lieutenant,
and my first love was Armine Wodehouse, the then
Lord Lieutenant's (Lord Kimberley's) younger son.
When I acquired a very pretty hat, the crown of which
consisted of a poor spatch-cocked kingfisher, I was not
6
THE UPPER CASTLE YARD
happy till I had paraded it for Armine's approval,
and I think of him still, though it is many years since
his death and many more since I saw him, as a neatly-
made little boy of five years old in a black velveteen
suit and black silk stockings, just as he looked to me
when I sat on his father's knee wearing my blue-
winged hat in the drawing-room at Dublin Castle
fifty-one years ago !
I used to have toothache very badly when I was
small perhaps it was due to the inevitable cutting
of double teeth and it would sometimes wake me up
crying in the night. Then Betsy would take me out
of my crib and, sitting in the big rocking-chair, rock
and rock me till I fell asleep. The nursery was at the
top of the house and looked out into a horrible slum
called Ship Street, where there were public-houses
and barracks and brawlers, male and female ; and as I
lay in Betsy's arms the cries and shoutings came up
and the light of the street lamps flickered on the wall
opposite our windows. Now and again we used to
hear the queer staccato notes of a dulcimer played by
a little ragged boy, and I thought his music beautiful.
I wonder if the dulcimer is played in the back streets
of Dublin now.
My father was too busy to see much of us children,
for in addition to his clerical duties he was Almoner
to the Lord Lieutenant, and investigations respecting
" petioners," as the petitioners almost invariably
signed themselves, had to be made by him before they
were accepted as beneficiaries or rejected as frauds.
He was very kind to us, and we three little ones were
7
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
immensely proud of being noticed by him. One winter,
while staying at Birr with Lord Rosse (constructor of
the famous telescope and father of Sir Charles Parsons,
inventor of the steam turbine), he slipped on the
polished floor of the hall during a game of battledore,
played Badminton fashion across a net, and broke
his arm. When it was nearly well again the Dublin
surgeon ordered him to work his hand about in a
bucket of hot bran-mash, with a view to restoring the
flexibility of the muscles, and every evening in the
children's hour the bucket was solemnly brought into
the drawing-room and set down by his side on one of
our little walnut -wood chairs. One evening it would
be placed on Charley's, the next on Bob's, and the
third on mine, and to this day there are the marks on
my chair left by the base of the bucket, which was
over-hot on one occasion and, being shifted, described
two intersecting circles on the seat. Alas ! that little
chair is no longer mine. Many years afterwards I dis-
covered that those chairs never belonged to us juniors
at all ; we had merely inherited the use of them when
outgrown by our elder brothers and sisters.
Charley was three years older than myself, and Bob
a year and a half. They were as unlike one another
in most respects as they well could be, but they were
both unusually clever. Charley, though not robust,
was wiry, a dreadful fidget, and filled at times with
an uncanny spirit of mischief amounting almost to
demoniacal possession. One Sunday morning while
all our elders were at church he decoyed me into the
drawing-room, where a bright fire was burning, and,
8
THE UPPER. CASTLE YARD
taking up the poker, thrust it between the bars and
left it till red-hot. " It won't hurt you a bit," he said,
holding my hand firmly in one of his and the poker in
the other, and before I had time to be frightened he
had lightly " branded " the back of my right hand.
Of course I screamed and ran to Betsy for comfort and
Pommade Divine, our nursery panacea for burns and
bruises, and to this day I have a small round scar to
remind me that Charley, kindest of brothers, was once
a cruel tyrant. I think now that he was far more
ailing and nervous than anyone realised in days when
children's " fancies " were more lightly regarded than
now.
He had a perfect ear for music and played the piano
with a touch both light and sure, but when he should
have been practising decorously he would cause his
hearers acute anguish by playing the bass in one key
and the treble in another. Among other notable deeds
of ingenious naughtiness Charley committed the
atrocity of pricking with a pin the nose of almost every
portrait in my mother's album. His own, I know, was
excepted. He must have been between eight and
nine then, a skinny little boy with very pretty bright
blue eyes, a mop of yellow curls, and many freckles.
Bob was plump, pretty and easy-going, with a beam-
ing smile and a peculiar enjoyment of monotonous
noises made by himself. He would drum with his
heels or repeat a thousand times in succession some
meaningless polysyllable such as Tatara, or twang upon
a piece of elastic till Charley was nearly beside himself
with exasperation. They both devoured books and
9
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
had an amazing capacity for assimilating miscellaneous
statistics and facts of all descriptions, and Charley's
remarkable range of knowledge and Bob's extra-
ordinarily retentive memory amaze me to this day.
In their childhood they would pore over the tonnage
of ships, the number of barrels of stout exported by
Guinness, and the scores made by celebrated cricketers,
Charley perched on a high chair with one leg tucked
under him, Bob lying under a table or on the hearth-
rug, with his chin between his hands, tapping away
with one toe until Charley fell upon him in a fury,
rolled him over on his back, and sat upon him. We
three shared a governess who came to us every day in
Dublin, but went down to Kerry with us every summer
and accompanied us to Limerick when my father
became Bishop of the united dioceses of Limerick,
Ardfert, and Aghadoe.* I suppose she taught us well,
but I can only remember writing copies under her
guidance with the tail of my quill pen pointing over
my right shoulder and suffering very much when it
became necessary to do sums on a little white porcelain
slate. My mother was fetched up one day to the
schoolroom at the Castle to sit in judgment on my
untidy rows of tear-smudged figures which would not
come right. She "sided "with Miss Eades ; I cried
myself into stupefaction and was sent to bed, and to
this day I have a hatred of white china slates and
figures.
To reach the Chapel Royal we used to cross the Upper
* Ardfert and Aghadoe were in Kerry. The diocese, roughly
speaking, embraced the counties of Limerick and Kerry.
10
THE UPPER CASTLE YARD
Castle Yard, pass through some of the viceregal
apartments and along a curving corridor carpeted with
red, and we often played with Armine in the Throne
Room swathed in dust-sheets and brown holland.
Sometimes we visited Mrs. Richmond, the dignified
housekeeper, in her own quarters, and heard from her
many a tale of the great folks she had served or seen.
When Queen Victoria visited Dublin in 1861 with the
Prince Consort, Mrs. Richmond had caused spotless
antimacassars of white crochet to be fastened to the
back of every sofa and easy-chair in the rooms pre-
pared for them. Five minutes before their arrival a
member of their suite rushed breathless into Mrs.
Richmond's office to tell her that every antimacassar
must be instantly removed, as the Queen detested
these " toilet-accessories," invented during a period
when hair oil was generally and liberally used. Mrs.
Richmond also told us that it was accounted a crime
to meet a member of the Royal Family in a passage,
and as the passages in Dublin Castle were narrow, and
in places tortuous, it was hard to avoid trouble. A
story of the Queen told to my father by the then
Master of the Horse made a deep impression on me
when I was old enough to understand it. When her
Majesty drove out in State into the country, the officer
commanding the escort rode beside her carriage so
that he should take her orders or supply information
chemin faisant. " Who lives here ? " the Queen would
ask as the carriage passed some great house or well-
kept " demesne," and the officer, more often than
not, replied " I don't know, Ma'am." So the Queen
ii
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
turned to the sergeant riding on the other side of the
carriage, who had the presence of mind to invent
owners, if he was ignorant of then: names, for every
place of consequence in which she was interested.
The moral pointed by my father when he told this tale
was "It is the business of everyone in attendance on
Royal personages to supply all the information required
by them."
In recognition of his own services as Chaplain during
the Queen's visit my father received from her a very
beautiful and uncommon ring composed of five large
diamonds set in the form of a cross. Inside it was
inscribed " V. R. Carolo Graves dat 1861." To us
children it was an object of veneration, and we would
beg to be allowed to put the Queen's ring on our small
fingers as a special indulgence. My father wore it
constantly until, as a very old man, not one of his
always slender fingers was thick enough to fill it.
CHAPTER III
EARLY TRAINING
WE spent about eight months of each year at the
Castle, where our only convenient playground was the
Pound, a great round grass plot on which Lord Carlisle,
Lord Kimberley's predecessor, used to play croquet,
a game introduced during his term of office. There
12
EARLY TRAINING
were some trees in the Pound and many sooty bushes
of lilac and laburnum, and we reached it by a foot-
bridge leading from the viceregal apartments and
spanning Ship Street. Here we used to meet other
" household " children from the Upper Castle Yard,
but they were all older than myself, and I was much
flattered when two big enormous, in fact girls led
me aside one day into what we were pleased to call an
" arbour " of blackened shrubs and, after bandaging
my eyes, put some little lozenges into my mouth. I
afterwards found them to be of a yellowish substance
called " Bath pipe," and, properly speaking, cough
lozenges, and they tasted of liquorice. Next time I
met my friends they executed the same mysterious
manoeuvre, but in the crowning ceremony substituted
for the Bath pipe some dirty little pebbles and twigs.
I have never quite forgotten this heartless deception,
and when I was told some years later that one of these
perfidious monsters had married the heir to a dukedom
I entertained the gravest doubts of her fitness to adorn
the position.
At five I began to develop a passion for dress. It
was the age of crinolines, and I longed to possess one,
but as my father would not permit the wearing of this
monstrous freak of fashion to his wife and elder
daughters, I was doomed to disappointment. However,
I had a green and white checked silk and a blue and
white striped " mohair," and as they were very short
and full they stuck out beautifully. About this time
my two sisters next above me, Rosy and Lily, had their
first bonnets. I can see them still, laid out with their
13
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
thick winter cloaks and grey kid gloves on their
beds before church one cold Sunday morning. They
were of coarse slate-grey straw and were trimmed with
reddish brown flowers, and they had long grey silk
or satin strings. The two girls had just been confirmed,
and I fancied the bonnets were in some way connected
with the rite of confirmation.
We went to church very regularly, but our Sundays
were never made penitential. We were taught from
Mrs. Alexander's book of " Hymns for Little Children,"
published, most fortunately for us, in time to supersede
the somewhat heavy hymnology of the previous era.
Such jingles as " There is a Happy Land " and " Shall
we gather at the River," which became popular about
this period, offended my father's taste, and I have
never regretted that they were excluded from our
repertory. Nor did he approve of such scraps of
secular information as were furnished by the " Child's
Guide to Knowledge " ; the " Swiss Family Robinson "
was tapu, and the rudimentary but enjoyable music of
the Christy Minstrels was anathema. However, we
heard the latter sung by our handsome nurserymaid
" Saranna," and I, for one, loved " Wait for de Wagon,"
" I wish I were with Nancy," and " Massa's in de cold,
cold ground."
I have since been glad that our parents only gave
us the best in prose, poetry, and music. One can
always widen one's range so as to embrace what is good
of all kinds in all the arts. If one does not start with
a high standard, it is hard to accept it later. Such
names as Bach, Shakespeare, and Raphael stood for
14
EARLY TRAINING
something as sacred and as far above our criticism as
St. Paul or Queen Victoria.* Among children taught
as we were there must always be the danger of adopting
a superior tone in intercourse with others less fas-
tidiously trained, and I plead guilty to many of the
faults which make the purist (or the prig) so objection-
able to the easily pleased. I have a horror of religious
clap-trap, of slipshod grammar, and of what a friend
of mine calls the rancid in music or literature, but I
have long since ceased to condemn the explosive
evangelical, the slovenly or trivial letter-writer and
the singer of comic songs. I know now that neither
canting nor ranting need be associated with the first,
affection can be expressed by the second, and vulgarity
is not essential in the third.
As well as I can remember, the naughtiest thing I
did while we lived at the Castle was to hide the piano-
tuner's hat, but what my motive was I cannot now say.
I bore him no grudge, nor yet was I so attached to
him that I wished to delay his departure. I hid it
behind the window curtain, and when everyone was
questioned I stoutly denied my guilt. But the crime
was ultimately traced to me and I was soundly
punished.
In a diary kept by my brother Alfred in those early
* What my father would have said had he lived to hear my boy's
opinion of a great composer's music at the beginning of this century
I do not know. His sense of humour must have been tickled, but
he would have been shocked. Roger, then a midshipman, had come
back from a Sunday afternoon concert at the Albert Hall, and
answered to my inquiry whether he had enjoyed the music, " Some
of it was all right, but there was a beastly long thing called Die,
Mr. Singer, by that rotter Wagg-ner that spoilt the whole show."
15
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
days I have found some references to myself as " Tiny,"
a nickname I should never have recognised as my own.
" Tiny sat down on a cabbage leaf full of fine straw-
berries in the railway carriage " (on our annual journey
from Dublin to Parknasilla) ; and later, " Tiny walked
right into the sea at Goleen Rivee to-day " (I must
have been about two and a half ) ; " she seems very
fond of the water."
Those journeys to Parknasilla and back were
desperate undertakings for the seniors of the party.
Six boys and girls between nine and nineteen and
three babies between six months and three and a half
years must have proved a handful for the bravest
of parents, nurses, and governesses to control. The
railway journey took nearly twelve hours, and, after
spending the night at Killarney, we drove thirty miles
over the mountains on a long outside car called a
" Bianconi " (after its Italian inventor) if fine. But
if it was wet we were imprisoned in batches of four in
the detestable contrivance known as a Cork, or inside,
car. This is a black box on two wheels, with two
tiny windows high up facing for'ard, a seat (to hold
two) on either side running fore and aft, and a pair of
black tarpaulin curtains closing in the after-part of
the vehicle aboVe the door. The results of a long
drive in an inside car are frequently both painful and
humiliating to bad sailors. Four friends of ours were
once starting for a ball from Cruise's Hotel in Limerick
in a Cork car (backed in against- the kerb), when that
portion of the harness described by an Irish groom-
gardener as the " lobelia-band " gave way and the
16
EARLY TRAINING
passengers were suddenly deposited on the muddy
pavement, boxed up in inextricable and agonising
confusion. They were rescued by some sympathetic
passers-by who, drawing down the skyward-pointing
shafts, restored the car to its original position.
Whether we were jolted and jumbled about in inside
cars or able to perch on the unprotected seats of a
Bianconi, that long drive from Killarney to Parknasilla
must have been a trial to us all. First we climbed
steadily up past the Lakes and through the exquisite
woods to Looscaunagh, where the horses were baited,
and then away we went down the curving roads
through a wild and treeless region to the sea and to the
unparalleled delights of boating and bathing, moun-
tain climbing and fishing that awaited us. There was
no lawn tennis then, no golf, no bicycling or motor-
ing ; but the days were never long enough, and the
unhackneyed beauties of Parknasilla never palled.
Everyone above nursery age hailed with joy an
expedition, whether to some remote mountain lake
where the little brown trout lived or across Kenmare
Bay to Sharky Island ; or to the great gloomy caves
of Ardgroom when the Atlantic swell allowed us to
explore their recesses ; or to Kilmackillogue Harbour
or lovely Derreen. And there was Derrynane, the old
home of Dan O'Connell, with its shell-strewn beach,
seventeen miles away along the western coast ; Water-
ville, Valencia, and the Skelligs for more ambitious
explorers ; and close at hand our own exquisite
creeks and shores and wooded islands where silver
birches drooped over the water and the heather began
A.W. 17 c
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
where the seaweed left off. To our right front lay
Garinish, Lord Dunraven's island, to our left the steep
bluff of Rossdohan, and up the bay to the eastward
were the tall rook-haunted trees, the great walled
fruit-garden and the fishpond of Derriquin where
lived my well-loved playmates, Altie and Mary Bland.
That hilly region of South Kerry between the Reeks
and the sea a region of bogs and heather, stout
hollies, tall pines, golden furze and ragweed, and blue
loughs was a paradise of fortunate children who had
never seen a bathing-machine or a nigger minstrel.
Sea wall, shingle, beach, sands, parade, esplanade
and pier were words forming no part of our vocabulary,
and were only learnt, and held in slight esteem, when
Folkestone, Brighton, Southsea and similar conven-
tional and wholly unsatisfactory seaside settlements
forced themselves upon our notice.
CHAPTER IV
DUBLIN PEOPLE
I WAS six years old when my father became Bishop
of Limerick, and on the same day his close friend,
Dr. Butcher, was consecrated Bishop of Meath. The
wits made merry over the names Butcher and Graves,
saying that the Crown had given the Protestants of
Ireland a Butcher in Meath to kill them and Graves in
18
DUBLIN PEOPLE
Limerick to bury them. I have no recollection of the
Butchers in Dublin, though the sons and eldest
daughter were the chosen companions of my elder
brothers and sisters when they lived next door to one
another in Fitzwilliam Square. They were a most
remarkable family of brilliant mental endowments
and great originality. Two only of the six are now
living J. G. Butcher, Unionist member for York,
and Mrs. George Prothero. All four sisters were fine
musicians Lady Monteagle, Mrs. Prothero, Mrs.
Crawley, and Eleanor, the youngest, who died un-
married but not unsought. The elder son Henry,
late member for Cambridge University, was for some
years Professor of Greek at Edinburgh. He married
a daughter of Archbishop Trench of Dublin, a well-
known poet and philologist as well as a soundly
orthodox pillar of his church. So many stories have
been circulated first and last about Archbishop Trench
that few can have been left untold, but the following
may have escaped. As a new and inexperienced curate
he was officiating before a small weekday congregation
of almswomen and other habitues of his church when
the words " Her sons shall grow up as the young
plants and her daughters as the polished corners of
the temple " fell to his share in the psalms. Half-way
through it a fervent " The Lord forbid ! " shocked and
startled him. The ejaculation had proceeded from an
old Mrs. Plant, whose sons had, without exception,
turned out badly !
In the 'sixties wits were plentiful in Dublin, which
was a perfect factory of appropriate nicknames. Two
19 c 2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
very big men named Joy, the less large of whom
stammered badly, were known as " Exceeding Great
Joy " and " Great Joy Unspeakable." Colonel
Tenison, of Kilronan, who had a Roman nose and was
nearly blind, was nicknamed " Blind Hookey," and his
wife, Lady Louisa, whom I remember as a very stout
old lady in 1879, was " Unlimited Loo " ; their two
daughters, co-heiresses, afterwards Lady Dormer and
Lady Kingston, were " Chicken Hazard."
I always longed to see a Drawing Room at Dublin
Castle, but my wish was never gratified. In old days
the Lord Lieutenant kissed every lady presented to
him on the cheek, and Lord Carlisle, who valued the
viceregal prerogative, used sometimes to pretend that
my mother, a very handsome woman, had not been
presented and direct one of his staff to bring her up so
that he might perform a work of supererogation much
to his taste. Lord Carlisle was clean shaven, and
Charley thought him very like Prince Bulbo in " The
Rose and the Ring " when he wore his broad blue
ribbon across the front of his white waistcoat. Lord
Spencer, who succeeded Lord Kimberley as Lord
Lieutenant, had a long and thick red beard, which
used to get so full of pearl powder after he had kissed
a few dozen ladies that he had to retire and brush it
out before proceeding. Besides, it made him sneeze.
In old days the majority of guests at a Castle ball
were of gentle birth and breeding, but in later regimes
the door was opened to so heterogeneous a crowd that
many representatives of noble and ancient families
absented themselves from viceregal solemnities and
20
DUBLIN PEOPLE
festivities. At any period, however, there were won-
derful toilettes to be seen and amazing brogues and
unconventional manners to be noted at a St. Patrick's
ball. An over-zealous mother has been known to
run round the ball-room after a daughter all unskilled
in the dance crying, " Shpring to the Captain, M'ria ;
shpring now, I tell ye," and on another occasion the
mother of a pretty ingenue replied to an A.D.C. who
besought her daughter's hand in the waltz, " Indeed,
then, she cann't be danncing now at all. Amn't I
keeping her cool for the Errel of Ranfurrly ? "
21
PART II
A BISHOP'S DAUGHTER, 18661885
CHAPTER V
CHANGES
WE moved to Limerick in the autumn of 1866 after
our customary sojourn at Parknasilla, but as the Palace
had to undergo a complete refit my father took a fur-
nished house on the Clare side of the Shannon for a few
months. I do not think it was a particularly interesting
or attractive residence, but it had the charm which
all novelty possesses for children, a charm which had
not worn off before we moved into our official quarters.
The Palace was a spacious and well-built Georgian
house with fine lofty rooms, a grand staircase of wide,
shallow steps, and a good-sized garden to play in.
The garden had originally run down to the river, but
on the building of wharves the loss of its muddy shore
was compensated for by the erection of a high terrace
between red-brick walls. Thence we could see all there
was to be seen of such cargo ships (sailing craft or
steamers) as came alongside, and we children would
perch for hours on the heavy stone coping, watching
the loading and unloading, the making fast, and the
preparations for departure that went on below us. It
was from this terrace that Bishop Higgins of Limerick
heard Catherine Hayes, then a young girl of the
people, singing down below on the wharf. Recognising
25
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
a jewel, he sought her out and himself defrayed the
cost of her musical education. There were ballad
singers on the wharf in our day, but no Catherine
Hayes, and I remember one the refrain of whose mono-
tonous song ran thus :
" Now, Bridget Donoghue,
I'll tell ye what to do
Ye'll change yer name to Pattherson
And I'll be Donoghue."
The reason for the change of name was, for me,
shrouded in mystery.
The climate of Limerick was damp, and at spring
tides the river used to find its way into our garden,
so perhaps it was not surprising that my eldest sister
Helen and I both had rheumatic fever during our first
winter at the Palace. Still it was in many respects
a delightful house, and the fresh paint and papers,
the comfortable new furniture, as little ugly as might
be in an age of ugly furniture, and, above all things, the
corkscrew backstairs (though in the dusk they were
full of terrors for me) provided material for satis-
faction to irresponsible beings of tender age. Betsy
was now known as Mrs. Robinson, the housekeeper,
but she was still my dear and indulgent nurse and
acted as maid to my mother. I had more new clothes
than heretofore, and in a brown velveteen frock piped
with blue and a black velveteen piped with scarlet
I thought myself a person of fashion and importance.
But I was always ailing, and when rheumatic fever was
followed by jaundice and jaundice by bronchitis, it
26
CHANGES
seemed certain that Limerick did not suit " poor little
Ida." Then when the summer came there was no
joyful removal to Parknasilla, because the house was in
the clinging grip of builders busy with the additions
necessary for the accommodation of a family now
counting so many grown-up members.
But there was great happiness at the Palace when
July brought Jack, the eldest of us all, back from
India on leave after seven years in the Indian Civil
Service. Never was there a gayer or more beloved
brother, and we three adored him. Alas ! that summer
ended in bitter grief when Jack died, after a short
illness, of meningitis. I was far too young to under-
stand all that his loss stood for, but I know now what
sorrow it caused my parents, whose love for and pride
in him were great, and I can remember how my mother
looked when she came out of the room where her
eldest-born lay dead. It was my first sight of tragedy,
and I ran to Betsy for comfort. " No, darlin', I can't
stay with you now," she said, and, weeping, kissed me ;
" I must go to the mistress."
I do not know when or how the news was broken
to me that I was to be sent to school in England. Bob
was very ill with scarlet fever after Jack's death, and
Betsy, of course, was nursing him when Charley and
I were packed off to a dreary seaside place in Clare
where there was little to make us forget our troubles.
Early in November my father took us over to London ;
Charley was placed at a preparatory school at Maiden-
head and I was taken down to the Misses Z 's
" Establishment for Young Ladies " at Fulham.
27
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
CHAPTER VI
TRANSPLANTED
IT was Bishop Tait of London, a good friend of my
father's, who had recommended the Misses Z 's
school. Their niece, Miss Y , a clever and charm-
ing woman, was governess to Lucy, Edith, and Agnes
Tait, and the school kept by her aunts provided an
excellent education under her sister Miss Emma Y ,
plus a Spartan training in manners and deportment at
the hands of Miss Susan Z , third of four maiden
sisters not content to live upon the memory of better
days who had established this school many years
before I was born.
Miss Susan must have been sixty ; Miss Elizabeth,
next above her in age, gave us religious instruction ;
Miss Jane, of unknown antiquity, we rarely saw ;
and Miss Rebecca, the youngest, who wore her hair in
bunches of ringlets that reminded me of a brown
water-spaniel's ears, must, I think, have superintended
the housekeeping. Two younger Misses Y , Miss
Frances and Miss Julia, walked out with us, taught and
attended to the needs of the junior pupils and main-
tained order out of school hours.
The teaching was first-rate, but there was a complete
absence of comfort and beauty in our surroundings.
Our crowded bedrooms were like those in a modern
orphanage, our food was, though plentiful, ill served
and unpalatable, and we had but one bath per week !
28
TRANSPLANTED
I am sure that neither the Bishop of London nor Mrs.
Tait had any conception of the inadequacy of the
domestic arrangements of Bridge House when they
recommended the school to my father. To myself,
rather petted than otherwise, such conditions were at
first almost intolerable.
We had spent some days in London with my mother's
sister, Mrs. Wilson Block, and before I bade her good-
bye she made me learn, and repeat to her, her address,
so that if I was not happy at school or needed anything
I should write to her at once. She was as ignorant as
her little niece of the custom, then common among
schoolmistresses, of censoring all letters going out of
the house as well as those coming into it, except from
parents. I had no chance of pouring out my woes
in ill-spelt, blotted letters. Once a week I wrote a
copy (on a slate) of my letter to my parents, and
on Sunday I transcribed it on to ruled notepaper
under the vigilant eye of a governess. I came
across a bundle of these hapless little documents
among my father's papers after his death thirty
years later. " I am very happy here," they said ;
" the Misses Z are very kind to me. We went
for a nice walk to Barnes Common " (or Wimble-
don, or along the Bishop's Walk) " yesterday. I
remain, my dear Mamma, Your affectionate little
daughter, IDA."
How should my mother have guessed that I was as
forlorn and lonesome as a prisoner among girls of a
social class with which I had never mixed and with
whom I had nothing in common ? They were farmers'
29
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
daughters and tradesmen's daughters almost without
exception, and every one of them was English. I was
an alien and the youngest of them all. There was no
Betsy to say " Good-night, darlin', and God bless you "
in her dear Lancashire voice, as she " happed " me up
cosily in my own little bed. I shared a bed with a
strange girl ; my hah" was cruelly imprisoned in half-
a-dozen stiff curl papers at night ; I dressed on cold
winter mornings by the light of a tallow candle in a
tin candlestick, and' we had long long prayers and a
chapter from Miss Elizabeth's own Commentary on
the Pentateuch before we sat down to thick slices of
bread spread with butter that did not come from Cork
and tea, ready " milked " and sweetened, from a tin
urn with a tap. I was one of an unsympathetic com-
munity ; I had chilblains on my fingers and toes, and
it seemed to me I had nothing of my very own except
my little troubles. One comforter I had a smiling,
rosy-cheeked housemaid named Martha Lloyd. It was
she who gave me my weekly bath, and, even # she had
been otherwise than kind, her connection with the
best moment of the week would have endeared her to
me. The event next best in my weekly round was the
dancing lesson. I loved dancing, and M. Adrien
Delferrier, who taught us, was an artist. He played
his little fiddle as he danced ; smiling or grimacing,
encouraging or sarcastic, he chassi'd and glissaded
upon the uneven but slippery boards of the great
schoolroom, calling out directions all the while. He
was particularly kind to me, recognising, perhaps,
in the little black-clad Irish girl a sister imigree in
30
TRANSPLANTED
uncompromisingly English surroundings, and once
it was, I think, in 1872 he produced from his neat
pocket-book a newspaper cutting which announced
that Charley had headed the list of junior scholarship
winners at Marlborough. I was called up between
two dances and made my best curtsy as I thanked
the good little man for his kind thought. Curtsying
was part of our daily routine, for we invariably
" bobbed " to our elder schoolmistresses, whom we
addressed as " Ma'am." It was a good custom.
My first Christmas holidays brought a respite,
and, though I was not to go home, there were friends
and relations close at hand who made the holidays
a cheerful time. I paid a short visit to the Taits, who
were then on the eve of translation to Lambeth, and
never have I been in so happy a household. The
three girls, of whom Agnes, the youngest, was just
my age, were as pretty as pictures, as good as angels,
and as merry as grigs ; and it seemed easy, and indeed
natural, to be good while I was in their company.
I was surprised and saddened to find, on leaving Fulham
Palace for my aunt's house in London, that I was
quite a naughty and troublesome little girl, rather in
the way than otherwise, and ready to fight with my
young cousins on the slightest provocation. But it
was a bad moment when I bade them good-bye and
was restored to the well-regulated and uncongenial
atmosphere of school.
My father, who then had a seat in the House of
Lords (it was before the Disestablishment of the Church
in Ireland), came over to London with my mother in
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
the following summer, and I spent three happy days
with them in their rooms in Sackville Street. I had
been cherishing a hope that when I could explain to
them fully my reasons for disliking school I should be
delivered and restored to my home, but I looked so
well, and had learnt so much geography, history,
French and arithmetic, that they were perfectly satis-
fied with their choice of a school, and the complaints
of a little girl of nine were not in those days listened
to with the attention they would now receive. I was
taken to Westminster Abbey on Sunday afternoon,
a never-to-be-forgotten experience which lifted me
for the time above the ugliness and fret of school life,
and after service we went to tea with the Dean and Lady
Augusta Stanley, whose dark, plain face was beautiful
with kindness and alight with intelligence.
When the summer holidays came, not many weeks
later, Charley and Bob (who had joined him at school
after Christmas) and I started off for Parknasilla. It
was a long and perilous journey for a child of my age,
with no more efficient protectors than two small
brothers armed with pea-shooters, but nothing dis-
mayed me, not even the rough crossing, and when I
found myself once more in Betsy's arms there was not
in the whole wide world a happier little girl.
Helen's marriage to Captain Harry Powys, of the
52nd L. I., made my first summer holidays peculiarly
exciting. I loved my big brother-in-law already (had
he not carried me about in a waste-paper basket the
year before in Limerick ?), and as a diminutive brides-
maid I enjoyed a social importance that sensibly
32
TRANSPLANTED
demoralised me. In the wedding group, photographed
on the step <" at Parknasilla, I was seated on the best
man's* knee. Him I worshipped, for he was as tall
and handsome as he was kind and witty, and when he
married my own first cousin five years later I experi-
enced such a sense of outrage and loss as only a bride
forsaken at the altar should feel.
When I was ten my first nephew, John Powys,
was born, and my pride and excitement were great.
The 52nd was then at Malta, but six months later in
the Christmas holidays Helen brought the baby and a
fat Maltese nurse named Gaetana to stay at the Palace.
John was unluckily too young to realise that I was his
aunt, but I hoped to impress his nurse favourably and
become a welcome visitor to the nursery, so I hunted
among my treasures, and finding a boxful of coloured
shells given me by a little friend, placed it in a con-
spicuous position with a paper laid beside it bearing
the words " Per Gaetana da Ida." It never occurred
to Gaetana, who was unable to read, that the shells
were an offering to her, and as little John would cer-
tainly have put them in his mouth they were " sided "
away without acknowledgment, a slight that distressed
me considerably.
* James Franklin Bland.
A.W. 33
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
CHAPTER VII
ALLEVIATIONS AND HUMILIATIONS
THE rigours of term time at Bridge House were
mitigated by permission to spend occasional week-ends
with friends of my family in or near London and with
my brothers Alfred and Arnold. In the winter of 1871
one of these exeats was passed with Sir Arthur and
Lady Helps in their charming old house on Kew Green.
Everyone there was very good to me, but I looked
upon the head of the house with particular affection
and respect. On Sunday he invited me into his den.
" These are my lesson books at present," he said,
pointing to the very twins of the German Grammar
and dictionary we used at Bridge House. " I am learn-
ing German now, but I don't think the people who
constructed the language showed much sense in making
the sun feminine and the moon masculine. I fear I
shall never quite get over it.* . . . And now, what
are your accomplishments ? " "I am afraid I haven't
any," I replied with unusual, but genuine, humility,
" because, you see, I haven't finished learning
anything yet " an answer which seemed to please
Sir Arthur.
Another week-end I spent delightfully in the heart-
warming circle of George Macdonald's large family
at " The Retreat," Hammersmith. The children were
* See p. 3 of " Social Pressure," by Sir Arthur Helps ; published
1874.
34
all clever and all attractive. On the Saturday evening
they acted one of Mrs. Macdonald's little plays in the
beautiful old garden where cedars and tulip trees
flourished, and earlier in the day we had watched an
Anglo-American boatrace from the front windows which
looked on to the river. We had cold luncheons and
cold suppers, for the weather was very hot, and I
returned most unwillingly to the suet puddings before
meat and the hashed mutton, which I imagined tasted
of cockroaches, of Bridge House.
In the following autumn Alfred and Arnold invited
me to their lodgings at Wimbledon where they were
cramming with Mr. Scoones. They were erratic
guardians, kind but reckless, and for the first time in
my life I ate as many walnuts as I liked. This deed,
which was unattended by disaster, represented to me
at the age of eleven the complete freedom of the
subject. We breakfasted late next morning, and it
was half-past ten before Alfred bethought him that I
ought to be taken to church. After consulting his
landlady he told me to get dressed at once as the church
was some way off. On our way we were caught in a
heavy shower, and, abandoning our original design,
turned for shelter into a strange place of worship where
prayer-books were useless. The clergyman wore no
surplice, and the hymns were neither ancient nor
modern, but made, we supposed, locally by uninspired
persons. It was not a success, and after listening to
a long and vehemently delivered sermon we were glad
to be released.
Next time I stayed with Alfred he was a clerk in the
35 D 2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Home Office, with rooms in Bayswater. He took Bob
and me to see a play called " Old Soldiers," and we
were very happy. We had shopped in the afternoon,
and Alfred, who was original and inquisitive where
food was concerned, but no gourmet, led us to Covent
Garden, whence we carried home strange and dis-
appointing fruits in paper bags shaddocks and Norfolk
biffins ! the names of which had proved fallaciously
attractive. On Sunday we walked all the way to
Onslow Gardens, where we had tea with Mr. and Mrs.
Froude, and by that time I had a blister, set up during
the expedition to Covent Garden, on each heel. Mr.
Froude was an object of devotion with me, and when
we sat in the library at tea I forgot my damaged heels,
but I shall never forget the incident which had
endeared this delightful writer to me. The Froudes
were for two seasons Lord Lansdowne's tenants at
Derreen, on Kenmare Bay, and one hot summer day
they had brought some of our party back to Park-
nasilla in their twenty-ton yacht after we had lunched
with them. I had been amusing myself towing for
mackerel from the deck of the yacht as she glided slowly
through the smooth water, and had reluctantly given
up my line without having caught a single fish when
our dinghy came alongside to take us ashore. We
transhipped, and the yacht had just gone about
and was heading for home when Mr. Froude hailed
us and putting the tiller hard over brought her round
again. " Hold on," he cried ; " Ida's line has caught
a fish, so it must be hers." The fish, a good-sized
pollock, was unhooked and thrown into our boat, and
36
ALLEVIATIONS AND HUMILIATIONS
very pleased and proud was Ida. Later when grown-up
people asserted in my hearing that Mr. Froude could
not be counted a great historian .and called his works
inaccurate or misleading I used to burn with indig-
nation and long to tell them how kind he had been
about the pollock.
It was more than unlucky, it was terrible, that
Alfred should have taken me back to Bridge House
on top of an omnibus the day after our visit to the
Froudes. Some spy perceived me from the window
and reported to Miss Susan that I, a " young lady "
of eleven or twelve, had been seen seated on the
" knifeboard " (there were no " garden-seats " in
those days) of a Putney Bridge omnibus, whence I had
presently descended with reckless inelegance by the
steep unshrouded ladder ! Miss Susan made Alfred
a painful scene in consequence. It was a scandal, a
disgrace in which the whole establishment was
involved ; and Alfred slunk away in deep humiliation,
leaving me to bear as best I might Miss Susan's
crushing comments on this act of unpardonable
indecorum. It was hard on poor Alfred, who had
devoted his week-end to entertaining Bob and me,
but at the time I felt he was far more fortunate than
myself.
Alfred was now and then inspired to perform deeds
more strange and daring than the purchase of unknown
fruits. On one memorable occasion when he was
invited to come in after dinner and spend the evening
at my aunt's house in Talbot Square, he arrived,
contrary to his wont, considerably before the hour
37
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
named to find himself alone in the drawing-room.
It was a warm night ; the square was still dining,
and every balcony was deserted. Now Talbot Square
has but three sides to it and is a cul-de-sac, and the
idea of leaping the low balustrades dividing each
balcony from its neighbours appealed irresistibly to
Alfred, so he pranced the whole way round from No. 15
to the end furthest removed therefrom, gave a wild
coo-ee ! on arriving at that point and bounded back
again. Nothing occurred to mar the success of this
most enjoyable escapade, and unless some startled
housemaid " straightening " a drawing-room per-
ceived his flying form and heard his coo-ee not one
single inhabitant of that decorous collection of stucco-
faced houses noted my brother's crazy progress.
I passed the Easter holidays of 1872 at Addington
Vicarage, close to Addington Park, then the country
residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. This gave
me an opportunity of continuing my acquaintance
with Archbishop Tait's daughters which had begun
three years earlier at Fulham. From the whole
family I met with great kindness, but two painful
incidents connected with a short visit I paid them at
Addington Park will ever remain in my memory.
On Sunday morning each of us repeated a hymn of
our own choosing to the Archbishop. Mine was " Art
thou weary? art thou languid? " and I made, from
sheer carelessness I fear, a terrible blunder, substi-
tuting foot-prints for wound-prints in the line " In
His hands and feet are wound- prints." The Arch-
bishop corrected me gently, but I was unspeakably
38
ALLEVIATIONS AND HUMILIATIONS
ashamed of myself. Later on, as we were leaving the
house for a walk, he dropped his glove, and before
I thought of darting forward to pick it up he had gone
painfully down on one knee to do so. It was one of
the irretrievable opportunities one does not cease to
regret.
Yet another, but merely absurd, recollection belongs
to those holidays at Addington. With two of the little
Benhams from the vicarage I had set off one mild
April morning to pick primroses in the neighbouring
copses. The grass was long and wet under the bushes,
and I wore goloshes, but when we emerged, hot and
tired, into the adjoining fields I removed my goloshes,
which were clumsy things a size too large, and carried
them in my hand. Then a magnificently steep grassy
slope tempted me to roll down it, and tying my trouble-
some goloshes together with my waistband I hung
them round my neck so that I should roll freely and
enjoyably. The rolling was not a complete success,
for there were aggravating molehills, soft yet lumpy,
which impeded my descent, and I arrived very crumpled,
earthy and breathless at the bottom of the field to
hear the kind voice of the Archbishop calling me by
name ! A wagonette containing the entire family
was drawn up on the road a few feet from the spot
where my roll had ended, and I was invited to take the
one vacant place and return in this good company to
Addington Park. Confused and abashed, with my
goloshes dangling from my neck, I accepted and crept
past the tall footman who held the door open feeling
myself a disgrace to my up-bringing. But the good
39
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
feeling of every member of the party helped me to
forget my dishevelled condition, and before I returned
to the vicarage I was restored to comparative tidiness
and had regained something of my self-respect. Any-
one short of an archangel must have laughed.
When my father came over to London he would take
me out with him for an afternoon, or even a whole
day, and we would go shopping or paying calls together.
Once we went to tea at the Theodore Martins', and I
gazed with something like awe at the agreeable and
vivacious elderly lady who as Helen Faucit had been
the greatest actress of her day.
As I grew older and arrived at the awkward age I
became conscious of my hands and feet and of the
ugly clothes which the " management " at Bridge
House purchased for me, and when my father took me
down with him to Kenry House at Combe Wood to
see Lady Dunraven* one hot summer day I was
so warmly and unbecomingly clad that I suffered
agonies of humiliation. As I clumped and creaked in
my father's wake across endless acres of floor in the
cool and dimly-lighted drawing-rooms I felt like a
baby hippopotamus in an aviary, and my voice
sounded loud and hoarse when I replied to the greeting
of my hostess, exquisitely dressed and slender to
fragility. My dress was of sand-coloured stuff,
peppered with red and green blobs and trimmed with
flat " crossway " bands of the same material piped
with ugly green silk ; my sand-coloured hat was as
hideous as my dress, and my stockings, of which
* Died 1916.
40
ALLEVIATIONS AND HUMILIATIONS
perhaps two inches showed above my thick black boots,
were white ! I have often thought how cruel it was to
make such a guy of a child of twelve. If only the Miss
Z s had guessed how self-conscious and awkward
their choice of colours, fashions and materials made me,
they might have taken more trouble with my ward-
robe. But it was in an age when many women, other-
wise kind-hearted, considered it right to discourage
vanity by every means in their power, not realising
that a child suitably and becomingly dressed
not " dressed-up " is both comfortable and unself-
conscious.
CHAPTER VIII
HOLIDAY MEMORIES
IT must have been in 1871 that we had " Charley "
Stanford (now Sir C. V. Stanford) and his great, tall,
witty father with the magnificent bass voice staying
with us at the Palace during the Christmas holidays.
Mr. Stanford was Rosy's godfather, and my father
stood in the same relation to Mr. Stanford's only son.
Godparents were, I think, more important in our young
days than they are now, and friendships were drawn
closer by the existence of the sponsor's tie. In Sir
Charles' delightful book of reminiscences (" Pages
from an Unwritten Diary ") he refers to the theatrical
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
entertainment called " The I.O.U. Indians," which,
devised by Alfred, was embellished by music written
for the occasion by Sir Charles himself, then a Cam-
bridge undergraduate. It was very clever music,
highly descriptive, and the march of cannibals was
appropriately queer and grisly. In order to include
me in the cast a female cannibal named Zylobalsamum
was introduced, and, clad in a white muslin frock with
blue ribbons, I must have been an extravagantly
incongruous figure. We all wore tails for we were
but little higher than monkeys and in one scene
when it should have been an important accessory
mine was missing, so in the marriage ceremony
between Ozokerit and Zylobalsamum a piece of my
skirt had to be tied to Alfred's tail of heavy brown
rope.
There were tableaux afterwards, and as Bluebeard's
wife I wore a white moire evening-gown with narrow
cerise stripes belonging to Rosy. Charley (Graves),
who was Bluebeard, was in a wicked mood that night,
and clutched my hair (preparatory to cutting my head
off) with such realistic force that I could have screamed.
But after I was released my joy in wearing a real
evening-gown with a train made me forget the passing
agony, and I was seated among the spectators, secure
of looking grown-up for the rest of the evening, when
the stage-manager called me away. Charley, dressed
as the Friar in " Romeo and Juliet," was actually
standing at the top of the steps leading down to
Juliet's tomb when, being seized with an attack of
hiccoughs, he bounded off his perch and fled. He was
42
HOLIDAY MEMORIES
pursued, divested of his cowled habit and set free,
while I, hastily stripped of my ball-gown, was thrust
into the brown fustian and obliged to stand at the top
of the steps in distracting consciousness of my white
kid shoes, which would not be hidden. I do not sup-
pose a soul noticed them Rosy made so lovely a
Juliet that the Friar might have worn a harlequin's
spangles without disturbing the audience but I was
miserable, and, besides, I had been bereft of my beauti-
ful grown-up gown. Not Charley himself, embittered,
embarrassed and in hiding, can have been more dis-
consolate than I.
Next day we were both cross, and I hurled a large
empty biscuit-tin, in which red-fire had been burnt
the night before, down a whole flight of stairs at
Charley's head. Fortunately it did not hit him, but
he looked up at me with a cold glare in his blue eyes
and said, " You little devil ! " This outburst scan-
dalised me at the moment, but I felt afterwards that
I had been at least as wicked as my brother. Indeed,
I was far from being a good child, and I cannot but
think that my elders must have been glad when the
end of the holidays arrived. But I was devoted to
Rosy. Her lovely contralto voice, her high spirits
and piquant face no one ever had a prettier little
nose commanded my admiration, and I was much,
and, I fear, inconveniently interested in the young
men who worshipped at her shrine.
It was, I think, in August, 1872, that Rosy painted
the steward's pig green. Johnson was a dour
Northerner, curt in speech and very unpopular both at
43
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Parknasilla and in the neighbourhood. How it came
about that we had a Protestant steward I cannot
say. Theoretically it would appear proper that a
Protestant bishop should employ only Protestant
servants, but in practice such an arrangement is
likely to cause trouble in a Catholic province. Johnson
was a stern father, and when Rosy heard that
he had beaten his little Annie, a pretty fair-haired
child of about the same age as myself, for some
fault her warm heart and quick temper dictated instant
reprisals.
Johnson rented a plot of ground about half a mile
away on the high-road to Sneem, and there, in a dere-
lict cottage, he kept a pig. With her friend Ada
Vandeleur (later Mrs. Wilton Alhusen) as confederate
Rosy plotted a revenge, and gladly abetted by Murty
Shea, " No. I to the steward," the two girls stole forth
after dark, entered the pig's villa residence and painted
the animal pea-green in stripes.
Next day was Sunday, and as all the good folk on
their way to chapel at Sneem came along the road their
eyes were caught by a boldly-printed placard exposed
on the pig's house-wall :
" THIS WAY TO THE GREEN PIG. ADMISSION
FREE."
Many must have been late for Mass, but they had
enjoyed a treat well worth a small penance, since
Johnson was universally disliked. When he and his
family came by, churchward-bound, the pig was holding
44
HOLIDAY MEMORIES
a levee, and his owner, not unnaturally, was extremely
wrathful. Rosy and her friend rejoiced to hear how
successful their practical joke had been and that
Johnson had looked as black as thunder and used
violent language to the pig's visitors, but they had a
shock next day when the doctor spending the summer
at Parknasilla on account of my mother's precarious
health was served with a summons to appear before
the nearest bench of magistrates on the charge of having
feloniously entered Johnson's premises and ill-treated
his pig. Mercifully, Dr Kidd was able to prove an
alibi, but it was some time before the two girls, whom
almost anyone in the neighbourhood could have given
away, were easy in their minds. It was never ascer-
tained whether Johnson modified his methods of
punishing his little daughter or not, but I fear his
temper deteriorated steadily after the incident of
the Green Pig, and before long he left my father's
service.
CHAPTER IX
A LITTLE GIRL IN ITALY
I HAD been five years at Bridge House when my
parents decided to remove me. My mother's health,
sadly failing for several years, had become so bad that
45
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
she was in 1873 a complete invalid, and I imagine it
was to please her that I was brought home and
established under the care of a governess. My people
were staying at Blarney, county Cork, where they had
taken a cottage in the grounds of the well-known
hydropathic institution founded by Dr. Barter at
St. Anne's Hill. Neither doctor's treatment nor change
of air availed anything in my mother's case, and she
died at Shannon Cottage in November of the same
year.
A complete change of scene was found necessary for
my father, whose own health had been impaired by his
long anxiety, and directly after Christmas he took my
two sisters, myself and my governess abroad for six
months. It was obviously necessary that I should have
a governess to keep me in order, but with a precocious
taste for society I greatly disliked being habitually
relegated to the care of Miss L , an amiable young
woman enough, but sadly uninteresting to me. In
spite of this handicap, I took great pleasure in my
travels. The sunshine and colour, the variety and
novelty of the French Riviera delighted me, but Italy
became in 1874, and has ever remained for me, a land
of enchantment. From Nice we went to Genoa,
from Genoa to Sestri Levante, and driving thence in
a seven-horsed vettura through the gorges and over the
heath-clad hills we reached Spezia, not then a great
naval base, but a mere fishing village with exquisite
surroundings. From Spezia we pursued our way via
Pisa to Rome and settled down for two months in a
shabby old Palazzo Palazzo Falzacappa within a
46
A LITTLE GIRL IN ITALY
few yards of the clanging bells of San Carlo in Corso.
Those were glorious months, marred only to my
youthful mind by visits to crypts, catacombs, churches,
and archaeologists' burrowings in the Campagna. It
was the picturesque antiquity of the city itself, still
unspoilt by trams and other modern advantages and
little vulgarised by the incursions of excursionists,
that captivated my fancy. The cypresses of the Pincio,
the steps of the Trinita de' Monti, delightfully encum-
bered with artists' models and flower-sellers' baskets
overflowing with colour ; the glorious gardens of the
Villa Pamnli-Doria ; the banksian roses shrouding the
walls and perfuming the whole environment of the
Rospigliosi Palace ; the waters of the Tiber running
grey and silver past the Castle of S. Angelo all these
made an appeal to me at the age of fourteen that no
excavations, no sacred pictures, no statue save the
Dying Gladiator, no church except St. Peter's, whose
spaciousness pleased me, could rival. We used to drive
out almost daily past the Coliseum and through the
Arch of Titus into the flower- jewelled Campagna, and
the sight of the tender green of April verdure contrast-
ing with the hoary grey of age-old stone or the faded
rose of antique brickwork touched me in a spot which
has vibrated ever since to this mingling of youth
eternally renewed in Nature with the great man-made
monuments of the past. After Rome came Perugia,
seated at sunset like a burnished crown on a cushion
of purple and green ; and after Perugia Florence,
where we soon accommodated ourselves to what
appeared at first frivolous and modern surroundings.
47
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Again it was the general feeling and aspect of things
that charmed me ; the blue skies cut by solemn spires
of cypress or seen through a tracery of olive boughs,
the dignified grey palaces, the eye-filling Duomo and
Battisteria, and the swiftly flowing Arno. I cannot
deny that the little booths of the Ponte Vecchio,
displaying as they did pretty trifles within the reach
of modest buyers like myself, drew me like a magnet ;
but perhaps the most pleasing of my many memories
connected with those hot weeks of May and early
June in Florence is that of the resonant singing of
stornelli by a party of serenaders in the cool darkness
of the narrow stone-paved street upon which the
windows of our rooms looked out.
By way of Bologna we went on to Venice, a dream
of delight in which gondolas and guitars, mosaics,
ripe cherries, bathing at Lido, and eating ices under the
coloured awnings of the Piazza San Marco jostled one
another. I was probably neither more nor less greedy
than other creatures of my age, but it seems a pity
that eating and drinking should fill so many niches
in my early recollections. The cherries and the ices
certainly stand out as boldly in my memory as do the
Lions of S. Mark and the white cupola of Santa Maria
della Salute.
A night at Verona broke our journey to Milan,
where I spent more time gazing into the shop windows
of the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele than I devoted to
admiring the ornate and dazzling whiteness of the
Duomo. From Milan we went to Bellaggio, to Lugano
and Stresa, and I must have bored my elders to
48
A LITTLE GIRL IN ITALY
distraction by my parrot-cries of " How lovely ! " and
"Oh, do look ! " as the beauties of those wonderful
Italian lakes unfolded themselves before my eyes.
We drove over the Simplon the railway was not then
completed passing the night at Iselle by the rushing
stream which provided the trout we ate at breakfast
before we began the descent to Visp. That crossing
of the Simplon was really very fine and thrilling,
but we had left Italy, and from that time forward
my .ready superlatives were reduced to unfavourable
comparisons, while my disappointment with the Rhine
was positive and freely expressed. Its rudimentary,
not to say childish, scenery presented nothing more
interesting than a succession of humpy hills with castles
on them set on either side of a rather colourless river.
I was more than disappointed ; I was disgusted.
Cologne Cathedral awakened some enthusiasm, and
Antwerp, so unlike anything I had ever seen, pleased
me greatly ; but I had been in Italy in April, May,
and June, and the last week of our tour was something
of an anti-climax.
49
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
CHAPTER X
HIGHFIELD
WE arrived at Parknasilla in time for the boys'
summer holidays. Miss L had left us in London,
where I learnt that I was to go to a new school in
September and there remain until my education was
" completed." Meanwhile a French holiday governess
of surpassing ability was to take charge of me and
brush up all that had been neglected or forgotten during
the previous year. She was a Tartar, that governess,
and to my delight the entire household trembled before
her. Although I was, of course, her obvious and habitual
scapegoat, Bob, who studied French with her, suffered
considerably. When I went to school in mid-September
Mademoiselle refused to budge, asserting, quite
unjustifiably I believe, that she had been engaged for
three months. She completed that period will he
nill he and made every soul at Parknasilla uncomfort-
able by her tyranny and ill-temper. I, safe, happy,
and contented at Highfield, could not but smile
over the letters from home telling what a burden and
thorn in the flesh they were finding Mademoiselle de
C , and when she finally departed Betsy rang every
bell in the house as an expression of the joy which
filled all hearts.
My three years at the Miss Metcalfes' great school
near Hendon were agreeably uneventful. We were
well treated in every respect, and, generally speaking,
50
HIGHFIELD
well taught ; but, oddly enough, the standard in
languages was not so high as that at Bridge House,
although we enjoyed the services of several resident
foreign governesses both kind and attractive. One
German governess of whom we were all fond was
studying English in her spare time, and would bring
her exercises and compositions for correction to the
study where we Upper-Sixth girls worked or shirked.
Led astray by a too copiously furnished dictionary,
Fraulein Heidsick made some delightful " howlers,"
and I remember how the whole room rocked with
laughter when the vanity of a little girl showing off her
new frock was thus described : "So she leered at her
fine clothes and straddled down the street."
My own half-hearted attempts to construe Vergil
in the holidays used to amuse Charley my temporary
preceptor and I fear he derived more pleasure from
my translation of the words insonuitque flagello (he
tuned up on the flageolet) than was proper in an
instructor. But I think I surpassed myself some years
later when I made of H.M.S. Vernon's punning motto
(Ver non semper viret] A worm does not always turn.
Socially speaking, we were literally a community of
" young ladies " at Highfield, but the Miss Metcalfes,
unlike the Miss Z s, called us, I am glad to chronicle,
girls. Every appointment of the house was comfort-
able and refined ; we played lawn tennis, and patches
of garden in which we sowed seeds and planted rose
bushes were allotted to those amongst us who had a
turn for horticulture. " Thena " Clough,* now Vice-
* Daughter of the poet, Arthur Hugh Clough.
51 E 2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Principal of Newnham, was a schoolfellow of mine,
a dark-haired fairy with dancing eyes, and there were
two Garrett-Smiths and two Jex-Blakes and the
younger daughters of Bishop Butcher of Meath.
]Vr. Franklin Taylor was our professor for the piano-
forte, and he had some pupils who did him great
credit, notably Augusta and Eleanor Butcher. I was
not one of these, but he taught me not to thump.
I was sometimes naughty and troublesome, some-
times good and hardworking, and when I left I found
myself at the top of the school bracketed with a friend
far better deserving the distinction had it been gained
by good work alone than I. But I had a fatal facility
and remarkable luck in examinations, so I carried
away as the trophy due to my eminence six fat volumes
of Schiller which I have never yet read ! I had a con-
stitutional, but not hereditary, distaste for the German
language. Its gutturals displeased, its grammar
maddened me ; and, though I have had good German
friends, certain national characteristics, as exemplified
in most of the Germans I have met, have always
repelled me. The total absence of what the French
call le charme so noticeable in the race is depressing,
and the mingling of stuffiness with sentiment, rich
pastry with poetry, and philosophy with pettiness I
find intolerable. What Octave Feuillet called making
" soupe de myosotis " describes perfectly the habit of
mind of that sentimental cook-housekeeper, the plump
Teutonic Charlotte. Her large blue eyes might be
dimmed by tears, but her appetite for every form of
pig-meat would be undiminished. And what can be
GROWN UP
said for a people using the words " Ich Hebe dich "
to confess the tender passion ? Such unlovely mono-
syllables would convey to an unlettered Maori an
unpleasant, even disgusting, impression.
CHAPTER XI
GROWN UP
MY brother Alfred married,* not long after I went to
Highfield, the eldest of a family famous for their
beauty and intelligence. There were no less than ten
Miss Coopers of Cooper Hill, five miles from Limerick,
and their blue eyes and black lashes, roseleaf com-
plexions, and masses of fair hair would have made
every one of them a county toast had they lived half
a century earlier.
The next marriage in the family was that of my
sister Rosy, which occurred just before I left Highfield
for good, and as the wedding took place in London
I was able to be one of the bridesmaids. Her husband,
Massie Blomfield, who had just left the Navy as a
captain, was a nephew of Bishop Blomfield of London,
and as my sister Helen had married a son of the then
Bishop of Sodor and Man our episcopal connections
were on the increase. It remained for me to complete
the triad by my own marriage with one who counted
no less than three Bishops of Salisbury among his
* His first wife died in 1886. Five years later he married Amy,
daughter of Heinrich, Ritter von Ranke, of Munich.
53
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
ancestors. Rosy's wedding was a very interesting
event. My new brother-in-law's sea-blue eyes and
engaging manners instantly endeared him to me,
and his qualities on better acquaintance proved fully
proportionate to his charms.
I now found myself not only grown up, but the
second, instead of the third, daughter at home, and as
soon as we were established for the months of villeggia-
tura at Parknasilla I found that my father had decided
to give me some work to do as occasional secretary.
The Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland by
Mr. Gladstone was coupled with its disendowment,
and although my father's original income was secured
to him for life his responsibilities towards a church
despoiled of its revenues were vastly increased. A
Church Sustentation Fund had to be established for
the payment of clergy appointed after the break,
cathedrals and parish churches were now dependent
for repairs and upkeep upon voluntary contributions,
and it had been necessary for my father to dispense
with the services of his private chaplain. So when I
came home for good I was taught to file and docket
papers, prepare formal letters for my father to sign,
and to write distinctly and carefully those he dictated.
It was a wholesome discipline at a time when my head
was full of girlish anticipations of gaiety, but I must
confess that I was not at seventeen at all interested
in diocesan matters. Still, I have never regretted
my father's training in epistolary punctilio.
Now and then something interesting or amusing
to me would be found among the number of appeals,
54
GROWN UP
complaints, and hard cases which littered the study
tables, but as a rule I fear I performed my daily duty
without zest. One incident is worth recording. A very
indignant bagman writing from the neighbouring
diocese of Cork called my father's attention to a
" scandalous " infraction of the canons of the Church
of Ireland which had caused him " the deepest pain."
He had chanced to be present at a harvest thanksgiving
service at, I think, Cahirciveen, county Kerry, when
the decorations included a cross of white flowers at
the east end of the church. This simple cross was in
the bagman's eyes the Mark of the Beast, a sign of
sympathy with Rome, a Papist emblem, etc., etc., etc.
" Write," said my father shortly. I wrote :
" SIR,
" I can only regard your letter of the instant as a
symptom of acute staurophobia.
" Yours faithfully ,
" Now you can tear it up," said my father, after
signing his name ; " the wretched fellow wouldn't
know the meaning of the word "staurophobia," which,
as a matter of fact, I have just coined myself ! It
means hatred of the cross. Put his letter in the fire."
I often wrote with one eye on the clock, longing for
the release at noon which signified " All hands to
bathe," and bathing at Parknasilla was a prime
pleasure, for we were all taught to swim at the earliest
possible moment, and I well remember taking my
header and swimming across the creek where we
generally bathed before I was seven years old. I
55
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
hated the header, but it was an incident paternally
insisted upon in an otherwise delightful operation,
and non-swimming visitors and neighbours would
come to watch the Graves family disporting itself
in the water as a sight worth seeing. Fully dressed
in old clothes, boots and all, we would sometimes
plunge into the sea, and I remember how cross one of
my brothers was because I refused on one occasion to
go to the bottom and wait there till he dived for and
" rescued " me. Good swimmers as we all were, we
could not rival the three daughters of Lord Cloncurry,
Emily,* Rose, and Mary Lawless, who rented Garinish
Island from Lord Dunraven one summer. They were
mermaids, no less. I have seen fine diving and swim-
ming in various parts of the world, especially in Sydney
Harbour, but for strength, grace, and absolute confi-
dence in the watery element I have never met the
equals of the Lawlesses.
We were all very fond of part-singing in those days,
and, though not one of my four brothers could furnish
a genuine bass, Bob's baritone was frequently pressed
into the service, and my father, a skilled musician
whose light tenor voice had been unluckily hurt beyond
mending by an accident to his throat, could murmur
any male part which was lacking. Arnold had a
superlatively pure tenor, Lily's soprano was powerful
and well trained, and I had a useful mezzo, while
Charley's tuneful tenor was a valuable asset. Indoors
o r out we would sing by heart and unaccompanied,
* Author of "Hurrish," " Crania," " With Essex in Ireland, "etc..
etc.
56
" OUT "
and often beguiled our homeward voyage from the
other side of the bay with music. One summer even-
ing, as we were singing Pinsuti's " In this Hour of
Softened Splendour," two susceptible seals flopped off
a rock in Kilmackillogue Harbour and followed the
boat for a mile or more while we encored the tuneful
numbers for their benefit. It was funny singing an
impassioned serenade to two seals.
Our open-air music was not always unaccompanied.
We had a queer little portable harmonium, a harmonina
I think it was called, upon which I remember Sir
Charles Stanford playing with extraordinary skill. It
had a range of about four octaves, and had to be held
on the performer's knee and pinched in its bellows by
himself or some helpful acolyte. We serenaded some-
one I cannot think whom one moonlight night,
and Sir Charles did wonders with the " Baby," as we
used to call it, in the rather elaborate music of " Der
Freischiitz."
CHAPTER XII
" OUT "
IT was near Christmas when we left Parknasilla in
1877, an d m y hopes as regarded plenty of dancing
at Limerick were not disappointed. I made my debu.
at a really big and beautiful ball given by Lady Louisa
FitzGibbon at Mount Shannon. Liddell's celebrated
57
AN ADMIRAL WIFE IN THE MAKING
band came down from Dublin to play, and we danced
till four or five next morning. All my sister's friends
and my own somewhat immature playmates conspired
to fill my programme to overflowing, and, much as I
enjoyed the ball, I had a sneaking regret, unexpressed
of course, that I had only danced once with each of my
partners. It seemed such a bewildering patchwork of
strange faces and varied " steps," and not quite what
heroines of the three-volume novel would have
approved. I am sure that one dance with me was
quite enough for each partner, for I was unaccommo-
dating through inexperience and inclined to count
one, two, three, as I revolved in the waltz. Quite six
months later at Commem. I discovered my deficiencies
and mended my ways. Undergraduates would never
have opened my eyes, since they just trampled joy-
ously round their partners as they pursued an erratic
course ; but I fell into the hands of a Mr. Mackenzie,
of riper years than the rest, who suddenly awoke in
me the knowledge that waltzing was not a mere
exercise, but a sublimely fascinating motion borrowed
from the planets and perfected by a limited number of
human beings. I regret that I never again met the
young man to whom I owe so much. All unconscious
of my gratitude, amounting with the compound
interest of thirty-eight years to something quite
incalculable, he still, I hope, walks, and lightly walks,
this earth, though his dancing days, like mine, must be
over.
Notwithstanding my shortcomings as a waltzer,
the winter and spring of 1878 had passed merrily at
58
"OUT"
Limerick, and we had spent six weeks in London
before going to Oxford for Commem. There Charley
was at Christ Church, and Helen, with her husband
(who was at his regimental depot) and two children,
lived in a little house in Iffley Road where we stayed
for a broilingly hot but memorable week.
We went by river to Nuneham, we lunched with
Charley and his friends at their rooms, we saw the sights
and went to garden parties and balls. Oscar Wilde
had won the Newdigate that year and was becoming
a celebrity. He was introduced to Lily, who thought
him very silly and affected when he described his idea
of what a dinner-party should be " very little to
eat, very little light, and a great many flowers." We
have now less solid food to eat, less light, and more
flowers at dinner-parties than in 1878, and I am sure
that if Oscar Wilde had looked less queer he wore a
tall white hat on the back of his head and was greenly
pale of face and had been less of a poseur my sister
would have been inclined to agree with his views.
To the ball at University College we were chaperoned
by Mrs. Humphry Ward, but, occupied as we were in
dancing every dance, it was impossible for us to do
more than appreciate her kindness in taking us under
her wing. Mrs. Ward was not then the celebrated
novelist she has since become, or I should have realised
how greatly favoured we were to find ourselves in her
company. After our third and last ball (Christ Church)
the cab ordered to bring us home failed to appear, and
at five a.m. of a brilliant June day we walked, foot-
sore but still full of life, all the way back from the
59
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Corn Market to Iffley Road. With us came Charley
and a party of giddy and agreeable undergraduates,
many of whom would otherwise most certainly have been
implicated in a shocking deed committed that morning
by some of their friends. These crazy youths found an
unattended fire-escape in the street, and pushed,
pulled, or rode it down the High, where by mis-
adventure it charged into the windows of the Clarendon
Press. One of my late partners was involved, and I
heard to my regret that he was fined five pounds.
As he had confided to me not an hour before that he
had but six pounds to spend during the Long Vacation
I often wondered how he managed to struggle through
those three lean months.
CHAPTER XIII
PARKNASILLA
WHILE I was still quite happy and heartwhole I was
surprised by a proposal of marriage. People may say
what they will about girls being invariably and
instinctively prepared for such an event : I know it was
not so in my case. My pretendant was a very nice
fellow, but I had no inkling that he regarded me with
special affection, so I was surprised as well as annoyed
when Helen, who was staying with us at Parknasilla,
woke me up one morning to say she had promised
60
PARKNASILLA
Mr. X that she would arrange an interview
between him and me before he left us later in the day
after a fortnight's visit. It was raining heavily after
breakfast, but Helen firmly carried us off to a spot
known as " The Knoll," whence a wide view of sea
and sky afforded an opportunity for diagnosing the
weather. There she deliberately abandoned us on the
pretext that her children's lessons must be attended
to. It was a horrid moment. I was wet, cross, un-
gracious, even brutal, when my companion made his
declaration, and before we had reached the seashore
I actually took to my heels and ran home by a short
cut past the stables, leaving my suitor to follow when
and how he pleased.
The story would not be worth telling but for its
sequel. Five years later my father, who had also been
in the young man's confidence, received a letter which
puzzled him extremely. We were sitting at breakfast
at the Palace when the post arrived, and after reading
the letter he handed it to Lily. " Who in the world is
Y. X.? " he asked ; " and what in the world does he
mean ? " Lily read the letter aloud, and I, alone of the
three of us, comprehended the full significance of the
writer's words. It was indeed my old suitor who wrote
announcing his engagement " to the best of women,
one who would make an ideal wife for a parson," and
thanking my father very warmly for the great kindness
he had shown him " five years ago under very trying
circumstances." My father had completely forgotten
the man and the circumstances ; Lily remembered the
man, but had never known the circumstances ! I
61
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
greatly longed to write and say that I too was engaged
and hoped shortly to become the happy, if not ideal,
wife of a sailor ; but this satisfaction was denied me,
for my engagement was then, in the eyes of my family,
non-existent.
For several years the Elands, our nearest neighbours
in Kerry, had let their place and lived in England,
and great was my pleasure when they returned in 1878
to Derriquin. No one ever had better comrades than
I found in the youngest pair of girls. There was a fund
of original humour in the family character combined
with the gentlest and most courteous manners, and I
cannot now recollect anything approaching a quarrel
between us at any period of a friendship which had
started in the nursery. Their parents held somewhat
rigid views on certain subjects, and they were never
allowed to go to theatres or taught to dance, but on
the other hand they were permitted to paddle, an
indulgence forbidden to, but ardently desired by,
myself, so until they grew up and pined to go to balls
as I did they had the best of it. We three girls, of
whom I was the eldest, would have spent every hour
of the day in one another's company had this been
possible, and even when we were all grown up we used
to play childish games together. We made ourselves
" houses " in the woods, or even among a hooker-
load of slates on Derriquin Quay, and carried on
serious conversations relating to the management of
servants and children when we called upon one another
which generally ended in fits of disabling laughter.
We used to race boats made of flag leaves on the mill-
62
PARKNASILLA
stream and drive Mrs. Eland's flock of turkeys to dis-
traction by mimicking them. " A, B, C, D " (in a rising
scale of squeaks) followed by " plee-yop, plee-yop,
plee-yop " (a sixth below) was our formula, and it
was astonishingly like the cry of these dowdy and
uninteresting birds.
Altie Bland is now Mrs. Wanless O'Gowan, wife of a
notable General, and Mary, who was engaged before
she put her hair up, has lately reigned in Cairo as
the consort of the High Commissioner, Sir Henry
McMahon ; but neither of them has lost the grace
and humour which so distinguished them in their
girlhood.
In July, August, and September, we always had
plenty of guests at Parknasilla. " Expeditions "
were less frequent as my father, who led them, grew
older, but lawn-tennis flourished, and our everyday
intercourse with our neighbours was never disturbed
by serious differences of opinion. A holiday spirit
prevailed during the summer months, and when the
days grew short and the country emptied of sons on
leave or vacation it was time for our return to Limerick.
In my day there were more boys than girls in the
neighbourhood. Our old friends, Colonel and Mrs.
Hartley, at Reenaferra had three sons and one
daughter, and there were four sons and one daughter
at Rossdohan, the children of Mr. Heard and his
beautiful Australian wife. At Rossdohan, in the
shelter of a high sandy bluff, a garden of flowering
shrubs and rock plants has been conjured out of a
tract of stone, heather and bog, and plantations of
63
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
trees, hardy or rare, made that now add shelter and
dignity to a landscape already full of charm. Derri-
quin has long ago changed hands, and at Parknasilla
there is a much advertised hotel. The old house
remains, but a pretentious building erected by the
Great Southern and Western Railway Company, to
whom my father sold the place some years before his
death, disfigures the shore at Goleen Rivee, where I
walked into the sea at the age of two and a half.
These summers at Parknasilla were in many respects
unlike any others of my life. There were no accidental
strangers in the neighbourhood beyond our own or
our friends' guests, for there was no habitable hotel
nearer than old Dromore on the Blackwater, six miles
to the eastward, where a few fishing people could be
put up ; and on the west Waterville, twenty-four
miles away, provided accommodation in its small
hotel for as many more. We were thirty miles from
Killarney our railway station and our weekly
supply of groceries came fifteen miles by cart from
Kenmare. We killed and ate our own excellent
mutton small and sweet ; our fisherman netted a
great variety of excellent fish from plaice to turbot,
pollock to red gurnet, in addition to what we caught
ourselves on a line ; our supply of lobsters was
unlimited, and from Mr. Eland's beds in the estuary
of the Sneem river we got first-rate oysters, while
salmon from his bag-net (now abolished) further
helped out our bill of fare. Beef was the hardest
thing to get, but I do not suppose anyone but the cook
minded that. Chickens of a miniature breed we raised
64
PARKNASILLA
or bought by the dozen. Six of these fitted easily
on an ordinary dish and were generally tender enough
to carve with a spoon. Many years ago an English
tourist thought he had discovered a gold mine when he
found that chickens in South Kerry could be had for
sixpence a couple (they were a shilling a couple in my
young days), so he bought a few hundreds to fatten ;
but you could as easily turn a Kerry chicken into a fine,
fat English fowl as you could make a dray horse out
of a Shetland pony by stuffing him with corn. Our
own Kerry cows, miniatures like the chickens, pro-
duced the best and creamiest milk in the world ; our
tiny hens and those of the cottagers in the district
provided eggs ; potatoes were good and plentiful,
and the kitchen garden nobly stood the strain imposed
upon its peas and beans, globe artichokes of special
excellence and other less distinguished vegetables, by
a large and hungry household. Except in the matter
of groceries and beef we were practically self-support-
ing, and no food has ever tasted better to me than the
fresh and ample produce of Parknasilla and its famous
home-made bread. As in most Irish households,
there was a casualness in the conduct of the domestic
staff. Makeshift kitchenmaids and under-housemaids
locally procured were sometimes about as well adapted
for service as mountain goats. They quickly learnt
those of their duties which appealed to them and
forgot or ignored the rest ; but they were generally
cheerful and friendly and invariably rose to any
emergency.
Old Fanny Sullivan, who looked after the poultry
A.W. 65 F
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
and milked the cows, was Betsy's devoted slave. She
was not quite right in her head, but her heart beat
warmly for us all. Married at fifteen, she had lost
her husband by drowning before she was sixteen and
had been childish ever since ; but she was an insti-
tution, and until the day of her death, after more than
thirty years in my father's service, she worked with
the simple ardour and perfect faithfulness to which
few of her superiors in mental power could lay claim.
Fanny belonged to the " permanent staff " at Parkna-
silla ; so did Gleeson, the steward (successor of the
unpleasant Johnson) ; and so did Dorohy, the boat-
man, who caught our fish, took charge of the boats
and stroked the galley's crew when we crossed the bay
with four or six oars. The men about the place were
all amphibious, as used to handling heavy oars in a
rough sea as they were to digging potatoes or harvesting
seaweed at spring tide, and picturesque enough they
looked in their gala rig, which some guest of long ago
described in these lines :
" Across the waves did Mrs. Graves
Direct our navigations.
The red-capped crew wore shirts of blue
And white continuations."
That was in the early days before my mother's health
broke down. As I best remember her she lay among
her cushions in a wide and comfortable canoe while
my father or some other skilful oarsman used the
paddles. All our boats were mis-designated, but we
never discovered this until Rosy married a sailor.
We called the galley the gig ; the gig was known as the
66
PARKNASILLA
pinnace ; the dinghy was the punt and the canoe the
skiff. It was really ingenious of us to get it all so
completely wrong. Later on we added to our fleet
a broad-beamed jolly-boat which had brought ashore
the whole crew of a small French ship wrecked in the
bay. We christened her the Fiddlite, after the lost
ship, but of course the boatmen called her the " Fiddle-
light."
Father Welsh, the old parish priest of Sneem, who
cared for the souls of a widely-scattered flock, was a
good friend to our family in our early days in Kerry.
He interested himself in all our doings and was beloved
by Protestants and Catholics alike. When his bishop
came to hold a confirmation at Sneem, it was we who
lent plates, knives, forks, and table linen for the lunch
which followed the ceremony, and there was in all our
intercourse a perfect understanding between us. But
Cardinal Cullen made it impossible for white Catholic
lambs to lie down with black Protestant sheep. We
were indeed no longer sheep, but wolves, or at best
goats, and the prelate who followed the genial and
kindly Bishop Moriarty of Kerry told my father that
he would have no communication whatever with him.
" You go your way and I'll go mine " were his written
words. Father Welsh was succeeded at Sneem by a
very different type of man polite, certainly, but
hostile and the old pleasant relations between our-
selves and the parish priest were never renewed.
Father Welsh was the prototype of " Father O'Flynn "
the ideal priest whose portrait was so happily
drawn by my brother Alfred in the verses set by Sir
67 F 2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Charles Stanford to an old Irish jig tune, the very
tune to which we ourselves learnt our steps long ago
at Parknasilla. Maynooth does not produce the type
which came from St. Omer.
CHAPTER XIV
FRIENDS IN KERRY
No one who has read Mr. William Le Fanu's
" Seventy Years of Irish Life " will need to be told
what a delightful guest we had in him in the 'seventies
and 'eighties. He and his wife with a selection of
children used to come every summer to fish at Old
Dromore, and on Sundays four of the party would
lunch with us after the morning service at Sneem
Church. His delightful face, his golden voice, his warm
handshake can never be forgotten. Between lunch
and tea he would tell us Irish stories of his brother's
(the brilliant Sheridan), such as " The Quare Gander,"
as we sat amongst the rocks and the heather on some
island point, or recite " Shamus O'Brien " or " Phau-
drig Crohore," with such fire and pathos as made our
cheeks burn and brought tears of sympathy to our eyes.
And he could arouse explosions of mirth or thrills of
horror and make our hearts gallop to the beat of his
rhythm. He was indeed a splendid man, a rare type ;
hearty and refined, wise and gay, tender and strong.
French Huguenot by origin, Irish in spirit, British in
68
FRIENDS IN KERRY
training, he combined in his personality essences to
charm the fancy and hold the esteem and love of all
who knew him.
Among our Kerry neighbours were Mr. Richard
Mahony of Dromore and Mr. Townsend Trench,
Lord Lansdowne's agent, at Kenmare. They, along
with our own landlord,* Mr. Christopher Bland, of
Derriquin, who owned fifty-two thousand acres of
lovely but unprofitable country, had left the pale of
the Church and become Plymouth Brethren at a time
when the clergy in their neighbourhood were impos-
sible. This, not unnaturally, caused a certain embar-
rassment in our relations, hitherto of the most cordial
nature, and when Lord Dunraven, father of the present
peer, alone of his family joined the Church of Rome
my father and mother felt and regretted the alienation
which such a step inevitably produces among friends
of long standing. The first Lady Dunraven had been
Lily's godmother, her son, Lord Adare, Bob's godfather,
and the elder " series " of my brothers and sisters
had lived in intimate and happy friendship with the
young people at Garinish, where they used to spend a
great part of each summer in the 'sixties. I do not
believe that any actual friction resulted from the
secession of these friends from the fold of the Church of
England, but it must have affected the spontaneity
of the intercourse which had hitherto subsisted between
all the members of our community.
Mr. Bland, Mr. Mahony, and Mr. Trench were, each
in his different line, commanding figures in my
* My father bought Parknasilla from Mr. Bland in about 1880.
6 9
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
treasury of childhood's memories Mr. Bland drily
humorous ; Mr. Mahony genial, chivalrous, and
refined ; Mr. Trench abrupt in manner and original to
the verge of craziness. I was not a little shy of Mr.
Bland and afraid of Mr. Trench, but Mr. Mahony
was a hero of romance. They were an interesting trio.
In the 'seventies Sir John Colomb bought Drum-
quinna, nine miles from Parknasilla on the road to
Kenmare. His was a very attractive personality.
His handsome face with its aquiline features and
flashing eyes, his genial manner and the intelligence
and rectitude which made him so valuable a member
of Parliament (where for many years he represented
Bow and Bromley and, incidentally, kept an eye on
the interests of his old corps, the Royal Marines),
endeared him to his neighbours. I personally shall
never forget his kindness when as a cold and tearful
schoolgirl I met him at the " half-way house " on my
way back to England after the summer holidays in
1876. It was a wild, wet September day, and he made
me descend from my outside car and get into his snug
brougham to drive with him the remaining fifteen
miles to Killarney.
The old knight of Kerry, father of Sir Maurice
Fitzgerald,* who succeeded him in that ancient and
picturesque title, reigned at Valencia in my young
days. I saw him once only and was impressed by his
dignity and goodness, but it was the curious indefinable
charm, not to be described or analysed, for which this
branch of the Geraldines is famous that attracted me.
* Died 1916.
70
FRIENDS IN KERRY
The same mysterious gift has been handed down to
the descendants of the Sheridans, among whom the
late Lord Dufferin was so conspicuous. Not every
member of the families with whose blood this magic
drop is mingled can claim to possess its power, but I
never met a Valencia Fitzgerald who had it not, and
in Mr. W. Le Fanu and his brother Sheridan it was
strongly marked.
Another well-known character of whom I used to
hear my father speak was Sir James O'Connell, who
lived near Killarney. He was brother of the
" Liberator," as Dan O'Connell, who could " drive a
coach and four through any Act of Parliament," was
called by his admirers. Sir James was as level-headed
and law-abiding as his brother was dashing and sub-
versive, and possessed a keen wit, evidences of which
have been preserved in many an anecdote of which he
was the hero. His opinions and decisions were regarded
with the highest respect by his neighbours, and not a
few litigious Kerrymen settled their differences out
of court after referring them to Sir James. One of
these came to complain that the lame sister of the girl
he had intended to marry had been palmed off on him
at the wedding when he was unfortunately too tipsy
to notice the exchange. " Had she the same fortune
as her sister ? " asked Sir James. " She had, Sir
James to a goat." " Then what ails ye, man ? "
asked Sir James : " Sure ye didn't want her for a
steeplechaser."
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
CHAPTER XV
ALGIERS
MY father's health in the late autumn of 1878
necessitated our wintering in a climate milder than
any to be found in the British Islands, and greatly
to my delight his choice fell upon Algiers. It was in
our day far from being a populous health resort. Pau
and Biarritz, Cannes, Mentone and San Remo, accommo-
dated the bulk of those for whom an English winter
proved too trying, and Egypt received the few who
had the means and the inclination, or the precise con-
dition of health, to make so long a flight from these
shores desirable.
Our first winter in Algiers opened badly, for in
ignorance of its unsatisfactory health conditions we
took a flat in the town itself, where we were tormented
by mosquitoes, maddened by street noises, and badly
fed by the neighbouring hotel whence our meals were
sent in. My father's health suffered, and we were glad
when he was persuaded by his two old friends, Anne,
Countess of Kingston, and Lady Louisa Tenison, to
shift our quarters to Zammit's ramshackle hotel,
the only one in those days at Mustafa Supe"rieur.
Here we found ourselves close to the Campagne du
Te'lemly, where lived Mr. Edwin Arkwright and his
sisters, musicians all and kindest of neighbours.
Mr. Arthur Smith-Barry (now Lord Barrymore) and
his first wife, who as Lady Mary Wyndham-Quin had
72
ALGIERS
been the friend of my elder sisters in Kerry, were near
at hand in their beautiful Moorish house, old but
judiciously modernised with a view to comfort, and
possessing a garden full of beautiful things. Presently
we shifted from the hotel and settled down in a funny
little villa on the Telemly road, where we were modestly
housed but quite comfortable.
It was a limited but extremely pleasant society
in which we found ourselves, and the country was so
beautiful, the climate so sunny and genial, that my
father's health and spirits benefited almost imme-
diately. Shortly after our arrival we had made, by
accident, the acquaintance of one of the most lovable
and attractive elderly women it has ever been my lot
to know, but, by design, on both sides, the acquaintance
ripened into a prolonged friendship. Lady Charleville *
had shortly before our arrival in Algiers bought the
villa above the Colonne Voirol formerly occupied by
Colonel Playfair, British Consul in Algiers, and when
we set off from our hotel to return Mrs. Playfair's
call our driver took us by mistake to Lady Charleville's
villa. Simultaneously arrived a rather unattractive
pair of tourists, rich but unpolished, and together we
made our entry into Lady Charleville's drawing-room,
unannounced, as it happened, for her brother-in-law,
Major Milner, who had been " discovered " in the
garden, piloted us all nameless into the house. My
father's dress proclaimed him a bishop, but the rich
couple had neither distinguishing mark nor mark of
distinction. We soon discovered our mistake and
* Widow of the last Earl of Charleville
73
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
regretfully retreated, although Lady Charleville told
us afterwards she would have liked to retain the bishop
and discard the Bilkinses, who were, like ourselves,
bound for Mrs. Playfair's hospitable house. A couple
of days later Lady Charleville called upon us at the
Hotel de la Regence with her niece, Lady Emily Bury,
and completed our subjugation.
I should have been perfectly content to be idle
eight years of school life had left me, shocking as it
may appear, with no wish to continue improving
my mind but when my father discovered that the
great violinist Vieuxtemps, old and in poor health,
was prssing the winter in Algiers, he consulted him
about the prosecution of my training, and I became
the pupil of Vieuxtemps' pupil, M. Smetkoren. It
would be satisfactory to record that my lessons bore
fruit and that I became a brilliant performer. Alas !
this was far from being the case. Like all my people,
I was " musical " in so far that I had a correct ear,
could play accompaniments acceptably, and possessed
a rather pretty singing voice which was useful in
part-music, since I read easily ; but my soul was too
small to carry me through the drudgery of that constant
practice without which no one can play the violin
as it deserves to be played. Like most strenuously
educated girls, I wanted above all things to enjoy
myself, and this I succeeded in doing at Algiers, where
the surroundings favoured my design. There was
but little dancing, but there were occasions upon which
all who were young and gay could meet. We played
lawn-tennis and picnicked, and we had the more sober
74
ALGIERS
joy afforded by the proceedings of a choral society
which met at the house of Miss Leigh-Smith and Miss
Blythe, near the Colonne Voirol. Miss Leigh-Smith
was a most accomplished woman, delicate in health,
but full of courage where art and literature were con-
cerned. Miss Blythe was what in modern parlance
would be called a " perfect old darling," and much of
the pleasure we got from our evenings at the villa of
these two ladies was due to the cordial kindness showed
us by Miss Blythe. On one non-musical occasion we
were set down to play a difficult game of rhyming
a rather aggravated version of bouts rimes and I was
dismayed rather than inspired by being given as an
illustration this really brilliant specimen, the work of
two previous players. One player had drawn the words
supposes and noses out of which he constructed the
question,
" What is the reason, as you supposes,
That English girls has turn-up noses ? "
This ethnological query was answered by a second
genius to whom surmise and eyes had fallen
" The reason is, as I surmise,
They turns 'em up to see their eyes."
A good number of yachting people used to come to
Algiers, and Mrs. Gerard Leigh's Chazalie was perhaps
the finest yacht from the sightseer's point of view.
One night we dined on board Lord Middleton's, the
Lady Isa, and I had my first experience at close
quarters of the Scottish bagpipes. The few drops of
Highland blood I possess enable me to enjoy the
75
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
pipes in the open air, and a kilted regiment swing-
ing along to the beautifully savage skirling of a
tune I know and love swells the poor trickle to a
flood. But a piper parading round the table of a
yacht's cabin braying like an inspired donkey of
incredible lung power seemed to me a dearly-purchased
privilege.
Sometimes a French man-of-war came into harbour,
and once we went on board the flagship of a small
squadron which visited Algiers in 1880. It is well
known that long after the army of France had become
democratised her navy remained an asylum for the
sons of aristocratic families desirous of serving their
country, and we were hardly surprised to see in the
flagship's ward-room three brutally clever frescoes cari-
caturing Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. Equality
was symbolised by two grossly fat hogs eating out of
one trough, Fraternity by two drunken bacchana-
lians reeling arm hi arm down the street. How
Liberty was depicted I cannot now remember. This
was, of course, barely a decade after the re-establish-
ment of the Republic ; but Algiers was red, very red,
and it might have been supposed that the home
authorities would have defaced or veiled pictures
certain to offend democratic eyes.
We knew few French residents at Algiers, but there
was one lady, honourably received by the English
colony, whose canary-coloured hair and peacock voice
failed to recommend her to us. It was told of Mme.
de Z that one Sunday evening, finding her dinner
party composed of twelve men reduced by some
76
ALGIERS
accident to eleven, she exclaimed : " Tant pis !
Pour eviter le malheur Louis dinera dans sa chambre."
" Louis " meekly acquiesced in this decree of banish-
ment, and his wife was wise in her generation, for the
party would have been a failure had she resigned in
favour of her dull and obedient spouse.
Lily and I were seized upon by Mr. Arkwright to
sing in the choir of the English church in the town,
and, though we were both assiduous in our attendance,
it was Lily who proved a mainstay to the little group
of amateurs which varied in number and quality as
any such collection of " casuals " must. Mr. Arkwright
was our conductor, and his sister Fanny (afterwards
Mrs. Hill-James) played the organ. The former
was very deaf, but this did not interfere with his
sense of rhythm, and whatever else he missed he was
exquisitely sensitive to a discord. One Sunday during
the sermon I watched with intense interest a large
bright green praying-mantis which, attracted by the
flowers in the bonnet of a maiden lady seated imme-
diately in front of me, had elected to pray among these
artificial blooms. I never thought it would jump,
but jump it did, with its ungainly limbs sprawling in
every direction and I jumped too ! It was a painful
experience for a girl of nineteen, who blushed readily
and profusely. Sacrilege was the crime of which I felt
I had been guilty, and I had also made myself con-
spicuous, so I was glad when service was over and I
could explain to the chaplain and Mr. Arkwright the
cause of my extraordinary conduct.
A celebrity in the shape of a famous lion-hunter was
77
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
at Algiers in 1879 80. This was M. Bombonnel, a
much-scarred and twisted little veteran, whom we
regarded with interest not unmixed with amusement.
He was very excitable, and threw himself, hands,
feet and all, into the descriptions of his encounters
with the king of beasts with which he regaled his
admirers. One day a friend calling at the house of two
extremely correct English maiden ladies was surprised
to find M. Bombonnel performing the motions of a
swimmer for the edification of his hostesses. He was
miraculously poised on the front of his waistcoat
upon the music-stool and was illustrating the action
of swimming with all four limbs. Whether this was
merely a demonstration or an incident in a practical
lesson during which M. Bombonnel's pupils would
have to copy their instructor's movements I could
not discover.
CHAPTER XVI
SPRING TRAVELS IN ALGERIA
As the spring advanced we would make each season
a driving tour, more or less prolonged, in the interior.
In this way we visited Kabylia, one of those small
mountainous countries which produce and maintain
a people differing entirely in ethnological respects
from their immediate neighbours. The Kabyles are
a hardy race tall lean and muscular, with hazel
78
SPRING TRAVELS IN ALGERIA
eyes and a skin fairer than that of the Fellah of Lower
Egypt. We stayed at Fort National and thence
descended three thousand feet on mule-back, ascended
another three thousand, and found ourselves at Beni-
Enni, a village in which Jesuit Fathers had established
a school. These priests were wise as well as learned,
for they made no attempt whatever to convert their
pupils until they had taught them reading, writing,
and arithmetic. When their kindness and patience as
instructors, and also their medical skill, had endeared
them to the children and their parents it was easy for
them to superimpose the religious teaching which it
was their chief object to impart. We ate our pic-nic
lunch in the schoolhouse, and when my father's
French was exhausted the conversation between him
and our hosts was carried on in Latin, as had often
been the case in Rome when he found himself in the
company of men more learned in dead than in living
languages.
We visited the great cedar forest of Teniet-el-Haad
on another occasion, arriving at the small garrison
town at a moment when all its inhabitants, military
and civil, were on the eve of a day's pleasuring in the
forest. In the primitive inn there was no bath of any
description, so we took turns to use le bol des poulets
a large earthenware crock with so small a base that a
bather could stand on only one foot while performing
his precarious ablutions. When we made inquiries
after breakfast respecting mules to carry us to the
forest and back we found to our dismay that every
horse, mule, and donkey of repute was already bespoke
79
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
for the fete. Three sorry animals were produced,
and seated on bdts stout canvas-covered bolsters
stuffed with I know not what we presently set off and
reached the heart of the forest to find the revels in
full swing. Smart officers and red-trousered piou-
pious and every available female our own chamber-
maid among them were playing a gigantic game
of kiss-in-the-ring in the shade of the great cedars.
They sang a rhyme the last line of which ran " Em-
brassez celle qui vous plaira ! " and I am sure every girl
and woman was "pleasing," for I never saw such an
exhibition of chasing and kissing. The forest was
superb, and we were glad to get out of sight and
hearing of the crowd, and, alighting from our forlorn
and weary mules, sit on the grass beneath the spreading
fans of these monarchs among trees. It never occurred
to my British mind that we, and not the denizens of
Teniet town, were the intruders, and when we retraced
our path I felt aggrieved on finding that the entire
gang of revellers was already under way, so that we
jogged along the one and only road, none too wide,
which overhung a considerable precipice for some
miles, in their noisy company. Our mule-driver
had lost the apology for reins with which I had striven
to guide my weak but obstinate animal in the morning,
and I had to direct it as best I might with an inadequate
pocket-handkerchief, one end of which was knotted
round the top of its headstall. My feet I sat side-
ways on my lumpy bolster actually dangled over
the precipice for a time, and the thundering of many
hoofs, the merrymakers' shouts, and the thrusting
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SPRING TRAVELS IN ALGERIA
and shouldering of other mules and horses would
have made any animal less abject than the poor
beast on top of which I sat helpless show alarm or
resentment. Suddenly a bold soldier riding on my
right addressed me, and after subjecting me to a
short catechism in which he exhibited considerable
interest in England and the English he suggested that
we should engage him as a groom and convey him to
our island home. I endeavoured to point out with
politeness the unsuit ability of such an arrangement,
but he was not to be quelled. " Dites done, Made-
moiselle ; je sais deja quelques mots d' anglais. / lof
you qu'est-ce que ?a signifie ? " " Je vous aime,"
I replied, stiff and unsmiling. I ought to have said
it meant filet de bceuf or pommes de terre, but the
combination of a precipice, from the verge of which
I was quite powerless to withdraw my mule, on one
side and a cheeky soldier-groom equally unavoidable
on the other had unnerved me, and the inevitable
sequel " Eh bien, I lof you, Mademoiselle " made me
for the moment prefer the precipice to the piou-piou.
And yet the mule to which I clung would never have
permitted me to involve him in my suicide. At last
the cavalcade got shuffled, and when I dared to look
over my right shoulder I found the too-amiable
soldier had disappeared.
One spring we went by steamer to Bona and drove
thence by way of the fine but gloomy Gorge of the
Chabet to Setif. It was a two-days' drive, between
rocky cliffs for the most part, with the noisy river
foaming beneath us, and our night was uncomfortably
A,W. 81 o
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
spent in a rest-house where there was but one guest-
chamber, in which we lay down in our clothes. Only
the French Genie could have accomplished so difficult
a task as the engineering of that Chabet road, and
only the cantonnier system could have maintained its
surface at such a pitch of perfection, for the torrent
itself and the steeply overhanging cliffs provided
constant menaces to its security.
From Setif we proceeded by train to Constantine,
in which curious spot we passed a week. It has been
described almost as often as Ronda, which it much
resembles. One permanent bridge connects it with the
surrounding plain, and it is encompassed by a wide
dry ditch several hundred feet in depth. Its narrow
and crooked streets were thronged with Arabs of every
shade, class, and tribe wearing their distinctive dresses,
besides the inevitable Jew and the elegant Moor, clad
according to their kind. There were Arabs of the
desert in great numbers in white burnous and white
turban covered with the hood of the burnous and
wound about with a long fine rope of camel's hair,
Biskris in their coats of many colours, and Mozabites
in loose black-and-white-striped jackets. And of
course there were soldiers red-and-white-robed Spahis,
trim Zouaves and baggy-trousered Turcos, besides
the men of the Infanterie de la Ligne. There was
very little in the way of a European quarter, and
as Lily and I were gazing one day into a shop, where
barbaric jewellery and curios so curious that we
wondered where, how, and for what they were made
were displayed in tumbled heaps, a fair and rosy-
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SPRING TRAVELS IN ALGERIA
cheeked young Turco said to us suddenly in the
English of London : " This is no place for you girls,
you'd best be getting back to your hotel." He passed
on at once, and we were left wondering whether some
piece of bad luck or merely the love of adventure had
turned the English lad into a Turco. But we took his
advice and hurried back to our hotel.
We halted at various straggling villages on our
two hundred and fifty mile drive back to Algiers,
which we accomplished in five days with the same
horses ! Our luggage was very light and the carriage
a small victoria with a queer little third seat hooked
on at the back. One horse was a tall, bony Norman
percheron, the other a small Arab barbe, and our driver
told us the Arab was far the hardier of the two, could
lie out on the coldest nights and subsist on consider-
ably less than his French comrade. I passed one night
in a bed placed conveniently (for air) under a hole in
the roof, but it rained so hard that I had to sleep under
my umbrella. In another of our resting places a little
wild boar, striped as wild boars are in early youth,
was a domestic pet and trotted on slim, stiff legs in
and out of the bare salle-d-manger, secure of a welcome.
We halted one day to eat our lunch on the edge of a
desolate-looking hamlet and asked the sad-faced wife
of a struggling French colon to sell us some lettuce from
her garden. She cut and washed it, added some cold
boiled mange-tout peas and watched us open a tin of
sardines. Its contents along with some vinegar
went into the salad bowl, and after we had lunched
the poor thing begged us to give her the two broken
83 o*
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
sardines which remained in the bowl. With tears in
her eyes she said : " It is five years since I have seen
a sardine." There is no nostalgia more complete
than that of the French colonist.
It was near the end of May that year when we left
Algiers and went home in a Moss steamer. She was a
cargo boat calling at various ports, and we had to
wait nearly three weeks at the Hotel de la Re'gence in
the town before she appeared, for we had given up our
villa at the Colonne Voirol before going to Constantine.
There were only menservants in the hotel, and when
Lily and I were sorting things out before packing up
there was no convenient chambermaid upon whom to
bestow our much-holed stockings and other worn-
out garments. Late one night we rose from our
beds and flung pair after pair of cast-off stockings out
of the window. Our aim was faulty, and next morning
we discovered that two had lodged in the flat-topped
plane tree opposite, one of gaudy red silk and another
of sca/cely less conspicuous black. We felt that all
Algiers must see and recognise them, and Lily's were
carefully marked ! Fortunately some prowling gamin,
not scrupulous enough to inquire into their ante-
cedents, spied and removed them, and we breathed
again.
When our steamer appeared we found ourselves
lodged to our dismay in a cabin whose larger port
looked for'ard over a hold containing a consignment
of highly-perfumed Spanish onions, and never save
during our day ashore at Gibraltar could we wholly
escape their pervading and penetrating odour. Our
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SPRING TRAVELS IN ALGERIA
little party on board consisted, beyond our three
selves, of Canon Blomfield, Rosy's father-in-law, and
his wife and Lord Kingston,* and as we all stood
outside the Post Office at Gibraltar a bearded per-
sonage in plain clothes came up and laid a detaining
hand on Lord Kingston's shoulder, saying, " I arrest
you as a deserter." Lord Kingston's blue serge suit
was certainly rather shabby, and his beard and flash-
ing dark eyes might have been those of a seafaring
desperado, but when a gaitered bishop and a minor,
but equally respectable, Church dignitary swore to our
friend's identity the arm of the law relaxed its grip
and the chief police constable became our apologetic
friend. He conducted us to the fruit and flower
market, and took such care we were not cheated that
we returned on board our steamer weighed down with
palm-leaf baskets containing every conceivable fruit
and flower then in season at the cost of a few
shillings.
CHAPTER XVII
THE BISHOP'S GRANDCHILDREN
As time went on grandchildren old enough to be
interesting to my father came with their parents to
Parknasilla. From a very early age John Powys,
* Father of the present peer.
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Helen's boy, was a particular friend and ally of mine.
He was my eldest nephew and I his youngest aunt,
and in all the letters he ever wrote me, from the short
and bald half-sheet of the small schoolboy to the
three-sheeted chronicle of the young soldier in India,
he signed himself " Your faithful cavalier, JOHN."
Dark-eyed and thoughtful, with flashes of humour
lighting up his rather serious face, steady but never
stolid, conscientious but very human, he was unlike
any of us, and no aunt of twenty ever had a more
gallant comrade than I possessed in John at the age
of ten. He never failed me in all his short life, and
when that was quenched in the Tirah expedition of
1897 my loss was unique and irreparable. I do not
think he ever caused real pain to his parents. He
understood while very young that they were not rich,
and would cheerfully do without what other boys
demanded as a right, not in any exalted spirit of self-
sacrifice, but simply because he loved his father and
mother. Not brilliantly clever, he made up, and
more than made up, by hard and thorough work
for the absence of genius, and he was every inch a
man.
However hard his task, he tried to make something
of it, and I have kept all these years ever since 1880
the verses written by him as a little fellow not ten
years old at a preparatory school at Oxford. How any
schoolmaster should have ordered a pack of small
boys to write a poem on the terrible Tay Bridge
disaster which befel a mail train in the last days of
1879 I cannot conceive. But John did his best,
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THE BISHOP'S GRANDCHILDREN
and his best was unintentionally and painfully
funny :
" Now the wind blows loud and strong,
Shaking all the bridge along,
But wince not, budge not, gallant stoker,
Near the fire stand with your poker.
" Then there comes an awful crash
And with it a dreadful smash ;
But wince not, budge not, gallant stoker,
Near the fire stand with your poker.
" Down sinks the train into the deep ;
Many gentle mothers weep ;
But wince not, budge not, gallant stoker,
Near the fire stand with your poker.
" On the next day were divers sent,
On bringing up dead bodies bent ;
But wince not, budge not, gallant stoker,
Near the fire stand with your poker.
" Several bodies there were found ;
But every one of them was drowned ;
But wince not, budge not, gallant stoker,
Near the fire stand with your poker."
John's mother, my dear sister Helen, died the day
my boy was born, and John, just confirmed at Marl-
borough, was Roger's godfather. He was not neg-
lectful of his godson, and when he was working in
London for the Indian Staff corps in 1896 he would
find time to take the little fellow to Maskelyne and
Cook's or some such fascinating entertainment during
his holidays. He had successfully passed his examina-
tion, and was coming home in the following year,
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
from India where the 52nd, his hereditary corps, was
stationed, when the Tirah trouble supervened and he
never returned.
Next in age among the grandsons came Philip,*
Alfred's eldest boy, uncannily clever, fair as an angel,
and distractingly untidy and unpunctual. He must
have been between five and six when Lily, intent on
rounding up for their midday meal the small fry
staying at Parknasilla, called to him : " Philip, didn't
you hear the gong ? " and Philip, busy with a story-
book, replied unmoved : "I heered, Aunt Lily, but I
did not heed." His sister Molly, the sweetest little
maid of four, would try to mother him hi those days,
pulling up his stockings and endeavouring to tie the
ribbons that confined the black silk handkerchief
of his sailor suit. She had the black-lashed blue eyes
of her mother's people, and when some indiscreet
admirer expatiated in her hearing upon their colour
Molly went to her nurse and told her Mrs. had said
she had violet eyes. Nurse demurred, but Molly was
firm. " Smell them, Nannie ! " she exclaimed.
Rosy's elder boy came close after Molly in age, and
of all the grandchildren's treasured sayings Charlie's
were the funniest. He would fix his large hazel eyes
on whatever interested him, and when his wonder
insisted upon expression out would come a question.
An elderly lady, a widow, whose health compelled
her to go about in a Bath chair, was one day the
object of little Charlie's observation. The border of
* Times correspondent in Constantinople when war with Turkey
was declared, 1914.
88
THE BISHOP'S GRANDCHILDREN
her heavy crape veil concealed her mouth, and
presently Charlie inquired : " Haven't you got any
mouth ? " She reassured him, and then " Haven't
you got any legs ? " followed.
In 1882, when he was three, Charlie arrived from
Egypt with his mother to spend the hot weather
in England. My father, who was in London, went
to inspect his little grandson in the lodgings where they
were staying, and Charlie was duly brought down by
his nurse and popped inside the door of the back
drawing-room, his mother and grandfather being in
the front room. Unobserved he took the episcopal
hat from the chair where my father had placed it and
hung it on his small head. Then, grasping the episcopal
umbrella, he stumped into the room beyond and,
peeping under the broad hat-brim, piped out to the
unknown guest : " And who are you, you funny old
monkey ? " My sister's filial respect was outraged,
her pride in her son discounted, but the situation was
far too absurd to be treated seriously. Charlie had
been called a funny little monkey so often by his nurse
that he certainly thought the words expressive of
affection and possibly admiration.
Not many months later when I made the voyage
to Egypt with my sister and her two little boys Charlie
proved himself the best sailor among the passengers,
and after his nurse (between paroxysms) had suc-
ceeded in washing and dressing him he would prance
about in the highest spirits, monarch of the saloon out
of which the first-class sleeping-cabins opened. Among
the passengers there chanced to be a little girl whom,
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
before the billows of the Bay laid us low, my sister
had marked as an unsuitable playmate for the less
critical Charlie, and now that she and her parents
as well as all Charlie's guardians were precluded by
sea-sickness from any interference with his concerns,
his independence asserted itself. Up and down the
saloon he marched, chanting over and over again,
loud and clear, these unpardonable words : " Emily
Barton, Emily Barton, my mother says you are
a horrid little girl and I'm not to play with you
but I will." And we were all incapable of silencing
him ! Happily there were no reprisals, for we were
one and all so thankful to reach Gibraltar that peace
and good- will reigned in every heart.
Charlie was nearly three when the massacre of
Alexandria took place in June, 1882. His father was
Controller of the Port and lived close to the Arsenal
gates in a big square Arab house overlooking the
harbour. On Sunday afternoon, June nth, Charlie
and his baby brother had gone with their nurse for a
drive in the victoria to the Khedivial Gardens on the
bank of the Mahmoudieh Canal and were returning
to tea, all unconscious of the carnage going on in the
streets of Alexandria, when they caught sight of some
unfortunate Europeans being hunted by a pack of
blood-thirsty Arabists. The nurse, a sensible English-
woman, kept her head and ordered the Arab coachman
to drive to the British Consulate for protection, but
they passed on their way through such scenes of
horror and brutality as could never be forgotten. The
Consulate gates were opened to receive them and they
90
THE BISHOP'S GRANDCHILDREN
were safe. Between the harbour and the Consulate
lay a network of narrow Arab streets as well as the
whole length of the Place Mehemet All, and it was in
these streets that the worst of the massacre took place.
Lord Charles Beresford had been lunching with the
Blomfields at Port House, but was obliged to return on
board H.M.S. Condor when it was known that trouble
had broken out. My brother-in-law, determined to do
what in him lay to discover the fate of his children
and their nurse, put on the tarboosh and " Stambouli "
(single-breasted coat), which as a servant of the
Khedive he was entitled to wear, and started off on foot.
Through the tortuous streets of the Arab quarter he
made his way unmolested, although his fair skin and
blue eyes proclaimed his nationality, but when he
reached a certain important zaptieh (police station)
half-way to the Place Mehemet Ali an Arab came out
and implored him to enter. Some of the zaptiehs
it was found later had become slaughter-houses for
Europeans who had thought to find in them protection
and shelter, but the motive of the man who stopped my
brother-in-law was pacific and merciful. An English-
man lay dying within, stabbed by some savage
follower of Arabi Pacha, and holding Captain Blom-
field's hand he presently breathed his last. This was
an engineer officer from one of our ships, and I heard
not long afterwards a curious story connected with his
death, but whether accurately reported or not I am
not now in a position to say. That Sunday afternoon
in their house in Cornwall the parents of this officer
distinctly heard these words uttered in the voice of
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
their son : " Good-bye, father ; good-bye, mother ;
I'm done for."
Released by the death of this innocent victim of an
ambitious rebel, Massie Blomfield pursued his way,
but it was long before he reached the Consulate and
several hours before he was able to return to Port
House with his children. What my sister suffered
during the six awful hours which elapsed between the
moment when she knew her children in deadly peril
and that which restored them and her husband to her
in safety very few people are in a position to know.
In little Charlie's mind the horror lingered, although
he was only once heard to speak of it. Six months
later he was with us listening to the band of the Duke
of Cornwall's Light Infantry at Mustafa Barracks,
Ramleh, when a ragged Arab crept up and stood close-
beside us. Charlie turned upon him with clenched
fists and blazing eyes. " Go away, wicked, bad Arab
that kills English peoples," he shouted ; " emshi,
emshi ! " (be off) ; and the man slunk away among
the stones and scrub without a word.*
* Destined for the Navy, but to his bitter disappointment pre-
cluded from entering the Senior Service by temporary eye trouble,
Charles Massie Blomfield obtained a commission in the Royal
Warwickshire Regiment and was a major at the time of his death
near Ypres on June gth, 1915. His was a very lovable character.
Modest, generous, and unself-seeking to a fault, he was sometimes
misunderstood, sometimes undervalued , until a flash of something
like genius, a witty comment or fantastic simile, would make his
hearers start and rub their eyes. His little book " The Young
Officer's Guide to Knowledge,' by " The Senior Major," published
anonymously some eighteen months before his death, was a revela-
tion even to those who knew him best. It was nothing less than
brilliant, and placed him at once in the front rank of skit-writers.
Many an exiled soldier in the tropics, many a weary fighter in the
trenches, has laughed over its quaint and apposite absurdities.,
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LAND LEAGUE DAYS
CHAPTER XVIII
LAND LEAGUE DAYS
I HAVE run on to Egypt that land of stirring
events without telling how things were going in
Ireland in those bad years 1880 82, when the Land
League instituted a reign of terror in Limerick and
North Kerry.
Mr. Clifford Lloyd had been appointed Chief Resi-
dent Magistrate in a large and disturbed district, and
it was from him we learned one evening at the rooms
occupied by himself and his wife in George Street,
Limerick, of the murder in Phrenix Park of Lord
Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke. No apologist
in theory and there are many such for political and
agrarian crime in Ireland can minimise the wickedness
of this double assassination ; only criminals in fact and
act could find it excusable, and we, law-abiding
subjects of the Crown, regarded with horror and
loathing the organisation which ordered, and the
savages who carried out, so brutal a deed.
In South Kerry there was but little ill-feeling
manifested towards the landlord class ; but the usual
sympathy evinced by the untutored, or mistutored,
Celt with agrarian crime was plainly noticeable. This
sympathy is very strong, and a man who has got
away from the police after shooting a landlord or agent
from behind a hedge may live the sheltered life in
some mountainous district secure of enjoying the best
93
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
his hosts can afford. Indeed it is on record that one
man, constitutionally disinclined for the effort of
earning his bread, introduced himself as a murderer
(agrarian) to some poor Kerry peasants living far off
the beaten track and sponged on them until it trans-
pired that he had never taken the life of landlord,
agent, or policeman ! Then he was flung out with
contempt and obloquy to work or starve.
It was not pleasant to live in Limerick in those
days. We felt we were rubbing shoulders with potential
murderers when we made our way past a knot of uncivil
" corner-boys " in the street. The constabulary were
reinforced, and every one whose life was threatened
and these were many was under the protection of
this smart and wholly admirable body of men. By
July, 1881, the Clifford Lloyds found that no one would
let them a house or even part of a house, so my father
lent them the Palace while we were in Kerry, and I
spent some weeks with them there in early autumn.
The stables and coach-house were full of mounted
police and their horses, and none of us ever drove out
unprotected. One day a number of us went to lunch
at Sir Charles Harrington's at Glenstal, about twelve
miles off, and just as we were on the point of returning
Sir Charles received a message to say there were Land
Leaguers on the look out for us, and a tree had been
felled and laid across the road to hold us up. So we
went home by another road. Mr Lloyd throve on the
dangerous and exciting conditions of his life, but his
wife was constantly anxious about him, for he was a
marked man as well as a man of mark. His deep-set
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LAND LEAGUE DAYS
eye had an extraordinarily luminous quality a lam-
bent iris surrounding the large pupil and his glance
was penetrating and, to suspects, awe-inspiring.
Original in thought and swift and fearless in action,
he was a terror to evil-doers ; but his friends found in
him much that was attractive and even heroic.
From Limerick I went to London to be for a third
time a bridesmaid. The bride was Lady Emily Bury,
whose friend I had become in Algiers, the bridegroom
Captain Kenneth Howard, R.A., and my father tied
the knot. I confess it grieved me that our gowns were
white and yellow, for yellow was never my colour,
and I envied my co-bridesmaid, Pamela Preston, of
Moreby Hall, whose dark eyes and beautiful complexion
were enhanced, not eclipsed, by a hue that bleached
my cheeks and extinguished my hair. Any girl with
a limited dress allowance will be able to feel for me when
I say that it took a long, long time to wear out that
gown a present from my father. It was exasperatingly
good in material and cut, but the day never came on
which I looked even passably well in it.
LILY and I did not go abroad in the winter of
1881 82, but my father spent some months in Egypt,
95
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
much to the satisfaction of my sister, Mrs. Blomfield,
who accompanied him to Luxor. The 52nd Oxford-
shire L.I. were quartered in Limerick, and my brother-
in-law, Major Powys, with my sister and the children,
stayed with us at the Palace, a very pleasant arrange-
ment. Things were going very badly just then with
the dependent members of Irish families. It was the
Duchess of Marlborough, wife of the then Lord Lieu-
tenant, who formed a committee for the relief of
Irish ladies too old or too little skilled to support
themselves by their own efforts when their small
incomes failed through the non-payment of rent. My
sister Helen was entrusted with the investigation of
such cases as fell within the town radius of Limerick.
No one could have been better fitted for the work,
for she was as careful and discreet as she was sympa-
thetic in dealing with the heartbreaking situations
into which she had to inquire. I remember particularly
one story she told me, giving no names, since secrecy
in such matters was imperative owing to the pride
and reserve which brought so many Irish ladies to
their last crust and their last penny without complaint.
Mrs. , far more truly Irish by birth and heritage
than many of her persecutors, was very old and
nearly blind, and she was starving in a wretched
garret in Boherbui, a most unsavoury district of
Limerick, when her name was sent to my sister.
Without loss of time Helen went to call upon her, only
to find that she had died of want that very day. Her
faithful old servant had just received a letter from her
daughter in America enclosing a money order for
96
LIMERICK IN THE 'EIGHTIES
two pounds. She told her beloved mistress of the
windfall, hurried out to buy food and firing, and
returned to find that the shock of so unexpected
a reprieve had killed the old lady she would have
died to save.
Limerick was a garrison town of some importance,
maintaining a line regiment, a squadron of cavalry,
one battery of Field, and one of Garrison Artillery.
Without the co-operation of military officers our gaieties
would have been limited ; as it was there was a con-
siderable amount of entertaining, unpretentious,
perhaps, but none the less enjoyable. To races Lily
and I were not allowed to go, and our very modest
adventures with the County Limerick Foxhounds were
brought to a sudden and complete end by the paternal
veto ; but there was no embargo on dancing, theatre-
going and lawn-tennis, and it seems to me, as I look
back upon my girlhood, that we had a great deal of fun
in one way or another. It was not expensive fun.
There was then just as much difference between the
cost of social amusement in England and that in
Ireland as there is between the valuable mechanical
toy and the plaything improvised at home. In my day
champagne was drunk at very few houses, and what were
known as " tay balls " (tea balls) were far commoner
than, and quite as pleasant as those where " wine,"
as it is now called, flowed as freely as claret-cup.
Dancing was what we wanted, and from ten p.m. to
four or five a.m. we danced with no more stimulant
than that afforded by tea, coffee, lemonade, and our
own good spirits. Chaperons, of course, ate ample
A.W. 97 H
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
suppers, but with the unthinking cruelty of youth I
found this odd and scarcely commendable Now
when either duty or friendship takes me to a dance the
announcement that supper will be served at eleven or
half -past is thankfully received.
Of course we knew " everyone " in town and county.
It is laid down by St. Paul that bishops be " given to
hospitality," and much hospitality was given to us
in return for ours, whether by the rich and great, the
" intermediates," or the smaller professional gentry,
and the early-acquired habit of making friends in every
class is one which has brought me a great deal of happi-
ness. I cannot imagine anything duller than belonging
exclusively to a particular circle. One might as well
be a tea-cup matching in value and design the rest of
the set and unable to be the companion of a nice big
earthenware dish, a cut-glass bowl, or a friendly
china dog with a gold chain round its neck. No matter
how learned, how " smart," how powerful' the set into
which I was born, I should be for ever longing to fly
off at a tangent, a rover or a pirate, breaking into other
circles, studying their ways, tasting their food and
drink, mental or material, but free to stay or return
as the fancy seized me, or as I found myself useful or
useless, welcome or the reverse. Of course there are
some circles I should never invade, just as there are
some popular authors whose books I never read, some
animals which must be for ever antipathetic. But I
have never envied the mill-horse his round nor the
convict his treadmill, and I hope to continue as long
as life lasts making excursions into social districts
98
LIMERICK IN THE 'EIGHTIES
other than that whose name is to be found on the label
I have long ago mislaid.
In Limerick we were fortunate in having in the
official and social circle to which we belonged by
right plenty of good friends, and there are many names
connected with my girlhood which, though their
owners are dead or flown, married or estranged, stand
for a great deal in my memory. The Bourkes of
Thornfields, as brilliant as they were handsome ; the
O'Briens of Old Church, with hearts as true as their
taste and their manners were exquisite ; the Barring-
tons, stalwart, straight and capable ; the Bannatynes,
staunch and generous ; the Bunburys, full of life and
intelligence ; this quintet of B's represents what was
best, and best loved by me, in Limerick of the 'seventies
and 'eighties. There is a new generation now, and a
fresh admixture of social elements unknown to me.
Were I to return there it would be as a Rip van Winkle ;
I should find white hair and tombstones, empty
nests, change and decay, and I would rather keep my
memories unspoilt.
Our radius in those days was limited to the scope of
a pair of horses, for local trains were slow and incon-
venient. Now and then my father would make a tour
lasting a week or more in the outlying portions of his
large diocese. Once he took Lily and me with him to
the southern part of county Limerick, and we stayed
for a couple of nights with the Muskerrys at Spring-
field and the Monteagles at Mount Trenchard. There
was a huge dinner party at Springfield on the night
of our arrival, and the two oval tables, placed end to
99 H 2
end, seated a rather incongruous party of guests.
After dinner a tall white-haired old gentleman, wearing
a white tie, black coat and brown trousers, stood up
with a clergy man 's, wife for his partner and danced
a jig. Right well they danced it, and the brown-
trousered legs were as nimble in shuffles, double
shuffles, and batters as those of a young man. But
the whole scene was more suggestive of Charles Lever
than anything I have ever seen before or since.
When I read that Lord Muskerry's second son had
been lost in the Princess Irene at Sheerness my mind
went back to the early winter of 1878 when, as a pretty
little fellow of about four years old, Cecil Deane-
Morgan led me round the garden at Springfield, dull
and colourless in its hibernation, and said when we
returned to the house, " You must come again when
the blue ' peddiwinkles ' is out." It struck me as
extraordinary that so young a child should know
and care that there were such things as blue peri-
winkles and that they would come out again in the
spring.
I caught a violent cold at Springfield, and, despite
the heroic remedy prescribed and compounded by
Lord Muskerry of whisky toddy with laudanum in
it, I was completely voiceless when we went on to
Mount Trenchard. However, I was able to enjoy the
music made by Lady Monteagle and her sisters and
applaud the admirable jig dancing of Frederica and
Frank Spring-Rice. Demure and neat, eyes downward
bent, the little lady footed it according to the best
traditions, while her sailor brother stamped and
100
LIMERICK IN THE 'EIGHTIES
flourished, and drummed with heels and toes with a zest
and frenzy bordering on the grotesque.
I think it was in the following year that Lily and I
paid a visit to the Knight of Glin and Mrs. FitzGerald,
kindest of hostesses, near Tarbert at the mouth of
the Shannon, and here I met naval officers for the
first time, as the guardship was stationed at Foynes.
I cannot say I liked my first party on board ship. A
junior officer played " Bonnie Dundee " very slowly
on the harmonium for us to waltz to, and we danced
on the rough brown carpet of the ward-room in our
walking shoes ! Of course it was absurd to judge of
the navy, its attractions and its value, by this isolated
and depressing experience. Three years later I changed
my opinion with the whole-hearted revulsion of feeling
common in the young.
CHAPTER XX
ALEXANDRIA
IN November, 1882, not five months after the
bombardment of Alexandria, I went out to stay there
with my sister, Mrs. Blomfield. We disembarked at
Suez and spent a very uncomfortable night in the
hotel, which was crowded to overflowing. At the other
end of our table, eating their dinner in sombre silence,
were seated Colonel (afterwards Sir Charles) Warren
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
and the officers conducting with him an inquiry into
the tragic disappearance of Professor Palmer, Captain
Gill, and Lieutenant Harold Charrington, R.N.
Mr. Charrington's brother and sister (afterwards
Mrs. R. A. Montgomerie) were also staying in the
hotel, and that very day evidence of foul play had
been discovered in the shape of the foot of one of the
missing party.*
Next evening we reached Alexandria. Shattered
houses, tumbled heaps of masonry, tottering walls
and piles of still smoking debris stood out with peculiar
clearness in the full yet tempered light of a moon
riding high in the dark blue heavens. " Where is
the Place Mehemet AH ? " cried my bewildered sister
as we drove from the railway station. Where indeed ?
Of three sides of the long square nothing was left
* Curiously enough, it was Lieutenant Richard Poore (then
unknown to me), temporarily in command of the old gunboat Decoy,
who had taken Colonel Warren's party from Port Said to El Arish,
in Syria, whence they started their search. On their arrival at
El Arish, a most extravagantly deceptive mirage had caused Mr.
Poore to wonder if his maps and charts had misled him. Instead
of a low shore, behind which sand-hummocks formed a fringe
to the desert beyond, lofty mountains rising steeply from a wide
plain met his bewildered gaze, but an hour later the background
had disappeared as completely as though some Titanic scene-shifter
had been at work, and modest sandhills humped themselves along
the shore. Colonel Warren was landed with his party, signalled
to show all was well so far, and disappeared from sight, but the
poor Decoy, not a mere lame duck, but a hopeless cripple, was for
seven whole days drifting at the mercy of winds and waves up the
Syrian coast. She should have gone to Port Said, but, very short
of coal, she managed to make Famagusta, in Cyprus, where her
distracted captain cleared out the coaling store and with forty-seven
tons pursued his way to Malta, whither he had had no intention of
going. It took him one calendar month to get from El Arish to
Malta. Even St. Paul in his memorable voyage can hardly have
been more sorely tried.
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ALEXANDRIA
intact but Abbat's Hotel and the building where the
main City Guard was posted. No wonder that she wept
to find the landmarks familiar to her for nearly three
years blackened, battered, swept away. To my eyes
it was a fantastic sight. Old ruins I had seen in
plenty, but there was a strange pathos in these still
living houses, untenanted, sightless and deformed,
which showed to alien eyes the furniture and hangings,
mirrors and pictures within them, not unlike dolls'
houses with the doors thrown back. The buildings
in the neighbourhood of Port House were practically
untouched, and in its large and comfortable rooms or
looking from its windows upon the harbour where
British men-of-war lay like faithful watch-dogs I
forgot the desolation of the European quarter.
Everything was new to me ; the weather up to
Christmas proved delicious, and my sister and brother-
in-law wanted me to enjoy myself. Beyond arranging
the flowers, doing a few errands for my sister, and
singing in the choir at the English church I fear I
did nothing useful. But presently relief work for the
poor folks made homeless by the bombardment
occupied all charitably-disposed Europeans, and I
found myself, as an appendage of my sister, attending
a great meeting of ladies anxious to be useful. A soup-
kitchen was started, and every morning I was employed
in doling out basins of hot and greasy fluid to crowds of
applicants. Then I was promoted to a more important
post I forget what and this I lost through displaying
too much zeal. I actually asked a lady of twice my
age and a hundred times my experience to give me
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
an account of money advanced to her the previous
week because I had to make up my books. Haughtily
she turned upon me, remarking for all to hear : "I
have nothing whatever to do with you, Miss Graves."
Rosy was so indignant, since the statement was not
only inaccurate but most impolitely made, that she
withdrew immediately from the Committee, carrying
me in her train. I cannot have possessed any public
spirit or sense of responsibility, for I was delighted to
be relieved of my post and gladly surrendered my books
to my successor in office, who proved, I hope, discreet
as well as brave.
Many of the English residents of Alexandria and its
suburbs did not return thither the winter after the
massacre and bombardment, and the society in which
I presently found myself was thoroughly cosmopolitan.
Among the Greeks I made some delightful friends.
The two unmarried Antoniadis girls (Marie, afterwards
Mme. Musurus, and Efterpy, Mrs. Kingsbury) were
clever, kind and attractive, and the two families of
Dummreicher (Danes) provided me with four charming
companions, while among the younger married women
Mme. P. Salvage and Mme. Constantin Sinadino I
loved and admired. Mme. van den Nest and Mme.
Borchgrevink, witty and engaging Americans, I can
never forget, and Mrs. Sydney Carver, whose husband
was one of the great firm of cotton merchants, proved,
and has ever remained, a most kind friend.
As there were not just then many young girls at
Alexandria and Ramleh I had an extremely pleasant
time, and was, I fear, considerably spoilt. Besides
104
ALEXANDRIA
the ships in harbour there were two British regiments
at Alexandria, and my few troubles arose from the
difficulty of making my English partners understand
the Continental practice of asking a tour de valse from
a lady already provided with a partner. To the mind
of a British partner the whole dance was his inviolable
right, but my foreign friends thought otherwise, and
the result was sometimes embarrassing, for black looks
were cast from beneath British brows at the inter-
lopers and cruel suspicions as to my good faith had to
be allayed. Most of my foreign partners spoke a little
English, some a great deal, and one or two had evi-
dently learnt the language from an English nurse or
groom, for it was pure cockney. I had always liked
speaking French, and as the French of well-educated
Greeks is particularly pure I felt I was combining the
useful and the agreeable in a manner calculated to
give me the least possible trouble when I found myself
in the company of those who knew no English. I must
admit that one or two of my foreign partners at dances
or tennis parties annoyed me very much by their flow
of pretty speeches, and when one of them threw a
languishing glance at me and cried " Ton jours la main
gauche ! " not less than eight times in succession as we
met in the Grand Cham of the Lancers, I was so
exasperated by his idiocy that I scratched him off my
list of bowing acquaintances. Had I given the goose
my right hand the entire figure would have gone askew.
I had never before been in a position to pick and
choose from a positive crowd of partners, and I should
have been at twenty-two a model of all the virtues
105
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
had I not thoroughly enjoyed it. It seems to me that
every girl ought to have just such a good time once in
her life before settling down to matrimony or a pro-
fession. It is horrible for a girl to feel grateful to a
man who asks her to dance ; more horrible to have her
programme but half filled ; most horrible to find the
courageous smile of the wall-flower slowly stiffening
into a grimace.
CHAPTER XXI
" CAIRO
MY father and Lily arrived in January, 1883, and
soon after we all went up to Cairo, where I remained
for a month, returning with Rosy to Alexandria when
the Bishop and Lily went up the Nile. Shepheard's hi
1883 was very unlike the Shepheard's of to-day. It
was a barrack of a place, scantily and poorly furnished.
The bare boards of the dining-room floor, the long,
narrow tables, unshaded lights, and indifferent food
and attendance would have befitted a desert caravan-
serai rather than one of the most famous hotels in the
world. But it was an institution, along with its terrace,
upon which, sooner or later, one saw or met everyone
of importance in Egypt. There, when the telegrams
came in from Suakim during the fighting in the winter
of 1883-84, Mr. Moberly Bell, Times correspondent, was
often to be seen with a sheaf of thin heavily pencilled
106
CAIRO
sheets in his hand and a dozen people clustering round
him to hear the latest news. Sir Evelyn Wood, Baker
Pasha, and General Arbuthnot were staying at Shep-
heard's ; Sir Archibald Alison with his wife and daugh-
ters lived not far off ; General Dormer and Sir Gerald
Graham were at Headquarters. All of these might be
met on the terrace after lunch, to say nothing of Sir
Edward Malet, Sir Auckland Colvin, and Sir Gerald
FitzGerald, representing British civil power. There
was a stir in the air and an expectation of great events ;
but there was laughter, too, and dancing and picnick-
ing, riding and driving parties to the Pyramids and
shopping parties to the Mooskee, besides the more
serious occupation of visiting mosques, museums,
and libraries.
Sir Evelyn and his staff sat immediately opposite to
us at meals. As the clatter of dishes, the tread of
hurrying waiters and the buzz of conversation made
an incessant din, we were often driven to exchanging
" chits " with our vis-d-vis, and Sir Evelyn would
sometimes put a hand on either side of his mouth
and literally " hail " us across the table.
Our first ball at Cairo was at General Dormer's
spacious villa, which housed himself and other members
of the Headquarters Staff. It was bewildering to have
nothing but strange partners, and about half-way
through the programme I found myself alone after a
waltz had begun wondering with which of the many
kilts I was engaged to dance. Then a slight, distin-
guished-looking elderly gentleman, with a pointed
beard and grey hair, came down one side of the room and
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
stopped before me. He was dressed in black and
wore a broad sky-blue ribbon across his breast. " May
I have the pleasure of this dance ? " he said. " Perhaps
I ought to wait for my partner," I answered doubt-
fully. " I'll give you up to him when he comes," said
Lord Dufferin, " and you must forgive me for dis-
pensing with the ceremony of introduction, for I am
an old friend of your father's." So I danced with the
man who had already been a Lord-in-Waiting to Queen
Victoria, a member of the Government, British
Ambassador successively to Russia and Turkey, and
was at that moment Minister Plenipotentiary at
Cairo without knowing who he was. My laggard
partner, better informed than I, made no claim on me
when he saw me dancing with so exalted a personage,
so I had a good opportunity of losing my heart to
perhaps the most attractive man of his time in complete
ignorance of his identity. A few days later we all dined
at the temporary Embassy, and, as Lady Dufferin
was suffering from an attack of fever, we were a small
and informal party, with Lady Helen Blackwood in
her mother's seat. Mr. Mackenzie Wallace was staying
in the house, and also some great civil engineer who
talked of irrigation works ; but I sat on my host's
left and, being now " put wise," as Americans say,
appreciated my situation to the exclusion of aught
else. As dinner was proceeding Lord Dufferin turned to
me and asked confidentially : " Can you keep a
secret ? " " Always, if I know it really is a secret,"
I answered. " Well then," said he, "a great friend of
yours is shortly coming to Cairo to reorganise one of
108
CAIRO
the Government Departments Clifford Lloyd." I
rejoiced of course, but I was also immensely flattered by
the " confidence," and went about fully conscious of
my important secret until it was everyone's property,
which, I must admit, was so soon that no indiscretion
on my part would have jeopardised the peace of two
continents. Although she was then so young, Lady
Helen Blackwood gave promise of the goodness and
ability which have ever distinguished her, and which
have gained for her the admiration of Australians
since her husband, Sir Ronald Munro - Ferguson,
has been their Governor-General. Very few women
have had the advantages which were hers as the
beloved and trusted daughter of a most remarkable
father.
Rosy and I were the fellow-travellers of the late
Sir Claude (then Captain) Macdonald on our return to
Alexandria, and I had no chance of asking him what he
thought of our table " manners " on that occasion
until I met him thirty years later dining at Lord
Darnley's. We had brought a cold chicken with us
from Shepheard's, but there were neither knives nor
forks in the basket, and we had to dismember the
bird as best we might with a blunt penknife and eat
it in our fingers. It seemed to me impossible that Sir
Claude should have forgotten so painful an incident,
but he assured me he had no recollection of it whatever.
His interesting and varied career in the Diplomatic
Service had no doubt crowded out so small a detail,
but for thirty years I had never heard his name without
thinking of two hungry Irishwomen tearing and hacking
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
at a cold roast chicken in an Egyptian railway carriage
under the eyes of a tall fair Highlander who had
already dined.
CHAPTER XXII
HAPPY DAYS AND HOT WEATHER
MY brother-in-law had had a tennis-court made just
behind the new quays of Alexandria, and here we had
plenty of good exercise as the spring drew on. The
Orion, commanded by that fine officer and enigmatical
character Robert O'Brien Fitzroy, was now relieved
by the Invincible, Captain R. More Molyneux, and
among her gunroom officers I found such a set of
cronies and playmates as I have never had before or
since. From Mr. Prendergast down to little Mr.
Everett, whose dark eyes illumined a small pale face,
I knew them all, and Francis Pollen was not only an
ideal sub., but my sworn ally. My sister, with a reck-
lessness born of inexperience and the wish that I
should be happy, imposed no restrictions on my asso-
ciation with this pack of boys, and as I was older than
the eldest of them by two years I considered myself
greatly their senior and far ahead of them in worldly
wisdom. In fact they appeared to me like a group of
schoolboys, only more amusing and more capable
than any schoolboys I had ever met. No one objected
to my becoming an honorary member of the gunroom
no
HAPPY DAYS AND HOT WEATHER
mess, unless it was the naval instructor, who was
reported to have said that I exercised a mischievous
influence upon the junior officers.* Before I went to
tea in the gunroom, a not infrequent occurrence, a
general clear up of debris took place there. The only
chair with a back to it was set for me, and I was regaled
with bread and butter with brown sugar on top of it.
The gunroom officers' housekeeping was meagre and
the table equipage miscellaneous, but I had the best
they could afford, and it tasted very good. To this
day I have a copy of Nares' " Seamanship " from which
I will never part, presented to me by the gunroom mess.
It has an illuminated inscription on the flyleaf. Mr.
Prendergast and Mr. Poland, senior midshipmen,
were my kind and indulgent friends, and almost with-
out exception their eleven juniors made niches for
themselves in my affections of which neither time nor
death has deprived them. There was Stafford Brown,
as naughty as he was clever and original ; T. C. Smyth,
whose crowing laugh would have infected a Church
congress ; W. H. D'Oyly, a most faithful friend, and
his cousin Hastings Shakespear, a handsome boy and
admirable dancer ; Frank O. Creagh-Osborne, small,
dark, and neat with an engaging smile that showed the
* So many of my Invincible cronies have attained distinction
in the Service that I cannot think my influence proved as deleterious
as their naval instructor anticipated. Mr. Prendergast has reached
flag-rank, Mr. D'Oyly is well up the captains' list, Mr. Creagh-
Osborne is a captain and Superintendent of Compasses at the
Admiralty, Mr. Hyde-Parker must be among the first fifty captains,
and " little Mr. Everett " with the bright black eyes is a commodore
and a C.B. As Admiralty regulations forbid me to see a current
" Navy List," I write under correction.
Ill
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
whitest of teeth, and two very small naval cadets,
E. Hyde-Parker and Allan Everett.
One, alas ! of the merry company died young
Felix Webber. Had he lived he would surely have made
a name for himself. Malta fever need not have robbed
the Navy of an officer of such great promise, but he
was left lying on the deck of a dockyard tender for
hours in a snowstorm the day he reached Plymouth
invalided from Malta in 1884, and, though he rallied
when placed under the care of his family, convulsions
of the brain supervened and put an end to his short
life in the following year.
My sister Rosy was undoubtedly a lenient chaperon.
She was justified in believing I could look after myself,
but in addition to the gallant band of junior officers
of H.M.S. Invincible I made a friend of one of the
lieutenants who was undeniably a detrimental. This
was Mr. Poore, and he very soon became a habitue of
Port House, a tennis and dancing partner, and, among
other things, my rowing instructor. He would bring
the skiff in to the landing-place just below the house,
and many a pleasant hour did we have on the water
with every officer-of-the-watch in the harbour acting
duenna ! But prospectless lieutenants must not be
pressing suitors, and, though Mr. Poore and I were
each equally certain of our own individual feelings
for the other, the Invincible left for Malta without
any interchange of confidence respecting their con-
dition.
Summer was now well advanced and my father and
Lily had returned to Ireland, but I remained with
112
HAPPY DAYS AND HOT WEATHER
Rosy, and there was still plenty to amuse me, although
the harbour had lost the ship which for four months
had provided so much that was agreeable in the way of
daily intercourse. The Khedive had transferred his
Court from Cairo to Alexandria, and various persons
and personages, useful or important, had come north at
the same time. Among these were Mr. (now Sir
Chauncey) Cartwright, second secretary to Sir Edward
Malet at Cairo, and Major Chermside (later Sir Herbert
Chermside and Governor of Queensland), of the Egyptian
Army. They often spent a couple of morning hours
at Port House, perhaps because it was near the
Khedive's Palace at Ras-el-Tin, perhaps because there
was very little to do. I may have been pugnacious
I am sure Major Chermside was and I think I dis-
agreed quite as often as I agreed with Mr. Cartwright,
but of course the weather was hot and trying. One
day Major Chermside said he had not been inside a
church for several years, and I, inspired by a wish
to do missionary work or simply by a demon of aggra-
vation, remarked : " Then the sooner you go the better.
To-morrow is Sunday, and the hours of service are so
and so." Major Chermside went, but on his next visit
to Port House told me that the pew-opener at St.
Mark's a dignified Englishman had refused to let
him worship with his tarboosh on his head, so he had
indignantly withdrawn, feeling that the Khedive whom
he served had been insulted. As a matter of fact a
special clause in the Egyptian Army orders had been
inserted permitting Christian officers to remove the
tarboosh when in church, but this had been overlooked
A.W. 113 i
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
by Major Chermside, who had not previously found
occasion to take advantage of the indulgence.
A huge moonlight picnic was given at Aboukir by
members of the Greek colony about this time. We
went, I think, by train, and there were droves of
donkeys waiting to convey us to the seashore. After
a cold collation we danced the "Lancers" on donkey-
back a most hilarious and confusing proceeding
and when this was over we were all so exhausted that
we dismounted and sat about on the sand. My cavalier,
whom I liked particularly and who had been a most
acceptable partner at many dances, was now inspired
to address me in warmer terms than usual. We had
always spoken French together, but at this moment
he most unfortunately dropped into English and began
his speech with " Graves, darling ! " which struck
me as so comic that I was unable to respond suitably, or
indeed at all, and welcomed the arrival of a third
person who put an end to the tete-d-tete. This incident
had no sequel. It merely illustrates the midsummer
madness induced by meridional moonlight.
Cholera broke out at Cairo about June 2Oth, 1883,
and raged desperately among the native population.
The highest daily death rate was seven hundred and fifty,
and if we at Alexandria had not been befriended by the
strong northerly wind which prevails there until August
arrives with its stuffy heat, we should not have remained
on at Port House, as we did, for another six weeks.
Then my brother-in-law decreed that Rosy and I
should return to England, whither the children had
preceded us in May, and, as it was doubtful whether
114
HAPPY DAYS AND HOT WEATHER
we could board the homeward-bound P. and O. Thames
at Suez, we went round to Port Sa'id in an empty
steamer and took up our quarters in a most comfortless
hotel, now extinct, where we waited for five blistering,
sweltering days till our ship appeared. The cholera
cordon round Port Said effectually prevented the
ingress of fresh vegetables, meat and poultry, and
we should have fared badly had not the Iris, com-
manded by Captain Rice (now Admiral Sir Ernest
Rice), been close under our lee. I do not think we had
any meals except early breakfast at that horrible
hotel, where mosquitoes, flies, and fleas, and worse
than fleas, were rampant, for Captain Rice's hospitality
was unstinted, and we were also kindly entertained by
the very beautiful woman so long known as the Queen
of Port Said, Mrs. Royle. But the Iris departed before
the Thames came in, and the wailing of her syren (the
first I had heard) heralded for us the inauguration of
a forty-eight hours' diet composed almost entirely of
bread and ginger-ale.
We flew on board our steamer as soon as her ladders
were down, only to find ourselves very much de trop,
since all the Indian passengers intending to use the
Alexandria to Brindisi short-cut were debarred by
Italian quarantine regulations from doing so. Why the
ship took passengers from Egypt at all I cannot say,
but there were several from Cairo who might reasonably
have been regarded with greater suspicion than our-
selves, for cholera only broke out at Alexandria ten
days after our departure. Some second-class cabins
had been converted by a stroke of the pen into first-
US i 2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
class, and in one of these we passed a night of misery.
It was very small, the port was closed as the ship was
coaling, and there was a violently animated coal shoot
just the other side of our bulkhead. Small wonder
that we arrived in the saloon with little appetite for
the breakfast at which we found ourselves brigaded
with the rest of the " sick Egyptians," as we heard
ourselves called by an anxious mother adjuring her
little boy to give us a wide berth. But after breakfast
a most remarkable thing happened. The purser came
to tell us that two gentlemen from India (Mr. Troup
and Mr. Lawson), total strangers to us, had volunteered
to give up their beautiful five-berthed cabin off the
first-class children's saloon to us in exchange for our
cramped quarters ! It seemed incredible that two
such unselfish men should exist. Then the wife of an
Egyptian official, more highly placed, or decorated,
than my brother-in-law, protested against our being so
favoured, but the purser maintained that the gentle-
men had named my sister and myself as the ladies
they desired to benefit, pointing out that Mr. and
Mrs. X were already in possession of a genuine first-
class two-berthed cabin. The fact that a coaling
Arab had purloined a black silk stocking belonging to
Mrs. X during the night because she had persisted
in disregarding the advice of the stewardess respecting
the closing of ports had ruffled her temper not a little.
She had actually seen the lean and grimy arm of the
thief as it came through the porthole, and so been in
time to prevent the capture of the second stocking ;
but of what use is a single stocking to anyone possessing
116
RECKLESS IMPRUDENCE
two legs ? The Arab possibly incorporated his booty
with his turban or wore it round his neck on cold days,
but Mrs. X could find no solace in the stocking
which remained to her, divorced as it was for ever
from its legitimate partner.
CHAPTER XXIII
RECKLESS IMPRUDENCE
IT seemed doubtful whether we should return to
Egypt in the following winter (1883 84), but my
father was laid up in London for some weeks in Decem-
ber with so severe an attack of bronchitis that the
doctors hurried him away as soon as he could leave
his bed, and we started for Port Sai'd in the P. and O.
Rosetta, well-named the " Rolling Rosey," a few
days before Christmas. There were a good many
Australians on board, the first I had ever met, but Lily
and I were so overpowered by the twang which dis-
figured the speech of some of the most attractive that
we were well past Gibraltar before we discovered that
it was in most cases a fortuitous, if regrettable, afflic-
tion, not necessarily due to defective education or
breeding.
Captain Brady of the Rosetta was a capital story-
teller, and one of his yarns I have never forgotten.
When he was one of " Green's midshipmen," in the
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
palmy days of the great East Indiamen, a passenger
homeward-bound on board his ship had on more than
one occasion succumbed to the influence of drink.
The culprit was a fine upstanding woman weighing
quite fourteen stone, and when she had transgressed
in this way she became the terror of the stewardesses,
for she was both noisy and violent. Brandy, spirits
of wine, or eau de cologne she obtained somehow, and,
though it was obvious that someone on board supplied
her with these intoxicants, the captain was unable
to lay his hand on the accomplice. He summoned
a posse of midshipmen to his aid and told them that
the next time the stewardess reported Mrs. Z as
the worse for drink and unmanageable they were to
capture and incarcerate her in the sail-room, but they
were to refrain as far as possible from using violence,
since she was, after all, a woman. The occasion soon
arrived and the boys were summoned by the stewardess.
With delicacy and despatch they put the lady feet-
foremost into a huge canvas sack (a " bread bag " of
the largest size), conveyed her to the sail-room, hung
her up on a stout peg just clear of the floor, and left
her there with the rats, innocuous but alarming, for
the night. She never broke out again on that voyage.
The Invincible was again at Alexandria when we
arrived in January, 1884, but not Mr. Poore, who had
been left behind with fever at Port Said. It was not
long, however, before he appeared, and I was hardly
surprised to find him as much my friend as ever, for
the preceding six months had not passed without some
correspondence of a strictly non-committal nature
118
RECKLESS IMPRUDENCE
between Ireland and the Mediterranean Station. I
could not if, I would, trace here the steps which led
to what some people considered the catastrophe of
February 2ist, 1884, but those were very happy and
exciting times. My gunroom friends were no less
companionable because they scented a romance ;
indeed, some of them proved at a slightly later period
willing and capable allies and confidants of two young
people who had fallen into disgrace with their elders
through the reckless imprudence which inspired one
to offer and the other to accept and reciprocate what
no money can buy and no power compel. We did not
like having no prospects, and we could not but admit
the propriety and common sense actuating my father
when he said he could not permit us to become engaged ;
but no considerations of prudence could prevent our
determining to be married, somehow, some day. I
had to stifle Mr. D'Oyly's cordial congratulations and
receive en cachette the token of our secret betrothal
which Mr. Smyth, commissioned by Mr. Poore (doing
a survey job up the Nile), brought me.
From that river survey Mr. Poore returned with his
captain to Cairo on April 7th, only the day before our
steamer left Alexandria for Brindisi. Without leave
he ran down to Alexandria to bid me good-bye, and I
have to thank my brother-in-law for conniving at an
interview of ten precious minutes' duration unsuspected
by my father and sisters.
We landed at Brindisi on our homeward way, spent
a week at Naples before returning to Limerick, and
very soon after I entered upon a period of great
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
anxiety unsolaced by sympathy or support from my
own people. They, influenced by perfectly sound
motives, desired that I should get over my " fancy "
for a detrimental as soon as possible, but I proved
obstinate beyond all expectation.
CHAPTER XXIV
BETSY
DURING the summer of 1884 the health of our dear
and faithful housekeeper, who had been nurse to every-
one of us, began to fail. For some time, though I had
not known it, her heart had been affected, but it was
only at Parknasilla in September that I realised how
serious was her state. She had always been my con-
fidant, and more than ever had I valued her affection
at this time when I could look for no comfort from my
own people. Betsy was not only a most faithful
servant ; she was a woman of strong character and
principle, refined and reticent in situations where her
superiors in station might fail. At twenty-eight she
had entered my father's service, and I often heard him
say she was then the handsomest woman he had ever
seen. She was a " Lancashire Witch," and possessed
the deep blue eyes, black brows and lashes, and
strongly-modelled features of the type. To the day
of her death her wonderful masses of black hair, silvered
I2O
BETSY
only above her forehead, fell to her knees. She rarely
let down the whole of its magnificence at a time,
because it was too heavy to handle conveniently, and
she would comb and brush each " section " separately
before putting it up in the closely-twisted coils which
stood out from her well-shaped head like the convolu-
tions of some great polished snail-shell. For forty-two
years Betsy lived in our family, identifying herself
with our joys and sorrows, watching over us in sickness,
ceaselessly caring for our comfort and well-being ;
darning, patching, and dress-making, washing my
mother's lace, filling every domestic gap, meeting
every domestic crisis, and keeping an eye on the
servants and the stores. It was always " Where is
Betsy ? " " Ask Betsy " when we were grown-up,
as it had been " I want Betsy " when we were small.
Somehow she never seemed to have a favourite amongst
us, and if I took up more of her time and sought her
company and affection oftener than the others it was
because I had been her last baby and because there was
so little mothering in my life that did not come from
her.
During those last weeks she often said to me, " I
wish I could see you married before I go." I do not
think she ever complained, though she suffered both
pain and discomfort, but on the night before she died
she said : "I wish I could get to sleep. My heart's
better, but my legs are worse." I rubbed the poor stiff
legs, and she lay still while I read low and quickly
from an old volume of " Household Words" till she
dropped off. Next morning she was dead. She had
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
slipped away from us in the early hours when brave
souls so often quit the worn-out bodies they have
animated long after less valiant fighters would have
given up the struggle. My first thought was " She
is happy and at rest," but very soon the overpowering
sense of loneliness created by her loss came upon me
and I mourned and could find no comfort anywhere.
I hid myself in a remote corner of the grounds when
the unbearably prosaic preparations for the funeral
began. I could not sleep at nights for listening for
the cough that had troubled her rest, and though
everyone, high and low, old and young, grieved for
her, there seemed nobody but myself who could not
do without her.
The whole countryside followed her to the grave one
bitter October day when the Reeks were covered with
snow and the sea and sky were of the hard dazzling
blue that only a nor'-westerly wind brings. Her
coffin was carried to the churchyard, two miles and a
half away, by relays of willing countrymen men who
actually quarrelled among themselves for the privilege
and gave up with a bad grace when their turn was
over. For weeks afterwards I dreaded to go outside
the grounds, for women, and men too, would waylay
me with tears in their eyes to pour some long story of
" Miss Robinson's " kindness into my ear, and I could
never listen unmoved. They told me of the dresses and
hats she had contrived for their children out of our
leavings, the " petticuts and shifts " and flannel
jackets and warm caps for themselves ; the " grain o'
tay " and " the bit o' sugar " she would herself buy
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BETSY
for them, the money she had lent them (in some cases
never repaid), the bad hands and legs and the sore
eyes she had dressed and cured, and the good sound
advice she had given them. " She was the grand
woman ; God rest her soul ! " was their invariable
conclusion. And yet she was an Englishwoman and
a Protestant, with a natural leaning towards her
co-religionists.
If Betsy was ever severe in the nursery I have for-
gotten it. When Charley, Bob, and I worried her to
give us figs or almonds and raisins and danced round
her in the storeroom, shouting " Something good !
something good ! " at the top of our voices, she would
sometimes raise hers and say, " Get out from under
my feet, childer, I'm Heaven " (even) " down moidered
with you," or threaten to whip every one of us if we
didn't hold our tongues ; but she never did whip us.
She was a grand woman : God rest her soul !
CHAPTER XXV
H.M. NILE STEAMER NASSIF KHEIR
MEANWHILE Mr. Poore, in command of one of Cook's
Nile steamers, was painfully worrying and scraping
his way up the Nile, which was not " taken at the
flood." Cataract after cataract was scrambled through
and over, repairs hastily effected to the crazy little
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
paddle steamer, and, after many weeks of pulling and
hauling by armies of Arabs, the Nassif Kheir reached
Dongola. Between Dongola, Korti, and the Fourth
Cataract she plied for months as a tug or a troopship,
and it was only after Mr. Poore had left her in January,
1885, to join the Naval Brigade that the useful and
gallant little vessel came to grief.
In a book of extracts from The Times collected
between May, 1884, and February, 1885, I have kept
a record of Mr. Poore's work during that period.
He had returned in April, 1884, to his surveying work
begun in the previous month his charts were still in
use during Lord Kitchener's successful campaign in
1898 and on May 22nd I read that an expedition
under Captain Bedford of the Monarch (afterwards
Admiral Sir F. Bedford), having for its object the
patrolling of the river's banks to keep open the com-
munications between Assouan and Wady Haifa, had
been formed, Three steamers armed with Catlings
and Gardners were to cruise between these points, and
of these two were lost in the cataracts. Lieutenant
Poore, senior of the three lieutenants chosen from the
ships then at Alexandria, commanded the Nassif Kheir,
sole and most useful survivor of the trio. At Assouan
she was prepared to receive men and guns, and figures
in a telegram of June nth as the " armed steamer
Nassif Kheir, arriving at Wady Haifa."
The fall of Berber was announced in the same issue
of The Times. Not till September 2nd was it possible
to attempt the passage of the Wady Haifa cataracts.
Seven hours of toil were required and six hundred
124
H.M. NILE STEAMER NASSIF KHEIR
men were employed in the operation, but she got safely
through the Lower Gates. " A fortnight ago the task
would have been infinitely easier," writes The Times
correspondent, " but nothing was then ready " the
usual comment on British unpreparedness. With a
steadily falling Nile the passage of each successive
cataract became increasingly difficult and dangerous.
" Not the smallest delay has occurred in Egypt,"
continues the correspondent. " Not a moment has
been lost since the arrival of the gear in port, and
officers and men in the armed steamer have worked
night and day to get the material here before it was
too late."
An attempt made on September loth failed, but on
the nth the little Nassif Kheir was, by superhuman
efforts which never ceased all day long, got over two
more " gates." There was not an inch to spare on
either side of the paddles. In the second gate she
struck and grated continually, and at the same time
two hawsers parted, causing her to drift heavily on to
the rocks, where one of her paddles was smashed up.
A boat bringing down a fresh hawser was wrecked,
and the crew of one officer and four men found them-
selves pinned upon a rock in mid-channel. Mr. Poore
used the third and last remaining hawser as a means
of extricating them from their perilous position. He
took a line out with him a bowline along the
hawser, and by means of this they were able to scramble
on board the ship, which was about forty yards away.
The last to reach safety was Mr de Lisle, the young
lieutenant, gallant and beloved, who was afterwards
125
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
killed at Abu Klea in front of his machine-gun, which
had jammed at a critical moment. " Operations
were now suspended for the day. Some little progress
was made."
Again on the I2th the ship was coaxed and hauled
over two difficult gates, and by the evening of the i6th
she had passed the Great Gate Cataract without
accident, though the operation was much more difficult
and dangerous than if performed at the proper season.
" The greatest credit," says The Times correspondent,
" is due to the naval officers and men engaged on this
dangerous task."
From my husband's letters written to me between
May 23rd, 1884, and June 5th, 1885, I have taken the
passages given in the next chapters. The story of
the Nile Expedition and the attempt to relieve Khar-
toum is now ancient history, but certain details con-
nected with it may prove interesting to those of my
readers who remember something of the struggle to
reach Gordon and the lamentable delays which
rendered the struggle abortive.
CHAPTER XXVI
LETTERS FROM THE CATARACTS
\ LIEUTENANT POORE started from Alexandria to
take command of the Nassif Kheir above Assouan
in the last week of May, 1884, and left Assouan with a
126
LETTERS FROM THE CATARACTS
crew of one officer (a sub-lieutenant) and twenty men
on June ist. They had been patrolling the river
between Assouan and Wady Haifa for nearly a month
with nothing of importance to record when Mr. Poore
writes from Philoe :
" Major Kitchener came in from the desert and came to
look me up on board this afternoon, looking like a Bedouin.
We have been working a good deal together lately, a
certain Shemaun of the Mahdi's headmen having slipped
through the Arab outposts, and got up towards Assouan.
Major K. went to try and catch him, and I did all I
could to help without being officious, and it has been great
fun. Now he has gone back to make things unpleasant
elsewhere."
" July i$th. KOROSOKO. Last night I got Major
Kitchener off to dinner in Arab rig and mystified the blue-
jackets completely. This wild sheikh, who came off and
performed a pas seul on my sacred quarter-deck and sat
on his haunches in a corner skirling an Arab song, was
too much for them, and I am sure the skipper's intimacy
with an Arab was voted risky. Hassan, the old inter-
preter (one of Cook's men), couldn't make him out at
first, but later when I asked him to find out the visitor's
tribe and all about him he smiled all over his face and
said, ' I think he b'long England country, this sheikh.'
We had a wild ride in the evening, self, Scudamore
(the Special, Times), Rundle (A.D.C. to Kitchener),
Kitchener in his Arab get-up on a trotting drome-
dary with two followers on dromedaries, and two wild
sheikhs (genuine) on ponies, whooping and yelling a most
motley crew, and in the eyes of the villagers not at all
safe customers.
" I heard a funny story the other day about Colonel
Duncan. It seems he said to one of his Egyptian officers
when arranging for gun practice, ' Demain nous aimerons
127
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
a deux mille metres.' It is possible, I have reason to
believe, to aimer at even longer range."
" August yd, 8.30 p.m. SECOND CATARACT. One of
the hardest and pleasantest days I have had for years.
Started from Wady Haifa at 8 a.m., and came up to the
first gate of the Cataract (the first steamer to try it for
nine years), To begin with, an obstructive rock of the
best granite simply drove itself against our nose, and I then
discovered that the pilots were fools. After that we stuck
in the sand, so we made our own arrangements, and crossed
the bad bit safely. The pilots again proved blind guides
in a narrow place no wider than an ordinary street with a
torrent running through it. We bumped with a venge-
ance, but no damage was done. Then Commander Hammill
(second in command to Captain Bedford) decided that
Naval people only were to work the whole thing, so we
started off again with myself in charge in the ship, and
waving my orders to the people on the hawsers ashore.
I never so perfectly enjoyed myself before. There was a
mass of foaming water all round us in a narrow channel
with steep rocky sides, a network of rocks before and
behind us, hawsers from us to the bank, manned by
crowds of excited natives from everywhere, and my
wits sharpened by the pickle we were in. I wish I could
describe it, but I am completely at an end of myself;
my voice is like a crow's, my nose is like a red-hot
coal, and we start early to-morrow for another day's
work of the same sort. We made seven miles in twelve
hours to-day. It's the greatest luck to be first over this
cataract, and I don't see how many more steamers can
come up this year."
" August 5th. SECOND CATARACT. I have been too
hopeful, for we are still in the same place I wrote from two
days ago. It is what everyone said ; the business was put
off too long, and endless delays have occurred, but I
thought we might just do it, and now the river has fallen
too low for us to get over the next gate. There is one
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LETTERS FROM THE CATARACTS
cataract half a mile astern of us, and another half a mile
ahead, the river steadily falling, and no chance, apparently,
of getting on or back."
" August 6th. SAME PLACE. Whoever imagined that
steamers could be taken through cataracts without risk
was a fool. Lose the steamer if you like, but never be
turned back by the first difficulty. A wire from Dongola
says the river is falling, and is six feet lower than
when Gordon's steamers went over. I am beginning to
think that a low Nile and Gladstone combined make
an insurmountable obstacle to our success. I, personally,
would take my chance to-morrow, but I am not in
authority."
" August 2oth. WADY HALFA. I shall not be happy
till I am well above this cataract (2nd), for then I shall not
have to do tug-boat, and be sent back to Philce never-
endingly."
" August 2ist. WADY HALFA. Four English regiments
are coming up here, and eighty bluejackets to work the
cataracts, and the old active service excitement makes
me feel happy. I suppose they will push troops up to
Dongola, and make that our base for the present, but
they must be quick about it, for the Nile waits for no
man, and low Nile will hamper everything. The natives
are quite upset by the warlike look of things now that
swarms of Englishmen are coming up. They didn't mind
the Egyptian troops."
" August 25th. SECOND CATARACT. A long day, 6 a.m.
to 6 p.m., with the thermometer at 105 hi the afternoon
and myself up to my waist in water most of the time ;
but that is pleasant. Same thing to-morrow, but I like it
hugely."
" August 27th. Working from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. without
a break. To-morrow we start again at 3.30 a.m. It is
worrying work and sometimes I feel I could do it all so
much better if I had a free hand, and I don't generally
feel like that."
A.W. 129 K
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
" August zgth. BETWEEN PHILCE AND WADY HALFA.
Things look a little more hopeful now that our ' only
General ' is coming out, but it is the oddest business I have
ever had to do with. There is no real head to it ; nearly
everyone seems bitten with the desire to be well hi the
expedition himself, and works for that end. I wish to
goodness we had Commander Hammill at Assouan, but he
has gone to Wady Haifa, where I hope to be in three days,
and then I shall be under his orders. I believe in this route
now instead of the Suakim to Berber one, but the difficulties
of transport are tremendous. The old story ' Everything
begun too late, and done with a scramble.' I took the first
detachment of the 35th to Wady Haifa on the I5th, and
the last only started on the 27th ! Captain Hammill has
seventy men and officers with him at Wady Haifa Mr.
Pollen is one of them and I expect they are tearing their
hair over the non-arrival of the hawsers I am now bringing
them. Sometimes when we are tied up I go for a moonlight
ramble in the desert, somewhat to the surprise of the Arabs,
but my old interpreter says proudly, ' No wolf or hyena
ever touch the captain. He too much clever man ! ' "
" September gth. SECOND CATARACT. A most success-
ful day this time, but a long one 4.30 a.m. to 7 p.m., and
off again to-morrow early to get through a very nasty gate.
Only good swimmers are left on board, and we are all
provided with inflated goatskins. Imagine me commanding
a penny steamboat, carefully embracing a thing like a
corpulent black pig ! We are far too late in attempting
this job and the risk is considerable, so it isn't a picnic,
and all our private gear has been sent ashore."
" nth September. SECOND CATARACT. Yesterday was
an unsuccessful day. We were nine hours actually in the
cataract, and I am tired, for nerves and wits were strung
to the highest pitch, and the poor old Nassif Kheir is
rather a wreck. 5 p.m. River falling fast and we can't be
blamed if we fail to pull the ship over dry land. The fault
will lie at the door of the home authorities."
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LETTERS FROM THE CATARACTS
" I2th September. SECOND CATARACT. Great success
yesterday. We managed to get over the gate that was
beating us and got two miles further up the river. The
loth was a most exciting day. We started early to cross
one bad gate, with Sir Evelyn Wood and a brilliant staff
to watch the struggle from the shore. Everything went
well at first and we were pulled up with the help of a little
steaming without bumping very many rocks on the way.
At last we reached this gate with a torrent running through
it and jagged rocks behind and on both sides of a narrow
channel of safety."
i6th September. SECOND CATARACT. Had to leave off
suddenly and haven't had a moment to write to you since,
and now here we are, having worked our way steadily up
to the foot of the Great Gate which we are to try to-day.
It is a dangerous business and I have volunteered to go
over the cataract in the steamer, taking six men (also
volunteers) with me. I couldn't do less, could I ? for she
is my own little ship after all, so you mustn't mind,"
" i8th September. SECOND CATARACT. At last we are
nearly at the end of our difficulties here, for we have passed
every gate, sixteen in all, and have now only one small
one between us and the open river. We are alongside the
bank now and repairing damages, for we knocked a hole
in the poor little ship yesterday at the last gate, which
would seem unlucky only that we have by the merest shave
missed losing her altogether just six times since we started.
The strain has been rather exhausting, but there is heaps to
be done, and we must push on for Dongola as soon as
possible, with four more cataracts to negotiate on the
way."
K 2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
CHAPTER XXVII
MORE LETTERS FROM THE CATARACTS
" September 2gth. SEMNEH CATARACT. After the
Second Cataract we went on to Sarras, eighteen miles with-
out a cataract, which was refreshing, but after that we had
to run our nose into the nearest soft place, build a tem-
porary dock, by which we got the ship's bows high and dry,
and patch up a most disastrous leak. Two days later we
were able to start again and got over another small cataract
by the skin of our teeth, and on the third day we got over
another which was pretty nasty. We started well and
got safely through the boiling water at the foot of the gate
with hawsers manned by six hundred men towing us along
the bank and the ship steaming full speed. When we came
to the full rush of water we hung for nearly three quarters
of an hour unable to make an inch and were nearly swept
into the high rocky cliffs that formed the bank. But
inch by inch we gained ground and came steadily up to
the point where I knew the greatest danger lay, for a strong
current rushed round it, and if our bows were swept away
from the land we should have turned straight across the
current instead of facing it and so gone broadside on to a
ridge of rocks three feet above the water and six feet across.
Well, we were swept round ; I had to cut away two out of
our three hawsers and trust to one holding us, and like a
flash we went down the cataract broadside on and swept
by a miracle over (or through) a ridge of sunken rocks,
just clearing the ones I mentioned before. The ship was
laying over all the time till we could hardly keep our footing
on deck. At last our one hawser tautened again and slowly
our head was pulled straight to the stream with a desperate
strain on the hawser, and there we were in a raging torrent
with rocks on both sides, and astern of us only boiling water
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MORE LETTERS FROM THE CATARACTS
and more rocks with one little channel through them
barely the width of the ship. If the hawser carried away
we should go broadside on to the rocks. Six times we
struggled by dint of hauling and steaming to the top of the
cataract, and six times we were swept back. The last time
we struck a sunken rock and broke up our port paddle,
and then I felt that the hawser had gone, but I couldn't
see where, and I feared the poor old N. K. had made her
last trip. Then to my amazement when we made one more
try we got over, and in half an hour found ourselves safely
tied up to the bank with Commander Hammill saying,
' Well, my dear Poore, I am very glad to see you again, for
I never expected to.' '
" October 2nd. ON THE WAY TO DONGOLA. My writing
is bad, for in our struggle with the cataracts I have knocked
pieces off most of my fingers and am going about with both
hands bandaged. Old Hassan, the interpreter, came to me
when our fight with the Semneh Cataract was over and said,
' Look, Captain, all our beard turn grey.' '
" October jth. ON THE WAY TO DONGOLA. I am scrib-
bling this perched up on the wooden awning of the N. K.,
where I seem to have spent all my days from dawn to dark
since we left W. Haifa a month ago. It has been a long
month, and sometimes I have felt so old and worn out after
the strain of a long and anxious day that I want to sit
still and think of nothing. It seemed glorious work at
first, but I have changed my mind now and never want to
see another cataract as long as I live after this job is
finished. It may be very nice for people in good steamers,
but I have to be all the time scheming and inventing a way
of getting this poor old barky over each one till I am pretty
nearly sick of it. Some of the river is very pretty, with
mountains rising from the bank, where there are little
patches of golden sand and here and there a date grove.
A few rocky islands and a strip of tumbling water improve
the scenery but turn my hair grey. Later. Just got off a
sandbank, but a sandbank is a luxury after all the rocks
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fcAN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
we have bumped lately, and now we are at the foot of our
next gate."
" October I2th. Arrived at Dongola two days ago and
I thanked God.* We had a most enthusiastic reception
and now I am going on to Merawi and as far up as I can
get, with Sir Charles Wilson, R.E. (whose mission is chiefly
political), on board."
" 2^th October. ON THE WAY TO MERAWI. I must tell
you about the Mudir of Dongola .. He is a very wide-awake
lunatic, and, I should think, more far-seeing than most
sane people who have an eye to the main chance. His
great idea is that he is the head of the whole expedition,
and that all of us, from Lord Wolseley down to the
smallest drummer boy, are at his beck and call. He is
humoured to the top of his bent, because his word is all-
powerful up here, and at present we are rather in his hands,
having only one regiment and one hundred and fifty
Mounted Infantry here. As it is he reigns over us, and
stores and provisions are coming in by tons every day,
but should he turn huffy and stop the sale of corn and
cattle not a thing could we get for love or money. I shall
be glad when we have made our footing good, for this state
* Times special correspondent, October loth, 1884 : " Nothing
could have been more opportune at the present moment, when the
minds of the population are excited by rumours of the approach of
an army of the Mahdi, than the arrival of H.M.S. Nassif Kheir
to-day. As she steamed up to Dongola amid the cheers of the
troops a great effect was produced among the people, who crowded
down to the bank at the news of her approach, and there has been
a visible change of attitude in the bazaar. The danger of steaming
up hundreds of miles of rapids studded with rocks and obstructions
can only be appreciated by those who have made the journey. The
Nassif Kheir was hauled up the rapids of Semneh, Ambugol and
Tangoor by three hundred men " (there must have been three
thousand at the Great Gate at Wady Haifa), " and steamed the rest
of the distance. Over and over again she had the narrowest escapes
of being wrecked, but thanks to the care and good management of
her commander and crew she was got through without serious
mishap. The appearance of the white ensign at this remote point
in Africa is a great feat.
134
MORE LETTERS FROM THE CATARACTS
of things is rather maddening. On the afternoon of my
arrival I went with General Stewart and five of the staff
to be presented to " His Excellency." When we arrived
the Mudir was praying (he always prays on these occasions) .
This time he prayed for half an hour while we twiddled our
thumbs. Then he appeared ; we rose, doffed our hats
and grovelled. The General was permitted to touch his
hand, but the remainder of us had not that honour. After
seating himself he permitted us to be seated. Said the
General, ' This is Captain Poore, who commands the steamer
which arrived this morning. Allow me to present him to
your Excellency.' H.E. looked straight in front of him and
told his beads ! You can imagine my wrath. The reception
over, we retired with deep bows, and first I bubbled over
with indignation and then I laughed at the absurdity of it
all till I nearly had hysterics. Next day the quartermaster
came down to me and said he thought ' one o' them
Pashas ' was coming on board. There was my friend
with Colonel Colville (the latter to take care of me, I
presume). H.E. bustled up to the gun-platform, had the
gun explained to him, said he didn't think much of it,
informed me that it must be removed and a stronger
platform made to mount one of his own brass pop-guns.
When this was done he would bring his soldiers on board
and proceed to Merawi to fight the rebels. Apparently I,
the brave and good Senior Naval Officer at Dongola, and
C. in C. of H.M.S. Nassif Kheir, was to be dispensed with !
Next he went down below and poked about in my cabin,
thought it would do nicely for him, asked if I had any
photographs to show him, and seemed to find the emphasis
of my negative unnecessary. Then he sent for his astro-
logical machine (which I covet) and explained that he could
by its aid tell what anyone in any part of the world was
thinking about. I trust he divined my thoughts, for he
very soon departed, saying he thought the N. K. was a nice
steamer and would suit him very well. Next day he very
nearly did come, but, thank goodness, the stars were unpro-
135
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
pitious and he decided to wait, and merely prophesied that
we should all have our throats cut by the rebels at Merawi.
Just before this he had reviewed the English troops and
they marched past and saluted ! It is the funniest bit of
diplomacy I have yet seen. He makes heaps of money
out of us, for all provisions, etc., are bought through him
and he simply says, ' I have had no money for three days ;
I can't buy any more provisions unless you give me 2,000,
and he gets it."*
From the middle of October, 1884, until January loth,
1885, the Nassif Kheir was kept busy running between
Hannek, at the head of the Third Cataract, and Korti
with detachments and stores.
" January qth, 1885. Now I am struggling up from
Debbeh to Korti with a heavy load and towing two heavy
boats. There are now so many lieutenants up here senior
to me that my chance of promotion isn't too good. I
really don't know what the Nile Expedition would have
done without this old tub, and I trust an ungrateful country
will recognise her commander's valuable services. A
pension as well as promotion would be a gracious acknow-
ledgment, but one or the other would be thankfully
received."
* Times correspondent, December aoth, 1884 : " The gentle
but firm pressing back of the Mudir into his proper place albeit
with honours bestowed on him for what he had accomplished
has been well done by Lord Wolseley, and on their final interview
between the two in Dongola it was evident more than on any previous
occasion that the Mudir was acknowledging even to himself that
he had found a master."
136
Photo, by G. West and Son, Southsea
COMMANDER RICHARD POORE
(Naval Brigade Nile Expedition)
1885
FROM KORTI TO GUBAT AND BACK
CHAPTER XXVIII
FROM KORTI TO GUBAT AND BACK
" January qth. Hope to be relieved of my command
to-morrow and join the Second Division of the Naval
Brigade. We have been running night and day, and it is
always ' Glad to see you, Poore. What have you brought
and when will you be ready to start again ? ' However, I
expect to meet the N.B.'s boats presently, go on to Korti
with them, and thence across the desert to Metemmeh,
where Gordon's steamers ought to be. My baggage, bed
and all, is limited to forty pounds, so, as your letters weigh
at least a quarter of that, they must, I regret to say, be
left behind."
" 2jth January. GAKDUL WELLS, SUDAN. Got here
yesterday after a long and thirsty camel ride of one hundred
miles of desert, and to-morrow we go on to Metemmeh.
We only heard of the hard fighting at Abu Klea (in which
the First Division of the Naval Brigade took part) after
we started from Korti."
" February ist, 1885. GUBAT, NEAR METEMMEH. Well
and happy, with heaps to do . We came on yesterday expect-
ing an attack every minute, but nothing more exciting
than an occasional interchange of shots with prowling
Arabs happened. I once wanted to have an experience of
desert life, but I find I don't like getting only two pints of
water per diem and entirely dispensing with washing. I
have lived in my clothes and boots for eight days and
nights up at 4.30 a.m., load camels, have breakfast
(short commons, too) , start at dawn and march till dusk ;
then supper and to bed, expecting to be demolished by
Arabs before dawn. News of the fall of Khartoum reached
us to-day a bad business indeed, and for ourselves the loss
of two steamers is serious, for we are left with only two of
137
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
the very shakiest penny boats, one of which has just gone
up the river with Lord Charles Beresford* to rescue the
crews of the two others, and I am here in command of only
fifty bluejackets. I sleep just outside poor Sir Herbert
Stewart's hut. He is desperately bad."f
" i^th February. A convoy came in from Korti yester-
day while I was up the river having a little skirmish in
my small penny steamer, and when I got back I was quite
thankful to find General Buller and the greater part of the
Royal Irish had at last arrived, for we have been for nine-
teen days without a sign from Korti. A mail came with
them, but not a line for me from anyone. I've been a
month without letters now."
" iSth February. ABU KLEA WELLS, BAYUDA DESERT.
Well and flourishing and more to do than ever, for Lord
Charles does run his second in command about and no
mistake. But I like it and the work immensely. My good
luck has come all together. The day before we left Gubat
I had a telegram from my mother to tell me of my pro-
motion (4th February, 1885) sent over with important
despatches, and in the same telegram she tells me that a
distant cousin, a poor crippled old lady whom I sometimes
went to see when I was in London on leave, has died and
left me 4,000 ! Everyone here is so nice about my pro-
* Times, January i2th, 1885 : "A considerable amount of
sympathy is expressed with Commander Hammill, R.N., who,
having rendered invaluable services in surveying the cataracts
and generally in connexion with the work of river transport has now
been shelved by the appointment of Lord Charles Beresford to
command the Naval Brigade. It is understood that Commander
Hammill has refused to act as second in command or to succeed
Lord C. Beresford as Naval A.D.C. to Lord Wolseley. The feeling
in the Navy is stronger because Captain Bedford, who organised
the Nile gunboat service, has been superseded by officers sent out
from England. It is regrettable that, even in favour of an officer
of undoubted ability like Lord C. Beresford, the services of naval
officers of equal ability and greater local experience gained during
the hardest part of the campaign should have been slighted at the
moment of decisive action.'
| Mortally wounded at Abu Klea and lingered three weeks.
138
FROM KORTI TO GUBAT AND BACK
motion and they all call it ' well earned,' which is very
satisfactory."*
Though his comrades at Gubat welcomed Lieutenant
Poore's promotion to Commander, it is not to be
supposed that all the three hundred and seven lieu-
tenants over whose heads he passed could feel equally
enthusiastic. Many of them were probably ignorant
of the fact that his claims for promotion were not based
merely on his inclusion in the Naval Brigade attached
to Sir H. Stewart's column which crossed the Bayuda
Desert to Gubat. It was mainly due to his services
on the Nile between March, 1884 (when he went up
with his captain to make a survey of the river from
Assouan to Wady Haifa), and January 8th, 1885,
that he mounted his third stripe just before he had
completed nine years as a lieutenant. But even with
so much strenuous service to his credit as was repre
sented by the negotiation in an ancient excursion
steamer and under circumstances of peculiar difficulty
and danger of hundreds of miles of cataracts and
rapids deemed impassable at the season, he might not
have been rewarded with promotion had not the
regrettable loss at Abu Klea of Lieutenant Pigott
removed an officer of exceptional capacity and charac-
ter who was senior to himself. t
* When these two pieces of good news reached Mr. Poore he
thought it in the highest degree unlikely that the force to which he
belonged would ever see England again.
| Lieutenant Poore had been mentioned in despatches for good
work at, and after, the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882. He
had been one of the small party who swam ashore from the Invincible
and spiked the guns of Fort Mex.
139
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
" March 8th, 1885. KORTI. Got in very thirsty and tired
yesterday evening, and last night I slept without my boots
on for the first time since January 21 st, and my feet were
so cold. Now I am comparatively clean, and I should feel
fairly respectable if there wasn't half a gale of wind blow-
ing clouds of dust over everything. I slept in a tent last
night for the first time since we left here, and found it so
stuffy that I rolled myself up in a blanket and lay on the
ground outside. I must go back a bit and tell you how
things happened. It was on January 3oth that we (Second
Division) reached Abu Klea on our way to Gubat. The
battlefield was a most gruesome sight. One poor little
fellow not more than twelve years old was lying under a
bush with his hands under his head looking as if he was
asleep. We pushed on the same night, hearing we should
have to fight our way on to Metemmeh (which, by the way,
we never took. Gubat was our headquarters). We had
two guns (R.A.) and about four hundred of the Camel
Corps not enough to do large fighting with, particularly
as we had a convoy of provisions to protect. Everyone
was very glad to see us next day at Gubat, as their stores
were nearly exhausted. On the ist we got the news of the
fall of Khartoum and the loss of the two steamers, which
put us in a very awkward position. Lord Charles started at
noon with one of the two remaining steamers, leaving me
in charge of the other half of the Naval Brigade. Some-
one had to be left, as we did not know when we might be
attacked, or whether we might have to attack Metemmeh in
self-defence, but I did not like being left behind."*
* Of the officers who started from Korti with the First Division
of the Naval Brigade Lieutenants Pigott and de Lisle were both
killed at Abu Klea. Lieutenants Van Koughnet and Poore, of the
Second Division, arrived at Gubat fit for service, but the former was
wounded while accompanying Lord Charles Beresford on his expe-
dition to the rescue of the steamers disabled between Gubat and
Khartoum. These two steamers had been sent down from Khartoum
by Gordon to meet the relieving force at Gubat, and were manned
by Gordon's faithful troops, supplemented by a detachment of the
35th. It was disastrous that no British officer on board these
140
FROM KORTI TO GUBAT AND BACK
" Lord Charles came back on the 3rd (February), and
after that we used to go up and down the river on foraging
expeditions and shoot people and be shot at. This went on
till the nth when Buller came in with six companies of the
Royal Irish. The I3th was spent in destroying everything
we could not carry on our limited number of very weak
camels, spiking the steamers' guns and destroying their
machinery, and on the I4th we started off at daylight for
Howeiat Wells. Much to our surprise we passed through
the belt of thick bush twelve miles from Metemmeh without
seeing a soul, though a party of convoyed sick and wounded
had been attacked there the previous day. Got to Howeiat
at noon on the I5th and entrenched ourselves there. On
the 1 6th at dusk the enemy opened fire on us from some
hills commanding the Abu Klea Wells and made us spend
a most uncomfortable night and following morning, when
they brought up a field-gun which the R.A. soon silenced.
I do not like being shot at all night, and it cost us thirty
killed and wounded with nothing to show for it. We
remained at Abu Klea till the 23rd when, camels having
been sent from Gakdul, we started off at dusk on our march
and passed through a nasty series of rocky passes where
we could have been knocked to pieces if they had only been
held by a few well-led men. At midnight we reached the
open desert, felt safe, and slept soundly. General Buller
was asleep the instant he lay down and never stirred till
boats could speak Arabic, and our force had to rely upon the ser-
vices and the good faith of a Greek interpreter. This man was
responsible for informing the British O. C. that Gordon had been
done to death and that the Mahdists were in overwhelming force.
In this connection I may mention that Major Kitchener, Major
Schafer, and Lieutenant Julian Baker, proficient Arabic scholars
with exceptional knowledge of the tribes of the Sudan, were all
retained at Korti. Major Kitchener had actually gone as far as
Gakdul Wells with the First Division of the Expeditionary Force,
but was recalled thence to Korti ! Months later Major Kitchener
said to my husband when they were talking over this incident,
" Never mind. I shall come back here some day and finish this
business." He did finish it in 1898.
141
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
we had to be off again in the morning. We neither met nor
saw anything of the enemy beyond a few of their scouts who
came up to us during the midday halt and fired a few shots,
but did no damage. And that was the last we saw of them. *
" A very thirsty, fagging march brought us to Gakdul
on the 26th. There weren't enough camels, and I preferred
to march with my men, but a long course of bad water and
scanty food had made me very seedy between Abu Klea
and Gakdul. However, there was an enterprising Greek
at Gakdul who had brought over a couple of camel-loads of
jam, etc., from Lord knows where, so I laid in a small
stock of jam at five shillings a pot, cocoa-and-milk at six
shillings a tin, two tins of soup at six shillings, and got a
bottle of whiskey for ten shillings. The craving I had for
something sweet was extraordinary, and I lived on jam and
cocoa for three days and had a glass of grog before my
bedtime pipe, and now I am quite fit again. We left
Gakdul on the 28th and arrived here yesterday (March yth)
and now I am on my way down to see if we can raise the
poor old Nassif Kheir, which has been sent to the bottom
by my successor." They talk of another expedition to
Khartoum after the summer, but I can't see what would be
gained. If we take Khartoum we must hold it if we are to
make our power felt in this country, and we should need a
huge army to keep the communications open. If the
Mahdi is coming to Egypt we can wait for him at Haifa,
with good water communications and easy routes for rein-
forcements and stores, and fight him on our own ground.
If he doesn't advance his prestige is gone."
There was, of course, no immediate sequel to this
expedition, and after two months of trying river work,
* Major Kitchener told Commander Poore some months later
that only eight hours after the departure of the British from Abu
Klea Wells the whole of the Mahdi's force attacked our deserted
defences at that place. What their numbers were one cannot
guess ; our force was barely twelve hundred men of all arms and
ranks. It was a very near thing.
142
FROM KORTI TO GUBAT AND BACK
which included salvage and surveying, Commander
Poore was invalided home with fever and dysentery.
On his way down the river he received a one-word
telegram from me in reply to his request that my
father would now sanction our engagement. " The
answer was in the affirmative."
All this time I had heard but twice of Mr. Poore from
friends in Egypt. A letter from Mr. Pollen contained
a glowing account of his cataract-climbing in Sep-
tember, 1884, but the writer was shortly after laid low
with enteric and invalided home. My brother-in-law,
Massie Blomfield, wrote later : "A certain lieutenant,
not unknown to you, seems to be covering himself
with glory." But it was cruelly hard that I should not
have been permitted to tell my friends and acquain-
tances that the Lieutenant Poore whose portrait
appeared with that of his little steamer in the
Graphic was my property, and I am sure the kind
Dean of Limerick (Dean Bunbury, who succeeded
my father as Bishop in 1899) would never have said
what he did when the news of the fall of Khartoum
reached England had he known of my personal stake
in the relieving expedition. " Now those poor fellows
at Gubat will be cut to pieces before they can recross
the desert to Korti " were his doleful words, and I,
frantic with suspense and misery at the moment,
turned upon this very reverend and good friend and
cried vehemently : " Mr. Dean, I hate you." I did
not apologise in spite of his horrified face, but three
months later when he congratulated me on my engage-
ment he apologised to me.
143
PART III
A COMMANDER'S WIFE, 18851890
CHAPTER XXIX
THE REWARD OF OBSTINACY
OUR prospects now looked bright enough, for my
father had given his consent to our being definitely
and publicly engaged. " But," added the Bishop,
" there must be no talk of marriage." This was some-
what disconcerting, but I had gained the outer lines
of fortification and sat tight.
In early July Commander Poore returned to England
in the hospital ship Ganges. The long strain and hard-
ship combined with persistently recurring attacks of
Indian fever had put him on the sick-list, and when he
reached Limerick he was looking thin and pulled down.
A week or two later the annual migration to Parknasilla
took place, but we two stopped on the way at Mitchels-
town Castle, in Cork, with Anna, Countess of Kingston,
a cousin of my father's. Hers was a beautiful house,
and it was full of beautiful things, for her second
husband, Mr. Webber, was a connoisseur and a judicious
buyer of china and old Italian furniture. But my
feelings were hurt at Mitchelstown by finding Com-
mander Poore regarded as a quantite negligeable.
Unimportant civilians were sent into dinner before him,
and I had my first experience of that to which later I
became accustomed the inexhaustible ignorance of
147 L2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
inland people concerning the Senior Service. That I
myself had been equally unenlightened less than three
years previously did not occur to me, and Commander
Poore, more inured and far more philosophical, was
much amused by my newly-acquired professional
snobbishness.
One day some of us went to lunch with Lord and Lady
Doneraile, and we saw and heard the pet foxes which
it was the old gentleman's delight to keep. He told
us that the wild foxes would come down at night and
call upon their captive cousins, one of whom was
actually treated like a lap-dog and accompanied
him when he drove out a somewhat odoriferous
neighbour. Alas ! poor Lord Doneraile came to his
tragic end only two years later through being bitten
by one of these strange pets of his. His coachman
was also bitten, and, as the fox was proved to be mad,
both master and servant went to Paris to be treated
by Pasteur. The coachman, who submitted to the cure
at the Institut and carried out all directions to the
letter, recovered. Not so Lord Doneraile, who paid
for his carelessness with his life.
Our " obstinacy," being now transformed (through
a persistency favoured by the Fates) into " constancy,"
was after all to be rewarded. My father's reluctance
to permit our marriage faded away as he became
better acquainted with Commander Poore, and our
wedding day was fixed for September 2ist. We had
some delightful weeks together at Parknasilla before
business called the bridegroom-elect to London,
whence he was to return to Kerry a few days before
148
THE REWARD OF OBSTINACY
the wedding. Suddenly Captain R. O'B. Fitzroy
asked him to go with him as commander of the Active,
flagship of a training squadron of four corvettes
commissioning on September 2ist ! So good an offer
could not be rejected, and, though the news threw
us at Parknasilla into great confusion, my father
mercifully decided as we wished, and, since it was not
possible for Commander Poore to return to Kerry,
consented to our marriage taking place in London on
the I4th.
Just then the Commodore (Captain Fitzroy) chanced
to see the announcement of our approaching marriage
in the Morning Post and wrote a characteristic letter
to his commander :
" DEAR POORE, I see you are engaged to be married.
Hope you are still of the same mind as regards coming with
me. Remember I shall require the commander to be on
board all day and every day, so if you wish to get married
you must do so in the dinner-hour. *
" Yours sincerely,
" R. O'B. FixzRoY."
Commander Poore replied by telegram :
" Personal considerations in no way affect service ones.
Join ship September I5th."
It was literally true that personal considerations were
put entirely on one side rather to my dismay, but it was
good training.
Of course my trousseau was not ready, but as I had
firmly refused the offer of a big wedding with its train
* Between noon and 1.15 p.m., when no work is done on board
His Majesty's ships.
149
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
of bridesmaids and other concomitant glories there was
so much the less to countermand. It was on
September loth that Commander Poore's explanatory
telegram reached Parknasilla, and on the following
day my father and Lily and I set off for England. We
slept that night at Mallow and next day proceeded
direct to London, arriving there very early on a Sunday
morning after a vile crossing. I cannot now be sure
whether I was more pleased or disconcerted to find
Commander Poore waiting on the platform at Euston,
for I was tired and dirty and painfully aware of my
travel-stained appearance. Much had still to be
arranged before the morrow when at n a.m. we were
to be married at St. Augustine's, Queen's Gate. I had
no wedding finery, so I had decided to be married in a
new black and white gown ; but Lady Poore strongly
objected to black, and in the end I was led to the altar
in a dark green velvet brocade of Rosy's ! Upon
my head I wore a bonnet to match, enlivened by a
cherry-coloured aigrette, and I do not suppose I ever
looked worse in my life ; indeed, I cannot but feel that
only the cheerful firmness of his admirable best man,
Lieutenant Francis H. Pollen, R.N., induced the
bridegroom to accept so unpromising a partner as
myself. The close-fitting sleeves designed for Rosy's
slender arms were tight to painfulness, and at the
earliest possible moment I peeled off the green velvet
and robed myself thankfully in the cool and easy black
and white.
The first event of my married life was the paying
of a visit to my husband's naval agents, Hallett's
150
THE REWARD OF OBSTINACY
where I learned to write a cheque in my new name.
Then we went shopping together, and Dick bought me
a penny account-book which I faithfully promised to
use.
Next day we went down to Portsmouth, where the
Active, in complete disarray, lay alongside the dockyard,
It was an odd sort of honeymoon, for my husband
was off at five o'clock every morning and did not get
back before seven p.m., and the days were long and
empty for me. For five solid hours on the 2Oth, a
Sunday, we sat making out watch, quarter and station
bills for the commissioning of the ship on the morrow,
and I was proud when I heard that my help had been
of use. By that time, however, I was far away, for
my husband went on board on the Sunday night, and
I, feeling very small and forlorn, set off next morning
for London, where a cousin had lent me her house for
a week. Almost everyone I knew was away, and I was
as bored and solitary as a prisoner, for, belonging as I
did to the mid-Victorian period when independence
in girls was discouraged, I had never had to find my
way about London alone. Indeed, I had much to
learn. Somehow the days passed, and when I returned
to Portsmouth the Active's commissioning was so far
advanced that Dick was beginning to see daylight,
and we managed to enjoy what little leisure he had
without looking too far ahead. This art of living in
the present is one that sailor's wives should lose no
time in acquiring.
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
CHAPTER XXX
PARTINGS AND MEETINGS
ON October 5th the ship went round to Portland.
I saw her leave Portsmouth Harbour and mournfully
departed for London, escorted to the station by
Lieutenant Charles E. Anson,* under whose care I
had previously bought a large and unwieldy housekeep-
ing purse at Charpentier's. I was fully determined to
be a frugal and methodical housewife.
Seven months passed before I saw my husband
again, the greater part of which I spent in rooms in an
old house, long ago demolished, just opposite the
Brompton Oratory. My mother-in-law, who lived not
far off, was very good to me, and with practical kindness
combined the very essence of sympathy, support,
and affection; but I was often depressed enough.
One letter a fortnight from my husband cruising in the
West Indies was the very most I could hope for, since
the Training Squadron, composed of sailing ships, was
commanded by a past master in the management of
masts and yards whose pleasure it was to keep at sea.
Before settling down in my rooms I paid a short
visit to my husband's cousin, Miss ^arianne North,
exploratory botanist and flower painter, in her flat in
Victoria Street. Her " Recollections of a Happy Life "
showed her at her best and happiest. Her deafness
and ill-health saddened her later years. To me she
* Rear-Admiral C. E. Anson.
152
PARTINGS AND MEETINGS
was very kind, but while I was with her she spent
almost every moment of daylight in flower painting,
grudging even the few minutes necessary for her mea-s.
Great botanists and nurserymen visited and consulted
her, bringing with them rare flowers to have their
portraits painted, and one day on returning from a
shopping expedition I was told that the Emperor of
Brazil was with her in the drawing-room. There was
to my mind something interesting and bizarre in the
idea of an Emperor in a Victoria Street flat approached
only by many flights of steep stone stairs.
My greatest pleasure during that winter of 1885 86
was derived from being a member of Sir Alexander
Mackenzie's choir. He chose voices that were fresh
and tuneful rather than those of older and more
experienced musicians, which are often harsh or
defraichi in tone, and we all regarded our leader with
so much affection as well as admiration that when he
suggested additional practices at inconvenient hours
in the recesses of Bloomsbury we put aside every con-
sideration of convenience and flew to his baton. Often
I would return alone by omnibus at a late hour and
through a blinding fog to my rooms in Brompton Road,
but with the inspiring music of Dvorak ringing in my
ears I felt I had not paid too dearly for the pleasure.
Besides, I took a certain pride in the discovery that
I could look after myself.
In February my father and Lily were to come over to
England to spend a month or two at Penzance, where
I was to join them, but Mr. Gladstone spoilt our plans
by desiring the Irish bishops to consider in congress
153
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
assembled one or other of his many destructive schemes,
and my father was therefore unable to leave Ireland.
No representations by himself or his colleagues
would have had the slightest influence upon the man
who had disestablished and disendowed the Church in
Ireland, and my father knew it, but he was in honour
bound to bear his part in what he recognised as a
congress pour rire. So I went alone to Penzance and
found much less than the sunshine I had anticipated,
but received both kindness and hospitality from the
great clan of Bolitho, with members of which I spent
several weeks. When I left them the moment fixed
for the return of the Training Squadron was at any
rate perceptibly nearer. I awaited the great day at
Portsmouth, and no one who realises that only the
meetings of sailors with their wives make the partings
endurable will need to be told how impatiently I
waited, how I reviled the contrary and blessed the
favourable winds, and how the desert of Portsmouth
lodgings blossomed like a garden of roses when the
commander of the Active finally entered the somewhat
dingy portals of No. , High Street.
Though receiving his commander's ungrudging
admiration, Commodore Fitzroy was undeniably an
exacting chief, blaming freely and praising rarely, and
if my husband had acted upon the advice of Sir Joseph
Fayrer he would have taken a few months' rest after
the Egyptian campaign instead of plunging into as
strenuous a job as could well be imagined. But he
had at any rate a welcome ten days of leave in May,
and I do not know which of us enjoyed the holiday at
154
Sea View most. We had still so much to say, so much
leeway to make up, and returned unwillingly enough
to Portsmouth when his brief spell of idleness was over.
It seemed to both of us that I might just as well live
in the country during the Active's next cruise, and our
choice fell upon Lyndhurst as a desirable spot for me
to settle down in. There I found a cottage which
was modestly comfortable, and there I was left when
the Squadron prepared for sea. The neighbourhood
possessed some family associations, as Cufmells had
been owned by my husband's father before it was sold
in the 'fifties to Mr. Hargreaves. Lady Margaret
Lushington, who lived close by, had been as a girl
the friend of my husband's aunts, and the Stevensons
at Foxlease were friends of Lady Poore's ; but of my
new neighbours none were more neighbourly and none
more interesting than Mr. and Mrs. Pitney Martin and
their niece, Miss English, at Gascoigns, and Colonel
and Mrs. Macleay and their daughter (now Lady
Arbuthnot) at Glasshayes.
It was at Lyndhurst that Roger was born, and he was
christened in the church made beautiful by Leighton's
fresco. My eldest sister, Helen Powys, had died the
very day my boy was born, and it was some time before
I was told that her brave and gentle spirit had flown.
Hers was not a long illness, though her health had been
indifferent for some months, and it was a shock as well
as a deep grief to me to find that I, to whom she had
ever been so affectionate and helpful, should never
see her again and never show her my little Roger.
It was in some degree a consolation to have her son, my
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
" faithful cavalier," John, then at Marlborough, for
Roger's junior godfather, since it seemed to draw me
even closer to the motherless boy who in his turn
proved for the remainder of his short life so good a
friend to mine.
My mother-in-law came to stay with me for the
christening, and Captain W. H. Pigott, R.N., Roger's
senior godfather, an old shipmate of my husband's,
was also present. Indeed, the latter was supposed to
be my husband by an unenlightened pew-opener,
who caused us some embarrassment by insisting that
he, as the infant's father, should sign the register !
Lyndhurst proved hi many respects a well-chosen
camping ground, but it was not until I was on the point
of leaving that my neighbours, generally speaking,
discovered me to be both perfectly respectable and
passably desirable as an acquaintance. There are great
merits to be discerned in the caution exhibited by
English people in such cases, but, accustomed as I was
to the prompt manifestations of hospitality common
in Ireland towards the families of English military
officers quartered there, I found such coolness dis-
couraging. My husband was, of course, at sea, a fact
that should have served as a recommendation rather
than a drawback to his wife.
When Roger was four months old the Training
Squadron returned from the Mediterranean and I went
off to Portland to welcome my husband. It was late
when I arrived, but next morning I woke to see the four
ships lying just inside the breakwater, and after break-
fast took my way along the road leading to the landing-
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PARTINGS AND MEETINGS
place, never for an instant supposing I should at such
an hour meet anyone I knew. As I stood looking
over the wall a dignified person stopped beside me.
" How do you do, Mrs. Poore ? " said the dreaded
Commodore ; " if I had known you were coming down
you should have gone off to the ship in my boat."
Overwhelmed with astonishment, I could scarcely
stammer out my thanks, but I am sure I made it clear
that no earthly consideration would have induced
me to do, or dream of doing, such a thing. It was
a Saturday morning, and the Commodore very evidently
recognised my bona fides, for on meeting his secretary
at the hair-cutter's later in the day he sent a message
by him to the Commander to the effect that he would
not be wanted on board till Monday morning. After
enjoying this wholly unexpected piece of luck I returned
to Lyndhurst to pick up my impedimenta hi the shape
of a very dignified nurse, a small red-headed baby,
and a perambulator, all of which I presently trans-
ported to lodgings in Southsea.
It was dark when my husband reached Elphinstone
Road on the evening of our arrival and the baby had
long been in his cot, but even the dignified nurse
regarded the occasion as one of exceptional importance,
and he was brought down to be introduced to his father
with all possible ceremony. The lighted gas, however,
proved a novelty far more attractive than his unknown
parent, and upon it, and it only, he fixed the gaze of
a pair of unblinking blue eyes. " Do you mean to tell
me," said Dick, " that that child doesn't know I am his
father ? " I reluctantly admitted this to be almost
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
certainly the case. Nurse resented such amateur
criticism of the precious baby's intelligence, and Roger,
happily unaware of failure and gazing to the last at
the gas, was removed to the nursery. I made his
apologies and decided to wait a bit longer for the
rapprochement which would certainly come as soon as
my son should begin to interest himself in strange
naval officers.
CHAPTER XXXI
VARIETY AND VICISSITUDES
DURING this short spell of domestic bliss we were
invited to dine at Admiralty House, Portsmouth. Sir
George Willes was then Commander-in-Chief, and I
had heard so much of his sarcastic tongue and awe-
inspiring manner that I trembled in my shoes as the
evening approached. We were too early, and as we
drove about the dockyard till we were sure the proper
moment had arrived I held my husband's hand tightly
and hoped passionately for the best. I have often
wondered of late years whether any of the junior
officers' wives who have dined with us at Sydney or
Chatham have been half as terrified as I was that night
in 1886. I earnestly hope not.
Lady Willes was all kindness, and Sir George was
fortunately in so mild a mood that my anticipations
were agreeably falsified. But he certainly was a tartar,
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VARIETY AND VICISSITUDES
and " standing up to " my husband's Commander-in-
Chief when he said nipping things was an effort for
which I had little taste. Once, at a later period, he
asked me where I had " caught Poore." That made me
really angry, and I said : " Perhaps if you will put
your question more politely I will answer you." Sir
George seemed to find this rather amusing and adopted
my suggestion, but I was actually shaking with rage
and fright. It is only fair to say that he was very
hospitable, and as far as I was concerned he never
went beyond the point of heavy chaff ; but women
guests at his parties had been actually reduced to tears
by his bullying speeches, and all Lady Willes' tact and
suavity could not atone for her husband's lapses into
ferocity.
Our few weeks at Southsea were over all too soon,
and when the Squadron began to prepare for a second
cruise to the West Indies I returned to Lyndhurst.
But I was allowed to see the ship off from Portland,
and there in our lodgings I actually gave a tea-party
to some of the Squadron's midshipmen my old
Invincible friends, who were doing such a strenuous
ourse of seamanship as should have qualified them all
to obtain " Ones." Mr. D'Oyly was in the Active and
Mr. Hyde-Parker in the Calypso, Mr. Smyth and Mr.
Osborne in the Volage, and Mr. Shakespear in the
Rover, and I made a new friend in Mr. P. H. Colomb, of
the Active, who, after passing through various
official reincarnations while remaining my firm ally,
materialised in 1911 15 as my husband's flag-captain
at the Nore. That is one of the thoroughly satisfactory
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
things about the Navy. No man is tied and confined
to one unit as a soldier is bound, generally speaking,
to his regiment, however beloved.* All executive
naval officers have hitherto passed through the one
mill at Dartmouth ; they are all emphatically of the
same school, as much so as though they had all been
at Winchester, Harrow, Rugby, or Marlborough, and
their early traditions are identical. Then they are sent
to sea in batches. Later on they go to college at Ports-
mouth or Greenwich. But during all their service they
shift from squadron to squadron, three years in one
ship, two or less in another, as circumstances dictate-
Specialise as they will, they remain none the less
members of the Navy as a whole, and from a submarine
an officer may go to a battleship, thence to a cruiser
or a destroyer, interchangeable, despite his distinguish-
ing label of G. (gunnery), T. (torpedo), or N. (navi-
gation). What will happen in the Naval Air Service,
which is at present as fluid as it is volatile, and
occasionally as intangible as the atmosphere in which
it operates, who am I that I should prophesy ?
The day after my midshipmen's tea-party the
Training Squadron sailed. I was allowed to go on
board to say good-bye, and while my husband was out
of his cabin I occupied myself in writing short pencil
messages on the inner sheets of his official blotting-pad,
so that he might find surprises as the days and months
of our separation went by. I think this was my own
* The term esprit de corps has hitherto stood, in the Army, for
regimental unity ; with sailors it has always meant the spirit of a
united Service.
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VARIETY AND VICISSITUDES
invention, one I can recommend to other sailors' wives
fond enough to adopt so innocent a method of bringing
themselves unexpectedly to remembrance.
But very soon the gig came alongside and, with Mr.
D'Oyly in charge, I went ashore heroically bent on
keeping the stiffest of stiff upper lips as I had faith-
fully promised to do. I wanted a stiff upper lip when
I got back late that evening to Lyndhurst, tired, sad,
and chilled to the bone. Nurse gave me time to take
my things off and then came to ask if I was not coming
to the nursery. " Oh," I answered impatiently ;
" I don't want to see Baby to-night," for I felt that
not even the nicest of babies signified just then.
" Very well, 'm, as you please, of course ; but he's
not at all the thing." I started to my feet and
flew to the nursery, and then followed twenty-four
hours of such anxiety as perhaps only mothers
of very small babies suffering from bronchitis can
understand. Too young to know how to cough,
the little fellow came near choking again and again.
My landlady was the parish nurse, and all her skill
was supplemented by the unflagging efforts of a
nurse no longer dignified and a mother no longer
careless. At last we were rewarded. Lying on his
nurse's lap, swathed in flannel and reeking of cam-
phorated oil, my little Roger watched with solemn,
tired eyes while I spun the lid of his ivory powder-box
on the polished surface of the nursery table. I do not
know how long I had been spinning it, in the faint
hope of giving him the pleasure this exhibition always
afforded, when suddenly he smiled. "Thank God!"
A.W. 161 u
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
said Nurse. "I'm a poor woman, but I would have
given a five pound note for that smile." And with
the amazing power of recuperation peculiar to babies
" from that hour he began to amend."
CHAPTER XXXII
TERRA FIRMA
I DO not know who suggested that the appointment
of commander of the royal yacht Victoria and Albert
(familiarly known as the V. and A.} would suit my
husband. He was again cruising in the West Indies
when the idea struck some friend of ours, and, as the
yacht appointments are in the gift of the Sovereign,
interest in obtaining them is, of course, indispensable.
I confess to having pulled several strings with my
own hand, but I need not have troubled, for Captain
J. R. Fullerton,* Captain of the Queen's Yachts,
personally recommended my husband to Queen
Victoria. The appointment was announced on the
very day of his return in the Active, although he only
took up his duties in the following month May, 1887.
It was very exciting to meet him at Weymouth with
the great news that we should be together for three
whole years at the end of which he would be auto-
matically promoted to post-captain, but for the first
* Now Admiral Sir John Fullerton.
1.62
TERRA FIRMA
month there was so much to do, bewilderingly much
for me after so long a period of quiet, that we had no
real peace. Among other things I had to be presented
at Court, to take a house (not, as we had hoped, well
outside Portsmouth, but at Southsea) and to find
servants, and I was so painfully inexperienced that I
made mistakes enough, costly ones for poor people,
to fill a chapter. The rent of our furnished house was
out of all proportion to our modest income, so was
my presentation gown, and so, it presently appeared,
was everything, and I no longer contemplated my
account-book with the pride and satisfaction it had
given me in London and at Lyndhurst. We did not
appear to be extravagant, but our scale of living was
at fault, and only when we let our house for a couple
of months to a rich manufacturer who considered
Southsea a desirable spot in which to spend July
and August did I breathe freely. For this period
the Yacht was at Cowes, and I found rooms, un-
fashionable, of course, but quite suitable, at East
Cowes.
In spite of my financial anxieties I had thoroughly
enjoyed the early months of that summer. We met
numbers of old friends and made new ones, we played
lawn-tennis, danced a little, and bought a funny little
sail-boat of two and a half tons, called the Tub, in
which we had various exciting experiences in the Solent.
We were ourselves the crew, and there were moments,
due chiefly to the overbearing ways of the Ryde
steamers, when we had to do all we knew to avert
disaster. Sir George Willes was still Commander-in-
M 2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Chief, with Sir John Hopkins as Admiral Superinten-
dent ; Captain Compton Domvile commanded the
Excellent and Captain Long the Vernon, and though
we received and duly appreciated the hospitality of
these our betters, we naturally found our friends
among the junior ranks. Lieutenants C. L. Napier,
Ethelston, Granville, W. L. Grant, C. Ottley, and Sir
Robert Arbuthnot were on the junior staffs of these
ships, and at the College there were quite a dozen
acting subs, whom I had known either at Alexandria
or while they were in the Training Squadron. But of
these the greater number were badly bitten with the
theatrical mania, and their spare hours, and some that
could hardly well be spared, were spent in rehearsing
musical comedy. I did not then understand as I do
now how inevitably naval officers during the period
following their time as midshipmen must lose much
of their early attractiveness ere they put on the whole
armour of the lieutenant. I sometimes felt at Ports-
mouth that my friends had given me up, but later
on I discovered my mistake and realised how foolish
I had been to expect any boy, even a midshipman, to
grow up without some slight solution of continuity
in character and ideals. The break in a chorister's
voice is something like that gap. The chorister's
friends almost hold their breath lest the white-washed
imp should never sing so true and sweet in after life
as he had done when his pure treble filled the cathedral
aisles ; and I used to wonder whether those delightfully
naif and entertaining boys of 1883 86 would ever
return to the old confidential footing. But one by one
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H.M.Y. VICTORIA AND ALBERT
I have met them again as lieutenants and commanders,
captains and even admirals, always with pleasure,
often with satisfaction and pride.
CHAPTER XXXIII
H.M.Y. VICTORIA AND ALBERT
BEFORE we went to Cowes there occurred the Great
Jubilee Review in the Solent. My husband was, of
course, on board the V. and A. but, by good luck, our
best man, Francis Pollen, then flag-lieutenant to Lord
John Hay at Devonport, turned up on the eve of the
Review in his Commander-in-Chief's yacht, the
Vivid, and asked my sister-in-law and myself and any-
one else we wished to bring with us to see the show
from his temporary command. He was unable to
promise us much to eat, so we took with us some solid
necessaries, such as a ham and a chicken pie, and
repaired on board next morning. Just as the Vivid
was casting off a mixed party of people who had failed
to find the ships from which their passes had entitled
them to witness the Review were bundled on board us
by distracted officials. It was well we had that ham,
for these unlucky derelicts were, of course, unprovided
with food, and when there was nothing left but the
bone Mr. Pollen bestowed cigars and whiskies and
sodas upon those of his uninvited guests for whom no
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
lunch was forthcoming. As a spectacle the Review
cannot, of course, be compared with more recent naval
displays, but it was a very great occasion, and I shall
never forget the cheering of the men manning the yards
on either side of the wide lane down which the Queen
passed slowly in the V. and A .
Unless there have been drastic changes in the last
five and twenty years a Royal Yacht is unlike any
other ship, and, to say the truth, she is far less inte-
resting, viewed from a naval standpoint. There is no
mingling of rough and smooth, " good boys " and bad
characters, in her ship's company. They are all good,
blameless, and often smugly self-satisfied, and I could
not detect any signs of that esprit de corps which
animates the officers and crew of a ship in general
service, for there was no competition and none of the
effervescence or keenness which is always found in
a " smart " ship, or one ambitious of becoming smart.
The men of the V. and A. were not unlike the sailors
in H.M.S. Pinafore, and most of her officers were paus-
ing for rest after a period of strenuous service, or
merely revelling in the social opportunities which their
position afforded. The navigator was a very live man,
since his responsibilities were great when the Yacht
was at sea, and so, of course, was the captain, but
the commander had not nearly enough to do, while
the three subs, were only appointed for the six weeks
which ensured their promotion, and these six weeks
were spent at Cowes ! For all but the months of July
and August and during an occasional trip across the
Channel the V. and A.'s officers lived on board the little
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H.M.Y. VICTORIA AND ALBERT
old yacht Royal George lying perpetually at anchor in
Portsmouth Harbour, half-way between the dockyard
and Gosport. There were two lieutenants who put
in two years for promotion, and if they were young men
of means they had an excellent time ashore, turn and
turn about. Neither watch-keeping nor navigation,
torpedo nor gunnery, vexed their souls. But when
Queen Victoria was on board officers and crew were
every button on duty, for nothing short of perfection
in dress and " deportment " as well as intelligence
and aptitude would satisfy the Greatest Lady in the
Land ; and all the officers knew it.
Indeed, as a rest-cure, two or three years in the
F. and A . were wholly desirable, and it would ill become
one who had reaped the advantages of so long a " stand
easy " to complain of the monotony inseparable
from it. The opportunity given to my husband of
repairing the inroads made upon his health by the long
spell of trying work in Egypt, a period succeeded so
quickly by one of relentless activity in the Training
Squadron, was invaluable, and I can never be too
grateful for the surcease from overstrain which those
three uneventful years afforded. And above all things
he appreciated the fact that he was brought into actual
touch with the Queen for whom at any time he would
most cheerfully have given his life if such a sacrifice
could have profited her anything.
I was naturally more an onlooker than an actor
at Cowes, for I did not belong to the society which can
afford to take its pleasures handsomely. The spectacle
offered by the crowds of smart folk on the lawn of the
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Yacht Squadron garden interested and amused me,
and such well-advertised faces as those of Lady
Randolph Churchill, then a very picturesque young
woman, and the celebrated Lady Cardigan needed no
label. But merely looking at people to whose monde
one does not belong soon palls, and I enjoyed our games
of tennis at Northwood and the outings in the Com-
mander's blue galley more than the occasional doses of
gape-seed which punctuated Cowes week. One day
when I had taken Roger and his nurse out in the boat
I put them ashore on Cowes beach so that the baby
might dabble his small toes in the almost tepid water.
On returning to pick them up I found " Nannie "
much excited and elated, for a party of strangers who
had seen them land from a Royal Yacht's boat had
concluded that the baby was a Royal infant and had
inquired whether her charge was not " the infant
Prince of Battenberg."* I cannot believe Nurse
brought herself to disclaim the " greatness thrust
upon " the baby. If she did not do so it must have
made the inquirers very happy to think they had
made the acquaintance of Queen Victoria's latest
grandson.
My husband was dining on board the V. and A. one
night with the Crown Princess of Germany, and I had
gone early and bored to bed, when I was aroused to
read a note brought by special messenger commanding
me to a small informal dance on board the Yacht.
I dressed with lightning speed, and it was lucky my
husband had had the forethought to tell me not to wear
* Prince Alexander, born 1886.
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H.M.Y. VICTORIA AND ALBERT
an evening gown, for all the Royalties were in high
dresses. I confess I felt very shy when I arrived along-
side, but Dick, who was on the look-out for me, took me
straight to the Crown Princess, and her greeting was
most kind. Soon I was flying round the deck with
one of the lieutenants, who, to my dismay, danced the
old valse a deux temps, dear to our Royal Family and
detested by myself. Yielding to my protests, my
partner mended his ways, reluctantly and much to my
amusement, since I was quite certain he had but very
recently adopted a step he would in less distinguished
company have despised. It was very hot dancing in
high dresses, and soon we all went to find cool drinks.
Next me, leaning against the bulkhead of a deck cabin,
was Princess Victoria of Prussia, a big girl, plain but
well and strongly built. Her sister, now Queen Sophie
of Greece, was smaller and better looking, and Princess
Margaret was just a round little backfisch of fifteen.
Presently Princess Victoria made an ejaculation, and,
thinking she spoke to me, I faltered " I beg your
pardon, ma'am ? " " Oh," she said, " I didn't speak ;
I was only gawsping " (gasping). I felt rather officious
and foolish, but Princess Louise, then Marchioness of
Lome, came to the rescue with some friendly remark
and earned my lasting gratitude. After another dance
or two the Crown Princess came and talked to me and
suggested a turn on deck. Glad and proud I bore her
company, and she told me that she knew very well how
great a service my brother Bob (then at Sofia with
Sir F. Lascelles) had rendered to Prince Alexander of
Battenberg, lately Prince of Bulgaria. I was mystified,
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
for, though I knew with what devotion my brother
regarded that brilliant and most ill-fated Prince, I had
never heard that he had been in a position to be of use
to him. Nor do I know now what it was that Bob did,
for he has kept his own counsel. Presently I ventured
to ask the Crown Princess what sort of ruler Prince
Ferdinand of Coburg was likely to make. " Oh,"
she answered, " he is, as you know, my cousin, but
all I can say for him is that he is considered to be a very
clever entomologist." The way in which the Princess
threw out her pretty hands and put her dignified
nose in the air as she said the word " entomologist "
was delightful. Had she said Prince Ferdinand was a
beetle rather than a beetle-hunter her expression and
tone could not have been more contemptuous.
Later on we were invited to dine at Norris Castle,
where the Crown Princess and her daughters were
living, and, as there were no other guests, we sat one
on each side of our hostess. She was talking of yachting
and said how much one missed by being a bad sailor.
I assented in heartfelt sympathy, and added that the
worst part of being seasick was the humiliation it
caused to the sufferer, as no seasick person could
maintain his self-respect. " Quite so," said the Crown
Princess. " I feel myself a worm, a contemptible
creature, when I cross the Channel in rough weather."
" Oh, no, ma'am," protested an obsequious Maid of
Honour ; " Not you, ma'am ! " " But yes, Miss ,
but yes, even /," mimicked the Princess ; and I
rejoiced to see that she recognised and rejected the
implication that she was superior to the rest of humanity.
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H.M.Y. VICTORIA AND ALBERT
I have always regretted that I never saw the Crown
Prince, that noble specimen of Royal manhood whose
life, had it been prolonged, would undoubtedly have
been an example of all that was good to the people
his son has bewitched. Long ago I heard a little story
of the Royal Family of Germany which I have treasured.
The Crown Prince and Princess were present at a Court
Ball at Berlin not long after their marriage, and the
very youthful bride came up to her mother-in-law in
the course of the evening and asked : " Mamma,
have you seen Fritz anywhere ? " Queen Augusta,
rigid and pompous stickler for etiquette, replied with
intent to reprove that she did not know where H.R.H.
the Crown Prince might be. Later on her son
approached her and said with gentle malice : " Mamma,
do you know where my little wife is ? " Queen Augusta
shrugged her celebrated alabaster shoulders (which
unkind people said were false) and frowned as she dis-
claimed all knowledge of the Crown Princess's where-
abouts. The stiffness of that German Court must have
been petrifying or asphyxiating to anyone less coura-
geous and sane than those two happy young people.
CHAPTER XXXIV
PARAME
THE rest of our time at Portsmouth was uneventful.
We were not rich enough to take advantage of the
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
many possibilities such an appointment affords to
people better endowed. We could have had plenty of
leave, but it seemed more economical to remain fixed
for the best part of our first two years at Southsea,
much as we came to dislike our suburban surroundings
and the dusty, wind-swept common. One day we
discovered that even our modest way of living was
costing more than we could afford, so we let the small
house we had furnished (our second venture), my
husband took up his quarters on board the George, and
I, with Roger and the faithful and accommodating
nurse who had succeeded the dignified one departed
for Brittany. The month was April, and it was bitterly
cold when we reached S. Malo and drove out along
the shore to Parame. A friend had found me a little
thin- walled furnished villa with just the amount of
comfort to be expected from a house rented at fifty
francs a month. She had also engaged a sour-faced
bonne d tout faire called Virginie, who was as honest
as she was cantankerous. There were some small mats
in the house, but not a single carpet, and not one of the
few fireplaces was capable of holding more than a
couple of minute logs of wood at a time. For two
months we lived in that wretched little house, but the
joy the perusal of my account-book gave me more than
outweighed the inconvenience, the ugliness, the cold,
and the creases in Virginie's temper, and when Dick
came over to spend a few days with us he found us
flourishing and contented.
At Southsea my husband had worked at French
under my tuition; and in spite of the disadvantages
172
PARAM
under which he laboured through a blank ignorance of
grammar of any kind, he had made some slight progress.
It was worrying for me who had been liberally fed on
grammar from the age of eight to seventeen to find that
my pupil did not know what a part of speech meant,
nor yet a case nor a tense, but his accent was good and
his translations so funny that I used to stop tearing
my hair and fall into helpless laughter over his
" howlers." Two of these I still remember. In " Le
Petit Chose," by Daudet, the young hero and his
brother are described as living on an irreducible
minimum of francs per week. The little budget they
drew up contained the item menus frais, deux francs,
and this he translated fresh menus, which was decidedly
comic considering the poor boys' life of grinding
economy. Again, when describing the New Year's
gifts bestowed upon a fortunate child, he made of the
phrase une corbeille pleine de papillottes (sweets twisted
up in strips of paper) a crow stuffed with butterflies.
When the summer came bringing a crowd of bathers
to the plage of Parame we were lucky in finding a truly
delightful old chateau two miles inland and half-way
between S. Servan and Parame. It was sparsely
furnished, but for a very few pounds we hired a suffi-
ciency of necessaries to render it habitable, and here I
passed five happy months. My husband was with me
for a good part of the time, and a party of cousins
with their children came to us at La Riviere as paying
or I should say, sharing guests for the summer holi-
days. My duties as a housekeeper were no sinecure,
for we were two miles from a shop, and without a jolly
173
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
little donkey, which trotted a mile in ten minutes, and
his miniature dog-cart we could not have procured
the necessaries of life. Sometimes I went into S. Servan
on market days and bought chickens and fish, but
most of my fournisseurs , lived at Parame. There was
the butcheress whose shop was far less refined than her
manners, the patissiere as attractive as her wares, and
the provision merchant who tied up carrots in thin and
brittle pale mauve paper with parti-coloured ribbons.
One day I went to Parame to buy pigeons from the
pretty patissiere. While I waited she wrung their
necks in the backyard and then handed the birds to me
across the counter in a paper bag through which the
warmth of their poor little bodies penetrated ! It was
a painful incident. Once I forgot to fetch the meat for
dinner while my cousins were with us. Their donkey
and ours were otherwise engaged, so I trudged into
Parame after lunch in the blazing August sun and
returned with four kilos of raw veal in a rush basket.
There was a beautiful but neglected garden at La
Riviere with a stone fountain in whose basin arum
lilies, rooted [under water, grew thickly, and there were
standard apricots and peaches and melting " William "
pears in the unpruned orchard. The house contained
plenty of good rooms and deep cupboards, and we had
a big cool salon with a parquet floor. The kitchen was
vast, and at the top of the house was a great lobby
providing space and wide tables for the two chattering
ironers who followed on the heels of Mme. Buant, the
laundress, and worked all Friday and Saturday. The
farmer, his wife and three fat baby daughters in tight
174
PARAM
white caps lived just ouside the garden wall, and from
them we bought milk and potatoes and the thin
pleasant cider of the country. I tried to keep poultry
in our high-walled yard, where a pink-washed colombier
reared its graceful cupola, but my own inexperience
and the visitations of a mysterious and murderous
reptile known locally as the v'lan militated against
success, so I bought chickens for thirty-two or thirty-
four sous apiece in S. Servan market instead.
Our bonne, Marie, was the wife of a Newfoundland
fisherman, absent from April to October, a plain,
clever, hot-tempered little woman from S. Nazaire
who cooked admirably and served inelegantly the food
I provided. Her pigeons aux choux were the perfection
of bourgeois cookery ; her coffee, produced from a
battered tin coffee-pot, was a dream.
Throughout the summer holidays we drove daily
into Parame to bathe. It was the event of the day, but
we also took long country or seaside walks, Dick fished
for bass off the rocks, and nearly every evening we had
delightful music from my cousins, Mrs. Hutchinson and
Mrs. Hess. Each of us had a task to do before the
bathing hour, and mine was the cleaning of the lamps
(an office I cordially hated), for with only one bonne and
two English nurses as the entire domestic staff it was
incumbent upon us to help ourselves.
We actually gave a dance of seventeen couples one
night. Mrs. Hutchinson made the macedoines for
supper and Mrs. Hess the mayonnaises ; Dick con-
cocted the claret and cider cups, and music was pro-
vided by amateurs at the piano. Our "men" were for
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
the most part pupils of Mr. Cowles, the well-known
crammer then at Parame", and we all danced with a
will on the smooth parquet of our airy salon. The cost
of this modest entertainment was just fifty francs,
but no money could have bought the exquisite night,
the perfumed garden with its shady bosquets and funny
little summerhouses faintly illumined by Japanese
lanterns, and the youthful gaiety of the company.
We hired chars-d-bancs and drove all the way one
blazing hot day to Mont S. Michel. There we wandered
by moonlight about the Mount of which Nature and
the architecture of past ages have conspired to make
one vast grey cathedral of columns, pinnacles and
arches, and there, with her back to a stone pillar,
Cecilia Hutchinson stood and poured out the full
treasure of her beautiful voice in " Solvejg's Lied."
Never before or since have its pathetic cadences so
touched me. Its wailing notes were like a threefold
cord woven of romance, magic and melancholy, a cord
that tightened about our hearts and held us silent,
spellbound. Next morning when we descended from
our various " billets " to breakfast at Mme. Poulard's
famous inn that kind and handsome woman asked us
who had been singing in the moonlight, for the people
in the village had thought it must be the voice of some
angel come down from heaven to visit the Mount of
St. Michael !
176
PART IV
A CAPTAIN'S WIFE, 1890-1903
A.W.
177
CHAPTER XXXV
HALF-PAY IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE
IN October, 1889, we returned to Portsmouth lighter
of heart and easier of pocket and fully determined to
cut our coat henceforth according to our cloth. It
was hardly a coat something more like a monkey-
jacket indeed but it sufficed, and we never seriously
regretted the exchange of a whole house with servants
and the various unexpected calls upon our exchequer
for five sunny rooms on the third and fourth floors of
No. n, Southsea Terrace. There we lived till our
three years at Portsmouth were up, and it was there
that Roger rose from petticoats to trousers. He was
so slim at three and a half that his infinitesimal sailor
suits were very becoming. They were made by a man
in the V. and A., and of course the little fellow sported
the white badges, the nameless cap-ribbon of watered
silk and the pumps, which were all the prerogative
of Royal Yachtsmen. I had ordered two pairs of
serge and one pair of fine cloth trousers, and the tailor
brought them home in a pocket-handkerchief ! "I'm
sorry, ma'am," he said, " if I've taken a liberty, but the
cloth is so wide I just had to make two pairs of best
trousers for the young gentleman." King Edward,
as Prince of Wales, had his first sailor suits made on
179 N 2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
board the Royal Yacht, and there is a legend that when
the Queen was cruising these were washed and " ironed "
on board. The Queen expressed her surprise that
they were so beautifully done and sent for the blue-
jacket who had been their launderer to compliment
him on his handiwork. " How well they are ironed ! "
she said to the very stout and blushing sailor. " I did
not know you had irons on board." " I don't iron
them, your Majesty," explained the man ; " I just
sets on 'em when they're damp."
Roger was overjoyed to put on male attire, and when
I came in one day I found him climbing the stairs after
a round of visits undertaken quite independently
of his nurse to show himself to the landlady and her
husband, and not only to them but to everyone
lodging in the house ! He had knocked at every door,
popped his head in and announced " I've got touzers " ;
for though he had been rather shy of strangers in his
petticoated days, he relinquished this excessive modesty
along with his starched skirts and his perambulator.
In May, 1890, my husband's appointment as com-
mander of the V. and A. terminated and he was pro-
moted to Captain. Now " the world was all before us,"
but half-pay limited our choice, and after some con-
sideration we decided to return to France so that Dick
should continue his pursuit of the language. We made
a bad shot this time, and in our anxiety to avoid
English people who would distract our minds from the
study of French we chose a spot some miles inland from
Dieppe where there was hardly a soul of any nationality
to speak to. It rained for the best part of two months,
180
HALF-PAY IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE
and if we had not played battledore in the upstairs
lobby of our dreary little furnished house, which
proved to be the well-patronised club of every cat in
the village, I, personally, should have succumbed to
damp and ennui. Then, when it grew warmer and the
rain stopped, we betook ourselves to Veules, a small
seaside place sixteen miles west of Dieppe. There were
no English people in our hotel, but there was a great
party of Russian artists besides the French visitors,
and to these Russians we owed the social agremens of
our stay. The seniors were persons of distinction,
residents in Paris and speaking French, as Russians
can, in perfection. The juniors were rather wild-looking
creatures who wore fanciful shirts tied at the neck
with cords and tassels and spoke little but their native
tongue. There was one lady of the party, a lovely
Mme. Coquelin, clever and fascinating, round whose
samovar the entire circle, often reinforced by ourselves,
gathered after lunch. There was a M. Coquelin also,
but he was not so interesting as his brilliant wife.
Bathing was, perhaps, the first and most important
item in our day, and some of the Russians were fine
swimmers and divers ; but they all worked hard at
their art, and, though ourselves supremely ignorant,
we took a deep interest in their sketches. M. Lehmann
and M. Rohmann (both from the Baltic provinces,
hence their German names) were painters of repute,
while M. Egornoff and M. " Michel," whose surname
was unpronounceable, had both won the Prix de
Rome. M. Egornoff volunteered to give me lessons,
and I sat humbly by his side for many hours wrestling
181
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
with the drawing and first wash of a well-filled farm-
yard. I still have that unfinished sketch. It was
very bad. After three lessons my master said he
thought I should study still-life and suggested my
beginning on articles de cuir. I thought he must mean
boots or saddles, but he should have said cuivre, not
cuir.
As we all sat at tea one afternoon on the lead-floored
verandah a barrel-organ struck up a waltz in the street
below. In two seconds the Russians were dancing,
and in four I found myself whisked off my feet by a
handsome giant from Odessa. Mme. Coquelin, to whom
I can never be too grateful, called out " trois temps "
as I flew past, and trois temps I kept, but I was like a
dry leaf in a hurricane, turned and twisted, wafted
and whirled hither and thither in a complicated and
fascinating dance such as I have never seen, much less
danced, before or since. " Brava " they cried when,
panting, I escaped from M. Develle ; but it would not
have been " brava " but for Mme. Coquelin's timely
hint.
One hot morning I came down to early breakfast
on the same useful verandah clad in a sort of overall
of pale pink gingham and wearing a large and shady,
but very French, hat of rosy hue upon my head.
" Quelle aurore ! " exclaimed one of the younger
artists ; but he pronounced it Quelle horreur, and I
must have looked more like an October sunset than a
delicate dawn until M. Rohmann perceived and cut
short my embarrassment by interpreting the friendly
comment. The artists were very fond of Roger, whose
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HALF-PAY IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE
funny French amused them. One of them, M. Roth,
had picked him up one Sunday morning and perched
him standing on his knee. Roger was unhappy,
though proud to be so exalted, and vainly endeavoured
to explain that his shoes were dirty and that he feared
they would spoil M. Roth's dimanche pantalon. As
none of the band of artists, except the two seniors,
appeared to possess a garment answering to that
description they were much entertained by this solici-
tude of which I had to be the interpreter.
The following winter I sent from London, by way of
greeting, some commonplace Christmas cards to these
kind holiday friends. To my surprise and pleasure
they replied with a large and composite water-colour
in which a typically Norman landscape was repre-
sented in grey monochrome by M. " Michel " ; a tiny
seascape of blues was M. EgornofTs contribution, and
M. Rohmann added a head in Bartolozzi style purport-
ing to be my own portrait in the hat of Aurore ; but
it was far more like Mme. Coquelin. That " Christmas
card," as the artists called it, to which all their signa-
tures were appended, is one of my treasures, and it has
hung on more walls than I can count since I received
it in 1890.
In those days, twenty-six years ago, the cost of living
was everywhere 25 per cent, less than it had grown to
be before the war, and the purchasing power of the
franc had always equalled that of the shilling. Our
visits to France were therefore as satisfactory financially
as they were useful and agreeable, and my husband's
French studies repaid him in hard cash when he passed
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
his interpreter's examination in 1891. On our return
to England he decided to go through a half-pay course
at Greenwich, so we took rooms in London for some
months, and found ourselves neither happy nor com-
fortable under the lynx eye of a landlady ever on the
alert for damages. Poor little Roger asked me one day
if we should never have a house of our very own where
he could do what he liked and have no " landlady's
furniture " to treat with respect. I was feeling depressed
at the moment, but never dreamt I should arouse him
to a passion of tears by saying I didn't suppose we
should ever have a house of our own. " Other mummies
have houses," he sobbed. I knew it, but said his
mummie must " scrub along somehow " without one.
" You shan't scrub, Mummie ; I won't let you scrub," he
cried, and it was hard to comfort him and remove the
sense of injury that was hurting him so sorely. But
on looking back over the lean years and the years of
carefulness I can remember very few occasions on
which the shoe of poverty actually pinched. One
incident of that summer in London in 1891 has, how-
ever, remained as fresh in my memory as though it
had happened only yesterday. It illustrates the
vicissitudes of the earthern pot when invited to swim
with its copper brethren.
A pretty cousin of mine and her husband asked us
to join a Sunday river-party. We were to meet them
at Paddington in time for the Henley train, but they
never appeared. We had taken first-class return
tickets and got into the train at the last possible
moment, hoping faintly that we should yet find them
184
HALF-PAY IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE
on the platform at our journey's end. This hope was
soon extinguished, and we wandered about forlorn
and disappointed in the brilliant sunshine, the only
unattached people in a crowd of gay folk. The next
train failed to bring our hosts, so we took a little skiff
by the hour and set forth upon the river. We lunched
frugally on bacon and eggs and tea at a lock-keeper's
house, returned to Henley, where we had a horrible
tea at fivepence a head at a temperance restaurant,
and set off for town by the next train. Our day had
cost us twenty-nine shillings and fourpence, and all
the pretty cousin said by way of apology was, " Oh,
I sent Major to Paddington to tell you we weren't
going, but he couldn't find you." We had actually
seen Major , but as we did not know he was to
have been of the party and could not guess he was my
cousin's emissary we did not speak to him as he passed
us in the crowd. We often used to wonder how it was
that people no better off than ourselves appeared to
have so much fun and gaiety, such smart frocks,
and apparently unlimited " petty cash." Whether
they omitted to pay their tradesmen's bills or whether
they were subsidised by generous relations we could
not decide, but they had a good time while we walked
to save 'bus fares. I now think it needs both training
and native ingenuity to become " Little Sisters and
Brothers of the Rich," as I heard social parasites called
in America.
Presently we had to consider our next step, for my
husband's course at Greenwich was over, and captains'
appointments in those days were slow to follow pro-
185
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
motion unless an officer was chosen as flag-captain.
So when July came and the gaieties and fine clothes
of a London season had thoroughly and painfully
emphasised our own shabbiness and limitations we
took wing for Switzerland.
CHAPTER XXXVI
HALF-PAY AT SPEZIA
IN Switzerland we shook off our cares and fared
sumptuously for six francs a day at Thun, Beatenberg,
and Oberhofen. My husband made long walking tours,
a source of special delight to one who loved, as he has
always done, fine scenery, exercise and solitude, and
the mountain air at Beatenberg put new life into
Roger and myself. It was there that the small boy had
his first fight. There was in our hotel a much-spoilt
Italian princeling who took peculiar delight in teasing
and mishandling Roger on every possible occasion.
He was a wicked little boy, and just missed braining
my sister-in-law by hurling a large tin toy-stable
from the top of the stairs as she was descending them.
Now Roger's nurse had told him it was wrong to fight,
and as Leone was much taller and stronger than he,
though no older, her prohibition seemed based on
expediency. But there was also staying in the hotel
186
HALF-PAY AT SPEZIA
a small English schoolboy, named Guy Smith, who
considered it Roger's duty to fight and beat his
Italian tormentor. On his own responsibility Guy
arranged the preliminaries, brought the two little
boys together without the cognisance of their nurses,
and saw fair play. Roger was victorious ; Guy came
to tell the tale of his prowess and my husband rewarded
his son with fifty centimes. But his nurse wept,
and he was himself sorely puzzled by the situation.
That Daddy should give him half a franc for punching
Leone's head while Louisa cried because he had been
so naughty as to fight constituted an ethical problem
which defeated him. One solid advantage was gained ;
Leone troubled him no longer.
When the weather turned cooler we descended to
Oberhofen, a charming village on the shore of Lake
Thun, where our chief pleasure was due to the tem-
porary possession of a light double-scull English-built
skiff. In this we passed long and delightful hours,
for September held fine almost to its close. Then the
snow came down low on the mountains, stoves over-
heated the small rooms of the pension, and we gladly
packed up and moved southwards.
We reached Spezia on a still and gloriously sunlit
evening of early October and took up our quarters on
the top floor of the Hotel Croce di Malta, whence we
could see both sea and mountains. It was not only
because Spezia was beautifully situated that we had
chosen it for our winter home. My husband, bent
on learning another foreign language, would there
enjoy an opportunity of meeting Italian naval people
187
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
among whom he hoped to acquire a seafaring vocabu-
lary. It had never occurred to us that it would be
difficult to obtain an official introduction to the naval
authorities at Spezia. But so it proved. Our Admiralty,
on being applied to for the needful credentials, referred
my husband to the British Embassy at Rome, but
Rome, as represented by our Military Attache (in the
absence of his naval confrere), refused curtly to have
anything to do with " navkl officers on half -pay ! "
This was, indeed, a slap in the face, but long before a
personal recommendation obtained through my father
as an old friend of the Ambassador (Lord Dufferin)
reached my husband he had secured off his own bat
the recognition both necessary and desirable.
My neighbour at table d'hdte was the Captain of the
Torpedo School Francesco Crespi, kind, witty and
somewhat irascible and he soon satisfied himself
that my husband was no spy. But, though his friendly
wing was spread over us, Dick would take no risks and
got the British Consul to introduce him formally to
Admiral Racchia, then Commander-in-Chief at Spezia
and later Minister of Marine, a fine old sea-dog, Scotch
on his mother's side, who startled my husband by
remarking at their first meeting that it was " varra
fine weather for the crops." He and Mme. Racchia
were both kind and hospitable to us, and before long
we found ourselves not only accepted, but warmly
welcomed, by the naval society of the port. Of Anglo-
Saxon friends we made but two couples for few
English people live at or near Spezia Mr. and Mrs.
George Henfrey and Mr. and Mrs. Huntington, both
188
HALF-PAY AT SPEZIA
of whom lived at Lerici. Mr. Henfrey, who died in
1916 at a very advanced age, had been the head of the
great iron foundry near Lerici established soon after
that long-headed statesman Cavour had discovered
the possibilities of Spezia, and Mr. Huntington, an
American full of life and intelligence with a charming
English wife, was his successor in office. The Henfrey s
had much to tell us of the old days long before Italy
was the Italia Unita of 1870, longer still before that
titular unity developed into the proven solidarity of
to-day. When the Henfreys, as young people, first
arrived at Spezia and took up their quarters at the little
hotel looking out upon a stretch of grass that lay
between it and the sea, they saw from their windows
at sunset a lady and a gentleman dancing the " heel and
toe " polka on the greensward ! On inquiry these
audacious mortals proved to be Charles Lever and his
wife, who for several years made their home at Spezia,
where Lever was British Consul. Lovers of Lever and
lovers of Italy will find in " Cornelius O'Dowd " a
great many interesting things about those times, both
before Cavour had discovered the value of Spezia and
after he had exploited its lovely shores for the benefit
of the country he served so well. Mr. Henfrey told us
that one of the Levier girls challenged an Italian officer
who prided himself on his powers as a long-distance
swimmer to race her across the harbour's mouth
from Porto Venere to Lerici about two and a half
miles of open sea, as there was then no breakwater.
When Miss^Lever had gone three-quarters of the way,
she looked back to find her rival had given up and was
189
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
clambering into an attendant boat ; so she said to
herself, " I may as well go back to Porto Venere as
my clothes are there," and back she went, to arrive
as fresh as though she had merely walked a couple of
miles on the flat.
Even as late as 1891 there was constant " tribal
warfare " between San Terenzo and Lerici, small
places on the eastern shore of the harbour, and Mr.
Henfrey told us that on Sundays the young men of
the district would meet at a certain spot midway
between the villages and stone one another ! Despite
the terrible inroads on its beauty made by the hand of
man, Spezia was still in 1891 set amidst lovely surround-
ings, wild and varied and rich in flowers, of which the
tall white Mediterranean heath was my favourite.
An Italian girl very anxious to learn English sometimes
walked with us on spring afternoons when flower-
gathering was my object. Of her more remarkable
efforts to speak our language I have preserved two.
She assured us of her enjoyment of country rambles
in these words : " I do not love to go ' toof, toof ' like
an ass. I love to stop and catch the savage flower " ;
and when describing the evening gown of a friend she
observed " The corpse was dead white and carried."
(The corsage was of lustreless white and cut square
(cane).} We could only surmise that our own mistakes
were quite as comic as these, and sometimes even
unintelligible to our kind and courteous Italian friends,
for they never by the twinkle of an eye betrayed their
amusement or amazement.
From our windows at the Croce di Malta we could
190
HALF-PAY AT SPEZIA
see the snowy peaks of the Apennines as well as the fine
curves and promontories of the eastern side of the
harbour. Our rooms were at the top of the house,
and were reached by a double flight of shallow white
marble steps which led in undiminished beauty right
up to our rooms. Several naval officers and their
wives stayed in the hotel, and bachelors like Captain
Crespi made it their home. Thus we found ourselves
from the first in a comfortably Italian atmosphere,
and, but for a couple of untravelled Britons con-
temptuous of all that was un-British, we were
surrounded by people so friendly and genial that the
learning of Italian was made as pleasant as possible
to my husband, while I soon recaptured all I had lost
in the previous sixteen years and added a great deal
to my store. Captain Crespi was rather contemptuous
with respect to the poverty of the everyday vocabulary
of an English man or woman. He spoke no English
and understood the spoken language with difficulty, but
read English books with ease. One of his complaints,
well justified, I think, was that we worked an innocent
word to death. " Sorry " was one such word. " If I
die," he said, " you are veyrie sawrie ; if it is a wet day
you are veyrie sawrie ; if Vesuvius is in eruption and
overwhelms a village you are veyrie sawrie. And
nice ! Am I, perhaps, nice ? " (I said " Heaven forbid
that I should call you so ! "). " I am glad I am not
nice ; but English people say Rome is nice, and
bombe glade is nice, and the sunset on the mountains,
and the music of Scarlatti or Verdi or Mascagni ! To
me they are Servants, this nice and this sawrie." If I
191
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
made a very bad error in speaking Italian he would
draw in his breath with a sharp hiss and say " Oh,
my neuralgia ! " as if I had caused him a twinge of
actual pain. Perhaps I did. Of course this treatment
was " permitted " and it was very wholesome, since
I should otherwise have grown vain. I used to write
letters or themes for Captain Mirabello and Lieutenant
Capomazza (A.D.C. to Prince Luigi, Duke of the
Abruzzi, now famous as an explorer and an admiral),
and the other day I came across one of these, preserved
by some chance for twenty-five years, bearing the
pleasing word " Benissimo " in Captain Mirabello's
handwriting.
Prince Luigi, son of the Duke of Aosta (brother
of King Humbert of Italy, and once King of Spain),
was a boy of twenty in 1891 and still under the guardian-
ship of Conte Falicon, who lived near the Croce di
Malta with his delicate and very interesting wife.
The Prince and Lieutenant Capomazza had rooms in
the hotel, and the Prince's valet was a friend of Roger's.
This important functionary contributed not a little
to spoil the small boy who was then five years old
and every evening attended Lieutenant Capomazza
by special request when he was dressing for dinner.
One day he ran to tell me that he had been talking to
Prince Luigi, who had come into his room to find
Roger " helping " Michele to put his things out.
" What did you do ? " I asked. " Oh, I just standed
up on the floor and saluted," answered Roger. " Did
the Prince say anything to you ? " " He asked what
was the matter with my eye, so I said ' sty, sapete ? '
192
HALF-PAY AT SPEZIA
I cannot suppose sty was a word known to the Prince,
who then spoke little English, but the shocking
familiarity of sapete* must have distressed Michele.
We had a great deal of dancing that winter, and I
introduced the barn-dance, which I had learnt from an
American girl in Switzerland, to my Italian friends.
It was not then a romp, and we performed it for the
first time with great propriety, not to say solemnity,
at a ball given by Contessa Falicon. I had previously
instructed the dozen couples who danced it, and led
the procession with Prince Luigi, and we all wore white
carnations as a special distinction ! As for the music,
I had written down from memory the tune my Ameri-
can friend had played, and this was easily set by the
bandmaster for his orchestra.
There was lawn-tennis, too, and visits to various
ships in harbour, and every fine day Roger went out
on the water with a handsome old boatman attached
to the hotel. What those two talked about in the
lingo peculiar to each of them I cannot now say,
but the small boy loved Manuele and had a great
deal to tell me of their doings together.
Among our new friends the chief were Captain
Mirabello of the Maria Adelaide (Gunnery School
ship), who became Minister of Marine in about 1904 ;
Captain Crespi, in charge of the Torpedo School ;
Captain Faravelli (later Admiral and Commander-in-
Chief) and pretty Madame Faravelli ; Captain Agnelli
and his kind English wife ; and Captain and Mme.
* The second person, plural, is not used in speaking to strangers
or superiors.
A.W. 193 O
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Grenet. Then there were Lieutenants Corsi, Merlo,
Bruno, Orsini, Leoncavallo, and a tribe of others,
besides a bunch of midshipmen, dear to me (as is all
the species of whatever nationality), but far more
advanced in the ways of the world and the path of
serious flirtation than are ours. Captain Grenet
spoke English admirably, as did many of his brother
officers. He had been Italian Naval Attache* in
London, and his technical vocabulary was perhaps
more complete than that of any other English-speaking
officer, and there were many, at Spezia. But in a
letter I received from him some tune after we had left
Italy he used a phrase less correct than was his habit.
Speaking of his command, the Lepanto, he said :
" There are many harbours which unluckily I cannot
visit on account of the cursed bigness of this ship."
Italian naval people are, like our own, rarely rich,
but they were, in those days at any rate, almost
invariably of good social standing. We knew them for
what they were gentlefolks ; but the entire lack of
snobbishness so delightful and so noticeable among
Italians kept us in ignorance of the greatness of their
families until some accident revealed the fact. The
absolute simplicity combined with distinction which
characterised their manners made them peculiarly
attractive, and our intercourse with them never
suffered from the banality or formality which, to my
mind, so often spoils the earlier stages of acquaintance-
ship with persons of races more conventional and
punctilious than our own.
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VIAREGGIO AND BAGNI DI LUCCA
CHAPTER XXXVII
VIAREGGIO AND BAGNI DI LUCCA
AFTER five months at Spezia my husband decided
to leave a place where a stay further protracted might
encourage the suspicions of people whose duty it was
to be on the look out for spies, but it was with great
regret that we said good-bye to our friends of the Italian
Navy, whose hospitality had given to us, poor wan-
derers on half-pay, so delightful a winter. I had but
two evening gowns, and only once did we drive to and
from a ball, but what the ladies of Cranford would have
called an elegant economy was the rule in the circle
we had been permitted to join a circle whose notable
simplicity never degenerated into ugliness, though
I often regretted the want of comfort afforded by good
fires on the hearth, for which we considered scaldini
and the wearing of fur coats indoors but a poor sub-
stitute.
It was to Viareggio that we went on leaving Spezia.
There we took a furnished house at an absurdly low
rent, and as it became bitterly cold in mid -March we
were at first undeniably unhappy. Besides being half-
frozen in rooms with sciagliola floors (so cool and
pleasant in hot weather) we were lonely, for until the
bathing season begins there is no society at Viareggio.
Roger, too, missed his many friends, and when the
white bearded English chaplain from Pisa called as
195 o 2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
our first visitor we had reached the lowest depths of
social isolation. No sooner had the front door closed
behind Mr. Honiss than an indignant little boy
descended from the nursery to say "You had a visitor,
Mummie, and you never called me ! " and a burst of
tears followed this pathetic admission of a passionate
desire for the society of even white-haired old gentle-
men. As the spring advanced matters rapidly improved
and we found many charms in our surroundings.
The vines burst into leaf, the Carrara Mountains
were bathed in warm sunshine, the great -pineta, a
pinewood extending for miles along the shore, was
delicious to walk in, and the narrow bocca (river-mouth),
in and out of which fishing-boats dashed precariously,
was full of picturesque life. Then the bathing began,
and we spent most of our days in amphibious fashion.
Never have I bathed more luxuriously. The long
wooden piers running out at right angles to the sandy
beach had bathers' rooms built upon them, and in the
floor of each was a ladder by which one descended
unseen to the sea. Hot fresh water in tubs was ready
in each room when we returned from our swim, and
little booths where biscuits and vermouth and par-
ticularly delicious peppermints were sold tempted the
sharp-set bather to spend a few centesimi.
My housekeeping was made easy by the priceless
possession of an excellent cook, a Lucchese named
Caterina, who did all the marketing and was as honest
and economical as she was obliging. My Italian
vocabulary was deficient in every-day words necessary
to a housekeeper, but as the language of the Lucchesi
196
VIAREGGIO AND BAGNI DI LUCCA
is particularly pure I learnt, and learnt correctly,
from Caterina a vast number of domestic terms relat-
ing to meat, fruit and vegetables, groceries, and weights
and measures. She was very dramatic when discussing
the butcher's orders and would place her hand on that
part of her own person corresponding to the joint she
proposed to buy so that I might understand her wishes,
and the neck or cutlets of mutton, the ribs or shin of
beef, the shoulder of lamb, the back or side of bacon,
and even the less elegant portions of veal were thus
made the subject of an Italian lesson with illustra-
tions by the good woman.
Roger presently found friends among the children
who frequented the beach, and would entertain them
there in our own capanna (a thatched hut), or be
received in theirs along with his nurse. The Duke of
Parma had a villa near Viareggio, and Roger's dearest
friends were the children of a gentleman of his suite.
One day the little Parmas came to spend the afternoon
in the capanna where Roger and his nurse were
honorary members, and the latter was really hurt
by being told that 'during the visit of the " Principi "
(of whom the unhappy Princess Ferdinand of Bulgaria
was one) she and her charge must not intrude.
With June came my husband's appointment to the
command of the cruiser Apollo, then brand-new, for
the manoeuvres, so he was unable to accompany us
to the baths of Lucca, where we had taken a house for
the hot months of July, August, and September.
Though this was, of course, a great disappointment
to me, we were both glad that he should have even
197
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
temporary employment after more than two years of
inaction.
At Bagni di Lucca we lived in a comfortable old
house, Casa del Chiappa, where Caterina cooked for
us and her daughter Linda acted as house-parlourmaid.
The nightingales singing in a garden lit by fireflies
kept me awake on the hottest nights, and a narrow
river rushed foaming past the foot of the garden.
The tonic effect of my morning swim was welcome
enough, but the fact that no mosquitoes haunted a
spot where such swift water raced was of even greater
moment. Early every morning I used to fling myself
into the icy current to be carried like a leaf to a point
where our territory ended, run back along the wide
stone-capped embankment and repeat the process,
for to swim against such a stream was out of the
question. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. one stayed indoors
with every window and shutter closed ; but when the
sun declined behind the mountains one could walk
among the hills or play lawn-tennis with other summer
visitors. The lovely steeps and grassy glades of Bagni
were clothed in Spanish chestnut, and as the bread of
the peasants was made of chestnut flour the chestnut
crop was of great importance. It was said that if a
Lucchese should go to Viareggio he would die of
dyspepsia brought on by eating bread made of gran'
turco (maize meal), whereas a Viareggino at Lucca
would succumb to a diet of chestnut bread ! However
the Lucchesi looked far better nourished than their
brethren on the coast, who, except in the bathing
season, which brought money-spenders, were as poor
108
VIAREGGIO AND BAGNI DI LUCCA
as poor could be and were kept poor by the exactions
of the octroi, which levied a tax on every little handful
of nichi (a small watery shellfish) that passed the town
gate. Even the collecting of salt by evaporation was
prohibited because salt was a Government monopoly.
But the poverty of the Viareggini showed no rags.
The women washed and patched their gowns until
they were faded or particoloured beyond recognition,
and every woman knitted her own stockings. I never
saw one that was down at heel or darned, but the
wooden zoccoli in which they clattered about had no
golosh at the back of the heel, so there was no friction
between shoe and stocking. Many visitors to Italy
judge rashly of the characteristics of the lower classes
after a few days at Naples and fill their minds with
such tales of brigands and the Maffia as appeal to their
love of sensation. These good tourists never dream
of drawing any distinction between the inhabitants
of a spot like Naples (where their own presence en-
courages the rapacious longshore harpy, the teasing
guide, and the unscrupulous vendor of rubbishy
mementoes) and the self-respecting, hard-working
contadino of Lombardy, Tuscany, and the Veneto.
The Neapolitan is as far removed in character and
customs from the Torinese as is a Kerryman from a
Yorkshireman, and would be confronted with linguistic
difficulties even greater on finding himself in Piemonte
than Paddy Sullivan would encounter when struggling
to converse with a denizen of the West Riding of York-
shire. And the points of view are as utterly dissimilar
as the lingoes. Picturesque rags are neither paying
199
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
nor proper in North Italy ; brigandage stops short
at a certain latitude, and dirt and lies are but little
esteemed above that parallel. I shall never forget
hearing the wife of a Church of England chaplain
in our hotel at Spezia descant upon the failings of
Italians generally. She was a Dublin woman and was
specially shocked by the absence of backyards in Spezia !
" How can the poor creatures be clean," she asked,
" when they have to put their refuse in tins in the street
outside their houses? "as though the possession of
a fly-haunted refuse-heap behind one's house were a
thing to boast of. One day she found some wild sage
when walking on the hills near the harbour. She had
nothing to say of the beauty of the early spring flowers,
but the wild sage appealed to her. " I'd have picked
a bunch," she said, regretfully, " but I felt sure the
cook here, poor creature, wouldn't know so much as
how to stuff a duck."
Richard Bagot's books show anyone desirous of
being well informed how the Italian contadino actually
lives and thinks. Upon Mr. Bagot has fallen the mantle
of Marion Crawford. These two novelists obtained
the right to act as exponents of the national character
in all classes and many provinces by long residence
in Italy and by true, and therefore discriminating,
affection for her people.
200
H.M..S. APOLLO
CHAPTER XXXVIII
H.M.S. APOLLO
A GREAT catastrophe befel us in August, 1892, and
we were deprived of the comfort of bearing it together.
My husband in the Apollo was, with the Naiad, follow-
ing the Forth (senior officer) round the Skelligs in a
dense fog during manoeuvres. The Forth, leading, was
in a position to avoid the rocks upon which the Naiad,
like No. 2 in a game of " follow my leader," inevitably
struck, and to the Apollo's captain was left the choice,
to be made instantaneously, between jumping on the
Naiad's back or picking out a rock for himself. He
chose the latter. He had been writing to me in his
cabin before the fog closed down, and his last words
were : " It's coming on thick and I must be off on
deck again. I don't at all like our keeping up this speed
thirteen knots in such weather on a particularly
nasty coast." But his was not the responsibility.
The senior officer, who had already gained notoriety
by losing two ships, set the pace and the course with
consequences disastrous to his own career, but cruel
enough to the two junior captains under his orders.
The Apollo struggled off her rock and got round under
her own steam to Queenstown, where presently a
Court of Inquiry was held, but owing to some irregu-
larity in the proceedings this was not considered
adequate by their Lordships and a Court-martial was
ordered. A whole month elapsed between the disaster
201
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
and the holding of the Court-martial at Portsmouth,
whither the poor crippled Apollo had to make her way
as best she might in a much damaged condition,
since Haulbowline Dockyard, for reasons local or
political, proved unaccommodating. At the Court-
martial, which lasted an entire week, my husband
made no defence worth the name, for he held that
every captain is responsible for the safety of the ship
he commands, whatever the circumstances other than
those produced by the " act of God." I, less high-
principled and bitterly resenting the sacrifice of the
two junior captains to the proved ineptitude of their
leader, have never concurred in the sentence of the
Court that they should be " admonished." How would
it have appeared if the junior officers had warned their
senior of the risk he was running ? Such things are
not done. If a leader misleads those under his orders,
discipline ordains that the misled should follow and
suffer the innocent with the guilty. The captain of
the Forth was never employed again.
For myself those five long weeks passed miserably.
I could not afford to give up my house at Bagni and
fly to my husband's side, and I was among people
wholly ignorant of naval life, its chances and mis-
chances. So I lay awake and cried while the nightin-
gales sang, and slipped away alone to the chestnut
woods in the cool of the evening and cried again ; but
my husband's grief at having hurt his beautiful new
ship seemed deeper than any he felt for himself.
Later I heard from Dick's first lieutenant how the
Apollo's men had at first wanted to send a deputation
202
H.M.S. APOLLO
to their captain to thank him for having pulled them
through so tight a place, but this, being contrary to
regulations, could, of course, 'not be permitted.
Then they decided to send a long and costly telegram
to the two naval papers most read in the Service the
Western Morning News and the Hampshire Telegraph
and a copy of the former containing this " testimonial "
reached me from our old landlady of No II, Southsea
Terrace, soon enough to help me through the worst :
" The crew of the Apollo wish us to insert the following :
" ' BEREHAVEN, Friday, August i2th, 1892.
" ' We wish to convey our gratitude to the captain of
said ship through the channels of your paper for the prompt
action taken by him at the time of the ship striking the
rocks off the Great Skelligs. This occurred on Thursday
in a dense fog when keeping station in line ahead in the
rear of two other cruisers, and it is firmly believed that the
timely action taken and the promptness shown by him
averted a serious collision with the Naiad and also pre-
vented us from rinding ourselves hard and fast on the rocks,
in which case both ships must have become a total wreck,
and no doubt a very great loss of life would have resulted.
There would have been very small chances of escape, and
the coolness displayed by Captain Poore has won the hearts
of all on board.' '
The Western Morning News Naval Editor prefaces this
communication with the words :
" It is pleasing to note the commendations of the ship's
company of the Apollo in regard to the coolness and good
judgment displayed by Captain Poore. It is, perhaps,
unusual for a ship's company to telegraph such comments
to a newspaper, but this course has probably been taken
203
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
in order to prevent hasty criticisms being made in other
quarters."
It was on Saturday, September I5th, 1892, that Dick
was tried for " hazarding and stranding " his ship.
That morning, as soon as the telegraph office at Bagni
was open, I crept down the quiet shady street and
sent off a telegram to Portsmouth directed, for want
of a more correct address, to " Court-martial Ship,"
Portsmouth. I could not trust the postmistress to
transmit an English message, and the three words
" Coraggio, caro mio " conveyed all I wanted so much
to say. It was just when my husband, deprived of his
sword, was awaiting the decision of the Court that
my message was handed to him. He said it was pre-
cisely what he most needed at that moment, and the
flimsy paper, discoloured by long exposure, hangs
framed to this day beside his writing-table. A splinter
(extracted from the ship's bottom) of the rock on which
the Apollo ran also survives, mounted as a letter-
weight, and these mementoes keep alive the recollec-
tion of almost the hardest trial of our joint existence ;
but there has always been comfort and pride mingled
w ith the trouble they recall, for the confidence and
appreciation of his men, though dearly bought, was
very precious to us both.
Meanwhile my time at Bagni was drawing to a close,
and Viareggio was the first stage on the homeward
way. There we stopped, and thence, greatly invigo-
rated by a week of sea bathing, betook ourselves via
Spezia and Dijon to London.
204
H.M.S. TOURMALINE
CHAPTER XXXIX
H.M.S. TOURMALINE
AGAIN we settled down in London, and were very
fortunate in our new quarters on Campden Hill, where
we found a landlady so kind and comfort so genuine
that we should have been loath to exchange with a
millionaire in Park Lane. Roger went to a kinder-
garten close at hand where he learnt very little of
anything, but he was kept occupied for a couple of
hours every morning and was, at any rate, taught the
first rudiments of school discipline.
We had scarcely been a month in Kensington when
my husband was offered the command of a corvette
on the North American Station, and this he accepted
with alacrity. The communication from the Admiralty
was confidential, and he was therefore amazed to
receive a letter two days later from their Lordships
to say that as he had chosen to disregard their wishes
by publishing his appointment in an evening paper
their offer was withdrawn. To no one had my husband
breathed a word of the offer, and when a friend of ours
taxed the editor of the paper with having done an
unpardonable thing he was told that Captain Poore
had himself volunteered the information to the editor
in the train by which they were fellow-travellers from
Portsmouth to London ! This was a double- or
treble-barrelled falsehood. My husband had neither
made the journey in question nor met the editor, nor
205
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
ing her, snatched the " hoops " from the ground,
hid them under her long cloak and stepped swiftly
into the carriage. " Thank you, my dear ; that was
nobly done," said her chaperon.
The last time I saw Sir Algernon Heneage he was
sadly changed. It was at a State Ball in 1912, and he
was then so feeble that he was unable to rise to his
feet when the Royal Procession passed by on their
way to supper. But he was as smartly turned out as
of yore, and, though it was nearly twenty years since
we had last met, I found he had not forgotten me
when I sat down beside him to have a yarn.
It was very interesting to me to make the acquain-
tance of the Tourmaline's gunroom officers, but I
must admit that when my husband and I met two of
them (naval cadets just hatched out) on the seawall
at Sheerness they looked as though they would sooner
cast themselves into the sea than encounter their
captain and his wife. Some of them had relations
who came down to Sheerness to see them, and I was
the object of much flattering attention on the part of
more than one anxious parent. Indeed, the grand-
father of one midshipman staying at the " Fountain "
plied us with champagne at dinner, while a fond mother
presented my husband with a box of plover's eggs
and myself with a bunch of Mare"chal Niel roses. The
eggs were sent on board just before the ship sailed,
and, sad to relate, they were put on one side by the
captain's steward to be discovered only through a
powerful appeal to his nose when the ship was half
way to Bermuda. But neither champagne, roses, nor
208
H.M.S. TOURMALINE
plover's eggs were needed to enlist my affections.
Even before they can themselves have been aware
of it I had become the friend of the Tourmaline's
gunroom officers, and much of my enjoyment during
the three years that followed was due to as nice a set
of boys as one would wish to meet.
Our good-byes were said on April 22nd, and soon
afterwards Roger and I went over to stay with my
father at Limerick. While I was at the Palace an
alarming incident occurred. This was the failure
of Messrs. Hallett, bankers and naval agents. With a
very serious face my father showed me the paragraph
in the morning paper announcing the news. Finance
was never my strong point, and visions of actual ruin
assailed me as I put on my things and flew to the
house of one of the kindest of friends one to whom
I never appealed in vain for help or advice the late
Mr. James Fitzgerald Bannatyne. In a few hours
he had not only discovered the precise condition of
affairs, but had himself volunteered to be my banker
until matters could be arranged. This failure of
Messrs. Hallett was entirely due to their own over-
generous leniency to clients. No securities were
affected by it, and I fancy that a great proportion of
those naval officers who banked with Halletts had no
balances worth mentioning to lose. The next thing
I did was to consult my Unicode and concoct a cable
which my husband should receive on his arrival at
Bermuda. The cable rate was then, I think, 10/6 a
word, and I most unwisely confined my message to two
of these expensive units. Search as I would, I could
A.W. 209 P
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
ing her, snatched the " hoops " from the ground,
hid them under her long cloak and stepped swiftly
into the carriage. " Thank you, my dear ; that was
nobly done," said her chaperon.
The last time I saw Sir Algernon Heneage he was
sadly changed. It was at a State Ball in 1912, and he
was then so feeble that he was unable to rise to his
feet when the Royal Procession passed by on their
way to supper. But he was as smartly turned out as
of yore, and, though it was nearly twenty years since
we had last met, I found he had not forgotten me
when I sat down beside him to have a yarn.
It was very interesting to me to make the acquain-
tance of the Tourmaline's gunroom officers, but I
must admit that when my husband and I met two of
them (naval cadets just hatched out) on the seawall
at Sheerness they looked as though they would sooner
cast themselves into the sea than encounter their
captain and his wife. Some of them had relations
who came down to Sheerness to see them, and I was
the object of much flattering attention on the part of
more than one anxious parent. Indeed, the grand-
father of one midshipman staying at the " Fountain "
plied us with champagne at dinner, while a fond mother
presented my husband with a box of plover's eggs
and myself with a bunch of Mare"chal Niel roses. The
eggs were sent on board just before the ship sailed,
and, sad to relate, they were put on one side by the
captain's steward to be discovered only through a
powerful appeal to his nose when the ship was half
way to Bermuda. But neither champagne, roses, nor
208
H.M.S. TOURMALINE
plover's eggs were needed to enlist my affections.
Even before they can themselves have been aware
of it I had become the friend of the Tourmaline's
gunroom officers, and much of my enjoyment during
the three years that followed was due to as nice a set
of boys as one would wish to meet.
Our good-byes were said on April 22nd, and soon
afterwards Roger and I went over to stay with my
father at Limerick. While I was at the Palace an
alarming incident occurred. This was the failure
of Messrs. Hallett, bankers and naval agents. With a
very serious face my father showed me the paragraph
in the morning paper announcing the news. Finance
was never my strong point, and visions of actual ruin
assailed me as I put on my things and flew to the
house of one of the kindest of friends one to whom
I never appealed in vain for help or advice the late
Mr. James Fitzgerald Bannatyne. In a few hours
he had not only discovered the precise condition of
affairs, but had himself volunteered to be my banker
until matters could be arranged. This failure of
Messrs. Hallett was entirely due to their own over-
generous leniency to clients. No securities were
affected by it, and I fancy that a great proportion of
those naval officers who banked with Halletts had no
balances worth mentioning to lose. The next thing
I did was to consult my Unicode and concoct a cable
which my husband should receive on his arrival at
Bermuda. The cable rate was then, I think, 10/6 a
word, and I most unwisely confined my message to two
of these expensive units. Search as I would, I could
A.W. 209 P
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
find nothing more appropriate and reassuring than
" There is no cause for apprehension " (Aggravo),
and to this I added " Halletts." When my husband
received the message he had heard nothing of the
bank failure and jumped to the conclusion that I was
seriously but not mortally ill ! Halletts he regarded
as his agent's signature. This little story points a
moral. There is no economy in sending a short cable
if it leaves the recipient in any doubt as to its meaning.
The Tourmaline had a long and weary voyage to
Bermuda and arrived to find the Squadron departed
for Halifax. The chrysanthemums her Captain was
charged to deliver to Lady Hopkins, wife of his Com-
mander-in-Chief, had been eaten " to the bone " by
the sheep on board during the voyage, so they had
time to sprout under the benign influence of the rain-
water obtained at Bermuda before they were handed
over to their owner at Halifax, but General Lyons,
Governor of Bermuda, was not pleased to find that the
full-sized billiard table he had been expecting per
Tourmaline had not arrived ! Shore-going people do
not always remember that the cargo capacity of a
small man-o'-war (the Tourmaline's tonnage was only
2,120) is far inferior to that of the ocean tramp.
The question which agitated our minds for several
months after my husband's appointment to the
Tourmaline was this : Could he find a suitable cottage
in Bermuda so that he might, with the consent of his
Commander-in-Chief, invite me to join him there in
the autumn when the Squadron would be coming south
again ? Only at the end of August did I hear that
210
H.M.S. TOURMALINE
what I so ardently wished was to come about, and
then the inevitable and unhappy task of finding a
home in England for Roger, now seven years old, faced
me. For long I had debated in my mind whether
husband or son had the stronger claim upon me. I
was keenly anxious to join my husband at Bermuda,
but I could not be sure that I was right in leaving the
small boy for two years and a half. Two friends of
mine helped me to decide, but the fact that the decision
I arrived at was the one to which my strongest incli-
nations pointed has always prevented my feeling that
I was right to do as I did. One of these friends was an
old Scottish lady, who insisted that my husband needed
me most, solemnly assuring me that children of Roger's
age did not forget their mothers during their absence.
The other, whose position as the wife of an officer in
India gave her a right to speak, said : " Other women
may take as good care as, sometimes even better care
than, one can oneself of one's children ; but no woman
wants another to take care of her husband for her, and
that is what sometimes happens when a man is long
separated from his wife." I cannot say I had any
genuine misgivings on this head, but I could see the
wisdom of my friend's reasoning. There is no doubt
that the captain of a ship is generally a very lonely
man. He leads a life so entirely apart from his ship-
mates for reasons of discipline that, without some sort
of shore-home to go to, a married captain on a distant
station is only too likely to become an object of com-
passion in the eyes of kind-hearted women, some of
whom are wise and some foolish. If he is a gregarious
211 p 2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
person he may find himself quite at home upon the
adopted hearth. He will only see his charitable
hostess at her best and may conclude that she is
always sweet-tempered and has naturally curly hair.
In these beliefs he may be utterly mistaken, but he
knows his wife is sometimes irritable, and he has seen
her hair waved with tongs or, worse still, twisted up
in "curlers" which mar the appearance of the very
loveliest woman.
I was fortunate indeed in finding the ideal deputy-
mother for Roger in the person of my friend Mrs.
Stanford, at Winchester, where I was confident he
would be both loved and cared for during my absence.
I cannot say whether the parting from his nurse, the
faithful and beloved Louisa who had been with us
through thick and thin for six years, was a greater
or less sorrow to him than that of bidding me good-
bye. I was never jealous of the affection he had for
her, and I know the separation gave her the keenest
pain. But he had outgrown the nursery, and a gover-
ness both wise and kind was to take charge of his
education, while he would receive from Mr. and Mrs.
Stanford affection and understanding.*
* When Roger was nine years old Mr. Stanford moved from
Winchester to Rottingdean, where he established his famous
preparatory school, " St. Aubyn's," and there Roger was one of his
first pupils.
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WESTWARD HO!
CHAPTER XL
WESTWARD HO !
IT was on September I5th, 1893, that I took my small
boy down to Winchester, and two days later I passed
the back of Mr. Stanford's house in the boat-train
on my way to Southampton, where I embarked for
New York. The nursery window was wide open, but
no little face looked out, and I carried the memory
of that empty frame in my heart for many a long
day.
My voyage procured me one pleasure the acquaint-
ance of a very charming American girl, Miss Gilfillan,
from St. Paul. The stewardess was gentle, but the sea
was rough, and I landed limp, aching, and thankful
at Hoboken. In the first five minutes I wished that
America had a language as exclusively her own as has
France or Italy, for of course I said " luggage " and
" boxes " instead of " baggage " and " trunks " ; I
called a " hack " a " cab," and I offered the Hoboken
ferry clerk three pennies (thirty centimes) instead of
the thirty cents, he demanded ! I also deeply resented
having to burden myself with many pounds weight of
brass baggage checks which stood for the safety of
the heavy items to be put on board the Bermuda
steamer Orinoco by which I was to sail in forty-eight
hours. When I had paid 12/6 to the hackman who
half an hour later deposited me and my light luggage
at the Brevoort House I felt America was no place
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
for me, and even a marvellous breakfast consisting of
about fifteen dishes all equally unsuited to a digestion
shattered by many days of sea-sickness did nothing to
mitigate my pessimism. And I had so looked forward
to meeting waffles and maple syrup and corn bread
in their native land ! However, a couple of hours'
rest on a delicious big bed, and oceans of the hottest
bath water to follow, helped to restore my serenity,
and when Miss Susan Ross Dodge, the clever and kind
American girl who had taught us to dance the barn-
dance in Switzerland in 1891, arrived to bid me
welcome I was dressed in garments untainted by cabin
use and no longer to be identified with the misanthropic
British Bear who had passed that morning through
the odious ordeal of an American Custom-house.
The extraordinary kindness of Americans to new-
comers like myself is beyond praise and almost beyond
comprehension. It seems to me a survival of the old
days when any stranger was welcome to the lonely
and often struggling colonists of the eighteenth century.
There is certainly nothing to equal it in England.
Next day it was Miss Gilfillan who became my
personal conductor, and, though not only the Four
Hundred but about Forty Thousand of New York's
choicest and best inhabitants were out of town at that
season, I learnt something of how life was lived in that
vast city. At the steamer office whither I went to
make inquiries respecting my voyage to Bermuda
I found a pleasant and sympathetic chief, and, just as
I was leaving, a fine-looking man came in whom
Mr. Outerbridge introduced to me as Mr. James
214
WESTWARD HO!
Trimmingham, of Bermuda, my fellow-passenger on
the morrow.
I cannot pretend that I had an ounce of courage
left with which to face the cross-grained seas between
New York and Bermuda, but the knowledge that I
should soon reach my journey's end and meet my
husband supported me through thirty-six hours of
unmitigated misery. As the ship was picking her way
out of New York Harbour I stood on deck with Mr.
Trimmingham and asked a few of the many questions
I wanted answered about the beautiful islands he
called Home ; but my catechism had not proceeded
far before he remarked," I think I ought to tell you
that I am what we in Bermuda call a storekeeper
and English people call a shopkeeper." I am sure I
neither fainted nor screamed, and I hope I said, " It
doesn't matter a bit what your occupation is so long
as you are, as is most obvious, a gentleman," for that
is what I felt and desired to express.
People well acquainted with Bermuda and the West
Indies (Bermuda, once and for all, is not in the West
Indies) know that business-folk there are actually
obliged to run their own shops or stores, for the high
pay expected by white employes would swallow up
half the receipts of their principals ; but I have seen
officers born far out of the purple (and wives of officers
also) actually turn their backs upon Bermudian gentle-
men at a dance because, forsooth, they were " shop-
keepers." If English visitors to Bermuda would but
take the trouble to learn something of the island's
history they would discover that the oldest of its
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
families can trace their descent to scions of the best
English stock who were wrecked on its coast on their
way to Virginia at a period when the ancestor of
Captain X - of the Blankshire Fusiliers had not a
decent coat to his back, much less a coat-of-arms on
his carriage panel.
I must confess I felt embarrassed when I first entered
the big store of the Trimmingham brothers in Front
Street, Hamilton, but my late shipmate put me so
completely at my ease by his pleasant and dignified
acceptance of the situation that I rallied quickly and
found myself asking his advice as to what kind of
puggaree would be the best to get. And over and over
again during my time at Bermuda he would suggest
my buying that which was less expensive than what I
had in mind.
CHAPTER XLI
" BEAUTIFUL ISLE OF THE SEA "
WHEN I saw my husband come alongside the
Orinoco in his galley in Grassy Bay I felt as a trapeze
lady must feel when she has made a long and perilous
flight through the air and grasps the swinging bar which
stands for safety. Even sitting on the trim lawn of
the Cottage at Ireland Island, where the Captain in
Charge, my host for the first few days, lived, I was only
half-thankful for my deliverance from the perils of the
deep, for it seemed then as though the island was only
216
"BEAUTIFUL ISLE OF THE SEA"
a little more secure, a little wider, than a ship's deck,
and until I had passed a whole week ashore I could not
fully appreciate my delightful surroundings as they
deserved.
Bermuda in October comes, to my mind, as near per-
fection in climate as any place I have seen. The intense
deep blue of the sea, upon the surface of which rocks
submerged paint patches of amaranth, the rich greens
of lawns and cedar trees, the hedges of rosy oleanders
twenty or thirty feet high, all had a robust and vivid
beauty ; the coral rocks and coral strands a stainless
purity ; while the boundless horizon, the generous
sun, the salt-spiced air mitigated rather than accen-
tuated the isolation. A valley surrounded by high
mountains will imprison body and spirit as a handful
of coral islands rising from a great and passionate
ocean never may. And then the exquisite sense of
cleanliness imparted by an air ever swept and washed
which no taint other than that of a passing ship's smoke
pollutes! There are sunsets more wonderful than
Alpine regions can show, since the whole firmament
is spread before the entranced beholder, himself the
tiny centre of the world's floor. The deep-blue dome
is plumed and fretted with clouds of crimson and amber,
purple and burnished gold ; the sea gives back the
colours from its shimmering breast ; the islands swim
in the reflected light. The splendour gathers, deepens,
disperses and fades till only a band of faintest primrose
remains between a sea grown dark and a heaven of
clear lavender patterned with the silvery lacework
of ten thousand stars.
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Bermuda is a Crown Colony with a Governor who is
also Military Commander-in-Chief. In 1893 96 the
garrison consisted of a battalion of the Berkshire
regiment, some Garrison Artillery, and a handful of
Royal Engineers and Army Service Cprps. It is
generally believed that three hundred and sixty-five
islands go to make up the colony. I never attempted
to count them, but I know there are a great many.
On the central island of the group, which forms a rough
crescent is Hamilton, the capital. Government House,
Parliament House, the Law Courts, Prospect Barracks
and several American hotels, both large and small,
are also to be found there, while Admiralty House
is delightfully placed at Clarence Cove on its northern
shore. Hundreds of veranda'd bungalows, gabled and
white-washed, are dotted about the length and breadth
of the group of islands. Pleasant gardens in which
standard magnolias and spreading poincianas flourish,
surround the bungalows, whose flower-beds flame with
canna and gladiolus. Oleanders white, pink, and rose-
coloured are everywhere, and hibiscus and althea,
bignonia and buddleia take the place of the laurustinus,
privet and berberis that compose an ordinary English
shrubbery. The natural wood of Bermuda presents
but little variety, consisting as it does almost entirely
of the common cedar a very poor relation of that of
Lebanon, giving but little shade, as it carries its branches
not horizontally but vertically and the undergrowth
is chiefly composed of the strong-smelling sage-brush
and the broad-leafed life-plant, an accommodating
parasite found anywhere and everywhere. Coarse
218
"BEAUTIFUL ISLE OF THE SEA"
creeping grass, known as crab-grass, covers the ground
thickly and makes the islands marvellously green. The
sea is as marvellously blue, and the roof of every house
is (compulsorily) of a dazzling whiteness, for the
heavens alone provide the inhabitants of Bermuda
with water for all purposes, and from these white-
washed roofs the rain runs into the capacious domestic
tank attached to every dwelling. Bermuda is not
flat ; its surface is delightfully diversified, although
its highest point is scarcely four hundred feet above
the sea, and its hills and hollows, glades and nooks have
infinite charm and variety. As for its shores, no pen
can describe the beauty of their curves and pockets
of white sand, sometimes shell-strewn and often
backed by hedges of plumy tamarisk. Boating and
bathing are to be enjoyed under peculiarly favourable
conditions, since there are neither slimy seaweed, green
mud, nor dangerous tides and squalls, and we were
told that no white person had ever fallen a victim
to a shark in Bermudian waters. All the same, I
confess that I was never perfectly at ease in the water,
for I had watched the sharks gathering round the ships
in Grassy Bay after the men's dinner-hour, and there
was nothing to prevent their eating me when I bathed
less than a mile away. But there are neither snakes
nor scorpions in these happy islands, and I do not
think the huge mosquitoes are more vicious than the
smaller ones to be met with in other places.
By great good luck there was when I arrived a
vacant bungalow on the military island of Boaz,
next to Ireland Island, upon which the Dockyard
219
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
is situated, and this the Governor kindly allowed us to
occupy. The scanty allowance of barrack furniture
we found there did not include such necessaries as
chests of drawers or wardrobes, armchairs, sofas or
mosquito-nets, and I do not think there were any
window-curtains. But we bought what we could not
improvise and improvised what we could not afford
to buy. My deck-chair was the only " easy " one in
the house, carpets we had none, and yet I cannot
remember that we were uncomfortable. Sunshine
and sweet air, cleanliness and space, rooms unencum-
bered with non-essentials, delicately pink-washed
walls and well-stained floors are not bad substitutes
for luxury when one is young and happy and healthy,
and in my husband's coxswain, Reynolds, and Friday,
his cook, we had two jewels. If I asked Friday to
produce dinner for three hungry midshipmen (belated
callers) he would snatch his spotless cap from his head
as though to give his brains air and reply, " Very good,
ma'am. I have plenty of eggs and Reynolds will pop
across to the canteen and see what he can find." My
husband's steward and also his valet were coal-black.
The latter was an excellent bowler, but I cannot
remember that he had any other merit ; the former
was useless, and one night he polished the wine-glasses
before placing them on the table at dessert with his
heavily-scented pocket-handkerchief ! This loathsome
crime, swiftly detected by my nose, led to his summary
ejection and dismissal by an indignant Captain, and
his place was filled by a young Englishman with a
superior standard of propriety.
220
"BEAUTIFUL ISLE OF THE SEA"
The garden of our bungalow contained a few scarlet
geraniums, two sago-palms and a loud-voiced and
imperturbable cat, but I was ambitious, though
ignorant, and presently Reynolds and I established in
its two large round beds seedlings of various kinds
disposed with the undeviating symmetry to be
observed in coastguard station gardens. In the narrow
borders round three sides of the house some of the
Tourmaline's midshipmen sowed sweet peas and other
annuals. We decided unanimously that a stout sago-
palm took up too much room in the centre of one of the
round beds, and on a hot November afternoon one
post-captain, one energetic lieutenant, three large
midshipmen, and Reynolds tailed on to a rope fastened
round the palm's waist and with a " one, two, three,
haul ' violently uprooted it, themselves falling
backwards in a perfect Laocoon of arms and legs
upon the grass plot. There the captain reposed in
the arms of the lieutenant, and Reynolds was flattened
beneath the weight of the midshipmen. I lived to
regret the expulsion of the scarlet geraniums and even
the sago-palm, for they had been better than beds
neatly edged with lace-plant but otherwise empty
of all but dying seedlings. One improvement in the
garden was effected by the army ; a friendly subal-
tern kindly shot the cat.
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
CHAPTER XLII
NEW VISITING-CARDS
THE Tourmaline was a happy ship. There were
" regrettable incidents " on board no doubt from time
to time, as, for instance, when I asked the Chief
Engineer, next whom I sat when lunching in the ward-
room, why the drinking water on board ship tasted
as though ropes had been boiled in it. He blushed
so violently that I knew I had said something dreadful,
but only learnt later that chief engineers are responsible
for the water supply.
Christmas was close at hand, though a long succession
of perfect days had made us forget that the season of
storms was approaching, when my husband received
a cable announcing the death of his father. It was
many long years since they had met, for Sir Edward
had early adopted a roving life, and for one reason or
another not one of my husband's station-mates knew
that his father's death would make him a baronet.
Our position was a little awkward. It was difficult
to advertise the fact that our style and title had changed
so my husband wrote to his Commander-in-Chief to
explain the situation. Even then Ireland and Somerset
Islands remained in ignorance and, until Mrs. Cornish,
wife of the first lieutenant, with considerable courage
took the bull by the horns and came to ask me if I
were not now Lady Poore, we shyly preserved our
embarrassing incognito. Then I besought her to
222
NEW VISITING-CARDS
spread the tidings, and went with a sense of relief to
buy some blank cards upon which I wrote in trembling
characters " Lady Poore." My husband broke the
news to Reynolds and Friday, who acted upon the
information each after his kind. Reynolds startled
me by inquiring with complete aplomb whether My
Ladyship would require him to water the garden that
evening as rain was threatening, and Friday tore his
cap from his head when next I entered the kitchen
saying, " You'll excuse me ma'am My Lady, I mean
if I don't say it right at first. It come rather a sur-
prise, me not knowing there was a title in the family."
The event in no way improved our financial position,
and I sometimes felt sorry I could not rise to the
occasion by being richly clad and diamond-decked.
My dear old Uncle Robert, my father's elder brother,
and Sub-Dean of the Chapel Royal, Dublin, had died
recently and left each of his nephews and nieces a
legacy of a few hundred pounds, and out of this I
bought myself some things for my toilet-table which
I had long desired. They of course impressed no one
but myself, but I must say I enjoyed having a pair
of pretty brushes, a looking-glass, and some silver-
topped pots and boxes beyond those provided by my
useful travelling-bag, and I certainly experienced a
slight increase of self-respect when I contemplated the
shining array.
Of course I supposed the change would come some
day, but I had never dwelt upon the difference it
would make because I knew so well it would carry
with it none of those material advantages which an
223
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
inherited fortune confers along with an increase of
social status.
My first Christmas morning on board ship went off
merrily ; but it was our last festivity together, for the
Squadron sailed for the West Indies in the first week
of January, and the ensuing loneliness was only
accentuated by the fact that it followed three months
of happy companionship.
CHAPTER XLIII
THE PRINCESS H<5TEL
I HAD been warned by people of experience that I
should find Bermuda, and particularly the western
end where I lived, a perfect hot-bed of gossip, so I
chose my topics of conversation with the utmost care
when calling or being called upon and scarcely per-
mitted myself to discuss anything more personal than
the birds and flowers and the price of food. After I
had lived for a few months at Boaz I came to the
conclusion that most of the gossip was started and
carried by the coloured servants, who, with few excep-
tions, devoted the larger part of their time to running
improvised errands and attending weddings and
funerals. Naval and military families rarely get the
best servants in the colonies ; only those who love
change better than long service are available for
224
THE PRINCESS H6lEL
immigrants like ourselves, and a lady who expected
a satisfactory character or reference before engaging
a servant in Bermuda was regarded as offering a
deliberate insult to the Rosalie or Blanche who con-
descended to offer her services. So when the ship
went south and my husband's cheerful and obliging
retinue of men departed with him I had to provide
myself with two dark-skinned ladies, and much did I
suffer at their hands. If Blanche resented my criti-
cisms she would avenge her wrongs by flavouring every
dish with paraffin. If I reproved Rosalie for leaving
mosquitoes inside my net she would absent herself
without warning from noon to midnight and meet
me in the morning with some tale of a death-bed or a
funeral which I was free to doubt but powerless to
call an invention. When my bill for groceries at the
Canteen showed that twelve pounds of lump sugar
had been purchased in a week Blanche protested that
every morsel had been consumed by myself, but a
neighbour of experience did more than hint that
Blanche's mother in Somerset would be making
loquat jam at about the time of this phenomenal expen-
diture. When my coal-black laundress with the arms
of a prize-fighter brought home my table-linen stained
with port I suggested that these stains could have been
removed with boiling water. " I nebber using boiling
water, lady," was Mrs. Jugg's retort ; " boiling water
too bad for de health. Always I washes in cold water."
Later I discovered that the washing aristocracy of
Somerset made a practice of entertaining their friends
at supper on Sunday evenings, and that at their tables
A.W. 225 g
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
much port was drunk (and spilt) on our tablecloths,
which were never restored to us until Monday !
Frequently I went to bed in a servantless house with
the backdoor unlocked, because I knew I should have
no servants at all if I dared to turn the key upon them,
and remonstrance was worse than useless. So ruinous
did I find my housekeeping, so uncomfortable my
meals and so irritating the knowledge that I was com-
pletely in the hands of Blanche and Rosalie that I
determined to give up my pleasant and airy bungalow
and find a room in one of the big hotels at Hamilton,
where I should be decently fed, reasonably charged,
and adequately waited on by the whitest of white
Americans.
I established myself early in March at the Princess
Hotel, a large, much veranda'd building set right on
the harbour close to Hamilton. I was lucky in having
already made the acquaintance of Mrs. Julius Catlin
and her two daughters who were staying at the hotel,
for they had brought with them an introduction from
a mutual friend, and Captain Arthur Clarke of the
Magicienne was also living there while his ship was in
dockyard hands. I was therefore not entirely friend-
less, but as I unpacked and arranged my belongings
before going down to lunch I looked forward with con-
siderable alarm to the plunge I was about to make into
a little world of strange faces, smart frocks, and high-
pitched voices where I should be the only English-
woman. Suddenly, from the room next to mine
proceeded a man's voice humming " The British
Grenadiers " ! The humming broke off and started
226
THE PRINCESS H6lEL
again perhaps a dozen times, stopping altogether when
the lunch-bell rang long and loud. With the inspiring
tune in my head and wondering very much who had
put it there I stepped bravely forth and found my way
to the dining-room, into which I was literally swept
by a tide of laughing, chattering women. Mrs. Catlin
and her girls were on the look-out for me, and I seated
myself with them at a table where there were six
places. " Mr. and Mrs. Rudyard Kipling sit with us,"
said Mrs. Catlin ; " they came by the same boat with
us." That seemed to explain the " British Grenadiers,"
but till the " Jungle Book " was published I did not
know just why my neighbour upstairs had been
buzzing away like an industrious bee, with pauses for
honey-gathering, before the lunch-bell rang.
It was not long before the awe with which I regarded
the " great little Man " dissolved into a liking which
cordially included his slender, bright-eyed wife ; but
the week during which we were table-mates was far
too short. Mr. Kipling never saved up his good things
for his books, but was as original and surprising as
possible, and infinitely more kindly than his often
sarcastic pen had led me to expect. Indeed I shall
never forget how good he was to me when I confessed
I tried to earn a little money by writing. It was rash
but delightful of him to give me an introduction to the
editor of a well-known American serial. This I made
use of when sending a five-thousand words sketch
of life (as I saw it) in Bermuda to the editor in question,
but the sketch was returned with a request that I
would " enliven it with a few personalities." I did not
227 Q2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
comply with this request, but had I done so I should
have been the richer by a good many dollars. I had
my own little standard and intended to adhere to it,
so the article went to a poverty-stricken English
monthly of quite unimpeachable respectability, and
brought in two pounds ten shillings !
Mr. Charles Dudley Warner was at Bermuda in
1894 a very charming old man, simple, kindly, and
interesting to talk to. He, also, gave me a letter to
the editor of a famous American magazine, but in it
the writer most unfortunately referred to me as " the
wife of Lord Poore." I simply could not find it in my
heart to point out the blunder to Mr. Dudley Warner,
and it was equally impossible to approach an editor
under false pretences, so I never used it.
I have not often met Mr. and Mrs. Kipling since
those days, but it always gives me what, for want of
a better word, I call a bubbly feeling to be with them.
I want to ask questions and to listen at the same time,
and not waste an instant of such precious company ;
and when they are gone I can't remember one half of
what has passed. In February, 1916, they came out
from Bath with their daughter to see me at Winsley.
I was as excited and elated by their visit as I had
every right to be, and next day on meeting an acquain-
tance I boasted to her of my piece of good luck. " They
stayed two hours!" I said, in the certainty of being
congratulated and envied. " Really ? how nice ! "
was the only comment the lady made. And then in a
tone of intense relief and satisfaction she cried, " Con-
gratulate me ! I have actually got a cook at last. All
228
AN ESCAPADE
the servants are taking up munition work nowadays,
etc., etc." The wind was indeed taken out of my
sails. / had merely met the greatest little man I know,
and his most adequate wife ; she had found a cook.
Being not without sympathy born of experience, I
rejoiced with the cook-finder ; but if the Chef from the
Tour d' Argent should ever call upon me I shall have
my revenge, for I will keep his visit dark, and the
recipes he gives me shall be copied out in cipher and
locked up in my cash-box.
CHAPTER XLIV
AN ESCAPADE
I MADE the acquaintance of several very agreeable
Americans at Bermuda in the spring of 1894. Mrs.
Catlin, whose country home was near Morristown,
N.J., asked me to stay with her on my way to Halifax
in the summer, and I was also invited to Newhaven
and to Cononicut, near Newport, R.I. But, pleasant
as I found my American acquaintances in the hotel,
their habit of talking in chorus was bewildering, and
their vocabulary provided surprises for which Mr.
Lowell's admirable essay on our common language
had not prepared me.
As I was waiting in the dog-cart of a friend outside
the house of Bermuda's principal dressmaker I was
229
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
cast into confusion by the remark of a pretty American
girl who had just emerged from it : "I think my
waist is under the seat. They put it in the dog-cart
by mistake." I know that it is just as odd to talk
of the body of a dress instead of the bodice, but waist
took me quite by surprise. Later on the same pretty
girl told me she was on the way to the house of Mrs. X.,
with a pattern, " because she wants to have a waist
like mine." Now Mrs. X. weighed thirteen stone,
and it was a physical impossibility that she should
ever acquire a waist like that of Miss Daisy N., who was
most elegantly slim, so I burst into a fit of laughter
which I am certain was, in my hearer's opinion, quite
uncalled for.
Before I left Bermuda for Halifax, ma the United
States, I spent a week at Government House with
General and Mrs. Lyons. The Governor was extremely
like the late Duke of Cambridge in appearance, very
punctilious, beautifully turned out and rather irascible.
His only daughter was just engaged to be married
to Captain Dowell of the Berkshire Regiment, and when
after dinner one evening these young people were
otherwise occupied, Mrs. Lyons resting in an armchair
after an exhausting headache and the Governor in
his study, Mr. Fisher- Rowe, the A.D.C., tempted me
to go out with him in his skiff, and I fell. It was
such a heavenly moonlight night, and I did obtain
Mrs. Lyons' consent before I slipped upstairs for a
cloak, and then out of the garden gate and away to
the cove where the boat lay. We pulled round to
Clarence Cove and paid an unceremonious and most
230
AN ESCAPADE
pleasant visit to Sir John Hopkins, who was then
living en gar con at Admiralty House. Perhaps we
stayed too long, but we could easily have been back
at Government House by ten o'clock had we not stuck
hard and fast upon a rock like a gridiron. The coral
rocks of that sea have no convenient padding of weed,
and their edges and points are as sharp as knives and
arrowheads. Mr. Rowe took off his shoes and socks
and went over the side, but though he shoved his
hardest and I shifted my weight from one spot to
another it was a quarter of an hour before we got
off. We raced up to the house to find the Governor
awaiting our return in much displeasure. " Mrs.
Lyons has already retired," he said, as he handed me
my bedroom candlestick. " Had you invited me to
do so I should have been happy to join your boating
excursion." (He meant escapade, not excursion.)
I could not say " We should never have got off that
rock if you had " ; besides, I was far too much
frightened to think of any repartee, and I know I
faltered " I am very sorry, Your Exigency," as I
accepted the candlestick and the reproof. It was long
before the word " Excellency " came trippingly from
my tongue. Only three years of constant practice
in Australia taught me to say it neatly.
Next day the Governor himself drove me in his
mail-phaeton to a rifle-meeting, and I did my best to
efface the memory of a lapse to which he kindly made
no allusion. It cannot have been the impropriety
of my conduct that called down his rebuke, for A.D.C.'s
and flag-lieutenants always enjoy brevet rank as
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
chaperons. Mr. Rowe was a charming and light-
hearted young Guardsman, several years my junior,
and no objection was raised to his taking me out in a
very high dog-cart behind a tandem of chestnuts
a really risky proceeding, for the leader was a fiend
who used to curl round and bite the less excitable
wheeler instead of minding his own business. Many
years afterwards I met Mr. Fisher- Rowe again at a
big ball at Portsmouth to which he had taken his bride,
and we laughed together over the " regrettable inci-
dent" which had made us co-delinquents in General
Lyons' eyes. He rejoined his regiment when war
broke out in 1914, and was, alas ! killed in the following
year.
CHAPTER XLV
AMERICAN IMPRESSIONS
I STARTED bravely enough for New York before the
end of May and went at once to Mrs. Catlin's at Morris-
town. The voyage had been, of course, rough, and we
had a cargo of onions on board ! As my luggage had
spent about forty-eight hours in the same hold with
these useful vegetables every garment my boxes con-
tained reeked of them and had to be hung or spread
out in a bare attic with every window widely opened
for days before it could be worn. It was an outrage
on the hospitality of my hostess which I was power-
232
AMERICAN IMPRESSIONS
less to prevent, and I felt humiliated to find myself
the means of infecting her beautiful house with so
plebeian an odour.
The weather should have been warm and fine at
this season, but it was miserably cold and wet for the
first ten days of my visit. Then it rushed to the other
extreme, and I shall never forget seating myself in the
landau which was to take us to church on a blazing
June morning and bouncing up again from the burning
cushions. It was as though I had sat down on the top
of a kitchen range. New Jersey mosquitoes are famous,
and fine green wire gauze protected every window,
so that our nights were airless as well as hot. The
climax came with a stupendous thunderstorm. Mrs.
Catlin and her elder daughter were in New York that
day, and as I was washing my hands before lunch
a bang, not a clap, resounded through the house, and
I felt this was indeed a real typical American storm
far surpassing anything I had experienced in Europe.
Pattering feet and agitated voices in the passage
succeeded the bang, and then Edith Catlin appeared.
"Do you know anything about telephones, Lady
Poore ? " " Nothing good or useful," I admitted.
" Something has happened to ours. It's blown up,
I think, and I've sent for James." (James, a delight-
ful Sligo man, was the coachman.) The lightning really
had blown up the telephone ! When James arrived he
said his " mind misgave him through the smell of
fire that was in it," so he promptly sopped his coat in a
bucket of water and thrust it down the gaping hole
where the box had been, extinguishing the fire caused
233
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
by the ignition of the paraffin-cotton coating of the
wires, and we breathed again.
While I was in Morristown I learnt a lot of American.
I mastered the names and functions of the different
vehicles employed : the Surrey, the rockaway, the
buckboard, the buggy, and one other which I have
forgotten. I learnt to call the stable the barn, and that
one should say gaits and not paces in speaking of a
horse's methods of progression. I drank ice-cream
soda flavoured with sarsaparilla at the chemist's and
ate chocolates spoilt with " winter-green." In Morris-
town I saw a fishmonger's shop with " SEA FOOD "
painted over the door, and rather expected to find
mermaids selling seaweed within. I learnt to my
surprise that Zee was the last letter of the alphabet
and spannle the correct pronunciation of spaniel ;
that it was quite usual to say " I'll go a little ways along
the road with you," and that nobody was thought the
worse of for saying " I don't know as I do." As regards
Zee, I was first incredulous and then annoyed about it,
for although the great Webster gives it precedence
of Zed in his dictionary I can hear no sound of appro-
priate finality in Zee. One might as well pronounce
dead, dee ; and if one did it simply wouldn't mean
dead.
Another thing that surprised me was the veranda
life of a town like Morristown. Good-sized houses
were just placed on a pocket-handkerchief of beauti-
fully cared-for lawn, like a large cake on a small plate,
and were quite unscreened from the passer-by by walls
or hedges. Upon the veranda were gathered the family
234
AMERICAN IMPRESSIONS
and its friends, as much en evidence as the occupants
of a box on the grand tier of an opera-house. Going
into New York by train was a trial in hot weather ;
but I found it was possible, though painful, to travel in
a car seating forty people without asphyxiation,
although every window was closed and the thermo-
meter at about 95. This was a very crumpled rose
leaf, but the other rose leaves were velvety and deli-
cately hued. The elaborate comfort of American
housekeeping and the elaborate elegance of the women's
dressing were fully up to expectations raised by a
careful perusal of American fiction.
After a very pleasant month at Morristown I went to
Greenwich, Conn., to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Donaldson,
whose sister and daughter we had met in Switzerland
in 1891. They were an attractive family, kind, hos-
pitable, and wholesome, but they breakfasted every
morning at a quarter past seven so that Mr. Donaldson
and his eldest son, a boy of about seventeen, should
take the business men's train to New York. It was
trying to start one's social day so early, and the hours
between breakfast and lunch were, for an idle visitor
like myself, too long. By one o'clock I had become
physically and mentally inane, and when no less than
eight phenomenally " bright " ladies (bright is an
American expression I do not like) came one hot day
to lunch I had reached such a pitch of imbecility that
I was stricken with aphasia and said, " How do you
be ? " instead of " How do you do ? " to the brightest
of the assembled guests ! I feared she would feel
compelled to remonstrate later with my hostess on
235
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
having picked up such a very queer English friend,
but I confessed to Miss Donaldson the trick my tongue
had played me and she quite condoned the offence.
Among American women, " bright," alert, competent
and very well dressed, I always felt myself slow-witted,
under-vitalised, unpardonably unpractical, indiffe-
rently educated and completely lacking in finish;
tete-a-tete I found them delightful, but a crowd stultified
me hopelessly. Only when a big, dull girl came to
tea at a house where I was staying and sang " Believe
me, if all those endearing young charms " very badly
to a guitar did I regain a fragment of confidence in my
own value. To find that not all Americans were clever
and graceful was an unspeakable comfort, and I could
have kissed her large pink hands for gratitude, for
no one with an ounce of imagination or a pennyweight
of aptness could sing Moore's melodies to a guitar ;
such a person would be capable of going out to dine in
her wedding veil or of throwing a bunch of snowdrops
to a toreador.
While at Newhaven I visited Yale University under
the guidance of young Mr. Ansel Phelps, a charming
boy with crinkly yellow hair who had been staying at
Morristown during my visit to Mrs. Catlin. He took
me one morning to Chapel, where the religious service,
conducted by the Principal, was one of the least impres-
sive I ever witnessed. The Principal in a black gown
stood upon a da'is opposite the high gallery reserved
for strangers, and the seats in the body of the oblong
hall were filled with members of the University facing
the dais. While he was reading the psalms a con-
236
AMERICAN IMPRESSIONS
siderable number of the younger men turned their
backs upon him and facing the " Strangers' Gallery "
regarded its occupants with critical eyes. Then, when
the service was over and the Principal was passing down
the narrow central aisle on his way out, all the men
whose places were next the aisle bowed low from the
waist at him, as though they were trying to hit the poor
man with their heads. He was fortunately so thin that
no one succeeded.
Next day I went to tea in Mr. Phelps' rooms and met
a number of cheerful young men whose craze for the
moment was the collection of brass plates which they
wrenched by night from the house doors or railings dis-
playing them. The plates of doctors and dentists were
numerous, and there were some " Modes et Robes," a
few bearing the names of boarding-houses and several
with "Do not ring unless an answer is required " upon
them. Americans seem to have a passion for making
collections of all sorts, and many consider that all is fair
in this pursuit. It certainly takes nerve to unscrew, or
wrench off, a doctor's plate without the cognizance of his
household or the police, and with almost every trophy
exhibited to me that afternoon at Yale some absurd or
exciting story of its capture was connected, so there was
some sport in the proceeding, however reprehensible it
might be in the eyes of the authorities.
At Newhaven I met a very important lady whose
mission in life I understood to be the preservation of
the Ancient Monuments of Connecticut. British
ignorance of the onerous nature of her work was
responsible for my asking if she found much to do.
237
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
" Do ! " she exclaimed ; " there are eighty-eight of
us in this State alone engaged in historical and genea-
logical research. Cases are constantly coming before
us of persons anxious to establish their connection with
the original families of Connecticut, and we have to
sift the evidence and make endless investigations." I
was silent, because I knew that my views on the subject
would be even less pardonable than my ignorance of
the magnitude of her task. I cannot now recollect
the name of the organisation of which this lady was
the head in her State. Perhaps it was the Colonial
Dames.
I was destined to meet many American ladies equally
interested in genealogy, their own and their neighbours'.
Of these one gravely assured me that her husband was
heir to an Irish peerage, but the necessary condition of
permanent residence in the British Isles deterred him from
establishing his claim ! The title in question was then
blamelessly borne by a peer of great respectability
who is still living. That American ladies have to draw
lines of their own to distinguish themselves and their
equals from the hoi-polloi is one of the disadvantages
arising from a republican form of government. It is
certainly more convenient to be simply labelled
" Duchess," " Countess," and so on, and officially
registered in " Debrett," whose pages now contain the
names of many an erstwhile Colonial Dame or Daughter
of the Republic.
The aristocracy of intellect in America is no less
exclusive, if my informants are to be believed, than
that of birth, and the old story of the Boston lady who
238
AMERICAN IMPRESSIONS
discovered a moss-grown milestone bearing the inscrip
tion im. from Boston, illustrates its limitations delight-
fully. She read upon it " I'm from Boston," and, in
the belief that the milestone was a tombstone, ex-
claimed, " How simple and how sufficient ! "
From Newhaven I went to Cononicut, an island close
to Newport, where I spent some happy days with Mr.
and Mrs. Hazard and their son and daughter. Cononi-
cut was then a striking contrast to Newport. There
one could lead the simple life in salt air and sunshine,
(I hope it still maintains its independence and naivete ,)
and we crossed the ferry and gazed upon the great
palaces of Newport with becoming awe, calculating
how many hundreds of thousands of dollars each huge
building had cost and how many more went to its
upkeep. Inadequate, if immaculate, lawns surrounded
these prominent palaces, and in front of them a grassy
plain extended to the cliffs which overhung the open
sea. I wondered whether their owners really enjoyed
the life of dressing and dining, dancing and dollar-
worship which the newspapers took such pride in
describing. Perhaps they fled to some other rendezvous
of the super-rich before the expensive delights of New-
port began to pall.
239
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
CHAPTER XLVI
HALIFAX
AT Halifax, whither I proceeded from Cononicut,
I had hoped to meet my husband, whose ship was on
the way up from the West Indies, but the poor
decrepit little Tourmaline kept me waiting a week, and
without the protecting kindness of Commander H.
Fleet, of the Tartar, and his wife I should have hated
my first experience of a boarding-house full to bursting
point of conflicting elements to which the safety-valve
of private sitting-rooms was denied. But the Fleets
were very good to me. Commander Fleet was a
brother of " Rutland Barrington," whose name is
inseparably associated with Gilbert and Sullivan's
greatest successes, and was himself a clever actor and
incurable farceur. It was, however, the something
that so frequently lies hidden under the comedian's
mask that made me his friend, and Mrs. Fleet's pleasant
equanimity provided the exact counterpoise needed
by a man of his mercurial temperament. Their six-
year-old son, Aylmer, was a most engaging person and
full of character. One day he bit a little girl of twelve
because she had insisted on kissing him. This was,
of course, a terrible crime on Aylmer's part, but his
friends appreciated the manly feeling which inspired it.
" Will you have a whipping, Aylmer, or shall mother
take the good conduct badge off the sleeve of your
jumper ? " asked his father. " A whipping, please,
240
HALIFAX
father," was the answer, and Aylmer was whipped ;
but it was the effusive little girl, in my opinion, who
deserved chastisement.
Mrs. Fleet and I went to tea on board the flagship,
Blake, one afternoon, and Aylmer, by special invitation,
accompanied us. He was jubilant until we got into
the steamboat. Then his face fell, and all the time we
were on board the Blake he clung closely to his pretty
mother's side. I could not account for this change of
mood, but as we were going ashore Mrs. Fleet told
me that poor Aylmer's pleasure had been completely
spoilt when he found he was not in " the rig of the day."
The Blake's men were in blues ; Aylmer was in whites !
When, much to my regret, Mrs. Fleet and Aylmer
left Halifax a few months later I went to see them off.
The flag-captain's coxswain had taken Mrs. Hamilton's
luggage on board the steamer, and when the order
" All for the shore " was given Aylmer, who had
wound himself desperately round one of Wilson's long
legs, had to be detached by force. If ever a child's
heart was wholly given to the Service it was the heart
of Aylmer Fleet.
The Tourmalines were glad enough to come north
after more than six months in the tropics, where they
had remained after the rest of the Squadron had
returned to Bermuda in the spring, and the charming
surroundings of Halifax, an ugly place in itself,
afforded them a welcome amount of fishing and shoot-
ing as well as lawn-tennis. In August Lord Aberdeen,
Governor-General of Canada, visited Halifax with
Lady Aberdeen, and dinner and garden parties of the
A.W. 241 R
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
customary official nature were given in their honour.
Their Excellencies' chief contribution to the ceremonial
gaieties took the form of a Drawing Room held at the
Town Hall. It was attended by ladies of many classes,
and the variety of their costumes made the function
more interesting, if less imposing, than its prototypes
at Buckingham Palace. Coloured feathers decked the
heads of some of the ladies presented, and it was said,
though we did not credit the story, that one matron,
over-anxious to do the right thing, actually entered the
' Throne Room " backwards !
Some of us naval ladies fell with our husbands into
deep disgrace on the occasion of the Drawing Room,
though we were innocent of any intention to offend.
A number of us had been invited a week or more earlier,
and before there was any talk of a Drawing Room,
to dine with Sir John Hopkins, our Commander-in-
Chief, at Admiralty House to meet Admiral Count de
Maigret, commanding a French Training Squadron
visiting Halifax. Sir John explained to the Governor-
General the impossibility of postponing his party,
but arranged to dine at so early an hour that he and
his guests would be able to put in an appearance
at the Town Hall by a quarter to nine. After a merry
dinner and a hurried rehearsal of our curtseys, with the
two Admirals representing Viceroy alty, we repaired
to the Town Hall, preceded by Sir John and Admiral
de Maigret, and when we had shaken ourselves out
and adjusted our snowy plumes and veils we ladies
rejoined our lords and in a compact body, all light-
hearted and smiling, made our way to the great hall.
242
HALIFAX
The door was locked, the hall was empty, and ere we
had fully realised the situation an irate private secre-
tary burst out of another room, closed the door behind
him, and confronted our party. " The Drawing Room
is over. Their Excellencies are partaking of light
refreshments. You are too late," cried the cross little
man. " Besides, I do not know if any of these ladies
have the private entrte." " If we are not welcome we
can go," said the flag-captain (the late Rear- Admiral
W. des Vceux Hamilton), bristling with rage. Right
about face he turned, and the rest of us followed suit.
" Private entrie ! What on earth does he mean ? "
we were asking one another, feeling like naughty
children who, fresh from some uproarious game, find
themselves late for prayers.
Upon this painful scene appeared an official dove
bearing an olive branch. " I am sure their Excellencies
will be delighted to see you in the supper-room," said
Mr. Fielding (then Premier of Nova Scotia) in the
friendliest manner. " The Drawing Room did not last
quite so long as her Excellency anticipated." Captain
Hamilton halted ; we did likewise. He relented ; we
did the same ; and, piloted and announced by Mr.
Fielding, we entered the room where Lord and Lady
Aberdeen and all the civil and military notabilities of
Halifax were assembled. We made our curtseys and
our bows to the best of our ability, and nothing could
have been more amiable and forgiving than their
Excellencies. Then, recklessly piling the Pelion of
supper on the Ossa of an admirable dinner we found
ourselves eating ices and drinking champagne at
243 R 2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
nine p.m. with the personages whose dignity our
behaviour had flouted. Presently I edged myself in
alongside the General's wife. " Dreadful of us to be so
late," I remarked cheerfully, " wasn't it ? " The
General's wife turned a petrifying eye upon me as she
replied with blighting emphasis, " Dr-r-readful, per-
fectly drreadful ! "
CHAPTER XLVII j
QUEBEC, MONTREAL, NIAGARA
IT was not long before a general move was made from
Halifax to Quebec, and the British Squadron was
followed thither by that of Admiral de Maigret. This
officer, who was later Commander-in-Chief of the French
Mediterranean Fleet, was a man of fine character and
great personal charm, but it was not very easy for a
Frenchman to forget that Canada had been French
before it became a British possession, and he was
often made to feel by tactless persons of the blatantly
British type that the old rigime was by them for-
gotten, the old connection ignored. " II n'y a que
Sir John qui a le don de me faire oublier le passe,"
he once said to me. And yet Sir John Hopkins was no
courtier. It was the simple good feeling of an officer
and a gentleman which enabled him to establish and
maintain perfectly cordial relations with a French
244
QUEBEC, MONTREAL, NIAGARA
admiral visiting Quebec, a place full of painful his-
torical interest for a patriotic Frenchman.
" C'est nous qui vous preparons vos colonies," said
M. Kleczowski, French Consul-General at Quebec,
to me one day, and he was historically accurate. Their
losses of colonial territory have come to the French
mainly through their passionate attachment to the
soil of France. They fought as bravely and as bril-
liantly as we did for India and Canada, but their
colonists live like exiles, unrooted in the alien soil,
while ours settle and will die happy in the country of
their adoption so long as the Union Jack floats over-
head.
Quebec deserves a special shrine in the memory of
all who have seen it. The peculiar charm permeating
it is due to our French predecessors who chose its site
and designed its streets and buildings, just as the
beauty and vivacity of its women is inherited from
them. French, in a somewhat archaic form, is the lan-
guage of its people whose politeness and suavity have
survived one hundred and thirty-four years of British
rule, and to the French Ursuline Convent the flower
of Quebec's maidens, Protestant and Roman Catholic
alike, go for their education.
The Governor-General and Lady Aberdeen, in
residence at the Citadel during the visit of the two
squadrons to Quebec, gave a great ball in their honour.
I have danced at many public balls and many official
ones, but never have I taken part in a worse-danced
set of Lancers than that performed on this occasion.
I was fortunately paired off with the Comte de Maigret,
245
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
but my husband had been told off to dance with
Mrs. Hamilton, wife of the flag-captain, who was then
no nearer Quebec than Halifax ! Urged by a worried
A.D.C. to find a substitute at the last moment, Dick
chose a very pretty American girl standing close by
who was qualified neither by seniority nor nationality
to figure in the " Lanciers d'Honneur." After the
music had begun her Excellency advanced hurriedly
to consult his Excellency, her vis-d-vis, as to whether
she or Lady Hopkins were " First Lady," a proceeding
which gave the dance a bad start. The French Admiral
and I steadily pursued our allotted course in spite of
a very discouraging want of attention on the part of
our " corners," and until the intricacies of the Grand
Chain with its " inside, outside" gave us pause we had
reason to be proud of our performance. Then the late
Lord Swansea, a man of considerable bulk, elected,
regardless of the impassioned remonstrances of A.D.C.'s
and the frequent collisions created by his independent
conduct, to take the opposite course to that recom-
mended and, indeed, indispensable, and with every
repetition of the figure confusion was worse confounded.
It was a d6b&de never to be forgotten, and I hardly
dared meet the eye of my dignified partner lest I should
read in it surprise or disapproval.
From Quebec the British Squadron proceeded to
Montreal, where, with my sister-in-law, Kate Poore,
who was now staying with us, I rejoined my husband.
There were various great doings of which the review
remains a painful memory, for, after sailors and marines
had done their part, the City Fire Brigade gave an
246
QUEBEC, MONTREAL, NIAGARA
exhibition of their prowess and efficiency. Cataracts
of water spouted from their hoses, sprinkling and even
drenching bluejackets, marines, and spectators impar-
tially and it was not good for the marines' best red
tunics.
Our five ships were thrown open to the public, and
as they lay alongside the wharves a miscellaneous
crowd of sightseers provided with baskets of food
invaded them and spent hours on board. One of these
visitors, after very deliberately sharpening his pen-
knife, sat down on the sacred quarter-deck of the
Tourmaline and began to carve his name on a plank.
He did not get far. I myself found a small boy of
inquiring mind endeavouring to prize up the cover
of the binnacle and reported the young delinquent to
a firm quartermaster who carried him off protesting
vigorously.
Montreal, fine city as it is, can never rival
Quebec, whose time-honoured dignity places it above
any modern town, and when Kate and I went on
to Niagara we did not leave much of our hearts
behind us.
At Niagara we spent three entire days, and each day
showed us the majesty of the Falls under different
conditions. We saw them first when blazing sunshine
from a blue sky turned the falling water into a trans-
parent veil of sapphire fringed with silver spray.
The shadowed depths beyond the spray presented
the steel-blue surface of ice, arabesqued with whirling
eddies ; the great trees of the neighbouring forest
clad in the grey-green foliage of August were unstirred
247
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
by any breeze, and the booming thunder of the Falls
struck heavily upon the ear. Next morning thick
smoke from a forest fire enveloped all but the fore-
ground, lead-coloured water patterned with dull white
lay at our feet, and the sapphire of the Falls had
changed to the dingy green of bottle-glass. A chord,
unheard by us before, a minor chord, prolonged and
organ-toned, came to our ears in the roar of the water
and turned our thoughts to melancholy. But the third
day dawned brightly. A strong wind had swept
away the volumes of pungent smoke, and white clouds
drove swiftly across a deep-blue sky. Sunshine and
shadow chased each other over the crinkling surface
of the lower waters, and the whirlpools boiled black
at the foot of the Falls.
A diminutive steamer with the horse-power of an
ocean liner carried us safely to within a few yards of the
descending flood. Trussed up in the tight oilskins
served out to all on board, even Kate's elegant form
looked for all the world like a shiny black sausage,
and there was nothing at all surprising in our falling
down and rolling upon the deck, slippery with spray,
when the steamer began to back and twist in her fight
with the cross-currents. Mr. Macalister, Commander
of the Partridge, who accompanied us, picked us up
gallantly and propped us against convenient stanchions,
but with the next squirm of the boat we fell down and
rolled once more, our uncontrollable laughter making
it harder than ever for him to " up-end " and secure
us a second time. I must admit that we felt guilty
of Use majeste. To giggle with Niagara looking on was
248
QUEBEC, MONTREAL, NIAGARA
a positive crime, but the utter absurdity of our appear-
ance and the grotesqueness of our involuntary antics
would have upset the gravity of a cathedral verger.
That night we returned to Montreal, whence, by
special permission of the Commander-in-Chief, we
went down as passengers on board the Tourmaline to
Quebec. The two days' trip down the St. Lawrence
in perfect weather was restful enough after our long
railway journey, and we arrived at Quebec to hear
that the ship was to stop there during the remainder
of the Governor-General's visit. So we gladly went
back to our old quarters at the Chateau Frontenac
Hotel and resumed our pleasant relations with the
friendly people of the beautiful old city. By way of
returning their hospitality the Tourmalines gave a
" sing-song " at the hotel, and the musical and dramatic
talent of the ship was drawn upon to provide an accept-
able entertainment. It was really a capital perform-
ance, and the best items of a very varied programme
were a clog-dance by one of the galley's crew and a
short recitation by a signalman. Their Excellencies
were present, and as soon as the sing-song was over
they were fed and sped. Their hosts had unkindly
concealed from them that there would be a sequel to
the concert in the shape of a dance, which proved as
gay and enjoyable as the light heels and hearts of the
officers and their pretty Canadian partners could
make it. And the A.D.C. who had conveyed
his principals back to the Citadel returned and
danced too !
As most people are aware, Lord and Lady Aberdeen
249
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
held peculiar views regarding servants, and it was
known that weekly entertainments, at which their
Excellencies were present, were given for the amuse-
ment of the domestic staff at the Governor-General's.
Nevertheless my husband was surprised to receive
a pressing invitation for the two bluejackets who had
distinguished themselves at our sing-song to perform
at one of these " Admirable Crichton " soirtes. It so
happened that neither of the men was able to accept
this invitation. Some slight dereliction of duty had
temporarily debarred them from the enjoyment of
their personal freedom, and Lord Aberdeen's offer
to provide a military escort for the two bluejackets
he desired to honour was respectfully declined by their
outraged captain.
Of Lord and Lady Aberdeen's bonne volonte one can
entertain no doubt, but their suitability to uphold the
prestige of the Crown, whether in Canada or Ireland,
has never been apparent.
Late in September we returned to Halifax to find
our boarding-house still crowded with people whom
prolonged intimacy had failed to domesticate, and early
in the following month I was glad to find myself once
more in the sunshine of Bermuda.
250
BERMUDA AGAIN
CHAPTER XLVIII
BERMUDA AGAIN
FOR the winter and spring of 1894 95 I had taken a
small cottage in the suburbs of Hamilton and by a
stroke of luck secured the services of an English maid-
servant as capable as she was handsome. Indeed, I
was as comfortable as I could wish for the eight or
nine months I spent under Julia's care.
" How happy could I be again
If I had no one else but Jane ! "
was a rhyme quoted to me long ago by some rich woman
who had been mistress of but one servant in her early
days ; and I could truly say
" I lived in comfort quite peculiar
When I had no one else but Julia-r ! "
But my handsome Julia married in the following
summer, and I gave her away with considerable reluct-
ance to her most fortunate bridegroom.
The Tourmaline arrived at Bermuda a few weeks
after I was installed at Tourmaline Cottage (so
christened with a lamentable want of originality by
myself), but before we had time to enjoy our small
and brilliant garden, with its lovely pomegranate trees,
its " shell " roses of soft and delicate pink, and its
bold violets which never hid their blossoms under their
251
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
leaves, the ship was ordered up to Newfoundland,
and I was left lamenting. Fires, famine and rioting
had made the presence of a man-of-war necessary in
the bleak and inhospitable climate of Newfoundland,
and for seven months the ship remained there. But
for the domestic peace and comfort ensured by the
ministrations of my treasured Julia, and the superior
social amenities provided by a more central residence
than the bungalow at Boaz Island I should have been
very forlorn. However, Colonel E. T. Dickson,*
commanding the Berkshire Regiment at Prospect,
and his wife adopted the naval derelict stranded not
much more than a mile from their doors, and my
happiest hours were spent in their company. Indeed,
I was far from being a recluse. I danced and sailed,
and rowed and played tennis with cheerful young
people, and was only seriously depressed when I sat
alone on chilly evenings in my fireplaceless drawing-
room while Julia entertained her fiance in the cosy
kitchen.
The winter and spring of 1895 were marked by no
event of importance, but a big tourist-carrying liner,
the Lusitania, I think, brought a welcome old friend in
the person of Mrs. Wilton Alhusen (who, as Ada
Vandeleur, had helped my sister Rosy to paint the
steward's pig green in the 'seventies) to my door, and
I drove about and saw the sights in her company.
Chief among these were the great fields of Bermuda
lilies in bloom at Mr. W. T. James' bulb gardens.
Cannas in infinite variety and exquisite gladioli are
* Now General.
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BERMUDA AGAIN
also grown wholesale for export in Bermuda, and I was
glad to introduce a customer to Mr. James, who, with
his wife, had shown me many a kindness.
The party on board the Lusitania was large and, of
course, mixed, but comprised at least one celebrity
the late Mr. W. S. Gilbert, and Mrs. Alhusen told me
that in a " Limerick " competition on board the veteran
rhymester had inevitably won the first prize. As I do
not suppose this somewhat grisly production has ever
been published I give it here :
" There was a young lady of Malta
Who strung up her aunt with a halter.
She said ' I won't bury her ;
She shall feed my fox terrier,
And she'll keep for a month if I salt her.' '
Captain Mahan, in command of a United States
cruiser, visited Bermuda a little later, and I was bidden,
much to my delight, to dine and sleep at Ireland Island
where the Captain-in-Charge and Mrs. Brackenbury
were about to entertain the very distinguished American
at dinner. But as I went in with my host I sat as far
away as possible from the guest of the evening, and
chance befriended me not at all when we were in the
drawing-room, so I only carried away an impression
of a smart and well set up officer with a pleasant voice
and quite unleonine manners.
At this period the Naval Hospital at Ireland Island
was in the charge of Dr. Thomas Browne, Deputy-
Inspector-General, an old friend and shipmate of my
husband's, and the cheerful company of his six daugh-
ters, from little Winnie, aged four, to Bessie and Louie,
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
just grown up, added to the unaffected and never-
failing hospitality of their parents, made of their
house a haven of peace and contentment. Once or
twice I spent a week under their roof, and when Julia
had married and left me and I was tired of hotels, I
stayed with them for six steaming weeks of early
autumn.
The Deputy-Inspector-General's house was much
more than an official residence. Countless lonely
people and shy people, and even stiff people, were
cheered or comforted or thawed by its genial atmo-
sphere. One knew one might drop in to lunch at
" Chateau Browne " without causing a famine, and its
unostentatious dinner-parties never attained the bleak
altitude of ceremonial banquets. Not even the
irruption of a host of fugitives from the Dockyard
when a fire broke out near the powder magazine could
overtax Mrs. Browne's hospitality, and mattresses
and pillows, as well as ample refreshment, were found
for those who absolutely refused to "go home till
morning." It was related that one nimble lady
from Dockyard Terrace fled without stopping all the
way to Somerset Ferry, something under two miles.
Before reaching the Ferry she met the wife of a naval
officer whose ship was lying in dock within the danger
zone. " Where is your husband ? " asked this lady
(who was heading for the Dockyard) of the breathless
fugitive. " I don't know, I'm sure," panted Mrs.
X , " this is no time to think of husbands," and on
she went. Fear had given legs, if not wings, to the
aged and even bedridden inhabitants of the western-
254
BERMUDA AGAIN
most portion of Ireland Island, and one very old woman
arose from the couch she had not quitted for five years,
hastily donned a pair of her son's slippers (having no
footgear of her own), and joined the exodus. She also
made her way at top speed to the Ferry. How she
returned I never heard.
In stormy weather communication by water between
Ireland Island and Hamilton was difficult, and a long
twelve miles by road, bridge, and ferry was the only
alternative route, so there were days when nothing
better than a very imperfect telephone system con-
nected the bulk of Ireland's inhabitants with the capital.
Many were the stories told of messages mutilated or
misdirected, but quite the best was related to me by
Mr. Thrupp, a subaltern of artillery filling the post of
" firemaster," whatever that may mean, at Boaz.
One stormy morning at about ten o'clock he was
rung up on the telephone, and the question " Have
you any beef ? " surprised his attentive ear. " No," he
replied, " I have no beef." " Have you any mutton ? "
followed. " No, I have no mutton," said Mr. Thrupp,
with Ollendorffian monotony. " Well, then, have you
any veal or lamb ? " " No," he answered curtly.
"And you call yourself a butcher I " said the voice
conveying, even through the telephone, the contempt
of his female interlocutor. " I don't," roared Mr.
Thrupp ; "I'm Thrupp, of the Royal Artillery," and
rang off.
It was not very long before I left Bermuda for good
that I spent a week at St. George's. This old-fashioned
little town is situated at the easterly end of the group,
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
and its forts command the Narrows, the only passage
for ships of other than negligible tonnage entering
and leaving Bermuda. In its Georgian church I found
a noteworthy memorial tablet to a resident of long ago.
It was the votive offering of a disconsolate widow,
careless or unfortunate enough to preface the text
that followed a comprehensive catalogue of the
deceased's virtues with the picturesque interjection,
Alas ! It reads therefore :
" Alas! he is not lost but gone before,"
and the inevitable inference made by the reader is
that the bereaved lady regretted her lord was not lost
for good but had only preceded her to a world where
she might some day be called upon to rejoin him.
CHAPTER XLIX
PORT ROYAL AND KINGSTON
IN June, 1895, the Tourmaline had paid a visit of
three weeks to Bermuda on her way to the West
Indies, and we spent all the time at my husband's
disposal in gardening at Cedar House (a large, cool
dwelling whither I had removed from Tourmaline
Cottage when the hot weather came) and boating
among the adjacent islands. I, personally, was far
from satisfied with the treatment meted out to the
256
PORT ROYAL AND KINGSTON
Tourmaline by the Commander-in-Chief, Sir James
Erskine, for I had had little more than a bowing
acquaintance with the ship for twelve months, and when
October arrived and there seemed no likelihood of
her return to Bermuda I decided to go south in the
hope of rejoining my husband at Jamaica. The same
detestable little ship which had brought me from
Halifax to Bermuda a year earlier received my shrink-
ing body and comparatively inflexible spirit, and after
a weary week of tropical heat spent in company with
a cargo of (literally) " stinking fish " destined for the
negro gourmets of Jamaica I gladly disembarked from
the Royal Mail steamer Alpha at Port Royal. There I
was the guest of Commodore Dowding at Admiralty
House, and by the time I was restored to the full
enjoyment of those senses I had often wished suspended
on my voyage the Tourmaline arrived. For the next
five months, with but one hiatus of three weeks when
riotous Indians in the hinterland of British Honduras
made her presence desirable at Belize, the little ship
lay at Port Royal or cruised round the island of
Jamaica.
The hospitable Commodore insisted upon my regard-
ing his house as headquarters, but sometimes alone
and sometimes with my husband, who knew the island
well, I visited various places more interesting and less
circumscribed than Port Royal.
Sir Henry Blake was then Governor of Jamaica,
and from time to time I passed a few days under the
spreading brown roof of King's House. No previous
Governor had travelled through the length and
A.W. 257 *
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
breadth of the island as had Sir Henry, and Lady
Blake, who made light of roughing it, was his constant
companion. To Sir Henry's long period of office is
due the opening up of the island by many excellent
roads, and these important aids to civilisation and
commerce form a lasting memorial of his rule, while his
fearless combating of the power of obeah (witchcraft)
and its priests let light into the darkest places and
weakened the tyranny of a far-reaching and detestable
system. By his orders the implements of the obi-men
were publicly burnt by the native police a valuable
object-lesson for all who were present.
But the belief in sorcery, based on the undoubted
power for evil possessed by those who practise it, is
too deeply rooted in the mind of the West Indian negro
to be dispelled until centuries of enlightened and
humane government have made clear to him the
guiding principles of Christianity and fostered in him
a love of honour and clean living. An old clergyman
in Bermuda, where a higher degree of civilisation,
or perhaps I should say a rudimentary scepticism
regarding their ancient beliefs, obtains among the
coloured population, told me sadly that though he had
laboured for forty years to make good Christians of his
coloured flock he could not claim to have influenced
them to any perceptible degree. " One might as well
boil down the Bible and Prayer Book and pour the
liquor over them," he said. " Nothing I have taught
them seems to have affected their conduct in daily
life."
A story told me in Jamaica by a blind philanthropist
258
PORT ROYAL AND KINGSTON
from Baltimore illustrates the apparent inability of
the negro to see the necessity for putting into practice
the religious principles taught him in church or school.
A coloured preacher recounting his " experiences " at
a camp meeting was heard to say, " Ah, my brothers !
I've broken nearly every one of the ten command-
ments over and over again, but, thank the Lord, I've
always kept my religion."
The negroes of Jamaica love to go frequently to
church, where they sing lustily and with tuneful
voice hymns innumerable, and on Sunday morning
the roads are gay with brightly-dressed ladies of
colour, redolent of patchouli, downy with pearl powder,
and wearing cardboard hats loaded with trimming
perched high upon their fuzzy heads. It is not in her
festal array that the negress shows to the best advan-
tage. Swinging along a mountain road, barefooted and
hatless, with anything from a flat-iron to a kitchen
table poised on her head, she can look both dignified
and picturesque. The soft voices and funny idiom
of the negroes are attractive, their knowledge of herbal
medicaments is remarkable and almost uncanny, and
they possess a proverbial philosophy in which there
is wisdom and originality.* But emancipation has,
so far, brought their failings rather than their virtues
to the surface. Dog-like faithfulness has given place
to an irritating assumption of an equality with the white
man which can never be theirs so long as their skulls
* Two of their proverbs I have preserved : " Many time Debbil
help thief ; one time de Lawd help watchman " ; and " Rock-stone
in ribber not know what road-stone feel."
259 s 2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
remain simian in character. "If God Almighty had
intended the negro and the white man to be equal
He would not have given the negro a sloping forehead
and a black skin," said an old American gentleman (a
Yankee) to me. " There is, in my opinion, as much
difference between a white man and a negro as there is
between a horse and a mule."
At King's House there was plenty of good talk
salted with wit, and the simple yet adequate dignity
of the domestic atmosphere was very pleasing. We
used to breakfast under the lofty shelter of a wooden
pavilion in the garden, where the morning freshness
of a languid climate was to be enjoyed. One day
the Governor, next whom I was sitting, broke off in
the middle of a sentence and adjured me in a low voice
to keep perfectly still. I thought of snakes, and
preserved the frozen immobility of terror. It was not
a snake, of course, that was under the table, since
there are now none in the island, but Lady Blake's
naughty monkey, which had broken its chain ! Very
quietly Sir Henry grasped the creature by the neck,
and bore him away regardless of Lady Blake's protest
that her pet had only shown his affection for her
husband by crawling under the table to lie at his feet.
Her passion for sharp-beaked birds, undomestic animals
and even reptiles was sometimes a cause of tribulation
to Lady Blake's entourage, and I confess I was none
too easy in my mind when her pretty daughter was
leading a young alligator round the garden by a piece
of string tied round its waist. But I am sorry I was
not present when a group of her pets was photographed
260
PORT HENDERSON
on the lawn. The alligators and iguanas, macaws,
parrots, monkeys, dogs and cats were collected oppo-
site the camera, but the monkeys fainted at the sight
of the alligators, and confusion, made vocal by the
piercing shrieks of the macaws, reigned. Ice was
fetched and placed as a restorative upon the heads of
the unconscious monkeys, and the menagerie was
regretfully disbanded by its proprietor before a satis-
factory picture could be obtained by the embarrassed
photographer.
CHAPTER L
PORT HENDERSON
BEFORE Christmas Dick and I broke away from the
superior comforts of Admiralty House and established
ourselves for a fortnight's solitude d deux in a little
bungalow near Port Henderson, which lies opposite
Port Royal at the mouth of Kingston Harbour. Port
Henderson is the deserted village of Jamaica. Commer-
cial competition and yellow fever killed it, and nothing
of its former prosperity remains. A very humble
general shop, about five negro inhabitants, stretches
of crumbling wharf and rows of rotting warehouses
were all that was left in 1895. But we were in search
of peace ; and we found peace, fresh air and beauty
in the isolation we had deliberately chosen.
Facing us were the magnificent ranges of the Blue
261
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Mountains with one of the finest harbours of the world
lying at their feet. To the right we saw Port Royal,
with its red-roofed houses and little gingerbread towers,
simmering away in the sunshine, and on the left the
sweeping curve of sandy beach fringed with vivid green
mangroves and broken by groups of tall cocoanut
palms standing as straight as the stiff sea breeze would
let them, and quartering the middle distance with their
waving branches. We saw the sun rise when we had a
mind to, and though we had no western horizon
visible from our veranda, we never missed the reflected
glories of a sunset that bathed the mountains in fire
and streaked the harbour with shell pink and pale
gold. Our veranda was cool enough after two o'clock
to be comfortable, and long before Port Royal had done
frying in wavering lines of heat we were enjoying
the grateful shade of the hills at our back.
Every morning after our early cup of coffee we went
down to the village to bathe in a saline spring which
our landlord, Mr. Hotchkin, of Half Way Tree Pen,
had roofed in and made praticable. Its temperature
was only 60, it was about four feet deep, and if we
swam very economically it took just ten strokes to
circumnavigate it. A great part of every day was
spent in sheer loafing with or without a book, but
when the heat diminished we would walk on the hilly
bridle-road leading past Apostles Battery to the
Lazarette, or paddle along the shore in the skiff,
exploring as we went and filling our pockets with
shells, pelican's wingbones, or bits of coral picked up
among the rocks.
262
PORT HENDERSON
The humours of our household afforded an agreeable
distraction to us, its irresponsible members. Friday the
cook, Tinsley the steward, and Reynolds the coxswain
composed our " permanent staff " ; Reynolds' Irish
terrier, Patsy, was an impermanent or intermittent
inmate, and Mrs. MacTavish, a singularly dirty old
black charwoman, visited us daily. She wore a black
cotton bedgown, a necklace of large cornelian beads,
and a crumpled red and white handkerchief bound
round her head. Now and then she would have a
washing day in our garden and hang the black garment
out to dry while she wore a purple skirt and a red blouse.
Her duties consisted in bringing up ten pails of water
daily from the village tank, making two beds and
polishing three floors. It was very hard to understand
what she said, but as she was dotingly incoherent this
mattered very little. She told us on our arrival that
she usually received three maccaronis and a half for
seven half-days' work, and as none of us knew what
a maccaroni was we offered her five shillings a week and
spoilt the market, for a maccaroni turned out to be
nothing more remarkable than a shilling ! On our first
morning Mrs MacTavish brought three ragged brown
granddaughters to help her to polish the floors, but the
steward fell over them so often in the pantry and the
sitting-room that we abolished them then and there.
The old lady never knew what to do next, nor when to
go away, and it was funny to hear the men chaffing
her good-naturedly in their cockney English. " Now,
then, old Dame Trot, it's about time for you to
be toddling. O revore, my dear. No ? you don't
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
understand French, don't you ? Well, it means go ;
g-o go. Now, we shan't be long," and so on for five
minutes before Mrs. MacTavish could be prevailed
upon to move homewards. One day we overheard
Friday asking her if she was " of Scotch extraction."
" Ay ? " she questioned doubtfully. " I mean, do
you come from Scotland, near England ? " he
explained. " Yees, Engleesh," said Mrs. MacTavish,
nodding her turbaned head vigorously. " Well, now,
I wonder 'ow it was ye come to get so sunburnt,"
rejoined the light-hearted cook, and the old lady
cackled in ignorant sympathy with the men's laughter.
I gave her a sailor-hat, a pair of Dick's boots, and a
pink chiffon blouse before we left ; at least I put the
blouse in the rubbish basket hoping she would not
think of wearing it, but she did.
The kitchen of our bungalow was a very queer place,
and we feared at first that Friday might rebel. It
was detached from the house and boasted neither
range nor stove. There was nothing but a wide open
hearth across which were laid from dog to dog two
long and crooked iron bars, and for fuel there were a
dozen bundles of small logs piled in one corner of the
kitchen. For cooking utensils there were a gridiron
and a frying-pan, a couple of saucepans and a three-
legged pot with a flat lid. In this pot the chickens
were roasted and the tarts baked. The earthen floor
was undulating, and the cook had to climb up a slippery
rock to reach the hearth, but Friday and his colleagues
were imperturbably good-tempered, and somehow we
had a very good dinner of five courses every night.
264
PORT HENDERSON
The men's sleeping place was a wooden hut on legs,
and this they accepted gleefully as part of a huge joke
which included Mrs. MacTavish and the open hearth.
I daresay the joy of getting away for a whole fortnight
from the restricted monotony of life on board ship
did not seem to them too dearly bought.
The unclaimed pigs of Port Henderson unclaimed
since nobody likes to acknowledge inveterate tres-
passers gave the Captain's " retinue " a good deal
of trouble. A party of them actually spent the night
following our arrival under the men's sleeping hut
and nearly capsized the whole erection by their violent
behaviour at two a.m. After this a truceless war was
waged upon them, and if I had not been assured that
these errant pigs were valued at only three shillings
a-piece by their anonymous owners I should have been
uneasy as to the result, for whenever they showed their
long noses within our precincts Friday or Tinsley or
Reynolds and Patsy would drive them squealing down
the road or into the thorny acacia scrub behind the
house. Pigs belonging to coloured people in Jamaica
are generally lodged, but never boarded, by their
owners and are the leanest and shabbiest of their
kind. We used, indeed, to see them paddling along the
shore at Port Henderson Beach and grubbing in the sand
and weed for crabs or small fish to appease their hunger.
Port Henderson Beach is a little fishing village of
small tumble-down shingle houses about half a mile
from the port itself. Rows of odd-looking dugouts *
* Fishing-boats, made of the hollowed-out trunks of cedars and
brought from Colon.
265
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
are drawn up on the sand, and the names roughly
painted on these primitive boats are strangely spelt.
The Rushlite, Evadny, Princess My, and Let Me Aloe
were resting when we saw them, and all round them
fishermen sat on the sand busily weaving fish-pots out
of split bamboo. The pattern they wove was that of
the ordinary cane-bottomed chair, but the mesh was
far larger, and when the woven strips were bound
together at the edges with lianes a pot two feet across
sold for eight maccaronis. The men worked hard
and did not care to talk, details pointing to the con-
clusion that the seafaring negro earns his living less
easily than does his inland brother. The latter by
working three days a week can provide himself with an
ample supply of the necessaries of life, for the coloured
gentleman of Jamaica demands American wages,
and were it not for coolie labour imported from India
the sugar planters of the island would now be not
merely impoverished but ruined.
We left Port Henderson reluctantly when our holiday
came to an end. There had been no discomfort, much
less hardship, in our rest-cure, since the kindness of
our landlord and his capable wife had supplemented
the bare essentials of our simple life in a hundred
ways. Not a day passed but something good to eat
found its way up to our bungalow from Half Way Tree
Pen a basket of tamarinds or a jar of Devonshire
cream, some devilled cashew nuts, or a section of
golden honey while bunches of eucharis lilies and
scarlet amaryllis, calladiums, splashed with crimson
and gold, great sprays of rosy abelia, and the huge
266
LAST WEEKS IN JAMAICA
white blossoms of the beaumontia made our sitting-
room fragrant and beautiful throughout that happy
fortnight.
CHAPTER LI
LAST WEEKS IN JAMAICA
ON our return to Port Royal the Commodore received
us as prodigal children. " What pleasure you can
find in leaving this comfortable house and planting
yourselves in the desert I can't conceive," was his
comment on our little escapade. And yet no man was
better able to rough it than he, as his subsequent
experiences in the untrodden places of South America
proved. Perhaps the risks he ran in that expedition
compensated for the loneliness and discomfort, hunger
and fatigue it entailed. He undoubtedly gloried in his
freedom from the ties which make a married man think
twice before risking his life for the sake of adventure.
He was quite certain that no naval officer should marry,
and dwelt with contemptuous pity on the restricted
opportunities, the financial trials and domestic dis-
comfort endured by the " poor devils " who had
" given up their liberty for the sake of a pretty face."
If I protested that matrimony was not without its
alleviations and had proved a happy estate in the case
of many naval officers of small means, he would tell me
of tragedies within his own cognisance which had
267
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
proved the contrary. " Haven't I seen the poor
chaps at the club ? hundreds of them," he would say.
" At half-past six or seven, when we bachelors are
looking forward to a good dinner and a pleasant even-
ing, the married man lays down his newspaper with a
sigh and turns out into the dark, scrambles into a
crowded 'bus, and is jolted off to West Kensington or
Campden Hill, or some such God-forsaken suburb.
And what does he find there ? A slatternly, down-at-
heel wife with her hair in curl papers, a smoking fire,
a pack of squalling children, and an uneatable meal
high tea, very likely."
I was young enough then to feel hurt by such tirades.
Now, when I hear an elderly sailor inveigh against
marriage I am tempted to conclude that he fell among
sirens as a sub.
Early in January, 1896, the Tourmaline went round
to the north coast of Jamaica. Filibusters from Cuba
had made a naval patrol desirable, and Dick was sworn
in as a magistrate for no less than five divisions of the
island. As soon as the ship had arrived in the harbour
of Ocho Rios I set out to rejoin my husband, going by
train to Moneague in the centre of the island and driving
thence through a district producing tropical trees,
ferns, and flowering creepers which surpassed my
wildest hopes. Arrived at Ocho Rios, I installed
myself at the primitive wooden lodging-house of Mrs.
Mesquitta, a lady of colour, where for a week I slept
and breakfasted, my days being passed on board the
ship or in exploring the surrounding country with my
husband and other Tourmalines. But for the far-
268
LAST WEEKS IN JAMAICA
reaching malice of the ticks, which burrowed right
under our skins and set up an almost ceaseless irritation
that lasted for weeks, we should have been perfectly
happy at Ocho Rios, with its little horseshoe harbour,
its exquisite woodland walks and shallow rushing
rivers, and we were sorry to move on to Montego Bay
when the time came. The trip thither took only eight
hours of daylight, and when the screw had been dis-
connected and hoisted and the ship was going smoothly
along under a good spread of canvas, I positively
enjoyed my first and only sailing voyage on board
a man-of-war. Near Montego Bay there was a com-
fortable hotel in the hills, but my recollections of our
stay there are of days and nights made miserable by
the mining operations of the ticks we had all brought
with us from Ocho Rios ; and everyone we met
talked of ticks and smelt of the paraffin which they
used to repel their advances. Wherever there are
cattle there are ticks, and valuable young beasts in
Jamaica are actually killed by those which get into
their throats and set up an incurable irritation. When
there were snakes in Jamaica the ticks gave no trouble,
but when the mongoose, introduced to rid the country
of snakes, had killed them all he turned his attention
to wild birds' eggs, and before long there were no small
birds to eat the ticks ! Personally I prefer ticks to
snakes, but I doubt if I should find a cattle-raiser in
Jamaica to agree with me.
The time of my departure for England was fixed for
mid-March, and, sorry as I was to part company with
my husband and the ship, I had my reunion with Roger,
269
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
now between nine and ten years old, to look forward
to. Besides, I was glad to leave a climate as enervating
as that of the Jamaican coast. Had I been the wife of
a soldier I should have spent a great part of my time
in the hills, where one can wear a woollen gown by day
and sit by a fire in the evening, but, since no ship other
than the Ark of Noah has proved a good mountain
climber, the Tourmaline and I stayed together on the
sea level until I was very nearly " boiled to rags."
Just after I left Jamaica a sham fight which I imagine
to be unique in the history of such events took place
between the Army guarding Port Royal and the shores
of Kingston Harbour and the Navy, represented by
H.M.S. Tourmaline, her one small steamboat and her
pulling boats. All that was expected of my husband
was that he should steam up the harbour and, by
exchanging a few shots with the forts, demonstrate to
the satisfaction of the military authorities the impregna-
bility of their defences. Although the umpires con-
sidered the strategy by which the sailors captured
Kingston and Port Royal unwarrantable, the joy and
gratification afforded by its success to the Tourmalines,
from their captain down to the youngest midshipman
employed, were unbounded.
Far from behaving in the orthodox manner antici-
pated by his superiors, Dick, under cover of darkness,
landed a party consisting of two officers and sixty
men under Lieutenant Arthur W. Craig * on the
Palissades, a strip of sand fourteen miles long forming
a natural breakwater behind which Kingston lies.
* Now Captain.
270
LAST WEEKS IN JAMAICA
They got the whaler across two hundred yards of sand
and launched her on the far side, whence she proceeded
unobserved to Kingston. There Mr. Craig landed
with a couple of hands and deposited without opposi-
tion a number of jam tins labelled " High Explosives,
H.M.S. Tourmaline," in the principal Government
buildings. Members of Mr. Craig's party also set fire
(theoretically) to all the coal stores, blew up (theo-
retically) a guardboat and returned unmolested to the
ship by the way they came. The Tourmaline had in
the interval steamed towards Port Royal and success-
fully distracted the attention of the forts from the
proceedings of the enterprising whaler, while at the
Dockyard at Port Royal Lieutenant Le Hunte Ward *
in another of the ship's boats had made a clean sweep
of undefended shipping and coal stores.
Neither the Commodore nor the General was pleased,
and when the Kingston daily paper described the
finding of the " explosive " jam tins at the central
police station, the town hall and other important
places in the capital, the General tore his hair.
CHAPTER LII
MIDSHIPMEN
THE Tourmaline midshipmen were less wild than
the old Invincibles, for the Tourmalines had plenty of
* Now Commander.
271
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
games in which to let off the steam which inspired the
crazy and sometimes dangerous pranks committed
by my midshipmen friends at Alexandria ten years
earlier. It was the very boys who had shown most
coolness and daring in the bombardment and its sequel
who came to grief in the quieter times that followed.
Young blood must circulate healthily, and stoppages
of leave involving loss of exercise often lead to out-
breaks far more to be deplored than a mere disinclina-
tion for X-chasing * or a tendency to make blots in a
log, or even on the fair pages of the leave-book. Beat-
ing was an excellent punishment when humanely
administered. " Six with the dirk scabbard " was a
most wholesome deterrent, and it is to be regretted
that cadets and midshipmen are no longer treated like
public school boys of equal age. But luckily some wise
captains and commanders hold views of their own on
this subject.
The Tourmaline's midshipmen were cheerful, straight-
forward and unspoilt. No active pursuits on duty or
for pleasure came amiss to them. Mr. G. F. S. Bowles f
was more the man of the world than any of them, but
his capacity for enjoyment and his generous disposition
made him a good comrade, and all who have read his
" Gunroom Ditty Box " know that his short career
as a naval officer was not unfruitful. Of his messmates
the greater number have steadily advanced along the
path of honour and promotion, but one, alas !
Mr. Fitzwilliams, tall, brown-faced, and merry-eyed
was accidentally drowned as a lieutenant. Mr. (now
* Mathematics. f M.P. 1906 10.
272
MIDSHIPMEN
Commander) Quentin Crauford, senior midshipman,
was a most original person, and greatly diverted us one
evening at dinner by asking if we knew how to do an
enemy to death without risking detection. We said
we were unprovided with the recipe, and he proceeded
solemnly : " You get some cat's hairs, chop them up
fine, and mix them with your enemy's food. Gradually
they will choke him. It's much safer than poison."
Each year the midshipmen asked permission to draw
upon the fund supplied by their parents for some
outing or expedition judged suitable by their com-
manding officer. From Halifax in 1894 they set forth
to search for hidden treasure, confident that they
possessed the clue to one of Captain Kidd's caches /
Gleefully they departed on hired bicycles, heavily
encumbered with blankets, weapons, tools and food
of various descriptions, but when the account of their
proceedings was duly written and sent in to the captain
there was no mention of the treasure-hunt. They had
" tarried " most agreeably " at Capua." A pleasant
riverside boarding-house not many miles away had
provided them with excellent entertainment and
appreciative company, and the knowledge they
acquired during their week's outing of the lumber
business was carefully set down in their reports. I
fancy they had a glorious time jumping from log to
log of the great rafts of timber, and I know they
returned to Halifax sunburnt and beaming, to confront
a captain wise enough to realise that their parents'
money had not been thrown away.
Eighteen months later the midshipmen went off to
A.W. 273 T
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
climb the Blue Mountains in Jamaica. They reached
the summit tired and thirsty as twilight fell. Suddenly
they awoke to the fact that their supply of drinkables
was exhausted, and there was no stream, well, pump,
or waterhole in sight. Panic seized them, and they
drew lots to decide upon whom the task of descending
to the nearest house should fall. Laden with empty
bottles, Mr. Kettlewell retraced the steep path ;
despondent and parched with thirst, his messmates
explored the surroundings of the rest-hut until a rain-
gauge a Government rain-gauge burst upon their
view. Recklessly they drank from it, caring nothing
for the consequences to the Meteorological Office of
Jamaica, or indeed to the whole world of science ; but
they did not drink deeply, for the water was nasty,
stale stuff, and few had partaken of it before a shout
of joy from a successful explorer announced that good
water had been found. Close to the hut, before their
very eyes, under their very noses, was a large board
bearing the inscription in the plainest lettering .
" This way to the Well." Poor Mr. Kettlewell was the*
only sufferer.
When I told this story to Sir Henry Blake
he remarked with a -twinkle in his eye, "They will
have to go back again and fill up that rain-gauge, or
the Government Meteorologist will have their blood."
Needless to say the Governor did not impose this
penance on the erring midshipmen, so the returns
for 1896 must have shown an unaccountable deficiency
in the rainfall of Jamaica.
Some of the Tourmaline's midshipmen grew apace
274
MIDSHIPMEN
and added, if not cubits, inches to their stature in the
three years they spent on the North American and West
Indian Station. Their trousers ran up their legs, their
sleeves retreated almost to their elbows, and the
mothers who had stooped to bestow the farewell kiss
stood level with, or were overtopped by the strong-
armed, long-legged boys who returned to them in
1896. A tale, more tragic than funny, told me in 1897
by a gigantic lieutenant of the Hawke* illustrates the
inconvenience of rapid growth. He went out to the
Cape a small cadet, but before two-thirds of the com-
mission were over he had shot up beyond all expec-
tation. He would have had to refuse a tempting
invitation to spend a week up-country but for the
kindness of a brother officer who lent him a suit of
clothes commensurate to his requirements. For two
days Mr. Fisher enjoyed life unspeakably. Then a
telegram from his benefactor put an abrupt end to his
outing : " Return suit immediately, am invited to
B ." Disappointed and embittered, Mr. Fisher
went back to his ship and handed over the borrowed
garments to their owner.
Of the midshipmen of my younger days I can write
with knowledge. Another system of entry and educa-
tion, a more liberal supply of pocket-money and the
disappearance of masted ships have made of his
successor a somewhat different being in non-essentials,
yet I believe him to be fundamentally the same. He
has been described by " Bartimaeus," messmate of the
type he portrays and holder of an inspired pen, and it
* Captain W. W. Fisher.
275 T 2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
appears to me that the boy who at an irresponsible,
age discharges the obligations of an officer is, as of yore,
a creature full of charm and contradictions.
The average midshipman, as I knew him before the
penalty of official greatness overtook me, was a very
happy combination of the boy and the officer. The
responsible boy is, in other walks of life, rarely an
unqualified success witness the buttons, the errand
boy, and the chorister but the young gentleman who
became an officer in Her Majesty's Navy at something
under sixteen contrived as a rule to unite the per-
formance of his duties with a wholesome and by no
means ungratified taste for larks. The youth, occa-
sionally to be met with, who laboured under the dis-
tressing delusion that he had already reached the age
when romantic attachments were permissible and
flirtation an employment suited to his age and official
status was not worthy of consideration, and any girl
stupid or mischievous enough to allow a midshipman
to make love to her deserved, in my opinion, a good
shaking. If, however, he showed himself disposed to
fetch and carry for her, to eat all the cake she offered
him at tea-time, to be her sworn friend and even
accomplice in emergencies, and to receive with becoming
gratitude such marks of favour as a quarter of a waltz,
part of a batch of home-made toffee, or a little good
advice, he was the right sort of boy. And she, on her
side, had to be scrupulously careful in the matter of
fair play. His confidences were absolutely safe with
her, and any engagement she made with the smallest
of naval cadets held good, even though ten admirals
276
MIDSHIPMEN
and twenty post-captains might thereby be doomed to
disappointment.
The " dear little middy " of days gone by was
superseded in the 'eighties by the giant midshipman.
There have been few microscopic ones since then, and
six feet is now no unusual height for a cadet. In 1886
when the seven midshipmen of H.M.S. Active were
laid out end to end like dominoes upon her deck they
covered forty-two feet of it. The main reason for this
development was to be found in the improved quality
of the food provided in the gunroom and the greater
amount of sleep allowed to midshipmen no longer
required to keep night watches when in harbour.
Life in the gunroom is not yet a life of luxury, although
it is far less uncomfortable than of old, but it is
generally a healthy one, and lessons in self-effacement
and self-control are learnt there as well as those which
enable a boy of fifteen or sixteen to deal success-
fully with men of twice his age and bulk drunk
or sober. Better is a good hand with men than
any number of Ones ;* but the possessor of both will
go far.
The very best kind of midshipman is almost bound
to be a pickle, but a firm hand over him, plenty of
occupation and an occasional opportunity for exer-
cising his judgment in an emergency will make of him
the very best kind of man. He may break the gun-
room furniture, commit acts of pure piracy on the other
messes and circumvent his superiors in a hundred
ingenious ways, but what matter ? The worthy,
* Firsts in Mathematics I. and II., Gunnery, Torpedo and Pilotage.
277
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
obtuse, slow-moving boy who cares nothing for games
and has not enough original sin or initiative to get into
a scrape and out of it will never be a success in the
Navy.
Providence is, generally speaking, kind to mid-
shipmen, but they are for ever doing unexpected
things and, owing mainly to the reckless manner in
which they embark on the most blameless enterprises,
unforeseen circumstances conspire to trip them up
and run them in. Here is an illustration. A midship-
man I knew was credited with the awful crime of
giving his captain's fox terrier a pin to eat, whereas
the boy's own version of the incident, given with
perfect candour and careful detail, pointed to the
conclusion that the dog wilfully and without encourage-
ment swallowed the pin. " I took some bits of meat
up on deck after dinner for the captain's dogs," he
explained, " but just as I was going to give it to them
the captain came out of his cabin, so I hid it behind
a target. The dogs made such a shindy, jumping up
and barking round it, that I took it away and pinned
it inside my cap (!), where it was quite safe. Well,
then, unluckily, the band struck up ' God save the
Queen,' so I had to take my cap off. All the dogs came
round me and simply tore the thing out of my hand
and made off with it. It wasn't my fault that Tim ate
the pin."
The midshipmen I knew in 1883 84 were a little
more primitive, a good deal less cared for, than the
contemporaries of "Bartimaeus," but they were possibly
more resourceful and necessarily more hardy. It seems
278
MIDSHIPMEN
to me that there was far less chance for a boy of
mediocre character in those days than there is now.
He sank like a stone or swam like a duck according to
the chance influences of his surroundings. Lifebelts
are provided now, and with their aid a great many
weaklings learn to swim ; not very well, perhaps,
but passably. Temptation is always available, but
the sort of temptation which wrecked the boys of the
'eighties and 'nineties is not so common now, or perhaps
it is less attractive to the newer school who may find
other paths leading to destruction. Wardroom officers
as a class undoubtedly show a greater interest in the
youngsters nowadays, but at any period boys have been
extricated by the good offices of a friendly lieutenant
from some entanglement or saved from some vice who
might have gone under had they been left to the tender
mercies of a dissipated or merely inefficient sub. or a
naval instructor more or less capable of teaching
mathematics but incompetent or unwilling to watch
over the moral development of midshipmen and
cadets. I have known a gunroom which was for a
whole commission nothing less than an inferno because
there was no powerful humanising influence at work
within or above it, and I knew another redeemed from
demoralisation by the unobtrusive efforts of a heaven-
sent gunnery-lieutenant. A captain, if he is worth
his salt, knows all about the conditions of gunroom
politics and conduct, but he is too far away and, to
the juniors' minds, either too lofty or too antiquated
a being to serve as a very present help in trouble. A
smart commander sometimes frightens midshipmen ;
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
a slack one always confuses them. It is, therefore,
in the power of a lieutenant, failing the ideal sub., to
become their Father O'Flynn, " checking the crazy
ones, coaxing onaisy ones, lifting the lazy ones on wid
the shtick."
Games are invaluable in interpreting between
juniors and seniors. On the cricket or football ground
a boy is rated by his performance or promise in the
game, and many a friendship has been made, many a
lifelong devotion born during the heated moments of
Rugby or the prolonged uncertainty of an inter-ship
cricket match. And I have known of ships where
music brought wardroom and gunroom together,
where concerts and dramatic performances owed
perhaps the greater part of their success to the talent
shown by gunroom officers. In no situation does
character exhibit itself more frankly than in the
playing of a game or the playing of a part. More
than a match is lost by instability or vanity ; more
than a reputation as a comic actor is gained by the
boy who shows himself unselfish on the amateur
stage.
Thus far had I written when " Songs of the Sailor-
men," by T. B. D., fell into my hands. The verses
" To a Naval Cadet " should be the vade mecum of
every youngster about to plunge into gunroom
life.
T. B. D. has put into that poem, as only a naval
officer who is also a gentleman and a poet could have
280
HOME AND AWAY AGAIN
done, much that I should have liked to say in this
chapter. One verse I must quote :
" Don't harbour a hate for an officer when he calls
You unkind names ;
Wait, and you'll find he cheerfully takes the falls
With you at games."
CHAPTER LIII
HOME AND AWAY AGAIN
A LETTER from my sister-in-law announcing the
serious illness of Lady Poore was awaiting me at
Plymouth, where I disembarked on April ist, on my
return from Jamaica, and as the boat-train carried me
swiftly through a dreary grey country, as yet untouched
by spring, anxiety instead of happy anticipation filled
my mind. In the sad days that followed, anxiety gave
place to apprehension, and apprehension to abandon-
ment of hope. Then the strong heart which had never
failed children or friends and risen buoyantly above
every disappointment and disaster of a chequered
life gave up the struggle, fluttered and lay still. If only
the son who from his earliest childhood had been the
true knight and champion of this incomparable woman
could have been there to close the eyes weary with
looking for his return we should have been content to
let her go. But this last solace was denied her.
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Roger's Easter holidays brought him to me a few
days before his grandmother's death. Blind with
neuralgia and tired to my very soul, I had to lie still
in a darkened room and wait while a friend fetched
him from the station, but the warming clasp of his
hard little hand and the soft pressure of his round
cheek on mine told me I had got him back unchanged
at heart after our long separation.
My husband's return in the following month took us
down to Sheerness, where the Tourmaline was paying
off, and Roger's cup of happiness was full.
One cannot but be sorry to say good-bye to the ship-
mates of three years, but during the process of paying
off there is little time to indulge in regrets, and until
the ship lies stripped and silent one does not realise
that there is no possibility of reassembling the elements
that made of her a home, more or less happy, for that
period.
The little Tourmaline was turned into a coal-hulk,
and since I bade her good-bye on that bright May
morning in 1896 I have often passed her lying at
anchor midway between Chatham and Sheerness.
When my husband was commissioning the battleship
Illustrious in 1898 the Tourmaline came alongside to
coal her. The graceful white lady with gold coronet
and necklace which formed the ship's figure-head was
scarcely to be recognised through the coal-dust and
weather-stain of two years. " Don't you remember
me ? " she seemed to ask, her grimy hand outstretched
as though to clasp that of her old captain. It was
pitiful. Though she was never a " flyer," the Tour-
282
HOME AND AWAY AGAIN
maline was once a clean and pretty little craft, and I
have just the same feeling of compassion mingled with
indignation when I look at her, shabby and degraded,
as that which burns within me at the sight of a well-
bred, ill-groomed old horse between the shafts of a four-
wheeler. Her figure-head has been detached and is now
honourably preserved in Chatham Dockyard, while
she herself lies at a northern port, humbly useful to
the fighting monsters of to-day.
When Roger's summer holidays, which he spent with
us in Cornwall, were over we addressed ourselves to the
task of finding a flat in London, but hardly were we
settled in De Vere Gardens before Dick was appointed
to the cruiser Hawke, already three months in com-
mission in the Mediterranean, where his old and well-
loved chief, Sir John Hopkins, was in command. My
husband was happy and proud to rejoin Sir John's
flag, but I, though naturally pleased with the appoint-
ment, suffered the customary collapse so familiar to
sailor's wives who have not had time to tire of depen-
dence and repose. Still I had now an excellent oppor-
tunity for visiting my father at Limerick and filling
up the gap of three years which even the most conscien-
tious correspondence had not been able to bridge, and
there were also Roger's Christmas holidays to be
enjoyed before I could shape my course for Malta.
By the end of January, 1897, I had let the flat
and completed all the preparations for my journey,
which, mindful of my experiences in the Atlantic,
would include no more than ten hours of sea all told.
Crossing the Straits of Messina in the ferry I fell
283
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
in with two naval officers bound for Malta from Corfu,
where they had been left behind in hospital with
fever. Their somewhat halting Italian had failed to
secure the second cups of coffee they badly needed, so
I came to the rescue and presently discovered that the
senior of the two was none other than Hugh Le Fanu,
son of my old friend Mr. William Le Fanu ! In the
hollow-cheeked convalescent there was little likeness
to the jolly little boy I remembered meeting ten or
eleven years before in Kerry, but the voice and manner
were unmistakable, and I found the encounter very
refreshing after my long and solitary journey. At the
hotel at Syracuse I cut my cake of soap in half with a
bit of string so that my fellow-travellers might be at
least as clean as I, but this slight benefaction was more
than repaid by the moral support they were to afford
me a few hours later. There was an outbreak of bubonic
plague in Egypt just at this time, and because Mr. Le
Fanu and the midshipman accompanying him had
come vid Brindisi from Corfu the Sicilian health
authorities considered them suspect. We could not
follow their reasoning, and when I found that I, too,
was regarded with disfavour the position of our little
party became serious. However, Mr. Le Fanu insisted
on going alongside the Malta steamer Carola, and after
we had signed various papers and solemnly sworn that
we were entirely uncontaminated the captain per-
mitted us to proceed.
As though bent on concentrating all the horrors I
had sought to avoid by taking an overland route, the
Carola for eight hideous hours bounced over the rough
284
FIRST WINTER AT MALTA
sea with the airy insouciance of a toy balloon, and I,
less happily constituted, arrived at my journey's end
like one that has encountered the point of a pin.
CHAPTER LIV
FIRST WINTER AT MALTA
MY husband had taken rooms at Sliema in the
Imperial Hotel, a broken-down palazzo run on a system
familiar to people frequenting Malta, but not possessing
for English minds or bodies any special advantages.
We had however, large and airy rooms which opened
on to a wide terrace-balcony overlooking a neglected
garden of fair size, and were waited upon by two
dear old women, Caroline and Giuseppa, who made up
as best they could in zeal and kindness for the startling
deficiencies of their principals. The air which came
across the open sea was fresher than that in Valletta,
and though the distance from the town itself entailed
the use of ferry or carrozze (a one-horse four-seated
carriage with an awning and curtains) whenever we
wished to go there, the expense of either was so small
as to present no overwhelming obstacle.
The Hawke had been only three months in com-
mission when my husband assumed command of her
(his predecessor, Captain W. des V. Hamilton, had gone
as flag-captain to Sir John Hopkins), but as her com-
285
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
mander, J. de C. Hamilton, had already been in her
for ten months she showed little of the rawness and
discomfort of the newly-commissioned ship. After
the cramped quarters of the Tourmaline my husband's
cabins appeared to me magnificent, and when I had
been to church on board and made the acquaintance
of some of the officers and of the two ladies lieutenants'
wives already settled in Malta I could have few
misgivings as to the future. The ship had been known
in the previous commission as the smartest cruiser
in the Mediterranean, and although the burnishing
of the cat-davits and torpedo-booms was now pre-
termitted as being, in my husband's opinion, a work of
supererogation, there seemed good reason to suppose
she would maintain her character. I do not see how
she could have done otherwise with officers such as
hers, and if any critical reader should think of the
Hawke at that period as anything less than a phoenix
among ships a glance at the names of her officers in
the Navy Lists of 1896 (and after) will convince him
that their standard of efficiency was such as led to
early promotion and continuous and important
employment.
To my eyes, accustomed to the broad shoulders,
deep chests, and sinewy arms of the Tourmaline s
crew, the men of the Hawke looked slight and unde-
veloped. Between the abolition of masts and yards
and the inauguration of adequate physical drill under
the " indiarubber man " (officer for gymnastic instruc-
tion) there was something of a hiatus, and among the
younger seamen one saw but few of the stalwart and
286
FIRST WINTER AT MALTA
well trained figures now happily so common. The
stokers of to-day might belong to a different race, for
in the 'nineties a pasty face and round shoulders
almost invariably proclaimed the denizen of the engine-
room.
The Hawke officers had already instituted a very
pleasant custom, that of ship picnics on Saturday
afternoons, and though my proficiency as a bicyclist
was by no means assured I very soon found myself
pedalling away by my husband's side to the rendezvous
at the end of Quarantine Harbour. Inwardly terrified
I joined the throng, but by dint of the strictest attention
to my own business I avoided disaster on the outward
ride. Coming back I was less fortunate, for after
rounding a corner in company with Mr. Stanley
Willis, a sub-lieutenant as tall and handsone as he was
kind, I turned left instead of right at a cross-road and
knocked him clean off his bicycle ! And I had been
going along so bravely and even daring to think I had
made the first step towards establishing something
like friendship with the Hawkes. I have always for-
gotten to ask Mr. Willis what his real feelings were when
he picked himself up and assured me in cheerful tones
that he was none the worse, but as he made a point
of my presenting his young and attractive bride at a
Court in 1914 I may safely assume that they were not
injured for life. At the time I was crestfallen to the
verge of tears, and I told my husband when we got
back to Sliema that I was quite certain the Hawkes
would never like me. He wisely recommended me to
be less precipitate in my conclusions, and on the f ollow-
287
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
ing Saturday I rode with such scrupulous care that at
any rate nobody can have considered me a nuisance.
There were sometimes as many as twenty-five of
us on these Saturday excursions, and as we were pre-
ceded by a carrozze laden with material for an ample
tea the junior officers turned up in force ; but Mrs.
Blomfield, Mrs. Ellis, and I were not the only ladies,
for we always contrived to bring with us others whom
we knew to possess special attractions for the Hawkes.
Almost every Sunday at tea-time my sitting-room
and terrace at Sliema were delightfully thronged with
midshipmen, and nothing in my life at Malta gave
me greater pleasure than their company. Now and
again a big fish would drop in, and the minnows would
slip hastily out of the net or lie low in a corner till the
monster had departed. Once it was the Admiral
Superintendent with his wife who arrived unheralded.
A scene of consternation ensued, and next Sunday not
one midshipman put in an appearance. This object-
lesson was not laid to heart by me as it should have
been, for I used to wonder at first why no gunroom
officers ever crossed the threshold of Admiralty House,
Chatham. Then I awoke regretfully to the knowledge
that midshipmen feared and distrusted admirals'
wives, and I had no claim to be considered an exception
by the rising generation, who could not be expected
to know how warm a welcome I had always given
to their kind.
It is not nice to find oneself the top-stone of an
official pyramid. One enj oys in one's youth the equality
and comradeship afforded by its wide-spreading base,
288
FIRST WINTER IN MALTA
but with each successive promotion the goodly fellow-
ship dwindles till at last one stands alone in the lime-
light and the storm.
" Marriage and death and promotion make barren our
lives."
Malta was gay that winter, and I danced to my
heart's content. Fortunately for me, my husband
enjoyed dancing too, but we were of one mind in a
desire to leave off at a reasonable hour. The extreme
cliquishness that had, I was told, characterised Malta
society prior to 1897 was disappearing. The possessors
of smart tandems were no longer the only people in
a position to explore the island, for bicycling was at
its zenith, and bridge had not as yet excluded from
many dinner-tables persons happy or unhappy enough
to be non-players. For our own part we had nowhere
enjoyed the distinction of belonging to any particular
coterie, and happy as we found ourselves with the
Hawkes alone, neither they nor we were disposed to
raise a barrier round us and take our pleasures only
within the limited area it embraced.
Sir Lyon Fremantle was Governor of Malta at this
time, and he and Lady Fremantle specially endeared
themselves to the naval colony by the kindness they
showed to ladies whose husbands were at sea. Captain
Biancardi, on the Governor's staff, used, indeed, to
keep a list of naval grass-widows, and these were not
only invited to dinner, but many among them, unable
for one reason or another to return to England for the
summer, were asked to spend a week or more at the
A.W. 289 u
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Governor's country house at Verdala, where purer
air and greater comfort than any to be had in Valletta
refreshed and restored bodies and spirits fatigued and
depressed by the stuffy heat of some poky flat or
second-rate hotel. The gratitude of sailors' wives
found expression in 1898 when a many-branched lamp
of antique silver was offered by a number of those they
had befriended to the Governor and Lady Fremantle
on their departure from the island.
The Governor had not a good memory for faces, nor
was he always as felicitous in speech as he was hos-
pitable in intention. At a public reception held at the
Palace not very long after Sir Lyon's arrival the Arch-
bishop of Malta, Monsignor Pace, was closely followed
in the procession of arriving guests by a Maltese lady
of middle age and comfortable proportions and her
two daughters. After welcoming the Archbishop with
due empressement Sir Lyon was unhappily inspired.
" And this, of course, is Mrs. Pace ! " he exclaimed,
shaking the stout lady's hand with great cordiality,
" and your Grace's daughters. Such a pleasure ! "
In what words the outraged Archbishop repudiated
the scandalised ladies or whether he left the latter to
enlighten the erring Governor I never heard.
290
VILLEFRANCHE
CHAPTER LV
VILLEFRANCHE
FOR the month of April, 1897, the Hawke was told
off to act as guardship in Villefranche Harbour to
Queen Victoria at Cimiez. True to my principle of
avoiding sea voyages whenever possible, I betook
myself to the French Riviera via Italy, and rejoined Mrs.
Ellis and Mrs. Blomfield, who had gone by Messageries
steamer to Marseilles, at Beaulieu. There we were
reinforced by Mr. and Mrs. Philip Sclater and their
daughter parents and sister of the Hawke's torpedo-
lieutenant * and Miss Patrick, bringing with her not
only her small nephew, Pat Ellis, to pay a visit to his
parents but Miss Desborough, the fiancee of the first
lieutenant, Mr. Morgan Singer.f Of course we all had
bicycles and on them made expeditions into the rugged
and beautiful country at our backs. Monte Carlo
engaged the attention of some of us, but failed to hold
that of my husband and myself, since we found it poor
fun to watch one five-franc piece after another being
swept unfailingly from our sight. Now and again we
went to Nice and thanked our stars that Beaulieu,
rather than that garish city, was our headquarters,
and once the captain and officers gave a party on
board to all the people of various nationalities who had
shown them hospitality.
* Afterwards Captain G. L. Sclater, lost in H.M.S. Bulwark, 1914.
| Now Rear-Admiral Singer.
291 U 2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
The Mayor of Villefranche had a wonderful garden
at Cap Ferrat, and on the morning of the party masses
of coppery pink roses, perfect in form and long in stem,
arrived for the beautifying of the cabins. What to
put them in I could not imagine, since the supply of
vases was hopelessly inadequate. " I have it," cried
Dick ; " grog measures ! " and straightway the ship's
steward produced an array of glowing copper mugs
and jugs, both great and small, such as I had never
seen or dreamt of. Nothing could have been more
becoming to the Mayor's roses with their well-shaped
copper-lined leaves and pointed buds, bronze green
stalks, and delicately-tinted shoots. I have forgotten
all about the party, but I shall always cherish the
memory of Monsieur Poulain's roses. He called them
Papa Jacquet, but neither Papa Gontier nor Pere
Jacquet can be compared with them, and in no French
rose-grower's catalogue have I ever found mention of
Papa Jacquet. Maybe he was a hybrid of the Mayor's
invention.
It is emphatically the right thing to keep up appear-
ances in a foreign port, and anyone could see that this
principle was acted upon on board the Hawke when
she lay at Villefranche. The men habitually wore their
best or second-best rig and the guns their Sabbath
Day trappings of red cloth pinked out at the edges,
white sennit beckets and burnished brass et ceteras.
The mere fact that the white ensign floated from every
boat gave a gala air to her embarcations, as her French
visitors called them, and only on two days a week
was any really hard work done on board. The men's
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VILLEFRANCHE
conduct was exemplary, and every one of them looked
bigger than he had done at Malta, because the men of
the Midi are as a rule short. The ship attracted a good
many visitors, and her quarter-deck was now and then
the theatre of comic incidents and of interviews carried
on in extremely broken English.
One hot afternoon three very fine French ladies
tripped up the ladder and confronted the officer of the
watch. Not one word of English could they speak,
and it was some time before Mr. Ellis could fathom
their reason for coming on board. " Nous ne desirons
pas voir le croiseur ; nous desirons voir des Maltais "
was what they kept repeating, and at last he realised
that they had come on board merely to see some natives
of Malta. What they expected a Maltese to look like
he never knew, but he sent them round the ship with a
Maltese steward who pointed out to them as many of
his fellow-islanders as happened to be on board.
These ladies were succeeded by a very strange-looking
couple a gaunt German lady with dishevelled grey
hair and a perfect command of our language and a
speechless gentleman with rolling black eyes. " I
wish to see this ship," said the lady firmly. " I desire
to see everything." " Certainly," said Mr. Ellis, and
calling a boy told him to go round with the Germans and
show them everything except the conning-tower and
the submerged torpedo-tubes. " But it is exactly those
things which I particularly wish to see," objected the
lady ; "in fact I insist upon seeing them. I have
been on board ships of every nation and always I have
been treated with the greatest respect and attention.
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Never have I received such treatment as this. I will
not be refused." " Very sorry, I'm sure," said Mr.
Ellis, " but I have my captain's orders." " Captain ! "
snorted the lady, " / am the friend of admirals."
" I have no doubt of it," returned Mr. Ellis, " but I
am not going to set aside my commanding officer's
orders." Furious, actually snarling, the lady went
round the ship, and her dumb escort, rolling his eyes
horribly, trotted after her. She returned still raging
and protesting, demanded a boat, and flung a " Good
afternoon, and thank you for your scant courtesy,"
over her shoulder as she left the ship. She was too
undiplomatic for a spy, but what she had come for no
one could make out.
Another day three plump German ladies clad in mud-
coloured stuff gowns laboriously climbed the ladder,
bowed to the officer of the watch and walked aft as of
set purpose. They seated themselves on the gratings
round the capstan and for half an hour remained there,
whispering among themselves, eating marrons glaces out
of their leather reticules and throwing the sticky
frilled papers about the deck. Then one of them
addressed the puzzled officer of the watch : " Kindly
tell when the steamer may start."
She and her friends had actually mistaken the
beautiful Hawke of 7,500 tons and 12,000 horse-power
for the little steamer plying daily between Villefranche
and Mentone !
But the oddest visitors of all were two French
schoolboys who came to see not the ship but the
captain two black-bloused urchins with dark eyes and
294
VILLEFRANCHE
hair cut en brosse. They brought with them a petition
neatly written in round hand on a ruled sheet torn from
a copy-book, but they also desired to speak with the
captain of the Hawke. This was their petition :
" VILLEFRANCHE, le 21 avril, 1897.
" MR. LE COMMANDANT,
" Nous voudrions savoir si Mr. le Commandant du
croiseur Anglais ne pourrait pas nous faire embarquer a
son bord comme aspirant.
" Monsieur, si vous nous acceptiez vous nous rendriez
un fier service digne de vous servir tres fidelement, en me 1 me
temps nous vous serons tres reconnaissant. En cas que
vous ne pourriez pas nous faire accepter est-ce que si nous
demandions a S. M. la reine d'Angleterre est-ce qu'elle
nous ferait embarquer soit a son bord, soit alors sur son
Yacht, ou bien encore est-ce que nous pourrions e"tre
ses serviteurs, la servir bien fidelement et faire partie
ainsi de la Maison Royale, et lui etre tout devoue a sa
personne.
" Oh ! Monsieur, faites tout votre possible pour nous
accepter et nous vous serons tres reconnaissant. En atten-
dant veuillez agreer, Monsieur, mes sentiments respectueux
et reconnaissants.
" Vos serviteurs ddvoues
" MARTINI MARC et CAMBON JEAN
" ages chacun de 15 et 16 ans.
" Vive 1'Angleterre
" Vive la Reine
" Vive Mr. le Commandant du Croiseur Anglais."
My husband interviewed the boys who were very
downcast on hearing that there was no possibility of
their becoming midshipmen of the Hawke nor yet of
being attached in any capacity to the Court of Queen
295
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Victoria, but he settled them down in the fore-cabin
and told his steward to give them the best meal he
could produce at short notice. They were such little
fellows and so terribly in earnest ; and, judging by
the peculiar wording of their petition, it seemed as
though they had but one heart and soul between them.
Their letter was shown to the Queen a few days later.
She was touched by their wish to serve her and amused
to find that only if they failed to join the Hawke did
they desire to be attached to her person.
CHAPTER LVI
AN OLD DREAM COMES TRUE
MY husband had dined with the Queen shortly after
his arrival, and I, personally, expected to have nothing
more than a fleeting glimpse of Her Majesty as her
carriage passed us on the road, but by a mere chance
and through a most unlikely channel, my presence at
Beaulieu was revealed to her with a result very sur-
prising to myself.
A party of Hawke officers in company with their
feminine belongings had set forth one afternoon in a
ship's cutter to picnic on the shore below Cap Ferrat,
but on their arrival it was discovered that the first
lieutenant had forgotten to have a breaker of water
for tea-making placed in the boat. So it came about
that Mr. Singer, and Mr. W. W. Fisher, followed by a
296
AN OLD DREAM COMES TRUE
bluejacket bearing a bucket, scaled the rocks and begged
from the nearest house on the high-road the water we
required. Returning they found the Queen's carriage
drawn up by the roadside, where servants were making
preparations for tea. The officers raised their hats and
passed on, but the bluejacket was stopped by the Queen
herself. " What are you carrying in that bucket ? "
asked Her Majesty. " Water, Madam," replied the
man, removing his hat and setting down the bucket,
" Water for the first lieutenant of the Hawke. The
officers and some of their lady friends are having a
picnic on the shore and the water was forgotten."
" Oh," said the Queen. " Is Sir Richard Poore there ? "
" No, Madam ; but Lady Poore is," answered the
communicative sailor. And that was all.
Of course the party on the rocks heard all there was
to tell of this exciting incident, and the bluejacket
gladly repeated for our edification the conversation
he had just had with the Queen.
Next day on our return to Beaulieu from, an expedi-
tion to Ezes an important-looking envelope was await-
ing my husband. It contained a command for both of
us to dine the same evening with the Queen. Terror,
rather than gratitude or elation, possessed me, for I was
so overpowered by a conviction of my own inade-
quacy that I would have welcomed a sprained ankle
or a swelled face should either be considered a sufficient
reason for failing to appear four hours later at Cimiez.
My husband did what he could to reassure me, and I
proceeded to review my very limited stock of evening
gowns, helped by a self-appointed committee of deeply -
297
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
interested ladies. A silver-grey garment was chosen,
and my hair was done by hands more skilful than my
own. Miss Patrick provided an exquisite evening wrap,
the equal of which I have never possessed, a fan of
corresponding elegance, and a petticoat so much
smarter than my gown that it seemed a sin to conceal
its beauties, while diamond crescents and stars were
positively showered upon me by those among my
friends fortunate enough to possess such things. That
I did not wear them all was no fault of their owners.
We drove off in such good time that we reached
Cimiez long before the hour and were shown into a
drawing-room of which we were the only occupants
until Lord and Lady Glenesk appeared. The latter
at once pulled off her gloves and rolling them into a
ball stuffed them into a corner of a sofa. I was sur-
prised but, with a deplorable lack of perception,
failed to see in the action a well-meant hint to do like-
wise. When we had sat for a few minutes in silence
I meekly observed that we had arrived ever so much too
early. " Oh," replied Lady Glenesk, " we never come
till just before nine " ; whereupon the humbled
novice subsided until the suite assembled and Dick
introduced me to Lady Lytton, then in waiting.
At last the wide doors flew open and a dignified
personage whom I called in my mind " The Lord High
Butler," though he might have been a herald or a toast-
master by his voice, cried " THE QUEEN ! " and
as my Sovereign passed into the room my quivering
knees bent and straightened with the vertical action
and reaction of a concertina, and I found I had curt-
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AN OLD DREAM COMES TRUE
seyed. Then Lady Lytton drew me towards the dining-
room door near which the Queen had paused to shake
hands with her guests. The cordial tones of her perfect
voice, the satin-soft touch of the warm little hand that
met mine (encased in the glove I had been too stupid
to remove) were unforgettable. The blood rushed back
to my heart, and when my turn came I entered the
dining-room not much more frightened than I had been
at my own wedding.
There were but ten, all told, at table. On either side
of the Queen sat a Princess : Princess Henry of Batten-
berg on her right, Princess Victoria of Schleswig-
Holstein on her left. On Princess Henry's right Lord
Glenesk with Lady Lytton on his other side, while my
husband sat between Princess Victoria and Lady
Glenesk. I, at the foot of the table, faced the Queen
and had Captain F. Ponsonby on one side of me and
Colonel Carrington on the other. The former proved
communicative, the latter quite the reverse ; and I
must admit that I felt rather as though I were talking
in church and suppressed with difficulty an inclination
to whisper. But the dinner itself was perfect in every
respect, for it was as short as it was excellent, and
though I am no judge of wine I am convinced that
Jove's own special brand of nectar could not compare
with the Queen's champagne.
Less than an hour had been spent at table when the
Queen rose and, leaning heavily on her stick, returned
to the drawing-room. In a straight-backed Empire
chair, all white and gold, she sat for about an hour,
talking first to the Princesses who had some snapshots
299
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
to show her and afterwards to each of her four guests
in turn. While Lady Glenesk had her innings Princess
Victoria talked to me, and I have always thought
the Queen's champagne responsible for the courage and
coherence I showed in conversation with the Princess
when I knew it would soon be my turn to stand before
the white and gold armchair.
Princess Henry had sent down to the Hawke a week
or so earlier to ask that " the tailor " should go up to
Cimiez and measure Prince Maurice, aged five and a
half, for his first sailor suit. There was no tailor
officially designated as such on board, but the first
lieutenant despatched a bluejacket of exceptional
skill to take the Princess's orders, and Princess Victoria
was amused to learn that the man had consulted Mr.
Singer on his return to the ship as to what material
should be used to line the waist of the little Prince's
trousers. He " had thought of red plush as suitable for
a Royal young gentleman," and was with difficulty
dissuaded from employing this magnificent material.
Princess Victoria told me that the first time Prince
Maurice wore his suit the sentry at the garden gate
saluted him an honour never accorded to the Prince
when he wore petticoats, and one which so confused
the little boy that he clutched his trousers with both
hands as though they had been skirts and rushed past
the sentry without acknowledging the salute ! *
* Seventeen years later Princess Victoria came with Princess
Christian to lunch with us at Admiralty House, Chatham. I asked
her if she remembered Prince Maurice's first trousers. " Oh, yes,"
she said, laughing, " and the kind sailor who wanted to line them
with red plush 1
300
AN OLD DREAM COMES TRUE
The Princess told me another amusing story.
The Cambrian, commanded by Prince Louis of
Battenberg, which had preceded the Hawke as guard-
ship at Villefranche, had had a very rough passage from
Malta with Princess Louis and her children on board,
and one night when the ship was rolling badly some of
the photographs in the first lieutenant's cabin, made
over to little Princess Alice,* had jumped from their
places against the bulkhead and landed on the bunk
where she was sleeping. Next morning she was heard
to complain indignantly to the first lieutenant (Mr.
Mark Kerr, who possessed an unusually complete
gallery of Royal portraits) that all her relations had
fallen on her face in the middle of the night ! With such
stories did the kind Princess beguile me until, with the
termination of Lady Glenesk's audience, I was bidden
to advance, and standing in front of the Queen
I answered her questions to the best of my ability,
amplifying my replies in the hope that I should save
her the trouble of seeking fresh topics. She asked if
I had any children. I told her one, a boy of nearly
eleven who, we hoped, would some day be a sailor.
" Where is he now ? " asked the Queen. I glanced at
the clock. " On his way from London to Limerick,
ma'am." " All alone ? " she asked. " Yes, ma'am,
but the guard of the Irish mail will wake him at
Holyhead." " Oh, the poor little fellow 1 " she cried.
" Couldn't you have sent somebody with him ? "
I was embarrassed, for I hardly liked to explain that
children of our class and fortune must learn to find
* Now Princess Andrew of Greece.
301
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
their own way about unless chance provides an escort,
and said he had so often made the journey that he was
not afraid to travel alone. Then she asked me what I
thought of the recent raising of the age at which cadets
joined the Britannia. To tell the truth I have for-
gotten what view I then took of the matter, but it
agreed with that of the Queen. Her next question
staggered me : " And has Sir Richard no other chil-
dren ? " " No, your Majesty," I faltered ; "I am the
only wife he ever had." She smiled and said " I beg
your pardon." Then, with a little frown, " I have been
misinformed."
What else passed I cannot recollect, but twice I
made the Queen laugh, and though it may have been
my ingenuousness or ignorance of etiquette that
amused her I have put the fact down in the short list
of good deeds that stand to my credit. After about
ten minutes' conversation she inclined her head in
dismissal. I curtseyed and withdrew to the back-
ground. I had broken a stick of Miss Patrick's beauti-
ful fan and shed three large violets on the floor at the
Queen's feet, but I was helped to retreat in good order
by Lady Lytton, who gathered me up, as it were, and
set me at my ease. I would have laid more, far more,
than three violets at the Queen's feet. The command
to dine at Cimiez, inspired, I am sure, by that chance
encounter with a sailor from the Hawke, had brought
about the realisation of a dream repeated again and
again from my childhood up. I had seen and spoken
with Queen Victoria.
Before the ship left Villefranche my husband
302
CRETAN COMPLICATIONS
dined again at Cimiez, and Lady Lytton told him that
the Queen had been quite distressed to think she had
regarded me as his second wife (it was commonly
believed that Queen Victoria did not like second
marriages). How and why she should have been
misinformed as regards my insignificant self I shall
never know. But misinforming a queen should rank
as lese majeste, for, as my father said to us long years
before in Dublin, it is the business of everyone in
attendance on Royal personages to be well informed.
Our happy month at Beaulieu came to an end in
the first days of May. When Dick had seen me off at
Nice he took the train to Monte Carlo, put a five-franc
piece on Zero, and won back just as much as we had
lost on a previous visit to the tables !
CHAPTER LVII
CRETAN COMPLICATIONS
THE Hawke was sent almost direct from the Riviera
to Candia, an abrupt descent from elaborate and
peaceful civilisation to militant semi-barbarism, for
disturbances in Crete at this period were occupying
the anxious attention of the Great Powers, and a
naval demonstration in force was made in Suda Bay,
where English, French, Russian, Italian, and Austrian
admirals had combined in an endeavour to point out
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
to Greeks, Turks, and Cretans the error of their ways.
Several regiments had been sent from Greece osten-
sibly to protect their co-religionists, but their presence
embarrassed rather than helped those whom they had
come to serve. Crete was a hotbed of revolutionaries
and brigands, a land of oppressors and oppressed, as
awkward, indeed impossible, to handle as a disturbed
wasps' nest, and it was only the supreme importance
of Suda Bay as the best harbour in the Levant with a
productive country behind it which compelled the
Powers to join in an effort to keep the island open to
their fleets.
The admirals made Suda Bay their headquarters,
but on May loth my husband found himself Senior
Naval Officer at Canea in command of ships of six
nationalities and all descriptions.
" I am supported " (he wrote on that date) " by the fact
that my coadjutor-captains consider me very young for
the position. My indiscretions will be the more pardonable.
The situation here is a curious one. Candia is a very old
walled city inside which our troops Welsh Fusiliers,
Seaforths and a Mountain Battery are quartered. The
population is almost pure Mussulman and consists of people
who have been driven from their homes by the Christians
(save the mark !) and are now living on a Government dole
of eleven ounces of flour per head per day. There are
twenty-nine thousand of them. Outside the town is a belt
of land four miles deep on which, by agreement between
the admirals and the Cretan Christians, the Candians are
allowed to graze their sheep ; beyond the four-mile limit
there is a neutral zone one thousand yards deep, and then
comes the Cretan insurgents' line. Turkish troops hold
Candia and are having pretty constant trouble with the
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CRETAN COMPLICATIONS
outsiders. Heavy firing was going on yesterday. Naval
officers may land, but may not go outside the town ; in
fact we are in a state of blockade, and if the Turkish troops
were withdrawn the Cretan Christians would cut the throat
of every Mussulman left in the place, though these are
Cretans born and bred, and settled from time immemorial
in the island. The whole thing seems to me an impasse.
I should rather like to raise a corps by forced levies from
the shrieking section of the British public who have got
up an hysterical agitation over the ' poor Christians '
and send them to garrison Crete, preserve order and bring
peace and prosperity to their dear downtrodden brethren.
There's not a pin to choose between Christian and Mussul-
man in this island. Mrs. Ormiston Chant " (a lady best known
for her benevolent efforts as a social reformer in London
in the 'nineties) " came out from England the other day
to condole with the Cretan insurgents and nurse their sick
and wounded. She managed to get passed out to Colonel
Vassos' headquarters in the mountains, but returned next
day much disappointed by her reception. Colonel Vassos
appears to have enquired what the mischief she was doing
there, made a prisoner of her and sent her back straight-
way."
My husband's job was, roughly speaking, to see the
Greek troops out of Crete. Two thousand soldiers
with their guns and all munitions of war, etc., had to
be firmly yet painlessly removed and repatriated
without damaging the susceptibilities of a highly-
susceptible race.
" It is most interesting and most difficult " (he wrote)
" and I hope I shall come out of it without burning
my fingers badly. The way I disobey orders makes me
shake in my shoes and doubt my own consistency, for
you know my views about implicit obedience to orders !
A.W. 305 x
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
My very slight knowledge of languages is invaluable, and
you would laugh to hear me laying down the law in French
to half a dozen people of different nationalities who hang
upon my words. I have seen many old friends here
Carlo Mirabello, Serra, Agnelli and Orsini," (all friends
of ours at Spezia in 1891-2) " and Captain Antoine,
who was with Admiral de Maigret in the Ndiade at
Quebec, is my right hand man and such a good straight
fellow."
The Greek soldiers " backed and filled " in the most
maddening way. Three times they came down to the
shore at Platania before they eventually embarked
with all their warlike stores on May 26th. On May 24th
my husband wrote :
" There is something peculiarly distasteful to me in
having to make things unpleasant for the Greeks. It is very
much like hitting a man when he is down, for the star of
Greece is not in the ascendant just now. It is true that
they have made things unpleasant for Europe at large,
but these soldiers have only obeyed orders, and I feel like
the big boy who takes it out of a small one, though I am
only obeying orders myself. ... I have made two fast
friends here : Ricotti, Captain of the R& Umberto, and
Antoine, of the Chanzy. The latter is a grandfather, and
when he calls me ' Senior Officer ' it makes me feel shy.
It was funny to be in a position to mention him in
despatches as I did the other day."
" May 28th. CANE A. At last I have got all my Greeks
safely off the premises, but I had to do all I knew to make
the Greek C. O. get some of his field-guns away from the
insurgents and refused to embark him and his soldiers
unless they brought in the guns. I lent him a destroyer to
hunt them up in, and next day she turned up with the guns
and a quantity of ammunition. I was delighted because
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CRETAN COMPLICATIONS
I had had a message from the combined admirals the day
before to say I should have to let the Greeks go without
their guns, and two days later they brought in yet two more
of which I had known nothing. The whole business has been
very complicated, and it would have been quite impossible
to do it off my own bat without a smattering of French
and Italian. As it was I did the whole of my interviewing
and arranging in French, and I always found someone on
board the merchant ships who could speak Italian. At
the end of it all the old Greek C. O. came on board to thank
me for the excellence of the embarkation arrangements
and for my ' invariable courtesy ' for the last fortnight.
I took him down below and gave him some champagne,
and we parted the best of friends. He told me the reasons,
in his opinion, for the failure of the Greek Army in wartime,
laying the blame on the ministers, diplomats, Headquarter
Staff, etc., and assured me that Greek soldiers could sweep
the Turks off the face of the earth ! . . . I'm glad the
embarkation is a fait accompli. Three times at least I
might have made a holy smash-up of the business, and end-
less complications would have ensued, for I was hampered
by the Laws of Neutrality (which I broke), by various
other rules of International Law (which I broke), and by
the Laws of the Cretan Blockade (which I broke). There
was nothing else to do, and I wound up by sending the
last batch of Greeks to sea and never tried to report that
fact till they were half-way to Athens, for which I think
all the admirals at Suda were thankful."
He wrote from Canea on June yth :
" At present we are doing nothing, and things are going
from bad to worse. There is no law, civil or military,
in the towns, and in the interior there is chaos. We talk
of autonomy for Crete, but nothing is being done. Now
the Turks are being shifted from Candia to Canea. . . .
One hears lots of claptrap about the Mussulmans and
307 x x
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
Christians of Crete. People at home don't realise that both
are Cretans. It is very much like the situation in Ireland
where Black Protestants and bigoted Roman Catholics
are eternally at one another's throats."
" On my ride to Alikanu on May i8th, when I visited
both the Greek and the insurgent camps on my own
responsibility and sat down in a circle of ferocious-looking
beings armed to the teeth, one of the insurgents, to my
surprise, spoke English. I asked him where he learnt it,
and he answered, 'Oh, I was at Oxford at Balliol ! '
This was the celebrated Manos, a man of about 28, with
Crete on the brain. He is a regular stormy petrel, and
appears in the island with the first sign of trouble."
" June 24th. CANEA. I have had rather a successful
Jubilee dinner I couldn't have it on Jubilee Day,"
(June 20th, 1897) " because the Consuls had an evening
reception. My party consisted of Sir Alfred Biliotti
(Consul-General), Amoretti (the Italian Commandant of
the town), and Cerri (his second in command), Colonel
Korolf (Russian), Colonel Fannin (French), Captain von
Jedina (Austrian), and Major Jamieson and Captain
Egerton, of the Seaforths. All went well, the band played
admirably, and no one thought of leaving before midnight.
My French was, luckily, in good order, and I proposed the
Queen's health in that language, compounding all the
other nationalities into a salad of European concert and
happy camaraderie. I got slightly tangled now and then,
but fortunately my audience was uncritical."
" The British Consul's Jubilee Day function was a great
business. I sent up my cook and steward to help and a
party of bluejackets to decorate, marines to wait, flags,
lamps, etc., and the show on Tuesday evening was quite
imposing. It was all out of doors and we rigged up a stage
for the Highlanders to dance on. At midnight when we had
smoked innumerable cigarettes in the garden we sat down
to supper, about no of us, and the following nationalities
helped to give three cheers for the Queen : English,
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CRETAN COMPLICATIONS
French, Italian, German, Russian, Austrian, Turkish,
Greek, Cretan, Montenegrin and Egyptian. The guard at
the gate was provided by the Seaforth Highlanders with
whom were Albanian and Montenegrin Kavasses. After
supper the Turkish Governor, inspired by champagne, did
lu's best to dance a Highland fling on the platform accom-
panied by the pipes, an unrehearsed item of the most
remarkable . . . Two days ago I rode out with
Major Jamieson and an escort of two Seaforths to see a
little Christian town that had been utterly wrecked by
Mussulmans. I have seen lots of Mussulman houses
wrecked by Christians, but so far not an entire town of
4,000 inhabitants reduced to ruins. It was a dismal
sight."
On July 2nd the Hawke went down from Canea to
Candia to embark Turkish troops. Turkish Governors
and C.O.'s created infinite confusion and gave great
trouble.
" The only ray of light in the whole business was the
Turkish soldier ; ragged and dirty, boots all in holes, but
patient and willing. I have just heard that their authorities
put off feeding them till the order had been given for them
to embark and then told them not to eat or they would be
seasick and spoil the appearance of the English man-of-
war ! They obeyed without a murmur. We got them all
on board that evening, 350 with 35 horses and mules. The
upper deck looked appalling, but the Turks were joyous and
sat on piles of straw and anything else that was inflammable
and smoked cigarettes. The idea that all this might catch
fire struck them as very amusing and they were perfectly
amenable when removed. After a smooth trip to Candia
we put them ashore and set to work to scrub and disinfect.
The Turkish officers were perfectly useless, but the quick-
ness of the men and their excellent management of the
disembarkation were remarkable. They are fine soldiers.
309
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
... It is curious to look back in the Blue-books and
see how very much one revolution in Crete resembles
another. The Christian murders the Turk and the Turk
retaliates, and each one blames the other and complains
to the Consuls. The Consuls wire home reports of frightful
massacres ; their Governments order them to make careful
enquiries, and it is found that all the massacred women and
children and most of the men are back again inside whole
skins. They do shoot each other a good deal, but that is
more a personal matter, a custom of the country in peace
or war, like the vendetta in Corsica or Sicily."
Rear-Admiral Harris had thanked my husband
both verbally and by signal for having successfully
carried through an undeniably difficult piece of work,
and one all the more delicate because necessarily
performed under the close observation of the naval
representatives of so many European Powers, but I
do not suppose that another soul in the world knew as
I did what tangles Dick had to unravel, what long
hours he worked, and what constant vigilance was
needed in dealing with such slippery customers as
Turks, Greeks and Cretans, while consulates and
chancelleries were on the alert to mark what was done
amiss. The British public can scarcely be expected
to realise how many pieces of intricate diplomacy are
confided to the simple and unsophisticated sailor,
because, in the majority of instances, no publicity
can be given to the facts, and no recognition of his
services is likely to be made by a Cabinet occupied
with a General Election, a bill dealing with trade
disputes, or the claims and counter-claims of Ireland,
North and South.
310
EGYPT
CHAPTER LVIII
EGYPT
IN the following October I rejoined my husband at
Malta, but the Hawke did not remain there long. Some
weeks before Christmas she took up her billet as
stationnaire at Alexandria, and Mrs. Ellis and I secured
our passages in the Clyde, a P. and O. running vid
Malta between Marseilles and Alexandria and gene-
rally crowded with opulent British " swallows." We
were left sitting on our boxes for three whole days
after the Clyde was due, and consternation naturally
prevailed in the island, for to be three days late on a
run of sixty hours is unusual. The ship had broken
down badly in the Gulf of Lions, and with the utmost
difficulty limped into harbour at Malta. There she was
hurriedly patched up, and " the Great 'Awke and the
Little 'Awke," as we were called, gladly abandoned
an attitude of agitated expectancy and set off in her
for Egypt.
My sister Rosy and her husband still occupied their
dear old Turkish house near the Arsenal at Alexandria,
and there Mrs. Ellis and I spent our first days, moving
later into two flats on the top floor of the British Con-
sulate. My flat faced the harbour and was wretchedly
cold and draughty, but there was a warm welcome
from many old friends not seen since 1884 to cheer us,
and before very long the weeks were racing by. I was,
however, no longer the irresponsible being who had
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
danced and laughed through the gay days and nights
in 1883 84, for Dick was now a person of considerable
importance. Multitudes of people called on Mrs.
Ellis and myself, and the returning of visits in a great
city whose streets now boasted legible names though
their houses were undistinguished by numbers was
something of a trial. The suburbs were far worse,
for there no aid whatever was afforded to the unprac-
tised visitor, and we called on several people innocent
of any wish for our acquaintance and left unvisited
others who had shown us politeness or hospitality.
Every week the Hawkes had a regatta, after which
there was dancing on board, and on these occasions
I found that a minimum of pleasure fell to my share.
But the Hawkes were so kind, their attitude towards
their captain's wife so engaging in its confidence, that
I could not fail them, and I think it was at Alexandria
that winter that I began to realise how much a captain's
wife owes to a ship like the Hawke. If only for her
credit I had to be punctilious in returning visits and
put behind me all thought of amusing myself when
called on to help in entertaining the ship's guests.
Still, I was given many opportunities for diversion
ashore, and it was half-funny and half-sad to recognise
in staid fathers of families and pose bachelors the
partners of my youth.
By good luck my nephew Hugh Blomfield, coming
out to spend his holidays at Alexandria, was able to
escort Roger, and for three weeks we had our boy with
us. He had quite forgotten the French he had learnt
at Parame" and Veules, and acquired in its place the
312
EGYPT
British schoolboy's contempt for all things foreign.
Hugh told us that on landing at Calais Roger surveyed
the scene with great disfavour. " Just look at that
beastly French lamp-post ! " was his first comment.
In what the poor lamp-post fell short of its English
brothers I cannot say. Probably it erred in not being
British. Roger was very happy at Alexandria, and
when he was with us in Cairo and someone asked him
what he thought of that wonderful city he answered,
" I like Alexandria best." " Alexandria ! " exclaimed
his friend in amazement. " Why," cried Roger,
equally surprised ; " don't you know the Hawke's
there ? "
Cairo differed lamentably from the Cairo we had
known in the 'eighties. It overflowed with rich
Americans and the smartest of smart Britons. For
us the bazaars had lost their charm, since, in place of
the grave and dignified merchants Turkish, Syrian or
Arab of the Mooskee, mean-faced little Jews and
Levantines sprang up on all sides, teasing us to buy
in broken cockney English embellished with Yankee
slang and even clawing at our sleeves in the endeavour
to attract our notice. Every child in the place had
learnt to demand baksheesh, donkey-riding was no
longer " the thing," and the pseudo-Oriental shabbiness
and scanty furniture of the hotels had given place to
a stuffy banality purely European. East had done
more than meet West at Cairo ; West had overlapped,
and in the process had not only vulgarised the place but
demoralised a people who before the British occupation
possessed Oriental virtues as well as Oriental vices.
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AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
dredgers from the canal cleared the sand away from
round her bows with their " vacuum cleaner "
apparatus, and an empty petroleum tank ship drawing
very little water towed the Victorious, a few yards
at a time, out of the pit of wet sand where she had lain
for the best part of a fortnight. This ingenious plan,
devised by one of the port authorities of Port Said,
proved quite successful, and at last the poor monster
was released and got back into the fairway. The funny
part of it all was that the Government had particu-
larly wished to " slip her through the Canal " on her
way to China " without attracting attention," though
how a I5,ooo-ton battleship could be slipped through
the Suez Canal unnoticed is a problem. Short of an
absolute phenomenon such as the passing of a camel
through a needle's eye nothing can be more noticeable
than a battleship going through the Canal.
The Court-martial on the captain and navigator
of the Victorious was held at Port Said, with Rear-
Admiral Sir Gerard Noel presiding, and there were
now so many ships of our Mediterranean Squadron
in port that there was some risk of exceeding the
number permitted by international convention. The
moment the trial was over our ships dispersed, and as
the Hawke was to return direct to Malta, there was
nothing for me to do but go back to Alexandria and
pack my boxes.
In a nice steady tramp-steamer I followed my hus-
band to Malta, where I was once more regarded with
disfavour by the health authorities, though whether
I was suspected of bringing cholera or plague I cannot
316
GOOD-BYE TO THE HAWKE
now remember. They decided, however, not to send
me to the lazzaretto in Quarantine Harbour, only
requiring that I should present myself daily for the
ensuing fortnight at Sliema Police Station. This
I never failed to do, and every morning at noon a
Maltese doctor shook me warmly by the hand his
was not very clean and asked me " Are you very
well ? " I was always very well.
CHAPTER LIX
GOOD-BYE TO THE HAWKE
WE had not been many weeks at Malta after our
return from Egypt when the appointment of my
husband to the battleship Illustrious, just completed
at Chatham, caused us consternation rather than
satisfaction. It was promotion, of course, but to say
good-bye to the Hawke was grievous, and I know my
husband felt like Napoleon when he turned his back
on the humbler but more engaging Josephine and
wedded the Austrian Archduchess.
The valedictory kindness of the Hawkes made the
parting all the harder. On the Sunday preceding our
departure for England the officers were photographed
on the quarter-deck, and I, proud but with an aching
heart, accepted their invitation to be the only lady
in the group. There was a farewell dinner too ; but
317
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
the climax came on the morning of our departure by
the Rubattino steamer for Syracuse. When we arrived
at the landing-place in Grand Harbour a ship's cutter
manned by officers lay waiting to take us off to the
Asia, and the ladies connected with the Hawke were
gathered in a little group on the steps. I bade them
good-bye and stumbled blindly into the cutter, which
but for Commander Hamilton's imperturbable cheer-
fulness might have been swamped by my tears. " Here
are some flowers for you," he said briskly, and laid a
sheaf of perfect Spanish irises on my lap. " I had the
thing made flat on one side so that you could lay it
down. Round bouquets must be such a nuisance."
Then he produced a wooden box and from the box
a beautiful silver bowl of old Neapolitan design, its
graceful lid surmounted by a well-modelled bird with
a hooked beak. " We think it's a hawk," explained
the Commander ; " and now, when you've done look-
ing at it, I'm going to take it away because we want to
have your name and the date and ' H.M.S. Hawke '
engraved on the foot of the bowl. Then it will follow
you to England." Even I was speechless, and not
until the Commander had despatched an attendant
midshipman on board the Hawke for a ship ribbon to
tie round the stems of my irises did I find words of
any sort in which to thank my " shipmates." I don't
know when I have swallowed so much salt water
not even when I took my first header in the creek at
Parknasilla as I did on that short trip to the Italian
steamer, for, with twelve officers opposite me pulling
and the Commander steering, common decency
GOOD-BYE TO THE HAWKE
demanded dry eyes. Then came the handshaking and
the good wishes, and there was a breathless midshipman
bearing a bunch of Hawke ribbons to be thanked.
To pass the well-beloved cruiser as the Asia made
her way out of harbour was bad enough, but when the
Hawkes " cheered ship " in my husband's honour
I felt I could bear no more. Just as I was hoping the
" seclusion of the cabin " would " grant " me a chance
of indulging in a good cry the Asia's captain appeared
at my door with a queer-looking object in his hand,
and I had to laugh, for the object was a belt in the
centre of which was a heart-shaped lump of gutta-
percha a patent dodge for the prevention of seasick-
ness ! It was called the Cintura Galleana after its
inventor, and the captain had promised Signor Galleana
that he would experiment with it upon such of his
passengers as were notoriously bad sailors. I said I
would wear it, and on his withdrawal the stewardess
strapped it tightly round my person, with the hard
heart, well inflated, pressing so painfully against the
points of my ribs that it would have hurt me very
much indeed if I had permitted myself to cry. The sea
was as flat as ice ; not even I could be seasick ; yet
when I left my cabin at Syracuse I yielded to the
captain's entreaties and wrote a beautiful testimonial
to the efficacy of the Cintura Galleana.
Sicily in April is " a land of pure delight," and our
three days at Taormina should have helped to diminish
the poignancy of my regrets. But, like Roger who was
unable to appreciate Cairo because the Hawke was at
Alexandria, I failed to enjoy the beauty of Taormina's
319
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
rose-red amphitheatre, the snowy breast of Etna
and the shore below with its tufted edging of starry
mesembryanthemum, for I had left my heart at Malta
and was not yet ready to grow a new one for the
Illustrious.
CHAPTER LX
COMMISSIONING THE ILLUSTRIOUS
WE arrived in England on a cheerless spring day, and
next morning my husband went down to Chatham to
make the acquaintance of his new command. It took
him three weeks of hard work to become passably
familiar with perhaps one-third of her internal economy,
and those of the Dockyard hands who were still at
work upon her regarded the interloper in very old
plain clothes and big brown gauntlets with a suspicion
that changed to amazement when they discovered he
was the captain of the Illustrious. On May loth the
ship commissioned, and then I went down to Rochester
where I put up at the " Bull," a hostelry at that period
more famous in fiction than in fact.*
We were at Chatham for the Queen's Birthday
Review on the Lines, and I shall never forget seeing
the Union Jack at the saluting point flying upside
down until Captain Hammick, commanding the depot-
ship Pembroke, hauled it down and hoisted it right
* Dickens made this inn the scene of revelries in which Mr.
Pickwick and his friends took part.
320
COMMISSIONING THE ILLUSTRIOUS
way up. I had gone to the review with the Dean of
Rochester and Mrs. Hole, to whom we had been recom-
mended by a friend at Malta Mrs. Kirke. She
deserved our gratitude. The Holes should not have
been mortal. They possessed the secret of perpetual
youth a peculiar grace and freshness belonging only
to those who have a perennial interest in all that lives
and grows.
After ten days of cold roast beef at lunch and hot
roast beef at dinner, salad and cheese to follow the one
and rhubarb tart the other, I was greedily pleased to
leave Rochester and find myself the guest at Admiralty
House, Sheerness, of Sir Charles and Lady Hotham,
whom I had never met before. But I had only just
sat down to tea after my arrival when the Commander-
in-Chief came in to tell me that the Illustrious had
broken a blade off one of her propellers when the
Dockyard people at Chatham were getting her out of
the basin and though she had come down the river
and was lying at Black Stakes, she would have to take
the next tide back to Chatham. This was annoying
for all concerned, and back I went to Rochester next
morning but not to the " Bull." The Dean and Mrs.
Hole, hearing of our plight, invited us to the Deanery,
and for five days we were under that most hospitable
roof. The Dean was so very much more than the
witty raconteur we had expected to find, for he would
tell a story against himself with as much zest as though
he were its hero instead of its victim. He was a most
picturesque figure. His towering height and his
leonine head with its thick white hah* were valuable
A.W. 321 y
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
accessories, but I should have loved him if I had
been stone blind. I shall never forget his coming down
from the drawing-room, ere the last laggard guests at
a clerical dinner-party had left, to implore his wife,
with whom Dick and I were picnicking in a small
sitting-room on the ground floor, to come up and help
him to entertain these limpets. "I've used up all my
topics," said the poor Dean piteously ; "I simply
haven't another idea in my head " ; so we all went up,
and the effort of being nice, but not too nice lest these
reverend stayers should remain till midnight, brought
us within measurable distance of imbecility before they
took their leave. Then we adjourned to the cozy
study and " blew out our cheeks." The Dean went
off at once and changed his gaiters, a simple action that
seemed to afford him great relief, and then, in defiance
of his wife's protests, produced two large cigars (which
he had been forbidden to smoke), one for himself and
one for Dick. " You have buttoned your gaiters all
crooked, Reynolds," said Mrs. Hole. " I don't care,
my dear," cried the Dean mutinously ; " indeed, I
buttoned them like that on purpose. Somehow or other
these clerical meetings make me want to do everything
that is wild and reprehensible. I wonder why it is."
Next day I came in from the Dockyard very late for
lunch to find the Archbishop of Canterbury (Temple)
and the Bishop of Rochester (Talbot) already at table
with my hosts. With such distinguished teetotallers
present barley water circulated freely, and I should
have been quite glad to drink some myself had not the
Bishop of Rochester taken for granted that I desired
322
COMMISSIONING THE ILLUSTRIOUS
this simple and refreshing beverage and poured me out
so generous a measure that it overflowed upon the
table-cloth. " Oh, thank you, my lord," I said depre-
catingly, " but I never drink barley water," and,
moved by an uncontrollable impulse to appear dis-
sipated, I asked the Dean to give me a glass of claret.
I was now quite able to comprehend and sympathise
with his little attack of contrariness on the previous
evening, for my perverseness in drinking the claret
I did not want was closely allied to the feeling which
had forced him to misbutton his gaiters and smoke
a large cigar.
As soon as the propeller of the Illustrious had been
repaired she made a fresh start, and I returned to
Sheerness, where I spent some pleasant days with the
Hothams and the Manns before the ship sailed for
Malta. She only got as far as Portsmouth, because,
in addition to the infantile diseases common to ships
which have not had time to " find themselves," the
Illustrious was affected with leaky steampipes. Leaky
steampipes are as serious a trouble in a ship as is tuber-
culosis in a human being, and many a harassing hour
did this ailment cause my husband and the Chief
Engineer. The latter took me down to the engine-
room one day after the ship had been nine months in
commission and explained her defects so beautifully
that I understood the situation perfectly for quite
twenty-four hours. Then the heavy cloud that obscures
that portion of my mind where an intelligent interest
jin machinery should reside closed down again, and I
ban only remember what a flange looks like.
323 Y 2
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
At Portsmouth the Illustrious, as a Chatham-built
and Chatham - manned ship, was nobody's child,
and lay alongside forlorn and unloved while her
Captain struggled valiantly to have her needs
attended to.
The Crescent, newly commissioned by the present
King then Duke of Cornwall and York was also
at Portsmouth, and it chanced that my husband and
I were bidden to dine with the Commander-in-Chief
(Sir Michael Culme-Seymour) and Lady Culme-Sey-
mour at Admiralty House to meet the Duke and
Duchess. It was not a large party, and after dinner
Dick and I found ourselves making a partie carree in
the drawing-room with the Royal guests. The Captain
of the Crescent and his wife talked with the Captain of
the Illustrious and his wife of the joys and sorrows
of commissioning a ship. The choice of chair-covers
and of shades for the electric lights in the captain's
cabins were topics apparently as absorbing to the
Duchess as they were to myself, and Dick and I went
back to our rooms in Southsea Terrace with a comfort-
able confidence in the human interest and human
kindness of the two young people destined to play
so great a part for England and the Empire.
By the time the Illustrious got away from Ports-
mouth I had been able to make the acquaintance of
a good many of her officers and one or two of their
wives. Commander Baker-Baker I found one of the
kindest and straightest of men ; I had already begun
to argue with Commander Hughes-Hughes, her navi-
gator, and had completely lost my heart to Mrs. Victor
324
ILLUSTRIOUS PLUS HAWKE
Stanley, wife of the first lieutenant* ; but until I had
been for a month or two at Malta I was unable to
master the names, much less the characteristics, of
her full complement of twenty-four gunroom officers.
CHAPTER LXI
ILLUSTRIOUS PLUS HAWKE
IN October I went out to the Mediterranean once
more and settled down in my old quarters at Sliema.
Captain Randolph Foote now commanded the Hawke,
and it distressed me to see her lying in Grand Harbour
two berths astern of the Illustrious, so near and yet
so far. Church on board the latter ship was indeed
a trial. A miserably-handled harmonium made, in
my opinion, a poor accompaniment to the men's voices,
for I was used to the little band of four stringed
instruments first and second violins, tenor and 'cello
which had supported the Hawke's harmonium played
by a signalman of talent, and I said as much after my
first Sunday's experience. Next Sunday I deliberately
went to church on board the Hawke, and when a large
company of officers of both ships turned up at Sliema
at tea-time I asked Captain Dixon, R.M.A., of the
Illustrious, with a brutality of which I was soon
ashamed, whether the same " pig " had played the
harmonium that morning. " No," he replied blandly,
* Now Captain the Hon. Victor Stanley.
325
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING]
" it was another pig," and a shout of laughter greeted
his answer. " What is so funny ? " I asked. " / was
the pig," explained Captain Dixon ! I was indeed
abashed and continued to be abashed, for the following
Sunday the music in the new ship was excellent.
Signor Bascetta, the bandmaster, himself a fine
violinist and excellent conductor, had told off four
bandsmen to accompany Captain Dixon, and hence-
forth I had no reason to desert my own proper place of
worship the wide quarter-deck of the Illustrious.
If the officers of that ship had been in league to make me
like them they could not have been more successful.
Now and then a severe pang of regret for the old ship
would wring my heart. Driving with Mrs. Foote one
day I met a string of too-hilarious ordinary seamen
dashing along the road on poor little broken-down
polo ponies, and every man of them had an Illustrious
ribbon on his hat ! The sight infuriated me, and when
I went back to tea with Mrs. Foote in Piazza Miratore
and looked down from her balcony upon the beautiful
little Hawke, so slim and smart and shining in the
evening glow, I felt I wanted to throw over the big
new Illustrious and be a Hawke once more. I was
unpardonably exacting, for I had not lost my Hawke
friends, and had gained in the Illustrious many new
ones who proved as time went on as true and helpful,
as kind and cheerful as I could desire. Even the
bumboatman attached to the Illustrious, Baptist
Borda, who, instead of dear old Tabona, now brought
me flowers, found his way to my affections by his dis-
interested goodness to the young and inexperienced
326
ILLUSTRIOUS PLUS HAWKE
wives of some of the men of the Illustrious. I could
no longer think of the new ship as the uninteresting
Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, though the
Hawke was still our Josephine our grande passion.
Two very dear friends of ours came out to Malta in
1898 Sir Robert Arbuthnot, Commander of the
Royal Sovereign, and his wife. Sir Robert had appeared
over our horizon as a young lieutenant in the Active in
1885, and Lady Arbuthnot became our friend in the
following year when, as Lina Macleay, she was just
emerging from the schoolroom. They first met at our
house, and almost from that moment I was the con-
fidant of Sir Robert, a most faithful knight whose
indomitable persistence was finally crowned with
success. His was a very strong and remarkable
personality, and to those who knew him as we did his
glorious death in the Battle of Jutland seemed not only
the right end for one who had always put the Service
first, but the happiest end, since his extraordinary
vitality, his curiously simple code of honour and
duty, had kept him young even after hoisting his flag
and made the idea of old age or diminished activity
one impossible to conceive in connection with him.
He was not always right, but he was the straightest
man I ever knew. He never asked of others what he
had not done, or would not do, himself, and men who
began by regarding him as cruelly despotic grew to
admire him for his thoroughness and to love him
because he was essentially lovable. A few weeks after
the Battle of Jutland I met a commander who had been
serving under him until the day before his death.
327
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
He was not an emotional young man, but his eyes
shone strangely as he said, " I loved ' Robert.' '
We loved Robert too, for there was never a firmer
friend nor a braver sailor than Robert Arbuthnot.
It was in the early spring of 1899 that the German
Emperor visited Malta in his great yacht, the Hohen-
zollern. We watched her come into Grand Harbour
and bungle badly in picking up her moorings. A signal-
man had previously reported that she was " flying
the in-cog-nye-toe flag " ! The Emperor William
incognito was a delightful contradiction in terms, and
I remember prophesying that such modesty would be
short-lived, for I could not believe he had one suit of
really plain clothes in his ample wardrobe ; and I
was right. He landed as a British Admiral of the
Fleet at the earliest possible moment, and for the
entire period of his visit he played the part of the bluff
and hearty sailor. When Dick's cockney valet came
out one day to Sliema with a message I asked him if he
had seen the Emperor. " No, m' lady, an' don't want
to, neether. It's my opinion 'e makes 'isself too
common."
When the Emperor visited the Dockyard the
Illustrious was seated in dry-dock, very dishevelled
and patchy with red lead. Her captain and com-
mander stood at the foot of the gangway and saluted
as the great man came along. " Ah, Captain Poore,
how beautiful your ship looks ! " said he ; "just like
a blushing maiden arrayed for her first ball." If this
comment was intended for sarcasm it was a poor
attempt, for the ship looked more like a moulting
328
PLEASANT DUTIES
barn-door hen having a dust bath than anything else,
but the " humour " of the Emperor William was never
subtle. At the end of his stay he bestowed decorations
upon such persons as were permitted by our regulations
to accept these marks of favour, and Sir John Hopkins'
steward, Casey, was much worried when he received
a gold medal liberally inscribed in German characters,
for not a soul at Malta knew its value or import.
CHAPTER LXII
PLEASANT DUTIES
THE late Admiral Sir Francis Sullivan was in the
habit of passing his winters in the 'nineties at Malta.
He was an invalid, but able to enjoy the sunshine and
the naval society afforded by the island, and Lady
Sullivan watched over him with, the discreet devotion
of a wise and tender wife. She was elderly, but she
was beautiful, with raven hair parted in the centre
and blue eyes made more brilliant by contrast with
their dark brows and lashes. She had a sort of com-
pelling power, and when she told me I must become a
member of the Friendly Union of Sailors' Wives
founded some years previously by Mrs. Goodenough I
at once obeyed her. Luckily for me Mrs. Arthur May,
wife of the Fleet-Surgeon of the Empress of India,*
* Now Sir Arthur May, Director-General of Hospitals and Fleets
329
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
was living at Valletta at this period, and the friendship
already growing up between us progressed with
lightning rapidity when we found ourselves leagued
together in the work of helping sailors' wives at Malta.
Many of these were young and inexperienced, few had
been outside the British Isles before they set off for
Malta, and their ignorance of its climatic conditions
and a dozen other matters more or less important
made them an easy prey to fever or the rapacity of
landlords. It was as helpers and interpreters rather
than teachers and preachers that Mrs. May and I
embarked upon our duties, and when each of us had
been provided with a' list of names we set off to the
far side of Grand Harbour on our first round of visits.
The premier pas is sometimes extremely couteux, and
I trembled as I knocked repeatedly and without result
at the door of a forbidding-looking house in Vittorioso.
As the door was ajar I ventured to penetrate into a
dark and empty passage, and was standing, undecided
what to do, at the foot of the stair when an inhospitable
male voice called from above, " Who's there ? " For
a few seconds I could not think what to say. The bold-
ness, and indeed impropriety, of calling uninvited and
unexpected upon total strangers to whom my name
could convey nothing struck me painfully, but at last
I stammered out, " Oh, I am only a friendly wife ! "
" The lady here is ill in bed," said the voice, whose
owner was now peeping over the bannisters ; " perhaps
you'll call again another day." " Yes, of course I will,"
I replied, rather too cheerfully, and fled. I did return
a week later to find a pretty, fragile-looking woman
330
PLEASANT DUTIES
sitting up in bed with a dark-browed Marine husband
waiting upon her. He was a very active member of the
Salvation Army and I was rather afraid of him, but
we became such good friends that I subscribed to the
funds of the Salvation Army at his request. Mrs. May
and I found after a little experience that our visits
were undoubtedly of use, for we could tell ailing women
about the English nurses of the Spldiers' and Sailors'
Families Association in Valletta and give them various
other pieces of information they were glad to have.
Once, in the height of summer when the ship was away,
I borrowed the Admiral Superintendent's big barge
and conveyed a poor fever-stricken Illustrious wife to
the hospital of the Blue Nuns, those most admirable
nurses, at Sliema, where she recovered, as she could
never have done in the stifling, sunless atmosphere
of Vittorioso. This was in itself no great deed (though
I was very nearly seasick on the way), but it shows
that an officer's wife can usefully help those who are
not in a position to help themselves. The men's wives
do not always know of the existence of the machinery
which may serve them, or if they know of its existence
they may believe themselves powerless to set it in
motion. The ink is dry in the bottle and baby has
broken the pen when the idea of writing to someone
anyone of the class that is able to help occurs to
them. So they drift into ill-health or debt and all the
concomitant miseries of poor lodgings and friendless-
ness, and when the ship comes back brandy may have
taken the place of the human comfort they so badly
needed, or fever and lassitude without the alleviations
33 1
AN ADMIRAL'S WIFE IN THE MAKING
o!' skilled nursing and change of air reduced the bonnie
English girl of a year before to a pitiful wreck. Sol-
diers' wives on the strength are recognised by Govern-
ment in peace-time as well as war-time. Married
quarters, not always attractive, exist for them, but
for the sailor's wife in peace-time there is no provision.
She pays her own passage to Malta, she lives as she
may in an insanitary tenement house, and if those
able and qualified to do so fail to look after her she
may die with no friend beside her but the Maltese
landlady, who will at least close her eyes and take
care that she is speedily buried.
Besides visiting the sailors' wives I often went to
the big Naval Hospital at Bighi to see both officers and
men. In those days the habitat of the Malta fever
germ was still undiscovered, but some years later it
was traced to the goats' milk commonly drunk on the
island and kept flowing with particular lavishness
in our naval and military hospitals. There it was
no unusual thing for a patient who had lost a finger or
toe in some accident to develop Malta fever and die
of that. If he drank the milk served out to him he
imbibed poisonous germs ; if he was a milk-hater
he was insufficiently nourished ; and I have known
officers to save half a round of bread or toast from
their tea so as to have something to eat later on when
supper-time brought them nothing but a glass of the
milk they abominated.
It is a great pleasure to visit people who are sure to
give one a welcome. That is why no visits are more
agreeable to the visitor than those paid to patients in
332
QUEER CAPTAINS
hospital, bored enough to welcome even an enemy,
and when the ship was away and I was feeling lonely
or out of sorts I would ask Tabona or Borda for a
dghaisa and betake myself to Bighi. It was something
of an expedition from Sliema, but I never failed to be
glad I had gone, never returned without feeling
ashamed of my own tendency to fume at small annoy-
ances or fuss over small ailments.
CHAPTER LXIII
QUEER CAPTAINS
THE winter of 1898 99 was a very gay one and the
great ball at the Palace in Carnival week a sight worth
seeing. Sir Francis Grenfell* was then Governor
of Malta, and his pretty niece, Miss Florita Grenfell
(who became Mrs. Guy St. Aubyn shortly after), made
a charming hostess. No setting could have been more
picturesque than that made by the wide corridors,
lofty saloons, and pillared refectory for the crowd of
guests in fancy dress who filled them. I had chosen
to get myself up as the wife of the Vicar of Wakefield
(Dame Primrose), and was distinctly annoyed to find
the dress set down as " Primrose Dame " in the
Malta Chronicle next mor 
