The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford
into his house (with my sovereign) leaving us still on the wrong side
of the gate. There was nothing for it but to break the rest of his
windows, but still he wouldn't come out. Evidently a surly fellow,
unfit to take charge of turnpike gates, an office demanding tact and
courtesy; and we thought it well to remove his temptation. So my
companion and I wrenched the gate from its hinges and lashed it to the
cart, vertically, so that it projected over our heads like a kind of
ornamental roof, its weight nearly lifting the mare between the shafts
off her legs and making her kick like blazes. Then we drove into
Plymouth, gate and all. The gate was reduced to firewood before
sunrise. Next day, the town was placarded with vain offers of reward
for information concerning "some evil-disposed person or persons
unknown who," etc.
At that time, I used to ride steeple-chases whenever I had an
opportunity, and kept myself in regular training by hard exercise; a
habit which on one occasion involved the commander-in-chief in an
alarming rumour. It arose from the trifling circumstance that I had
borrowed his overcoat. The Fleet was at Holyhead, to celebrate the
opening of the new breakwater by the Prince of Wales; I was just going
for a training run up and down that breakwater, when, finding I had no
coat, I took Sir Harry Keppel's uniform overcoat. I took it, without
thinking, merely because I wanted it. The next thing that happened was
that the signalmen in the Fleet reported that the Admiral must have
gone mad on the breakwater, seeing that he was racing up and down it
clad in a shooting-cap, grey trousers, muffler and uniform overcoat.
As my face was almost hidden by cap and muffler, the signalmen were
deceived by the gold lace, took me for the admiral, and thought that
poor Sir Harry was smitten with insanity.
{115}
We used to hunt a good deal with the Dartmoor hounds; and upon a day
when there was no run, and everyone was bored, one of the ladies
present begged me to provide some kind of sport, kindly suggesting that
I should personate the fox, a part I declined.
"You _must_ do something to amuse us," she said.
"Very well, I will," said I.
Among the officers there were an elderly admiral and an elderly
general, and I pointed them out to the lady.
"I will get up a race between the two of them," said I.
She bet me I would not, and I took it. I began with the soldier.
Ambling alongside the general, I asked him casually if he had ridden
much in his life.
"Of course I have," says he irritably. "What do you mean, sir?"
"Nothing at all," says I. "I thought I would ask. The admiral----"
"What about the admiral?" cries the general, staring suspiciously at
the distant and unconscious officer.
"He was saying he didn't think you knew very much about a horse."
The general lost his temper. He swore. He said he would show the
admiral what he knew about a horse.
"You can easily prove it," said I; and before he understood what was
happening, he had agreed to ride a race. Then I went over to the
admiral.
"Do you know what the general says? He says you look like a monkey on
a horse," said I; and it was the admiral's turn to swear.
"D----d impertinence!" says he. "I'll race him, and beat him any day
in the week." And he continued to use forcible language.
"You can do that," I said, for the admiral was riding one of my best
horses.
"If you really want a race, I'll arrange the whole thing," said I. And
I brought the two wrathful old gentlemen {116} together, rode with them
to the starting-point, gave the word, and off they went as hard as they
could pelt. I followed, cheering them on. The general began to draw
ahead, when his horse baulked at a soft place. The admiral's horse did
the same, throwing his rider upon his neck.
"Get back into the saddle and he'll go through," I shouted, for I knew
the horse. The admiral hove himself into his seat, and won the race.
He wouldn't have won, if his adversary hadn't baulked.
The members of the Board of Admiralty came down to Plymouth to witness
the autumn military manoeuvres. I offered to drive them all in my
coach; and they were settled in their places--Mr. Goschen the First
Lord, Admiral Sir Alexander Milne, the Earl of Camperdown and Mr.
Shaw-Lefevre--when out of the house came Rear-Admiral Beauchamp Seymour.
"Get down!" he shouted. "Gentlemen, you must get down."
They asked him why.
"You don't know that boy," said Seymour. "He's not safe. He'll upset
you on purpose, just to say he's upset the whole Board of Admiralty!"
And he actually ordered my guests off my coach, so that they had to go
in barouches.
Sir Harry Keppel often came sailing with me in my little yacht. We
were out together, when I said to him,
"I cannot weather that ironclad, sir."
"Then run into her, my dear boy," said Keppel placidly.
"All right, sir--obey orders."
I held on, and we cleared the jib-boom of the ironclad by an inch.
Sir Harry had an old friend of his to stay with him, Captain Clifton, a
most remarkable and interesting man. In the old days, the passage for
the opium trade existing between China and India was taken only once a
year--the opium ships running up to China with one monsoon and down to
India with the other. Clifton went to the Government {117} of India
and undertook, if the Government would permit him to build vessels to
his own design, to build clippers to thrash up against the monsoon as
well as run before it, and so double the income accruing from the opium
trade. The Government consenting, Clifton designed the _Blue Jacket_
and the _Red Jacket_ and vessels of that class, which were the famous
opium clippers of the "roaring forties" and fifties.
The Indian Government gave Captain Clifton a lakh of rupees. On his
way home, Clifton, touching at what is now the city of Melbourne in
Australia, but which was then a small assemblage of wooden shanties,
noticed the possibilities of the magnificent harbour. He told me that
he could have bought the whole site of Melbourne for a lakh; but on
consideration, he decided against the project.
One of my great friends, Sir Allan Young, a brilliant seaman of the old
school, commanded, at the age of twenty-four, one of Clifton's opium
clippers.
Upon the occasion of the Prince of Wales's opening the new breakwater
at Holyhead, in 1873, his Royal Highness was entertained together with
a large party at a country house in the neighbourhood. The Prince
called to me, and said:
"This is very slow. You really must do something to enliven the
proceedings."
"Well, sir," said I, "I will run a hundred yards race with Lord ----.
As he is Irish, he is sure to take me up if I challenge him."
Sure enough, Lord ---- accepted the challenge, but on conditions.
These were: that I should race in full uniform, excepting my sword,
while himself should "take his wardrobe from off himself." Lord ----
then proceeded to divest himself there and then of his Patrick ribbon,
coat, waistcoat, and boots, which he confided to the care of the wife
of a certain distinguished Liberal statesman. He dropped his Patrick
ribbon into her lap, saying:
"Madam, will ye have a care now of me Jewel, for glory {118} be to God
there's no saying what twist this mad one might give me!"
Entirely at ease, with the seat of his breeches patched with stuff of
another colour from the rest, and his toes sticking from his stockings,
he was wholly unperturbed by the laughter of the assemblage.
Although attired in cocked hat, frock coat, and epaulettes, I had the
speed of him, and waited on him. Then the devil entered into me; and
when Lord ---- drew abreast of a big plant of pampas grass, I cannoned
into him, pitching him head first into the grass, not, of course,
intending to harm him. But to my consternation and sorrow, Lord ----'s
leg was broken below the knee. I put the poor lord into his coach--he
had a coach and four-in-hand--and drove him back to his hotel. That
excellent and magnanimous sportsman was perfectly unconcerned.
"You hit me a bad skelp, and I am destroyed," said he. "Never mind,
they all laughed, anny way."
It was about this period of my life, when, returning from a ball in
London in the early morning, I came upon a person selling whelks. He
invited me to sup--or breakfast--upon a plate of these delicacies.
"How much do you charge for a plateful?"
"Threepence," said he.
"I'll give you sixpence for every plateful you eat yourself."
"Done," said he.
He finished two platefuls, and had begun a third, when he was overtaken
by rebellion from within, swiftly followed by catastrophe.
"That's not fair," I said. "You can't count those two platefuls."
"O my Gawd," he said. "'Ave I got to begin again?"
To this time, too, belong my memories of a certain famous naval
captain, who was extraordinarily particular both as to his own dress
and the wearing of proper uniform by others. His regard for
appearances, however, {119} did not prevent his diving overboard in
full and immaculate uniform, including white gloves, to save a seaman.
Exceedingly precise in his speech, he owned the singular trait of
becoming deprived of utterance when he was angry; and few things made
him more angry than faulty attire in the Service.
He was driving with me in a cab towards Plymouth, when we met an old
warrant officer, who was wearing a purple woollen waistcoat and green
gloves. My friend, stopping the cab so suddenly that the horse
slithered along on its haunches, leaped from the vehicle. The old
warrant officer, his attention arrested, had halted and turned round.
My friend went up to him. Then I perceived that he was stricken
speechless with wrath; for, continuing to swallow nothing, as his habit
was in these crises of emotion, he tapped the warrant officer's
waistcoat and gloves. Glaring at him and still silently swallowing, he
turned about and got into the cab. The old warrant officer stood
staring with dropped jaw, like a man petrified.
It was my friend who, being asked at a court-martial what he would have
done in certain difficult circumstances, replied deliberately:
"If I was where I was not I might have done something I did not do."
In after years, when he was commander-in-chief at the Nore, he was
walking along the road to Sheerness, dressed in plain clothes, when a
bluejacket, who was slightly intoxicated, lurched against him.
"Man, man," said my friend, with his picked elocution, "do you know
what you are doing? Man, you are colliding with the
commander-in-chief."
"Ho," returned the seaman, totally unimpressed. "Har you, indeed?
Then all I've got to say, is to say you've got a ruddy good billet--an'
wha's more, you take care you don't lose it by getting drunk."
Despite of my diversions, I did a good deal of hard work. As
flag-lieutenant I was in charge of the signalling, a {120} science
which, as it was understood in those days, I mastered completely.
My first independent command was the _Goshawk_ gunboat, to which I was
appointed as lieutenant-commander for the manoeuvres and for review in
1873, while I was still flag-lieutenant to Sir Harry Keppel. I had a
narrow escape from disaster at the very beginning. Fortunately I
noticed that the navigator was going the wrong side of the buoy off
Drake's Island, and I was just in time to point out his mistake. I
remember my feeling of horror at the prospect of running on a rock in
Plymouth Sound in my first command.
The first thing I did in the _Goshawk_ was to get from the flagship a
big working party of a hundred men to work at holystoning our decks
until they were as clean as a hound's tooth. From that day onwards I