And how most delicious they were! And how delightful was old “Papa” Polsonare! and the daughters so plump and opulent in their charm!
And their only son the “brave Belge!” He was a soldier! What has become of them now? They cared for us as their very own, and charged us the very minimum for our board and lodging! And having nothing but my pay then I was grateful! And the Kindergarten so delightful! The little children all tied together by a rope when they went out walking. Pamela was my youngest daughter. “The last straw” was her nickname! And it was written up over the mantelpiece that it was “défendu” to kiss Pamela! She was about three years old, I think, and went to school with a bun and her books strapped to her back, and when the Burgomaster gave away the prizes she was put on a Throne to hand them out (dressed as a Ballet Dancer!). But alas! when the moment came she was found to be fast asleep!
I am always so surprised that so little notice is taken of Satan’s dramatic appearance before the Almighty with reference to the Patriarch Job. It’s so seldom that Satan in person comes before us. He usually uses someone else, and in this case of Job it’s quite the most subtle innuendo I ever came across! It so accentuates what occurs in common life!
“Doth Job fear God for nought?” Well may one be thankful and prayerful when prosperity is showered on one! Can you be so in adversity and affliction—undeserved and unexplainable? However, Job got through all right! But Prayer is as much misunderstood as Charity. A splendid Parson in Norfolk replied to his congregation who asked him to pray for rain that really it was useless while the wind was east! Also it appears to me that one farmer, wanting rain for his turnips, doesn’t have any feeling for the other man who is against rain because of carrying his crop of something else. Indeed the pith and marrow of prayer is that it must be absolutely unselfish, and so Dr. Chalmers accordingly acutely said the finest prayer he knew was: “Almighty God, the Fountain of all Wisdom, who knowest our necessities,” etc. (see Collects at end of Communion Service).
Coming home from the China Station in 1872, I was Commander of the old Battleship “Ocean.” She was an old wooden Line of Battleship that had armour bolted on her sides. When we got into heavy weather, the timbers of the ship would open when she heeled over one way, and shut together when she heeled the other, and squirted the water inboard! And always we had many fountains playing in the bottom of the ship from leaks, some quite high. At Singapore the Chaplain left us; he couldn’t face it, as we were going home round the Cape of Good Hope at the stormy season. So I did chaplain! When we put into Zanzibar on the East Coast of Africa, I heard there was a sick Bishop ashore from Central Africa who had been carried down on a shutter with fever. I went to see him, to ask whether he could take on next day, Sunday, and give the crew a change! He turned out to be a splendid specimen, and had given up a fat living in Lincolnshire to be a Missionary. I found him eating boiled rice and a hard boiled egg on a broken plate—we gave him a good feed when he came on board—but I am telling the story because his Sermon was on Prayer. He gave us no text, but began by saying he had been wondering for the last half-hour what on earth that thing was overhead between the beams on the main deck where we were assembled! Of course we knew it was one of the long pump handles for pumping the ship out with the chain pumps (a thing of past ages)—all the crew had to take continually to the pumps, she was leaking so badly—and “There!” he said, “I’m a Bishop, and instead of saying my prayers I’ve been letting my thoughts wander,” and he gave us a beautiful extempore sermon on wandering thoughts on Prayer that hit everyone in the eye!
I believe he died there in Central Africa, a polished English gentleman, with refined tastes and delighting in the delicacies of a cultured life! A missionary had come preaching at his Country Church and had made him ashamed of his life of ease, so he told me!
We got into a fierce gale off the Cape, and I began to envy the Chaplain we had left behind at Singapore, especially when the Captain said he thought there was nothing for it but for me, the Commander, to go aloft about the close reefed fore topsail as the men would follow no one of lower rank. My monkey jacket was literally “blown into ribbons!” I had heard the expression before, but never had realised it could be exact!
Sir Thomas Troubridge foundered with all hands in the exact place in an old two-decker—I think it was the “Blenheim.” He was Nelson’s favourite, and got ashore in the “Culloden” at the Nile; but that’s another story as Mr. Kipling says!
How I became Captain of the “Inflexible”
The “Inflexible” in 1882 was a wonder. She had the thickest armour, the biggest guns, and the largest of everything beyond any ship in the world. A man could crawl up inside the bore of one of her guns. Controversy had raged round her. The greatest Naval Architects of the time quarrelled with each other. Endless inventions were on board her, accumulated there by cranks in the long years she took building. A German put a new type of gas into the engine room, which was lovely, and no smell, so bright, so simple! But when it chanced to escape from a leaky joint, it descended and did not rise, so it got into all the double bottoms and nearly polished off a goodly number of the crew. There were whistles in my cabin that yelled when the boiler was going to burst, or the ship was not properly steered, and so on. So to be Captain of the “Inflexible” was much sought after. As each name was discussed by the Board of Admiralty it got “butted,” that is to say, it would be remarked: “Yes, he’s a splendid officer and quite fit for it, but——” and then some reason was adduced why he should not be selected (he had murdered his father, or he had kissed the wrong girl!). Lord Northbrook, who was First Lord, got sick of these interminable discussions as to who should be Captain of the “Inflexible,” so he unexpectedly said one morning: “Do any of you know a young Captain called Fisher?” And they all—having no notion of what was in Lord Northbrook’s mind, and I being well known to each of them—had no “buts”! So he got up and said: “Well, that settles it. I’ll appoint him Captain of the “Inflexible.” I was about the Junior Captain in the biggest ship!