He had an ungovernable temper. I heard him once say to one of the principal Officers in his ship: “Here; don’t you look sulky at me, I won’t have it!” There was a famous one-legged cabman at Portsmouth whom Sir Frederick Richards hired at Portsmouth railway station by chance to drive him to the Dockyard. He didn’t recognise the man, but he was an old ship-mate who had been with him when Sir Frederick Richards commanded a brig on the coast of Africa, suppressing the Slave Trade—he led them all a dog’s life. The fare was a shilling, and ample at that; and as old Richards got out at the Admiral’s door he gave the cabman five shillings, but the cabby refused it and said to old Richards: “You drove me for nothing on the Coast of Africa, I will drive you for nothing now,” and he rattled off, leaving old Richards speechless with anger. He used to look at Sir William Harcourt in exactly the same way. I thought he would have apoplexy sometimes.
Dear Lord Spencer was pretty nearly as bad in his want of lucid exposition; so I usually did Aaron all through with Sir William Harcourt, and one of the consequences was that we formed a lasting friendship.
When I was made a Lord, Stead came to my house that very morning and said he had just had a message from Sir William Harcourt (who had then been dead for some years), saying how glad Sir William was; and the curious thing was that five minutes afterwards I got a letter from his son, now Lord Harcourt, congratulating me on my Peerage, which had only been made known an hour before. I think Stead said Sir William was in Heaven. I don’t think he ever quite knew where the departed were!
Campbell-Bannerman was a more awkward customer.
But it was all no use. We got the ships and Mr. Gladstone went.
II.—The Great Lord Salisbury’s Brother-in-law.
It really is very sad that those three almost bulky volumes of my letters to Lord Esher—which he has so wonderfully kept—could not all have been published just as they are. This is one of the reasons for my extreme reluctance, which still exists, for these “Memories” and “Records” of mine being published in my lifetime. When I was dead there could be no libel action! The only alternative is to have a new sort of “Pilgrim’s Progress” published—the whole three volumes—and substitute Bunyan names. But that would be almost as bad as putting their real names in—no one could mistake them!
I think I have mentioned elsewhere that Lord Ripon, when First Lord, whom I had never met, had a design to make me a Lord of the Admiralty, but his colleagues would not have it and called me “Gambetta.” Lord Ripon said he had sent for me because someone had maligned me to him as “a Radical enthusiast.” Well, the upshot was that in 1886 I became Director of Ordnance of the Navy; and after a time I came to the definite conclusion that the Ordnance of the Fleet was in a very bad way, and the only remedy was to take the whole business from the War Office, who controlled the Sea Ordnance and the munitions of sea war. A very funny state of affairs!
Lord George Hamilton was then First Lord and the Great Lord Salisbury was Prime Minister. Lord Salisbury’s brother-in-law was the gentleman at the War Office who was solely responsible for the Navy deficiencies, bar the politicians. When they cut down the total of the Army Estimates, he took it off the Sea Ordnance. He had to, if he wanted to be on speaking terms with his own cloth. I don’t blame him; I expect I should have done the same, more particularly as I believe in a Citizen Army—or, as I have called it elsewhere, a Lord-Lieutenant’s Army. (The clothes were a bit different; but Lord Kitchener’s Army was uncommonly like it.) Lord George Hamilton, having patiently heard me, as he always did, went to Lord Salisbury. Lord George backed me through thick and thin. The result was a Committee—the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, Chairman; W. H. Smith, Secretary for War; Lord George Hamilton, First Lord of the Admiralty; the Director of Ordnance at the War Office, and myself. It was really a very remarkably unpleasant time. I had an awful bad cold—much worse than General Alderson, the Prime Minister’s brother-in-law—and Lord Salisbury never asked after it, while he slobbered over Alderson. I just mention that as a straw indicating which way the wind blew. The result, after immense flagellations administered to the Director of the Sea Ordnance, was that the whole business of the munitions of war for the Navy was turned over to the Admiralty, “lock, stock and gun barrel, bob and sinker,” and by Herculean efforts and the cordial co-operation of Engelbach, C.B., who had fought against me like a tiger, and afterwards helped like an Angel, and of Sir Ralph Knox, the Accountant-General of the Army, a big deficit, in fact a criminal deficit, of munitions for the Fleet was turned over rapidly into a million sterling of surplus.
They are nearly all dead and gone now, who worked this enormous transfer, and I hope they are all in Heaven.