I was told by an eminent authority for many years at the bar, my friend Sir Edward Clarke, that in his early days he "read" in chambers where "Monty" Corry was his companion. The career of my informant speaks for his diligence; and he assured me that Corry chiefly passed his time in making rhymes on the names which appeared in The Times of the day in the column restricted to the announcements of "hatches," "matches" and "despatches"!
Two other things about this dear man occur to me. He told me, after the great fancy-dress ball given at Devonshire House on a State event, that he was at the head of the staircase when Irving arrived, and was struck with the impression that the actor alone of all the distinguished crowd wore his robes (he went as a cardinal) as if they were his daily garb, and not obviously hired from a costumier's store, or made for the occasion.
My last remembrance of Rowton is on leaving a club with him one night to walk home; he suddenly stood still on the way and, after a pause, said, as if dreaming of secrets under mental lock and key: "I seem to have passed the whole of my life in holding my tongue."
"Jacky" Fisher
At the hospitable board of mutual friends we first met Sir John and Lady Fisher, as they then were. The great Admiral took my wife down to dinner, and from that evening was her good friend and mine. Others at the table, I remember, were the scientist Lord Kelvin and Canon Ainger, the Master of the Temple. Fisher accepted an invitation to dine with me in these words: "On the 25th, with pleasure. Yours till hell freezes, J. F." His bad language was really only a not very bad habit—his bark was infinitely worse than his bite; in fact, he was a deeply religious man, as a beautiful letter he wrote to my wife when Lady Fisher died would testify. He knew much of the Bible, and quotations from it were as often on his lips as were his stock phrases. A friend of mine told me that he was once as astounded to hear the old Sea Lord preach a sermon in the Duke of Hamilton's private chapel as he was by its excellence. Whenever he caught sight of me, no matter where, Lord Fisher would call out, cheerily, "How's the vintage?"
When Queen Alexandra shared King Edward's throne, Lord Fisher paid Her Majesty a pretty compliment when offering his congratulations on her sixtieth birthday. "Have you seen, Ma'am," he asked, "the paper which says: 'Her Majesty is sixty years old to-day; may she live till she looks it!' The words were his own, but he thought it would please the Queen more to believe that the compliment had been paid to her publicly. Soon afterwards, the Queen cut out from an illustrated catalogue the figure of a little girl, stuck on the top of it a portrait of her own head, and wrote underneath it: "May she live till she looks it!" and sent it to Lord Fisher.
This reminds me of a compliment that I will dare to mention, paid to me by Alfred Sutro on my eightieth birthday, when he ended a charming letter with these words: "But then, my dear B, you are not really eighty, you are only forty for the second time."
We did not know that dandy of the Senior Service, Lord Alcester, until he had retired upon his laurels and left the planks of an ironclad for the pavement of St. James's Street, of which his lavender kid gloves seemed to be a daily part, and had earned for him his gorgeous nickname, the "Swell of the Ocean."
It was as Beauchamp Seymour that he so ably served his country, the height of his career being the brilliant success of his bombardment of Alexandria, which gave him his Peerage, and doubtless paved the way to our occupation of Egypt. It is interesting to know that two of his captains at the time were named John Fisher and Charles Beresford.
The first Admiral Sir Edward Inglefield was our neighbour fifty years ago, and many a nautical salute have we exchanged "over the garden wall." As a "handy man" I never met his equal. If a pane of glass in house or conservatory was broken he replaced it; if the kitchen clock stopped he soon made it go again; if a chimney took to smoking it soon gave up the habit through his means.