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Read Ebook: Les misérables Tome III: Marius by Hugo Victor
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Ebook has 2040 lines and 90151 words, and 41 pages
FURTHER MEMORIES OF KING EDWARD AND OTHERS 24
THE BIBLE, AND OTHER REFLECTIONS 38
EPISODES 50
DEMOCRACY 69
PUBLIC SPEECHES 79
THE ESSENTIALS OF SEA FIGHTING 88
JONAH'S GOURD 97
NAVAL PROBLEMS 127
NAVAL EDUCATION 156
SUBMARINES 173
NOTES ON OIL AND OIL ENGINES 189
THE BIG GUN 204
SOME PREDICTIONS 211
THE BALTIC PROJECT 217
THE NAVY IN THE WAR 225
POSTSCRIPT 249
LORD FISHER'S GREAT NAVAL REFORMS 251
SYNOPSIS OF LORD FISHER'S CAREER 259
INDEX 271
PHOTOGRAPH, TAKEN AND SENT TO SIR JOHN FISHER BY THE EMPRESS MARIE OF RUSSIA, OF A GROUP ON BOARD H.M.S. "STANDARD," 1909 48
A GROUP ON BOARD H.M.S. "STANDARD," 1909 65
A GROUP ON BOARD H.M.S. "STANDARD," 1909 80
A GROUP AT LANGHAM HOUSE. PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AND SENT TO SIR JOHN FISHER BY THE EMPRESS MARIE OF RUSSIA 97
SIR JOHN FISHER GOING ON BOARD THE ROYAL YACHT 112
SIR JOHN FISHER AND SIR COLIN KEPPEL 129
"THE DAUNTLESS THREE," PORTSMOUTH, 1903 160
SOME SHELLS FOR 18-INCH GUNS 177
LORD FISHER'S PROPOSED SHIP, H.M.S. "INCOMPARABLE," SHOWN ALONGSIDE H.M.S. "DREADNOUGHT" 208
THE SUBMARINE MONITOR M 1 240
RECORDS
EARLY YEARS
Of all the curious fables I've ever come across I quite think the idea that my mother was a Cingalese Princess of exalted rank is the oddest! One can't see the foundation of it!
"The baseless fabric of a vision!"
My godfather, Major Thurlow , was the "best man" at my mother's wedding, and very full of her beauty then--she was very young--possibly it was the "Beaut? du diable!" She had just emerged from the City of London, where she was born and had spent her life! One grandfather had been an officer under Nelson at Trafalgar, and the other a Lord Mayor! He was Boydell, the very celebrated engraver. He left his fortune to my grandmother, but an alien speculator robbed her of it. My mother's father had, I believe, some vineyards in Portugal, of which the wine pleased William the Fourth, who, I was told, came to his counting house at 149, New Bond Street, to taste it! Next door Emma, Lady Hamilton, used to clean the door steps! She was housemaid there.
I don't think the Fishers at all enjoyed my father marrying into the Lambes! The "City" was abhorred in those days, and the Fishers thought of the tombs of the Fishers in Packington Church, Warwickshire, going back to the dark ages! I, myself, possess the portrait of Sir Clement Fisher, who married Jane Lane, who assisted Charles the Second to escape by disguising his Majesty as her groom and riding behind him on a pillion to Bristol.
The Fishers' Baronetcy lapsed, as my ancestor after Sir Clement Fisher's death wouldn't pay ?500 in the nature of fees, I believe. I don't think he had the money--so my uncle told me. This uncle, by name John Fisher, was over 60 years a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and told me the story of an ancestor who built a wing of Balliol at Oxford, and they--the College Authorities--asked him whether they might place some inscription in his honour on the building! He replied:
"Fisher--non amplius,"
My uncle explained that his ancestor only meant just to put his name, and that's all.
But the College Authorities put it all on:
One of my ancestors changed his motto and took these words :--
"Ubi voluntas--ibi piscatur." .
A Poacher, I suppose! or was there a "double entendre"?
I'm told in the old days you could change your motto and your crest as often as you liked, but not your coat of arms!
A succession of ancestors went and dwelt at Bodmin, in Cornwall--all clergymen down to my grandfather, who was Rector of Wavendon, in Bucks, where is a tablet to his brother, who was killed close to the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo, and who ordered his watch to be sent to my uncle's relatives with the dent of the bullet that killed him, and that watch I now have.
I remember a Dean glancing at me in a Sermon on the Apostles, when he said the first four were all Fishers!
On the death of Sir Robert Fisher of Packington in 1739, a number of family portraits were transferred apparently to the Rev. John Fisher of Bodmin, born January 27th, 1708. The three principal portraits are a previous Sir Robert Fisher, his son Sir Clement Fisher, who died 1683, and Jane Lane, his wife. Another portrait is a second Sir Clement Fisher, son of the above and of Jane Lane. This Sir Clement Fisher died 1709, and was succeeded by his only brother, Sir Robert Fisher, who died A.D. 1739, one year before his niece, Mary Fisher, wife of Lord Aylesford. All these portraits were transmitted in direct inheritance to Sir John Fisher. The four generations of Reverend John Fishers of Bodmin, commencing with John Fisher born 1708, were none of them in a position to incur the heavy expenses involved for their assumption of the Baronetcy. They were descended from a brother of the Sir Robert Fisher who lived before the year A.D. 1600.
"She walks in beauty like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meets in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellow'd to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies."
These lines were written by Lord Byron of my godmother, Lady Wilmot Horton, of Catton Hall, Burton-on-Trent. She was still a very beautiful old lady at 73 years of age when she died.
One of her great friends was Admiral Sir William Parker , and he, at her request, gave me his nomination for entering the Navy. He had two to give away on becoming Port Admiral at Plymouth. He gave the other to Lord Nelson's own niece, and she also filled in my name, so I was doubly nominated by the last of Nelson's Captains, and my first ship was the "Victory" and it was my last! In the "Victory" log-book it is entered, "July 12th, 1854, joined Mr. John Arbuthnot Fisher," and it is also entered that Sir John Fisher hauled down his flag on October 21st, 1904, on becoming First Sea Lord.
A friend of mine was taken prisoner in the old French War when he was a Midshipman ten years old, and was locked up in the fortress of Verdun. He so amused me in my young days by telling me that he gave his parole not to escape! as if it mattered what he did when he was only four foot nothing! And he did this, he told me, in order to learn French; and when he had learned French, to talk it fluently, he then cancelled his parole and was locked up again and then he escaped; alone he did it by filing through the iron bars of his prison window , and wended his way to England. I consider this instance a striking testimony to the inestimable benefit of sending little boys to sea when they are young! What splendid Nelsonic qualities were developed!
But it was quite common in those days of my old yellow Admiral for boys to go to sea even as young as seven years old. My present host's grandfather went to sea as a Midshipman at seven years old! Afterwards he was Lord Nelson's Signal Midshipman, his name was Hamilton, and his grandson was Midshipman with me in two ships. He is now the 13th Duke of Hamilton! It is interesting as a Nelsonic legend that the wife of the 6th Duke of Hamilton peculiarly befriended Emma, Lady Hamilton, and recognised her, as so few did then , as one of the noblest women who ever lived--one mass of sympathy she was!
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