Mrs. Ellice often told me of his
peculiarities, which must evidently have been known to
others. Walter Bagehot, speaking of him, says:
'Singular stories of eccentricity and excitement, even of
something more than either of these, darken these latter
years.'
What Mrs. Ellice told me was, that she had to keep a sharp
watch on Lord Brougham if he sat near her writing-table while
he talked to her; for if there was any pretty little knick-
knack within his reach he would, if her head were turned,
slip it into his pocket. The truth is perhaps better than
the dark hint, for certainly we all laughed at it as nothing
but eccentricity.
But the man who interested me most (for though when in the
Navy I had heard a hundred legends of his exploits, I had
never seen him before) was Lord Dundonald. Mr. Ellice
presented me to him, and the old hero asked why I had left
the Navy.
'The finest service in the world; and likely, begad, to have
something to do before long.'
This was only a year before the Crimean war. With his strong
rough features and tousled mane, he looked like a grey lion.
One expected to see him pick his teeth with a pocket
boarding-pike.
The thought of the old sailor always brings before me the
often mooted question raised by the sentimentalists and
humanitarians concerning the horrors of war. Not long after
this time, the papers - the sentimentalist papers - were
furious with Lord Dundonald for suggesting the adoption by
the Navy of a torpedo which he himself, I think, had
invented. The bare idea of such wholesale slaughter was
revolting to a Christian world. He probably did not see much
difference between sinking a ship with a torpedo, and firing
a shell into her magazine; and likely enough had as much
respect for the opinions of the woman-man as he had for the
man-woman.
There is always a large number of people in the world who
suffer from emotional sensitiveness and susceptibility to
nervous shocks of all kinds. It is curious to observe the
different and apparently unallied forms in which these
characteristics manifest themselves. With some, they exhibit
extreme repugnance to the infliction of physical pain for
whatever end; with others there seems to be a morbid dread of
violated pudicity. Strangely enough the two phases are
frequently associated in the same individual. Both
tendencies are eminently feminine; the affinity lies in a
hysterical nature. Thus, excessive pietism is a frequent
concomitant of excessive sexual passion; this, though notably
the case with women, is common enough with men of unduly
neurotic temperaments.
Only the other day some letters appeared in the 'Times' about
the flogging of boys in the Navy.
