ADMIRAL LORD FISHER

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 352, 1 April 1910, Page 7

ADMIRAL LORD FISHER

| A CHARACTER SKETCH. I In a character sketch of Lord Fisher, in thfe Review of Reviews, Mr. Stead | gives some interesting personal gossip i about the distinguished Admiral. When : , the King, he says, went to Reval Admiral Fisher was the life and soul of the party. I have heard from one who ' was present that he charmed everyone , by the gaiety of his conversation, and j that he even succeeded in achieving the impossible by bringing a smile to the face of the Empress of Russia. But ■what I should most have liked to see was the dance which was improvised after the State banquet, when the band ) •truck up the waltz in "The Merry' Widow." The Grand Duchess Olga and I Admiral Fisher danced with their hands ' behind their heads, with all the brilliant' company standing round the dancers, until tliey were tired. Then "Jacky" went oa deck, and by requests, which were commands, he brought down the house by dancing a hornpipe in approved nautical fashion. Much of his language, Jie often says, "is quite unfit for ■publication," not because of its profanity or its coarseness, for he is never either profane or coarse, but because it would get on people's nerves. Exeter Hall, he used to say, would give him i short shrift.. So would many Solons, who frequent what he irately described one day as the "gasworks at Weetmin- ' stef," where by quaint irony of fate he •himself is now destined to hold forth. , It will 'lie interesting to see where he will sit. "I am no politician," he used to say; "I have voted consistently on both sides, whichever gave most money to the navy." Fisher's autographs were always quaint and characteristic. When in a more rovstering mood he would sign himself, "Yours till hell freezes." In milder moments it would be "till the ■angels .smile upon us.", Many of his sentiments sound somewhat pagan, and his .profession as a naval officer may seem to some inconsistent with a sincere amptance of the Christian creed, with its exaltation of humility and its .precepts of non-resistance. . .But, like Lord Kelson, Fisher was taught from 4 his youth up to "Fear God and honor J the Kinp," and he has never straved i from the ancient way's. It is well that il he is a Ood-fenrin? man, for other fear ' he has never known. His religion is . simple, hearty, and unaffected. If he does not exactly follow in the line of warrior saints like Cromwell. Gordon and Havelock, he ha« never faltered in hie dPvotion to the fnith of his fathers with its instinctive reliance upon the allsustaining, all-directing Providence of God. {