To show the oddness of things and how opposite to one another brothers may be, his elder, the uncle of Curtis, and Baldwin, was the renowned old Admiral Fakenham, better known along our sea-coasts and ports among sailors as ‘Old Showery,’ because of a remark he once made to his flag-captain, when cannon-balls were coming thick on them in a hard-fought action.  ‘Hot work, sir,’ his captain said.  ‘Showery,’ replied the admiral, as his cocked-hat was knocked off by the wind of a cannon-ball.  He lost both legs before the war was over, and said merrily, ‘Stumps for life’’ while they were carrying him below to the cockpit.  In my girlhood the boys were always bringing home anecdotes of old Admiral Showery:  not all of them true ones, perhaps, but they fitted him.  He was a rough seaman, fond, as they say, of his glass and his girl, and utterly despising his brother Geoffrey for the airs he gave himself, and crawling on his knees to a female Parleyvoo; and when Geoffrey died, the admiral drank to his rest in the grave:  ‘There’s to my brother Jeff,’ he said, and flinging away the dregs of his glass:  ’There ‘s to the Frog!’ and flinging away the glass to shivers:  ‘There’s to the Turncoat!’

He salted his language in a manner I cannot repeat; no epithet ever stood by itself.  When I was young the boys relished these dreadful words because they seemed to smell of tar and battle-smoke, when every English boy was for being a sailor and daring the Black Gentleman below.  In all truth, the bad words came from him; though an excellent scholar has assured me they should be taken for aspirates, and mean no harm; and so it may be, but heartily do I rejoice that aspirates, have been dropped by people of birth; for you might once hear titled ladies guilty of them in polite society, I do assure you.

We have greatly improved in that respect.  They say the admiral’s reputation as a British sailor of the old school made him, rather his name, a great favourite at Court; but to Court he could not be got to go, and if the tale be true, their Majesties paid him a visit on board his ship, in harbour one day, and sailors tell you that Old Showery gave his liege lord and lady a common dish of boiled beef with carrots and turnips, and a plain dumpling, for their dinner, with ale and port wine, the merit of which he swore to; and he became so elate, that after the cloth was removed, he danced them a hornpipe on his pair of wooden legs, whistling his tune, and holding his full tumbler of hot grog in his hand all the while, without so much as the spilling of a drop!—­so earnest was he in everything he did.  They say his limit was two bottles of port wine at a sitting, with his glass of hot grog to follow, and not a soul could induce him to go beyond that.  In addition to being a great seaman, he was a very religious man and a stout churchman.