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The letter to Lord Tweedmouth was a friendly communication dealing with the conditions of the British and German fleets in the past and present, and without a word in it that might not have been published in The Times.
"Hush! hush! here cometh the Governor, blowing like a Tweedmouth grampus, fresh from the German Sea, in full run after a lady-fish of the queen of rivers." It appeared to Hume, as he listened, that Wallace, and the Mayor, who was with him, had sallied out, after the fourth bottle, in search of Isabel a suspicion verified by the speech of the warlike Captain.
In addition to these two incidents, the Emperor had written a letter to Lord Tweedmouth, who was already then a sick man, and probably not wholly responsible, in which it was said he had offered advice as to the increase of the British navy.
Her story is very well known, and it may therefore be sufficient to say here that her father, having been concerned in one of the many political conspiracies which in those days were judged to merit death, lay in prison under sentence, and that, to save his life, the brave lady, disguised as a man, on two separate occasions, on Tweedmouth moor, robbed the mail by which her father's death warrant was being conveyed from London to Edinburgh.
Accept my additional statement that in the letter of his Majesty to Lord Tweedmouth one gentleman, one seaman, talks frankly to another, that our Kaiser highly appreciates the honour of being an admiral of the British navy, and that he is a great admirer of the political education of the British people and of their fleet, and you will have a just view of the tendency, tone, and contents of the imperial letter to Lord Tweedmouth.
"It's two French privateers, Edie," said I, "Chasse-marries, they call them, and yon's one of our merchant ships, and they'll take her as sure as death; for the Major says they've always got heavy guns, and are as full of men as an egg is full of meat. Why doesn't the fool make back for Tweedmouth bar?"
Lord Salisbury ought to have known that he was thrusting a brand into the fire when he sent him to be the official bellows-blower of the Hibernian pot. Lord Aberdeen will always be remembered as the husband of his wife. Lady Aberdeen was a more ardent Home Ruler than even her brother, Lord Tweedmouth.
It is easy to see now that it would have been better had the Emperor not written the letter, better had the Times not brought it to public notice, better, also, had the Emperor or Lord Tweedmouth or Sir Edward Grey for one of them must have spoken of it to a third person not let its existence become known to anyone save themselves, at least not until the international situation which prompted it had ceased.
All eyes and ears were now turned to Lord Tweedmouth, and on March 10th he briefly referred to the matter in the House of Lords.
It is a gross, in no way justifiable misrepresentation, to assert that his Majesty's letter to Lord Tweedmouth amounts to an attempt to influence the Minister responsible for the naval budget in the interests of Germany, or that it denotes a secret interference in the internal affairs of the British Empire.
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