THE VISIT OF THE FRENCH FLEET IN 1905
The year 1905 will always be memorable in the annals of the Royal Yacht
Squadron, that greatest of all clubs, of which King Edward was, and King
George now is, the Admiral. In that year the friendly understanding
between France and England, so happily conceived and so charged with
destiny, was celebrated by two meetings between the fleets of the
two countries. The first of these took place at Brest, and it was
arranged that the return visit should be at Cowes during the regatta
week. The King also settled that the French Admiral and his principal
officers should be entertained officially—or perhaps I ought to say
semi-officially—at luncheon by the Royal Yacht Squadron on the 8th of
August. It was certainly a unique and important occasion as being the
first time that the club had been used as the scene of an international
political banquet, and the gathering was worthy of it.
It was the command of the King, who took the greatest interest in all the
details of the reception, that I should be the speaker to welcome our
guests. Lord Ormonde, our Commodore, was in the chair, the Duke of Leeds,
as Vice-Commodore, facing him. Besides Admiral Caillard and his officers,
we had as guests the French Ambassador, M. Paul Cambon, Sir Francis
Bertie, now Lord Bertie, our Ambassador at Paris, Sir John Fisher, First
Sea Lord of the Admiralty, now Lord Fisher, and, of course, all the
principal members of the Squadron. After the toasts of the King and the
President of the Republic had been proposed by the Commodore, I had to
perform my rather difficult duty. My speech was as follows:
“Messieurs, J’obéis à l’appel de notre Commodore. La tâche
qu’il m’a imposée serait bien difficile, bien au-dessus de
mon courage, n’étais-je sûr de pouvoir compter d’un côté
sur la bienveillance et sur l’indulgence de nos hôtes, et
si de l’autre je ne savais pas que ce sera à l’unanimité, à
l’unanimité enthousiaste, que mes collègues acclameront sinon
mes pauvres paroles, au moins les sentiments dont elles seront
la faible expression.
“Messieurs, nous célébrons aujourd’hui une occasion rare dans
l’histoire des pays—unique dans celle de notre cercle quoiqu’il
soit bientôt séculaire. Jamais ces vieux murs lézardés n’ont
assisté à pareille fête. Humbles amateurs, nous avons l’honneur
de recevoir chez nous les grands professionnels des deux plus
importantes marines du monde. Mais ce n’est pas tout—il y a
mieux que cela.
“Depuis neuf cents ans il n’y a pas eu d’invasion de
l’Angleterre. Nous en avons été menacés mainte fois. Les
Espagnols l’ont tentée. Les plongeurs fouillent jusqu’à
nos jours parmi les épaves de leur flotte, englouttie par
les vagues il y a près de quatre siècles. Les Hollandais
ont voulu recommencer la partie; cela ne leur a pas mieux
réussi. Aujourd’hui, trève de forfanterie, Messieurs, trève
de vantardise! Depuis hier l’invasion de l’Angleterre est un
fait accompli, et c’est à bras ouverts que nous accueillons
nos envahisseurs. Car il ne s’agit pas d’une invasion hostile,
mais d’une invasion d’amis, d’une invasion de cœurs battant à
l’unisson avec les nôtres. Les bouches à feu ont parlé, mais
cela n’a été que pour saluer de part et d’autre le Tricolor et
l’Union Jack.
“Messieurs, il n’en a pas toujours été ainsi. Proches voisines,
la France et l’Angleterre ont eu leurs jalousies, leur
querelles, et leurs hostilités. Entre voisines c’est bien
permis; c’est même, dit-on, d’usage. Mais nous avons changé
tout cela! Nous avons trouvé notre chemin de Damas, et c’est
notre auguste Souverain qui nous y a conduits. Aimant son
pays avant tout, travaillant sans relâche pour le bien de son
peuple, le Roi a gardé néanmoins, je le sais, un petit coin
bien chaud dans son cœur pour la France.
“C’est grâce à son initiative, admirablement secondée
d’ailleurs par Monsieur le Président de la République, par
les Ministres et par les Ambassadeurs des deux pays, que nous
montrons aujourd’hui au monde entier le spectacle de deux
grandes nations marchant comme deux bonnes sœurs, la main dans
la main, vers le même noble but—la paix—c’est-à-dire vers le
progrès, la civilisation et le bonheur de l’humanité.
“C’est pour cela que nous sommes fiers et heureux, Amiral, de
voir vos beaux cuirassés amarrés dans cette rade historique.
Formidables engins de guerre, ils sont ici Missionnaires de la
Paix, venus pour mettre le dernier sceau au pacte d’une amitié
qui nous est bien chère, d’une amitié saine, loyale, et combien
desirée par tous ceux qui ont à cœur les intérêts des deux pays!
“Que cette amitié soit durable, qu’aucune jalousie, aucune
intrigue ne vienne la troubler—voilà, je me plais à croire, le
vœu intime et sincère de tous ceux qui m’entendent.
“Messieurs, je crains d’avoir abusé de votre patience, aussi
vais-je me taire. Mais avant de m’asseoir je vous prie,
Messieurs mes collègues de l’Escadre Royale, de remplir vos
verres, et de boire avec moi à la santé de l’amiral Caillard,
à celle des officiers distingués dont il est entouré, et à la
gloire impérissable de la Marine Française.”
Admiral Caillard then rose and made the following reply:
“Tous, ici, nous partageons les sentiments exprimés par Lord
Redesdale. Nous sommes charmés de l’accueil sympathique qui
nous a été reservé au Royal Yacht Squadron Club, et cette
impression, s’ajoutant à celle des marques d’amitié que nous
donnèrent la flotte de l’Atlantique à Brest et, hier, la flotte
de la Manche, les graveront dans notre souvenir d’une façon
indélébile.
“Je bois à la santé du Royal Yacht Squadron Club.”
That night the French Admiral gave a reception on board his flagship, at
which the King was present. There was cordial talk of the luncheon at the
Castle, which had given the French Fleet great pleasure and no little
satisfaction to the King.
During the forenoon of Wednesday, 9th August, His Majesty the King
reviewed the French Fleet, which subsequently at 1 p.m. weighed anchor
and proceeded to Portsmouth.
In London there was a great luncheon in Westminster Hall given by
both Houses of Parliament with the Lord Chancellor, Lord Halsbury, in
the chair. The French officers were also entertained at one of those
magnificent feasts for which the hospitality of the City is world-famous,
and this furnished the occasion for what was one of the noblest
expressions of chivalrous feeling that could be conceived. It aroused
great and admiring enthusiasm at the time, but in the course of years
these things are forgotten, and the French visit is worth recording here
if for no other reason. When the procession of carriages passed through
Trafalgar Square, where a great crowd had gathered, Admiral Caillard
stood up in his landau, turned to the column, and with great dignity
saluted the statue of Nelson. All the officers of his following did the
same. It touched England to the quick, and even now, after the lapse of
ten years, I cannot tell the tale without emotion. Could that knightly
inspiration, so gracefully carried out, have been bettered?
* * * * *
In the summer of 1905 King Edward did us the honour of paying us a
visit at Batsford; it was the fulfilment of an old promise, and on the
8th of July he arrived. The King was an enthusiastic gardener, and for
many years I had the honour of sharing with him in what, in a letter to
a friend, he once described as his favourite pursuit. At Sandringham,
Buckingham Palace, Windsor and Balmoral he never wearied of walking about
with Sir Dighton Probyn, another fanatic worshipper of the great god Pan,
and myself, planning or listening to plans for improvements.
Among the guests who were to meet his Majesty we had invited two great
horticulturists, Mr. Chamberlain, whose special cult was that of orchids,
and Georgina, Countess of Dudley, whose skill and care converted a
hopeless jungle into one of the loveliest pleasaunces that could provoke
a poet’s song. The King brought with him Sir George Holford, the greatest
of all English gardeners—so there was much flower talk. When the King
arrived I was rather taken aback, for almost the first thing that he said
to me was, “Now I must warn you that I will not go up a hill”—with a
great stress on the _not_. This was rather a blow, for such merit as the
garden at Batsford possesses is due to the fact that it is nothing but a
hill, and indeed a pretty steep one. However, it was a lovely afternoon,
and we all sallied forth. Presently, when we came to a turn leading
upward, the King began wandering on and so, led by one view or grouping
of plants after another that took his fancy, he climbed and climbed until
he had reached the furthest and highest point.
The next day was taken up with church and a long drive to Stanway over
the Cotswold Hills, which I was eager to show him, and so he saw Campden,
Broadway and some of the picturesque neighbouring villages with their old
seventeenth-century houses dating from a time before the grazing country
was broken up during the Napoleonic wars, owing to the boom in wheat—a
time when every man was a flock-master and every good-wife span. When the
plough came, the old houses, so full of architectural charm, were divided
up to furnish labourers’ cottages. The King was very much pleased with
this view of a part of his dominions that was new to him, and he was loud
in his admiration of Inigo Jones’s beautiful work at Stanway, where Lord
and Lady Elcho gave him tea.
But my triumph as a gardener was complete when on the Monday the King put
off his return to London till midday so that he might once more walk up
the hill, which, at first, he had declared to be _tabu_.
The King’s visit was not only a great honour for us, but it gave immense
pleasure to a great many of his loyal subjects to whom, living as they do
in a rather out-of-the-way part of the country, kings and queens had, up
to that time, been like the gods of Olympus, mystic beings, venerated but
unseen. The last king that had been seen in Moreton-in-Marsh was Charles
the First. The room in which the Martyr King slept is still shown at the
White Hart.
Later in the same year, 1905, the King sent for me and told me that he
was about to send the Garter to the Emperor of Japan, that Prince Arthur
of Connaught was to take it, and that it was his Majesty’s wish that I
should go with the Mission. Of course I was only too glad to obey. We
started in January, 1906, on what turned out to be a most delightful
expedition, a success in every way. The voyage out with halts at Aden,
Ceylon, Singapore, and Hong Kong was full of interest. The Prince played
his part admirably and the return journey through Canada gave me an
impression of that richly blest country which can never be forgotten. I
have already published an account of “the Garter Mission to Japan,” so I
need say no more about it here.
Before we left for Japan the King did me the honour of conferring upon me
the Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, and when I came home I was
given the K.C.B.
1908-9
The King’s relations with the Emperor of Russia had always been of the
most friendly and even affectionate character. As Tsarevitch the Emperor
paid a visit to Sandringham, and the near relationship to Queen Alexandra
had been kept very much alive by those family parties in Denmark at which
King Christian’s sons and daughters with their husbands and children
were wont to keep up a patriarchal kinship. No family was ever united
by stronger ties of love and affection than that of the Danish King and
Queen, and those bonds were never allowed to slacken. It was only natural
therefore that our King and Queen should wish to pay a visit to their
nephew in his own country.
St. Petersburg was then not in such a condition politically as to
warrant their going there, so the meeting took place at Reval in the
month of June. The visit was purely dictated by family affection, and
there was not the most distant suspicion of politics attached to it.
There were, however, a few—happily very few—ill-conditioned members
of Parliament who chose to assume that the King, by going to Reval,
was more or less giving a sign of approval to the severity with which
rebels were said to be treated in Russia, a severity, by the by, which
has since been shown to have been greatly exaggerated. The professional
agitator seldom allows himself to be hampered by accuracy. The German
Press also took exception to this meeting, and held it up as evidence
of a dark and sinister anti-Teuton plot. It is really amazing that
the King should have been suspected of hatred against Germany. Nothing
could be further from the truth, as I have good reason to know. The King
delighted in his yearly visits to Germany; he loved the country where
he had many friends, not to speak of his near relations; he delighted
in his intercourse with them, which was greatly facilitated by his
exceptional knowledge of their language, in which he took some pride in
exercising his skill; and yet the newspaper writers, who in Germany seem
to be a singularly ill-informed race, were never weary of girding at the
King and proclaiming a hostility which was purely the invention of a
mischief-making spite.
All this had the effect of irritating him; he could not see why he might
not give a token of affection to a near relation without being called
over the coals by a section of his own people, and held up by foreign
pressmen to the hatred of a nation for which, as he had shown throughout
his life, he entertained nothing but the friendliest feelings. The King
showed his just displeasure by excluding from his invitations to a garden
party at Windsor the Members of Parliament who had attacked him. In that
he did no more than any private gentleman would have done. No gentleman
invites to his house a man who has offered him a public affront for which
no apology has been offered. Is the King to be the only man in his realm
who must allow who will to insult him unchallenged and unrebuked? Yet
there were people who blamed him. In my humble judgment he did right.
In the month of August, 1909, the Emperor Nicholas paid the King
a return visit at Cowes in his yacht, the _Standart_. There was a
brilliant gathering for the regatta week, and the King gave more than one
entertainment in his nephew’s honour. I had the honour to be invited to a
great banquet on board the _Victoria and Albert_, and after dinner had a
long talk with the Emperor, who asked many questions about the old days
at St. Petersburg in his grandfather’s time. He was obviously very much
delighted with his reception, and was graciously pleased to accede to a
suggestion which I made by the King’s command that he should become a
member of the Marlborough Club.
Again the agitators snarled and sneered at the visit, but M. Isvolsky,
who was with the Tsar, very tactfully said that the protest only served
to accentuate the cordiality of the welcome by the people. Nothing came
of what was an ugly piece of discourtesy on the part of some men who
should have known better; and the Emperor sailed away from Cowes on the
5th of August, leaving behind him in the minds of all those who had had
the good fortune to meet him a happy memory of a truly royal geniality
and kindness.