On the day following the death of King Edward, I obtained permission
to see him lying in his death chamber. The little room had crimson
hangings, and bright sunlight streamed through the windows upon the bed
where the King lay with a look of dignity and peace. I was profoundly
moved by the sight of the dead King who had been so vital, so full of
human stuff, so friendly and helpful in all affairs of state, and with
all conditions of men who came within his ken.
In spite of the severe discipline of his youth in the austere tradition
of Queen Victoria--perhaps because of that--he had broken the gloomy
spell of the Victorian Court, with its Puritanical narrowing influence
on the social life of the people, and had restored a happier and more
liberal spirit. Truly or not, he had had, as a young Prince of Wales,
the reputation of being very much of a “rip,” and certain scandals
among his private friends, with which his name was connected, had made
many tongues wag. But he had long lived all that down when, in advanced
middle age, he came to the throne, and no one brought up against him
the heady indiscretions of youth.
He had played the game of kingship well and truly, with a desire for
his people’s peace and welfare, and had given a new glamour to the
Crown which had become rather dulled and cobwebbed during the long
widowhood of the old Queen. In popular imagination he was the author of
the Entente Cordiale with France, which seemed to be the sole guarantee
of the peace of Europe against the growing menace of Germany, though
now we know that it had other results. Anyhow, Edward VII, by some
quality of character which was not based on exalted idealism but was
perhaps woven with the genial wisdom of a man who had seen life in all
its comedy and illusion, and had mellowed to it, stood high in the
imagination of the world, and in the affection of his people. Now he
lay with his scepter at his feet, asleep with all the ghosts of history.
His death chamber was disturbed by what seemed to me an outrageous
invasion of vulgarity. In life King Edward had resented the click of
the camera wherever he walked, but in death the cameramen had their
will of him. A dozen or more of them surrounded his bed, snapping him
at all angles, arranging the curtains for new effects of lights, fixing
their lenses close to his dead face. There was something ghoulish in
this photographic orgy about his deathbed.
The body of King Edward was removed to Westminster Hall, whose timbered
roof has weathered seven centuries of English history, and there he
lay in state, with four guardsmen, motionless, with reversed arms
and heads bent, day and night, for nearly a week. That week was a
revelation of the strange depths of emotion stirred among the people
by his personality and passing. They were permitted to see him for the
last time, and, without exaggeration, millions of people must have
fallen into line for this glimpse of the dead King, to pay their last
homage. From early morning until late night, unceasingly, there were
queues of men and women of all ranks and classes, stretching away from
Westminster Hall across the bridges, moving slowly forward. There was
no preference for rank. Peers of the realm and ladies of quality fell
into line with laboring men and women, slum folk, city folk, sporting
touts, actors, women of Suburbia, ragamuffin boys, coster girls, and
all manner of men who make up English life. History does not record
any such demonstration of popular homage, except one other, afterward,
when the English people passed in hundreds of thousands before the
grave of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey.
I saw George V proclaimed King by Garter King-at-Arms and his
heralds in their emblazoned tabards, from the wall of St. James’s
Palace. Looking over the wall opposite, which enclosed the garden of
Marlborough House, was the young Prince of Wales with his brothers and
sister. That boy little guessed then that this was the beginning of a
new chapter of history which would make him a captain in the greatest
war of the world, where he would walk in the midst of death and see the
flower of English youth cut down at his side.
At Windsor, in St. George’s Chapel, I saw the burial of King Edward.
His body was drawn to the Castle on a gun carriage by bluejackets,
and the music of Chopin’s Funeral March, that ecstasy of the spirit
triumphing over death, preceded him up the castle hill. Against the
gray old walls floral tributes were laid in masses from all the
people, and their scent was rich and strong in the air. On the castle
slopes where sunlight lay, spring flowers were blooming, as though
to welcome this home-coming of the King. Kings and princes from all
nations, in brilliant uniforms, crowded into St. George’s Chapel, and
it was a foreign King and Emperor who sorted them out, put them into
their right places, acted as Master of the Ceremony, and led forward
Queen Alexandra, as though he were the chief mourner, and not King
George. It was the German Kaiser. The Kings of Spain and Portugal
wept unaffectedly, like two schoolboys who had lost their father, and
indeed, this burial of King Edward in the lovely chapel where so many
of his family lie sleeping was strangely affecting, because it seemed
like the passing of some historic era, and was so, though we did not
know it then, certainly.
The task fell to me of describing the coronation of the new King in
Westminster Abbey, and of all the great scenes of which I have been
an eyewitness, this remains in my memory as the most splendid and
impressive. As a lover of history, that old Abbey, which has stood as
the symbol of English faith and rule since Norman days, is to me always
a haunted place, filled with a myriad ghosts of the old vital past.
And the coronation of an English king, in its ancient ritual, blots
out modernity, and takes one back to the root sentiment of the race
which is our blood and heritage. One may, in philosophical moments,
think kingship an outworn institution, and jeer at all its pomp and
pageantry. One’s democratic soul may thrust all its ritual into the
lumber room of antique furniture, but something of the old romance
of its meaning, something of its warmth and color in the tapestry of
English history, something of that code of chivalry and knighthood by
which the King was dedicated to the service of his peoples, stirs in
the most prosaic mind alive when a king is crowned again in the Abbey
Church of Westminster.
The ceremony is, indeed, the old ritual of knighthood, ending with the
crowning act. The arms and emblems of kingship are laid upon the altar,
as when a knight kept vigil. He is stripped of his outer garments,
and stands before the people, bare of all the apparel which hides his
simplicity, as a common man.
There was a dramatic moment when this unclothing happened to King
George. The Lord Chamberlain could not untie the bows and knots of his
cloak and surcoat, and the ceremony was held up by an awkward pause.
But he was a man of action, and pulling out a clasp knife from his
pocket, slashed at the ribbons till they were cut....
Looking down the great nave from a gallery above, I saw the long purple
robes of the peers and peeresses, the rows of coronets, the little
pages, like fairy-tale princes, on the steps of the sanctuary, the
Prince of Wales himself like a Childe Harold, in silk doublet and
breeches, the Archbishop and Bishops, Kings-at-Arms, and officers of
state, busy about the person of the King who was helpless in their
hands as a victim of sacrifice, clothing him, anointing him, crowning
him, before the act of homage in which all the Lords of England moved
forward in their turn to swear fealty to their liege, who, in his turn,
had sworn to uphold the laws and liberties of England. A cynic might
scoff. But no man with an artist’s eye, and no man with Chaucer and
Shakespeare in his heart, could fail to see the beauty of this mediæval
picture, nor fail to feel the old thrill in that heritage of ancient
customs which belong to the poetry and the heart of England.
I, at least, was moved by this sentiment, being, in those days, an
incurable romantic, though the war killed some of my romanticism. But
even romance is not proof against the material needs of human flesh,
and as the ceremony went on, hour after hour, I felt the sharp bite
of hunger. We had to be in our places in the Abbey by half-past seven
that morning, and keep them until three in the afternoon. I had come
provided with half a dozen sandwiches, but, with a foolish trust in
hungry human nature, left them for a few minutes while I walked to the
end of the gallery to see another aspect of the picture below. When I
came back, my sandwiches had disappeared. I strongly suspected, without
positive proof, a famous lady novelist who was in the next seat to
mine. It was a deplorable tragedy to me, as after the ceremony I had to
write a whole page for my paper, and there was no time for food.
Among other royal events which I had to record was King George’s
Coronation Progress through Scotland, which was full of picturesque
scenes and romantic memories. The Scottish people were eager to prove
their loyalty and for hundreds of miles along the roads of Scotland
they gathered in vast cheering crowds, while all the way was guarded by
Highland and Lowland troops of the Regular and Territorial Armies. For
the first time I saw the fighting men of bonnie Scotland, and little
dreamed then that I should see their splendid youth in the ordeal of
battle, year after year, and foreign fields strewn with their bodies,
as often I did, in Flanders and in France.
There were four or five correspondents, of whom I was one, allowed to
travel with the King. We had one of the royal motor cars, and wherever
the King drove, we followed next to his equerries and officers. It was
an astonishing experience, for we were part of the royal procession
and in the full tide of that immense, clamorous enthusiasm of vast and
endless crowds which awaited the King’s coming. Our eyes tired of the
triumphal arches, floral canopies, flag-covered cities and hamlets,
through which we passed, and of those turbulent waves of human faces
pressing close to our carriage. Our ears wearied of the unceasing din
of cheers, the noise of great multitudes, the skirl of the pipes, the
distressing repetition of “God Save the King” played by innumerable
brass bands, sung for hundreds of miles by the crowds, by masses of
school children, by Scottish maidens of the universities, by old
farmers, standing bareheaded as the King passed. We pitied any man who
had to pass his life in such a way, smiling, saluting, keeping the
agony of weariness out of his eyes by desperate efforts.
I am bound to say that the correspondents’ car brightened up the
royal procession considerably. One of our party was an Edinburgh
correspondent, who has been made by nature in the image of a celebrated
film actor of great fatness, with a cheery, full-moon face of
benevolent aspect. The appearance of this figure immediately following
the King, and so quick upon the heels of solemnity, had a devastating
effect upon the crowds. They positively yelled with laughter,
believing that they recognized their “movie” favorite. Highland
soldiers, with their rifles at the “present,” stiff and impassive as
statues, wilted, and grinned from ear to ear. Scottish lassies from the
factories and farms, whose eyes had shone and cheeks flushed at the
sight of the King, had a quick reaction, and shrieked with mirth.
They could not place the correspondents at all. Some thought we were
“the foreign ambassadors.” Others put us down as private detectives.
But the most astonishing theory as to our place and dignity in the
procession was uttered by an old Scottish farmer at Perth. The King
had halted to receive a loyal address, and the crowd was jammed tight
against our carriage. We could hear the comments of the crowd and the
usual question about our identity. The old farmer gazed at us with his
blue eyes beneath shaggy brows, and plucked his sandy beard.
“Eh, mon,” he said, seriously, “they maun be the King’s barstards.”