NEW YORK
There was no qualification or reservation in New York's welcome to the
Prince of Wales.
In the last year or so I have seen some great crowds, and by that I
mean not merely vast aggregations of people, but vast gatherings of
people whose ardour carried away the emotions with a tremendous psychic
force. During that year I had seen the London crowd that welcomed back
the British military leader; the London and Manchester crowds, and
vivid and stirring crowds they were, that dogged the footsteps of
President Wilson; I had seen the marvellous and poignant crowd at the
London Victory March, and I had had a course of crowds, vigorous,
affectionate and lively, in Montreal, Toronto and throughout Canada.
I had been toughened to crowds, yet the New York crowd that welcomed
the Prince was a fresh experience. It was a crowd that, in spite of
writing continuously about crowds for four months, gave me a direct
impulse to write yet again about a crowd, that gave me the feeling that
here was something fresh, sparkling, human, warm, ardent and
provocative. It was a crowd with a flutter of laughter in it, a crowd
that had a personality, an _insouciance_, an independence in its
friendliness. It was a crowd that I shall always put beside other
mental pictures of big crowds, in that gallery of clear vignettes of
things impressive that make the memory.
There was a big crowd about the Battery long before the Prince was due
to arrive across the river from the Jersey City side. It was a
good-humoured crowd that helped the capable New York policemen to keep
itself well in hand. It was not only thick about the open grass space
of the Battery, but it was clustering on the skeleton structure of the
Elevated Railway, and mounting to the sky, floor by floor, on the
skyscrapers.
High up on the twenty-second floor of neighbouring buildings we could
see a crowd of dolls and windows, and the dolls were waving shreds of
cotton. The dolls were women and the cotton shred was "Old Glory."
High up on the tremendous cornice of one building a tiny man stood with
all the calm gravity of a statue. He was unconcerned by the height, he
was only concerned in obtaining an eagle's eye view.
About the landing-stage itself, the landing-stage where the new
Americans and the notabilities land, there was a wide space, kept clear
by the police. Admirable police these, who can handle crowds with any
police, who held us up with a wall of adamant until we showed our
letters from the New York Reception Committee (our only, and certainly
not the official, passes), and then not only let us through without
fuss but helped us in every possible way to go everywhere and see
everything.
In this wide space were gathered the cars for the procession, and the
notabilities who were to meet the Prince, and the camera men who were
to snap him. Into it presently marched United States Marines and
Seamen. A hefty lot of men, who moved casually, and with a slight
sense of slouch as though they wished to convey "We're whales for
fighting, but no damned militarists."
Since the Prince was not entering New York by steamer--the most
thrilling way--but by means of a railway journey from Sulphur Springs,
New York had taken steps to correct this mode of entry. He was not to
miss the first impact of the city. He would make a water entry, if
only an abbreviated one, and so experience one of the Seven (if there
are not more, or less) Sensations of the World, a sight of the profile
of Manhattan Island.
The profile of Manhattan (blessed name that O. Henry has rolled so
often on the palate) is lyric. It is a _sierra_ of skyscrapers. It is
a flight of perfect rockets, the fire of which has frozen into solidity
in mid-soaring. It is a range of tall, narrow, poignant buildings that
makes the mind think of giants, or fairies, or, anyhow, of creatures
not quite of this world. It is one of the few things the imagination
cannot visualize adequately, and so gets from it a satisfaction and not
a disappointment.
This sight the Prince saw as he crossed in a launch from the New Jersey
side, and "the beauty and dignity of the towering skyline," his own
words, so impressed him that he was forced to speak of it time and time
again during his visit to the city. And on top of that impression came
the second and even greater one, for, and again I use his own words,
"men and women appeal to me even more than sights." This second
impression was "the most warm and friendly welcome that followed me all
through the drive in the city."
When the Prince landed he seemed to me a little anxious; he was at the
threshold of a great and important city, and his welcome was yet a
matter of speculation. In less than fifteen minutes he was smiling as
he had smiled all through Canada, and, as in Canada, he was standing in
his car, formality forgotten, waving back to the crowd with a
friendliness that matched the friendliness with which he was received.
He faced the city of Splendid Heights with glances of wonder at the
line of cornices that crowned the narrow canyon of Broadway, and rose
up crescendo in a vista closed by the campanile of the Woolworth
Building, raised like a pencil against the sky, fifty-five storeys
high. On the beaches beneath these great crags, on the sidewalks, and
pinned between the sturdy policemen--who do not turn backs to the crowd
but face it alertly--and the sheer walls was a lively and vast throng.
And rising up by storeys was a lively and vast throng, hanging out of
windows and clinging to ledges, perilous but happy in their
skyscraper-eye view.
And from these high-up windows there began at once a characteristic
"Down Town" expression of friendliness. Ticker-tape began to shoot
downward in long uncoiling snakes to catch in flagpoles and
window-ledges in strange festoons. Strips of paper began to descend in
artificial snow, and confetti, and basket-loads of torn letter paper.
All manner of bits of paper fluttered and swirled in the air, making a
grey nebula in the distance; glittering like spangles of gold against
the severe white cliffs of the skyscrapers when the sun caught them.
On the narrow roadway the long line of automobiles was littered and
strung with paper, and the Prince had a mantle of it, and was still
cheery. He could not help himself. The reception he was getting would
have swept away a man of stone, and he has never even begun to be a man
of stone. The pace was slow, because of the marching Marine escort,
and people and Prince had full opportunity for sizing up each other.
And both people and Prince were satisfied.
Escorted by the motor-cyclist police, splendid fellows who chew gum and
do their duty with an astonishing certainty and nimbleness, the Prince
came to the City Hall Square, where the modern Brontosaurs of commerce
lift mightily above the low and graceful City Hall, which has the look
of a _petite_ mother perpetually astonished at the size of the brood
she has reared.
Inside the hall the Prince became a New Yorker, and received a civic
welcome. He expressed his real pride at now being a Freeman of the two
greatest cities in the world, New York and London, two cities that
were, moreover, so much akin, and upon which depends to an
extraordinary degree the financial health and the material as well as
spiritual welfare of all continents. As for his welcome, he had learnt
to appreciate the quality of American friendship from contact with
members of the splendid fighting forces that had come overseas, but
even that, he indicated, had not prepared him for the wonder of the
greeting he had received.
Outside the City Hall the vast throng had waited patiently, and they
seemed to let their suppressed energy go as the Prince came out of the
City Hall to face the massed batteries of photographers, who would only
allow snapshots to be his "pass" to his automobile.
The throngs in financial "Down Town" gave way to the massed ranks of
workers from the big wholesale and retail houses that occupy middle New
York as the Prince passed up Broadway, the street that is not as broad
as other streets, and the only one that wanders at its own fancy in a
kingdom of parallels and right-angles. At the corner where stands
Wanamaker's great store the crowd was thickest. Here was stationed a
band in a quaint old-time uniform of red tunics, bell trousers and
shakos, while facing them across the street was a squad of girls in
pretty blue and white military uniforms and hats.
Soon the line of cars swung into speed and gained Fifth Avenue, passing
the Flatiron building, which is now not a wonder. Such soaring
structures as the Metropolitan Tower, close by in Madison Square, have
taken the shine out of it, and in the general atmosphere of giants one
does not notice its freakishness unless one is looking for it.
Fifth Avenue is superb; it is the route of pageants by right of air and
quality. It is Oxford Street, London, made broad and straight and
clean. It has fine buildings along its magnificent reach, and some
noble ones. It has dignity and vivacity, it has space and it has an
air. In the graceful open space about Madison Square there stood the
massive Arch of Victory, under which America's soldiers had swung when
they returned from the front. It was a temporary arch constructed with
realism and ingenuity; the Prince passed under it on his way up the
avenue.
He went at racing pace up to and into Central Park, that convincing
affectation of untrammelled Nature (convincing because it is
untrammelled), that beautiful residences of town dwellers look into.
He swung to the left by the gracious pile of the Cathedral of St. John
the Divine, and out on to Riverside Park, that hangs its gardens over
the deep waters of the Hudson River. Standing isolated and with a fine
serenity above green and water is General Grant's tomb, and at the
wideflung white plaza of this the Prince dismounted, going on foot to
the tomb, and in the tomb, going alone to deposit a wreath on the great
soldier's grave.
Riverside Park had its flowering of bright people, and its multitude of
motors to swarm after the Prince as he passed along the Drive, paused
to review a company of English-Americans who had served in the war, and
then continued on his way to the Yacht Club jetty, where he was to take
boat to the _Renown_. Lying in deep water high up in the town was this
one of the greatest of the modern warships, her greatness considerably
diminished by the buildings lifting above her. To her the Prince went
after nearly three months' absence, and on her he lived during his stay
in New York.
II
When I say that the Prince lived on board the _Renown_, I mean that he
lived on her in his moments to spare. In New York the visitor is lucky
who has a few moments to spare. New York's hospitality is electric.
It rushes the guest off his feet. Even if New York is not definitely
engaged to entertain you at specific minutes, it comes round to know if
you have everything you want, whether it can do anything for you.
New York was calling on the Prince almost as soon as he went aboard.
There was a lightning lunch to Mr. Wanamaker, the President of the
Reception Committee, and other members of that body, and then the first
of the callers began to chug off from the landing-stage towards the
_Renown_. Deputations from all the foreign races that make New York
came over the side, distinguished Americans called. And, before
anybody else, the American journalist was there.
The Prince was no stranger to the American journalist. They were old
friends of his. Some of them had been with him in the Maritime
Provinces of Canada, and he had made friends with them at Quebec. He
remembered these writers and that friendship was renewed in a pleasant
chat. The journalists liked him, too, though they admit that he has a
charming way of disarming them. They rather admired the adroit
diplomacy with which he derailed such leading questions as those
dealing with the delicate and infinite subject of American girls:
whether he liked them: and how much?
He met these correspondents quite frankly, appreciating at once the
fact that it was through them that he could express to the people of
America his intense feeling of thanks for the singular warmth of
America's greeting.
From seeing all these visitors the Prince had only time left to get
into evening dress and to be whirled off in time to attend a glittering
dinner given at the Waldorf-Astoria by Mrs. Henry Pomeroy Davidson on
behalf of the Council of the American Red Cross. It was a vivid and
beautiful function, but it was one that bridged the time before
another, and before ten o'clock the Prince was on the move again, and,
amid the dance of the motor-bike "cops," was being rushed off to the
Metropolitan Opera House.
He was swung down Broadway where the advertisements made a fantasy of
the sky, a fantasy of rococo beauty where colours on the huge pallets
of skyscrapers danced and ran, fused and faded, grouped and regrouped,
each a huge and coherent kaleidoscope.
Here a gigantic kitten of lights turned a complete somersault in the
heavens as it played with a ball of wool. There six sky-high manikins
with matchstick limbs, went through an incandescent perpetual and
silent dance. In the distance was a gigantic bull advertising
tobacco--all down this heavenly vista there were these immense signs,
lapping and over-lapping in dazzling chaos. And seen from one angle,
high up, unsupported, floating in the very air and eerily
unsubstantial, was a temple lit by bale-fires that shone wanly at its
base. It was merely a building superimposed upon a skyscraper, but in
the dark there was no skyscraper, and the amazing structure hung there
lambent, silent, enigmatic, a Wagnerian temple in the sky.
Broadway, which sprouts theatres as a natural garden sprouts flowers,
was jewelled with lights, lights that in the clear air of this
continent shone with a lucidity that we in England do not know. Before
the least lighted of these buildings the Prince stopped. He had
arrived at the austere temple of the high arts, the Metropolitan Opera
House.
Inside Caruso and a brilliant audience waited impatiently for his
presence. The big and rather sombre house was quick with colour and
with beauty. The celebrated "Diamond Horseshoe," the tiers of the
galleries, and the floor of the house were vivid with dresses,
shimmering and glinting with all the evasive shades of the spectrum,
with here a flash of splendid jewels, there the slow and sumptuous
flutter of a great ostrich fan.
Part of the program had been played, but _Pagliacci_ and Caruso were
held up while the vivid and ardent people craned out of their little
crimson boxes in the Horseshoes and turned and looked up from the
bright mosaic of the floor at the empty box which was to be the
Prince's.
There was a long roll of drums, and with a single movement the
orchestra marched into the melody of "God bless the Prince of Wales,"
and the Prince, looking extraordinarily embarrassed, came to the front
of the box.
At once there was no melody of "God bless the Prince of Wales"
perceptible; a wave of cheering and hand-clapping swept it away. The
whole of the people on the floor of the house turned to look upward and
to cheer. The people under the tiers crowded forward into the gangways
until the gangways were choked, and the floor was a solid mass of
humanity. Bright women and men correctly garbed imperilled their necks
in the galleries above in order to look down. It was an unforgettable
moment, and for the Prince a disconcerting one.
He stood blushing and looking down, wondering how on earth he was to
endure this stark publicity. He was there poised bleakly for all to
see, an unenviable position. And there was no escape. He must stand
there, because it was his job, and recover from the nervousness that
had come from finding himself so abruptly thrust on to this veritable
pillar of Stylites in the midst of an interested and curious throng.
The interest and the curiosity was intensely friendly. His personality
suffered not at all from the fact that he had lost his calm at a moment
when only the case-hardened could have remained unmoved. His
embarrassment, indeed, made the audience more friendly, and it was with
a sort of intimacy that they tittered at his familiar tricks of
nervousness, his fumbling at his tie, tugging of his coat lapels, the
passing of the hand over his hair, even the anxious use of his
handkerchief.
And this friendly and soft laughter became really appreciative when
they saw him tackle the chairs. There were two imposing and pompous
gilt chairs at the front of the box, filling it, elbowing all minor,
human chairs out of the way. The Prince turned and looked at them, and
turned them out. He would have none of them. He was not there to be a
superior person at all; he was there to be human and enjoy human
companionship. He had the front of the box filled with chairs, and he
had friends in to sit with him and talk with him when intervals in the
music permitted. And the audience was his friend for that; they
admired him for the way he turned his back on formalities and
ceremonials. General Pershing, who gratifies one's romantic sense by
being extraordinarily like one's imaginative pictures of a great
General, came to sit with him, and there was another outburst of
cheering. I think that the _petits morceaux_ from the operas were but
side-shows. Although Rosina Galli ravished the house with her dancing
(how she must love dancing), opera glasses were swivelled more toward
the Royal box than to the stage, and the audience made a close and
curious study of every movement and every inflection of the Prince.
The cheering broke out again, from people who crowded afresh into the
gangways, when the Prince left, and in a mighty wave of friendliness
the official program of the first day closed.
III
There was an unofficial ending to the day. The Prince, with several of
his suite, walked in New York, viewed this exhilarating city of lights
and vistas by night, got his own private and unformal view of the
wonders of skyscraping townscape, the quick, nervous shuttle of the
sidewalks, the rattle of the "Elevated," the sight, for the first time
in a long journey, of motor-buses. And without doubt he tasted the
wonder of a city of automobiles still clinging to the hansom cab.
About this outing there have been woven stories of a glamour which
might have come from the fancy of O. Henry and the author of the
"Arabian Nights" working in collaboration. The Prince is said to have
plunged into the bizarre landscape of the Bowery, which is Whitechapel
better lighted, and better dressed with up-to-date cafes, where there
are dance halls in which with the fathomless seriousness of the modern,
jazz is danced to violins and banjoes and the wailing ukelele.
They tell me that Ichabod has been written across the romantic glory of
the Bowery, and that for colour and the spice of life one has to go
further west (which is Manhattan's East End) to Greenwich Village,
where life strikes Chelsea attitudes, and where one descends
subterraneanly, or climbs over the roofs of houses to Matisse-like
restaurants where one eats rococo meals in an atmosphere of cigarette
smoke, rice-white faces, scarlet lips, and bobbed hair. But there are
yet places in the Bowery to which one taxis with a thrill of hope,
where the forbidden cocktail is served in a coffee cup, where wine
bottles are put on to the table with brown paper wrapped round them to
preserve the fiction that they came from one's own private (and legal)
store, where in bare, studiously Bowery chambers the hunter of a new
_frisson_ sits and dines and hopes for the worst.
The Bowery is dingy and bright; it has hawkers' barrows and chaotic
shop windows. It has the curiosity-stimulating, cosmopolite air of all
dockside areas, but to the Englishman accustomed to the picturesque
bedragglement of East End costumes, it is almost dismayingly
well-dressed. Its young men have the leanness of outline that comes
from an authentic American tailor. Its Jewesses have the neat
crispness of American fashion that gives their vivid beauty a new and
sparkling note. It was astonishing the number of beautiful young women
one saw on the Bowery, but not astonishing when one recalls the number
of beautiful young women one saw in New York. Fifth Avenue at shopping
time, for example, ceases to be a street: it becomes a pageant of youth
and grace.
The Prince, of course, may have gone into the Bowery, and walked
therein with the air of a modern Caliph, but I myself have not heard of
it. I was told that he went for a walk to the house of a friend, and
that after paying a very pleasant and ordinary visit he returned to the
_Renown_ to get what sleep he could before the adventure of another New
York day.
IV
The morning of Wednesday, November 19th, was devoted by the Prince to
high finance; he went down to Wall Street and to visit the other
temples of the gold god.
When one has become acclimated to the soaring upward rush of the
skyscrapers (and one quite soon loses consciousness of them, for where
all buildings are huge each building becomes commonplace), when one
stops looking upward, "Down Town" New York is strangely like the "City"
area of London. Walking Broadway one might easily imagine oneself in
the neighbourhood of the Bank of England; Wall Street might easily be a
turning out of Bishopsgate or Cannon Street. Broad Street, New York,
is not so very far removed in appearance from Broad Street, London.
There is the same preoccupied congestion of the same work-mazed people:
clerks, typists (stenographers), book-keepers, messengers and masters,
though, perhaps, the people of the New York business quarter do not
wear the air of sadness those of London wear.
And there is the same massive solidity of business buildings, great
blocks that house thirty thousand souls in the working day, and these
buildings have the same air as their London brothers; that is, they
seem to be monuments to financial integrity (just as mahogany
furniture, with a certain type, is an indication of "standing and
weight") rather than offices. And if New York buildings are, on the
whole, more distinguished, are characterized by a better art, they are,
on the other hand, not relieved by the humanity of the shops that gives
an air of brightness to the London commercial area. In New York "Down
Town" the shops are mainly inside the buildings, and it is in the
corridors of the big blocks that the clerk buys his magazines, papers,
"candies," sandwiches and cigars.
The interiors of the buildings are ornate, they are sleek with marble,
and quite often beautiful with it. They are well arranged; the
skyscraper habit makes for short corridors, and you can always find
your man easily (as in the hotels) by the number of his room: thus, if
his number is 1201 he is on the twelfth floor, 802 is on the eighth,
and 2203 is on the twenty-second; each floor is a ten.
Up to the floors one ascends by means of one of a fleet of elevators,
some being locals and some being expresses to a certain floor and local
beyond. Whether the fleet is made up of two or ten lifts, there is
always a man to control them, a station-master of lifts who gives the
word to the liftboys. To the Englishman he is a new phenomenon. He
seems a trifle unnecessary [but he may be put there by law]; he is soon
seen to be one of a multitude of men in America who "stand over" other
men while they do the job.
The unexpected thing in buildings so fine as this, occupied by men who
are addicted to business, is that the offices have rather a makeshift
air. The offices I saw in America do not compare in comfort with the
offices I know in England. There is a bleakness, an aridity about them
that makes English business rooms seem luxurious in comparison. I
talked of this phenomenon with a friend, instancing one great office,
to be met with surprise and told: "Why! But that office is held up as
an example of what offices should be like. We are agitating to get
ours as good as that." After this I did not talk about offices.
The "Down Town" restaurants bring one vividly back to London. They are
underground, and there is the same thick volume of masculinity and
masculine talk in them. They are a trifle more ornate, and the food is
better cooked and of infinitely greater variety (they would not be
American otherwise), but over all the air is the same.
Into the familiar business atmosphere of this quarter the Prince came
early. He drove between crowds and there were big crowds at the points
where he stopped--at the Woolworth building and at Trinity Church, that
stands huddled and dwarfed beneath the basilicas of business. The
intense interest of his visit began when he arrived at the Stock
Exchange.
The business on the floor was in full swing when he came out on to the
marble gallery of the vast, square marble hall of the Exchange, and the
busy swarm of money-gathering men beneath his eyes immediately stopped
to cheer him. To look down, as he did, was to look down upon the floor
of some great bazaar. The floor is set with ranks of kiosks spaced
apart, about which men congregate only to divide and go all ways; these
kiosks might easily be booths. The floor itself is in constant
movement; it is a disturbed ant-heap with its denizens speeding about
always in unconjectural movements. Groups gather, thrust hands and
fingers upward, shout and counter-shout, as though bent on working up a
fracas; then when they seem to have succeeded they make notes in small
books and walk quietly away. Messengers, who must work by instinct,
weave in and out of the stirring of ants perpetually. In a line of
cubicles along one side of the Exchange, crowds of men seemed to be
fighting each other for a chance at the telephone.
Two of the tremendous walls of this hall are on the street, and superb
windows allow in the light. On the two remaining walls are gigantic
blackboards. Incessantly, small flaps are falling on these blackboards
revealing numbers. They are the numbers of members who have been
"called" over the 'phone or in some other way. The blackboards are in
a constant flutter, the tiny flaps are always falling or shutting, as
numbers appear and disappear, and the boards are starred with numbers
waiting patiently for the eye of the member on the floor to look up and
be aware of them.
The Prince stood on the high gallery under the high windows, and
watched with vivid curiosity the bustling scene below. He asked a
number of eager questions, and the strange silent dance of numbers on
the big blackboards intrigued him greatly. Underneath him the members
gathered in a great crowd, calling up to him to come down on the floor.
There was a jolly eagerness in their demands, and the Prince, as he
went, seemed to hesitate as though he were quite game for the
adventure. But he disappeared, and though the Bears and the Bulls
waited a little while for him, he did not reappear. Those who knew
that a full twelve-hour program could only be accomplished by following
the timetable with rigid devotion had had their way.
From the Stock Exchange the Prince went to the Sub-Treasury, and
watched, fascinated, the miracle work of the money counters. The
intricacies of currency were explained to him, and he was shown the men
who went through mounds of coin, with lightning gestures separating the
good from the bad with their instinctive finger-tips and with the
accuracy of one of Mr. Ford's uncanny machines. He was told that the
touch of these men was so exquisite that they could detect a "dud" coin
instantly, and, to test them, such a coin was produced and marked, and
well hidden in a pile of similar coins. The fingers of the teller went
through the pile like a flash, and as he flicked the good coins towards
him, and without ceasing his work, a coin span out from the mass
towards the Prince. It was the coin he had marked.
V
Passing among these business people and driving amid the quick crowds,
the Prince had been consolidating the sense of intimate friendship that
had sprung up on the previous day. A wise American pressman had said
to me on Tuesday:
"New York people like what they've read about the Prince. They'll come
out today to see if what they have read is true. Tomorrow they'll come
out because they love him. And each day the crowds will get better."
This proved true. The warmth of New York's friendliness increased as
the days went on. The scene at the lunch given by the New York Chamber
of Commerce proved how strong this regard had grown. The scene was
remarkable because of the character and the quality of the men present.
It was no admiration society. It was no gathering of sentimentalists.
The men who attended that lunch were men not only of international
reputation, but of international force, men of cautious fibre
accustomed to big encounters, not easily moved to emotion. And they
fell under the charm of the Prince.
One of them expressed his feelings concerning the scene to me.
"He had it over us all the time," he said, laughing. "There we were,
several hundreds of grey-headed, hardened old stiffs, most of us over
twice his age, and we stood up and yelled like college freshmen when he
had finished speaking to us.
"What did he say to us? Nothing very remarkable. He told us how
useful we old ones in the money market had been as a backbone to the
boys in the firing line. He told us that he felt that the war had
revealed clearly the closeness of the relationship between the two
Anglo-Saxon nations, how their welfare was interlocked and how the
prosperity of each was essential to the prosperity of the other, and he
agreed with the President of the Chamber's statement that British and
American good faith and good will would go far to preserve the
stability of the world. There's nothing very wonderful to that. It's
true enough, but not altogether unknown.... It was his manner that
caught hold of us. The way he speaks, you see. His nervousness, and
his grit in conquering his nervousness. His modesty; his twinkle of
humour, all of him. He's one fine lad. I tell you we've had some big
men in the Chamber in the last two years, but it's gilt-edged truth
that none of the big ones had the showing that lad got today."
From the Chamber of Commerce the Prince went to the Academy of Music
where there was a picture and variety show staged for him, and which he
enjoyed enormously. The thrill of this item of the program was rather
in the crowd than in the show. It was an immense crowd, and for once
it vanquished the efficient police and swarmed about His Royal Highness
as he entered the building. While he was inside it added to its
strength rather than diminished, and in the face of this crisis one of
those men whose brains rise to emergencies had the bright idea of
getting the Prince out by the side door. The crowd had also had that
bright idea and the throng about the side door was, if anything, more
dense than at the front. Through this laughing and cheering mass
squads of good-humoured police butted a thread of passage for the happy
Prince.
The throng inside Madison Square Garden about the arena of the Horse
Show was more decorous, as became its status, but it did not let that
stifle its feelings. The Prince passed through from a cheering crowd
outside to the bright, sharp clapping of those inside. He passed round
the arena between ranks of Salvation Army lassies, who held, instead of
barrier ropes, broad scarlet ribbons.
There was a laugh as he touched his hair upon gaining the stark
publicity of his box, and the laugh changed to something of a cheer
when he caught sight of the chairs of pomp, two of them in frigid
isolation, elbowing out smaller human fry. All knew from his very
attitude what was going to happen to those chairs. And it happened.
The chairs vanished. Small chairs and more of them took their place,
and the Prince sat with genial people about him.
The arena was a field of brightness. It was delightfully decorated
with green upon lattice work. Over the competitors' entrance were
canvas replicas of Tudor houses. In the ring the Prince saw many
beautiful horses, fine hunters, natty little ponies pulling nattier
carriages, trotters of mechanical perfection, and big lithe jumpers.
In the middle of the jumping competition he left his box and went into
the ring, and spent some time there chatting with judges and
competitors, and watching the horses take the hurdles and gates from
close quarters.
Leaving the building there happened one of those vivid little incidents
which speak more eloquently than any effort of oratory could of the
kinship of the two races in their war effort. A group of men in
uniform who had been waiting by the exit sprang to attention as he came
up. They were all Americans. They were all in British uniform--most
of them in British Flying Corps uniform. As the Prince came up, they
clicked round in a smart "Left turn," and marched before him out of the
building.
The Prince from thence on vanished for the day into a round of
semi-social functions, but he did not escape the crowds.
Walking up Fifth Avenue with friends shortly before dinner-time, we
came upon a bunched jumble of people outside the "Waldorf-Astoria." It
was a crowd that a man in a hurry could not argue with. It filled the
broad street, and it did not care if it impeded traffic. We were not
in a hurry, so we stood and looked. I asked my friends what was
happening here, and one of them chuckled and answered:
"They've got him again."
"Him? Who--you can't mean the Prince? He's on _Renown_ now, resting,
or getting ready for a dinner. There's nothing down for him."
My friend simply chuckled again.
"Who else would it be?" he said. "How they do gather round waiting for
that smile of his. Flies round a honey-pot. Ah, I thought so."
The Prince made a dash of an exit from the hotel. He jumped into the
car, and at once there was a forest of hands and handkerchiefs and
flags waving, and his own hand and hat seemed to go up and wave as part
of one and the same movement. It was a spontaneous "Hallo, People!
Hallo, Prince!" A jolly affair. The motor started, pushed through the
crowd. There was a sharp picture of the Prince half standing, half
kneeling, looking back and laughing and waving to the crowd. Then he
was gone.
The men and women of the throng turned away smiling, as though
something good had happened.
"They've seen him. They can go home now," said my friend. "My, ain't
they glad about themselves.... And isn't he the one fine scout?"
VI
When the Prince made his appearance on Thursday, November 20th, in the
uniform of a Welsh Guardsman he came in for a startling ovation. Not
only were many people gathered about the Yacht Club landing-stage and
along the route of his drive, but at one point a number of ladies
pelted him with flowers. Startled though the Prince was, he kept his
smile and his sense of humour. He said dryly that he had never known
what it was to feel like a bride before, and he returned this volley
with his friendly salute.
He was then setting out to the Grand Central Station for his trip up
the Hudson to West Point, the Military Academy of the United States.
In the superb white station, under a curved arch of ceiling as blue as
the sky, he took the full force of an affection that had been growing
steadily through the visit. The immense floor of the building was
dense and tight with people, and the Prince, as he came to the balcony
that made the stair-head was literally halted by the great gust of
cheering that beat up to him, and was forced to stand at the salute for
a full minute.
The journey to West Point skirted the Hudson, where lovely view after
lovely view of the piled-up and rocky further shore tinted in the
russet and gold of the dying foliage came and went. There was a rime
of ice already in the lagoons, and the little falls that usually
tumbled down the rocks were masses of glittering icicles.
The castellated walls of West Point overhang the river above a sharp
cliff; the buildings have a dramatic grouping that adds to the extreme
beauty of the surroundings. Toward this castle on the cliff the Prince
went by a little steam ferry, was taken in escort by a smart body of
American cavalrymen, and in their midst went by automobile up the road
to the grey towers of West Point.
Immediately on his arrival at the saluting point on the great campus
the horizon-blue cadets, who will one day be the leaders of the
American army, began to march.
Paraded by the buildings, they fell into columns of companies with
mechanical precision. With precise discipline they moved out on to the
field, the companies as solid as rocks but for the metronomic beat of
legs and arms.
They were tall, smart youths, archaic and modern in one. With long
blue coats, wide trousers, shakos, broad white belts, as neat as
painted lines, over breast and back, and, holding back the flaps of
capes, they looked figures from the fifties. But the swing of the
marching companies, the piston-like certainty of their action, the cold
and splendid detachment of their marching gave them all the _flare_
[Transcriber's note: flair?] of a _corps d'elite_.
Forming companies almost with a click on the wide green, they saluted
and stood at attention while the Prince and his party inspected the
lines. Then, the Prince at the saluting point again, the three
companies in admirable order marched past. There was not a flaw in the
rigid ranks as they swept along, their eyes right, the red-sashed "four
year men" holding slender swords at the salute.
The Prince lunched with the officers, and after lunch the cadets
swarmed into the room to hear him speak, having first warmed up the
atmosphere with a rousing and prolonged college yell. Having spoken in
praise of their discipline and bearing, the Prince was made the subject
of another yell, and more, was saluted with the college whistle, a
thing unique and distinctive, that put the seal upon his visit.
That night the Prince played host upon _Renown_, giving a brilliant
dinner to his friends in New York. This was the only other ceremony of
the day.
VII
Friday, November 21st, the Prince's last day in New York, was an
extraordinarily full one, and that full not merely in program, but in
emotion. In that amazing day it seemed to me that the people of this
splendid city sought to express with superb eloquence the regard they
felt for him, seemed to make a point of trying to make his last day
memorable.
The morning was devoted to a semi-private journey to Oyster Bay, in
order that the Prince might place a wreath on the tomb of President
Roosevelt. The Prince had several times expressed his admiration for
the great and forceful American who represented so much of what was
individual in the national character, and his visit to the burial-place
was a tribute of real feeling.
After lunch at the Piping Rock Club he returned to _Renown_, where he
had planned to hold a reception after his own heart to a thousand of
New York's children.
On _Renown_ a score of "gadgets" had been prepared for the fun of the
children. The capstans had been turned into roundabouts, a switchback
and a chute had been fixed up, the deck of the great steel monster had
been transformed into fairyland, while a "scrumptious" tea in a pretty
tea lounge had been prepared all out of Navy magic.
The tugs that were to bring off the guests, however, brought few that
could come under the heading of "kiddies." Those that were not quite
grown up, were in the young man and young woman stage. Fairyland had
to be abandoned. Roundabout and switchback and chute were abandoned,
and only that "scrumptious" tea remained in the program. It was a
pleasant afternoon, but not a "kiddies'" afternoon.
The evening was quick with crowds.
It began in a drive through crowds to the Pilgrims' Dinner at the Plaza
Hotel, and that, in itself, was a crowd. The Plaza is none of your
bijou caravanserais. It is vast and vivid and bright, as a New York
hotel can be, and that is saying a good deal. But it was not vast
enough. One great marble room could not contain all the guests,
another and another was taken in, so that the banquet was actually
spread over three or four large chambers opening out of the main
chamber. Here the leading figures of America and the leading Britons
then in New York met together in a sort of breezy informality, and they
gave the Prince a most tremendous welcome.
And when he began to speak--after the nimble scintillations of Mr.
Chauncey Depew--they gave him another. And they rose up in a body, and
moved inward from the distant rooms to be within earshot--a sight for
the Messenger in _Macbeth_, for he would have seen a moving grove of
golden chair legs, held on high, as the diners marched with their
seating accommodation held above their heads.
Crowds again under the vivid lights of the streets, as the Prince drove
to the mighty crowd waiting for him in the Hippodrome. The Hippodrome
is one of the largest, if it is not the largest, music-hall in the
world. It has an enormous sweep of floor, and an enormous sweep of
galleries. The huge space of it takes the breath away. It was packed.
As the Prince entered his box, floor and galleries rose up with a
sudden and tremendous surge, and sent a mighty shout to him. The
National Anthems of England and America were obliterated in the gust of
affectionate noise. Minutes elapsed before that great audience
remembered that it was at the play, and that the Prince had come to see
the play. It sat down reluctantly, saving itself for his departure,
watching him as he entered into enjoyment of the brave and grandiose
spectacular show on the stage.
And when he rose to go the audience loosed itself again. It held him
there with the power of its cheering. It would not let him stir from
the building until it had had a word from him. It was dominant, it had
its way. In answer to the splendid outburst the Prince could do
nothing but come to the edge of his box and speak.
In a clear voice that was heard all over the building he thanked them
for the wonderful reception he had received that night, and in New York
during the week. "I thank you," he said, "and I bid you all good
night."
Then he went out into the cheering streets.
It was an astonishing display in the street. The throng was so dense,
the shouting so great that the sound of it drove into the silent houses
of other theatres. And the audiences in those other theatres caught
the thrill of it. They "cut" their plays, came pouring out into the
street to join the throng and the cheering; it was through this
carnival of affection that the Prince drove along the streets to a
reception, and a brilliant one, given by Mr. Wanamaker, whose ability
as Chairman of the Reception Committee had largely helped to make the
Prince's visit to New York so startling a success.
VIII
On that note of splendid friendliness the Prince's too short stay in
America ended. On Saturday, November 22nd, he held a reception on
_Renown_, saying good-bye to endless lines of friendly people of all
classes and races who thronged the great war vessel.
All these people crowded about the Prince and seemed loth to part with
him, and he seemed just as unwilling to break off an intimacy only just
begun. Only inexorable time and the Admiralty ended the scene, and the
great ship with its escort of small, lean war-craft moved seaward along
the cheering shore.
Crowds massed on the grass slope under Riverside Drive, and on the
esplanade itself. The skyscrapers were cheering grandstands, as the
ships steamed along the impressive length of Manhattan. They passed
the Battery, where he had landed, and the Narrows, where the escorting
boats left him. Then _Renown_ headed for Halifax, where his tour ended.
Certainly America and the Prince made the best of impressions on each
other. There is much in his quick and modern personality that finds
immediate satisfaction in the American spirit; much in himself that the
American responds to at once. When he declared, as he did time and
time again, that he had had a wonderful time, he meant it with
sincerity. And of his eagerness to return one day there can be no
doubt.
Of all the happy moments on this long and happy tour, this visit to
America, brief as it was, was one of the happiest. It was a brilliant
finale to the brilliant Canadian days.
THE END