The Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Arthur received the Shah in state, and
then all of us--princes, Shahs, ambassadors, Grand Viziers and newspaper
correspondents--climbed aboard the train and started off to London just
like so many brothers.
From Dover to London it was a sight to see. Seventy miles of human
beings in a jam--the gaps were not worth mentioning--and every man,
woman, and child waving hat or handkerchief and cheering. I
wondered--could not tell--could not be sure--could only wonder--would
this “impress the Shah”? I would have given anything to know. But--well,
it ought--but--still one could not tell.
And by and by we burst into the London Railway station--a very large
station it is--and found it wonderfully decorated and all the
neighboring streets packed with cheering citizens. Would this impress
the Shah? I--I--well, I could not yet feel certain.
The Prince of Wales received the Shah--ah, you should have seen how
gorgeously the Shah was dressed now--he was like the sun in a total
eclipse of rainbows--yes, the Prince received him, put him in a grand
open carriage, got in and made him sit over further and not “crowd,” the
carriage clattered out of the station, all London fell apart on either
side and lifted a perfectly national cheer, and just at that instant the
bottom fell out of the sky and forty deluges came pouring down at once!
The great strain was over, the crushing suspense at an end. I said,
“Thank God, this will impress the Shah.”
Now came the long files of Horse Guards in silver armor. We took the
great Persian to Buckingham Palace. I never stirred till I saw the gates
open and close upon him with my own eyes and knew he was there. Then I
said:
“England, here is your Shah; take him and be happy, but don’t ever ask
me to fetch over another one.”
This contract has been pretty straining on me.
III
THE SHAH AS A SOCIAL STAR
LONDON, _June 21, 1873_.
After delivering the Shah at the gates of that unsightly pile of dreary
grandeur known as Buckingham Palace I cast all responsibility for him
aside for the time being, and experienced a sense of relief and likewise
an honest pride in my success, such as no man can feel who has not had a
Shah at nurse (so to speak) for three days.
It is said by those who ought to know that when Buckingham Palace was
being fitted up as a home for the Shah one of the chief rooms was
adorned with a rich carpet which had been designed and manufactured
especially to charm the eye of His Majesty. The story goes on to say
that a couple of the Persian suite came here a week ago to see that all
things were in readiness and nothing overlooked, and that when they
reached that particular room and glanced at the lovely combination of
green figures and white ones in that carpet they gathered their robes
carefully up about their knees and then went elaborately tiptoeing about
the floor with the aspect and anxiety of a couple of cats hunting for
dry ground in a wet country, and they stepped only on the white figures
and almost fainted whenever they came near touching a green one. It is
said that the explanation is that these visiting Persians are all
Mohammedans, and green being a color sacred to the descendants of the
Prophet, and none of these people being so descended, it would be
dreadful profanation for them to defile the holy color with their feet.
And the general result of it all was that carpet had to be taken up and
is a dead loss.
Man is a singular sort of human being, after all, and his religion does
not always adorn him. Now, our religion is the right one, and has fewer
odd and striking features than any other; and yet my ancestors used to
roast Catholics and witches and warm their hands by the fire; but they
would be blanched with horror at the bare thought of breaking the
Sabbath, and here is a Persian monarch who never sees any impropriety in
chopping a subject’s head off for the mere misdemeanor of calling him
too early for breakfast, and yet would be consumed with pious remorse if
unheeding foot were to chance to step upon anything so green as you or
I, my reader.
Oriental peoples say that women have no souls to save and, almost
without my memory, many American Protestants said the same of babies. I
thought there was a wide gulf between the Persians and ourselves, but I
begin to feel that they are really our brothers after all.
After a day’s rest the Shah went to Windsor Castle and called on the
Queen. What that suggests to the reader’s mind is this:--That the Shah
took a hand satchel and an umbrella, called a cab and said he wanted to
go to the Paddington station; that when he arrived there the driver
charged him sixpence too much, and he paid it rather than have trouble;
that he tried now to buy a ticket, and was answered by a ticket seller
as surly as a hotel clerk that he was not selling tickets for that train
yet; that he finally got his ticket, and was beguiled of his satchel by
a railway porter at once, who put it into a first-class carriage and got
a sixpence, which the company forbids him to receive; that presently
when the guard (or conductor) of the train came along the Shah slipped a
shilling into his hand and said he wanted to smoke, and straightway the
guard signified that it was all right; that when the Shah arrived at
Windsor Castle he rang the bell, and when the girl came to the door
asked her if the Queen was at home, and she left him standing in the
hall and went to see; that by and by she returned and said would he
please sit down in the front room and Mrs. Guelph would be down
directly; that he hung his hat on the hatrack, stood his umbrella up in
the corner, entered the front room and sat down on a haircloth chair;
that he waited and waited and got tired; that he got up and examined the
old piano, the depressing lithographs on the walls and the album of
photographs of faded country relatives on the center table, and was just
about to fall back on the family Bible when the Queen entered briskly
and begged him to sit down and apologized for keeping him waiting, but
she had just got a new girl and everything was upside down, and so forth
and so on; but how are the family, and when did he arrive, and how long
should he stay and why didn’t he bring his wife. I knew that that was
the picture which would spring up in the American reader’s mind when it
was said the Shah went to visit the Queen, because that was the picture
which the announcement suggested to my own mind.
But it was far from the facts, very far. Nothing could be farther. In
truth, these people made as much of a to do over a mere friendly call as
anybody else would over a conflagration. There were special railway
trains for the occasion; there was a general muster of princes and dukes
to go along, each one occupying room 40; there were regiments of cavalry
to clear the way; railway stations were turned into flower gardens,
sheltered with flags and all manner of gaudy splendor; there were
multitudes of people to look on over the heads of interminable ranks of
policemen standing shoulder to shoulder and facing front; there was
braying of music and booming of cannon. All that fuss, in sober truth,
over a mere off-hand friendly call. Imagine what it would have been if
he had brought another shirt and was going to stay a month.