I was commanded by my lord the Lord Mayor to make a report for the
archives, and was furnished with a fleet horse, and with a paper
permitting me to go anywhere at my will, without let or hindrance, even
up and down the processional route, though no other person not of the
procession itself was allowed this unique privilege during the whole of
the 21st and the 22d.
On the morning of the 22d, toward noon, I rode from the Tower into the
city, and through it as far as St. Paul’s. All the way, on both sides,
all the windows, balconies, and roofs were crowded with people, and
wherever there was a vacancy it had been built up in high tiers of seats
covered with red cloth, and these seats were also filled with people--in
all cases in bright holiday attire--the woman of fashion barring the
view from all in the rear with those tiresome extinguisher hats, which
of late have grown to be a cloth-yard high. From every balcony depended
silken stuffs of splendid and various colors, and figured and pictured
rich tapestries. It was brisk, sharp weather, but a rare one for sun,
and when one looked down this swinging double wall of beautiful fabrics,
glowing and flashing and changing color like prisms in the flooding
light, it was a most fair sight to see. And there were frequent May
poles, garlanded to their tops, and from the tops swung sheaves of
silken long ribbons of all bright colors, which in the light breeze
writhed and twisted and prettily mingled themselves together.
I rode solitary--in state, as it might be--and was envied, as I could
see, and did not escape comment, but had a plenty of it; for the
conduits were running gratis wine, and the results were accumulating. I
got many ribald compliments on my riding, on my clothes, on my office.
Everybody was happy, so it was best to seem so myself, which I did--for
those people’s aim was better than their eggs.
A place had been reserved for me on a fine and fanciful erection in St.
Paul’s Churchyard, and there I waited for the procession. It seemed a
long time, but at last a dull booming sound arose in the distance, and
after a while we saw the banners and the head of the procession come
into view, and heard the muffled roar of voices that welcomed it. The
roar moved continuously toward us, growing steadily louder and louder,
and stronger and stronger, and with it the bray and crash of music; and
presently it was right with us, and seemed to roll over us and submerge
us, and stun us, and deafen us--and behold, there was the hero of
Agincourt passing by!
All the multitude was standing up, red-faced, frantic, bellowing,
shouting, the tears running down their faces; and through the storm of
waving hats and handkerchiefs one glimpsed the battle banners and the
drifting host of marching men as through a dimming flurry of snow.
The king, tall, slender, handsome, rode with his visor up, that all
might see his face. He was clad in his silver armor from head to heel,
and had his great two-handed sword at his side, his battle-ax at his
pommel, his shield upon his arm, and about his helmet waved and tossed a
white mass of fluffy plumes. On either side of him rode the captive
dukes, plumed like himself, but wearing long crimson satin gowns over
their armor; after these came the French marshal similarly habited;
after him followed the fifteen hundred French knights, with robes of
various colors over their armor, and with each two rode two English
knights, sometimes robed in various colors, sometimes in white with a
red cross on the shoulder, these white-clad ones being Knights Templars.
Every man of the three thousand bore his shield upon his left arm, newly
polished and burnished, and on it was his device.
As the king passed the church he bowed his head and lifted his shield,
and by one impulse all the knights did the same; and so as far down the
line as the eye could reach one saw the lifted shields simultaneously
catch the sun, and it was like a sudden mile-long shaft of flashing
light; and, Lord! it lit up that dappled sea of color with a glory like
“the golden vortex in the west over the foundered sun”! (The
introduction of this quotation is very interesting, for it shows that
our literature of to-day has a circulation in heaven--pirated editions,
no doubt.--M.T.)
The knights were a long time in passing; then came 5,000 Agincourt
men-at-arms, and they were a long time; and at the very end, last of
all, came that intolerable old tun of sack and godless ruffler, Sir John
Oldcastle (now risen from the dead for the third time), fat-faced,
purple with the spirit of bygone and lamented drink, smiling his
hospitable, wide smile upon all the world, leering at the women,
wallowing about in his saddle, proclaiming his valorous deeds as fast as
he could lie, taking the whole glory of Agincourt to his single self,
measuring off the miles of his slain and then multiplying them by 5, 7,
10, 15, as inspiration after inspiration came to his help--the most
inhuman spectacle in England, a living, breathing outrage, a slander
upon the human race; and after him came, mumming and blethering, his
infamous lieutenants; and after them his “paladins,” as he calls them,
the mangiest lot of starvelings and cowards that was ever littered, the
disgrace of the noblest pageant that England has ever seen. God rest
their souls in the place appointed for all such!
There was a moment of prayer at the Temple, the procession moved down
the country road, its way walled on both sides by welcoming multitudes,
and so, by Charing Cross, and at last to the Abbey for the great
ceremonies. It was a grand day, and will remain in men’s memories.
That was as much of it as the spirit correspondent could let me have; he
was obliged to stop there because he had an engagement to sing in the
choir, and was already late.
The contrast between that old England and the present England is one of
the things which will make the pageant of the present day impressive and
thought-breeding. The contrast between the England of the Queen’s reign
and the England of any previous British reign is also an impressive
thing. British history is two thousand years old, and yet in a good many
ways the world has moved further ahead since the Queen was born than it
moved in all the rest of the two thousand put together. A large part of
this progress has been moral, but naturally the material part of it is
the most striking and the easiest to measure. Since the Queen first saw
the light she has seen invented and brought into use (with the exception
of the cotton gin, the spinning frames, and the steamboat) every one of
the myriad of strictly modern inventions which, by their united powers,
have created the bulk of the modern civilization and made life under it
easy and difficult, convenient and awkward, happy and horrible, soothing
and irritating, grand and trivial, an indispensable blessing and an
unimaginable curse--she has seen all these miracles, these wonders,
these marvels piled up in her time, and yet she is but seventy-eight
years old. That is to say, she has seen more things invented than any
other monarch that ever lived; and more than the oldest old-time English
commoner that ever lived, including Old Parr; and more than Methuselah
himself--five times over.
Some of the details of the moral advancement which she has seen are also
very striking and easily graspable.
She has seen the English criminal laws prodigiously modified, and 200
capital crimes swept from the statute book.
She has seen English liberty greatly broadened--the governing and
lawmaking powers, formerly the possession of the few, extended to the
body of the people, and purchase in the army abolished.
She has seen the public educator--the newspaper--created, and its
teachings placed within the reach of the leanest purse. There was
nothing properly describable as a newspaper until long after she was
born.
She has seen the world’s literature set free, through the institution of
international copyright.
She has seen America invent arbitration, the eventual substitute for
that enslaver of nations, the standing army; and she has seen England
pay the first bill under it, and America shirk the second--but only
temporarily; of this we may be sure.
She has seen a Hartford American (Doctor Wells) apply anæsthetics in
surgery for the first time in history, and for all time banish the
terrors of the surgeon’s knife; and she has seen the rest of the world
ignore the discoverer and a Boston doctor steal the credit of his work.
She has seen medical science and scientific sanitation cut down the
death rate of civilized cities by more than half, and she has seen these
agencies set bounds to the European march of the cholera and imprison
the Black Death in its own home.
She has seen woman freed from the oppression of many burdensome and
unjust laws; colleges established for her; privileged to earn degrees in
men’s colleges--but not get them; in some regions rights accorded to her
which lifted her near to political equality with man, and a hundred
bread-winning occupations found for her where hardly one existed
before--among them medicine, the law, and professional nursing. The
Queen has herself recognized merit in her sex; of the 501 lordships
which she has conferred in sixty years, one was upon a woman.
The Queen has seen the right to organize trade unions extended to the
workman, after that right had been the monopoly of guilds of masters for
six hundred years.
She has seen the workman rise into political notice, then into political
force, then (in some parts of the world) into the chief and commanding
political force; she has seen the day’s labor of twelve, fourteen, and
eighteen hours reduced to eight, a reform which has made labor a means
of extending life instead of a means of committing salaried suicide.
But it is useless to continue the list--it has no end.
There will be complexions in the procession to-day which will suggest
the vast distances to which the British dominion has extended itself
around the fat rotundity of the globe since Britain was a remote unknown
back settlement of savages with tin for sale, two or three thousand
years ago; and also how great a part of this extension is comparatively
recent; also, how surprisingly speakers of the English tongue have
increased within the Queen’s time.
When the Queen was born there were not more than 25,000,000
English-speaking people in the world; there are about 120,000,000 now.
The other long-reign queen, Elizabeth, ruled over a short 100,000 square
miles of territory and perhaps 5,000,000 subjects; Victoria reigns over
more territory than any other sovereign in the world’s history ever
reigned over; her estate covers a fourth part of the habitable area of
the globe, and her subjects number about 400,000,000.
It is indeed a mighty estate, and I perceive now that the English are
mentioned in the Bible:
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
The Long-Reign Pageant will be a memorable thing to see, for it stands
for the grandeur of England, and is full of suggestion as to how it had
its beginning and what have been the forces that have built it up.
I got to my seat in the Strand just in time--five minutes past ten--for
a glance around before the show began. The houses opposite, as far as
the eye could reach in both directions, suggested boxes in a theater
snugly packed. The gentleman next to me likened the groups to beds of
flowers, and said he had never seen such a massed and multitudinous
array of bright colors and fine clothes.
These displays rose up and up, story by story, all balconies and windows
being packed, and also the battlements stretching along the roofs. The
sidewalks were filled with standing people, but were not uncomfortably
crowded. They were fenced from the roadway by red-coated soldiers, a
double stripe of vivid color which extended throughout the six miles
which the procession would traverse.
Five minutes later the head of the column came into view and was
presently filing by, led by Captain Ames, the tallest man in the British
army. And then the cheering began. It took me but a little while to
determine that this procession could not be described. There was going
to be too much of it, and too much variety in it, so I gave up the idea.
It was to be a spectacle for the kodak, not the pen.
Presently the procession was without visible beginning or end, but
stretched to the limit of sight in both directions--bodies of soldiery
in blue, followed by a block of soldiers in buff, then a block of red, a
block of buff, a block of yellow, and so on, an interminable drift of
swaying and swinging splotches of strong color sparkling and flashing
with shifty light reflected from bayonets, lance heads, brazen helmets,
and burnished breastplates. For varied and beautiful uniforms and
unceasing surprises in the way of new and unexpected splendors, it much
surpassed any pageant that I have ever seen.
I was not dreaming of so stunning a show. All the nations seemed to be
filing by. They all seemed to be represented. It was a sort of
allegorical suggestion of the Last Day, and some who live to see that
day will probably recall this one if they are not too much disturbed in
mind at the time.
There were five bodies of Oriental soldiers of five different
nationalities, with complexions differentiated by five distinct shades
of yellow. There were about a dozen bodies of black soldiers from
various parts of Africa, whose complexions covered as many shades of
black, and some of these were the very blackest people I have ever seen
yet.
Then there was an exhaustive exhibition of the hundred separate brown
races of India, the most beautiful and satisfying of all the complexions
that have been vouchsafed to man, and the one which best sets off
colored clothes and best harmonizes with all tints.
The Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Africans, the Indians, the
Pacific Islanders--they were all there, and with them samples of all the
whites that inhabit the wide reach of the Queen’s dominions.
The procession was the human race on exhibition, a spectacle curious and
interesting and worth traveling far to see. The most splendid of the
costumes were those worn by the Indian princes, and they were also the
most beautiful and richest. They were men of stately build and princely
carriage, and wherever they passed the applause burst forth.
Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers, and still more and more soldiers and
cannon and muskets and lances--there seemed to be no end to this
feature. There are 50,000 soldiers in London, and they all seemed to be
on hand. I have not seen so many except in the theater, when thirty-five
privates and a general march across the stage and behind the scenes and
across the front again and keep it up till they have represented
300,000.
In the early part of the procession the colonial premiers drove by, and
by and by after a long time there was a grand output of foreign princes,
thirty-one in the invoice.
The feature of high romance was not wanting, for among them rode Prince
Rupert of Bavaria, who would be Prince of Wales now and future king of
England and emperor of India if his Stuart ancestors had conducted their
royal affairs more wisely than they did. He came as a peaceful guest to
represent his mother, Princess Ludwig, heiress of the house of Stuart,
to whom English Jacobites still pay unavailing homage as the rightful
queen of England.
The house of Stuart was formally and officially shelved nearly two
centuries ago, but the microbe of Jacobite loyalty is a thing which is
not exterminable by time, force, or argument.
At last, when the procession had been on view an hour and a half,
carriages began to appear. In the first came a detachment of two-horse
ones containing ambassadors extraordinary, in one of them Whitelaw Reid,
representing the United States; then six containing minor foreign and
domestic princes and princesses; then five four-horse carriages
freighted with offshoots of the family.
The excitement was growing now; interest was rising toward the boiling
point. Finally a landau driven by eight cream-colored horses, most
lavishly upholstered in gold stuffs, with postilions and no drivers, and
preceded by Lord Wolseley, came bowling along, followed by the Prince of
Wales, and all the world rose to its feet and uncovered.
The Queen Empress was come. She was received with great enthusiasm. It
was realizable that she was the procession herself; that all the rest of
it was mere embroidery; that in her the public saw the British Empire
itself. She was a symbol, an allegory of England’s grandeur and the
might of the British name.
It is over now; the British Empire has marched past under review and
inspection. The procession stood for sixty years of progress and
accumulation, moral, material, and political. It was made up rather of
the beneficiaries of these prosperities than of the creators of them.
As far as mere glory goes, the foreign trade of Great Britain has grown
in a wonderful way since the Queen ascended the throne. Last year it
reached the enormous figure of £620,000,000, but the capitalist, the
manufacturer, the merchant, and the workingmen were not officially in
the procession to get their large share of the resulting glory.
Great Britain has added to her real estate an average of 165 miles of
territory per day for the past sixty years, which is to say she has
added more than the bulk of an England proper per year, or an aggregate
of seventy Englands in the sixty years.
But Cecil Rhodes was not in the procession; the Chartered Company was
absent from it. Nobody was there to collect his share of the glory due
for his formidable contributions to the imperial estate. Even Doctor
Jameson was out, and yet he had tried so hard to accumulate territory.
Eleven colonial premiers were in the procession, but the dean of the
order, the imperial Premier, was not, nor the Lord Chief Justice of
England, nor the Speaker of the House. The bulk of the religious
strength of England dissent was not officially represented in the
religious ceremonials. At the Cathedral that immense new industry,
speculative expansion, was not represented unless the pathetic shade of
Barnato rode invisible in the pageant.
It was a memorable display and must live in history. It suggested the
material glories of the reign finely and adequately. The absence of the
chief creators of them was perhaps not a serious disadvantage. One could
supply the vacancies by imagination, and thus fill out the procession
very effectively. One can enjoy a rainbow without necessarily forgetting
the forces that made it.
LETTERS TO SATAN
(1897)