I wonder how many people who live in London lodgings look in the
mirror during their occasional shaves and think: "There goes the
rightful Duke of Brixton!"
O the wild dreams of London! The old man who starves himself that he
may search year after year for a document which conceals a coronet is
only less tenacious than the elderly virgin whose sole passion is the
belief that somebody way back in history "did her down" over a will.
There are humble, ragged people who must be positively shocked when
they cut a finger and discover that their blood is just ordinary red.
There are others who believe themselves to be the ground-landlords of
New York or Philadelphia, who go on living in the splendid hope that
some day--some day--that missing document will turn up to smooth out
the injustices of time.
The Record Office in Chancery Lane is the magnet which draws all
these queer people year after year. These unofficial dukes and earls
go off each morning with their luncheon in paper bags to hunt up
their ancestors. They are all so certain. So convincing. You can
put your head quite close to theirs and never hear the bee.
Their finger nails may be in mourning for their lost departed, their
collars may be greyish, and their cuffs frayed, but they have butlers
and scarlet carpets in their hearts, and in their eyes a hunger most
awful to see. There is a legend that one searcher who insisted on
being called "my lord," became tired of trying to justify his claim
and in a moment of enthusiasm hired a peer's robes and actually
succeeded in entering the House of Lords during a State ceremony!
What a moment!
There he stood for a moment among his peers. It must have been the
greatest moment of his life. It was during the State opening of
Parliament, and the House of Lords was waiting with lowered lights
for that moment when the King and the Queen, with white-satined pages
holding the royal trains, would enter at the precise moment, the
lights leap up and send a green and fiery glitter rippling along the
throats of the peeresses in the gallery. In this scene stood the
peer from Bloomsbury or Brixton or Balham, watching with who knows
what delicious thrills the Gentlemen-at-Arms standing at the doors
holding their halberds in white gauntleted hands while the lights
glanced off their golden helms. What a moment! And what, I wonder,
betrayed him? Why did they ask him to go? Did he show too much
confidence in his rightful surroundings, or did he say, "Granted, I'm
sure," to the duke who trod on his foot? I wonder....
When I entered the Record Office yesterday the curious round room,
like the smoking-room of an Atlantic liner that has taken to
book-collecting, was full of students and historians poring over
spidery Elizabethan script or muttering the English of Chaucer's day
beneath their breath. Now and again someone with the strawberry leaf
complex wanders in here, puts an old hat on the chair, and calls for
documents with the air of a rather weary Malvolio. Generally
speaking, the legacy and title hunters gather next door in the Legal
Search Room.
Here I found an assortment of women and men. Some were solicitors
and barristers looking up records, some were trying to claim funds in
Chancery, and others the usual fortune and title hunters.
This is merely a fraction of the interest this building holds for us.
It houses twenty-six miles of shelves packed with historic documents
and millions of unhistoric documents. Here are the bones of English
History. Come into the Museum known so well to those who have a
_flair_ for the right things, the Americans. Here in two portly
volumes is "Domesday Book," writ in a fair monkish hand. Shelves are
stacked with letters from kings and queens, generals and admirals,
cardinals and peers: humour, pathos, tragedy, passion. In one of
these Wolsey, "the King's poore, hevy and wrechyd prest," asks Henry
VIII to forgive him and take him back into favour. Queen Elizabeth's
hand is set to a number of letters, and to her are missives from many
men, including two who loved her. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester,
says in one: "I humbly kiss your foot," and the imprisoned Earl of
Essex is represented by a brief letter written for the eyes of
Gloriana alone.
You can read letters which recall cannon shot on the high seas, and
letters which give a vision of deep political plotting and such-like
villainy. "God has given us a good day in forcing the enemy so far
to leeward," wrote Sir Francis Drake aboard the "Revenge." "I hope
in God the Prince of Parma and the Duke of Sedonya shall not shake
handes this fewe days." Quite near you will find the last confession
of Guy Fawkes.
When you have enjoyed the flavour of these old days you may meet on
the stairs an ordinary cat. At least so it seems. It is Felix, and
he has been walking through history for centuries. It is the only
cat officially on a Government staff--in spite of anything women
secretaries in Whitehall may tell you! It receives a penny a day
from Government funds! I believe that the terms of its appointment
include a clause that it must keep itself clean, catch rats and mice,
and bring up its children. If anybody killed the official cat in
ancient times he had to forfeit sufficient wheat to cover the body.
* * *
The officer in charge of the Legal Search Room sits with the official
list of lost money before him--the funds in Chancery, which, by the
way, are only sufficient to make one decent full-blown
millionaire--as millionaires go nowadays.
"Yes," he said, "there are some strange searchers.
"In the summer many good, democratic Americans come over to trace
their ancestry back to William the Conqueror!"
"And the lost heirs," I said--"the would-be dukes?"
"Ah!" he replied. "Ah!"
He sighed.
I noticed a shabby old man mournfully shuffling out. I felt certain
that there was the ghost of ermine over him, and I hope that now and
then his landlady, just to keep his poor heart up, drops a curtsy
when she brings in the kippers and says: "Dinner is served--_your
grace_."