The excitement is caused by the coming of the King; and I wish that I
could present that event in just its sincere unimpressiveness. I have
assisted at several such events on the Continent, where, especially in
Germany, they are heralded as they are in the theatre, with a blare of
trumpets, and a sensation in the populace and the attendant military
little short of an ague fit. There, as soon as the majesties mount into
their carriages from the station, they drive off as swiftly as their
horses can trot, and their subjects, who have been waiting for hours to
see them, make what they can of a meagre half-minute’s glimpse of
them. But how different was the behavior of that easy-going Majesty of
England! As soon as I heard that he was coming, I perceived how anxious
I had been in the half-year of my English sojourn to see him, and how
bitterly I should have been disappointed to leave his realms without it.
All kings are bad, I knew that well enough; but I also knew that some
kings are not so bad as others, and I had been willing to accept at
their face the golden opinions of this King, which, almost without
exception, his lieges seemed to hold. Of course it is not hard to think
well of a king if you are under him, just as it is not hard to think
ill of him if you are not under him; but there is no use being bigotedly
republican when there is nothing to be got by it, and I own the fact
that his subjects like him willingly. Probably no man in his kingdom
understands better than Edward VII. that he is largely a form, and that
the more a form he is the more conformable he is to the English ideal
of a monarch. But no Englishman apparently knows better than he when to
leave off being a form and become a man, and he has endeared himself to
his people from time to time by such inspirations. He is reputed on all
hands to be a man of great good sense; if he is ever fooled it is not by
himself, but by the system which he is no more a part of than the least
of his subjects. If he will let a weary old man or a delicate woman
stand indefinitely before him, he is no more to blame for that than for
speaking English with a trace of German in his _th_ sounds; he did not
invent his origins or his traditions. Personally, having had it out with
life, he is as amiable and as unceremonious as a king may be. He shares,
as far as he can, the great and little interests of his people. He has
not, so far as noted, the gifts of some of his sisters, but he has much
of his mother’s steadfast wisdom, and his father’s instinct for the
right side in considerable questions; and he has his father’s prescience
of the psychological moment for not bothering. Of course, he is a
fetish; no Englishman can deny that the kingship is an idolatry; but
he is a fetish with an uncommon share of the common man’s divinity.
The system which provides him for the people provides them the best
administration in the world, always naturally in the hands of their
superiors, social and political; but we could be several times rottener
than we administratively are, and still be incalculably reasonabler, as
republicans, than those well-governed monarchists.
[Illustration: DURHAM CATHEDRAL--NORTHWEST VIEW]
Some of us are apt to forget the immense advantage which we have of the
monarchical peoples in having cast away the very name of King, for with
the name goes the nature of royalty and all that is under and around it.
But because we are largely a fond and silly folk, with a false conceit
of ourselves and others, we like to make up romances about the favor in
which thrones, municipalities, and powers hold us. Once it was the Tsar
of Russia who held us dear, and would do almost anything for Americans;
now it is the King of England who is supposed rather to prefer us to his
own people, and to delight to honor us. We attribute to him a feeling
which a little thought would teach, us was wholly our own, and which
would be out of nature if not out of reason with him. He is a man of
sense, and not of sentiment, and except as a wise politician he could
have no affection for a nation whose existence denies him. He is very
civil to Americans; it is part of a constitutional king’s business to be
civil to every one; but he is probably not sentimental about us; and we
need not be sentimental about him.
He looked like a man of sense, and not like a man of sentiment, that
day as he drove through the Doncaster street on his way to the sport he
loves beyond any other sport. He sat with three other gentlemen on the
sidewise seats of the trap, preceded by outriders, which formed the
simple turnout of the greatest prince in the world. He was at the end on
the right, and he showed fully as stout as he was, in the gray suit he
wore, while he lifted his gray top-hat now and then, bowing casually,
almost absently, to the spectators fringing, not too deeply, the
sidewalks. He was very, very stout, even after many seasons of
Marienbad, and after the sufferings he had lately undergone, and he
was quite like the pictures and effigies of him, down to those on the
postage-stamps. He has a handsome face, still bearded in the midst of a
mostly clean-shaving nation, and with the white hairs prevalent on
the cheeks and temples; his head is bald atop, though hardly from the
uneasiness of wearing a crown.
It was difficult to realize him for what he was, and in the unmilitary
keeping of a few policemen, he was not of the high histrionic presence
that those German majesties were. The good-natured crowd did not strain
itself in cheering, though it seemed to cheer cordially; and it did
not stay long after the trap tooled comfortably away. I then addressed
myself to a little knot of railway servants who lingered talking, and
asked them what some carriages were still waiting for at the door of the
station, and one of them answered with a lightness you do not expect
in England, “Oh, Lord This, and Lady That, and the Hon. Mr.
I-don’t-know-what’s-his-name.” The others laughed at this ribald satire
of the upper classes, and I thought it safer to follow the King to the
races lest I should hear worse things of them.