Westward with the Prince of Wales Part 9

With the crowd thick about him, His Royal Highness strove to force his way to the platform on which he was to speak and to give medals, but movement could only be accomplished at a slow pace. As he neared the platform, indeed, movement ceased altogether, and Prince and crowd were wedged tight in a solid ma.s.s. The pressure of the crowd seems to have been too much for him, for there was a moment when it seemed he would be thrown from his horse. A "movie" man on the platform came to his rescue, and catching him round the shoulders pulled him into safety over the heads of the crowd.

On this platform and in a setting of enthusiasm that cannot be described adequately, he spoke and gave medals to what seemed an endless stream of brave Canadians.

It was in the evening that he drove through the streets of the town, and I believe I am right in saying that he gave up other more restful engagements in order to undertake this ride that took several hours and was not less than twenty miles in length.

Toronto is a city in which the civic ideal is very strong, and the concern not merely of the munic.i.p.ality but of all the citizens. It believes in beautiful and up-to-date town planning, and the elimination of slums, of which it now has not a single example. On his ride the Prince saw every facet of the city's activity.

He drove through the beautiful avenues of Rosedale, and through the not so beautiful but more eclectic area of The Hill. He went through the suburbs of charming, well-designed houses where the professional cla.s.ses have their homes, and into the big, comely residential areas where the working people live. These areas are places of attractive homes. The instinct for good building which is the gift of the whole of America makes each house distinctive. There is never the hint of slum ugliness or slum congestion about them. The houses merely differ from the houses of the better-to-do in size, but, though they are smaller, they have the same pleasant features, neat colonial-style architecture, broad porches, unrailed lawns, and the rest. Inside they have central heating, electric light (the Niagara hydro-power makes lighting ridiculously cheap), baths, hardwood floors, and the other labour-saving devices of modern construction. Most of the houses are owned by the people who live in them, for the impulse towards purchase by deferred payments is very strong in the Canadian.

One of the brightest of the suburbs was built up almost entirely through the energy of the British emigrant. These men working in the city did not mind the "long hike" out into the country, to an area where the street cars were not known. From farming lots they built up a charming district where, now that street cars are more reasonable, the Canadian is also anxious to live--when he can find a householder willing to sell.

The Prince's route also lay through the big shopping streets such as Yonge ("street" is dropped in the West) and King. Here are the great and brilliant stores, and here the thrusting, purposeful Canadian crowd does its trading. There is a touch of determination in the Canadian on the sidewalk which seems ruthlessness to the more easy-going Britisher, yet it is not rudeness, and the Canadian is an extraordinarily orderly person, with a discipline that springs from self rather than from obedience to by-laws. It may be this that makes a Canadian crowd so decorous, even at the moment when it seems defying the policemen.

The Prince began his ride in the wonderful High Park, where Nature has had very little coddling from man, and the results of such non-interference are admirable, and in that park he at once entered into the avenue of people that was to border the way for twenty miles.

Again this crowd thickened at certain focal points. At the entrances of different districts, in the streets of heavily populated areas, about the cemetery where he planted a tree, it gathered in astonis.h.i.+ng ma.s.s, but the amazing thing was that no place on that twenty-mile run was without a crowd.

The whole of the city appeared to have come in to the street to cheer and wave flags or handkerchiefs as he pa.s.sed, just as the whole of the little boy population appeared to have made up its mind to run or cycle beside him for the whole of the journey despite all risks of cars behind.

The automobileocracy of the wealthy districts made grandstands of their cars at every cross-road (and the Correspondents don't thank them for this, for they tried to cut into the procession of cars after the Prince had pa.s.sed). The suburbans made their lawns into vantage points, and grouped themselves on the curb edge, and the working cla.s.ses simply overflowed the road in solid ma.s.ses of attractively dressed women and children and Canadianly-dressed men. "Attractively dressed" is a phrase to note; there are no rags or dowdiness in Canada.

There was a carnival air in the greeting of that mult.i.tude on that long ride, and the laughing and cheering affection of the crowds would have called forth a like response even in a personality less sympathetic than the Prince. It captured him completely. The formal salute never had a chance. First his answer to the cheering was an affectionate flag-waving, then the flag was not good enough and his hat came into play, then he was standing up and waving, and finally he again climbed on to the seat, and half standing, half sitting on the folded hood, rode through the delighted crowds. With members of his Staff holding on to him, he did practically the whole of the journey in this manner, sitting reasonably only at quiet spots, only changing his hat from right to left hand when one arm had become utterly exhausted. And all the way the crowds lined the route and cheered.

It was an astonis.h.i.+ng spectacle, an amazing experience. It was the just culmination of the three full days of profound and moving emotion in which Toronto had shown how intense was its affection.

The effect of such a demonstration on the Prince himself was equally profound. One of the Canadian Generals who had been driving with His Royal Highness on one of these occasions, told us that in the midst of such a scene as this the Prince had turned to him and said, "Can you wonder that my heart is full?"

CHAPTER IX

OTTAWA

I

The run from Toronto to Ottawa, the city that is a province by itself and the capital of Canada, was a night run, but there was, in the early morning, a halt by the wayside so that the train should not arrive before "skedule." The halt was utilized by the Prince as an opportunity for a stroll, and by the more alert of the country people as an opportunity for a private audience.

At a tiny station called Manotick farming families who believe in shaming the early bird, came and had a look at that royal-red monster of all-steel coaches, the train, while the youngest of them introduced the Prince to themselves.

They came out across the fields in twos and threes. One little boy, in a brimless hat, working overalls, and with a fair amount of his working medium, plough land, liberally distributed over him--Huckleberry Finn come to life, as somebody observed--worked hard to break down his shyness and talk like a boy of the world to the Prince. A little girl, with the ac.u.men of her s.e.x, glanced once at the train, legged it to her father's homestead, and came back with a basket of apples, which she presented with all the solemnity of an illuminated address on vellum.

It was always a strange sight to watch people coming across the fields from nowhere to gather round the observation platform of the train for these impromptu audiences. Every part of Canada is well served by newspapers, yet to see people drift to the right place at the right time in the midst of loneliness had a touch of wonder about it. These casual gatherings were, indeed, as significant and as interesting as the great crowds of the cities. There was always an air of laughing friendliness in them, too, that gave charm to their utter informality, for which both the Prince and the people were responsible.

From this apple-garnished pause the train pushed on, and pa.s.sing through the garden approach, where pleasant lawns and trees make a boulevard along a ca.n.a.l which runs parallel with the railway, the Prince entered Ottawa.

We had been warned against Ottawa, mainly by Ottawa men. We had been told not to expect too much from the Capital. As the Prince pa.s.sed from crowded moment to crowded moment in Toronto, the stock of Ottawa slumped steadily in the minds of Ottawa's sons. They became insistent that we must not expect great things from Ottawa. Ottawa was not like that. Ottawa was the taciturn "burg."

It was a city of people given over to the meditative, if sympathetic, silence. It was an artificial city sprung from the sterile seeds of legislature, and thriving on the arid food of Bills. It was a mere habitation of governments. It was a freak city created coldly by an act of Solomonic wisdom. Before 1858 it was a drowsy French portage village, sitting inertly at the fork of the Ottawa and Rideau rivers, concerning itself only with the lumber trade, almost inattentive to the battle which Montreal and Quebec, Toronto and Kingston were fighting for the political supremacy of the Dominion. Appealed to, to settle this dispute, Queen Victoria decided all feuds by selecting what had been the old Bytown, but which was now Ottawa, as the official capital of the Dominion.

Ottawa men pointed all this out to us, and declared that a town of such artificial beginnings, and whose present population was made up of civil servants and mixed Parliamentarians, could not be expected to show real, red-blood enthusiasm.

A day later those Ottawa men met us in the high and handsome walls of the Chateau Laurier, and they were entirely unrepentant. They were even proud of their false prophecy, and asked us to join them in a grape-juice and soda--the limit of the emotion of good fellows.h.i.+p in Canada (anyhow publicly) is grape-juice and soda--in order that they might explain to us how they never for a moment doubted that Ottawa would show the enthusiasm it had shown.

"This is the Capital of Canada, sir. The home of our Parliament and the Governor-General. It is the hub of loyalty and law. Of course it would beat the band."

II

I don't know that I want to quarrel with Ottawa's joke, for I am awed by the way it brought it off. Perhaps it brought it off on the Prince also. If so he must have had a shock, and a delightful one. For the taciturnity of Ottawa is a myth. When the Prince entered it on the morning of Thursday, August 28th, it was as silent as a whirlwind bombardment, and as reticent as a cyclone.

There were crowds, inevitably vast and cheering, with the invincible good-humour of Canada. They captured him with a rush after he was through with the formalities of being greeted by the Governor-General and other notabilities, and had mounted a carriage behind the scarlet outriders of Royalty. That carriage may have been more decorative but it was no more purposeful than an automobile would be under the circ.u.mstance. Even as the automobile, it went at a walking pace, with the crowd pressing close around it.

It pa.s.sed up from the swinging, open triangle that fronts the Chateau Laurier Hotel and the station, over the bridge that spans the Rideau Ca.n.a.l, and along the broad road lined with administration buildings and clubs, to the s.p.a.cious gra.s.s quadrangle about which the ma.s.sive Parliament buildings group themselves.

This quadrangle is a fit place to stage a pageant. It crowns a slow hill that is actually a sharp bluff clothed in shrubs that hangs over the startling blue waters of the Ottawa river. From the river the ma.s.s of buildings poised dramatically on that individual bluff is a sharp note of beauty. On the quadrangle, that is the city side, this note is lost, and the rough stone buildings, though dignified, have a tough, square-bodied look. Yet the ma.s.siveness of the whole grouping about the great s.p.a.ce of gra.s.s and gravel terraces certainly gives a large air. They form the adequate wings and backcloth for pageants.

And what happened that morning in the quadrangle was certainly a pageant of democracy.

There was a formal program, but on the whole the crowd eliminated that for one of its own liking. It listened to addresses; it heard Sir Robert Borden, and General Currie, only just returned to Canada, express the Dominion's sense of welcome. Then it expressed it itself by sweeping the police completely away, and surrounding the Prince in an excited throng.

In the midst of that crowd the Prince stood laughing and cheerful, endeavouring to accommodate all the hands that were thrust towards him.

A review of Boy Scouts was timed to take place, but the crowd "scratched" it. The neat wooden barricades and the neat ropes that linked them up about a neat parade ground on the green were reduced by the scientific process of bringing an irresistible force against a movable body. Boy Scouts ceased to figure in the program and became mere atoms in a ma.s.s that surrounded the Prince once more, and expressed itself in the usual way now it had him to itself.

As usual the Prince himself showed not the slightest disinclination for fitting in with such an impromptu ceremony. He was as happy and in his element as he always was when meeting everyday people in the closest intimacy. It was a carnival of democracy, but one in which he played as democratic a part as any among that throng.

Yet though the Prince himself was the direct incentive to the democratic exchanges that happened throughout the tour, there was no doubt that the strain of them was exhausting.

He possesses an extraordinary vitality. He is so full of life and energy that it was difficult to give him enough to do, and this and the fact that Canada's wonderful welcome had called into play a powerful sympathetic response, led him to throw himself into everything with a tireless zest. Nevertheless, the strenuous days at Toronto, followed by this strenuous welcome at Ottawa, had made great demands upon him, and it was decided to cut down his program that day to a Garden Party in the charming grounds of Government House, and to shelve all engagements for the next day, Friday, August 29th.

The Prince agreed to the dropping of all engagements save one, and that was the Public Reception at the City Hall on the 29th. It was the most exacting of the events on the program, but he would not hear of its elimination; the only alteration in detail that he made was that his right hand, damaged at Toronto, should be allowed to rest, and that all shaking should be done with the left.

The Public Reception took place. The only invitation issued was one in the newspapers. The newspapers said "The Prince will meet the City."

He did. The whole City came. It was again the most popular, as well as the most stimulating of functions. And it followed the inevitable lines. All manner of people, all grades of people in all conditions of costume attended. Old ladies again asked him when he was going to get married. Lumbermen in calf-high boots grinned "How do, Prince?"

Mothers brought babies in arms, most of them of the inarticulate age, and of awful and solemn dignity of under one--it was as though these Ottawa mothers had been inspired by the fine and homely loyalty of a past age, and had brought their babies to be "touched" by a Prince, who, like the Princes of old, was one with as well as being at the head of the great British family.

And with all the people were the little boys, eager, full of initiative and cunning. Shut out by the Olympians, one group of little boys found a strategic way into the Hall by means of a fire-escape staircase.

They had already shaken hands with the Prince before their flank movement had been discovered and the flaw in the endless queue repaired. That queue was never finished. Although, on the testimony of the experts, the Prince shook hands at the rate of forty-five to the minute, the time set aside for the reception only allowed of some 2,500 filing before him.

But those outside that number were not forgotten. The Prince came out to the front of the hall to express his regret that Nature had proved n.i.g.g.ardly in the matter of hands. He had only one hand, and that limited greetings, but he could not let them go without expressing his delight to them for their warm and personal welcome.

The disappointed ones recognized the limits of human endeavour. His popularity was in no way lessened. They were content with having seen "the cute little feller" as some of them called him, and made the most of that experience by listening to, and swopping anecdotes about, him.

Most of these centred round his accessibility. One typical story was about a soldier, who, having met him in France, stepped out from the crowd and hopped on to the footboard of his car to say "How d'y' do?"

The Prince gripped the khaki man's hand at once, and shaking it and holding the soldier safely on the car with his other hand, he talked while they went along. Then both men saluted, and the soldier hopped off again and returned to the crowd.

"It was just as if you saw me in an automobile and came along to tell me something," said the man who told me the story. "There was no king-stuff about it. And that's why he gets us. There isn't a sheet of ice between us and him."