Faces and Places Part 2

was in an ecstasy of delight at things having gone on so well thus far. He positively pervaded the place, nervously changing the napkin from arm to arm, and frantically flicking off imaginary crumbs. At length it happily occurred to him that it would be well to go and see after the cutlets. Whereupon we emptied the soup back into the tureen, and when G. returned were discovered wiping our lips with the air of people who had already dined.

After all, there were the cutlets, and G. had not indulged in exaggerated approval of their excellence when in a state of nature.

They were those dainty cuts into which veal naturally seems to resolve itself in butcher's shops on the Continent. We observed with concern that they looked a little burned in places when they came to the table, and the same attraction of variety was maintained in the disposition of salt. There were large districts in the area of the cutlet absolutely free from savouring. But then you came upon a small portion where the salt lay in drifts, and thus the average was preserved. We were very hungry and ate the cutlets, which, with an allowance of bread, made up the dinner. There were some potatoes, fried with great skill, amid much of the compound we had agreed to call b.u.t.ter. But, as I explained to G. in reply to a deprecatory gesture when he took away the floating ma.s.s untouched, I have not for more than three years been able to eat a potato. One of my relations was, about that date, choked by a piece of potato, and since then I have never touched them, especially when fried in a great deal of b.u.t.ter.

We had some cheese, for which Earl Granville's family motto would serve as literal description. You might bend it, but could not break it. I never was partial to bent cheese, but we made a fair appearance with this part of the feast, owing to the arrival of G.'s dog, a miserable-looking cur, attracted to the banquet-hall by unwonted savours. He seemed to like the cheese; and G., when he came in with the coffee, was more than ever pleased with our appreciation of the good things provided for us.

"Rosbif and chiss--ha!" he said, breaking forth into English, and smiling knowingly upon us.

He felt he had probed the profoundest depths of the Englishman's gastronomical weakness.

With the appearance of the coffee the real pleasure of the evening commenced. Along nearly the whole of one side of the banquet-hall ran a fireplace, a recess of the proportions of a spare bedroom in an ordinary English house. There were no "dogs" or other contrivance for minimising the spontaneity of a fire. There are granite quarries near, and these had contributed an enormous block which formed a hearth raised about six inches above the level of the floor. On this an armful of brushwood was placed; and the match applied, it began to burn with cheerful crackling laughter and pleasant flame, filling the room with a fragrant perfume. For all other light a feeble oil lamp twinkled high up on the wall, and a candle burned on the table where we had so luxuriantly dined.

The fitful light shone on the oil paintings which partly hid the damp on the walls. There was a picture (not a bad one) of St.

Sebastian pierced with arrows, and in his death-agony turning heavenward a beautiful face. There was the portrait of another monk holding on to a ladder, each rung of which was labelled with a cardinal virtue. There was a crucifixion or two, and what elsewhere might well pa.s.s for a family portrait--an elderly lady, with a cap of the period, nursing a spaniel. The damp had spared the spaniel whilst it made grave ravages upon the lady, eating a portion of her cheek and the whole of her left ear.

G. having the dinner off his mind, and having, as was gathered from a fearsome clattering in the back premises, washed up the dishes, wandered about the shadows in the background and showed a disposition for conversation. It was now he unfolded that dream of the hotel some day to be built up here, with the porter in the hall, the waiters buzzing round, the old man, his father, in the receipt of custom, and he (G.) exercising his great natural talents in supervising the making of soup, the frying of potatoes, and the selection of elastic cheeses. He showed, with pardonable pride, a visitors' book in which was written "Leopold, Prince of Great Britain and Ireland." His Royal Highness came here one rainy day in 1876, riding on a mule, and escorted by a bedraggled suite.

Did they partake of any refreshments?

No; the father, G. frankly admits, lost his head in the excitement of the moment--a confession which confirms the impression that, on a much less auspicious occasion, it has been thought desirable that a younger and stronger man should a.s.sume the direction of affairs.

To proffer Royalty _potage au riz_ on such brief notice was of course out of the question. But the fatuous old gentleman had permitted a Prince of Great Britain and Ireland to descend the mountain without having tasted any other of the comestibles which were doubtless on hand at the time, and portions of which most probably remain to this day.

About eight o'clock there were indications from the shadowy portions of the banqueting chamber that G. was getting sleepy, and that the hour had arrived when it was usual for residents to retire for the night. Even on the top of a mountain one cannot go to bed at eight o'clock, and we affected to disregard these signals.

Beginning gently, the yawns increased in intensity till they became phenomenal. At nine o'clock G. pointedly compared the hour of the day as between his watch and mine.

It was hard to leave a bright wood fire and go to bed at nine o'clock; but G. was irresistible. He literally yawned us out of the room, up the staircase, and into the bed-chamber. There was a key hanging by the outside of the door the size of a small club, and weighing several pounds. On the inside the keyhole, contrary to habitude, was in the centre of the door. From this point of approach it was, however, useful rather for ventilation than for any other purpose, since the key would not enter. Looking about for some means of securing the door against possible intrusions on the part of G.

with a new soup, I discovered the trunk of a young tree standing against the wall. The next discovery was recesses in the wall on either side of the door, which suggested the evident purpose of the colossal bar. With this across the door one might sleep in peace, and I did till eight o'clock in the morning.

G. had been instructed to call us at sunrise if the morning were fair. As it happened, our ill luck of the evening was repeated in the morning. A thick mist obscured all around us, though as we pa.s.sed down to civilisation and Lugano the sun, growing stronger, lifted wreaths of white mist, and showed valley, and lake, and town bathed in glorious light.

CHAPTER III.

THE PRINCE OF WALES

We in this country have grown accustomed to the existence of the Prince of Wales, and his personality, real and fabulous, is not unfamiliar on the other side of the Atlantic. But if we come to think of it, it is a very strange phenomenon. The only way to realise its immensity is to conceive its creation today, supposing that heretofore through the history of England there had been no such inst.i.tution. A child is born in accidental circ.u.mstances and with chance connections that might just as reasonably have fallen to the lot of some other ent.i.ty. He grows from childhood through youth into manhood, and all the stages, with increasing devotion and deference, he is made the object of reverential solicitude. All his wants are provided for, even antic.i.p.ated. He is the first person to be considered wherever he goes. Men who have won renown in Parliament, in the camp, in literature, doff their hats at his coming, and high-born ladies curtsey.

It is all very strange; but so is the rising of the sun and the sequence of the moon. We grow accustomed to everything and take the Prince of Wales like the solar system as a matter of course.

Reflection on the singularity of his position leads to sincere admiration of the manner in which the Prince fills it. Take it for all in all, there is no post in English public life so difficult to fill, not only without reproach, but with success. Day and night the Prince lives under the bull's-eye light of the lantern of a prying public. He is more talked about, written about, and pulled about than any Englishman, except, perhaps, Mr. Gladstone. But Mr.

Gladstone stands on level ground with his countrymen. If he is attacked or misrepresented, he can hit back again. The position of the Prince of Wales imposes upon him the impa.s.sivity of the target used in ordinary rifle practice. Whatever is said or written about him, he can make no reply, and the happy result which in the main follows upon this necessary att.i.tude suggests that it might with advantage be more widely adopted.

Probably in the dead, unhappy night when the rain was on the roof and the Tranby Croft scandal was on everybody's tongue, the Prince of Wales had some bad quarters of an hour. But whatever he felt or suffered, he made no sign. To see him sitting in the chair on the bench in court whilst that famous trial was proceeding, no one, not having prior knowledge of the fact, would have guessed that he had the slightest personal interest in the affair. There was danger of his even over-doing the att.i.tude of indifference. But he escaped it, and was exactly as smiling, debonair and courtly as if he were in his box at the theatre watching the development of some quite other dramatic performance. He has all the courage of his race, and his long training has steeled his nerves.

It would be so easy for the Prince of Wales to make mistakes that would alienate from him the affection which is now his in unstinted measure. There are plenty of precedents, and a fatal fulness of exemplars. Take, for example, his relations with political life. It would not be possible for him now, as a Prince of Wales did at the beginning of the century, to form a Parliamentary party, and control votes in the House of Commons by cabals hatched at Marlborough House. But he might, if he were so disposed, in less occult ways meddle in politics. As a matter of fact, noteworthy and of highest honour to the Prince, the outside public have not the slightest idea to which side of politics his mind is bia.s.sed. They know all about his private life, what he eats, and how much; how he dresses, whom he talks to, what he does from the comparatively early hour at which he rises to the decidedly late one at which he goes to bed. But in all the gossip daily poured forth about him there is never a hint as to whether he prefers the politics of Tory or Liberal, the company of Lord Salisbury or Mr. Gladstone.

In a country where every man in whatever station of life is a keen politician, this is a great thing to say for one in the position of the Prince of Wales.

This absolute impartiality of att.i.tude does not arise from indifference to politics or to the current of political warfare.

The Prince is a Peer of Parliament, sits as Duke of Cornwall, and under that name figures in the division lists on the rare occasions when he votes. When any important debate is taking place in the House, he is sure to be found in his corner seat on the front Cross Bench, an attentive listener. Nor does he confine his attention to proceedings in the House of Lords. In the Commons there is no more familiar figure than his seated in the Peers' Gallery over the clock, with folded hands irreproachably gloved, resting on the rail before him as he leans forward and watches with keen interest the sometimes tumultuous scene.

Thus he sat one afternoon in the spring of the session of 1875. He had come down to hear a speech with which his friend, Mr. Chaplin, was known to be primed. The House was crowded in every part, a number of Peers forming the Prince's suite in the gallery, while the lofty figure of Count Munster, German Amba.s.sador, towered at his right hand, divided by the part.i.tion between the Peers'

Gallery and that set apart for distinguished strangers. It was a great occasion for Mr. Chaplin, who sat below the gangway visibly pluming himself and almost audibly purring in antic.i.p.ation of coming triumph. But a few days earlier the eminent orator had the misfortune to incur the resentment of Mr. Joseph Gillis Biggar.

All unknown to him, Joseph Gillis was now lying in wait, and just as the Speaker was about to call on the orator of the evening, the Member for Cavan rose and observed,--

"Mr. Speaker, Sir, I believe there are strangers in the house."

The House of Commons, tied and bound by its own archaic regulations, had no appeal against the whim of the indomitable Joey B. He had spied strangers in due form, and out they must go.

So they filed forth, the Prince of Wales at the head of them, the proud English Peers following, and by another exit the Envoy of the most potent sovereign of the Continent, representative of a nation still flushed with the overthrow of France--all publicly and peremptorily expelled at the raising of the finger of an uneducated, obscure Irishman, who, when not concerned with the affairs of the Imperial Parliament, was curing bacon at Belfast and selling it at enhanced prices to the Saxon in the Liverpool market.

The Prince of Wales bore this unparalleled indignity with the good humour which is one of his richest endowments. He possesses in rare degree the faculty of being amused and interested. The British workman, who insists on his day's labour being limited by eight hours, would go into armed revolt if he were called upon to toil through so long a day as the Prince habitually faces. Some of its engagements are terribly boring, but the Prince smiles his way through what would kill an ordinary man. His manner is charmingly unaffected, and through all the varying duties and circ.u.mstances of the day he manages to say and do the right thing. It is not a heroic life, but it is in its way a useful one, and must be exceedingly hard to live.

Watching the Prince of Wales moving through an a.s.semblage, whether it be as he enters a public meeting or as he strolls about the greensward at Marlborough House on the occasion of a garden party, the observer may get some faint idea of the strain ever upon him. You can see his eyes glancing rapidly along the line of the crowd in search of some one whom he can make happy for the day by a smile or a nod of recognition. If there were one there who might expect the honour, and who was pa.s.sed over, the Prince knows full well how sore would be the heart-burning.

There is nothing prettier at the garden party than to see him walking through the crowd of brave men and fair women with the Queen on his arm. Her Majesty used in days gone by to be habile enough at the performance of this imperative duty laid upon Royalty of singling out persons for recognition. Now, when he is in her company, the Prince of Wales does it for her. Escorting her, bare-headed, through the throng; he glances swiftly to right or left, and when he sees some one whom he thinks the Queen should smile upon he whispers the name. The Queen thereupon does her share in contributing to the sum of human happiness.

It is, as I began by saying, all very strange if we look calmly at it.

But, in the present order of things, it has to be done. It is the Prince of Wales's daily work, and it is impossible to conceive it accomplished with fuller appearance of real pleasure on the part of the active agent.

CHAPTER IV.

A HISTORIC CROWD.

"I very much regret that so much of your valuable time has been absorbed," said the Lord Chief Justice, speaking to the Tichborne Jury, as the ma.s.sive form of the Claimant vanished through the side door, never more to enter the Court of Queen's Bench; "but it will be a consolation to you to think that your names will be a.s.sociated in history with the most remarkable trial that has ever occurred in the annals of England."

There was another jury outside Sir Alexander c.o.c.kburn's immediate observation that always struck me, and I saw a good deal of it, as not the least notable feature in the great trial that at one time engrossed the attention of the English-speaking race. That was the crowd that gathered outside the Courts of Justice, then still an adjunct of Westminster Hall.

As there never was before a trial like that of the Claimant, so there never was a crowd like this. It had followed him through all the vicissitudes of his appeal to the jury of his countrymen, and of his countrymen's subsequently handing him over to another jury upon a fresh appeal. It began to flood the broad s.p.a.ces at the bottom of Parliament Street in far-off days when the case of Tichborne _v._ Lus.h.i.+ngton was opened in the Sessions House, and it continued without weariness or falling-off all through the progress of the civil suit, beginning again with freshened zeal with the commencement of the criminal trial.

Like the Severn, Palace Yard filled twice a day whilst the blue brougham had its daily mission to perform, the crowd a.s.sembling in the morning to welcome the coming Claimant, and foregathering in the evening to speed him on his departure westward. It ranged in numbers from 5000 down to 1000. Put the average at 3000, multiply it by 291, the aggregate number of days which the Claimant was before the Courts in his varied character of plaintiff and defendant, and we have 873,000 as the total of the a.s.semblage.

As a rule, the congregation of Monday was the largest of the week.

Why this should be, students of the manners of this notable crowd were not agreed. Some held that the circ.u.mstance was to be accounted for by the fact that two days had elapsed during which the Claimant was not on view, and that on Monday the crowd came back, like a giant refreshed, to the feast, which, by regular repet.i.tion, had partially palled on Friday's appet.i.te. Others found the desired explanation in the habit which partly obtains among the labouring cla.s.ses of taking Monday as a second day of rest in the week, and of devoting a portion of it to the duty of going down to Westminster Hall to cheer "Sir Roger."

Probably both causes united to bring together the greater crowd of Monday afternoons. It must not be supposed that the mob was composed wholly or princ.i.p.ally of what are called the working cla.s.ses. When an hon. member rose in the House of Commons, and complained of the inconvenience occasioned to legislators by the "Tichborne crowd,"

another member observed that, relative numbers considered, the House of Commons contributed as much to swell the throng as any other section of the people. During the last months of the trial, if any cla.s.s predominated it was that which came from the provinces. The Claimant was undoubtedly one of the sights of London and before his greater attraction the traditional Monument which elsewhere--

"Lifts its tall head and like a bully lies,"

sank into absolute insignificance. Not to have seen the Claimant, argued the London of the period unknown. Fas.h.i.+onably dressed ladies and exquisitely attired gentlemen battled for front places upon the pavement with st.u.r.dy agriculturists who had brought their wives and daughters to see "Sir Roger," and who had not the slightest intention of going back till they had accomplished their desire.

It came to pa.s.s that there were some two hundred faces in the crowd familiar to the police as daily attendants at the four o'clock festival in Palace Yard. Day after day, they came to feast their eyes on the portly figure of "Sir Roger," and, having gazed their fill, went away, to return again on the morrow. There was one aged gentleman whose grey gaiters, long-tailed coat, and ma.s.sive umbrella were as familiar in Palace Yard as are the features on the clock-face in the tower. He came up from somewhere in the country in the days when Kenealy commenced his first speech, and, being a hale old man, he survived long enough to be in the neighbourhood when the learned gentleman had finished his second. At the outset, he was wont to fight gallantly for a place of vantage in the ranks near the arch-way of the Hall. Then, before the advances of younger and stouter newcomers, he faded away into the background. Towards the end, he wandered about outside the railings in Bridge Street, and, as the clock struck four, got the umbrella as near as its natural obstructiveness would permit to the carriage-gate whence the Claimant's brougham was presently to issue.

At first the police authorities dealt with the a.s.sembly in the ordinary manner, a more or less sufficient force being told off for the duty of keeping the thoroughfare clear. It soon became manifest that the Tichborne crowd, like everything else in connection with the trial, required especial treatment, and accordingly a carefully elaborated scheme was prepared. Superintendent Denning had under his command, for the preservation of peace and order in Palace Yard and the adjacent thoroughfares, not less than sixty men. One or two were stationed in the justice-chamber itself, and must by the time the verdict had been delivered have got pretty well up in the details of the case. Others guarded the entrance-door; others lined the pa.s.sage into the yard, others were disposed about the yard itself; whilst, after three o'clock, two strong companies stood in reserve in the sheds that flank the entrance to the Hall. At half past three the crowd began to a.s.semble, building itself up upon the little nucleus that had been hanging about all day. The favourite standpoint, especially in the cold, uncertain winter weather that marked the conclusion of the trial, was inside Westminster Hall, where the people were ma.s.sed on the far side of a temporary barricade which the Tichborne case called into being, the railing of which was worn black by the touch of the hands of the faithful.

Outside, in the yard, the crowd momentarily thickened till it formed a dense lane, opening out from the front of the Hall, and turning to the left down to the south carriage-gate. The railings in Bridge Street and St. Margaret's Street were banked with people, and ranks were formed on the pavement in front of the gra.s.s-plot. At a quarter to four the policemen under the shed received the word of command, and marched out into St. Margaret's Street, some filing off to take charge of the gates, whilst the rest were drawn up on the pavement opposite and at the corner of Bridge Street, with the mission of preventing rushes after the Claimant's carriage as it drove through.