Sir William was asked by Lord Wolseley to take up the Aldershot command in the absence of Sir Redvers Buller, who was struggling very desperately to retrieve our fortunes in the Boer War; so to Aldershot we went from Devonport, where my husband"s command ran concurrently. How intensely England had hoped for the turning of the tide when Buller was given the tremendous task of directing our armies! We forget the horrors the nation went through in those days because the late War has made us pa.s.s through the same apprehensions multiplied by millions, but there the fact remains in our history that we nearly suffered a terrible catastrophe at the time of which I am writing. Buller, on leaving for the Cape, had said to my husband how fervently he wished he possessed his gift of imagination, and, indeed, that is a very precious gift to a commander. This truly awful state of things--our terrible losses, and the temporary lowering of our military prestige (thank heaven, so gloriously recovered and enhanced in the World War!)--were the answer to the repeated a.s.sertion made, when we were at the Cape, by those who ought to have known, that "the Boers won"t fight." How this used to enrage my husband, whose "gift of imagination" made him see so clearly the danger ahead. Well, all this is of the long ago, and, as I have already noted, it is better to say little now; but the sense of injustice lives!
[Ill.u.s.tration: A DESPATCH-BEARER, BOER WAR, AND THE HORSE-GUNNERS.]
Buller had a great reception at Aldershot on his return from South Africa. I never saw a more radiantly happy face on a woman than poor Lady Audrey"s, who had been in a state of most tense anxiety during her dear Redvers" absence. As the train steamed into the station the band struck up "See the Conquering Hero comes!" The horses of his carriage were unharnessed, and the triumphal car was drawn by a team of firemen to Government House. At the entrance gate a group of school children sang "Home, sweet Home"; my husband hauled down his flag and Buller"s was run up, and so that episode closed.
We had inhabited a suburban-looking villa on the road to Farnborough during the absence of Sir Redvers, not wishing to disturb the anxious watcher at Government House, and very often we saw the Empress, just as in the old days. She told us the dear Queen was very ill, far worse than the world was allowed to know. My husband had always said the war would kill her, for she had taken our losses cruelly to heart, and so it happened on January 22nd, 1901. The resumed Devonport Diary says:
"A day ever to be marked in English history as a day of mourning. Our Queen is dead. At dinner S. brought us the news that she pa.s.sed away at 6.30 this afternoon. We were prepared for it, but it seems like a dream.
To us who have been born and have lived all our lives under her sovereignty it is difficult to realise that she is gone.
"_January 23rd, 1901._--A dull gloomy day, punctuated by 81 minute guns, which began booming at noon. All the royal standards and flags hanging half-mast in the fog, on land and afloat.
"_January 24th._--At noon-day all standards and flags were run up to the masthead, and a quick thunder of guns proclaimed the accession of Edward VII. At the end the band on board the guardship _Nile_ struck up "G.o.d Save the King." The flags will all be lowered again until the day after Queen Victoria is laid to rest. Edward VII.! How strange it sounds, and how events and changes are rolling down upon us every hour now. Albert Edward will be a greater man as Edward VII.
"_February 5th._--The Queen was buried to-day beside her husband at Frogmore. It is inexpressibly touching to think of them side by side again. Model wife and mother, how many of your women subjects have strayed away, of late, from those virtues which you were true to to the last!
"_February 16th._--There is great indignation amongst us Catholics at Edward VII. having been called upon to take the oath at the opening of Parliament which savours so much of the darkest days of "No Popery"
bigotry. I think it might have been modified by this time, and the lies about "idolatry" and the "worship" of the Virgin Mary eliminated. Could not the King have had strength of mind enough to refuse to insult his Catholic subjects? I know he must have deeply disliked to p.r.o.nounce those words.
"_August 6th._--Again the flags to-day are at half-mast, and so is the royal standard, and this time, on the men-of-war, it is the German flag!
The Empress Frederick died yesterday." I never mentioned at the time of our visit to the Connaughts at Bagshot, when we were first at Aldershot, a touching incident concerning her. Sir William sat next to her at dinner, and, _a propos_ of a really fine still-life picture painted by her, which hung over the dining-room door in the hall, he asked her whether she still kept up her painting. "No," she said, "I have cried myself blind!" What with one Empress crying as though her heart would break in speaking to him that time at Camden Place and this Empress telling him she had cried herself blind----! The illness and death of the Kaiser Frederick must have been a period of great anguish.
During this summer I was very busy with my picture of the "10th Bengal Lancers at Tent Pegging," a subject requiring much sunshine study, which I have already mentioned.
In September, Lord Roberts--"the miniature Field Marshal," as I call him in the Diary--came down on inspection, and great were the doings in his honour. "How will this little figure stand in history? Will"s well-planned defence against a night attack from the sea came off very well this dark still night, though the navy were nearly an hour late.
There was too much waiting, but when, at last, the enemy torpedo boats and destroyers appeared, the whole Sound was bordered with such a zone of fire that, had it been real war, not a rivet of the invader"s flotilla would have been left in possession of its hold. "Bobs" must have been gratified at to-night"s display, which he reviewed from Stonehouse.
"Our Roberts dinner was of twenty-two covers, and the only women were Lady Charles Scott, myself and C. A guard of honour was at the front door, and presented arms as the Field Marshal arrived, the band playing.
He certainly is diminutive. A nice face, soldierlike, and a natural manner. With him that too jocose Evelyn Wood and others. "Bobs," of course, took me in to dinner, and, on my left, Lord Charles Scott took in C. Will took in Lady Charles. The others--Lord Mount Edgc.u.mbe, H.S.H.
Prince Louis of Battenberg (in command of the _Implacable_), Admiral Jackson, and so forth--subsided into their places according to seniority. Every man in blue or red except one rifleman. Soft music during dinner and two bars of the National Anthem before the still unfamiliar "The King, G.o.d bless him!" at dessert. Will still feels a little--I don"t know how to express it--of the mental hesitation before changing "the Queen" which he felt so strongly at first. He was very truly attached to her. I was back in the drawing-room in good time to receive the crowd, who came in a continuous flow, all with an expectant smile, to pay homage to the Lion. I don"t think I forgot anybody"s name (coached by the A.D.C.) in all those introductions, but that item of my duties is a thing I dread. I never saw people in such good humour at any social function before. We certainly _do_ love to honour our soldiers.
But, all the time, things are not going too well with us in the war!
"_September 14th._--Again the flags half-mast! Now it is the "Stars and Stripes." Poor President McKinley succ.u.mbed to-day to his horrible wound. The surgeons wouldn"t let him die for a long while, though he asked them to. They did their best.
"_March 7th, 1902._--And now for the royal visit, the princ.i.p.al occasion for which is the launching of the great battleship the _Queen_, by Queen Alexandra. Will was responsible for all matters ash.o.r.e, as the admiral was for those afloat. Lady Charles and I had to be on the platform at North Road to receive Their Majesties, the only other women there being Lady Morley and the Plymouth Mayor"s daughter, bearing a bouquet for presentation. The royal train had an engine decorated in front of its funnel with an enormous gilt crown, and I was pleased, as it majestically glided into the station, to see that it is possible even in railway prose to have a little dash of poetry. The band struck up, the guard of honour presented arms with a clang. First, out sprang lacqueys carrying bags and wraps who scurried to the royal carriages waiting outside, and out sprang various admirals and diplomats in hot haste, all with rather anxious faces veneered with smiles. And then, leisurely, the ever lovely and self-possessed Queen and her kindly and kingly consort, wearing, over his full-dress admiral"s uniform, a caped overcoat.
Salutes, bows, curtseys, smiles, handshakes. Will presents the great silver Key of the Citadel, which Charles II. had made for locking the Great Gate against the refractory people. Edward VII. touches it and the General Commanding returns it to the R.A. officer, who has charge of it.
We all kiss the King"s hand as seeing him for the first time to speak to since his accession. The Queen withdraws her hand quickly before any officer can salute it in like manner, which looks a little ungracious.
Whilst the General and Admiral are introducing their respective staffs to the King, the Queen has a little chat with me and asks after my painting and so forth. She is very fond of that water colour I did for her alb.u.m at Dover of a trooper of her "own" 19th Hussars at tent-pegging. Lady Charles and I did not join in the procession through the Three Towns to the dockyard, but hastened home to avoid the crowd.
"In the evening we dined with Their Majesties on board the royal yacht over part of which floating palace C. and I had been conducted in the morning. Whatever the yacht"s sailing value may be she certainly cuts out the Kaiser"s _Hohenzollern_ in her internal splendour. When it comes to washstand tops of onyx and alabaster; and carpets of unfathomable depth of pile, and hangings in bedrooms of every shade of delicate colour, "toning," as the milliners say, with each particular set of furniture; and the most elaborately beautiful arrangements for lighting and warming electrically, and so on, and so on--one rather wonders why so much luxury was piled on luxury in this new yacht which the King, I am told, does not like on the high seas. Her lines are not as graceful as those of the old _Victoria and Albert_, and it is said she "rolls awful"!
"Well, to dinner! As we drove up to the yacht, which is moored right opposite the Port Admiral"s house and is the habitation of the King and Queen during their sojourn here, we saw her outlined against the pitch black sky by coloured electric lamps, which was pretty. Equerries, secretaries and Miss Knollys received us at the top of the gangway, and the ladies of the Queen soon filed into the ante-chamber (or cabin) where they and we, the guests, awaited Their Majesties. Full uniform was ordered for the men, and we ladies were requested to come in "high, thin dresses," as, it appears, is the etiquette on board royal yachts. There were the Admiral and Lady Charles, the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Buccleugh, Lord and Lady St. Germans, Lord Walter Kerr, Lord Mount Edgc.u.mbe ("the Hearl," as he is known to Plymothians), the Bishop of Exeter, Lady Lytton and others up to about thirty-six in number. The King, still dressed as an admiral, and the Queen in a charming black and white semi-transparent frock, with many ropes of pearls, soon came in, and, the curtseying over, we filed into the great dining saloon brilliantly lighted and splendid. The King led in his daughter, Princess Victoria.
Buccleugh led in the Queen, and so on. How unlike the painfully solemn, whispered dinners of dear old Queen Victoria was this banquet. We shouted of necessity, as the band played all the time. The King and Queen seem to me to have acquired an _expanded_ dignity since they have come to the Throne. Will and I could not do justice to the dinner as it was Friday, but that didn"t matter. After the sweets the head servant (what Goliaths in red liveries they all are!) handed the King a _snuff box_! I was so fascinated by the sight of the descendant of the Georges engaged in the very Georgian act of taking a pinch that my eyes were riveted on him. I love history and am always trying to revive the past in imagination. It is true that "a cat may look at a King," but then I am _not_ a cat (at least I hope not). I only trust His Majesty didn"t mind, but he certainly saw me!
"After dinner we women went down with the Queen to her boudoir, where an Egyptian-looking servant wearing a _tarboosh_ handed us coffee of surpa.s.sing aroma, and Her Majesty showed us her beloved little j.a.panese dog and some of the pretty things about the room. She then asked us to see her bedroom (which I had already seen that morning) and the little dog"s basket where he sleeps near her bed. She is still extremely beautiful. Her figure is youthful and shapely, and all her movements are queenly. The King had quite a long talk with Will about this dreadful Boer War which is causing us all so much anxiety, after we went up again. He then came over to me, and after a few commonplaces he came nearer and in a confidential tone began about Will. I think he is fond of him. What he said was kind, and I knew he wanted me to repeat his sympathetic words to my husband afterwards. He spoke of him as a "splendid soldier." I know he had in his mind the painful trial Will had gone through. It was late when Their Majesties bade us good-night.
"_March 8th._--The great day of the launch of H.M.S. _Queen_. I wonder if the hearts of the sailors beat anxiously to-day at all! A quieter, more unemotional-looking set of men than those naval bigwigs could nowhere be seen in the world. But, first of all, there was the medal-giving at the R.N. Barracks, where Ladies Poore and Charles Scott, Mrs. Jackson and myself had to receive the King and Queen by the side of our respective husbands on a raised das in the centre of the huge parade ground. It was very cold, and the Queen told me she envied me my fur-lined coat. Will said I missed an opportunity of making a pendant to Sir Walter Raleigh! The function was very long, for the King had to give a medal to each one of the three hundred bluejackets and marines who pa.s.sed before him in single file. At the launching place we all a.s.sembled on a great platform, and there in front of us stood the huge hull of the battleship, the ram projecting over the little table on which the Queen was to cut the ropes. That red-painted ram was garlanded with flowers, and the bottle hung from the garland, completely hidden under a covering of roses. It contained red Australian wine, a very sensible change from the French champagne of former times. Down below an immense crowd of workmen waited, some of them right under the ship, and all round, in the different stands, were dense ma.s.ses of people. We were soon joined by three German naval grandees and two j.a.panese _leprechauns_, one an admiral, a toadlike-looking creature in a uniform entirely copied from ours. Our new allies are not handsome. Then came the Bishop of Exeter, in robes and cap and with a peaked beard, a living Holbein in the dress of Cranmer. How could I, a painter, not delight in that figure? I told a friend that bishop had no business to be alive, but ought to be a painting by Holbein, on panel. What does she do but whisk off straight to him and Mrs. Bishop and tell them! Our privileged group kept swelling with additions of officers in full glory and smart women in lovely frocks, and bouquets were brought in, and everything was to me perfectly charming. Monarchy calls much beauty into existence.
Long may it endure!
"At last there was a stir; the monarchs came up the inclined approach and the band struck up. They took their places facing the ship"s bows, and Cranmer on panel by Holbein blessed the ship in as nearly a Catholic way as was possible, with the sign of the cross left out. A subordinate held his crozier before him. A hymn had previously been sung and a psalm, followed by the Lord"s Prayer. Then came the "christening"
(strange word), a picturesque Pagan ceremony. The Queen brightened up after the last "Amen" and, nearing the table, reached over to the flower-decked bottle; then, stepping back, swung it from her against the monstrous ram, saying, "G.o.d bless this ship and all that sail in her." I heard a little crack, and only a few red drops trickled down. This wouldn"t do, for she immediately seized the bottle again and, stepping well back this time and holding the bottle as high over her head as the ropes would allow, flung it with such violence that it smashed all to pieces and the red wine gushed over her hands and sleeves and poured out its last drops on the table. A great cheer rang out at this, and the King laughingly seemed to say to her, "You did it this time with a vengeance!" She flushed up, looking as though she enjoyed the fun. Then came the great moment of the cutting by the Queen of the little ropes that held the monster bound as by silken threads. Six good taps with the mallet, severing the six strands across a "turtle back" in the centre of the table, and away flew the two ropes down amongst the cheering crowd of workmen and, automatically, down came the two last supports on either side of the yet impa.s.sive hull. Still impa.s.sive--not a hair"s breadth of movement! A painful pause. Some men below were pumping the hydraulic apparatus for all they were worth. I kept my eye on the nose of the ram, gauging it by some object behind. Firm as a rock! At last a tiny movement, no more than the starting of a snail across a cabbage leaf.
"She"s off!" A hurricane of cheers, and with the most admirable and dignified acceleration of speed the great ship, seeming to come into life, glided down the slips and, ploughing through the parting and surging waters, floated off far into the Hamoaze to the strains of "Rule Britannia." Queen Alexandra, in her elation, made motions with her arms as though she was shoving the ship off herself. Scarcely had the battleship _Queen_ pa.s.sed into the water than the blocks displaced by her pa.s.sage were rolled back, still hot as it were from the friction, into the position they had occupied before she moved, and the King, stepping forward, turned a little electric handle at the table, and lo!
the keel plate of the _Edward VII_. slowly moved forward and stopped in its position on the blocks as the germ of the new battleship. The King, in a loud voice, proclaimed that the keel plate of the _Edward VII_. was "well and truly laid," and a great cheer arose and "G.o.d Save the King,"
and all was over. A new battleship was born.[14] We met Their Majesties at the Port Admiral"s at tea, and Will dined with them, together with some of his staff.
"_March 10th_.--Saw Their Majesties off. I wonder if they were getting tired of seeing always the same set of faces and smiles? I am going to present C. at Court on the 14th, and my function twin, Lady Charles, is going there, too, so I shall feel it will be a case of "Here we are again," when I meet the royal eye that night. In the evening the news of Methuen"s defeat and capture by Delarey. To think this horror was going on the day we received the King and Queen at North Road Station!
"_March 14th_.--The King"s Court was much better arranged than formerly, as we had only to make two curtseys--nothing more--instead of having to run the gauntlet of a long row of princes and princesses who were abreast of Queen Victoria (or her representative), and who used to inspect one from head to foot. These were now grouped behind the monarchs, and formed a rich, subdued background to the two regal figures on their thrones. (What a blessing to the aforesaid princes and princesses to be spared the necessity of pa.s.sing all those nervous women in review, and by daylight, too!) Altogether the music and the generally more festive character of the function struck one as a great and happy improvement on the old dispensation. The King and Queen didn"t exactly say, "How do you do again?" as I appeared, but looked it as I met their smiling eyes. This is the first Court of the King"s reign.
"_March 27th_.--Cecil Rhodes died yesterday. I am glad I saw him at the Cape. One morning just at sunrise I and the children were driving to Ma.s.s during the mission and, as we pa.s.sed over the railway line, we saw people riding down from "Grootschuur." The foremost horseman was Cecil Rhodes, looking very big and with a wide red face. He gave me a searching look or stare as if trying to make out who I was in the shade of the carriage hood. So I saw his face well.
"_April 3rd_.--Will and I are invited by the King and Queen to see them crowned at Westminster. I am to wear "court dress with plumes but without train." But what if the nightmare war still is dragging on in June? The time is getting short! We hear the King is getting anxious.
Lord Wolseley"s trip to the Cape (for his health!) is supposed to have really to do with bringing about peace. But "ware politics" for me.
They are not in my line. What a wet blanket would be spread as a pall over all the purple canopies in Westminster Abbey if war was still brooding over us all! Imagine news of a new Methuen disaster on the morning of June 26th!"
On Varnishing Day that spring at the Royal Academy I found that my tent-pegging picture could not look to greater advantage, but it was in the last room, where the public looks with "lack-l.u.s.tre eyes," being tired.
On June 21st I left to attend the Coronation of Edward VII., spending two days at d.i.c.k"s monastery at Downside on the way, high up in the Mendip Hills. I note: "I had a bright little room at the guest house just outside the precincts. That night the full moon, that emblem of serenity, rose opposite my window, and I felt as though lifted up above that world into which I was about to plunge for my partic.i.p.ation in the pomp of the Coronation in a few hours. It is inexpressibly touching to me to see my son where he is. A hard probation, for the Benedictine test is long and severe, as indeed the test is, necessarily, throughout the Religious Orders.
"_June 24th_.--Memorable day! I was pa.s.sing along Buckingham Palace Road at 12.30 when I saw a poster: "Coronation Postponed"! Groups of people were buying up the papers. Of course, no one believed the news at first, and people were rather amusedly perplexed. No one had heard that the King was ill. On getting to Piccadilly I saw the official posters and the explanation. An operation just performed! and only yesterday Knollys telling the world there was "not a word of truth in the alarming rumours of the King"s health." I and Mrs. C. went to a dismal afternoon concert at 2.30 to which we were pledged, and which the promoters were in two minds about postponing, and we left in the middle to stroll about the crowded streets and watch the effect of the disastrous news. There was something very dramatic in the scene in front of the palace--the huge crowd waiting and watching, the royal standard drooping on the roof (not half-mast yet?), and the sense of brooding sorrow over the great building, which held the, perhaps, dying King. What a change in two or three hours!
"_June 26th_.--This was to have been the Coronation Day. General dismantling. Those dead laurel wreaths still lying in the gutters are said to be the same that were used at the funeral of King Humbert. What a weird thought! The crowds are thinning, but still, at night, they gaze at the little clumps of illuminations which some people exhibit, as the King is going on well. "_Vivat Rex_" flares in great brilliancy here and there. The words have a deeper meaning than usual. May he live!
"_June 27th_.--This was to have been the day of the royal procession.
Where is that rose-colour-lined coach I so looked forward to? Lying idle in its cover. Every one is moralising. Even the clubmen, Will tells me, are furbishing up little religious plat.i.tudes and texts; many are curiously superst.i.tious, which is strange."
On our return home I was very busy in the studio. There was much galloping and trotting of horses up and down in the Government House grounds for my studies of movement for my next Academy picture (dealing with Boer War yeomanry) and others.
"_August 9th_.--King Edward VII. was crowned to-day. At about 12.40 the guns firing in the Sound and batteries announced that, at last, the Coronation was consummated. We were asked to the ceremony, but could not go up this time."
A little tour in France, with my husband and our two girls, made in September, 1902, gave us sunny days in Anjou on the Loire. The majestic rivers of France are her chief attraction for the painter, and to us English Turner"s charm is inseparably blended with their slowly flowing waters. We were visitors at a _chateau_ at Savonnieres, near Angers, for most of the time, and our hosts took care that we should miss none of the lovely things around their domain. The German "Ocean Greyhounds" of the Hamburg-Amerika line used to call at Plymouth in those days, huge, three-funnel monsters which, I think, we have since appropriated, and one of these, the _Augusta Marie_, bore us off to Cherbourg in all the pride of her gorgeous saloons, flower-decked tables, band, and extraordinary bombastic oleographs from allegorical pictures by the Kaiser William II. As we boarded her the band played "G.o.d Save the King," the captain receiving Sir William with finished regulation attention, and hardly had the great twin engines swung the ship into the Sound to receive her pa.s.sengers, than with another swing forward, which made the masts wriggle to their very tops, she was off. It was the "Ma.r.s.eillaise" as we reached France. That band played us nearly the whole way over. A really pretty idea, this, of playing the national air of each country where the ship touched.
It was vintage time at Savonnieres, which was a French "Castagnolo," a most delightful translation into French of that Italian patriarchal home. There were stone terraces garlanded with vines bearing--not the big black grapes of Tuscany, but small yellow ones of surpa.s.sing sugariness. We were in a typical and beautiful bit of France, peaceful, plenteous, and full of dignity. They lead the simple life here such as I love, which is not to be found in the big English country houses, as far as I know. I was truly pleased at the sight of the peasantry at Ma.s.s on the Sunday. The women in particular had that dignity which is so marked in their cla.s.s, and the white lace coifs they wore had many varieties of shape, all most beautiful, and were very _soignees_ and neatly worn. Not an untidy woman or girl amongst these daughters of the soil.
I was anxious to see "Angers la Noire," where we stayed on our way from Savonnieres to Amboise. But the black slate houses which gave it that name are being turned into white stone ones, and so its grim characteristic is pa.s.sing away. Give me character, good or bad; characterless things are odious. I don"t suppose a more perfect old Angevin town exists than Amboise. It fulfilled all I required and expected of it. How Turner understood these towns on the broad, majestic Loire! He occasionally exaggerated, but his exaggerations were always in the right direction, emphasising thus the dominant beauties of each place and their local sentiment. Which recalls the deep charm of the rivers of France more subtly to the mind, Turner"s series or an alb.u.m of photographs? Turner"s mind saw more truly than the camera. The castle of Amboise is superb and its creamy white stone a glory. Then came Blois, with a quite different reading of a castle, where plenty of colour and gilding and Gothic richness gave the character--not so restful to eye and mind as Amboise. Through both the _chateaux_ we were marshalled along by a guide. I would sooner learn less of a place, by myself, than be told all by a tiresome man in a _cicerone"s_ livery. Plenty of horrors were supplied us at both places, vitiating my otherwise simple pleasure as a painter in the sight of so much beauty.
We returned to Plymouth Sound on a lovely day, and there our blue launch, with that bright bra.s.s funnel I had so long agitated for, was awaiting us, and we landed at the steps of Mount Wise as though we had merely been for a trip to Penlee Point.
I found my picture of the yeomanry cantering through a "spruit" in the Boer War, "Within Sound of the Guns," admirably placed this time at Burlington House, in the spring of 1903. I had greatly improved in tone by this time. Millais" remark once upon a time, "She draws better than any of us, but I wish her _tone_ was better," had sunk deep.
On July 14th, 1903, the Princess Henry of Battenberg (as the t.i.tle was then), with a suite of six, paid us a visit of two days at Government House, and we had, of course, a big reception, which was inevitable. Our guest hated the ordeal of all those presentations, being very retiring, and I sympathised. I heard her murmur to her lady, Miss Bulteel, "I shall die," as the first arrival was announced. And there she had to stand till I and the A.D.C. had finished terrifying her with about 250 people in succession. What a tax royalty has to pay! There was the laying of a foundation stone, a trip in the launch up the Tamar, and something to be done each day, but with as many rests as we could squeeze in for our very _simpatica_ princess. The drive through the streets of Plymouth showed me what the crowd looks like from royalty"s point of view as I sat by her side in the carriage. I remarked to her what bad teeth the people had. "They are nothing to those in the north,"
the poor dear said. How often royalty has to run that gauntlet of an unlovely and cheering crowd!
I was now to go through the great ordeal of witnessing our dear d.i.c.k"s[15] taking his vows. This was on September 4th, 1903, at Belmont Minster, Hereford.
On July 10th, 1904, a German squadron of eighteen men-of-war came thundering into the Sound, and on the 12th we a.s.sembled a Garden Party of about three hundred guests to give the three admirals and their officers a very proper welcome. Eighteen beautiful ships, but all untried. I lunched on board the flagship, the _Kaiser Wilhelm II._, on the previous day, and anything to equal the dandified "get up" of that war vessel could not be found afloat. Wherever there was an excuse for a gold Imperial crown, there it was, relieved by the spotless whiteness of its surroundings. The fair-haired bluejackets were extremely clean and comely, but struck me as being drilled too much like soldiers, and wanting the natural manner of our men. The impression on my mind at the time was that immense care and pains had been taken to show off these brand-new ships and to rival ours, but that they were not a bit like their models. The General dined in state on board that evening. Oh! the veneer of politeness shown to us these days; the bowings, the clicking of heels, the well-drilled salutes; and all the time we were joking amongst ourselves about the certainty we had that they were taking soundings of our great harbour. As usual, they were allowed to do just as they liked there. It is a tremendous thought to me that I have lived to hear of the surrender of Germany"s entire navy. How often in those days we allowed ourselves to imagine a modern _possible_ Trafalgar, but such a cataclysm as this was outside the bounds of any one"s imagination.