PEACE AND PLENTY.
Notes from the Menu Card of Toby, M.P.
Hôtel Métropole, Wednesday Night.—Dinner in Whitehall Rooms to celebrate completion of railway communication between Natal and South Africa. Occasion important; list of guests comprehensive; all the Colonies represented, whilst Don José, home from historic Spain, happily typified the paternal British Lion glad to see its cubs around it. Walter Peace, Agent-General for Natal, is the Amphitryon—le véritable Amphitryon où l'on dîne. As Sark says, "With Peace in the Chair and Plenty on the table, what more can one desire?"
Joe Chamberlion encouraging the Colonial Cubs.
An excellent dinner, marked by an innovation against which protest cannot be made too early. Between the entrée and the joint cigarettes served. Worse still, they were lit and smoked; timidly at first, but weak-minded men seeing others start also made themselves uncomfortable. Room soon filled with poisonous smoke of tobacco and paper. I like a cigar at dinner, or even two—in proper place. This spoiling of the palate midway through a meal was wanton flying in the face of Providence who had next provided excellent saddle of Welsh mutton. Custom of interpolating cigarette has not even colonial origin to recommend it. "Kicky" likes it, 'tis true. But the British public scornfully asks, "Who's Kicky?" and will be no wiser if I tell them he's a capitalist.
After dinner, speeches. For a man whose breast is blazoned with Victoria Cross, never saw anyone in such a funk as Redvers Buller when he rose to reply to toast to the Army. Knees shook; manly cheek blenched; evidently moment when he contemplated turning his back on foe and bolting. But pluck of British soldier prevailed, and he pulled through. If alternative were open to him, would rather have gone through the Ashantee Campaign again, or worked his way once more through the sad Soudan.
Nothing of this feeling apparent in demeanour of old friend Martin F. Tupper. General impression is that, like Shakspeare, he is dead. All a mistake; only changed his estate; dropped his earlier initials; assumed name of Charles, with a baronetcy, the G.C.M.G., the C.B., and the High Commissionership of Canada. Talks prose now instead of poetry. But the old style indelible, ineradicable. His speech to-night marked by all the prosy, kindly, commonplace verbosity of the Proverbial Philosophy of his earlier state.
Don José, rising to respond to toast of his health, met with hearty reception. Misguided man at end of room proposed to greet him as "a jolly good fellow." Effort well meant; had the songster managed, at outset, to strike right note, the thing might have been done. As it was inappropriateness of this particular hymnal, combined with a certain flatness in the opening notes of the songster, chilled the choir. As Sark says, "jollity not precisely the quality one associates with Joe." So the melody, after feebly fizzling round the tables, was drowned in burst of laughter.
Occasion was, as Don José remarked, first time he had publicly appeared in capacity of Minister for the Colonies. In every way a happy one. A gathering representing the uttermost corners of the Empire, each vying with the other in loyalty to Crown. New Secretary, with easy grace, rose to height of situation. Struck lofty note in his picture of our fellow-subjects throughout the world recognising the great inheritance that has befallen them by mere virtue of their citizenship. "They must feel," he said, in ringing voice that found echo in the crowded room, "that no separate existence, however splendid, could compare with that they enjoy equally with ourselves as joint heirs of all the traditions of the past, joint partakers of all the influence, resources, and power of the British Empire."
A speech not too long, splendidly pitched, admirably phrased, full of the old Palmerstonian ring, and yet, if closely examined, signifying nothing likely to embarrass a Minister in future relations either with Colonies or foreign powers. Just the thing for the hour, and the place. Full of promise for fresh triumphs for Don José on the new pathway he surprised some people by selecting as his own.
After the Colonial Secretary, the Lord High Admiral. Don Currie, also, though in quite a different way, in his best form. Could not look upon him as with clasped hands, and eyes upraised to a perturbed firmament, he protested against continued absence of imperial subvention of mail packets to the Cape, without thinking what a tragedian is here lost to the stage!
Threw quite a fresh light on the Spanish Armada. "Why," he exclaimed, "the Spanish Armada, with the assistance of Portugal and Mexico, did not include as many ships as are under my management in the Castle fleet!"
"Let us be grateful," said Sark, as the man in the hat and cloak department handed him through the pigeon-hole someone else's overcoat, "that Don Currie was not born before his time or out of his place. Had he been a subject of Philip the Second, he would certainly have commanded the Armada. In which case the whole course of history would have been changed, and to-day Great Britain would have been even as Cuba."