London Days: A Book of Reminiscences

by Arthur Warren

And so it was to Stanley's good sense and his willingness to enter into the spirit of the thing that the affair got under weigh. But it was a long time in arriving anywhere. I saw Whistler put his head in at the door. I went after him and introduced him to Stanley. "I say," said Whistler to me, "are you stewarding? I 'm a steward, too. It's all stew, is n't it? But I don't know what to do, do you? Is there anything to eat?"

"Not yet," said I.

"B-r-r-r-r-h! What's that?" It sounded like a crash of china in an adjoining room.

"The end of all things, I should think," said Stanley. "I say, there's the Duke! No Committee? Well, I 'll receive him."

"The Duke" was the Duke of Teck, the father of the present Queen. In a minute he was followed by another Duke, Sutherland. And there were Stanley's chief officers, who were to share with him the honours of the evening. And very soon the rooms were filled. But nobody in authority appeared, or if appearing, no authority was exercised. For an hour and a half everybody stood about, accumulating hunger and getting very tired. And there was no one to say what was to be done, or when, or how.

At last somebody cried: "Gentlemen, dinner is served. This way, please, and sit where you like!"

We all cheered at this.

And so the royalties, and the guests of honour, and the orators of the evening followed the hungriest men who were nearest the doors, walked rapidly into the dining room, and took the first seats they could find. The affair had become a picnic. But there was a meal. That was the important thing. After famishing so long, we had a dinner of sorts. But there were sixteen speeches to follow! This fact we learned from the souvenir albums which we found at our plates. In the course of time the speeches began.

One of them issued, poured, from a New York lawyer who stood in a far corner, waving his arms and displaying vast expanses of shirt-cuff. He spread-eagled, he made the eagle scream, he Gods-countried till you could hear the corn grow. Nothing could stop him. He ran on till he ran down. And then the Grenadier Guards Band, Dan Godfrey conducting, struck up the "Star Spangled Banner." That was another relief.

The American dinner to Stanley was given in the Portman Rooms in Baker Street. The Portman Rooms had formerly housed Madame Tussaud's Waxworks. Perhaps the hall in which we dined had been the Chamber of Horrors. I suspect it. At any rate, there was a general air of wonderment as to what might happen next. We would have liked the affair more if the Committee, or the Manager of All Things, had given less of his useful attention to souvenir albums and elaborate trophies, and more attention to the details of the evening. Some one had designed a large, costly, and elaborate silver shield, on which were to be depicted events in Stanley's career. It was to be presented with a flourish of trumpets, that is to say, a speech by the Consul-General. But the shield was unfinished, although on the spot, and some of the flourishes had to be omitted. If the table plans were omitted, somebody had managed to get up a list of guests, at the last minute. But that was incomplete, too. In that dim English way which robs men of their first names and puts them down with a single initial, even Cumberland, the mind reader, who was present, could not have guessed, without seeing him, that "H. Hunt" was Holman-Hunt, and not Helen, or Henry; that "H. White" was Henry White, the secretary of our Legation, and later Ambassador at Rome and Paris, still later the unabashed deliverer of a pro-German speech, and in the Wilsonic course of events, a member of the American Delegation to the "Peace Conference" of 1918-1919. But so many names were disguised by the poverty of labour which denied them all connection with their owners that I must now deny them space on this page. I remember that "B. Harte" was Bret Harte, that "E. Gosse" meant Edmund Gosse, and I remember that "Prof. John S. Hopkins of Gilman University", as he appeared in the newspapers of the following morning, was really Professor Gilman of Johns Hopkins University. To this day the Briton persists in printing the name of that university "John S. Hopkins."