“Another time he said to a culprit, ‘I can produce five witnesses who saw you steal that cow.”—‘Yes,’ said the prisoner, ‘but I can produce five hundred who did not.’
“Sir George Dasent said he should not go to the Abbey on the Jubilee Day. His legs were so infirm now, that a touch would upset him, and, when once down, he could not get up again. He had once been knocked down by a newspaper—‘retributive, you might say.’”[449]
“June 20.—The streets are all hung with scarlet and blue draperies, and Waterloo Place is embowered in a succession of triumphal arches. The crowds are tremendous. The foot-passengers have already expelled the carriages from the principal thoroughfares, and two million more people are expected to arrive to-day.
“I dined last night with Charlie Halifax, meeting Lady Morton, the Arundel Mildmays, and Sir Hickman Bacon—a pale frail youth, so High-Church that he could not take part in any Jubilee gaieties whilst —— (one of their especial clergy) was imprisoned. Charlie was very funny in his tantrums against the bishops. ‘I hate them all except Lincoln, and—as cowards—I despise them.’ He said he would not go to the service in the Abbey, because he considers it desecrated by having seats erected over the altar!”
To Miss Leycester.
“June 21, 1887.—Nothing can have been more sublimely pathetic than the whole ceremony (of the Jubilee)—more inexpressibly touching and elevating. The Abbey, too, did not look spoilt: all the tiers of seats, all the galleries disappeared utterly: nothing was visible between the time-worn pillars and under the grey arches but the masses of people they contained.
“I went at 8 A.M. It was not a moment too soon. Cabs charged two pounds to the Abbey, but I walked very comfortably. The tickets had little maps of the Abbey, with the entrance for the bearer marked on each. Mine was by a door on the north-east behind St. Margaret’s, and there I waited, with a small crowd, till nine struck, and some iron gates were opened by the police, when we ran down an awned passage to where a staircase of rough timber led up by the great Norris tomb to our places.