Abdul-Aziz, the Sultan of Turkey, came to England in 1867, and was present at a review at Wimbledon on 20 July. He was riding along the ground with the Prince of Wales and the Staff, when suddenly a mass of well-dressed men broke through the barriers, and made a rush towards him. And then two squadrons of the Life Guards came down at a gallop, knocked over the leaders of the rush, and closed up round the Sultan. I was on the Grand Stand, and saw the whole thing admirably. The explanation was that the Sultan’s saddle-cloth was studded with diamonds, and the “swell-mob” thought that it could grab them. But it looked more like an attempt at assassination; and he must have taken it for that, judging by the way he managed his horse. However, he had nearly nine years more of absolute power before he was deposed and bled to death.
At one time or another I have seen a good many people of renown; but I have never seen anything more magnificent than the Emperor Frederick, when Crown Prince, seated on his horse and wearing the white dress of the Cuirassiers. He was grander even than the statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni.
I saw the Mahmal at Cairo on 11 February 1882. There was a vast crowd, and the Mahmal was received with a salute of sixteen guns, and the Khedive with a salute of twenty-one; but neither made so great a show as Arabi. On 2 February he had made himself Minister of War, and there was a notion that he would choose this occasion for making himself Khedive; but nothing happened then. I had passed through Tell el-Kebir on 4 February, and should have looked at it more closely, had I foreseen what would be happening there on 13 September. I sailed from Alexandria on 11 March, and never imagined then that there would be a massacre there on 11 June, and a bombardment on 11 July.
On the morning of the procession I saw the Mahmal saddled on its camel: after which the camel went out to meet the Mecca Caravan, and then marched into the city with the pilgrims, as though it had come all the way from Mecca. As a matter of fact, the Mahmal is nothing but a pair of panniers with a canopy above, such as women ride in when they make the pilgrimage, only more ornate. There is nothing whatever inside it. The story is that queen Sheger ad-Durr made the pilgrimage in very splendid panniers about the year 1250; and such panniers have been sent each year since then, though nobody has ever ridden in them. The procession was too straggling to be impressive as a whole, but some things in it were striking—particularly the Sheikh of the Camel. That holy man kept wagging his head from side to side, as if he wished to shake it off; and he was said to go on wagging it all the way from Cairo to Mecca and back.
I went to Siena to see the Palio in August 1898. It has not been vulgarized like the Carnivale, as it comes at a season when few people go to Italy.—In my opinion, people generally choose the wrong time of year for going there. To see Italy in all its glory, one must be there at the Vintage.
Strictly speaking, the Palio is the banner which forms the prize in a race of ten horses, representing ten of the seventeen wards into which the city is divided; seven of the wards being selected by rotation and three by lot. There are trial races on the 14th and 15th, and the race itself is on the 16th. It is run in honour of God and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by statute of 17 June 1310; and the horses go to church before the race, and are blessed and sprinkled with holy water after certain prayers on their behalf.
The whole history of such festivals is given in Palio and Ponte by William Heywood, 1904. On looking into this, I found references to the Palio of 1898, and on plate 22 I found the top of my straw hat in the foreground of the picture. The hat is unmistakeable—built specially for me at Christys’ with wider brim and lower crown than was usual at that period.
Siena is still a mediæval city; and the race is run inside the city in a semicircular space enclosed by fine old buildings. But the race itself is not as interesting as the procession that precedes it. The city and its seventeen wards are represented by about 180 men, all in costumes of the Fifteenth Century, and the chief in splendid armour: the horses go with the members of the wards for which they run: the Palio is carried on a wagon in the middle; and the procession ends with the standard of the city on the mast of the Carroccio, the great wagon round which the struggle centred at that Battle of the Standard fought at Montaperto on 4 September 1260. I have seen as brilliant a sight with the bull-fighters entering the Plaza de Toros in procession—Madrid, 9 September 1877—but this was more impressive with its stately movement round that venerable place, the deep notes of the ancient drums and trumpets, and the great bell—the Campanone—roaring in its tower.
From my diary, Antwerp, 20 August 1872:—“Saw the Procession of the Giant from a house in the Rue de Chaperon. This procession takes place every third year on the last day of the Kermis: it commemorates the killing of a giant who held a castle on the banks of the Scheldt. First came an immense figure of a dolphin.... Then a basket-work figure of the Giantess, about twenty-five feet high: seated and holding in one hand a spear and in the other a shield with the city arms. Then the Giant, another figure of the same sort: in armour and carrying a club and sword.”
The procession was performed out of due season on 19 September 1843 for the benefit of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert; and they went afterwards to the studio of Gustaf Wappers, and commissioned him to paint a picture of it. The picture is in the King’s collection, and is engraved in Hall’s Royal Gallery of Art. It depicts three ladies at an open window, looking down on the procession as it passes through the Place de Meir, the Giant in the middle distance, and the Cathedral spire in the background. I have the preliminary sketch in oils; and this gives a second window, showing the palace in the Place de Meir, and the royal party on the balcony.