Readily complying with the invitation, I squeezed myself in at the small aperture. His Majesty, graciously handing me a little three-legged stool on which I took my seat in a corner, inquired if I smoked.
‘I do;—that is, I can,’ I answered.
‘Pipe and a screw!’ said His Majesty to the attendant charioteer. ‘Do you prefer a dry smoke, or do you moisten it?’
As unmitigated tobacco produces most disturbing effects upon my system (indeed, if I had perfect moral courage, I doubt if I should smoke at all, under any circumstances), I advocated moisture, and begged the Sovereign of the Bill-Stickers to name his usual liquor, and to concede to me the privilege of paying for it. After some delicate reluctance on his part, we were provided, through the instrumentality of the attendant charioteer, with a can of cold rum-and-water, flavoured with sugar and lemon. We were also furnished with a tumbler, and I was provided with a pipe. His Majesty, then observing that we might combine business with conversation, gave the word for the car to proceed; and, to my great delight, we jogged away at a foot pace.
I say to my great delight, because I am very fond of novelty, and it was a new sensation to be jolting through the tumult of the city in that secluded Temple, partly open to the sky, surrounded by the roar without, and seeing nothing but the clouds. Occasionally, blows from whips fell heavily on the Temple’s walls, when by stopping up the road longer than usual, we irritated carters and coachmen to madness; but they fell harmless upon us within and disturbed not the serenity of our peaceful retreat. As I looked upward, I felt, I should imagine, like the Astronomer Royal. I was enchanted by the contrast between the freezing nature of our external mission on the blood of the populace, and the perfect composure reigning within those sacred precincts: where His Majesty, reclining easily on his left arm, smoked his pipe and drank his rum-and-water from his own side of the tumbler, which stood impartially between us. As I looked down from the clouds and caught his royal eye, he understood my reflections. ‘I have an idea,’ he observed, with an upward glance, ‘of training scarlet runners across in the season,—making a arbour of it,—and sometimes taking tea in the same, according to the song.’
I nodded approval.
‘And here you repose and think?’ said I.
‘And think,’ said he, ‘of posters—walls—and hoardings.’
We were both silent, contemplating the vastness of the subject. I remembered a surprising fancy of dear Thomas Hood’s, and wondered whether this monarch ever sighed to repair to the great wall of China, and stick bills all over it.
‘And so,’ said he, rousing himself, ‘it’s facts as you collect?’