The Dowager Lady Ampthill, one of her ladies-in-waiting, recounted an incident which I do not think appeared in any of the papers. When the royal train was coming down from Scotland Lady Ampthill awoke in the early summer dawn, and looked out of the carriage in which she had been sleeping. The world was not yet awake, but as the train rushed through the country amongst fields and meadows she was astonished to see numbers of men and women standing apparently silently gazing—simply waiting to see the passing of the Great Queen to her Jubilee. Perhaps the climax was the Thanksgiving Service in Westminster Abbey.
I cannot refrain from inserting here my mother’s lines describing the final scene on that occasion:
“It was an hour of triumph, for a nation
Had gathered round the Monarch of their pride;
All that a people held of great or lovely,
The wise, the world-renowned, stood side by side.
“Lands famed in story sent their Kings and chieftains,
Isles scarcely recked of came our Queen to greet,
Princesses lent the tribute of their beauty,
And laid the flowers of welcome at her feet.
“The organs pealed, the trumpets gave their challenge,
A stormy shout of gladness rent the air,
All eyes beamed welcome, and all hearts bowed with her
When low she bent her royal head in prayer.
“She bent amid a haughty nation, knowing
No sun e’er set upon its widespread towers,
Though right and good had deemed that day the lion
To sheath its claws and robe itself in flowers.
“When Cæsar kept high holiday, when Rome
Called forth her maidens to fill hours of ease,
Pale warriors darkly met in bloody ring
Or some Numidian giant died to please.
“But in that hour supreme when all eyes turned
Upon the Queen’s kind face and gestures mild,
Bright tears unbidden rose, stern bosoms heaved,
They saw her stoop—she stooped to kiss her child.
“Children and children’s children passed before her,
Each one ‘fair History’s mark’ with stately grace;
Mother of many nations, Queen and Empress,
She drew them each within her fond embrace.
“Symbolic kiss—it spoke of early birthdays,
When little hearts had swelled with little joys,
It told of kisses given and counsels tender
To graceful maidens and to princely boys;
“Of fond caresses given in days of gladness
When Hope was young and blue the skies above,
Of kisses interchanged in hours of sorrow
When all seemed shattered save the bonds of love.
“And of that hour of dutiful surrender
Of hearts to Him who gives to Kings to be,
The memory of those kisses grave and tender
Shall knit our hearts, Victoria, still to thee.
“Sceptres outlasting long the hands that held them,
Thrones that have seated dynasties may fall:
Love never dies, his chain is linked to heaven,
The Lord, the friend, the comforter of all.
“Yes! of those hours so joyous and so glorious
When the tall fires prolonged the festal day,
The memory of those kisses gently given
Shall be the dearest we shall bear away.”
On July 2nd I recollect Lord and Lady Lathom coming to spend a Sunday with us at Osterley. He was then Lord Chamberlain—and the poor man seemed utterly exhausted by the strain of the Jubilee festivities though very happy at their success. He spoke among other things of the quaint applications which he had received for permission to attend the service at the Abbey. Amongst others he had one from a lady who said that if she did not obtain a seat a large class would be unrepresented—namely, the class of Old Maids. I think she had one. Even people like my father not connected with the Court were pestered to “use influence”—one lady wrote to him to try and get seats for herself and her father, and wanted them near the preacher as “papa was very deaf.”
TRIALS OF COURT OFFICIALS
Lord Mount Edgcumbe—then Lord Steward—once told me of a trying experience which he had in connection with the Jubilee. There was a great banquet at Windsor and he had to order the seating of the guests, who included various foreign royalties. As is well known in dealing with foreigners the order in which they sit is far more important than the precedence in which they walk into the banqueting hall—if you put two princes or dignitaries one on the right, the other on the left of the table, and both are about equally important, you must take care to put the left-hand man one higher up at the table than the guest on the right. Well, Lord Mount Edgcumbe had ordered this feast of some thirty or forty notabilities or more to complete satisfaction, and had gone to his room to attire himself in all the glory of a High Steward. Just as he was getting into his breeches a message was brought him that two more German princelets had arrived who had to be included in the party. Poor man! he had to hasten to complete his toilet and to rush down and rearrange the whole table.
Talking of German etiquette (I don’t know how far it survives the fall of the Hohenzollerns), we had a most eccentric Teutonic specimen at Osterley that Jubilee summer. Our kind hostess at Berlin—Lady Ermyntrude Malet—introduced to us, by letter, a certain Count Seierstorpff—so we asked him to spend Whitsuntide. We had various other guests, including the Kintores and Lord and Lady Maud Wolmer (now Lord and Lady Selborne) and Lady Maud’s sister, Lady Gwendolen Cecil. Count Seierstorpff’s one form of conversation was to catechise everybody as to the rank of the company—how far they were “ebenbürtig.” This culminated in his asking me what Lady Maud would be if Lord Wolmer were to die! I told Lord Wolmer this, and he said, “Couldn’t you tell him that of two sisters in the house, both equally eligible, one is unmarried!”
When on Whit-Monday we drove to see Ham House he kept jumping up on the seat of the landau in which he went with some of the party to inspect the surrounding country—spying, I suppose—and when we were sitting outside the house after dinner he suddenly disappeared and was found to have rushed wildly right round a portion of the grounds. Many years afterwards—1913, I believe—Jersey and I met him again at Cannes. He had grown into a fat, truculent Prussian, and had married a pleasant American wife. Poor people! After the War I asked what became of them. He and his two sons were killed in the War—she had lost money and relations by the sinking of the Lusitania—had gone mad and was in an asylum. I only wonder that he had not gone mad, but suppose there was method in his Osterley madness.
THE NAVAL REVIEW
The last festivity in which I took part that summer was the Jubilee Naval Review at Spithead. Jersey went by invitation of the P. and O. Company on a ship of their fleet—the Rome if I recollect rightly—but Lady Galloway and I with her stepfather Lord Derby were invited from Friday, July 22nd, for the Review on Saturday and to spend Sunday on board the Mirror, one of Sir John Pender’s electric-cable ships. I never shared in a more amusing party. There was great confusion with the luggage at Waterloo. I think most people lost something. Lady Galloway and I each had two small boxes and each lost one, but it did not matter, as we were able to supplement each other’s remaining articles. Sir William Russell the journalist lost all his luggage, but it was said that he invariably did so, and he did not seem to mind at all. Lord Wolseley, Lord Alcester, Lord Lymington (afterwards Portsmouth), and Sir William Des Voeux, who had been Governor of Fiji, Lady Tweeddale, and Countess Marie Münster were among the guests, and our kind host did everything to make us happy. The Mirror, like the other unofficial ships, remained stationary during the Review, but Lady Galloway and I persuaded the Chairman, Sir John Pender, and the Captain to let a boat take us to the House of Lords ship, the Euphrates, for which we had tickets, and which was to follow the Queen’s Yacht, the Victoria and Albert, down the lines. It was a magnificent sight. I will not attempt to describe it, as it has been far better recorded than any words of mine could achieve. One thing, however, I may note. The then biggest and finest ships were like rather ugly floating forts, and all, or almost all, different from each other. The graceful old men-of-war with long lines and pointed bows were considered obsolete. Ten years later when there was a Review for the second Jubilee all was changed again. I do not mean that the naval architects had reverted to the old models, but the general effect was a return to the old lines, and the fortress ships, almost sunk under the sea, had disappeared. Also they were later on built in classes, so that their fittings were interchangeable and the engineers from one ship could be easily transferred to another.