“April 3rd.—Will and I are invited by the King and Queen to see them crowned at Westminster. I am to wear ‘court dress with plumes but without train.’ But what if the nightmare war still is dragging on in June? The time is getting short! We hear the King is getting anxious. Lord Wolseley’s trip to the Cape (for his health!) is supposed to have really to do with bringing about peace. But ‘’ware politics’ for me. They are not in my line. What a wet blanket would be spread as a pall over all the purple canopies in Westminster Abbey if war was still brooding over us all! Imagine news of a new Methuen disaster on the morning of June 26th!”
On Varnishing Day that spring at the Royal Academy I found that my tent-pegging picture could not look to greater advantage, but it was in the last room, where the public looks with “lack-lustre eyes,” being tired.
On June 21st I left to attend the Coronation of Edward VII., spending two days at Dick’s monastery at Downside on the way, high up in the Mendip Hills. I note: “I had a bright little room at the guest house just outside the precincts. That night the full moon, that emblem of serenity, rose opposite my window, and I felt as though lifted up above that world into which I was about to plunge for my participation in the pomp of the Coronation in a few hours. It is inexpressibly touching to me to see my son where he is. A hard probation, for the Benedictine test is long and severe, as indeed the test is, necessarily, throughout the Religious Orders.
“June 24th.—Memorable day! I was passing along Buckingham Palace Road at 12.30 when I saw a poster: ‘Coronation Postponed’! Groups of people were buying up the papers. Of course, no one believed the news at first, and people were rather amusedly perplexed. No one had heard that the King was ill. On getting to Piccadilly I saw the official posters and the explanation. An operation just performed! and only yesterday Knollys telling the world there was ‘not a word of truth in the alarming rumours of the King’s health.’ I and Mrs. C. went to a dismal afternoon concert at 2.30 to which we were pledged, and which the promoters were in two minds about postponing, and we left in the middle to stroll about the crowded streets and watch the effect of the disastrous news. There was something very dramatic in the scene in front of the palace—the huge crowd waiting and watching, the royal standard drooping on the roof (not half-mast yet?), and the sense of brooding sorrow over the great building, which held the, perhaps, dying King. What a change in two or three hours!
“June 26th.—This was to have been the Coronation Day. General dismantling. Those dead laurel wreaths still lying in the gutters are said to be the same that were used at the funeral of King Humbert. What a weird thought! The crowds are thinning, but still, at night, they gaze at the little clumps of illuminations which some people exhibit, as the King is going on well. ‘Vivat Rex’ flares in great brilliancy here and there. The words have a deeper meaning than usual. May he live!
“June 27th.—This was to have been the day of the royal procession. Where is that rose-colour-lined coach I so looked forward to? Lying idle in its cover. Every one is moralising. Even the clubmen, Will tells me, are furbishing up little religious platitudes and texts; many are curiously superstitious, which is strange.”
On our return home I was very busy in the studio. There was much galloping and trotting of horses up and down in the Government House grounds for my studies of movement for my next Academy picture (dealing with Boer War yeomanry) and others.
“August 9th.—King Edward VII. was crowned to-day. At about 12.40 the guns firing in the Sound and batteries announced that, at last, the Coronation was consummated. We were asked to the ceremony, but could not go up this time.”
A little tour in France, with my husband and our two girls, made in September, 1902, gave us sunny days in Anjou on the Loire. The majestic rivers of France are her chief attraction for the painter, and to us English Turner’s charm is inseparably blended with their slowly flowing waters. We were visitors at a château at Savonnières, near Angers, for most of the time, and our hosts took care that we should miss none of the lovely things around their domain. The German “Ocean Greyhounds” of the Hamburg-Amerika line used to call at Plymouth in those days, huge, three-funnel monsters which, I think, we have since appropriated, and one of these, the Augusta Marie, bore us off to Cherbourg in all the pride of her gorgeous saloons, flower-decked tables, band, and extraordinary bombastic oleographs from allegorical pictures by the Kaiser William II. As we boarded her the band played “God Save the King,” the captain receiving Sir William with finished regulation attention, and hardly had the great twin engines swung the ship into the Sound to receive her passengers, than with another swing forward, which made the masts wriggle to their very tops, she was off. It was the “Marseillaise” as we reached France. That band played us nearly the whole way over. A really pretty idea, this, of playing the national air of each country where the ship touched.
It was vintage time at Savonnières, which was a French “Castagnolo,” a most delightful translation into French of that Italian patriarchal home. There were stone terraces garlanded with vines bearing—not the big black grapes of Tuscany, but small yellow ones of surpassing sugariness. We were in a typical and beautiful bit of France, peaceful, plenteous, and full of dignity. They lead the simple life here such as I love, which is not to be found in the big English country houses, as far as I know. I was truly pleased at the sight of the peasantry at Mass on the Sunday. The women in particular had that dignity which is so marked in their class, and the white lace coifs they wore had many varieties of shape, all most beautiful, and were very soignées and neatly worn. Not an untidy woman or girl amongst these daughters of the soil.