There is only one more sovereign about whom I may say a few words, the late Queen of Holland, highly gifted as she was, and most charming in society. She frequently came to England; according to the newspapers, as a friend and advocate of the Emperor Napoleon. She was far too wise, however, to attempt to play such a part at the English court. But that she was much admired and won the hearts of many people in London is certainly true. She came to lunch with Stanley at the Deanery. She had asked him to invite a number of literary men—Tennyson, Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Huxley, and several more. We were waiting and waiting, but Tennyson did not appear. Stanley suggested that we should not wait any longer, but the Queen refused to sit down before the great poet’s arrival. At last it was suggested that Tennyson might be mooning about in the Cloisters, and so he was. He was caught, and was placed next to the Queen. The Queen knew wonderfully how to hide her Crown, and put everybody at their ease. She took the conversation into her own hands, and kept the ball rolling during the whole luncheon. But she got nothing out of Tennyson. He was evidently in low spirits, and, sitting next to him, I could hear how to every question the Queen addressed to him he answered, “Yes, Ma’am,” “No, Ma’am,” and at last, by a great effort, “Ma’am, there is a good deal to be said on both sides of the question.” He then turned to me and said in a whisper, but a loud whisper: “I wish they had put some of you talking fellows next to Regina.”
While I am finishing these “Recollections of Royalties,” and sending the proof sheets to press, the last echoes of the greatest triumph that has ever been granted to royalty, which has ever been celebrated by royalty, are vanishing from our ears. May those royal recollections never vanish from our memories! We need not, nay, we cannot exaggerate their importance. Magnificent as the pageant has been of the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen of England, what was invisible in it was far greater than what was so brilliantly visible in the royal procession passing through the crowded streets of London. Has there ever been an empire like the British, not excluding the Babylonian, the Persian, the Macedonian, or the Roman empires? Sixty years of one reign is not a mere numerical expression; no, it means permanent vitality, unbroken continuity, sustained strength and vigour, such as, I believe, have never been witnessed in any reign during the whole history of the world.
And England is not only the greatest, it is also the freest, country in the world, so free that even republics may well envy it its fresh and pure air; and yet was there ever among the vast masses, rich and poor, a more universal outburst of hearty loyalty to the Throne, of personal love of the sovereign, than in the days of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee?
It was said early in her reign by a royal and loyal thinker that constitutional government was then on its trial in England. So it was, but it has come out triumphant, and stronger than ever. Constitutional government under a royal protector will henceforth be recognised as the most perfect form of government which human ingenuity has been able to devise, after many centuries of patient and impatient search. Royalty has proved its right to exist, and that under the sceptre of a Queen who, if compared to other sovereigns, will be famous not only for much that she has done, but also for much that she has not done. Constitutional government has proved its superiority over any form of government by the triumph on 22nd June.
If the people have been loyal to the Queen, how loyal has the Queen been to her people; if her subjects have shared her joys and sorrows, how warmly has she taken the sufferings of her people to heart. Royalty has its dangers, and mankind has suffered much from kings and emperors, but the greatness of England during the last sixty years has chiefly been due to the mutual esteem and love of her people and their sovereign. The world will know henceforth one at least of the secret springs of England’s health and wealth and strength—namely, the true sympathy that for years has knitted ruler and ruled together. England has had great ministers and counsellors, but ask those ministers, who for years has been their truest and most trusted counsellor, and they will not hesitate in their answer. No wonder that England, celebrating the Sixty-years’ Jubilee of her Sovereign, should have roused the admiration—and it may be, the envy also—of other nations. Let us hope that the admiration, so ungrudgingly bestowed, may last, and that the envy, if any, may pass away. “Viel Ehr, viel Feind” is as true here as elsewhere. Let other nations blame and criticise, it is the highest compliment they can pay. But let them ponder what Europe would have been without England, what the world would have been without the sceptre of the wise and good Queen Victoria.
BEGGARS
Often when I had related to my friends some of my painful experiences with beggars and they laughed at me, “Wait,” I said, “I shall have my revenge; and when I am unfit to do anything else, I shall write a book about Beggars.” Now it has sometimes happened to me of late that, when I had sat down to do the work to which I have been accustomed for so many years, I could not get on at all, or if by a great effort of will I managed to do something, it was of no use, and had to be done again. I felt, therefore, that the time had come for rest, or at all events, for a change of occupation, and, though I had not yet sufficient time to spare for writing a whole book on beggars, I thought I might jot down a few of my experiences, not only as an amusement to myself, but possibly as a useful lesson to some of my friends. It seems to me that my experience has been large, larger than that of most of my acquaintances. Why, I cannot tell; but beggars, and extremely clever beggars too, have evidently singled me out as an easy prey. They seem to have imagined—in fact they told me so again and again—that I was a rich man, and could well afford to help a poor beggar. They little knew what a poor beggar I was myself, and how hard I have had to work through life to keep myself afloat, and to live as I was expected to live among my wealthy colleagues at Oxford. They would have smiled incredulously if I had told them how many hours, nay, how many weeks, a scholar has often to do the hardest drudgery without getting a penny for his work. He has often to be thankful if he can find a publisher for what is the outcome of years of hard labour. It is schoolbooks only that are remunerative, or novels and sermons, and novels he has to leave to his worldly, sermons to his unworldly, fellow-labourers.
Some of my beggar acquaintances were so clever and so well educated that they might easily have made a living for themselves; but, as one of them told me when I thought I had made him thoroughly ashamed of himself, and quite confidential, they preferred begging to any other kind of occupation. “Talk of shooting partridges or pheasants,” he said, “talk of racing or gambling, there is no sport like begging. There must always be risk in sport, and the risk in begging is very great. You are fighting,” my half-penitent informant said, “against tremendous odds. You ring at the door, and you must first of all face a servant, who generally scrutinises you with great suspicion, and declines to take your name or your card, unless you have a clean shirt and a decent pair of boots. Then, after you have been admitted to the presence, you have to watch every expression of your enemy or your friend, as the case may be. You have to face the cleverest people in the world, and you know all the time that the slightest mistake in your looks or in the tone of your voice may lead to ruin. You may be kicked out of the house, and if you meet with a high-minded and public-spirited gentleman, who does not mind trouble and expense, you may find yourself in the hands of the police for trying to obtain money under false pretences. No,” he concluded, “I have known in my time what hunting and shooting and gambling are; but I assure you there is no sport like begging.”
What is one to do with such a visitor—in appearance, in manners, and in language, quite a gentleman, or a ci-devant gentleman, a man who has been at a university, and who, when asked, will translate a page of Homer to you very fairly, who bears, of course, a noble name, and has friends, as he gives you to understand, in every university or at every court in Europe—what is one to do with him, if not to accelerate his departure by means of a small gift, for which he is generally very grateful? But that is really the worst one can do. For, on the strength of it, your noble sportsman will at once go to other covers, to all your friends, tell them that you have helped him, describe your generosity, your room, your dog, your cat, and thus among your unsuspecting friends secure a fresh bag, dearer to him, if you may believe him, than any number of pheasants and partridges.
The information which these beggars possess is quite astounding. They have stepped into my room, and given me the most minute information about my friends and relations in Germany, who live in a small and little-known town, describing their houses, their gardens, their dogs—everything, in fact, to show that they had been on the most familiar terms with them. This happened to me some years ago when the organisation among the foreign beggars in London was far more perfect than it is, or seems to be, at present. It may be, of course, that they know that an old fox who has been hunted again and again is difficult to catch. Anyhow, I have not of late heard of any such exploits as, unfortunately, I have had to suffer from in former years.