O the wild dreams of London! The old man who starves himself that he may search year after year for a document which conceals a coronet is only less tenacious than the elderly virgin whose sole passion is the belief that somebody way back in history "did her down" over a will. There are humble, ragged people who must be positively shocked when they cut a finger and discover that their blood is just ordinary red. There are others who believe themselves to be the ground-landlords of New York or Philadelphia, who go on living in the splendid hope that some day—some day—that missing document will turn up to smooth out the injustices of time.
The Record Office in Chancery Lane is the magnet which draws all these queer people year after year. These unofficial dukes and earls go off each morning with their luncheon in paper bags to hunt up their ancestors. They are all so certain. So convincing. You can put your head quite close to theirs and never hear the bee.
Their finger nails may be in mourning for their lost departed, their collars may be greyish, and their cuffs frayed, but they have butlers and scarlet carpets in their hearts, and in their eyes a hunger most awful to see. There is a legend that one searcher who insisted on being called "my lord," became tired of trying to justify his claim and in a moment of enthusiasm hired a peer's robes and actually succeeded in entering the House of Lords during a State ceremony! What a moment!
There he stood for a moment among his peers. It must have been the greatest moment of his life. It was during the State opening of Parliament, and the House of Lords was waiting with lowered lights for that moment when the King and the Queen, with white-satined pages holding the royal trains, would enter at the precise moment, the lights leap up and send a green and fiery glitter rippling along the throats of the peeresses in the gallery. In this scene stood the peer from Bloomsbury or Brixton or Balham, watching with who knows what delicious thrills the Gentlemen-at-Arms standing at the doors holding their halberds in white gauntleted hands while the lights glanced off their golden helms. What a moment! And what, I wonder, betrayed him? Why did they ask him to go? Did he show too much confidence in his rightful surroundings, or did he say, "Granted, I'm sure," to the duke who trod on his foot? I wonder....
When I entered the Record Office yesterday the curious round room, like the smoking-room of an Atlantic liner that has taken to book-collecting, was full of students and historians poring over spidery Elizabethan script or muttering the English of Chaucer's day beneath their breath. Now and again someone with the strawberry leaf complex wanders in here, puts an old hat on the chair, and calls for documents with the air of a rather weary Malvolio. Generally speaking, the legacy and title hunters gather next door in the Legal Search Room.
Here I found an assortment of women and men. Some were solicitors and barristers looking up records, some were trying to claim funds in Chancery, and others the usual fortune and title hunters.
This is merely a fraction of the interest this building holds for us. It houses twenty-six miles of shelves packed with historic documents and millions of unhistoric documents. Here are the bones of English History. Come into the Museum known so well to those who have a flair for the right things, the Americans. Here in two portly volumes is "Domesday Book," writ in a fair monkish hand. Shelves are stacked with letters from kings and queens, generals and admirals, cardinals and peers: humour, pathos, tragedy, passion. In one of these Wolsey, "the King's poore, hevy and wrechyd prest," asks Henry VIII to forgive him and take him back into favour. Queen Elizabeth's hand is set to a number of letters, and to her are missives from many men, including two who loved her. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, says in one: "I humbly kiss your foot," and the imprisoned Earl of Essex is represented by a brief letter written for the eyes of Gloriana alone.
You can read letters which recall cannon shot on the high seas, and letters which give a vision of deep political plotting and such-like villainy. "God has given us a good day in forcing the enemy so far to leeward," wrote Sir Francis Drake aboard the "Revenge." "I hope in God the Prince of Parma and the Duke of Sedonya shall not shake handes this fewe days." Quite near you will find the last confession of Guy Fawkes.
When you have enjoyed the flavour of these old days you may meet on the stairs an ordinary cat. At least so it seems. It is Felix, and he has been walking through history for centuries. It is the only cat officially on a Government staff—in spite of anything women secretaries in Whitehall may tell you! It receives a penny a day from Government funds! I believe that the terms of its appointment include a clause that it must keep itself clean, catch rats and mice, and bring up its children. If anybody killed the official cat in ancient times he had to forfeit sufficient wheat to cover the body.
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