Up Notting Hill, along Bayswater Road, and through Oxford Street passed the carriage, surrounded and followed by a huge and demonstrative crowd.
In Bond Street the horses were taken out, and the carriage was dragged by some twenty-five persons along St. James’s Street, Pall Mall, by Charing Cross, and through the Strand and Fleet Street, up Ludgate Hill, and along Cheapside, to the Guildhall.
A dense mass of people had congregated in the Guildhall yard, where a British sergeant was carrying the English standard. The scene beggared description. The Guildhall itself was full to overflowing, and having alighted, Bates had perforce to be lifted on shoulders and hoisted, flag and all, back into the carriage, from which place of vantage he made a speech before refurling his banner.
He was delighted with his reception in the heart of the great Metropolis, and never forgot the sea of faces, the endless crowds, the fluttering flags, the waving handkerchiefs, the cheers, and the kindly greeting of that memorable day. His hand seemed to have been wrung into pulp, and he was struck with the phrasing of the oft-repeated salutation, “Give us your hand, old pal.”
Cabmen had little American flags mounted on their vehicles or pinned to their horses’ heads, ladies had the Stars and Stripes for carriage-aprons, and children waved toy flags.
Sergeant Bates was somewhat annoyed by relic hunters, who, could they have had their way, would soon have whittled his flagstaff into imperceptible pieces and riven the banner into a thousand shreds.
He gave a piece of flag and his boots to Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition as a small offering to those of the British public “who,” as he quaintly remarked, “worship such things, and who find at Madame Tussaud’s perhaps the best field for the satisfaction of their curiosity.”
Writing from the Langham Hotel, where he was staying, he observed that Madame Tussaud’s had previously voted him a niche among the immortal heroes who adorned their Exhibition, a mark of honour for which he was told he ought to feel no small pride.
And what had Sergeant Bates accomplished? He claimed to have succeeded in bringing the two great nations’ hearts near to each other, till they seemed to beat in unison, and the pulsation of the one was for a while that of the other.
“God grant,” he said, “that work so begun may not willingly be laid down.”