The effect in England of the news of the relief was truly surprising. The spectacle was unique in the annals of Victoria’s reign. On Thursday the 1st of March the whole City of London by one consent burst into jubilation. Every human being, however hard-worked, wore a smile; every heart, however sore, throbbed with a sense of reflected triumph; for all, if they had not been at the front in the flesh, had been there in the spirit these many, many days. Never was such a spontaneous outburst of rejoicing! A nation of shopkeepers indeed! Why, shopkeeping and work of all kinds were forgotten, and in front of the Mansion House crowded the delighted multitudes, oblivious of everything save the glorious fact that British bull-dog tenacity had withstood the most fiendish warfare, and wiles, and wickedness that vengeful Dutchmen could invent.
From north, south, east, and west the people flocked, springing as it were from the very earth. The news came in at 10 A.M. By eleven the City was alive with drama. Hats were being waved or flung into the air, regardless of the effect upon the nap; flags from here, there, and everywhere fluttered—in default of these, other brandishable things were seized. Sometimes handkerchiefs did duty, newspapers, and even parcels and commercial bags; and from tongues innumerable came cheers and shouts and snatches of patriotic song, till an ignorant spectator, if one such there could have been, might have imagined Bedlam to have broken loose. “Rule Britannia,” “God save the Queen,” “Tommy Atkins,” “The Absent-Minded Beggar”—all tunes poured forth to an accompaniment of cheers. The Lord Mayor was called out, and appeared on his balcony. He was forthwith invited to speak. The great man opened and shut his mouth—he was much moved with the general emotion—but no sound penetrated the uproar. Cheers loud and vehement tore the air, and the walls of the civic domain literally shook with the inspiriting fracas. Then for a moment or two there was a lull, and taking advantage of the opportunity, in a short sincere speech the Lord Mayor expressed himself.
“Fellow-citizens, this news of the relief of Ladysmith makes our hearts leap with joy. We are now satisfied that at last our sacrifices of blood and treasure are not in vain!”
Upon that the crowd roared itself hoarse, sung “For he’s a jolly good fellow,” and never with better cause, for Sir A. J. Newton had put the best of himself into the launching of the glorious C.I.V.’s. By-and-by came, with banners and much ceremony, a deputation from the Stock Exchange, and after them waves on waves of shouting enthusiasts—a spectacle so un-English, so genuine, so unrestrained, that the gloomy decorous regions of the City seemed suddenly to have become things apart, card-houses to fill in the background to a soul-stirring scene. Everywhere, in the alleys of “’Arriet,” in the haunts of the “wild, wild West,” at the Bank, in Leadenhall Market, and along the Thames, went up the jubilant echo—“Ladysmith is relieved!” Whereupon windows and balconies were dressed, flags, red, white, and blue, and the green of Erin with its romantic harp in the corner, fluttered wings of ecstasy from every British nest, and from every British household there rose unanimously a rapturous cry that was almost a sob, a cry of thanksgiving that the end had come, and that Ladysmith and the honour of the old country were saved!
THE FORMAL ENTRY
It seemed but artistic that Lord Dundonald and his brave irregulars should have met the keen edge of joyous welcome, that the burst of enthusiasm which greeted them should have been the heartiest of which Ladysmith, after a siege of 118 days, was capable. It was right, almost beautiful, that the staunch Colonials, who so well had fought for the Empire, should be the ones to throw open the doors of the dolorous prison, and deliver those who had been not only victims to the devilish machinations of the Boer, but had suffered from the active ache of suspense and the passive one of starvation, from their hellish bondage. Their informal coming was part and parcel of the unrehearsed and the splendid that appeared at every corner in this absolutely incomprehensible war.
BRIGADIER-GENERAL THE EARL OF DUNDONALD, C.B.
Photo by R. Faulkner & Co.
The next day things were more decorously done—more English in their reserve. Etiquette and custom resumed their sway, and General Sir Archibald Hunter straightened out the limp backbone of the army, and made soldierly preparations to welcome the relief column. There were cleansings and polishings, washings and brushings up, of a ramshackle kind, it is true, but they savoured of the old parade days returned. Poor skeletons of horses were groomed down, Sunday best was smoothed out, everything was done that the slender resources of the melancholy perimeter would allow. Shortly after noon on the 3rd of March Sir Redvers Buller made his formal entry. His arrival was somewhat unexpected, and there was little effervescent demonstration. Sir George White and Sir Redvers Buller meeting with a handclasp, said at first little more than the familiar “D’ye do?” of saunterers in Piccadilly. What else could be done? There was much to say, so much that must remain ever unsaid, and throats to-day were too tightly compressed in strangling the large and unspeakable emotion to give vent to the infinitesimal resource of speech. Meanwhile the forlorn streets had begun to fill. They were margined by the garrison, and with them were collected such of the sorry civilians as were able to stand exposed to the tropical glare of the sun in its zenith. They came out wondering, almost diffident. Was it possible that the morning message of melenite was no longer to be heard? that the hoarse cadence of hostile artillery was silent for good? Was the open distance really innocuous—clear and peaceful as a Swiss landscape? They scarcely recognised themselves or their surroundings, and looked dazedly to right and left as on a changed world. Sir George White, with his staff, now took up a position in front of the Town Hall, where, backgrounded by the ruined tower—it had been battered, as it were, by the whole armoury of Satan—the broken blue tin houses and the parched trees, the group made an appropriate picture of noble wreck—of aristocratical exhaustion. The relievers, though physically hale, were externally scarcely more presentable than the relieved. The outsiders, it is true, were begrimed and tattered, though robust and swarthy; while the Invincibles, rigged up in honour of their deliverers in Sunday best, and washed and scrubbed to a nicety, seemed—soap-like—to have dissolved in the very process of ablution. No joy of the moment could alter the tale of shrinkage that was printed on man and beast. But jubilation expressed itself in the best way it could. From windows and balconies soon hung strips of colour, national emblems, gathered from hither and thither to mark a rapture that it was impossible for human tongue to describe. From hotels and habitations the citizens began to pour forth and to congregate. And then, when all were collected, the curtain drew up on the most wondrous scene that the nineteenth century has witnessed—the march past of the Ladysmith Relieving Column! Sir Redvers Buller, imperturbable of visage as usual, accompanied by his staff, rode at the head of his magnificent warriors, and leading, in the place of honour, were the valorous Dublin Fusiliers, the poor but glorious remnant, consisting now of 400 of the original battalion who had so grandly acquitted themselves in many battlefields. Next came Sir Charles Warren and the Fifth Division, and afterwards General Barton and General Lyttelton’s Brigades—goodly fellows all, who had proved themselves deliberately brave and doughtily undefeatable. Meanwhile the pipes and drums of the Gordon Highlanders, with such vigour as was left them, made exhilarating music, to which was united the clanking and clamping of the Artillery Howitzer Battery and Naval Brigade as they filed past with uproarious martial rampage. Each section was greeted with admiring cheers. The regiments moved along in review order, a superb throng, bronzed, and battered, and brawny, a curious contrast to the pallid and emaciated comrades-in-arms—morally superb too, but physically degenerate—who welcomed them. The spectacle was unique in soul-stirring grandeur as in unspoken pathos.