“Perhaps the most beautiful part of the Court was the passing of the Royal procession through the galleries on their way to supper. I was not flurried then as I was on presentation, so I could just stand and see the regal party pass without personal emotion. The King looks every inch a King in his dark blue uniform, wearing, of course, that blue ribbon which they call the Order of the Garter. First of all came the King and Queen, followed by their daughters, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, the Mistress of the Robes, and a host of others. They walked very slowly, and the Queen, who had no bouquet, bowed delightfully to everyone, as she passed through those vast rooms. Oh dear! Oh dear! It was lovely, and I am sorry it is over, for it was more lovely than anything I could ever have conjured up in my wildest dreams.”
Most useful proved my own experiences at such functions as Drawing-rooms, and my favourite adage as to journalism came into play, viz. Write of what you know.
But how, some timid minds may object, can a working-woman still afford to go to Court? Suffice it to say that one originally handsome gown of wealthier days served me, its wearer, several times to make my curtseys to Royalty.
I should not have attended so often in the ordinary way, but going so much abroad as I did, it was advisable. There one’s reception at Court is of use, for, after all, foreigners are unable to judge one’s social position from one’s appearance, some of the worst scamps seeming the most ideal on the surface, therefore a pass-word, such as having “been to Court”—which means so little in England—counts for something across the water. I always wore a train, that once belonged to my great-grandmother. It ought to know its way to Buckingham Palace by now. Strangely enough, that old chiné silk (it must be between one hundred and a hundred and fifty years old) has a stripe of soft grey between wider stripes of beautiful mellowed flowers. It is exactly the same kind of thing that is so fashionable to-day. History repeats itself even in silk, and those dull chiné ribbons and dull chiné silks are but reproductions of those worn by our great-grandmothers.
Royalty and really great folk—that is great-minded people in high places—do not carp at the clothes of those whose work in life is harder than showing off new and expensive dresses. Thank goodness, the days are long dead when writers were supposed to exist on the sufferance of publishers, to be always ragged, in debt, or to fawn on patrons and live in Grub Street.
Still, this is forestalling the account of my laborious, weary time before achieving anything, so it must be put down in faithful warning that “good times” have to be worked and waited for.
I often wonder now how I lived through those first years of hardship, paying off debts, working often ten hours a day with the constant goal of making an income and achieving success.
Poverty or ambition are the only stepping-stones to attainment. Perseverance did it, and bed. On and on I pegged. Wrote and re-wrote some things several times over, while others were not even corrected. Worked with throbbing eyes and weary brain—I’ve always been more or less a teetotaller, but it wasn’t that which helped me—it was bed. Never a good sleeper at any time, I crept off to bed as early as possible, and even if I did not sleep, I rested my back, closed my eyes, and lay in the dark. Most of my work was planned then, all my articles were thought out in that silent obscurity. My bed was my salvation.
Lots of people work best in the evening and the small hours of the morning. I was never any good then, and if “copy” had to be ready, say, by eleven at night, and I knew a “printer’s devil” would be standing in my hall at that hour to bear it away to the machines, I always got hot and cold, nervous and fussy; I never worked so well as directly after breakfast.
Work! Would anyone dare to say I have not worked? Why, in one fortnight (November, 1906) I see I had long signed articles in the Queen, Daily Chronicle, Observer, Daily Mail, and Tatler. Five important papers, besides unsigned articles in others.