“Oh,” he replied, “the Mansion House is a network of officialism, and all these papers have gone through the proper office, been enquired into, and passed; I have, therefore, nothing to do with them but sign my name.” Gorgeous flunkeys placed the papers before him and gorgeous flunkeys bore them away.
The luncheon was not particularly good, except the turtle soup, though it was well served. All the plates and silver bore the City arms. Beautiful yellow tulips stood in golden vases down the table. Certainly the foreign visitors ought to have been impressed by the solid magnificence of a City banquet. The Lord Mayor made a happy, though evidently unprepared speech, and regretted that he was not master of each of the sixteen languages represented by the different nationalities sitting round the table, but he did give a few phrases in French and German, much to the delight of the foreigners.
“What is the most difficult part of being Lord Mayor?” I asked.
“The dinners,” was his surprising reply. “It is a case of dining out practically every night, and as the Lord Mayor goes everywhere in his official capacity, he is always expected to say something. How is it possible to say anything with any sense in it six times a week?”
He seemed delighted with the Queen’s visit and showed the sword which had been used for the ceremony. The next day the announcement appeared in the papers that Her Majesty, in recognition of her City reception, had been pleased to confer a baronetcy upon him, and knighthood upon the Sheriffs.
I had a long talk after the luncheon with Sir William Agnew, who said, “I have now collected all my pictures for the Paris Exhibition, and flatter myself they are the finest collection of representative English art that has ever been brought together, considering the number—Gainsborough, Raeburn, Romney, Constable, Turner, Watts, Burne-Jones are among them, and several are insured for from £10,000 to £15,000 apiece. But I have never before found such difficulty in obtaining the loan of pictures. In several cases I received an answer in the affirmative until I mentioned Paris. ‘Oh no, my dear fellow! I am not going to let my picture go there,’ has been the reply.
“There is no doubt about it,” he continued, “that the attitude of the French Press lately towards the Queen, and their comments on the Transvaal War, have caused a very bitter feeling in this country, and in several instances I have had to make it a personal favour to myself to get the pictures at all. Indeed, the fear has been so great that the exhibition might be burnt down, or the canvases cut and destroyed, that I almost gave up all idea of a representative English collection in despair; and, although I have insured the pictures for a large sum from their owner’s door till their ultimate return, I shall not be happy in my mind until the exhibition is over and they are back again. The present mistrust of the French people is extraordinary, and the sort of feeling current that we may go to war with France has made it very difficult.”
A few years later the influence of King Edward did much to create a better understanding with France.
The Lord Mayor’s documents coming in for signature reminded me of a millionaire, who has much to do with the issue of shares and can sign his name fourteen or fifteen hundred times in an hour.
“I often do that,” he said; “in fact, two or three times in a year. But the greatest number of times I ever signed my name in a week was once in Paris when we were bringing out a new company; then I signed my name thirty-three thousand times in one week.”