Two days afterwards the Victoria and Albert was at Kingstown, from which port the King and Queen and Princess Victoria drove to Dublin for the purpose of visiting the Dublin Exhibition, the Marquis of Aberdeen being, at that time, Viceroy. To use the usual form of the Court Circular, during all the driving that was done on this occasion, and on a subsequent visit to Leopardstown for the races, “the Equerries-in-Waiting were in attendance on horseback.”
I have ridden many miles in my time on these sorts of occasions, and any one with any sense of humour can get a good deal of fun out of them, by studying the attitude of the mobs that one has to pass through; but nothing is half so amusing as an Irish crowd. The Irish people are always supposed to be the very reverse of loyal, but none the less they love a show of any kind, and whenever I have been riding in attendance in Ireland, though passing only an arm’s length off the packed masses of humanity that line the streets, I have never heard a word, or seen a gesture, of anything that was not at any rate friendly.
The following day the Royal party went by road to the Leopardstown races. Racing is always good sport in Ireland, even when one is dressed in an Equerry’s riding-kit, which includes a cocked hat, and when feeling very hot and dusty after having ridden in front of the escort for several miles on the hard high road. That particular meeting at Leopardstown produced even more amusement than usual. The King gave a cup for the winner of an officers’ race, for which there were some thirty starters. There were some fairly decent animals entered, the property of officers, and ridden by their owners or some brother officer; but amongst the whole lot there was only one serious race-horse. This horse had been given by a large race-horse owner to a departmental officer so short a time before the race, as to call forth serious comment. Good odds were laid on this animal to win, but curious things happen in racing, and especially in Ireland. Some of the young officers who were riding in the race with no particular chance of winning, but more for the sake of taking part in a very amusing contest than anything else, had evidently made up their minds, rightly or wrongly, that the gift was not a very genuine one, and that whatever won, they would take care that this particular horse did not. And he did not! At the start, a sort of zareba of horses was formed round him, and after the flag was dropped, curiously enough, whenever he seemed to have a chance of getting through his horses, and taking his place, he was invariably unlucky in being knocked into, and eventually came in with the ruck. An Irish crowd loves and understands racing, and is endowed with the keenest sense of humour, and the shouts of laughter that went up to heaven during this contest did one good to hear.
After leaving Kingstown, the Royal Yacht steamed up the Bristol Channel on her way to Cardiff. It was a lovely morning and full of interest to me, as I could recognise many of my old haunts when passing; such as Hartland, Lundy Island, beautiful Clovelly,—where, from boyhood onwards, I have spent some of the happiest days of my life,—and the outline of Exmoor, where I had so often hunted in my boyhood and youth.
The function at Cardiff consisted in the formal opening of the new Alexandra Docks, and, later on, after lunching with Lord and Lady Bute at their great house, which is literally within the town of Cardiff, a special non-stop train ran the Royal party up to London in time for dinner. I am afraid to say at what pace the train must have been running. I only know that the permanent way of the Great Western is so well laid that there was no shaking; we might have been pottering along at thirty miles an hour instead of at considerably over double that speed.
In August the Royal Yacht was again in full commission for Cowes, and the opportunity was taken of paying a visit to the then brand-new Dreadnought, and going outside the island in her, to see the target-practice of the then, also new, 12-inch guns. To me, of course, it was very interesting, and the visitors on board (there was quite a large party, amongst which were a great number of ladies, who came by the invitation of their Majesties) were, I think, agreeably disappointed in the noise made by the firing, which was nothing like so ferocious as had been generally expected.
And so ended the year 1907 as far as Court duties were concerned.