Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!"
Rudyard Kipling, "Recessional."
Le Roy est mort; vive le Roy!
King Edward was mourned a twelvemonth, and in the spring of the following year all sorts and conditions of men gathered to do honour to his successor. Before the first hammer beat on the first Coronation stand, the invasion of London had begun: from Channel to Tweed ran a whisper of social schemings—a daughter's presentation, a ball, a house in town for the Season. Our solid, self-conscious race, never gay for gaiety's sake, reached out and grasped the excuse for innocent dissipation. The last five years had been so charged with political acrimony, the world had worked itself into so great a passion over the Budgets and Second Chambers. Three months respite was a prospect alluring to the straitest Puritan.
My uncle Bertrand had hoped that a year of mourning would tempt his countrymen to regard politics as a serious study rather than a pretext for vulgar abuse. Seldom have I watched the death of a vainer hope, for the world flung off its black clothes and prepared for carnival. Apaches plotted new raids, strange-tongued provincials rubbed shoulders with American tourists, Colonial Prime Ministers jostled you in the streets or appropriated your favorite table at the restaurants.
For a time I sought refuge in the Club—and found it was no refuge. Members were balloting for seats to view the procession or discussing Adolf Erckmann's prospects in the Coronation Honours List. Erckmann himself was very prominent, and the capture of London, which he largely effected in the next three or four years, started with his acquisition of a title. Perhaps he tried to capture the Eclectic Club—I certainly remember being asked to blackball three of his candidates. If so, he failed; the most mediaeval club in the world was strong to resist the most modern social impresario. And this I regard with satisfaction when I consider, in moments of sombre retrospection, how the tone of England has become modernized in the last half generation. Sir John Woburn and the Press Combine modernized journalism; Vandale, Bendix and Trosser modernized the House of Commons, as anyone will agree who recalls the three scandals associated with their names—squalid, financial scandals, lacking the scale and dignity of Central American corruption; and Erckmann modernized London Society. It was a brilliant, gaudy thing when he left it, yet I almost preferred the old state when the loudest voice and longest purse did not necessarily go the furthest.
From time to time I saw something of his conquering march. My mother and sister came over for the Coronation, and we suffered the season patiently. Of course we gave a ball; equally 'of course,' it was at the Ritz, for the Ritz at this time was an article of faith. If a hostess wanted men, she must entertain there; if a man wanted supper, he must secure an invitation by hook or by crook—or else walk in without it.