London, Aug. 14, 1905.
We have spent the day at Windsor Castle, the favorite home of Queen Victoria, and indeed of British monarchs for several centuries. King Edward and Queen Alexandra were not at home. We had not advised them in advance of our intention to visit them, and Edward had gone off to a hot-springs resort to recuperate from the festivities of last week, when he was entertaining the French navy. The queen is visiting her folks in Copenhagen, and none of the royal family were at the depot. However, we went direct to the castle, and, opening it with the usual key (a shilling), we wandered around in the big and beautiful rooms, tramped through the stables and saw the horses, and enjoyed the beautiful view of the valley of the Thames from the terrace on which Queen Elizabeth used to stand and shoot deer which her gamekeeper drove in front of her. King Edward and Queen Alexandra have a right pretty place at Windsor, but it takes a lot of help to keep it up. There are fifty men employed in the stables alone. The queen is a good housekeeper, as can be told from the well-polished floors, the shining brass and the absence of dirt and dust from the walls and furniture. Windsor Castle is about three times as big as the Reformatory. Part of it was built over 800 years ago by William the Conqueror, and it has been added to by nearly every sovereign. It was a favorite place with Henry VIII., and one of his wives, Anne Boleyn, was confined and executed in Windsor. At the time, Henry was over in the next county waiting until Anne was dead so he could marry another, which he did within forty-eight hours. The kings and queens in those days were often tough bats and acted scandalous. They couldn’t do it now, at least in England. A few years ago the people of England were worked up over a gambling scandal in which the present king, then Prince of Wales, was implicated. But King Edward has shown himself to be a model monarch, and he and the queen are both popular.
A king does not have an easy job. He has to attend state banquets, preside at the laying of corner-stones, and ride in state on great occasions, always look pleasant when he is in public, and eternally be entertaining somebody from somewhere that he does not care about. This does not sound so bad, but when you read, as you do in the English papers, just what the king does every day and realize what a grind it must be after the novelty is worn off, you begin to feel sorry for Edward. No wonder he has to go to the hot springs for his health. I don’t suppose that since he has been king he has had a whole week off, and he is getting old. Kings and queens have to do everything, from marrying to visiting, because it is best for their countries and not because they want to. Even an independent American citizen knows how tiresome it is to do “what is best” rather than what you really like, and poor Edward never gets a rest. Of course, if the king really had power there would be some recompense to a man. But the king of England has little or no power. He is not allowed to have any views on public questions. When the Conservative party is in power it speaks for the king and when the Liberal party is in power it voices the sentiment of the king. This fiction is a part of the British constitution, with the further inconsistent proposition that the king can do no wrong. If the people disapprove of the public policy they blame the dominant ministry, and properly so, for the king has no more to say on political questions in England than a Republican has in Texas. Edward would no more dare to take a decided position or make a stand on a government policy than he would get out in the street with nothing on but his crown. The people run the government in Great Britain nearly as much as they do in the United States, and the monarchical customs and the restrictions and regulations which seem absurd to us would be dumped out in the next session of parliament if the people wished it. But they don’t, for they are English and they cling to the old ways. They want the king and nobles and are willing to pay the bills.
But I am getting away from Windsor. It is the biggest and best castle I have seen in Europe. There are towers and turrets and moats enough to remind you that once upon a time a castle was a fort, and there are gardens and terraces and beautiful pictures which show that the kings have spent their money, or the people’s money, with good taste. There are several other royal residences in England, but Windsor is conceded to be the best. It is in a beautiful country, and yet it is close to London, so that the king could spend a quiet night and in the morning hop on the train and in thirty minutes be at his office in the city. And the king has a train of special cars nearly as handsome as those of a division superintendent on the Santa Fe.
Our guide pointed out to us a neighboring estate which belonged to William Penn, the first owner of Pennsylvania, long before Quay’s time. Penn got the English sovereign to let him have all of Pennsylvania at a nominal rent. He then settled with the Indians on a friendly basis, and the result was his Quaker colony prospered from the start. The contract was that he and his successors and assigns should pay to the king of England so many beaver-skins annually. There have been no payments, so the guide said, since July 4, 1776.
On our way to Windsor we stopped at Stoke Poges, or rather at the church near there, in the graveyard of which Gray wrote his great “Elegy.” The little church stands just as it did when Gray was there about 150 years ago. The yew tree, to which he refers, is a veritable monarch, and the woman who shows strangers around said it was 900 years old. In the church are the graves of Gray and his mother, to whom he owed his intelligence and his opportunity. The ivy-covered tower looks down over the crumbling gravestones of those—
“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;