All Sorts and Conditions of Men: An Impossible Story

by Walter Besant

Then she stepped forward and raised her veil, and stood before them all, beautiful as the day, and with tears in her eyes. Yet she spoke in firm and clear accents which all could hear. It was her first and last public speech; for Angela belongs to that rapidly diminishing body of women who prefer to let the men do all the public speaking.

"My dear friends," she said, "my kind friends: I wish first that you should clearly understand that this Palace has been invented and designed for you by my husband. All I have done is to build it. Now it is yours, with all it contains. I pray God that it may be used worthily, and for the joy and happiness of all. I declare this Palace of Delight open, the property of the people, to be administered and governed by them, and them alone, in trust for each other."

This was all she said; and the people cheered again, and the organ played "God Save the Queen."

With this simple ceremony was the Palace of Delight thrown open to the world. What better beginning could it have than a wedding party? What better omen could there be than that the Palace, like the Garden of Eden, should begin with the happiness of a wedded pair?

At this point there presented itself, to those who drew up the programme, a grave practical difficulty. It was this. The Palace could only be declared open in the great hall itself. Also, it could be only in the great hall that the banquet could take place. Now, how were the fifteen hundred guests to be got out of the way and amused while the tables were laid and the cloth spread? There could not be, it is true, the splendor and costly plate and épergnes and flowers of my Lord Mayor's great dinner, but ornament of some kind there must be upon the tables; and even with an army of drilled waiters it takes time to lay covers for fifteen hundred people.

But there was no confusion. Once more the procession was formed and marched round the hall, headed by the band of the Guards, visiting first the gymnasium, then the library, then the concert-room, and lastly the theatre. Here they paused, and the bridal party took their seats. The people poured in; when every seat was taken, the stewards invited the rest into the concert-room. In the theatre a little sparkling comedy was played; in the concert-room a troupe of singers discoursed sweet madrigals and glees. Outside the waiters ran backward and forward as busy as Diogenes with his tub, but more to the purpose.

When, in something over an hour, the performances were finished, the stewards found that the tables were laid, one running down the whole length of the hall, and shorter ones across the hall. Everybody had a card with his place upon it; there was no confusion, and, while trumpeters blared a welcome, they all took their places in due order.

Angela and her husband sat in the middle of the long table; at Angela's left hand was Lord Jocelyn, at Harry's right Lady Davenant. Opposite the bride and bridegroom sat the chief brewer and the chief accountant. The bridemaids spread out right and left. All Angela's friends and acquaintances of Stepney Green were there, except three. For old Mr. Maliphant was sitting as usual in the boarding-house, conversing with unseen persons, and laughing and brandishing a pipe; and with him Daniel Fagg sat hugging his book. And in his own office sat Bunker, sick at heart. For he remembered his officious private letter to Miss Messenger, and he felt that he had indeed gone and done it.

The rest of the long table was filled up by the clerks and superior officers of the brewery; at the shorter tables sat the rest of the guests, including even the draymen and errand-boys. And so the feast began, while the band of the Guards played for them.

It was a royal feast, with the most magnificent cold sirloins of roast beef and rounds of salt beef, legs of mutton, saddles of mutton, loins of veal, ribs of pork, legs of pork, great hams, huge turkeys, capons, fowls, ducks, and geese, all done to a turn; so that the honest guests fell to with a mighty will, and wished that such a wedding might come once a month at least, with such a supper. And Messenger's beer, as much as you pleased, for everybody. At a moment like this, would one, even at the high table, venture to ask, to say nothing of wishing for, aught but Messenger's beer?