Along with half a million, more or
less, of his patriotic fellow countrymen, tearing his own clothes
off and their clothes off, trampling the weak and sickly underfoot,
bucking the doubled and tripled police lines in a mad, vain effort
to see the flagpole on the roof or a corner of the rear garden
wall. For that house was Clarence House, and the young man who
posed so accommodatingly for the photographer was none other than
Prince Arthur of Connaught, who was getting himself married the
very next day.
The next day I beheld from a short distance the passing of the
bridal procession. Though there were crowds all along the route
followed by the wedding party, there was no scrouging, no shoving,
no fighting, no disorderly scramble, no unseemly congestion about
the chapel where the ceremony took place. It reminded me vividly
of that which inevitably happens when a millionaire's daughter is
being married to a duke in a fashionable Fifth Avenue church - it
reminded me of that because it was so different.
Fortunately for us we were so placed that we saw quite distinctly
the entrance of the wedding party into the chapel inclosure.
Personally I was most concerned with the members of the royal
house. As I recollect, they passed in the following order:
His Majesty, King George the Fifth.
Her Majesty, Queen Mary, the Other Four Fifths.
Small fractional royalties to the number of a dozen or more.
I got a clear view of the side face of the queen. As one looked
on her profile, which was what you might call firm, and saw the
mild-looking little king, who seemed quite eclipsed by her presence,
one understood - or anyway one thought one understood - why an English
assemblage, when standing to chant the national anthem these times,
always puts such fervor and meaning into the first line of it.
Only one untoward incident occurred: The inevitable militant lady
broke through the lines as the imperial carriage passed and threw
a Votes for Women handbill into His Majesty's lap. She was removed
thence by the police with the skill and dexterity of long practice.
The police were competently on the job. They always are - which
brings me round to the subject of the London bobby and leads me
to venture the assertion that individually and collectively,
personally and officially, he is a splendid piece of work. The
finest thing in London is the London policeman and the worst thing
is the shamefully small and shabby pay he gets. He is majestic
because he represents the majesty of the English law; he is humble
and obliging because, as a servant, he serves the people who make
the law. And always he knows his business.
In Charing Cross, where all roads meet and snarl up in the bewildering
semblance of many fishing worms in a can, I ventured out into the
roadway to ask a policeman the best route for reaching a place in
a somewhat obscure quarter.
