AT KING EDWARD’S HOUSE.
AT KING EDWARD’S HOUSE.
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 ithas been added to by nearly every sovereign. It was a favorite place with HenryVIII., 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 hadpower 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 concededto 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;Along the cool, sequestered vale of lifeThey kept the noiseless tenor of their way.”
“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,Their sober wishes never learned to stray;Along the cool, sequestered vale of lifeThey kept the noiseless tenor of their way.”
“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,Their sober wishes never learned to stray;Along the cool, sequestered vale of lifeThey kept the noiseless tenor of their way.”
“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool, sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.”
Gray wrote a great poem. He never wrote another in the same class. His reputation is based on the Elegy, and that is enough. It made him famous, and he was offered the position of poet laureate to the king and declined it. A man who will decline a good job like that is almost as rare as a great poet.
We read the poem aloud out in the graveyard underneath the yew tree. It fitted exactly. Gray had touched the springs of sublimity by seeing through nature and telling just what he saw, no more.
In a field near Windsor I saw a mowing-machine, the first I have noticed in Europe. Everywhere else the hay and grass has been cut by hand. I mentioned this fact to the driver, and he was very bitter over the introduction of machinery because it kept men out of an opportunity to work. He told me he was going to America just as soon as he could “raise the funds.” The women do not work in the field in England, at least not much. But they are busy in the dairy, at the stores and behind the bar in the saloons. In every way I found England ahead of the continent in its ways of doing things, but there is still enough difference from our ways to make them seem queer. I also have a kick coming on another matter. A great many English people do not speak the English language. They think they do, but they not only drop their h’s when they should be on and put them on where they do not belong, but they pronounce the vowels and some of the consonants in a manner that would make a dictionary turn pale. It is often very difficult for me to understandthem, and they are all at sea over my Kansas brogue. Of course this does not apply to the educated English people, who only speak differently from us in using a broad and pleasant accent.
Coming down the street on the way home I saw in a grocery-store window these signs: “Breakfast eggs, ten for a shilling;” “Recommended eggs, twelve for a shilling;” “Select eggs, fourteen for a shilling;” “Cooking-eggs, sixteen for a shilling.” The frankness of the signs surprised me. I suppose we have the same varieties of eggs in Kansas, but we don’t describe them so exactly and they all go at the same price. As eggs are a staple item on the bill of fare, I am wondering to-night whether my landlord buys “breakfast eggs” or “cooking-eggs,” or just plain “eggs.”
The English money is the hardest to understand in Europe. It is based on the shilling, worth about a quarter in our money. Four farthings make a penny, 12 pennies make a shilling, and 20 shillings make a pound ($4.80). The usual coins are the ½ penny, pronounced “ha-penny,” penny, “tuppence,” the 3-penny, pronounced “trippence,” the sixpence, the shilling, the 10-shilling, the pound, called a sovereign; the 5-shilling piece, called a crown, and the half-crown. You add 8 pence to 10 pence and it doesn’t make 18, it makes “one and six.” Add one and six to one and eight and it makes three and two—yes, it does! Figuring with English money for an American beginner is like turning handsprings.
The paper currency is issued by the Bank of England,and is made of white-fiber paper. In some way I got possession of a ten-pound note and took it into a bank to have it changed. The cashier had me sign my name on the back. I demurred at first, but as I wanted the change I finally did it, remarking to him that I was pleased to know that the bank considered my indorsement necessary to a bank note of the Bank of England. The cashier did not see the joke, for he took pains to tell me that it was not to make the note better and that a Bank of England note was worth its face in gold anywhere. I have had a hard time with my alleged jokes. I had a letter of introduction to a London banker from a New York banker, and presented it in order to get the opportunity of looking through an English bank. Wanting to be pleasant and friendly, I remarked as he finished reading the letter that I had gotten it so that if I had trouble with the police I might call on him for help. He gravely assured me that he did not think I would have any difficulty with the police. He did not see my little joke. Perhaps he has seen it by this time, for that was two days ago.