An Autobiography

CHAPTER XXII

THE CAPE AND DEVONPORT

ON November 12th, 1898, my husband sailed for South Africa, there to take up the military command, and to act as High Commissioner in place of Sir Alfred Milner, home on leave. His staff at Dover loved him. Their send-off brought tears to his eyes. I, C. and the A.D.C. saw him off from Southampton, to rejoin him in the process of time at the Cape. We little knew what a dark period in his life awaited him out there, brought about by the malice of those in power there and at home. It is too sacred and too painful a subject for me to record it here further than I have done. The facts will be found in his “Autobiography.” I left England on February 18th, 1899, with three of the children, leaving the two eldest boys at college. It was a very painful leave-taking at the Waterloo Station. My mother was there and all the dear ones, whom I did not expect to see again for two or three years – my mother perhaps ever again. Yet in a few months we were back there! My theory that one should try and not fret about the future, which is an absolutely unknown quantity, proved justified. I have chronicled our voyage out in my former little book, and described one night at Madeira – a night of enchantment under the moon.

I need not go over the days on the “blue water” again, nor our strange life beyond the Equator, where, though I was filled with admiration for the beauty of our surroundings, I never felt the happiness which Italy, Egypt or Palestine had given me. Very absurd, no doubt, and sentimental, but my love of the old haunts made me feel resentful of the topsy-turvy state of things I found down there. The crescent moon on what (to me) was the wrong side of the sunset, the hot north wind, the cold blast from the south, the shadows all inverted – no, I did not enjoy this contradiction to my well-beloved traditions. There was, besides, a local melancholy in that strange beauty I cannot describe. All this may be put down to sentimentality, but a very real melancholy attaches to South Africa in my mind in connection with my husband, who suffered there for his honesty and devotion to the honour of the Empire he served. The authorities accepted his resignation of the Cape command which he tendered for fear of embarrassing the Government, and he accepted the command of the Western District in its place, which meant Devonport. So on August 22nd we all embarked for Home.

There we found the campaign of calumny, originated in South Africa against Sir William, in its acutest phase. The Press was letting loose all the poison with which it was being supplied, and I consequently went through, at first, the bitter pain of daily trying to intercept the vilest anonymous letters, many of them beer-stained missives couched in ill-spelt language from the slums. Not all the reparation offered to my husband later on – the bestowal of the Grand Cross of the Bath, his election to the dignity of Privy Councillor, his selection as the safest judge to investigate the South African war stores scandals, not to name other acts conveying the amende honorable– ever healed the wound.

His offence had been a frank admission of sympathy for a people tenacious of their independence and, knowing the Boers as he did, he knew what their resistance would mean in case of attack. He was appalled at the prospect of a war, not against an army but against a people, involving the farm-burnings and all the horrors which our armies would have to resort to. He would fain have seen violence avoided and diplomacy used instead, knowing, as he did, that the old intransigent Dopper element would die out in time, and the new generation of Boers, many of whom were educated at our universities, intermarrying with the English, as they were already doing, would have brought about that very union of the two races within the Empire which has been reached to-day through all that suffering. In case, however, war should be decided on he employed the utmost vigour allowed to official language to warn those in power of the necessity for enormous forces in order to ensure success. Some of his despatches were suppressed. The idea at Headquarters was an easy march to Pretoria. What I have alluded to as the malice which prompted the campaign of calumny had caused the report to be spread that our initial defeats were owing to his wilful neglect in not warning the directing powers of the gravity of their undertaking.

The chief interest I found in our new appointment was caused by the frequent arrivals of foreign men-of-war, whose captains were received officially and socially, and there were admirals, too, when squadrons came. It was interesting and amusing. Lord and Lady Charles Scott were at the Admiralty and, later, Sir Edward Seymour, during our appointment. The foreign sailors prevented the official functions from becoming monotonous, and we got a certain amount of pleasure out of this Devonport phase of our experiences. I carried my painting “through thick and thin,” and did well, on the whole, at the Academy. I had the “consuming zeal” – a very necessary possession. One year it was a big tent-pegging picture (I don’t know where its purchaser is now), which was well lighted at Burlington House. Then a Boer War subject, “Within Sound of the Guns” – well placed; followed by an Afghan subject, “Rescue of Wounded,” which to my great pleasure was given an excellent place in the Salle d’Honneur. I also accomplished other smaller works and exhibited a great number of water colours. It is a medium I like much. I also prepared for the Press my “Letters from the Holy Land” there which I have already mentioned. My publishers, Messrs. A. and C. Black, reproduced the water-colour illustrations very faithfully.

Our French sailor guests were always bright, so were the Italians, but the Japanese were very heavy in hand, and conversation was uphill work. It was mainly carried on by repeated smiles and nods on their part. When their big ships came in on one occasion the Admiralty gave them the first dinner, of course, and at the end the bandmaster had the happy thought of giving a few bars out of Arthur Sullivan’s “Mikado” before the Emperor’s health was drunk, the National Air not being in his repertory. Some one asked the Jap admiral if he recognised it. “Ah! no, no, no!” came the usual smiling and nodding answer. At the Port Admirals’ I was to learn that in the navy you mustn’t stand up for our Sovereign’s health, by order of William IV. This resulted one evening in our sitting for “The King” and standing up for “The Kaiser.” There were the German admiral and officers present. I thought that very unfortunate.[13 - Some one has explained to me, with what authority I cannot tell, that “The Sailor King” gave this order to his officers with Royal tact, being well aware that they could no more stand, at that period of the dinner, than he could himself. So we sit.]

Well, Devonport in summer was very delightful, but Devonport in winter had long periods of fog and gloom. I had the blessing of another trip to Italy, this time with our eldest daughter, starting on a dark wintry day in early March, 1900. Sir William’s work prevented his coming with us. Viâ Genoa to Rome lay our happy way. Of course, it wasn’t the Rome I first knew, but the shock I received when revisiting it four years before this present visit had already introduced me into the new order, and I now knew what to see, enjoy, and avoid. There were several new things to enjoy: above all, the Forum, now all open to the sky! In the dear old days that space was a rather dreary expanse of waste land where some poor old paupers were to be daily seen, leisurely labouring under the delusion that they were excavating. They grubbed up the tufts of grass and scraped the dust with pocket-knives, and the treasures below remained comfortably tucked away from public view. Then the much-abused Embankment. The dignified sweep of its lines leads the eye up, as it follows the flow of the stream, to the dignity of St. Peter’s, whereas, formerly, in its place, unbeautiful masses of mouldering houses tottered over the Tiber and gave that long-suffering river the reflections of their drainpipes. Then, the two end arches of that most estimable Ponte Sant’ Angelo are now cleared of the old mud which blocked them up malodorously and docked the lovely thing of its symmetry. Then, finally, Rome is clean!

We had the good fortune to be present at two very striking Papal functions, striking as bringing together Catholics from a wide-flung circle embracing some remote nationalities unknown by sight to me. The first was the Pope’s Benediction in St. Peter’s on March 18th. We were standing altogether about three hours in the crowd at the Tomb, well placed for seeing the Holy Father. He was taken round the vast basilica in his sedia gestatoria, and blessed a wildly cheering crowd. I never saw a human being so like a spirit as Leo XIII. He looked as white as his mitre as he leant forward and stretched his arm out in benediction from side to side, borne high above the helmets of the Noble Guard. One heard cheers in all languages, and a curious effect was produced by the whirling handkerchiefs, which made a white haze above the dark crowd. I have often heard secular monarchs cheered, and that very heartily, but for a Pope it seems that more than ordinary loyalty prompts the cheerers. The people seem to give out their whole being in their voices and gestures.

The Diary says: “I am glad I have seen that old man’s face and his look, as though it came to us from beyond the grave. At times the cheers went up to the highest pitch of both men’s and women’s voices. A strange sound to hear in a church.”

A spring day spent at the well-known Hadrian’s Villa, under Tivoli, is not to be allowed to pass without a grateful record. It is a most exquisite place of old ruins, cypresses, olives and, at this time, flowering peach trees, violets and anemones. It is an enchanting site for a country house. Hadrian chose well. From there you see the delicately-pencilled dome of St. Peter’s on the rim of the horizon to the west, and behind you, to the north, rise the steep foot-hills of the mountains, some crowned with old cities. The ruins of the villa are all minus the lovely outer coating which used to hide the brickwork, and poor Hadrian would have felt very woeful had he foreseen that all the white loveliness of his villa was to come to this. But as bits of warm colour and lovely surface those brick spaces take the sun and shadow beautifully between the dark masses of the cypresses and feathery grey cloudiness of the olives. Nowhere is the “touch and go” nature of life more strikingly put before the mind than in dead Rome, where so much magnificence in stone and marble and mosaic and bronze has fallen into lumps of crumbling brick.

On March 26th we attended the Papal Benediction in the Sistine Chapel, which is a remarkable thing to see. It was a memorable morning. The floor of the chapel was packed with pilgrims, some of them rough men and women from remote regions of the north-east, whose outlandish costumes were especially remarkable for the heavy Cossack boots, reaching to the knee, worn by both sexes. One wondered how these people journeyed to Rome. What a gathering of the faithful we looked down on from our gallery! The same ecstatic cheering we had heard in St. Peter’s announced the entrance of Leo XIII. There he was, the holy creature, blessing right and left with that thin alabaster hand, half covered with a white mitten. With all their hoarse barbaric cheering, I noticed how those peasants, who had so particularly attracted me, remembered to bend their heads and most devoutly make the sign of the cross as he passed. They almost monopolised my study of the motley crowd, but I was aware of the many nationalities present, and the same enthusiasm came from them all. At such times a great consolation eases the mind, saddened, as it often is, by the general atmosphere of declining faith in which one has to live one’s ordinary life in the world. After the Mass came the presentation of the pilgrims at the altar steps. The Pope had kind words for all, bending down to hear and to speak to them, and often stroking the men’s heads. One huge Muscovite peasant knelt long at his feet, and the Pope kept patting the rough man’s cheek and speaking to him and blessing him over and over again. At the sight of this a wild “hourah!” broke from his fellow villagers. Where in the world was their village? In the mists of remoteness, but here in heart, unmistakably. Following the swarthy giant three sandy-haired German students, carrying their plumed caps in their hands and girt with rapiers, presented some college documents to receive the Papal benediction, and a great many men and women knelt and passed on, but the Pope seemed in no way fatigued. As he was borne out again he waved us an upward blessing with his white and most friendly countenance turned up to us.

Our Roman wanderings included a visit to the Holy Father’s Vatican gardens, which are part of the little temporal kingdom a Pope still possesses, and to his tiny “country house” therein, where he goes for change of air(!) in the summer, about two stonethrows from the Vatican. I note: “There are well-trimmed vineyards there; there are pet birds and beasts in a little ‘zoological gardens’; there is the arbour where he has his meals on hot days; and, finally, we were conducted to his little villa bedroom from whose window one of the finest views of Rome is seen, dominated by the Quirinal, within (let us hope) shaking hands distance.” We heard the “Miserere” at St. Peter’s on Good Friday – very impressive, that twilight service in the apse of the great basilica! The unaccompanied voices of boys sounded in sweetest music – one hardly knew whence it came – and the air seemed to thrill with the thin angelic sound in the waning light as one by one the candles at the altar were put out. At the last Psalm the last light was extinguished, and the vast crowd with its wan faces remained lighted only by the faint glimmer that came down from the pale sky through the high windows. Then good-bye to Rome. We left for Perugia on April 22nd. I certainly ought to be grateful for having had yet another reception by my Umbrian Hills! And such a reception that April afternoon, with the low sun gilding everything into fullest beauty! I did my best to secure that moment in miserably inadequate paint from the hotel window immediately on arrival. Better than nothing. But no more of Perugia, nor of dear old Florence on our way to academic Padua; no more of Verona. I have much yet to record on getting home, and after!

CHAPTER XXIII

A NEW REIGN

SIR William was asked by Lord Wolseley to take up the Aldershot command in the absence of Sir Redvers Buller, who was struggling very desperately to retrieve our fortunes in the Boer War; so to Aldershot we went from Devonport, where my husband’s command ran concurrently. How intensely England had hoped for the turning of the tide when Buller was given the tremendous task of directing our armies! We forget the horrors the nation went through in those days because the late War has made us pass through the same apprehensions multiplied by millions, but there the fact remains in our history that we nearly suffered a terrible catastrophe at the time of which I am writing. Buller, on leaving for the Cape, had said to my husband how fervently he wished he possessed his gift of imagination, and, indeed, that is a very precious gift to a commander. This truly awful state of things – our terrible losses, and the temporary lowering of our military prestige (thank heaven, so gloriously recovered and enhanced in the World War!) – were the answer to the repeated assertion made, when we were at the Cape, by those who ought to have known, that “the Boers won’t fight.” How this used to enrage my husband, whose “gift of imagination” made him see so clearly the danger ahead. Well, all this is of the long ago, and, as I have already noted, it is better to say little now; but the sense of injustice lives!

Buller had a great reception at Aldershot on his return from South Africa. I never saw a more radiantly happy face on a woman than poor Lady Audrey’s, who had been in a state of most tense anxiety during her dear Redvers’ absence. As the train steamed into the station the band struck up “See the Conquering Hero comes!” The horses of his carriage were unharnessed, and the triumphal car was drawn by a team of firemen to Government House. At the entrance gate a group of school children sang “Home, sweet Home”; my husband hauled down his flag and Buller’s was run up, and so that episode closed.

We had inhabited a suburban-looking villa on the road to Farnborough during the absence of Sir Redvers, not wishing to disturb the anxious watcher at Government House, and very often we saw the Empress, just as in the old days. She told us the dear Queen was very ill, far worse than the world was allowed to know. My husband had always said the war would kill her, for she had taken our losses cruelly to heart, and so it happened on January 22nd, 1901. The resumed Devonport Diary says:

“A day ever to be marked in English history as a day of mourning. Our Queen is dead. At dinner S. brought us the news that she passed away at 6.30 this afternoon. We were prepared for it, but it seems like a dream. To us who have been born and have lived all our lives under her sovereignty it is difficult to realise that she is gone.

“January 23rd, 1901.– A dull gloomy day, punctuated by 81 minute guns, which began booming at noon. All the royal standards and flags hanging half-mast in the fog, on land and afloat.

“January 24th.– At noon-day all standards and flags were run up to the masthead, and a quick thunder of guns proclaimed the accession of Edward VII. At the end the band on board the guardship Nile struck up ‘God Save the King.’ The flags will all be lowered again until the day after Queen Victoria is laid to rest. Edward VII.! How strange it sounds, and how events and changes are rolling down upon us every hour now. Albert Edward will be a greater man as Edward VII.

“February 5th.– The Queen was buried to-day beside her husband at Frogmore. It is inexpressibly touching to think of them side by side again. Model wife and mother, how many of your women subjects have strayed away, of late, from those virtues which you were true to to the last!

“February 16th.– There is great indignation amongst us Catholics at Edward VII. having been called upon to take the oath at the opening of Parliament which savours so much of the darkest days of ‘No Popery’ bigotry. I think it might have been modified by this time, and the lies about ‘idolatry’ and the ‘worship’ of the Virgin Mary eliminated. Could not the King have had strength of mind enough to refuse to insult his Catholic subjects? I know he must have deeply disliked to pronounce those words.

“August 6th.– Again the flags to-day are at half-mast, and so is the royal standard, and this time, on the men-of-war, it is the German flag! The Empress Frederick died yesterday.” I never mentioned at the time of our visit to the Connaughts at Bagshot, when we were first at Aldershot, a touching incident concerning her. Sir William sat next to her at dinner, and, à propos of a really fine still-life picture painted by her, which hung over the dining-room door in the hall, he asked her whether she still kept up her painting. “No,” she said, “I have cried myself blind!” What with one Empress crying as though her heart would break in speaking to him that time at Camden Place and this Empress telling him she had cried herself blind – ! The illness and death of the Kaiser Frederick must have been a period of great anguish.

During this summer I was very busy with my picture of the “10th Bengal Lancers at Tent Pegging,” a subject requiring much sunshine study, which I have already mentioned.

In September, Lord Roberts – “the miniature Field Marshal,” as I call him in the Diary – came down on inspection, and great were the doings in his honour. “How will this little figure stand in history? Will’s well-planned defence against a night attack from the sea came off very well this dark still night, though the navy were nearly an hour late. There was too much waiting, but when, at last, the enemy torpedo boats and destroyers appeared, the whole Sound was bordered with such a zone of fire that, had it been real war, not a rivet of the invader’s flotilla would have been left in possession of its hold. ‘Bobs’ must have been gratified at to-night’s display, which he reviewed from Stonehouse.

“Our Roberts dinner was of twenty-two covers, and the only women were Lady Charles Scott, myself and C. A guard of honour was at the front door, and presented arms as the Field Marshal arrived, the band playing. He certainly is diminutive. A nice face, soldierlike, and a natural manner. With him that too jocose Evelyn Wood and others. ‘Bobs,’ of course, took me in to dinner, and, on my left, Lord Charles Scott took in C. Will took in Lady Charles. The others – Lord Mount Edgcumbe, H.S.H. Prince Louis of Battenberg (in command of the Implacable), Admiral Jackson, and so forth – subsided into their places according to seniority. Every man in blue or red except one rifleman. Soft music during dinner and two bars of the National Anthem before the still unfamiliar ‘The King, God bless him!’ at dessert. Will still feels a little – I don’t know how to express it – of the mental hesitation before changing ‘the Queen’ which he felt so strongly at first. He was very truly attached to her. I was back in the drawing-room in good time to receive the crowd, who came in a continuous flow, all with an expectant smile, to pay homage to the Lion. I don’t think I forgot anybody’s name (coached by the A.D.C.) in all those introductions, but that item of my duties is a thing I dread. I never saw people in such good humour at any social function before. We certainly do love to honour our soldiers. But, all the time, things are not going too well with us in the war!

“September 14th.– Again the flags half-mast! Now it is the ‘Stars and Stripes.’ Poor President McKinley succumbed to-day to his horrible wound. The surgeons wouldn’t let him die for a long while, though he asked them to. They did their best.

“March 7th, 1902.– And now for the royal visit, the principal occasion for which is the launching of the great battleship the Queen, by Queen Alexandra. Will was responsible for all matters ashore, as the admiral was for those afloat. Lady Charles and I had to be on the platform at North Road to receive Their Majesties, the only other women there being Lady Morley and the Plymouth Mayor’s daughter, bearing a bouquet for presentation. The royal train had an engine decorated in front of its funnel with an enormous gilt crown, and I was pleased, as it majestically glided into the station, to see that it is possible even in railway prose to have a little dash of poetry. The band struck up, the guard of honour presented arms with a clang. First, out sprang lacqueys carrying bags and wraps who scurried to the royal carriages waiting outside, and out sprang various admirals and diplomats in hot haste, all with rather anxious faces veneered with smiles. And then, leisurely, the ever lovely and self-possessed Queen and her kindly and kingly consort, wearing, over his full-dress admiral’s uniform, a caped overcoat. Salutes, bows, curtseys, smiles, handshakes. Will presents the great silver Key of the Citadel, which Charles II. had made for locking the Great Gate against the refractory people. Edward VII. touches it and the General Commanding returns it to the R.A. officer, who has charge of it. We all kiss the King’s hand as seeing him for the first time to speak to since his accession. The Queen withdraws her hand quickly before any officer can salute it in like manner, which looks a little ungracious. Whilst the General and Admiral are introducing their respective staffs to the King, the Queen has a little chat with me and asks after my painting and so forth. She is very fond of that water colour I did for her album at Dover of a trooper of her ‘own’ 19th Hussars at tent-pegging. Lady Charles and I did not join in the procession through the Three Towns to the dockyard, but hastened home to avoid the crowd.

“In the evening we dined with Their Majesties on board the royal yacht over part of which floating palace C. and I had been conducted in the morning. Whatever the yacht’s sailing value may be she certainly cuts out the Kaiser’s Hohenzollern in her internal splendour. When it comes to washstand tops of onyx and alabaster; and carpets of unfathomable depth of pile, and hangings in bedrooms of every shade of delicate colour, ‘toning,’ as the milliners say, with each particular set of furniture; and the most elaborately beautiful arrangements for lighting and warming electrically, and so on, and so on – one rather wonders why so much luxury was piled on luxury in this new yacht which the King, I am told, does not like on the high seas. Her lines are not as graceful as those of the old Victoria and Albert, and it is said she ‘rolls awful’!

“Well, to dinner! As we drove up to the yacht, which is moored right opposite the Port Admiral’s house and is the habitation of the King and Queen during their sojourn here, we saw her outlined against the pitch black sky by coloured electric lamps, which was pretty. Equerries, secretaries and Miss Knollys received us at the top of the gangway, and the ladies of the Queen soon filed into the ante-chamber (or cabin) where they and we, the guests, awaited Their Majesties. Full uniform was ordered for the men, and we ladies were requested to come in ‘high, thin dresses,’ as, it appears, is the etiquette on board royal yachts. There were the Admiral and Lady Charles, the Duke and Duchess of Buccleugh, Lord and Lady St. Germans, Lord Walter Kerr, Lord Mount Edgcumbe (‘the Hearl,’ as he is known to Plymothians), the Bishop of Exeter, Lady Lytton and others up to about thirty-six in number. The King, still dressed as an admiral, and the Queen in a charming black and white semi-transparent frock, with many ropes of pearls, soon came in, and, the curtseying over, we filed into the great dining saloon brilliantly lighted and splendid. The King led in his daughter, Princess Victoria. Buccleugh led in the Queen, and so on. How unlike the painfully solemn, whispered dinners of dear old Queen Victoria was this banquet. We shouted of necessity, as the band played all the time. The King and Queen seem to me to have acquired an expanded dignity since they have come to the Throne. Will and I could not do justice to the dinner as it was Friday, but that didn’t matter. After the sweets the head servant (what Goliaths in red liveries they all are!) handed the King a snuff box! I was so fascinated by the sight of the descendant of the Georges engaged in the very Georgian act of taking a pinch that my eyes were riveted on him. I love history and am always trying to revive the past in imagination. It is true that ‘a cat may look at a King,’ but then I am not a cat (at least I hope not). I only trust His Majesty didn’t mind, but he certainly saw me!

“After dinner we women went down with the Queen to her boudoir, where an Egyptian-looking servant wearing a tarboosh handed us coffee of surpassing aroma, and Her Majesty showed us her beloved little Japanese dog and some of the pretty things about the room. She then asked us to see her bedroom (which I had already seen that morning) and the little dog’s basket where he sleeps near her bed. She is still extremely beautiful. Her figure is youthful and shapely, and all her movements are queenly. The King had quite a long talk with Will about this dreadful Boer War which is causing us all so much anxiety, after we went up again. He then came over to me, and after a few commonplaces he came nearer and in a confidential tone began about Will. I think he is fond of him. What he said was kind, and I knew he wanted me to repeat his sympathetic words to my husband afterwards. He spoke of him as a ‘splendid soldier.’ I know he had in his mind the painful trial Will had gone through. It was late when Their Majesties bade us good-night.

“March 8th.– The great day of the launch of H.M.S. Queen. I wonder if the hearts of the sailors beat anxiously to-day at all! A quieter, more unemotional-looking set of men than those naval bigwigs could nowhere be seen in the world. But, first of all, there was the medal-giving at the R.N. Barracks, where Ladies Poore and Charles Scott, Mrs. Jackson and myself had to receive the King and Queen by the side of our respective husbands on a raised daïs in the centre of the huge parade ground. It was very cold, and the Queen told me she envied me my fur-lined coat. Will said I missed an opportunity of making a pendant to Sir Walter Raleigh! The function was very long, for the King had to give a medal to each one of the three hundred bluejackets and marines who passed before him in single file. At the launching place we all assembled on a great platform, and there in front of us stood the huge hull of the battleship, the ram projecting over the little table on which the Queen was to cut the ropes. That red-painted ram was garlanded with flowers, and the bottle hung from the garland, completely hidden under a covering of roses. It contained red Australian wine, a very sensible change from the French champagne of former times. Down below an immense crowd of workmen waited, some of them right under the ship, and all round, in the different stands, were dense masses of people. We were soon joined by three German naval grandees and two Japanese leprechauns, one an admiral, a toadlike-looking creature in a uniform entirely copied from ours. Our new allies are not handsome. Then came the Bishop of Exeter, in robes and cap and with a peaked beard, a living Holbein in the dress of Cranmer. How could I, a painter, not delight in that figure? I told a friend that bishop had no business to be alive, but ought to be a painting by Holbein, on panel. What does she do but whisk off straight to him and Mrs. Bishop and tell them! Our privileged group kept swelling with additions of officers in full glory and smart women in lovely frocks, and bouquets were brought in, and everything was to me perfectly charming. Monarchy calls much beauty into existence. Long may it endure!

“At last there was a stir; the monarchs came up the inclined approach and the band struck up. They took their places facing the ship’s bows, and Cranmer on panel by Holbein blessed the ship in as nearly a Catholic way as was possible, with the sign of the cross left out. A subordinate held his crozier before him. A hymn had previously been sung and a psalm, followed by the Lord’s Prayer. Then came the ‘christening’ (strange word), a picturesque Pagan ceremony. The Queen brightened up after the last ‘Amen’ and, nearing the table, reached over to the flower-decked bottle; then, stepping back, swung it from her against the monstrous ram, saying, ‘God bless this ship and all that sail in her.’ I heard a little crack, and only a few red drops trickled down. This wouldn’t do, for she immediately seized the bottle again and, stepping well back this time and holding the bottle as high over her head as the ropes would allow, flung it with such violence that it smashed all to pieces and the red wine gushed over her hands and sleeves and poured out its last drops on the table. A great cheer rang out at this, and the King laughingly seemed to say to her, ‘You did it this time with a vengeance!’ She flushed up, looking as though she enjoyed the fun. Then came the great moment of the cutting by the Queen of the little ropes that held the monster bound as by silken threads. Six good taps with the mallet, severing the six strands across a ‘turtle back’ in the centre of the table, and away flew the two ropes down amongst the cheering crowd of workmen and, automatically, down came the two last supports on either side of the yet impassive hull. Still impassive – not a hair’s breadth of movement! A painful pause. Some men below were pumping the hydraulic apparatus for all they were worth. I kept my eye on the nose of the ram, gauging it by some object behind. Firm as a rock! At last a tiny movement, no more than the starting of a snail across a cabbage leaf. ‘She’s off!’ A hurricane of cheers, and with the most admirable and dignified acceleration of speed the great ship, seeming to come into life, glided down the slips and, ploughing through the parting and surging waters, floated off far into the Hamoaze to the strains of ‘Rule Britannia.’ Queen Alexandra, in her elation, made motions with her arms as though she was shoving the ship off herself. Scarcely had the battleship Queen passed into the water than the blocks displaced by her passage were rolled back, still hot as it were from the friction, into the position they had occupied before she moved, and the King, stepping forward, turned a little electric handle at the table, and lo! the keel plate of the Edward VII. slowly moved forward and stopped in its position on the blocks as the germ of the new battleship. The King, in a loud voice, proclaimed that the keel plate of the Edward VII. was ‘well and truly laid,’ and a great cheer arose and ‘God Save the King,’ and all was over. A new battleship was born.[14 - To die during the World War. – E. B., 1921.] We met Their Majesties at the Port Admiral’s at tea, and Will dined with them, together with some of his staff.

“March 10th. – Saw Their Majesties off. I wonder if they were getting tired of seeing always the same set of faces and smiles? I am going to present C. at Court on the 14th, and my function twin, Lady Charles, is going there, too, so I shall feel it will be a case of ‘Here we are again,’ when I meet the royal eye that night. In the evening the news of Methuen’s defeat and capture by Delarey. To think this horror was going on the day we received the King and Queen at North Road Station!

“March 14th. – The King’s Court was much better arranged than formerly, as we had only to make two curtseys – nothing more – instead of having to run the gauntlet of a long row of princes and princesses who were abreast of Queen Victoria (or her representative), and who used to inspect one from head to foot. These were now grouped behind the monarchs, and formed a rich, subdued background to the two regal figures on their thrones. (What a blessing to the aforesaid princes and princesses to be spared the necessity of passing all those nervous women in review, and by daylight, too!) Altogether the music and the generally more festive character of the function struck one as a great and happy improvement on the old dispensation. The King and Queen didn’t exactly say, ‘How do you do again?’ as I appeared, but looked it as I met their smiling eyes. This is the first Court of the King’s reign.

“March 27th. – Cecil Rhodes died yesterday. I am glad I saw him at the Cape. One morning just at sunrise I and the children were driving to Mass during the mission and, as we passed over the railway line, we saw people riding down from ‘Grootschuur.’ The foremost horseman was Cecil Rhodes, looking very big and with a wide red face. He gave me a searching look or stare as if trying to make out who I was in the shade of the carriage hood. So I saw his face well.

“April 3rd. – Will and I are invited by the King and Queen to see them crowned at Westminster. I am to wear ‘court dress with plumes but without train.’ But what if the nightmare war still is dragging on in June? The time is getting short! We hear the King is getting anxious. Lord Wolseley’s trip to the Cape (for his health!) is supposed to have really to do with bringing about peace. But ‘’ware politics’ for me. They are not in my line. What a wet blanket would be spread as a pall over all the purple canopies in Westminster Abbey if war was still brooding over us all! Imagine news of a new Methuen disaster on the morning of June 26th!”

On Varnishing Day that spring at the Royal Academy I found that my tent-pegging picture could not look to greater advantage, but it was in the last room, where the public looks with “lack-lustre eyes,” being tired.

On June 21st I left to attend the Coronation of Edward VII., spending two days at Dick’s monastery at Downside on the way, high up in the Mendip Hills. I note: “I had a bright little room at the guest house just outside the precincts. That night the full moon, that emblem of serenity, rose opposite my window, and I felt as though lifted up above that world into which I was about to plunge for my participation in the pomp of the Coronation in a few hours. It is inexpressibly touching to me to see my son where he is. A hard probation, for the Benedictine test is long and severe, as indeed the test is, necessarily, throughout the Religious Orders.

“June 24th. – Memorable day! I was passing along Buckingham Palace Road at 12.30 when I saw a poster: ‘Coronation Postponed’! Groups of people were buying up the papers. Of course, no one believed the news at first, and people were rather amusedly perplexed. No one had heard that the King was ill. On getting to Piccadilly I saw the official posters and the explanation. An operation just performed! and only yesterday Knollys telling the world there was ‘not a word of truth in the alarming rumours of the King’s health.’ I and Mrs. C. went to a dismal afternoon concert at 2.30 to which we were pledged, and which the promoters were in two minds about postponing, and we left in the middle to stroll about the crowded streets and watch the effect of the disastrous news. There was something very dramatic in the scene in front of the palace – the huge crowd waiting and watching, the royal standard drooping on the roof (not half-mast yet?), and the sense of brooding sorrow over the great building, which held the, perhaps, dying King. What a change in two or three hours!

“June 26th. – This was to have been the Coronation Day. General dismantling. Those dead laurel wreaths still lying in the gutters are said to be the same that were used at the funeral of King Humbert. What a weird thought! The crowds are thinning, but still, at night, they gaze at the little clumps of illuminations which some people exhibit, as the King is going on well. ‘Vivat Rex’ flares in great brilliancy here and there. The words have a deeper meaning than usual. May he live!

“June 27th. – This was to have been the day of the royal procession. Where is that rose-colour-lined coach I so looked forward to? Lying idle in its cover. Every one is moralising. Even the clubmen, Will tells me, are furbishing up little religious platitudes and texts; many are curiously superstitious, which is strange.”

On our return home I was very busy in the studio. There was much galloping and trotting of horses up and down in the Government House grounds for my studies of movement for my next Academy picture (dealing with Boer War yeomanry) and others.

“August 9th. – King Edward VII. was crowned to-day. At about 12.40 the guns firing in the Sound and batteries announced that, at last, the Coronation was consummated. We were asked to the ceremony, but could not go up this time.”

A little tour in France, with my husband and our two girls, made in September, 1902, gave us sunny days in Anjou on the Loire. The majestic rivers of France are her chief attraction for the painter, and to us English Turner’s charm is inseparably blended with their slowly flowing waters. We were visitors at a château at Savonnières, near Angers, for most of the time, and our hosts took care that we should miss none of the lovely things around their domain. The German “Ocean Greyhounds” of the Hamburg-Amerika line used to call at Plymouth in those days, huge, three-funnel monsters which, I think, we have since appropriated, and one of these, the Augusta Marie, bore us off to Cherbourg in all the pride of her gorgeous saloons, flower-decked tables, band, and extraordinary bombastic oleographs from allegorical pictures by the Kaiser William II. As we boarded her the band played “God Save the King,” the captain receiving Sir William with finished regulation attention, and hardly had the great twin engines swung the ship into the Sound to receive her passengers, than with another swing forward, which made the masts wriggle to their very tops, she was off. It was the “Marseillaise” as we reached France. That band played us nearly the whole way over. A really pretty idea, this, of playing the national air of each country where the ship touched.

It was vintage time at Savonnières, which was a French “Castagnolo,” a most delightful translation into French of that Italian patriarchal home. There were stone terraces garlanded with vines bearing – not the big black grapes of Tuscany, but small yellow ones of surpassing sugariness. We were in a typical and beautiful bit of France, peaceful, plenteous, and full of dignity. They lead the simple life here such as I love, which is not to be found in the big English country houses, as far as I know. I was truly pleased at the sight of the peasantry at Mass on the Sunday. The women in particular had that dignity which is so marked in their class, and the white lace coifs they wore had many varieties of shape, all most beautiful, and were very soignées and neatly worn. Not an untidy woman or girl amongst these daughters of the soil.

I was anxious to see “Angers la Noire,” where we stayed on our way from Savonnières to Amboise. But the black slate houses which gave it that name are being turned into white stone ones, and so its grim characteristic is passing away. Give me character, good or bad; characterless things are odious. I don’t suppose a more perfect old Angevin town exists than Amboise. It fulfilled all I required and expected of it. How Turner understood these towns on the broad, majestic Loire! He occasionally exaggerated, but his exaggerations were always in the right direction, emphasising thus the dominant beauties of each place and their local sentiment. Which recalls the deep charm of the rivers of France more subtly to the mind, Turner’s series or an album of photographs? Turner’s mind saw more truly than the camera. The castle of Amboise is superb and its creamy white stone a glory. Then came Blois, with a quite different reading of a castle, where plenty of colour and gilding and Gothic richness gave the character – not so restful to eye and mind as Amboise. Through both the châteaux we were marshalled along by a guide. I would sooner learn less of a place, by myself, than be told all by a tiresome man in a cicerone’s livery. Plenty of horrors were supplied us at both places, vitiating my otherwise simple pleasure as a painter in the sight of so much beauty.

We returned to Plymouth Sound on a lovely day, and there our blue launch, with that bright brass funnel I had so long agitated for, was awaiting us, and we landed at the steps of Mount Wise as though we had merely been for a trip to Penlee Point.