One day when Wattie and I were crossing Leadenhall Street we were halted by a Bobby to let a carriage pass. The wheels grazed our impatient haste. We looked up petulantly into the carriage and our eyes met those of Queen Victoria, smiling down on us.
Chatter ceased, our breath held when Her Majesty smiled right into our surprised faces. She gave us a private, most gracious bow, not a majestic sweeping one to be shared by the crowd. The personal smile of a mother-lady who, having raised a family, loves all boys and girls. The carriage rolled on. Wattie and I stared, first after the carriage, then at one another.
“Carlight—the Queen!”
How motherly! was my impression. The garish, regal chromos on Mrs. Mitchell’s walls had been Queens only. This kindly old lady in a black bonnet was woman as well as Queen.
Wattie had never before seen the Queen close. She had been only one of a bellowing multitude watching her pass. She was tremendously excited.
Having just won her final South Kensington teaching certificate she was tip-toey anyhow and she was going out to a married brother in India for a year. I had moved to Mrs. Dodds’ big boarding house for students in Bulstrode Street. Wattie had run up to London to bid me good-bye.
Mrs. Radcliffe, surrounded by the daily newspapers, was as near tears as I could imagine her being. Mrs. Denny opposite was openly crying, curls bobbing, handkerchief mopping, the delicate little face all puckered. In the students’ boarding house all was silent, the usual clatter stilled. London had hushed, England was waiting and Queen Victoria lay dying. Bulletins were posted every hour on the gates of Buckingham Palace. We stole out in twos and threes all through the day to read them. The ones at home looked up on our return, saw there was no change, looked down again. Every one was restless.
Fräulein Zeigler, the German, at present cubicled in our room in Bulstrode Street, was retrimming her winter hat. From his moth-ball wrappings she took a small green parrot with red beak and glassy eyes. Smoothing his lack-lustre plumage she said, “So, or so, girls?” twisting the mangy bird’s stare fore, then aft. Advising heads poked out between cubicle curtains. Nobody’s interest in the German woman’s hat was keen.
“Extry! Extry! ’Er Majesty gorn!” shrilled the news-boys. Everyone took a penny and went out to buy a black-bordered “Extry”. Then they read the bulletin posted on the gate which said,
“Osborne, January 23, 1901.
My beloved Mother has just passed away, surrounded by her children and grandchildren.
Signed ‘Albert Edward’.”
The following morning, passing through St. James’s Park on my way to school, I was halted for a passing carriage. In it sat the new, uncrowned King—Edward VII. He looked sad and old. When they had said to him, “The Queen is dead. Long live the King!” he had replied, “It has come too late, too late!”
I remarked to Wattie, “Queen Victoria might have sat back and let Edward reign a little before he got so old.”
“Carlight! It is poor taste to criticize England’s Queen, particularly after she is dead.”
“She was our Queen too, Wattie. All the same, I do not think it was fair to Edward.”
London completely blacked herself. It was ordered so. Shops displayed nothing but black, lamp posts and buildings draped themselves in black rag which fog soon draggled. Bus-horses wore crêpe rosettes on their bridles. Black bands were round the drivers’ arms, cab and bus whips floated black streamers. Crêpe was supremely fashionable. The flower women couldn’t black the flowers so they favoured white and purple varieties, ignoring the gay ones. Dye-shops did a roaring trade; so many gay garments visited them and returned sobered. The English wallowed in gloom, glutted themselves with mourning.
On the first black Sunday Marie Hall, a young violinist in our house, asked to come to service in the Abbey with me. Young Marie, sure of herself since Kubelik had kissed her and told her she was the prodigy of the day, had just bought a new hat—bright cherry. “I don’t care. It’s my only hat; I shan’t black it.”
Instead of sitting in her usual seat beside me, Mrs. Radcliffe crossed to the far side of the Abbey. After service she whispered coldly in my ear, “How could you, Klee Wyck! The whole loyal Abbey blacked—that screaming hat!”
“Can I help it, Mrs. Radcliffe, if an English girl won’t kill her hat in honour of her dead Queen?”
In the boarding house Fräulein angrily removed the green parrot. “I don’t see why I should,” she grumbled, rolling “Polly” back in his moth-ball wrappings, slapping a black bow in his place and sulking under it.
The funeral preparations were colossal. Every Royalty in Europe must be represented. Mouse-like queens no one had ever heard of came creeping to the show—and Kaiser William with his furious moustachios! Hundreds of bands throbbed dead marches, the notes dragging so slow one behind another the tune was totally lost. London’s population groaned and wept.
I did not want to go to the Queen’s funeral procession—Little Kindle, my cubicle neighbour in the new boarding house, begged, “Come on, you may never see such another.”
We rose at five; at six we took position in the Piccadilly end of St. James Street, front row. The procession was not due till eleven. In one hour we had been forced back to the sixth row by soldiers, police and officials who planted themselves in front of us. In defiance of the law, I carried a little camp-stool, but by the time I was sitting-tired the crowd was too tight to permit my doubling to sit. You could not even raise an arm. St. James Street had a gentle rise, the upper crowd weighted down on those below. Air could only enter your mouth, you were too squashed to inflate. Each soul was as a wedge driven into a mass as a tightener is forced into an axe handle.
Those with seats reserved in upper windows along the route came much later than the crowd. Police tore a way for them through the people. The seat-holders hanging on to the Bobby, the crowd surged into the gap to better their positions. They fought tooth and nail.
“Kindle!”
She half-turned, looked, groaned, pounded a Bobby on the vertebrae, said, “My friend, get her out quick, Bobby.”
“Way there! Lydy faintin’!” shouted the policeman.
A great roaring was in my ears—then nothing. I recovered, draped over an area railing in a side street. I was very sore, very bruised.
“My camp-stool, Kindle?”
“Back among the legs—rejoicing in the scoop it took out of my shin. I told you not to bring the thing!”
She bound a handkerchief round her bloody stocking.
“Come on,” she growled.
“Home?”
“Not after we have waited this long! The Mall, it’s wide; hurry up!”
I dragged. I know exactly how a pressed fig feels.
I saw a corner of the bier, Kindle saw the Kaiser William’s moustachios. Oh, the dismal hearing of those dead-march bands, which linked the interminable procession into one great sag of woe, dragging a little, old woman, who had fulfilled her years, over miles of route-march that her people might glut themselves with woe and souse themselves in tears on seeing the flag that draped the box that held the bones of the lady who had ruled their land.
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