CHAPTER XLI

THE VISIT OF THE FRENCH FLEET IN 1905

The year 1905 will always be memorable in the annals of the Royal Yacht Squadron, that greatest of all clubs, of which King Edward was, and King George now is, the Admiral. In that year the friendly understanding between France and England, so happily conceived and so charged with destiny, was celebrated by two meetings between the fleets of the two countries. The first of these took place at Brest, and it was arranged that the return visit should be at Cowes during the regatta week. The King also settled that the French Admiral and his principal officers should be entertained officially—or perhaps I ought to say semi-officially—at luncheon by the Royal Yacht Squadron on the 8th of August. It was certainly a unique and important occasion as being the first time that the club had been used as the scene of an international political banquet, and the gathering was worthy of it.

It was the command of the King, who took the greatest interest in all the details of the reception, that I should be the speaker to welcome our guests. Lord Ormonde, our Commodore, was in the chair, the Duke of Leeds, as Vice-Commodore, facing him. Besides Admiral Caillard and his officers, we had as guests the French Ambassador, M. Paul Cambon, Sir Francis Bertie, now Lord Bertie, our Ambassador at Paris, Sir John Fisher, First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, now Lord Fisher, and, of course, all the principal members of the Squadron. After the toasts of the King and the President of the Republic had been proposed by the Commodore, I had to perform my rather difficult duty. My speech was as follows:

“Messieurs, J’obéis à l’appel de notre Commodore. La tâche qu’il m’a imposée serait bien difficile, bien au-dessus de mon courage, n’étais-je sûr de pouvoir compter d’un côté sur la bienveillance et sur l’indulgence de nos hôtes, et si de l’autre je ne savais pas que ce sera à l’unanimité, à l’unanimité enthousiaste, que mes collègues acclameront sinon mes pauvres paroles, au moins les sentiments dont elles seront la faible expression.

“Messieurs, nous célébrons aujourd’hui une occasion rare dans l’histoire des pays—unique dans celle de notre cercle quoiqu’il soit bientôt séculaire. Jamais ces vieux murs lézardés n’ont assisté à pareille fête. Humbles amateurs, nous avons l’honneur de recevoir chez nous les grands professionnels des deux plus importantes marines du monde. Mais ce n’est pas tout—il y a mieux que cela.

“Depuis neuf cents ans il n’y a pas eu d’invasion de l’Angleterre. Nous en avons été menacés mainte fois. Les Espagnols l’ont tentée. Les plongeurs fouillent jusqu’à nos jours parmi les épaves de leur flotte, englouttie par les vagues il y a près de quatre siècles. Les Hollandais ont voulu recommencer la partie; cela ne leur a pas mieux réussi. Aujourd’hui, trève de forfanterie, Messieurs, trève de vantardise! Depuis hier l’invasion de l’Angleterre est un fait accompli, et c’est à bras ouverts que nous accueillons nos envahisseurs. Car il ne s’agit pas d’une invasion hostile, mais d’une invasion d’amis, d’une invasion de cœurs battant à l’unisson avec les nôtres. Les bouches à feu ont parlé, mais cela n’a été que pour saluer de part et d’autre le Tricolor et l’Union Jack.

“Messieurs, il n’en a pas toujours été ainsi. Proches voisines, la France et l’Angleterre ont eu leurs jalousies, leur querelles, et leurs hostilités. Entre voisines c’est bien permis; c’est même, dit-on, d’usage. Mais nous avons changé tout cela! Nous avons trouvé notre chemin de Damas, et c’est notre auguste Souverain qui nous y a conduits. Aimant son pays avant tout, travaillant sans relâche pour le bien de son peuple, le Roi a gardé néanmoins, je le sais, un petit coin bien chaud dans son cœur pour la France.

“C’est grâce à son initiative, admirablement secondée d’ailleurs par Monsieur le Président de la République, par les Ministres et par les Ambassadeurs des deux pays, que nous montrons aujourd’hui au monde entier le spectacle de deux grandes nations marchant comme deux bonnes sœurs, la main dans la main, vers le même noble but—la paix—c’est-à-dire vers le progrès, la civilisation et le bonheur de l’humanité.

“C’est pour cela que nous sommes fiers et heureux, Amiral, de voir vos beaux cuirassés amarrés dans cette rade historique. Formidables engins de guerre, ils sont ici Missionnaires de la Paix, venus pour mettre le dernier sceau au pacte d’une amitié qui nous est bien chère, d’une amitié saine, loyale, et combien desirée par tous ceux qui ont à cœur les intérêts des deux pays!

“Que cette amitié soit durable, qu’aucune jalousie, aucune intrigue ne vienne la troubler—voilà, je me plais à croire, le vœu intime et sincère de tous ceux qui m’entendent.

“Messieurs, je crains d’avoir abusé de votre patience, aussi vais-je me taire. Mais avant de m’asseoir je vous prie, Messieurs mes collègues de l’Escadre Royale, de remplir vos verres, et de boire avec moi à la santé de l’amiral Caillard, à celle des officiers distingués dont il est entouré, et à la gloire impérissable de la Marine Française.”

Admiral Caillard then rose and made the following reply:

“Tous, ici, nous partageons les sentiments exprimés par Lord Redesdale. Nous sommes charmés de l’accueil sympathique qui nous a été reservé au Royal Yacht Squadron Club, et cette impression, s’ajoutant à celle des marques d’amitié que nous donnèrent la flotte de l’Atlantique à Brest et, hier, la flotte de la Manche, les graveront dans notre souvenir d’une façon indélébile.

“Je bois à la santé du Royal Yacht Squadron Club.”

That night the French Admiral gave a reception on board his flagship, at which the King was present. There was cordial talk of the luncheon at the Castle, which had given the French Fleet great pleasure and no little satisfaction to the King.

During the forenoon of Wednesday, 9th August, His Majesty the King reviewed the French Fleet, which subsequently at 1 p.m. weighed anchor and proceeded to Portsmouth.

In London there was a great luncheon in Westminster Hall given by both Houses of Parliament with the Lord Chancellor, Lord Halsbury, in the chair. The French officers were also entertained at one of those magnificent feasts for which the hospitality of the City is world-famous, and this furnished the occasion for what was one of the noblest expressions of chivalrous feeling that could be conceived. It aroused great and admiring enthusiasm at the time, but in the course of years these things are forgotten, and the French visit is worth recording here if for no other reason. When the procession of carriages passed through Trafalgar Square, where a great crowd had gathered, Admiral Caillard stood up in his landau, turned to the column, and with great dignity saluted the statue of Nelson. All the officers of his following did the same. It touched England to the quick, and even now, after the lapse of ten years, I cannot tell the tale without emotion. Could that knightly inspiration, so gracefully carried out, have been bettered?

* * * * *

In the summer of 1905 King Edward did us the honour of paying us a visit at Batsford; it was the fulfilment of an old promise, and on the 8th of July he arrived. The King was an enthusiastic gardener, and for many years I had the honour of sharing with him in what, in a letter to a friend, he once described as his favourite pursuit. At Sandringham, Buckingham Palace, Windsor and Balmoral he never wearied of walking about with Sir Dighton Probyn, another fanatic worshipper of the great god Pan, and myself, planning or listening to plans for improvements.

Among the guests who were to meet his Majesty we had invited two great horticulturists, Mr. Chamberlain, whose special cult was that of orchids, and Georgina, Countess of Dudley, whose skill and care converted a hopeless jungle into one of the loveliest pleasaunces that could provoke a poet’s song. The King brought with him Sir George Holford, the greatest of all English gardeners—so there was much flower talk. When the King arrived I was rather taken aback, for almost the first thing that he said to me was, “Now I must warn you that I will not go up a hill”—with a great stress on the _not_. This was rather a blow, for such merit as the garden at Batsford possesses is due to the fact that it is nothing but a hill, and indeed a pretty steep one. However, it was a lovely afternoon, and we all sallied forth. Presently, when we came to a turn leading upward, the King began wandering on and so, led by one view or grouping of plants after another that took his fancy, he climbed and climbed until he had reached the furthest and highest point.

The next day was taken up with church and a long drive to Stanway over the Cotswold Hills, which I was eager to show him, and so he saw Campden, Broadway and some of the picturesque neighbouring villages with their old seventeenth-century houses dating from a time before the grazing country was broken up during the Napoleonic wars, owing to the boom in wheat—a time when every man was a flock-master and every good-wife span. When the plough came, the old houses, so full of architectural charm, were divided up to furnish labourers’ cottages. The King was very much pleased with this view of a part of his dominions that was new to him, and he was loud in his admiration of Inigo Jones’s beautiful work at Stanway, where Lord and Lady Elcho gave him tea.

But my triumph as a gardener was complete when on the Monday the King put off his return to London till midday so that he might once more walk up the hill, which, at first, he had declared to be _tabu_.

The King’s visit was not only a great honour for us, but it gave immense pleasure to a great many of his loyal subjects to whom, living as they do in a rather out-of-the-way part of the country, kings and queens had, up to that time, been like the gods of Olympus, mystic beings, venerated but unseen. The last king that had been seen in Moreton-in-Marsh was Charles the First. The room in which the Martyr King slept is still shown at the White Hart.

Later in the same year, 1905, the King sent for me and told me that he was about to send the Garter to the Emperor of Japan, that Prince Arthur of Connaught was to take it, and that it was his Majesty’s wish that I should go with the Mission. Of course I was only too glad to obey. We started in January, 1906, on what turned out to be a most delightful expedition, a success in every way. The voyage out with halts at Aden, Ceylon, Singapore, and Hong Kong was full of interest. The Prince played his part admirably and the return journey through Canada gave me an impression of that richly blest country which can never be forgotten. I have already published an account of “the Garter Mission to Japan,” so I need say no more about it here.

Before we left for Japan the King did me the honour of conferring upon me the Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, and when I came home I was given the K.C.B.

1908-9

The King’s relations with the Emperor of Russia had always been of the most friendly and even affectionate character. As Tsarevitch the Emperor paid a visit to Sandringham, and the near relationship to Queen Alexandra had been kept very much alive by those family parties in Denmark at which King Christian’s sons and daughters with their husbands and children were wont to keep up a patriarchal kinship. No family was ever united by stronger ties of love and affection than that of the Danish King and Queen, and those bonds were never allowed to slacken. It was only natural therefore that our King and Queen should wish to pay a visit to their nephew in his own country.

St. Petersburg was then not in such a condition politically as to warrant their going there, so the meeting took place at Reval in the month of June. The visit was purely dictated by family affection, and there was not the most distant suspicion of politics attached to it. There were, however, a few—happily very few—ill-conditioned members of Parliament who chose to assume that the King, by going to Reval, was more or less giving a sign of approval to the severity with which rebels were said to be treated in Russia, a severity, by the by, which has since been shown to have been greatly exaggerated. The professional agitator seldom allows himself to be hampered by accuracy. The German Press also took exception to this meeting, and held it up as evidence of a dark and sinister anti-Teuton plot. It is really amazing that the King should have been suspected of hatred against Germany. Nothing could be further from the truth, as I have good reason to know. The King delighted in his yearly visits to Germany; he loved the country where he had many friends, not to speak of his near relations; he delighted in his intercourse with them, which was greatly facilitated by his exceptional knowledge of their language, in which he took some pride in exercising his skill; and yet the newspaper writers, who in Germany seem to be a singularly ill-informed race, were never weary of girding at the King and proclaiming a hostility which was purely the invention of a mischief-making spite.

All this had the effect of irritating him; he could not see why he might not give a token of affection to a near relation without being called over the coals by a section of his own people, and held up by foreign pressmen to the hatred of a nation for which, as he had shown throughout his life, he entertained nothing but the friendliest feelings. The King showed his just displeasure by excluding from his invitations to a garden party at Windsor the Members of Parliament who had attacked him. In that he did no more than any private gentleman would have done. No gentleman invites to his house a man who has offered him a public affront for which no apology has been offered. Is the King to be the only man in his realm who must allow who will to insult him unchallenged and unrebuked? Yet there were people who blamed him. In my humble judgment he did right.

In the month of August, 1909, the Emperor Nicholas paid the King a return visit at Cowes in his yacht, the _Standart_. There was a brilliant gathering for the regatta week, and the King gave more than one entertainment in his nephew’s honour. I had the honour to be invited to a great banquet on board the _Victoria and Albert_, and after dinner had a long talk with the Emperor, who asked many questions about the old days at St. Petersburg in his grandfather’s time. He was obviously very much delighted with his reception, and was graciously pleased to accede to a suggestion which I made by the King’s command that he should become a member of the Marlborough Club.

Again the agitators snarled and sneered at the visit, but M. Isvolsky, who was with the Tsar, very tactfully said that the protest only served to accentuate the cordiality of the welcome by the people. Nothing came of what was an ugly piece of discourtesy on the part of some men who should have known better; and the Emperor sailed away from Cowes on the 5th of August, leaving behind him in the minds of all those who had had the good fortune to meet him a happy memory of a truly royal geniality and kindness.

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