Part 5

(A series of news letters describing a visit to England by the Shah of Persia)

I THE ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND

LONDON, _June 18, 1873_.

“Would you like to go over to Belgium and help bring the Shah to England?”

I said I was willing.

“Very well, then; here is an order from the Admiralty which will admit you on board Her Majesty’s ship _Lively_, now lying at Ostend, and you can return in her day after to-morrow.”

That was all. That was the end of it. Without stopping to think, I had in a manner taken upon myself to bring the Shah of Persia to England. I could not otherwise regard the conversation I had just held with the London representative of the New York _Herald_. The amount of discomfort I endured for the next two or three hours cannot be set down in words. I could not eat, sleep, talk, smoke with any satisfaction. The more I thought the thing over the more oppressed I felt. What was the Shah to me, that I should go to all this worry and trouble on his account? Where was there the least occasion for taking upon myself such a responsibility? If I got him over all right, well. But if I lost him? if he died on my hands? if he got drowned? It was depressing, any way I looked at it. In the end I said to myself, “If I get this Shah over here safe and sound I never will take charge of another one.” And yet, at the same time I kept thinking: “This country has treated me well, stranger as I am, and this foreigner is the country’s guest--that is enough, I will help him out; I will fetch him over; I will land him in London, and say to the British people, ‘Here is your Shah; give me a receipt.’”

I felt easy in my mind now, and was about to go to bed, but something occurred to me. I took a cab and drove downtown and routed out that _Herald_ representative.

“Where is Belgium?” said I.

“Where is Belgium? I never heard such a question!”

“That doesn’t make any difference to me. If I have got to fetch this Shah I don’t wish to go to the wrong place. Where is Belgium? Is it a shilling fare in a cab?”

He explained that it was in foreign parts--the first place I have heard of lately which a body could not go to in a cab for a shilling.

I said I could not go alone, because I could not speak foreign languages well, could not get up in time for the early train without help, and could not find my way. I said it was enough to have the Shah on my hands; I did not wish to have everything piled on me. Mr. Blank was then ordered to go with me. I do like to have somebody along to talk to when I go abroad.

When I got home I sat down and thought the thing all over. I wanted to go into this enterprise understandingly. What was the main thing? That was the question. A little reflection informed me. For two weeks the London papers had sung just one continual song to just one continual tune, and the idea of it all was “how to impress the Shah.” These papers had told all about the St. Petersburg splendors, and had said at the end that splendors would no longer answer; that England could not outdo Russia in that respect; therefore some other way of impressing the Shah must be contrived. And these papers had also told all about the Shahstic reception in Prussia and its attendant military pageantry. England could not improve on that sort of thing--she could not impress the Shah with soldiers; something else must be tried. And so on. Column after column, page after page of agony about how to “impress the Shah.” At last they had hit upon a happy idea--a grand naval exhibition. That was it! A man brought up in Oriental seclusion and simplicity, a man who had never seen anything but camels and such things, could not help being surprised and delighted with the strange novelty of ships. The distress was at an end. England heaved a great sigh of relief; she knew at last how to impress the Shah.

My course was very plain, now, after that bit of reflection. All I had to do was to go over to Belgium and impress the Shah. I failed to form any definite plan as to the process, but I made up my mind to manage it somehow. I said to myself, “I will impress this Shah or there shall be a funeral that will be worth contemplating.”

I went to bed then, but did not sleep a great deal, for the responsibilities were weighing pretty heavily upon me. At six o’clock in the morning Mr. Blank came and turned me out. I was surprised at this, and not gratified, for I detest early rising. I never like to say severe things, but I was a good deal tried this time. I said I did not mind getting up moderately early, but I hated to be called day before yesterday. However, as I was acting in a national capacity and for a country that I liked, I stopped grumbling and we set out. A grand naval review is a good thing to impress a Shah with, but if he would try getting up at six o’clock in the morning--but no matter; we started.

We took the Dover train and went whistling along over the housetops at the rate of fifty miles an hour, and just as smoothly and pleasantly, too, as if we were in a sleigh. One never can have anything but a very vague idea of what speed is until he travels over an English railway. Our “lightning” expresses are sleepy and indolent by comparison. We looked into the back windows of the endless ranks of houses abreast and below us, and saw many a homelike little family of early birds sitting at their breakfasts. New views and new aspects of London were about me; the mighty city seemed to spread farther and wider in the clear morning air than it had ever done before. There is something awe-inspiring about the mere look of the figures that express the population of London when one comes to set them down in a good large hand--4,000,000! It takes a body’s breath away, almost.

We presently left the city behind. We had started drowsy, but we did not stay so. How could we, with the brilliant sunshine pouring down, the balmy wind blowing through the open windows, and the Garden of Eden spread all abroad? We swept along through rolling expanses of growing grain--not a stone or a stump to mar their comeliness, not an unsightly fence or an ill-kept hedge; through broad meadows covered with fresh green grass as clean swept as if a broom had been at work there--little brooks wandering up and down them, noble trees here and there, cows in the shade, groves in the distance and church spires projecting out of them; and there were the quaintest old-fashioned houses set in the midst of smooth lawns or partly hiding themselves among fine old forest trees; and there was one steep-roofed ancient cottage whose walls all around, and whose roof, and whose chimneys, were clothed in a shining mail of ivy leaves!--so thoroughly, indeed, that only one little patch of roof was visible to prove that the house was not a mere house of leaves, with glass windows in it. Imagine those dainty little homes surrounded by flowering shrubs and bright green grass and all sorts of old trees--and then go on and try to imagine something more bewitching.

By and by we passed Rochester, and, sure enough, right there, on the highest ground in the town and rising imposingly up from among clustering roofs, was the gray old castle--roofless, ruined, ragged, the sky beyond showing clear and blue through the glassless windows, the walls partly clad with ivy--a time-scarred, weather-beaten old pile, but ever so picturesque and ever so majestic, too. There it was, a whole book of English history. I had read of Rochester Castle a thousand times, but I had never really believed there was any such building before.

Presently we reached the sea and came to a stand far out on a pier; and here was Dover and more history. The chalk cliffs of England towered up from the shore and the French coast was visible. On the tallest hill sat Dover Castle, stately and spacious and superb, looking just as it has always looked any time these ten or fifteen thousand years--I do not know its exact age, and it does not matter, anyway.

We stepped aboard the little packet and steamed away. The sea was perfectly smooth, and painfully brilliant in the sunshine. There were no curiosities in the vessel except the passengers and a placard in French setting forth the transportation fares for various kinds of people. The lithographer probably considered that placard a triumph. It was printed in green, blue, red, black, and yellow; no individual line in one color, even the individual letters were separately colored. For instance, the first letter of a word would be blue, the next red, the next green, and so on. The placard looked as if it had the smallpox or something. I inquired the artist’s name and place of business, intending to hunt him up and kill him when I had time; but no one could tell me. In the list of prices first-class passengers were set down at fifteen shillings and four pence, and dead bodies at one pound ten shillings and eight pence--just double price! That is Belgian morals, I suppose. I never say a harsh thing unless I am greatly stirred; but in my opinion the man who would take advantage of a dead person would do almost any odious thing. I publish this scandalous discrimination against the most helpless class among us in order that people intending to die abroad may come back by some other line.

We skimmed over to Ostend in four hours and went ashore. The first gentleman we saw happened to be the flag lieutenant of the fleet, and he told me where the _Lively_ lay, and said she would sail about six in the morning. Heavens and earth. He said he would give my letter to the proper authority, and so we thanked him and bore away for the hotel. Bore away is good sailor phraseology, and I have been at sea portions of two days now. I easily pick up a foreign language.

Ostend is a curious, comfortable-looking, massively built town, where the people speak both the French and the Flemish with exceeding fluency, and yet I could not understand them in either tongue. But I will write the rest about Ostend in to-morrow’s letter.

We idled about this curious Ostend the remainder of the afternoon and far into the long-lived twilight, apparently to amuse ourselves, but secretly I had a deeper motive. I wanted to see if there was anything here that might “impress the Shah.” In the end I was reassured and content. If Ostend could impress him, England could amaze the head clear off his shoulders and have marvels left that not even the trunk could be indifferent to.

These citizens of Flanders--Flounders, I think they call them, though I feel sure I have eaten a creature of that name or seen it in an aquarium or a menagerie, or in a picture or somewhere--are a thrifty, industrious race, and are as commercially wise and farsighted as they were in Edward the Third’s time, and as enduring and patient under adversity as they were in Charles the Bold’s. They are prolific in the matter of children; in some of the narrow streets every house seemed to have had a freshet of children, which had burst through and overflowed into the roadway. One could hardly get along for the pack of juveniles, and they were all soiled and all healthy. They all wore wooden shoes, which clattered noisily on the stone pavements. All the women were hard at work; there were no idlers about the houses. The men were away at labor, no doubt. In nearly every door women sat at needlework or something of that marketable nature--they were knitting principally. Many groups of women sat in the street, in the shade of walls, making point lace. The lace maker holds a sort of pillow on her knees with a strip of cardboard fastened on it, on which the lace pattern has been punctured. She sticks bunches of pins in the punctures and about them weaves her web of threads. The numberless threads diverge from the bunch of pins like the spokes of a wheel, and the spools from which the threads are being unwound form the outer circle of the wheel. The woman throws these spools about her with flying fingers, in and out, over and under one another, and so fast that you can hardly follow the evolutions with your eyes. In the chaos and confusion of skipping spools you wonder how she can possibly pick up the right one every time, and especially how she can go on gossiping with her friends all the time and yet never seem to miss a stitch. The laces these ingenious Flounders were making were very dainty and delicate in texture and very beautiful in design.

Most of the shops in Ostend seemed devoted to the sale of sea shells. All sorts of figures of men and women were made of shells; one sort was composed of grotesque and ingenious combinations of lobster claws in the human form. And they had other figures made of stuffed frogs--some fencing, some barbering each other, and some were not to be described at all without indecent language. It must require a barbarian nature to be able to find humor in such nauseating horrors as these last. These things were exposed in the public windows where young girls and little children could see them, and in the shops sat the usual hairy-lipped young woman waiting to sell them.

There was a contrivance attached to the better class of houses which I had heard of before, but never seen. It was an arrangement of mirrors outside the window, so contrived that the people within could see who was coming either up or down the street--see all that might be going on, in fact--without opening the window or twisting themselves into uncomfortable positions in order to look.

A capital thing to watch for unwelcome (or welcome) visitors with, or to observe pageants in cold or rainy weather. People in second and third stories had, also, another mirror which showed who was passing underneath.

The dining room at our hotel was very spacious and rather gorgeous. One end of it was composed almost entirely of a single pane of plate glass, some two inches thick--for this is the plate-glass manufacturing region, you remember. It was very clear and fine. If one were to enter the place in such a way as not to catch the sheen of the glass, he would suppose that the end of the house was wide open to the sun and the storms. A strange boyhood instinct came strongly upon me, and I could not really enjoy my dinner, I wanted to break that glass so badly. I have no doubt that every man feels so, and I know that such a glass must be simply torture to a boy.

This dining room’s walls were almost completely covered with large oil paintings in frames.

It was an excellent hotel; the utmost care was taken that everything should go right. I went to bed at ten and was called at eleven to “take the early train.” I said I was not the one, so the servant stirred up the next door and he was not the one; then the next door and the next--no success--and so on till the reverberations of the knocking were lost in the distance down the hall, and I fell asleep again. They called me at twelve to take another early train, but I said I was not the one again, and asked as a favor that they would be particular to call the rest next time, but never mind me. However, they could not understand my English; they only said something in reply to signify that, and then went on banging up the boarders, none of whom desired to take the early train.

When they called me at one, it made my rest seem very broken, and I said if they would skip me at two I would call myself--not really intending to do it, but hoping to beguile the porter and deceive him. He probably suspected that and was afraid to trust me, because when he made his rounds at that hour he did not take any chances on me, but routed me out along with the others. I got some more sleep after that, but when the porter called me at three I felt depressed and jaded and greatly discouraged. So I gave it up and dressed myself. The porter got me a cup of coffee and kept me awake while I drank it. He was a good, well-meaning sort of Flounder, but really a drawback to the hotel, I should think.

Poor Mr. Blank came in then, looking worn and old. He had been called for all the different trains, too, just as I had. He said it was a good enough hotel, but they took too much pains. While we sat there talking we fell asleep and were called again at four. Then we went out and dozed about town till six, and then drifted aboard the _Lively_.

She was trim and bright, and clean and smart; she was as handsome as a picture. The sailors were in brand-new man-of-war costume, and plenty of officers were about the decks in the state uniform of the service--cocked hats, huge epaulettes, claw-hammer coats lined with white silk--hats and coats and trousers all splendid with gold lace. I judged that these were all admirals, and so got afraid and went ashore again. Our vessel was to carry the Shah’s brother, also the Grand Vizier, several Persian princes, who were uncles to the Shah, and other dignitaries of more or less consequence. A vessel alongside was to carry the luggage, and a vessel just ahead (the _Vigilant_) was to carry nobody but just the Shah and certain Ministers of State and servants and the Queen’s special ambassador, Sir Henry Rawlinson, who is a Persian scholar and talks to the Shah in his own tongue.

I was very glad, for several reasons, to find that I was not to go in the same ship with the Shah. First, with him not immediately under my eye I would feel less responsibility for him; and, secondly, as I was anxious to impress him, I wanted to practice on his brother first.

THE SHAH’S QUARTERS

On the afterdeck of the _Vigilant_--very handsome ship--a temporary cabin had been constructed for the sole and special use of the Shah, temporary but charmingly substantial and graceful and pretty. It was about thirty feet long and twelve wide, beautifully gilded, decorated and painted within and without. Among its colors was a shade of light green, which reminds me of an anecdote about the Persian party, which I will speak of in to-morrow’s letter.

It was getting along toward the time for the Shah to arrive from Brussels, so I ranged up alongside my own ship. I do not know when I ever felt so ill at ease and undecided. It was a sealed letter which I had brought from the Admiralty, and I could not guess what the purport of it might be. I supposed I was intended to command the ship--that is, I had supposed it at first, but, after seeing all those splendid officers, I had discarded that idea. I cogitated a good deal, but to no purpose. Presently a regiment of Belgian troops arrived and formed in line along the pier. Then a number of people began to spread down carpets for fifty yards along the pier, by the railway track, and other carpets were laid from these to the ships. The gangway leading on board my ship was now carpeted and its railings were draped with bright-colored signal flags. It began to look as if I was expected; so I walked on board. A sailor immediately ran and stopped me, and made another sailor bring a mop for me to wipe my feet on, lest I might soil the deck, which was wonderfully clean and nice. Evidently I was not the person expected, after all. I pointed to the group of officers and asked the sailor what the naval law would do to a man if he were to go and speak to some of those admirals--for there was an awful air of etiquette and punctilio about the premises; but just then one of those officers came forward and said that if his instinct was correct an Admiralty order had been received giving me a passage in the ship; and he also said that he was the first lieutenant, and that I was very welcome and he would take pains to make me feel at home, and furthermore there was champagne and soda waiting down below; and furthermore still, all the London correspondents, to the number of six or seven, would arrive from Brussels with the Shah, and would go in our ship, and if our passage were not a lively one, and a jolly and enjoyable one, it would be a very strange thing indeed. I could have jumped for joy if I had not been afraid of breaking some rule of naval etiquette and getting hanged for it.

Now the train was signaled, and everybody got ready for the great event. The Belgian regiment straightened itself up, and some two hundred Flounders arrived and took conspicuous position on a little mound. I was a little afraid that this would impress the Shah; but I was soon occupied with other interests. The train of thirteen cars came tearing in, and stopped abreast the ships. Music and guns began an uproar. Odd-looking Persian faces and felt hats (brimless stovepipes) appeared at the car windows.

Some gorgeous English officials fled down the carpet from the _Vigilant_. They stopped at a long car with the royal arms upon it, uncovered their heads, and unlocked the car door. Then the Shah stood up in it and gave us a good view. He was a handsome, strong-featured man, with a rather European fairness of complexion; had a mustache, wore spectacles, seemed of a good height and graceful build and carriage, and looked about forty or a shade less. He was very simply dressed--brimless stovepipe and close-buttoned dark-green military suit, without ornament. No, not wholly without ornament, for he had a band two inches wide worn over his shoulder and down across his breast, scarf fashion, which band was one solid glory of fine diamonds.

A Persian official appeared in the Shah’s rear and enveloped him in an ample quilt--or cloak, if you please--which was lined with fur. The outside of it was of a whitish color and elaborately needle-worked in Persian patterns like an India shawl. The Shah stepped out and the official procession formed about him and marched him down the carpet and on board the _Vigilant_ to slow music. Not a Flounder raised a cheer. All the small fry swarmed out of the train now.