Told by an Idiot

by Rose Macaulay

  But what was the good of that?

  Imogen’s straining attention flagged. If she couldn’t hear, she couldn’t. She sighed and gave up. She stared, fascinated, at the splendid figure on the platform, and imagined him on the Fram, sailing along through chunks of floating ice, and on each chunk a great white bear. Floes, they were, not chunks. . . . She and the boys meant, when they should be grown up, to fit out a Fram for themselves, and find the Pole. Hughie had some idea of going for the South Pole. The sort of unusual, intelligent idea Hughie did get. But to Imogen the North was the Pole that called. Away they sailed, away and away . . . Tony was attacked, as he fished from a floe, by a huge mother bear, with three cubs. Imogen got there just in time; she slew the bear with her long knife, at imminent personal risk; it toppled backwards into the ice-cold water and died. The green sea reddened hijjously. But the three little cubs Imogen kept. She took them back to the Fram, and there was one for each of them, and they were called Mowgli, Marcus and Mercia, and Marcus was hers (the children had been taken to “The Sign of the Cross ”last summer. There was a play indeed!), and the cubs slept in their bunks with them, and ate from their plates at meals. . . .

  Another storm of clapping. It was over.

  “Did you like it, Jennie? How much did you follow?”

  “I liked it very much. I followed it a lot . . . Mother, do you think, when I’m big, I shall ever speak to him? I mean, when Hughie and Tony and I have got our ship, and have been to the Pole?”

  “Oh, yes, darling. I should think when that happens, certainly. Only Dr. Nansen may be dead by that time, I’m afraid.”

  “Is he old, mother? Is he very old? Will he die before we grow up? Will he, mother?”

  “Children, be careful crossing the road. . . . What’s the matter, Imogen?”

  “Will he die, mother, before we’re grown up?”

  “Who? Dr. Nansen? Oh, no, I hope not, why should he? Tony, don’t dawdle. We’ll go home by the park. Keep together, children, there’s such a crowd. . . . Imogen, don’t play with strange dogs—I keep telling you.”

  “Mother, he’s such a weeny one . . . all white, with a black nose and a red tongue. . . . Mother, when can I have a puppy?”

  25

  Jubilee

  Jubilee Day. Sweltering heat, after a gray beginning; baked streets. Irving, out of his wealth and generosity, had bought a block of seats in the Mall for the procession, and there the family sat. Papa, mamma, Vicky, and Charles and their daughter Imogen (their other children were away at school), Rome, Stanley, Irving and his wife, and Una and Ted up from the country with two stout and handsome children. The ladies wore beflowered, rakish, fly-away hats, and dresses with high collars and hunched sleeves and small waists. They look absurd now, in old pictures of the period, but they did not look absurd to one another at the time; they looked natural, and comme-il-faut, and smart. The boys wore their Eton suits, and the girls light frocks. Imogen had a blue smock, gathered across the yoke, so that when she ran her fingers across the smocking it made a little soft, crisp noise. She sat next her little cousins from the country. But she was shy of them and turned her face away, and would say nothing to them after she had asked, “How is Rover? How is Lassie? Are the puppies born yet?” Fits of shyness seized upon Imogen like toothache, even now that she had been ever so long at school, and she would hang her head and mutter monosyllabic answers, and wish she were Prince Prigio, with his cap of darkness, and when, in church, it came to the psalm about, “Deliver me from the hands of strange children,” she would pray it ardently, feeling how right David (if that psalm were one of his) had been. She was not shy of her cousins when she stayed at the farm with them, for the farm was like paradise, full of calves, puppies, pigs, and joy, and Katie, Dick, Martin, and Dolly were its hierophants, and, though they weren’t much good at being pirates or Red Indians, it was, no doubt, because they were always employed to better purpose. But in the Mall, seated in a tidy row waiting for the procession, it was different. Imogen wished that two of her brothers and sisters could have been there, instead of Katie and Dick. She held a fold of her mother’s soft foulard dress tightly between her hot fingers. She whispered.

  “Mother. Suppose some one felt sick and couldn’t get out?”

  “Jean—you don’t feel sick, do you, child?” Vicky was alarmed, knowing the weakness of her daughter’s stomach.

  “Oh, no, I don’t feel sick. But if some one did? What would they do, mother? Suppose the lady just above you felt sick, mother? Suppose she was sick? What would you do, mother?”

  “Don’t be silly, Imogen. If you talk like that you’ll feel sick yourself. Talk to Katie. Don’t you see you’re interrupting grandmamma and me?”

  But Imogen’s grandmamma smiled across at her small, pink, freckled face.

  “Are you enjoying yourself, Jennie?”

  “Yes, grandmamma. . . . Is the queen older than you, grandmamma?”

  “Yes. The Queen is seventy-eight. I am sixty-three. When I was only three years old, the Queen was crowned.”

  “Did you see her crowned?”

  “No. I was too young.”

  “Is it a very big crown? Will she have it on? . . . Mother”—Imogen had a terrible thought and whispered it—“suppose the Queen was sick, in her carriage, just opposite here? What would happen, mother? Would the procession wait or go on?”

  “Now, Jennie, that will do. You’re being tiresome and silly. Talk to Katie and Dick. I’m talking to grandmamma: I told you before.”

  (For that was the way in which children were kept under in the last century. Things have changed.)

  Gold and purple and crimson. Silver and scarlet and gold. Fluttering pennons on tall Venetian masts. The Mall was a street in fairyland, or the New Jerusalem. And thronged with those who would never see either more nearly, being neither fantastic nor good. Never would most of these enter through the strait gate and see the gates of pearl and the city of golden streets. But was not this as good? Silver and violet and crimson and gold; gay streamers flying on the wind. Beautiful as an army with banners, the Mall was. . . .

  “Let’s count the flags,” said Imogen to Katie and Dick.

  “I remember the coronation,” said Mr. Garden, half to Irving, half to any one sitting about who might be interested, after the way of elderly persons. “I was a very small boy, but my father took me to see the procession. I remember he put me up on his shoulder while it passed. . . . There wasn’t quite such a crowd then as to-day, I think.”

  “People have increased,” said Rome. “Particularly in London. There are now too many, that is certain.”

  “The crowd,” said Mr. Garden, his memory straying over that day sixty years ago, “was prettier then. I am nearly sure it was prettier. Costumes were better.”

  “They could hardly,” said Rome, “have been worse.”

  “I remember my mother, in a violet pelisse, that I think she had got new for the occasion, and a crinoline . . . Crinolines hadn’t grown large in ’37—they were very graceful, I think . . . and a pretty poke bonnet. And my father in a cravat, with close whiskers (whiskers hadn’t grown large, either) and a tall, gray hat. . . . And myself done up tight in blue nankeen with brass buttons, and your aunt Selina with white, frilled garments showing below her frock. Little girls weren’t so pretty,” he added, looking across at Imogen’s straight blue smock. “Well, well, sixty years ago. A great deal has happened since then. A great reign and a great time.”

  “They’re pretty nearly due now,” said Irving, consulting his watch. “Sure to be late, though.”

  “Who’ll come first, mother?” Imogen asked.

  “Captain Ames, on a horse. And behind him Life Guards and dragoons and that kind of person. . . . So I said to her, mamma, that really unless she could undertake to . . . Oh, listen, they really are coming now. Listen to the cheering, Jennie.”

  The noise of loyalty beat and broke like a sea from west to east. The sound shivered down Imogen’s spine like music,
and, as usual in such moments, her eyes pringled with hot tears, which she squeezed away. Then came the blaring of the trumpets and the rolling of the drums, and, singing high above them like a kettle on the boil, the faint, keen skirling of the pipes.

  Imogen’s hot hand clutched Vicky’s dress.

  “Now, Jean, don’t get too excited, darling. Try to be quiet and sensible, like Katie and Dick.”

  “Mother, I am too excited, already. Look, mother—is that Captain Ames on a horse?”

  Captain Ames on a horse (and what a horse!) it was. And behind him Life Guards, dragoons, lancers, and that kind of person, in noble profusion. Very gallant and proud and lovely, prancing, curveting, gay as bright flowers in a wind. . . . Oh, God, what military men!

  A little, white-moustached general rode by, and great cheers crashed. “That’s Lord Roberts, Imogen.” Imogen, who knew her Kipling, had a lump in her throat for Bobs of Kandahar.

  “And that’s Lord Charles Beresford—with the cocked hat, do you see?”

  Then came the great guns, running on their carriages.

  And then the cheering broke to a mighty storm, as it always does when sailors go by.

  The sailors, too, had guns. Bluejackets and smart, neat officers, Britannia’s pets, Britannia’s pride. . . .

  Imogen, who had always meant to be a sailor, and who even now blindly hoped that somehow, before she reached the age for Osborne, a way would be made for her (either she would become a boy, or dress up as a boy, or the rule excluding girls from the senior service would be relaxed) gasped and screwed her hands tightly together against her palpitating breast. Here were sailors. Straight from the tossing blue sea; straight from pacing the quarter-deck, spy-glass in hand, spying for enemy craft, climbing the rigging, setting her hard-a-port, manning the guns, raking the enemy amidships, holding up slavers, receiving surrendered swords. . . . Here, in brief, were sailors; and the junior service faded from the stage. Rule, Britannia, Britannia rules the waves. The moment was almost too excessive for a budding sailor, with wet eyes and lips pressed tight together to keep the face steady. Fortunately it passed, and was succeeded by the First Prussian Dragoon Guards, great men with golden helmets, who could be admired without passion, and by strange, brown men, with turbans and big beards.

  “Indians,” Vicky said, and Indians, too, one knew from Kipling. And, “Sir Partab Singh,” added the informing voice.

  “Is he the chief of the Indians, mother?”

  “Some kind of chief, yes.”

  Other brown men followed the Indians—little, coppery, fuzzy Maoris; and with them rode splendid white men from New Zealand, and slouch-hatted Rhodesian horse.

  “From South Africa. . . . You remember Dr. Jim and his raid, and Cecil Rhodes . . . the Christmas holidays before last . . .”

  “When the chair broke and I cut my head.” Yes, Imogen remembered, though she had been only seven then. Over the Transvaal border, then a gallop for life or death. . . . The chair was still broken. . . . Every one seemed to remember Dr. Jim and his raid and Cecil Rhodes, for the slouch-hatted riders were cheered and cheered. Hurrah for South Africa! “Political trouble, much less war, cannot now be apprehended,” the Times had said that morning, in a pæan of Jubilee satisfaction with sixty years of progress abroad and at home.

  The best was over, for now began carriages—landaus and pairs. Foreign envoys. The Papal Nuncio sharing a landau with a gentleman from China, who cooled himself with a painted fan. Landau after landau bearing royal gentlemen, royal ladies. What a pity for them to be borne tamely in landaus instead of a-horseback!

  A Colonial escort; an Indian escort; Lord Wolseley.

  And then the procession’s meaning and climax. “The Queen, Jennie.”

  Eight cream horses soberly drawing an open carriage, surrounded by postilions and red-coated running footmen; and in the carriage the little stout old lady, black-dressed, with black and white bonnet, and with her the beautiful Princess in heliotrope, dressed in the then current fashion, which royal ladies have adhered to ever since, never allowing themselves to be unsettled by the modes of the new century.

  The Queen, God save her. The noise was monstrous, louder than any real noise could be.

  “Dear old soul,” cried Vicky’s clear voice as she lustily clapped white kid hands.

  Papa’s blue eyes looked kindly down on the old lady whose coronation he remembered.

  “A record to be proud of,” said papa.

  “Oh, yes, she’s seen some life these sixty years, the old lady,” Irving admitted.

  “I expect she’s feeling the heat a bit,” said Una. “Well, I hope she’s happy.”

  Behind them people were saying loyal Victorian things to one another about the dear old Queen.

  “She’s got the hearts of the Empire all right,” they were saying, “whether they’re under white skins or brown,” and “God bless our dear Queen,” and “How well she looks to-day,” and “She’s an Empress, but she’s a woman first. That’s why we all love her so,” and so on and so forth.

  And “There goes the Prince,” they said, applauding now the burly middle-aged gentleman riding his horse by his mother’s carriage.

  “He must be gettin’ pretty impatient, poor man,” said Amy. “Nearly sixty himself, and mamma still going strong. I expect he thinks this ought to be his silver jubilee, not mamma’s diamond one.”

  Mr. Garden looked pained. He often looked and was pained at the wife of Maurice.

  Imogen’s heart swelled for the Empress-Queen and the crash of loyalty, but not to bursting point; for here was only a little old lady in a carriage (though drawn by eight cream horses like a fairy godmother’s), and it is the swagger of gallantry that stirs. Sailors, soldiers, explorers, martyrs, firemen, circus-riders, Blondin on his rope, Christ on His cross, Joan of Arc on her white steed or her red pile—these are they that shake the soul to tears. Not old ladies, however mighty, who have sat on a throne for sixty years.

  “The prince, Jennie. The Prince of Wales.”

  “Oh, mother, where?”

  The Prince of Wales. Gallant figure of legend. Young, noble, princely, with caracolling charger and a triple white plume in a silver helm. The bravest and the most chivalrous of the knights. Where was the Prince of Wales—“ Oh, mother, where?”

  “There—don’t you see him? The big man in uniform with a gray beard, riding by the Queen’s carriage.”

  The big man. . . . Oh, no, that must be a mistake.

  “That’s not the Prince of Wales, mother. Not that one. . . .”

  “Of course. Why shouldn’t it be?”

  A thousand reasons why it shouldn’t be. A hundred thousand reasons. . . . But in vain their legions beat against the hard little fact that it was. Imogen’s soaring heart sank like a stone in water. Fearful doubts whispered. Had all the Princes of Wales been like that—fat, elderly men with gray beards? The Black Prince. . . . Oh, no, not the Black Prince. . . .

  “The Black Prince wasn’t like that, mother, was he?”

  “It must be nearly the end now. Here’s the music. . . . What, Jean? What’s bothering you now?”

  “The Black Prince . . .”

  “Forget him, my precious. Don’t let any prince weigh on your little mind. Here comes the music. Do you hear the pipes, children?”

  So the great procession passed eastward, to rejoice Trafalgar Square, the Strand, Fleet Street, and the lands across the river.

  “It’ll be a job getting out of this. Hold on to me, Imogen. Did you enjoy it, darling?”

  “Yes.” Imogen nodded, with the sun in her screwed-up eyes. “I wish we could run very fast down the streets to where they haven’t passed yet, and see them all again. Do you think you could, mother?”

  “I’m quite sure we couldn’t. . . . You’re not over tired, mamma dear?”

  “Oh, no. I feel very well. . . . But that child has turned green . . .”

  Vicky looked down, startled, at her daughter.

  “Imogen. A
ren’t you well?”

  “Mother, I think I may be going to be sick.”

  “Well, sit down till it’s over. . . . Bless the child. It’s the heat and the excitement. She gets taken like that sometimes, by way of reaction after her treats—most tiresome.”

  “Poor little mite.”

  “How are you feeling now, Jennie?”

  Imogen said nothing. Yellow as cream cheese, she sat in her seat and asked God not to disgrace her by letting her be sick in public, in the grand stand, on Jubilee Day, with all London looking on.

  But, “I’m not sure, mother, that I do very much believe in prayers,” she said to Vicky that evening.

  26

  Recessional

  Triumphant patriotism is all very well. Proud imperialism is all very well. But these things should be carried with a swagger, like a panache, with a hint of the gay and the absurd, marching, as it were, to the wild, conceited noise of skirling pipes. People of all nations, but more particularly the English, are apt to forget this, and bear their patriotism heavily, unctuously, speak solemnly of the white man’s burden, and introduce religion into the gay and worldly affair.

  Rudyard Kipling did this, on July 17th of Jubilee year, when he published in the Times, “Recessional,” beginning,—

  “God of our fathers, known of old,

  Lord of our far-flung battle line,

  Beneath whose awful Hand we hold

  Dominion over palm and pine—

  Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

  Lest we forget, lest we forget.”

  Stanley read it at breakfast, and shuddered. It was such a poem as the Jews might have made, in the days of Israel’s glory—terribly godly and solemn. It was addressed to Jehovah, the Jewish Lord of Hosts. Those Jews! How their influence lasts! Beneath whose awful Hand we hold. . . . Awful is a bad word, and hand should never, whosoever hand it is, have a capital h—(but that might have been the printer’s fault, as any one who knows printers must, in fairness, admit)—and dominion over palm and pine is much too delightful and romantic a thing to be spoilt by being held thus. And, further down, it was worse.