The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page Volume I Part 8

[Footnote 9: Clarence Poe, editor of _The Progressive Farmer_.]

[Footnote 10: The reference is to the meeting of the Southern and the General Education Boards.]

CHAPTER V

ENGLAND BEFORE THE WAR

The London Emba.s.sy is the greatest diplomatic gift at the disposal of the President, and, in the minds of the American people, it possesses a glamour and an historic importance all its own. Page came to the position, as his predecessors had come, with a sense of awe; the great traditions of the office; the long line of distinguished men, from Thomas Pinckney to Whitelaw Reid, who had filled it; the peculiar delicacy of the problems that then existed between the two countries; the reverent respect which Page had always entertained for English history, English literature, and English public men--all these considerations naturally quickened the new amba.s.sador's imagination and, at the same time, made his arrival in England a rather solemn event. Yet his first days in London had their grotesque side as well. He himself has recorded his impressions, and, since they contain an important lesson for the citizens of the world's richest and most powerful Republic, they should be preserved. When the amba.s.sador of practically any other country reaches London, he finds waiting for him a s.p.a.cious and beautiful emba.s.sy, filled with a large corps of secretaries and servants--everything ready, to the minutest detail, for the beginning of his labours. He simply enters these elaborate state-owned and state-supported quarters and starts work. How differently the mighty United States welcomes its amba.s.sadors let Page's memorandum tell:

The boat touched at Queenstown, and a ma.s.s of Irish reporters came aboard and wished to know what I thought of Ireland. Some of them printed the important announcement that I was quite friendly to Ireland!

At Liverpool was Mr. Laughlin[11], Charge d'Affaires in London since Mr.

Reid's death, to meet me, and of course the consul, Mr. Washington. . . .

On our arrival in London, Laughlin explained that he had taken quarters for me at the Coburg Hotel, whither we drove, after having fought my way through a mob of reporters at the station. One fellow told me that since I left New York the papers had published a declaration by me that I meant to be very "democratic" and would under no conditions wear "knee breeches"; and he asked me about that report. I was foolish enough to reply that the existence of an a.s.s in the United States ought not necessarily to require the existence of a corresponding a.s.s in London.

He printed that! I never knew the origin of this "knee breeches" story.

That residence at the Coburg Hotel for three months was a crowded and uncomfortable nightmare. The indignity and inconvenience--even the humiliation--of an amba.s.sador beginning his career in an hotel, especially during the Court season, and a green amba.s.sador at that! I hope I may not die before our Government does the conventional duty to provide amba.s.sadors' residences.

The next morning I went to the Chancery (123, Victoria Street) and my heart sank. I had never in my life been in an American Emba.s.sy. I had had no business with them in Paris or in London on my previous visits.

In fact I had never been in any emba.s.sy except the British Emba.s.sy at Washington. But the moment I entered that dark and dingy hall at 123, Victoria Street, between two cheap stores--the same entrance that the dwellers in the cheap flats above used--I knew that Uncle Sam had no fit dwelling there. And the Amba.s.sador's room greatly depressed me--dingy with twenty-nine years of dirt and darkness, and utterly undignified.

And the rooms for the secretaries and attaches were the little bedrooms, kitchen, etc., of that cheap flat; that's all it was. For the place we paid $1,500 a year. I did not understand then and I do not understand yet how Lowell, Bayard, Phelps, Hay, Choate, and Reid endured that cheap hole. Of course they stayed there only about an hour a day; but they sometimes saw important people there. And, whether they ever saw anybody there or not, the offices of the United States Government in London ought at least to be as good as a common lawyer's office in a country town in a rural state of our Union. n.o.body asked for anything for an emba.s.sy: n.o.body got anything for an emba.s.sy. I made up my mind in ten minutes that I'd get out of this place[12].

At the Coburg Hotel, we were very well situated; but the hotel became intolerably tiresome. Harold Fowler and Frank and I were there until W.A.W.P.[13] and Kitty[14] came (and Frances Clark came with them). Then we were just a little too big a hotel party. Every morning I drove down to the old hole of a Chancery and remained about two hours. There wasn't very much work to do; and my main business was to become acquainted with the work and with people--to find myself with reference to this task, with reference to official life and to London life in general.

Every afternoon people came to the hotel to see me--some to pay their respects and to make life pleasant, some out of mere curiosity, and many for ends of their own. I confess that on many days nightfall found me completely worn out. But the evenings seldom brought a chance to rest.

The social season was going at its full gait; and the new amba.s.sador (any new amba.s.sador) would have been invited to many functions. A very few days after my arrival, the d.u.c.h.ess of X invited Frank and me to dinner. The powdered footmen were the chief novelty of the occasion for us. But I was much confused because n.o.body introduced anybody to anybody else. If a juxtaposition, as at the dinner table, made an introduction imperative, the name of the lady next you was so slurred that you couldn't possibly understand it.

Party succeeded party. I went to them because they gave me a chance to become acquainted with people.

But very early after my arrival, I was of course summoned by the King. I had presented a copy of my credentials to the Foreign Secretary (Sir Edward Grey) and the real credentials--the original in a sealed envelope--I must present to His Majesty. One morning the King's Master of the Ceremonies, Sir Arthur Walsh, came to the hotel with the royal coaches, four or five of them, and the richly caparisoned grooms. The whole staff of the Emba.s.sy must go with me. We drove to Buckingham Palace, and, after waiting a few moments, I was ushered into the King's presence. He stood in one of the drawing rooms on the ground floor looking out on the garden. There stood with him in uniform Sir Edward Grey. I entered and bowed. He shook my hand, and I spoke my little piece of three or four sentences.

He replied, welcoming me and immediately proceeded to express his surprise and regret that a great and rich country like the United States had not provided a residence for its amba.s.sadors. "It is not fair to an amba.s.sador," said he; and he spoke most earnestly.

I reminded him that, although the lack of a home was an inconvenience, the trouble or discomfort that fell on an amba.s.sador was not so bad as the wrong impression which I feared was produced about the United States and its Government, and I explained that we had had so many absorbing domestic tasks and, in general, so few absorbing foreign relations, that we had only begun to develop what might be called an international consciousness.

Sir Edward was kind enough the next time I saw him to remark that I did that very well and made a good impression on the King.

I could now begin my amba.s.sadorial career proper--call on the other amba.s.sadors and accept invitations to dinners and the like.

I was told after I came from the King's presence that the Queen would receive me in a few minutes. I was shown upstairs, the door opened, and there in a small drawing room, stood the Queen alone--a pleasant woman, very royal in appearance. The one thing that sticks in my memory out of this first conversation with her Majesty was her remark that she had seen only one man who had been President of the United States--Mr.

Roosevelt. She hoped he was well. I felt moved to remark that she was not likely to see many former Presidents because the office was so hard a task that most of them did not long survive.

"I'm hoping that office will not soon kill the King," she said.

In time Page obtained an entirely adequate and dignified house at 6 Grosvenor Square, and soon found that the American Amba.s.sadorship had compensations which were hardly suggested by his first glimpse of the lugubrious Chancery. He brought to this new existence his plastic and inquisitive mind, and his mighty gusto for the interesting and the unusual; he immensely enjoyed his meetings with the most important representatives of all types of British life. The period of his arrival marked a crisis in British history; Mr. Lloyd George was supposed to be taxing the aristocracy out of existence; Mr. Asquith was accused of plotting the destruction of the House of Lords; the tide of liberalism, even of radicalism, was running high, and, in the judgment of the conservative forces, England was tottering to its fall; the gathering mob was about to submerge everything that had made it great. And the Irish question had reached another crisis with the pa.s.sage of the Home Rule Bill, which Sir Edward Carson was preparing to resist with his Irish "volunteers."

All these matters formed the staple of talk at dinner tables, at country houses and at the clubs; and Page found constant entertainment in the variegated pageant. There were important American matters to discuss with the Foreign Office--more important than any that had arisen in recent years--particularly Mexico and the Panama Tolls. Before these questions are considered, however, it may be profitable to print a selection from the many letters which Page wrote during his first year, giving his impressions of this England which he had always loved and which a closer view made him love and admire still more. These letters have the advantage of presenting a frank and yet sympathetic picture of British society and British life as it was just before the war.

_To Frank N Doubleday_

The Coburg Hotel, Carlos Place, Grosvenor Square, London, W.

DEAR EFFENDI:[15]

You can't imagine the intensity of the party feeling here. I dined to-night in an old Tory family. They had just had a "division" an hour or two before in the House of Lords on the Home Rule Bill. Six Lords were at the dinner and their wives. One was a Duke, two were Bishops, and the other three were Earls. They expect a general "bust-up." If the King does so and so, off with the King! That's what they fear the Liberals will do. It sounds very silly to me; but you can't exaggerate their fear. The Great Lady, who was our hostess, told me, with tears in her voice, that she had suspended all social relations with the Liberal leaders.

At lunch--just five or six hours before--we were at the Prime Minister's, where the talk was precisely on the other side.

Gladstone's granddaughter was there and several members of the Cabinet.

Somehow it reminds me of the tense days of the slavery controversy just before the Civil War.

Yet in the everyday life of the people, you hear nothing about it.

It is impossible to believe that the ordinary man cares a fig!

Good-night. You don't care a fig for this. But I'll get time to write you something interesting in a little while.

Yours, W.H.P.

_To Herbert S. Houston_

American Emba.s.sy London Sunday, 24 Aug., 1913.

DEAR H.S.H.:

. . . You know there's been much discussion of the decadence of the English people. I don't believe a word of it. They have an awful slum, I hear, as everybody knows, and they have an idle cla.s.s.

Worse, from an equal-opportunity point-of-view, they have a very large servant-cla.s.s, and a large cla.s.s that depends on the n.o.bility and the rich. All these are economic and social drawbacks. But they have always had all these--except that the slum has become larger in modern years. And I don't see or find any reason to believe in the theory of decadence. The world never saw a finer lot of men than the best of their ruling cla.s.s. You may search the world and you may search history for finer men than Lord Morley, Sir Edward Grey, Mr. Harcourt, and other members of the present Cabinet. And I meet such men everywhere--gently bred, high-minded, physically fit, intellectually cultivated, patriotic. If the devotion to old forms and the inertia which makes any change almost impossible strike an American as out-of-date, you must remember that in the grand old times of England, they had all these things and had them worse than they are now. I can't see that the race is breaking down or giving out. Consider how their political morals have been pulled up since the days of the rotten boroughs; consider how their court-life is now high and decent, and think what it once was. British trade is larger this year than it ever was, Englishmen are richer then they ever were and more of them are rich. They write and speak and play cricket, and govern, and fight as well as they have ever done--excepting, of course, the writing of Shakespeare.

Another conclusion that is confirmed the more you see of English life is their high art of living. When they make their money, they stop money-making and cultivate their minds and their gardens and entertain their friends and do all the high arts of living--to perfection. Three days ago a retired soldier gave a garden-party in my honour, twenty-five miles out of London. There was his historic house, a part of it 500 years old; there were his ten acres of garden, his lawn, his trees; and they walk with you over it all; they sit out-of-doors; they serve tea; they take life rationally; they talk pleasantly (not jocularly, nor story-telling); they abhor the smart in talk or in conduct; they have gentleness, cultivation, the best manners in the world; and they are genuine. The hostess has me take a basket and go with her while she cuts it full of flowers for us to bring home; and, as we walk, she tells the story of the place. She is a tenant-for-life; it is entailed. Her husband was wounded in South Africa. Her heir is her nephew. The home, of course, will remain in the family forever. No, they don't go to London much in recent years: why should they? But they travel a month or more. They give three big tea-parties--one when the rhododendrons bloom and the others at stated times. They have friends to stay with them half the time, perhaps--sometimes parties of a dozen. England never had a finer lot of folk than these. And you see them everywhere. The art of living sanely they have developed to as high a level, I think, as you will find at any time in any land.

The present political battle is fiercer than you would ever guess.

The Lords feel that they are sure to be robbed: they see the end of the ordered world. Chaos and confiscation lie before them. Yet that, too, has nearly always been so. It was so in the Reform Bill days. Lord Morley said to me the other day that when all the abolitions had been done, there would be fewer things abolished than anybody hopes or fears, and that there would be the same problems in some form for many generations. I'm beginning to believe that the Englishman has always been afraid of the future--that's what's keeps him so alert. They say to me: "You have frightful things happen in the United States--your Governor of New York[16], your Thaw case, your corruption, etc., etc.; and yet you seem sure and tell us that your countrymen feel sure of the safety of your government." In the newspaper comments on my Southampton[17] speech the other day, this same feeling cropped up; the American Amba.s.sador a.s.sures us that the note of hope is the dominant note of the Republic--etc., etc. Yes, they are dull, _in a way_--not dull, so much as steady; and yet they have more solid sense than any other people.

It's an interesting study--the most interesting in the world. The genuineness of the courtesy, the real kindness and the hospitality of the English are beyond praise and without limit. In this they show a strange contradiction to their d.i.c.kering habits in trade and their "unctuous rect.i.tude" in stealing continents. I know a place in the world now where they are steadily moving their boundary line into other people's territory. I guess they really believe that the earth belongs to them.

Sincerely, W.H.P.

To Arthur W. Page[18]

Gordon Arms Hotel, Elgin, Scotland.

September 6, 1913.

Dear Arthur:

Your mother and Kitty[19] and I are on our way to see Andy[20]. Had you any idea that to motor from London to Skibo means driving more than eight hundred miles? Our speedometer now shows more than seven hundred and we've another day to go--at least one hundred and thirty miles. And we haven't even had a tire accident. We're having a delightful journey--only this country yields neither vegetables nor fruits, and I have to live on oatmeal. They spell it p-o-r-r-i-d-g-e, and they call it puruge. But they beat all creation as carnivorous folk. We stayed last night at a beautiful mountain hotel at Braemar (the same town whereat Stevenson wrote "Treasure Island") and they had nine kinds of meat for dinner and eggs in three ways, and no vegetables but potatoes. But this morning we struck the same thin oatbread that you ate at Grandfather Mountain.