Westward with the Prince of Wales Part 29

Pa.s.sing among these business people and driving amid the quick crowds, the Prince had been consolidating the sense of intimate friendship that had sprung up on the previous day. A wise American pressman had said to me on Tuesday:

"New York people like what they've read about the Prince. They'll come out today to see if what they have read is true. Tomorrow they'll come out because they love him. And each day the crowds will get better."

This proved true. The warmth of New York's friendliness increased as the days went on. The scene at the lunch given by the New York Chamber of Commerce proved how strong this regard had grown. The scene was remarkable because of the character and the quality of the men present.

It was no admiration society. It was no gathering of sentimentalists.

The men who attended that lunch were men not only of international reputation, but of international force, men of cautious fibre accustomed to big encounters, not easily moved to emotion. And they fell under the charm of the Prince.

One of them expressed his feelings concerning the scene to me.

"He had it over us all the time," he said, laughing. "There we were, several hundreds of grey-headed, hardened old stiffs, most of us over twice his age, and we stood up and yelled like college freshmen when he had finished speaking to us.

"What did he say to us? Nothing very remarkable. He told us how useful we old ones in the money market had been as a backbone to the boys in the firing line. He told us that he felt that the war had revealed clearly the closeness of the relationship between the two Anglo-Saxon nations, how their welfare was interlocked and how the prosperity of each was essential to the prosperity of the other, and he agreed with the President of the Chamber's statement that British and American good faith and good will would go far to preserve the stability of the world. There's nothing very wonderful to that. It's true enough, but not altogether unknown.... It was his manner that caught hold of us. The way he speaks, you see. His nervousness, and his grit in conquering his nervousness. His modesty; his twinkle of humour, all of him. He's one fine lad. I tell you we've had some big men in the Chamber in the last two years, but it's gilt-edged truth that none of the big ones had the showing that lad got today."

From the Chamber of Commerce the Prince went to the Academy of Music where there was a picture and variety show staged for him, and which he enjoyed enormously. The thrill of this item of the program was rather in the crowd than in the show. It was an immense crowd, and for once it vanquished the efficient police and swarmed about His Royal Highness as he entered the building. While he was inside it added to its strength rather than diminished, and in the face of this crisis one of those men whose brains rise to emergencies had the bright idea of getting the Prince out by the side door. The crowd had also had that bright idea and the throng about the side door was, if anything, more dense than at the front. Through this laughing and cheering ma.s.s squads of good-humoured police b.u.t.ted a thread of pa.s.sage for the happy Prince.

The throng inside Madison Square Garden about the arena of the Horse Show was more decorous, as became its status, but it did not let that stifle its feelings. The Prince pa.s.sed through from a cheering crowd outside to the bright, sharp clapping of those inside. He pa.s.sed round the arena between ranks of Salvation Army la.s.sies, who held, instead of barrier ropes, broad scarlet ribbons.

There was a laugh as he touched his hair upon gaining the stark publicity of his box, and the laugh changed to something of a cheer when he caught sight of the chairs of pomp, two of them in frigid isolation, elbowing out smaller human fry. All knew from his very att.i.tude what was going to happen to those chairs. And it happened.

The chairs vanished. Small chairs and more of them took their place, and the Prince sat with genial people about him.

The arena was a field of brightness. It was delightfully decorated with green upon lattice work. Over the compet.i.tors' entrance were canvas replicas of Tudor houses. In the ring the Prince saw many beautiful horses, fine hunters, natty little ponies pulling nattier carriages, trotters of mechanical perfection, and big lithe jumpers.

In the middle of the jumping compet.i.tion he left his box and went into the ring, and spent some time there chatting with judges and compet.i.tors, and watching the horses take the hurdles and gates from close quarters.

Leaving the building there happened one of those vivid little incidents which speak more eloquently than any effort of oratory could of the kinship of the two races in their war effort. A group of men in uniform who had been waiting by the exit sprang to attention as he came up. They were all Americans. They were all in British uniform--most of them in British Flying Corps uniform. As the Prince came up, they clicked round in a smart "Left turn," and marched before him out of the building.

The Prince from thence on vanished for the day into a round of semi-social functions, but he did not escape the crowds.

Walking up Fifth Avenue with friends shortly before dinner-time, we came upon a bunched jumble of people outside the "Waldorf-Astoria." It was a crowd that a man in a hurry could not argue with. It filled the broad street, and it did not care if it impeded traffic. We were not in a hurry, so we stood and looked. I asked my friends what was happening here, and one of them chuckled and answered:

"They've got him again."

"Him? Who--you can't mean the Prince? He's on _Renown_ now, resting, or getting ready for a dinner. There's nothing down for him."

My friend simply chuckled again.

"Who else would it be?" he said. "How they do gather round waiting for that smile of his. Flies round a honey-pot. Ah, I thought so."

The Prince made a dash of an exit from the hotel. He jumped into the car, and at once there was a forest of hands and handkerchiefs and flags waving, and his own hand and hat seemed to go up and wave as part of one and the same movement. It was a spontaneous "Hallo, People!

Hallo, Prince!" A jolly affair. The motor started, pushed through the crowd. There was a sharp picture of the Prince half standing, half kneeling, looking back and laughing and waving to the crowd. Then he was gone.

The men and women of the throng turned away smiling, as though something good had happened.

"They've seen him. They can go home now," said my friend. "My, ain't they glad about themselves.... And isn't he the one fine scout?"

VI

When the Prince made his appearance on Thursday, November 20th, in the uniform of a Welsh Guardsman he came in for a startling ovation. Not only were many people gathered about the Yacht Club landing-stage and along the route of his drive, but at one point a number of ladies pelted him with flowers. Startled though the Prince was, he kept his smile and his sense of humour. He said dryly that he had never known what it was to feel like a bride before, and he returned this volley with his friendly salute.

He was then setting out to the Grand Central Station for his trip up the Hudson to West Point, the Military Academy of the United States.

In the superb white station, under a curved arch of ceiling as blue as the sky, he took the full force of an affection that had been growing steadily through the visit. The immense floor of the building was dense and tight with people, and the Prince, as he came to the balcony that made the stair-head was literally halted by the great gust of cheering that beat up to him, and was forced to stand at the salute for a full minute.

The journey to West Point skirted the Hudson, where lovely view after lovely view of the piled-up and rocky further sh.o.r.e tinted in the russet and gold of the dying foliage came and went. There was a rime of ice already in the lagoons, and the little falls that usually tumbled down the rocks were ma.s.ses of glittering icicles.

The castellated walls of West Point overhang the river above a sharp cliff; the buildings have a dramatic grouping that adds to the extreme beauty of the surroundings. Toward this castle on the cliff the Prince went by a little steam ferry, was taken in escort by a smart body of American cavalrymen, and in their midst went by automobile up the road to the grey towers of West Point.

Immediately on his arrival at the saluting point on the great campus the horizon-blue cadets, who will one day be the leaders of the American army, began to march.

Paraded by the buildings, they fell into columns of companies with mechanical precision. With precise discipline they moved out on to the field, the companies as solid as rocks but for the metronomic beat of legs and arms.

They were tall, smart youths, archaic and modern in one. With long blue coats, wide trousers, shakos, broad white belts, as neat as painted lines, over breast and back, and, holding back the flaps of capes, they looked figures from the fifties. But the swing of the marching companies, the piston-like certainty of their action, the cold and splendid detachment of their marching gave them all the _flare_ [Transcriber's note: flair?] of a _corps d'elite_.

Forming companies almost with a click on the wide green, they saluted and stood at attention while the Prince and his party inspected the lines. Then, the Prince at the saluting point again, the three companies in admirable order marched past. There was not a flaw in the rigid ranks as they swept along, their eyes right, the red-sashed "four year men" holding slender swords at the salute.

The Prince lunched with the officers, and after lunch the cadets swarmed into the room to hear him speak, having first warmed up the atmosphere with a rousing and prolonged college yell. Having spoken in praise of their discipline and bearing, the Prince was made the subject of another yell, and more, was saluted with the college whistle, a thing unique and distinctive, that put the seal upon his visit.

That night the Prince played host upon _Renown_, giving a brilliant dinner to his friends in New York. This was the only other ceremony of the day.

VII

Friday, November 21st, the Prince's last day in New York, was an extraordinarily full one, and that full not merely in program, but in emotion. In that amazing day it seemed to me that the people of this splendid city sought to express with superb eloquence the regard they felt for him, seemed to make a point of trying to make his last day memorable.

The morning was devoted to a semi-private journey to Oyster Bay, in order that the Prince might place a wreath on the tomb of President Roosevelt. The Prince had several times expressed his admiration for the great and forceful American who represented so much of what was individual in the national character, and his visit to the burial-place was a tribute of real feeling.

After lunch at the Piping Rock Club he returned to _Renown_, where he had planned to hold a reception after his own heart to a thousand of New York's children.

On _Renown_ a score of "gadgets" had been prepared for the fun of the children. The capstans had been turned into roundabouts, a switchback and a chute had been fixed up, the deck of the great steel monster had been transformed into fairyland, while a "scrumptious" tea in a pretty tea lounge had been prepared all out of Navy magic.

The tugs that were to bring off the guests, however, brought few that could come under the heading of "kiddies." Those that were not quite grown up, were in the young man and young woman stage. Fairyland had to be abandoned. Roundabout and switchback and chute were abandoned, and only that "scrumptious" tea remained in the program. It was a pleasant afternoon, but not a "kiddies'" afternoon.

The evening was quick with crowds.

It began in a drive through crowds to the Pilgrims' Dinner at the Plaza Hotel, and that, in itself, was a crowd. The Plaza is none of your bijou caravanserais. It is vast and vivid and bright, as a New York hotel can be, and that is saying a good deal. But it was not vast enough. One great marble room could not contain all the guests, another and another was taken in, so that the banquet was actually spread over three or four large chambers opening out of the main chamber. Here the leading figures of America and the leading Britons then in New York met together in a sort of breezy informality, and they gave the Prince a most tremendous welcome.

And when he began to speak--after the nimble scintillations of Mr.

Chauncey Depew--they gave him another. And they rose up in a body, and moved inward from the distant rooms to be within earshot--a sight for the Messenger in _Macbeth_, for he would have seen a moving grove of golden chair legs, held on high, as the diners marched with their seating accommodation held above their heads.

Crowds again under the vivid lights of the streets, as the Prince drove to the mighty crowd waiting for him in the Hippodrome. The Hippodrome is one of the largest, if it is not the largest, music-hall in the world. It has an enormous sweep of floor, and an enormous sweep of galleries. The huge s.p.a.ce of it takes the breath away. It was packed.

As the Prince entered his box, floor and galleries rose up with a sudden and tremendous surge, and sent a mighty shout to him. The National Anthems of England and America were obliterated in the gust of affectionate noise. Minutes elapsed before that great audience remembered that it was at the play, and that the Prince had come to see the play. It sat down reluctantly, saving itself for his departure, watching him as he entered into enjoyment of the brave and grandiose spectacular show on the stage.

And when he rose to go the audience loosed itself again. It held him there with the power of its cheering. It would not let him stir from the building until it had had a word from him. It was dominant, it had its way. In answer to the splendid outburst the Prince could do nothing but come to the edge of his box and speak.

In a clear voice that was heard all over the building he thanked them for the wonderful reception he had received that night, and in New York during the week. "I thank you," he said, "and I bid you all good night."

Then he went out into the cheering streets.