Читать книгу Mary Boyle, Her Book онлайн

40 страница из 63

ssss1.The Editor of these Memoirs, Sir Courtenay Edmund Boyle, K.C.B.

CORONATION OF GEORGE IV.

As I have said in my preface, I have not a good head for dates, and I may as well make a clean breast of it at once, and add, for figures of any kind. It may be from want of practice, as far as pounds, shillings, and pence are concerned, for I have never had much experience in counting up thousands on my own account. In respect of dates, then (which, I hope the reader will agree with me, are not of much importance in a narrative of this kind), I do not pretend to the strict order of succession, but I know it was in the year 1821 that George IV. was crowned, and I can well remember the excitement I experienced in seeing my father, mother and sister set off for the coronation. I looked from the window with longing eyes, deeply regretting I was not allowed to be of the party. My father was the most punctual of men—indeed he would have come under the category of those who overdid the virtue. The Duke of Wellington, it will be remembered, upon the Queen saying to him: “You see how punctual I am, Duke, I am even before my time,” replied with blunt veracity, “That, Your Majesty, is not punctuality.” My sister did not inherit this trait in her father’s character. She was late, and in answer to his vociferous summons from the carriage, ran downstairs, in her hurry, without her white satin shoes, which were thrown after her from the window. My father’s extreme anxiety to be early on the scene may, however, be accounted for by the fact that he was to form part of the procession, as train-bearer, or page of the coronation robes of his brother, Lord Cork. His dress was not picturesque, being a scarlet and gold frock-coat, or tunic, bound round the waist with a blue silk sash, and I am free to confess that I did not consider his age, stature, or costume in any way calculated to fulfil my ideal of a page; but then the page of my imagination was naturally of a dramatic sort. I do not know that I have yet recovered from the sorrow caused by my missing that magnificent sight. It is true that I have assisted since, at two other coronations, but in both of these there was no banquet, and worse than all, no Champion! The rest of the pageant was doubtless splendid in every sense of the word, but the idea of the Champion was so historical, so romantic, and was I not the most romantic of small human beings? Besides the description of the challenger, who flung down his gauntlet in Westminster Hall, and dared any one to hazard a doubt on the claim of the Sovereign to the throne, was there not a description, I say, of this remnant of chivalry in the pages of Walter Scott’s “Red Gauntlet?” Walter Scott! the god of my literary idolatry, with whose heroes I had fallen in love, in succession—whose heroines I had envied and admired one after another, encouraged thereto by our governess, who judged rightly that children could scarcely be too young to appreciate the beauties of that incomparable novelist. I must confess that several alleviations were offered to my regret at not witnessing that coronation. I had a beautiful toy given me of a kind which is now, I believe, obsolete—a small wooden case containing a roll of a coloured representation of the procession, several yards long, and commencing with the figures of Miss “Herb Strewer Fellowes”—for so the lady was designated on her visiting-card—and her maidens, and ending, as Royal processions do, with the most exalted Personage. This was my delight, and I was never tired of drawing it out and gazing at it; but better than all, I went to the theatre with my father, and saw as near a resemblance as could be produced on the stage, to the glories of that day. I can perfectly recall the bow with which Elliston the actor gave the very facsimile of that of His Majesty George IV., which was universally upheld for its surpassing grace. Then, oh joy! There was the Champion in complete armour, on a horse richly caparisoned, whose hoofs sounded on the wooden floor of the stage with a hollow, almost terrible, reverberation, as he backed—backed, and piaffed and caracoled and curvetted, according to all the strict regulations of the haute école.