Yet we did have our torchlight procession that night. The torches were ready, and it would have been a pity to waste them. Moreover, everyone needed cheering, and what could be more cheering than they? So the town marched en masse to Wilton House, the torches crowding together in the courtyard, shining along the walls and glittering upon the windows. Speeches were made. Songs were sung. Like Old Sarum before it, Wilton had ceased to return a member of its own to the parliment of its country, and it had made its protest.
My memories of these early processions might well end with Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, when, to my surprise and delight, I found myself for the first time seeing how they did these things in London. Our Mayor went to London to see the Queen keep her Jubilee, so our Wilton festivities were on the day before. That afternoon, as I was proudly presiding at one of the tables at the children’s tea in the market-place, my father unexpectedly appeared, and, as I wrote in my diary, ‘hauled me off to London’. I afterwards learnt that there had been prolonged discussion as to whether or not I was too young to go; and it had at last been decided that the younger the spectator, the longer she was likely to live to remember the occasion. This tipped the scales in my favour.
My father ordered me to write a diary of those days, and I still possess it. It was detailed, but dull, yet its very uninspired narrative still evokes for myself the memory of my reactions to that Jubilee Day. Our seats were on the House of Lords stand, outside St. Margaret’s church, and when we reached them at eight o’clock in the morning, the route which lay before us was still so packed with carriages that I thought the procession would never be able to get through. But by ten o’clock it was clear, and a double row of red-coated soldiers showed plainly where the Queen was to come. Very soon after this, we heard the sound of cheering from Whitehall. It had begun, and sooner than we had expected. We sat eagerly forward to see come round the comer—a jolly old cockney workman driving a water-cart, for London streets were dusty in those days. The whole crowd roared cheers and chaff at this absurd figure, who was not at all embarrassed by the ovation he received. He came down the route, bowing on both sides, and waving his hand. He was immensely enjoying himself. Nothing could have been grander than the spectacle itself, but there was still room on the day for this friendly little episode.
The water-cart was followed by a succession of dazzling sights. Three processions in all went to the Abbey that morning, and the first one consisted of Indian Princes driving in open landaus. As I read my diary, I see again their dresses and turbans ‘made of glorious silks and satins of all colours, and covered with diamonds and all sorts of precious stones’. Some of them, I said, ‘ seemed to be a blaze of diamonds’, and the obvious phrase does indeed recall to me the gasp of wonder with which one met the glare of those magnificent jewels burning in the sunlight of that wonderful june day. I can still see the dark proud mysterious faces of the princes, and their black beards.
A little pause, and then came the second procession, which I now feel sure must have been the most beautiful of all, although at the time I liked it least. In it came one after the other a succession of the gilt and painted state coaches from the royal stables; their four horses were harnessed with elaborate and most decorative trappings, and were driven by coachmen in eighteenth-century liveries, while royal footmen held the heads of every horse. In these coaches drove the European sovereigns who were attending the Jubilee, and to my regret I remarked that the coaches hid their faces. I
