Jubilee Day in London.

Hastings Standard, Issue 398, 13 August 1897, Page 4

Jubilee Day in London.

" TOMMY ATKINS." LAST OF TIIE SIX HUNDRED. THE COLONIAL CONTINGENTS. RECEPTION OF THE PREMIERS. [Evening Post Correspondent.] London June 23. The first thought with everyone this morning from the Queen downwards, will be the surprising excellence of the police arrangements yesterday. Never before has a great show r in London been seen in such perfect comfort. The closing of the bridges from the south side and the blocking off of the East End worked like a charm. Instead of Fleet-street being an inferno .of worse character that we witness every Lord Mayor's Day, the crowd was not more than four or five deep anywhere. We got up in the middle of the night to avoid the crush—so appalling was it expected to be—and found we could have reached the office half an hour before the colonial procession passed without any difficulty whatever. And getting away proved equally easy. One's great expectations on these historic occasions are never perhaps wholly fulfilled, and in my opinion the procession of 1887 was perhaps the smartest of the two. But this one was far the most interesting. The cheers which welcomed the colonial contingent were the loudest of the day at our point, and they swelled into positive a roar when General Lord Roberts was recognised leading the van. Sir Wilfred Laurier and the Right Hon. G. H. Reid, as the first of the colonial Premiers, also met with a satisfactory welcome, whilst the grace of the bows with which the Right Hon. Richard Seddon and the Right Hon. Cecil Kingston acknowledged the popular plaudits left nothing to be desired.

Of the colonial troops there can be no question the New South "Welshmen pleased everybody most. They sat their horses well, and seemed altogether more" workmanlike than the Canadians. Suffice it to say here that from first to last it was altogether a remarkable manifestation, made supreme and wonderful by the people and the streets and the unique circumstances of the scene. Nothing like it has been known before or in all probability will ever be seen again. Just as the batch of vocalists just in front of the office of Black and White had started on " Tommy Atkins " once more —we had snatches of it many times— a tremendous cheering swelled up from the eastward, and glancing down to discover to cause we saw coming up the street a line of old men. Some were lame, others lacked an arm, others a leg, and some saw but with one eye. Many were bent •with age and infirmities, and their faltering footsteps told of lifejs sands almost run. But there were also among them hale, ruddy-cheeked old men, erect of bearing, and with the spark of life still bright in their eyes. The medals on their breasts spoke of services rendered to Queen and country in days gone by, and the cheering mob recognised them for what they were—all that are left of the noble six hundred, the heroes of Balaclava, whose fame will live as long as the mother of nations rejoices in- a history. These aged warriors were the guests of the proprietor of Illustrated Bits, who had sought them out from the holes and corners of Great Britain, paid their fares to town, and made himself responsible for their food, lodgings, and general welfare during the time of Jubilee. His waa indeed a happy notion, and a proud man he must have been when to the cheers of his guests the crowd gave tongue to a great " Hurrah ! for Roberts," and informed us in the song that " he's a jolly good fellow." The veterans were quickly installed in the Illustrated Bits buildings, and their appearance at the windows was the signal for a renewal of the cheering and for a fresh outburst of song. This is what we heard gradually swelling above the " Bravos " and hand-clapping : How Cardigan the fearless His name immortal made, As he crossed the Russian valley with His noble — Hooray ! Hoora-ay ! ! Hoora-a-a-y ! ! ! East and west the Fleet-streeters took up the cry, for even those who could not see the old soldiers knew in whose honor the Bouverie-street section of jubilators were rasping their throats and stinging their hands. Having temporarily exhausted themselves with cheering, some of the crowd called out to the veterans for a speech, and some one in the office of the Illustrated Bits obliged. What he said I do not know, for those who could hear cheered every word, but in a temporary lull I caught the words, " Shoulder a gun, and sing long live the Queen. It was the conclusion of the speech, and once again the crowd gave a mighty cheer, out of which evolved the line, " How Cardigan the fearless." Everybody was reserving himself to give the colonials a greeting. They showed up for it close upon half-past 10. Col. Ward, the secretary of the late military tournament, was at the head of afi'airs with a few non-coms, and troopers of the Royal Horse Guards hard upon his horse's heels, and the Guards Band following blowing and banging away just behind. Then amid a storm of cheering which completely drowned the music came Lord Roberts, the hero of Kandahar, the one and only " Bobs," and the military idol of the great B.P. By his side rode little Bugler Daly, of the New South Wales Mounted Rifles. Hard upon " Bobs" and his bugler c.ime the Canadian troopers, and to them succeeded the Canadian Premier. Close upon his carriage followed the Lincers and Mounted Rifles of the Mother Colony—as gallant and ser-viceable-lcoking a body of men as was

seen that day, though they lacked the and "lit'or of some of the Ira\i troops. The people roar:-.;! an;] clapped a \velco::-!o to their !:in beyond the seas, and for the space of time the colonial Premiers and troopers occupied in traversing Newspaper Alley cur ears were split with a mighty babel of sounds. Stand in an empty room and yell as hard a*s you can something like this : " Ray, aray, aray, aray," clapping your hands the while as hard as you can, and then imagine the noise you make magnified a few thousand times, and you will be able to get just a faint idea of the sort of row they kicked up in Fleet-street in honor of the colonists. Other pens will tell you how the different contingents looked, and where they came in the procession, and they may tell you of Mr Reid's smile, of Mr Turner's semi-panic-stricken attempt to copy his genuine expression of pleasure, of the Hon. Richard Seddon's gallant effort to bow to every individual on the pavements, of Mr Kingston's vain endeavors to look on both sides of the street at once and smile at the same time, and of " Sir Eddard's" seeming indifference to the popular welcome. As the colonists passed away from our view, and their accompaniment of applause died slowly away in the distance, our ears caught a new sjund from the direction of Temple Bar, and craining our necks to see up the street we could catch a glimpse of burnished metal, and soon the head of the Queen's procession came into full view. The leader was Captain Ames, of the Second Life Guards, the tallest man in the British Army, a magnificently proportioned giant", with a face which the ladies declared to be very good to look upon. Aud certainly in the magnificent equipments of his regiment, and mounted on a splendid charger, Captain Ames must have appealed to the most pronounced " men-haters." accorded to the Royal Princes fell far short of that given to the colonials, but the climax of the applause came with the approach of the seventeenth carriage, containing our Queen, the Princess of Wales and Princess Christian, and escorted on the right by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Connaught, and on the left by the Duke of Cambridge. But my limited stock of adjectives has run out, and I must confess myself at a loss for words to convey an adequate idea of how we Fleet-streeters welcomed the " Widow of Windsor." But I think I may say that we established a record for noise that the good people at other parts of the route would be hard set to beat. We looked at our watches as the tail of the procession swept by. It was barely past midday, but as tar as Fleet street was concerned the Jubilee was a thing of the past. The soldiery lining the street disappeared soon after a quarter-past 12, the windows began to empty, and the crowds swarmed up and down the street, and before one o'clock the sound of hammering told of shopkeepers hurrying to reduce their premises to everyday orderliness.