Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [37]
A Franco-American accord (Persia abstaining) was reached before the landau made its first stop in Parliament Square. Pichon agreed to wait and see where he was seated later in the day, at lunch in Windsor Castle, before making his placement a casus belli that might prevent France’s attendance at the future coronation of George V.
THE ENORMOUS PARADE, growing ever more brilliant as the sun climbed high, looked almost festive until King Edward’s coffin was brought out from Westminster Hall, to a single toll of Big Ben. Cannons boomed across the river. The casket was placed on a gun carriage, which led the way up Whitehall. By now, the procession was a mile long. Moving to the implacable rhythm of funeral marches by Handel, Beethoven, and Chopin, it took over an hour to get to Marble Arch. Roosevelt remained unobtrusive, but caught the eye of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, reporting for the Daily Mail: “One remembers the strong profile of the great American, set like granite as he leans back in his carriage.”
Another profile, less strong but equally expressionless, was that of the heir to the thrones of Austria and Hungary. Franz Ferdinand, plumed and corseted, gave off waves of hauteur that disagreeably affected many observers. An American correspondent predicted that the archduke was “destined to make history in Southeastern Europe.”
Belgium’s enormous young king made a handsome figure, modestly dressed in a dark uniform that reproved the baroque costumes of the German dukes. They in turn failed to match the splendor of the Bulgarian Tsar, sweating under a white fur hat and carbuncled from groin to shoulder with decorations. The Tsar whom everybody would have preferred to see had stayed home in Russia, preoccupied with a pogrom against the Jews of Kiev. He was represented by his brother and mother.
Epaulettes pulsed like golden jellyfish and hundreds of medals swayed as the Earl Marshal, worrying about the approach of noon, tried to hurry his lead horses down the Edgware Road to Paddington. By 11:57 every dignitary expected at Windsor for the interment service was aboard the waiting royal train. It departed with no further ceremony, hauling a white-domed coffin car. Bystanders on the platform who had watched that equipage bearing away the Victorian Age, only nine years before, now saw it carry off the Edwardian.
M. PICHON’S MOOD began to improve when he was required to walk ahead of Roosevelt on the long march from Windsor Station to the castle. The midday heat was stifling, and only an occasional breeze darkened the buttercup fields stretching down to the Thames. Roosevelt suffered in his black clothes. For some reason, his aides-de-camp had made him carry an overcoat. He shifted it uncomfortably from arm to arm, making no attempt to keep step with his marching companions. It was plain that the special ambassador of the United States had had enough of pompe funèbre.
“EPAULETTES PULSED LIKE GOLDEN JELLYFISH.”
Roosevelt (far right) marches in the funeral procession of Edward VII, 20 May 1910. (photo credit i3.2)
But there was more to come. The cloister of St. George’s Chapel was heavy with the scent of stacked flowers. Members of His Majesty’s government sat waiting inside. To the delight of one socialistic reporter, there were no pews available for the royal mourners. They stood perspiring, awkwardly jockeying for position as the burial service got under way. Their swords and thigh boots made kneeling difficult, and getting up even more so. The liturgy was interminable, and the air in the room almost too close to breathe. Roosevelt