The Weekly Machen
This week, we are ushered by star reporter Arthur Machen into a whirl of sound and a blaze of color in London on the day before a royal coronation. He grants us a street-level view of the rush and excitement of the crowd as the grand event draws nearer. Over a year earlier, George V became the king-emperor upon the death of his father Edward the VII on May 6, 1910. Yet, the coronation was not performed until June 22, 1911. Next week, we will read Machen’s observations of that historical day.
The following article is not listed in the bibliography by Goldstone and Sweetser.
There are two kinds of crowds. There is the crowd fixed in its position, the huge mass of human beings in serried lines, waiting for the great event. That is the sort of crowd that we shall see to-morrow.
But to-day I have been looking at a crowd of another kind, a crowd in constant slow motion, and I do not think that I have ever seen such a sight in London before.
Think of a few streets in the West End as they are when the theatres turn out: for five or ten minutes the footways are thronged, and there is a jarring block of carriage; then the roads and pavements are clear again and resume their normal appearance.
But this morning I have walked for three hours in the heart of London, and the marching multitudes grow thicker and thicker, and the quadruple lines of motorcars, carriages and buses move more and more slowly, and come to a dead stop at still more frequent intervals.
From Buckingham Palace to Charing Cross
You may see such sights, as I have said, at a quarter-past eleven every night in Leicester-square; you may see as great a horde of foot passengers all day long and a great part of the night in the Cannebiere at Marseilles; but the crowd and crush of to-day are continuous. The multitude fetches from Buckingham Palace to Charing Cross, from Charing Cross to Hyde Park Corner; it overflows into side streets, it makes quiet byways and lonely nooks and corners of central London resonant and noisy with the sound of eager voices and the pattering of innumerable feet.
To-morrow the King and Queen set out from Buckingham Palace on their sacred errand; and at the Palace people were gathered in thousands before eleven o’clock. They stood six deep by the railings, they were standing in dense black clusters on the steps of the Memorial, they had made a line in the centre of the roadway, leaving spaces on either side for the wheeled traffic.
The Trooping of the Colour
Away in the Park, under the quiet leaves, I heard the loud sonorous summons of the trumpet, and coming nearer there was the beat of the drum and the blare of brass instruments. The colours of the Scots Guards were being trooped in the Palace Courtyard. Line on line of bright scarlet uniforms stretched before the Palace, and between the bright lines the two “ancients”—who are now, I suppose, sub-lieutenants—bore the dark crimson colours, pacing to and fro as the band played.
On the Mall the stands were receiving their last touches. The boxed-in treetops which intersect some of the seats were being covered with wire netting. Here, too, the crowd was thick; every now and then a royal carriage, with coachman and footmen in scarlet, drove by, and once or twice I saw dark faces within, and the gleam of cloth of gold and the shining of Oriental jewels. And almost continuously small detachments of soldiery in scarlet, dark blue, and khaki uniforms marched along the Mall on their way to the Palace. It was curious to note that the seats under the trees in the garden of Marlborough House are still plain deal.
A Blaze of Colour
Carlton House-terrace is all a blaze of red and white and blue; the colours of England are displayed in hanging draperies and blazoned in lilies and roses and blue flowers. At this point, the noise of the hammer is still to be heard; some of the stands and pavilions are not yet finished.
Trafalgar-square is all a-wave and aflutter with bright flags and streamers, and the pale garlands of green and red that swing from the long poles. The pavements are alive with sightseers gazing about them, on the roadway people are hurrying here, crossing there, darting in and out of the swirling traffic.
At the turn into Whitehall and for most of the way to the Abbey it becomes difficult to move at all. Long lines of vehicles going either way are stopped. There is a friendly crowd round a taxi-cab holding four French officers in uniform, who look delighted with the turmoil of popular excitement and rejoicing. There are always a few people about the Horse Guards admiring the two sentries; to-day there is a seething mob.
The street hawkers are doing a brisk trade. They are selling an infinite variety of trifles, badges, buttons, brooches, “official programmes,” fans displaying the royal arms, picture postcards with portraits of the King and Queen, Coronation {illegible} George Lucky Farthings, sticks to which are attached scarlet streamers; all these things are to be bought within a few yards.
“In the Midst of Life”
The final touches of gilding are being applied to the Canadian Arch, the two Ontario columns are still scaffolded.
And strangely, amidst all the flags and gold and ornaments, there came into the crush of vehicles at the corner of Westminster Bridge, a funeral hearse bearing a coffin covered with white flowers.
The portico of the Abbey now stands perfect, a fine piece of temporary Gothic. The doors are in position, with the mottoes, “Domine Salvum fac Regem,” and “Vivat Rex,” on gold labels; and on each side a fierce stone lion guards the arms of the King and the Queen. In the niches stand the statues of English Kings, ending with King Edward VII.
Here the crowd was very thick; it was as much as the police could do to keep the way moderately open by dint of constant requests to “Keep to the right,” to “Pass along, please.”
The Final Rehearsal
Everybody was interested in the arrival of the distinguished personages engaged in the final rehearsal. The Archbishop of Canterbury drove by in his motor-car, and Lord Crewe and the Lord Mayor were also observed. I saw a neatly-dressed man in bowler hat and dark tweed suit asking his way of a policeman. He was carrying an odd bundle under his arm—an earl’s coronet and his scarlet and ermine robes.
Turning back to Charing Cross, one noticed ancient horse omnibuses, that looked as if they had long rested in retirement, joining in the long procession of vehicles. Pall Mall was a blaze of colour, and the wheeled traffic stood as a dead block for five minutes. Nervous ladies made mad rushes to cross the way, and entangled themselves in mazes of cars. Here and there “lighting rehearsals” were being held; the glow of the lamps in daylight was both strange and beautiful.
The head and foot of St. James’s-street have a charming effect. From the white and gold Ionic columns, crowned with blue vases that hold pink roses, garlands of green and “old rose” rise to a round canopy in “old rose” and cream colour that hangs over the centre of the street. Against one house is a painting of the victory of St. George over the Dragon in brave colours; it must be twelve feet high.
Crowds of Delighted Children
Vanloads of shrieking, cheering, laughing children pass up the road; the press seems to grow thicker and still thicker. On a platform before Devonshire House stands a fine pavilion in white and blue; and here again tiny lights are glowing. Then there is a house hung about with dark crimson roses; here an effect of rich blue drapery and pink roses; there bow-windows have been apparelled in red and blue cloth spangled with crowns.
The people stream up from the Park into Piccadilly; one man, I notice, shows his loyalty by wearing a tie of red, blue, and white. There is an unceasing rush of motors past the red-serried seats of Constitution Hill, and the crowds are still massed in front of Buckingham Palace.
There is one quite trifling circumstance that I noticed in the crowd. There were many well-dressed men to be seen, but I do not believe that one in two hundred of them wore a silk hat.
Previous: A Study in Scarlet
Next: How the King Was Crowned
darklybrightpress.com 
Hmm! I wouldn’t have expected to see “slow motion” in journalism so early as this. If I’d seen it used thus in an historical novel, I might have been put off by that and might have dropped the book.
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I thought about how well this report might have sounded if read over the radio. Likewise, but less anachronistically, how well it might have sounded if a copy of the paper showed up in some rural household, perhaps two or three days later than the issue date, and the paterfamilias read the account to his household.
Christopher, would either of Machen’s parents in Wales possibly have been reading the Evening News as something mailed to them or delivered by rail to some village shop?
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Dale, that is an interesting question to consider. I think it would be best to quote Machen from Far Off Things, Chapter 3:
“But, anyhow, the call of London, partly external and partly internal, came to me, and for some months before I left the old land for the first time I was imagining London and making a picture of it in my mind, and longing for it. I turned up the old magazines and re-read Sala’s “Twice Round the Clock.” I came upon the strange phrase, “the City,” in stories, and wondered what the City signified. And I began to have an appetite for London papers. For it should be understood that at Llanddewi Rectory a London paper was a thing of the rarest appearance. I think I can remember that when the Prince of Wales—afterwards King Edward VII, of happy memory—was dangerously ill, my father made some kind of arrangement—I cannot think what it could have been—by which he got the “Echo” of those days, not only on week days, but on Sunday afternoons. And in ordinary times, when we went into Newport on market days, we might possibly bring back a “Standard” or a “Telegraph,” but likely enough not. We saw the “Western Mail” occasionally, the “Hereford Times” once a week; weekly also came the “Guardian,” an excellent paper, but with more of Oxford, Pater, and Freeman, and Deans, and Dignitaries in it than of London or Londoners.”
And again, he writes:
“As I have explained, the London paper made a very rare and occasional appearance at Llanddewi-among-the-Hills, and I don’t think that any of us felt any aching need of it. But now for me “Standard” and “Telegraph” became mystic documents of the highest interest and most vital consequence; these were the charts to the Nova Terra Incognita; every line in them came from the heart of the mystery and was written by men who were learned in all the wisdom of London. London papers I must have; that was certain; so I set out to get them.
The nearest point at which these precious rarities were obtainable was Pontypool Road Station, about four miles distant from Llanddewi Rectory.”
For those who haven’t read this great volume, they can read here: https://darklybrightpress.com/far-off-things-1922/.
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Thank you both for question and answer! I was thinking as I read, what a vivid picture for us, 112 years later – and, I suppose for anyone between then and now with access to some sort of newspaper archive (about which possibility I know too little) – but also wondering for how wide a contemporary readership? How many in the crowds described were Londoners, and how many from how much further afield, in England, Britain, elsewhere? How many Londoners working that day, or shy of the press of crowds, who would have read with fascination and delight that evening, when the paper arrived or after they bought a copy on the way home from work? That box below the article also suggests a conscious souvenir-value: I wonder how the press-run compared to the usual? I expect it sold well! Speaking of souvenirs… the Internet Archive has scans of The Form and Order of the Service (56 pages) – and of the version “With the Music to Be Sung” (viii + 144 pages)! Plus a 78 rpm recording of “Coronation March and Hymn” (“As performed in Westminster Abbey”).
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Thank you, Chrostopher. What a pleasure Far-Off Things is to read — for me, one of the best of such books.
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Searching the Internet Archive a bit further with Coronation of George V as term, I encountered The Book of the Coronation Bonfires compiled and edited by the Rev. Canon H.D. Rawnsley – including a list of the Welsh Coronation bonfires, and 97 photographs of bonfires! Also J. Hogarth Milne’s richly-illustrated Great Britain in the Coronation Year (1914), and Coroniad E. F. Sior V. a’i M. y Frenhines Mari – a pamphet with their portraits on the cover and 4 pages with a song text in Welsh and English on facing pages to be sung to the tune of “God Bless the Price of Wales” (published in Treherbert and printed in Treorchy: local sounvenir initiative)!
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I had to look up “Lord Crewe”, but it was worth it: Robert Offley Ashburton Crewe-Milnes, at that moment (if we may trust Wikipedia) Lord Privy Seal, Leader of the House of Lords, and for the past 28 days His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for India – with, I suppose, no little attention for various of those royal carriages with “the gleam of cloth of gold and the shining of Oriental jewels” within.
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