SWINBURNE.
Vivat Rex Eduardus! They crowned a king this day, and there has been
great rejoicing and elaborate tomfoolery, and I am perplexed and
saddened. I never saw anything to compare with the pageant, except
Yankee circuses and Alhambra ballets; nor did I ever see anything so
hopeless and so tragic.
To have enjoyed the Coronation procession, I should have come straight
from America to the Hotel Cecil, and straight from the Hotel Cecil to a
five-guinea seat among the washed. My mistake was in coming from the
unwashed of the East End. There were not many who came from that
quarter. The East End, as a whole, remained in the East End and got
drunk. The Socialists, Democrats, and Republicans went off to the
country for a breath of fresh air, quite unaffected by the fact that four
hundred millions of people were taking to themselves a crowned and
anointed ruler. Six thousand five hundred prelates, priests, statesmen,
princes, and warriors beheld the crowning and anointing, and the rest of
us the pageant as it passed.
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