Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field/Mark on "Royal Honors"
MARK ON "ROYAL HONORS"
Mark and I were walking down the Linden, Berlin, when a royal carriage, easily distinguished for its well-known breed of horses and livery, passed us. When it drew near the "Foot Guards," a drum and fife corps and half a hundred soldiers, under a lieutenant, rushed out, stood at attention and made a frightful racket.
Mark remained glued to the spot at the first sound of the "royalist propaganda"—his description—and eyed the spectacle with a mixture of amazement and disgust written all over his genial face.
"That carriage was empty," he observed, after a lot of staring and pulling at his moustache.
"What's the difference? If it were full of princes there would be a void—somewhere," I replied.
"Thanks awfully," said Mark, impatiently, "I was once greeted by fife and drums and thought it the most tremendous honor ever paid to a writing person. And now I see they do as much for an empty carriage, when there is a coat of arms on the door.
"Yes, I got so inflated with the reverse of modesty when the boys in red were tickling the veal-skin for me and worked their merry flutes, I well nigh bust off the buttons of my Prince Albert. It happened in Ottawa when I was visiting the Governor General, the Marquis of Lorne, and come to think of it, I was riding in one of Lorne's carriages. When we neared the Government House, the guards tumbled out like mad, the drummer boys worked like windmills in a gale and the fifes like steam calliopes. Sure, I felt like a hundred and fifteen degrees in the shade and I must have walked into the hall with the strut of Larry Barrett playing the Ghost in Hamlet. It was the proudest moment of my life then—and now I see it was all bosh and balderdash."
Speaking of those Canadian days, Mark vehemently rebuked me when I suggested that the Marquis of Lorne was "a prosy ass."
"But I admit it's embarrassing to visit in a family where the head of the house is a mere Lord, while the wife is kowtowed to as her Royal Highness. Mixes one up so, and I think that in my perplexity I once or twice said a Lord too many, namely, 'Oh Lord, Oh Lord.' I never was boss in my own house, but I like other men to be the he-brute for fair. At Ottawa I recalled a hundred times Lola Montez, the girl who started the revolution in Munich by wearing the breeches at the Palace.
"'I am the master here,' shouted King Louis, during one of their rows.
"'And I am the mistress, don't you forget that,' replied Lola.
"Now, Lola was only a common baggage, strolling actor-folks' bairn," added Mark. "Think of the advantages royal birth gives to a woman. Such a one, even if born without legs, would wear the breeches and boss the show."