Monday, Feb. 11, 1929
"This is Ghastly!"
Jauntily, impishly, Edward of Wales appeared in evening dress with a red carnation, one night last week, thus setting London's impeccable chappies terribly agog. On the very next evening dozens of red carnations appeared in Mayfair, and smart women flattered their escorts by thrilling, "How adorably ghastly!" Meanwhile, however, Jester Wales, having had his floral joke,* was speeding nocturnally toward the north of England, to visit in grim earnest the stricken coal fields where a half-million miners are workless and nigh to starving (TIME, Jan. 7).
As the ordinary night express from London pulled into smoky Newcastle, H. R. H. emerged from a common-first class sleeping car, accompanied only by Sir Godfrey Thomas, his private secretary. Together they tramped over to the Station Hotel, unwelcomed, unescorted, and there they took a room and sitting room, bathed, breakfasted. Just as the station clock neared nine, Edward of Wales drew on capacious rubbers, donned a grey checked overcoat, struggled into a great black ulster with an astrakhan collar, clapped a bowler (derby) on his head, and was off by limousine to inspect in three days slightly over 100 bleak, grimy villages. Appropriately a driving snow swirled about the royal car and patriotic British correspondents wired to anxious London that H. R. H. was "pressing on," despite "his heavy cold" and "frequent coughing."
On the outskirts of each village the royal motor halted and its occupants alighted in mud and slush. Resolutely the rubbers waded, and the bowler advanced toward drab little rows of tiny cottages, some containing only one room and an attic. The village of Winlaton was the first major halt, for there Edward of Wales expected to find an old man .who had challenged him --Frank McKay, a miner of 74. "I'll show you misery, Your Royal Highness!" he had written. "I challenge you to come!"
"Where's Mr. McKay's cottage?" cried Challengee Wales. The white-faced, starveling villagers pointed. He climbed the muddy stoop, rapped on the sleasy door. "Come in!" cried a child's voice, and H. R. H. entered to find two weeping little girls beside the bed of a grey-haired woman who lay stark and motionless. "Dead!" croaked a villager, "Starved--an' Old Frank 'as gone for 'er coffin!"
Since there was nothing else to do, the visitor spoke gently to the sobbing little girls. "Cheer up," he said several times. "Cheer up!"
"I'm Taffy Lewis," interrupted a somewhat belligerent Welshman, pushing into the room. "No good staying here with the dead. I was a soldier in India at His Majesty's Durbar. I'll show Your Highness misery, with your permission, as much as ever Old Frank could!"
Meanwhile a white-faced, scant-clad crowd had gathered--men who had had no steady work for .three years .past, men who eat meat never more than once a week, but Britishers, for they gave the well-fed young man in two overcoats a thin tut loyal cheer. Cried a quavering old man: "Ay, ay, the dear lad's a champion!"--perhaps referring to the fact that the Prince's radio appeal at Christmastide brought in some $2,000,000 for mine-relief.
Sloshing out of Winlaton, H. R. H. took limousine for Newfield, Pelton, High Spen and Chopfield--the latter called "Little Moscow" and possessing a Lenin Street crossed by a Trotzky Street. In High Spen a few ragged young women cheerily called, "Good luck, Prince!" and there a certain Mrs. Ferrage dusted off a chair for the royal guest and called her daughter, saying, "Daughter, this is the Prince of Wales. Prince, this is my daughter."
Soon afterwards the bowler was doffed very gravely in the presence of a Mrs. Charles Cameron. Her husband had had no work for three years, and last week she gave birth to her eighth child. "How do you live?" questioned Edward. "Well, you see," said Mr. Cameron, "I get ten bob [$2.40] a week from the Poor Law Guardians and 18 bob [$4.30] in vouchers for food." Thus nine mouths have been fed on $6.70 a week, and now there is a tenth. This latter aspect of miner-woe was frankly discussed by Bachelor Wales with Father-of-Eight Cameron. British correspondents indicated what H. R. H. had said by reporting that he spoke to the workless begetter with "sympathy and anger."
On sped the limousine to "Little Moscow." There the red fires of communism, which burned brightly a year ago, have been quenched by black hunger. Cowed communists cheered royalty. Suddenly the drab, depressing scene was enlivened as a motor hired by several press correspondents rattled up. They wanted Edward of Wales to meet his challenger--Frank McKay. Working fast they had found Old Frank in a neighboring village, ordering a coffin for his wife. Nothing would do but that he must hop in with them and rush to thank H. R. H. for stopping at his house. When embarrassed Challenger Frank came apologetically up to Challengee Wales the latter wrung his hand warmly, and said a moment later to a charity field secretary, "See that you do something for that old chap!"
Seemingly it was not until the second or third day of such royal slumming that Edward of Wales fully and deeply sensed the misery around him. He reacted by demanding to see the books and pay sheets of several employers, and appeared scandalized when one such sheet showed that a gang of four men, working five shifts, received at the end of the week only 29 shillings ($7.10).
"For each man, surely!" exclaimed H. R. H. incredulously.
"No, for all four."
Said the Prince, "What causes all this?"
"Management."
"Bad management?"
"No, just hard management."
After this conversation H. R. H. began to dictate copious notes to Sir Godfrey Thomas. Apparently he plans to place con crete names and figures before his next radio audience. As the third day wore on, as he slopped down street after street and peered into hovel after hovel, the Prince's face hardened, greyed. "This is ghastly 1" he ejaculated frequently to Sir Godfrey. "I never thought things were so bad. A ghastly mess!"
At the close of the three-day tour, London news organs said that H. R. H. seemed "pale and haunted" by the memory of the dead woman, the other in childbed, and all the horrors of starvation he had seen. Casual U. S. readers supposed this meant that Edward of Wales would eschew gayety for some weeks. But Englishmen are not like that. With duty done, H. R. H. hopped a local train for Melton Mowbray, his favorite hunting centre. After a sound night's sleep he seemed his cheerful self again, sprang to horse, and galloped off with many another after a frightened little red fox. The horse fell and sprained a foreleg, but Edward of Wales kept his seat, as he usually does, and fell with-- not from--his beast.
Perhaps only Englishmen completely understood. At West Hartlepool, fighting Laborite John R. Clynes, M. P., loyally said of H. R, H.'s tour:
"I think there is a fine human touch in that act, and nothing has brought the Throne nearer to the troubles of the poor than this unprecedented act by perhaps the most popular man in the world!"
Several correspondents suggested that unless the Conservative Government of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin acts quickly to relieve miner distress, the result of Edward of Wales' tour may be a storm of indignation which will cost Mr. Baldwin the next election. Though the public has contributed $2,500,000 and Parliament has voted to double that sum (TIME, Jan. 7), the Conservative Government is still procrastinating so outrageously that last week Laborites in the House of Commons, forced from Lord Eustace Percy the admission that not a penny of the huge fund has as yet been spent.
Rich Miss Radclyffe Hall, author of the suppressed Lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness (TIME, Dec. 31), contributed $5,000 to the fund, last week, after selling for that sum to the Glasgow Art Gallery a portrait of the late Mrs. George Batten by John Singer Sargent. It had been bequeathed to her by Mrs. Batten.
"I hope by parting with one of my most treasured possessions," said Miss Radclyffe Hall, "that I shall be able to inaugurate a sort of 'gift in kind' movement to help the miners."
*A serious matter was the late famed Joseph ("Joe") Chamberlain's daily practice of appearing in the House of Commons wearing an orchid. This extravagant tradition, though abandoned by his son Sir Austen Chamberlain, now Foreign Secretary, is still staunchly upheld by Sir Harry Brittain, M. P., who was chairman of the British Hospitality Committee for U. S. officers in London during the War.