In 1906 I came in for a most interesting cruise in the Royal Yacht, which took me further afield than I had been for many a long year, for early in April the King and Queen and Princess Victoria joined the Royal Yacht at Marseilles for a cruise in Eastern waters. The voyage cannot be said to have commenced auspiciously, as the yacht was compelled to remain for four days at Marseilles, whilst weatherbound by an atrocious gale. However, nothing lasts for ever, and eventually the gale came to an end, so by the 8th of the month the yacht was on her way to Messina, at which port she arrived early next day. Taormina, the beautiful, being within easy reach, had, of course, to be visited. It was always a pleasure to me to see it again; but I knew the place well, having been there in the old Surprise days, and later, in the course of a winter trip to Sicily.
From Messina it was only a short journey to Corfu, and there the Royal Yacht was to spend some days not only in very beautiful, but also amongst very interesting surroundings. To commence with, the King of the Hellenes was there with a number of his family on board his yacht the Amphitrite; the Prince and Princess[320] of Wales, on their way home from India, were on board the Renown; and, finally, the Mediterranean Fleet was at anchor in the bay under the command of the late Lord Beresford, flying his flag from the masthead of H.M.S. Bulwark.
Various entertainments were given on board the flagship in the shape of dinners, and we were also shown a good deal of what was then the new Navy, for even as late as 1906 the Fleet in the Mediterranean was our most up-to-date Naval asset, and its command was still looked upon as the most important in the Navy. Except for the great beauty of the island itself, there is nothing very remarkable in the way of sight-seeing to be done at Corfu, so in default of any other short excursion, the Achilleion was frequently visited; the house itself consists of a sort of rather tawdry villa, built in what is evidently meant to be a Pompeian style, the whole edifice being extremely ugly and characteristically German in taste. But there criticism ends, for as regards situation, and the view from the garden, it is absolutely beautiful. From where the statue of Achilles stands, from which the villa takes its name, one can see right over the little town of Corfu, with its charming old Venetian fort, and Ulysses’ Island, enshrined in a most beautiful bay, the whole view being rounded off by a background, consisting of the mountains of Albania.
In fact, Corfu is a very charming place, and I always wonder that more people do not winter there; it has a delightful climate, the scenery is superb, the roads we made during our long occupation of the island, although sadly neglected by their present owners, make[321] excursions in all directions still feasible. On the other hand, islands are always troublesome to arrive at, and get away from, and there is no such thing as a Casino there, though were it to become a fashionable winter resort, that necessity (?) would doubtless be soon provided by some enterprising Greek syndicate.
After four or five pleasant days at Corfu, the Victoria and Albert proceeded to the Pir?us, and on her arrival there, the King and Queen and Princess Victoria and the suite left Pir?us for Athens, and took up their temporary residence at the palace.
Shortly after our King’s arrival, the Olympic games, that were intended to be a sort of International Sporting Tournament, to be held in turn in various Capitals, were inaugurated in the new Stadium that had been built for the occasion. The Stadium, in another thousand years or so, when the white marble of which it is built has become coloured and patinaed with age, may become beautiful; but to my mind, nothing is so hideous as the staring white, of brand-new marble, and the Stadium at Athens was no exception. It was of huge size, and being new, could look like nothing in the world but a wedding cake. Personally, I am not fond of looking on at what are called “sports,” especially when they consist largely in teams of extremely well-drilled and well-set-up athletes doing, what used to be called in the Navy “physical drill,” and a large part of the competition seemed made up of these exercises, which are, I fancy, very popular in Germany and among the Northern races generally. But one very interesting competition I did see, that took place outside the[322] Stadium in a garden in the vicinity; for there the English team of épéeists (if there is such a word!) encountered the German representatives, and to our great joy soundly trounced them. Our team was headed by Lord Desborough, and eventually fought its way into the final, in which they were defeated, after a very close contest, I think, by the Belgians. The particular bout that delighted me, was one between Lord Desborough, and a remarkably corpulent German expert, who received such a prodding from his powerful and active antagonist that, in spite of the plastron and the button on the épée, I fully expected to see daylight let into the Teutonic “corpulency”!
Towards the end of the month, the Royal Yacht was once more under weigh, anchoring for a night at Katakolo to enable a visit to be paid to Olympia. I had been several times to Athens before, but never had managed to get to Olympia, which is really very difficult of access. To get there in any comfort a yacht is required, supplemented by a short railway journey and a long drive, and as the hotel—or rather the village inn—is quite remarkably bad, the whole expedition has to be compressed into the inside of a day. With a yacht at one’s disposal, there is no great difficulty, and indeed the actual journey by sea from Athens to the anchorage in Katakolo Bay is a very pleasant one, and wonderfully lovely as to scenery. Athens itself is more beautiful when seen from the sea than from any other aspect, and, after going through the Corinth Canal, the Gulf of Corinth, which is never more than about thirty miles across at its broadest portion, provides a succession of views whose[323] beauty, both as to colour and to outline, are difficult to over-estimate. Olympia itself is wonderfully interesting. When the original town was at the height of its fame, with its wealth of temples and shrines, to say nothing of the most important feature of all,—the Stadium for the Olympic games,—it must have been one of the wonders of the world. Much has been done in the way of excavation, so, from the summit of Kronos Hill, just to the north of the town, which lies in a sort of natural amphitheatre, it is possible to form some sort of idea of what its appearance must have been, when Olympia was in its glory. But, to my mind, far more beautiful than anything else there, and alone worth any length of journey to see, is the Hermes of Praxiteles that is safely lodged in the little museum. This statue was, I believe, found some twenty or thirty years ago by an excavating party, and was lying at the bottom of the little stream which is still dignified with the name of the River Alphios. It is exquisitely beautiful. The slight turn of the head that enables the Hermes to glance at the lovely little Bacchus perched on his shoulder, the beauty of every detail, and the wonderful patina, perhaps produced by the many hundreds of years immersion, make up altogether what is, in my poor judgment, far the most attractive, if not the finest, statue in the world. I remember how difficult it was to tear oneself away from this wonderful group, and how almost disagreeable it was to look at anything else in the museum, though, as a matter of fact, not far from it stands the Niké of Paconios, which is extremely fine, and there are also a quantity of interesting fragments;[324] but the Hermes is so compellingly wonderful, that everything else under the same roof seems to be second-class.
Altogether the trip to Olympia was an immense delight, and even the names on the signposts were attractive. There was something very pleasant in driving, (even in a shandrydan of a Greek fly), down the road to Arcadia!
From Katakolo the Royal Yacht proceeded to Naples, at which port the King disembarked for Paris and London, the Queen and Princess Victoria remaining on board for a further cruise on the Italian coast.
Later in the year I was present at Buckingham Palace at a rather mournful little ceremony. Under the new Army Organisation Scheme, it had been decided to disband the 3rd Battalion of the Scots Guards. Naturally, the officers and men of the battalion were much distressed at their disappearance from the Army List, and, as some sort of consolation, the King took the opportunity of parading them at Buckingham Palace, so as to take leave of them, accepting, at the same time, the custody of their colours. This fine battalion paraded under the command of Colonel Lawrence Drummond, their Colonel. After the parade, the colours were handed over by the colour party to the two Equerries-in-Waiting, and by them were duly placed in the private chapel of the palace, where I have no doubt they remained until the late war, when a third battalion was reformed.
Early in 1907 I was once more in Paris in attendance on the King and Queen, who took the opportunity[325] of paying a week’s visit to that Capital. With the exception of a luncheon with the President, there were no official functions, and for once in a way it was a real holiday for their Majesties. The King and Queen occupied the Embassy during the whole of their visit, the Ambassador and Ambassadress (then the late Sir Francis and Lady Feodorovna Bertie) taking up their residence for the time at the H?tel Bristol.
The British Embassy in Paris is worthy of a few words of description, both on account of its historical interest and its magnificence as a residence. I question whether many of my countrymen realise what a bargain was made by the nation, when it was purchased for something under ￡30,000, its value before the late war being estimated at about a quarter of a million sterling. It was bought on the advice of the Duke of Wellington during the occupation of Paris by the Allies after Waterloo, and was at the time the Paris home of the Prince and Princess Borghese, the Princess being the beautiful Pauline, a sister of the great Napoleon.
It is most conveniently situated for an official residence, standing as it does, to use the French expression, “entre cour et jardin,” with its entrance on the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, only a very few hundred yards from the Palace of the élysée,............