Nancy Mitford Read Free Page A

the room the Son of Heaven rose and acknowledged our bows. He was at that time a tall youth with a bright eye and clear complexion; his demeanour was very dignified , well becoming the heir of a dynasty many centuries older than any other sovereignty on the face of the globe. He was dressed in a white coat with long padded trousers of crimson silk trailing like a lady’s court-train. His head-dress was the same as that of his courtiers, though as a rule it was surmounted by a long, stiff, flat plume of black gauze. I call it a plume for want of a better word, but there was nothing feathery about it. His eyebrows were shaved off and painted in high up on the forehead; his cheeks were rouged and his lips painted with red and gold. His teeth were blackened. It was no small feat to look dignified under such a travesty of nature; but the
sangre Azul
would not be denied. It was not long, I may add, before the young sovereign cast adrift all these worn-out fashions and trammels of past ages, together with much else that was out of date.’
    With Sir Harry Parkes he narrowly escaped murder by reactionary samurai for his support of the reformers. His early book
Tales of Old Japan
(1871) has deservedly become a classic, and as a child I longed for more stories of the same kind, where blood was mingled with haunting poetry.
    After fourteen varied and adventurous years in the diplomatic service he resigned in 1873. Meetings with Sir Richard Burton and Abd el Kader in Damascus, with Garibaldi in self-imposed exile at Caprera, with Brigham Young in Salt Lake City—the rest of his autobiography is sprinkled with dramatic encounters and anecdotes of historical personages. Disraeli appointed him Secretary to the Board of Works in 1874—ten days after he had purchased a black opal which a friend had prophesied would bring him luck precisely within that period. At the end of the same year he married Lady Clementine Ogilvy, a daughter of the seventh Earl of Airlie, and there is reason to believe that it was a happy marriage though he maintained that ‘the veil of sanctity should mask the wedded life of even the humblest individual ’.
    During his twelve years with the Board of Works he was responsible for many improvements in Hyde Park, Hampton Court, Kew Gardens, and other neglected beauty spots. He then decided to turn country squire, which led to being ‘mixed up with the horse world,’ notably as judge and director of the International Horse Show at Olympia, and succumbeddutifully but reluctantly to membership of the House of Commons for three years. English to the core, he was yet a cosmopolitan polyglot in culture and his
Memories
reveal the multifaceted type of
milordo inglese
now almost obsolete. ‘Looking back,’ he asserted, ‘I claim the privilege of the sun-dial, and among the hours record only the serene.’
    In 1906 he accompanied Prince Arthur of Connaught on a mission to invest the Mikado with the Order of the Garter in Japan—how transformed since his previous visit in 1868 when the juvenile Mikado, regarded as a demigod, ‘had descended from the clouds to take his place among the children of men, and not only that, but he had actually allowed his sacred face to be seen by, and had held communion with, “The Beasts from Without”.’ Since capturing Port Arthur and annihilating the Russian fleet in 1904 Japan had become one of the great powers and there was a general imitation of everything European—to the detriment of many an indigenous art and craft. In lieu of their former elegance crude European dress was prescribed for officials. The rapid metamorphosis was prodigious even then, and Lord Redesdale had been lucky to witness the feudal status quo. ‘Tell us how it was in the olden time,’ the courtiers begged him, curious to hear of their bygone ceremonial from this venerable foreigner.
    The second volume of his
Memories
ends with a rhapsody on Wagner: ‘poetry and music are united in an indissoluble