FINE PAGEANT.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18888, 31 December 1926, Page 10

FINE PAGEANT.

LORD MAYOR'S SHOW. ROAD TRANSPORT OF ALL TIME. SEDAN CHAIR TO LIMOUSINE. (IKOII OUR OW» COBBMPOSfDIKT.) LONDON. November 16. Rain, fog, and snow wo are used to on Lord Mayor's Day, but not sunshine. But so it was on November 9th. The sun shone on a wonderful pageant, which roused the enthusiasm of the thousands of spectators as it never has done during the seven years the old cus-tom has been re-established. Before the day was ended the streets of London were deluged with rain, but while the procession wound along its customary route all was well. It was a gracious morning. The new Lord Mayor, Sir Rowland Blades, M.P., too, seemed to enjoy the day, tor he spent his time and energythrusting his head out of the gilded coach to acknowledge the cheers of the crowd. Most Lord Mayors find their chains and robes too heavy _ to rise from their seats on this occasion. Indeed, Sir Rowland Blades is a cricketer, cyclist, golf player, and allround sportsman, and is very popular. lb was in truth, a jolly show, which set all the crowd cheering and laughing. The pageants which formed' the feature of the procession assembled in the network of streets near the Guildhall; and one could wander in comparative ease to watch John Gilpin giving his boots a final polish prior to his famous ride, while the Fat Boy from "Pickwick Papers" munched a final bun prior to taking the stage. The pageants were those of Road Passenger Transport in England and the evolution of Fire Brigades. The first began with the human carriers—a. Welsh milkwomen, two men with a polo to which a load was suspended; •and a sedan chair carried by four men. In this there was a lady passenger. Next came the" pack'horse, the pillion horse, and four saddle horses. AH horses were ridden by people of a ivery early period of English history. Vehicular traffic began with a wheel barrow propelled by a porter, and then to the delight of everybody came thooe early ancestors of the bicycle—the velocipede, several varieties of boneshaker of the 'seventies, and the perilous high bicycle of the 'eighties and nineties." Most of those came no doubt, from museums and were not of a strength to hold a rider; hence they were wheeled along by their costumed guardians. Then came the more modern "safeties," and so. on down to the very latest in motorbicycles. There was that curious contraption which made one of the first tricycles possessing one huge wheel at one side for driving, and two small wheels in line on the other, the rider perched uneasily on a steel spider frame. The whole cycle exhibit was excellent, and with it came by the daring lady cyclist in voluminous "bloomers'* which shocked susceptibilities not so many years ago. What antiquities the relics of London's old street transport looked, and yet many of the adults remembered them. There was the 'bus of the knife-board age, the inside carpeted with straw; the dogcart, the governess cart, the hansom cab. This last however, is not yet out of date, for one was seen carrying passengers down the Strand the very same evening. There was the four-wheel growler, carrying Mrs Sairey Gamp, and as a contrast the modern taxi-cab. There followed the single liorse victoria, and the Austin Seven car.; the single horse brougham and the motor brougham; state road carriage and pair withr footman, and the posting carriage and pair, a _ road coach and four with Dickensian passengers.

Motor-Cars Then and Now. One had an opportunity of seeing the changes in the motor-car during the past thirty years. The Daimler car of 1890, a cumbersome two-seater with wooden wheels and primitive steering, the occupants perched. high, seemed impossibly .remote amid the fleet of modern motor vehicles,. as far out of date as would be Nelson's ships in to-day's Royal Navy. Yet it was the last word in motoring five and twonty years ago. It led the new Daimler "double-six," looking as large as a railway coach in the city streets. A Vauxhall park phaeton of 1903, not unlike a wheeled four-post bed, piloted the present-day Vauxhall saloon. As if to remind people that the day may come when even the latest and best of vehicular transport will give place to a transport of another kind, Sir Alan Cobham's Haviland 'piano, shorn of its wings, was drawn by a small motor tractor.

Fir* Brigades. The fire service also made an attraction in a picturesque Lord Mayor's Show. Till as late as 1866 there was no London fire brigade, and the insurance companies rushed their own engines to every conflagration. Four companies founded in ■ the . eighteenth century survive—Sun, ■ London Assurance, Phoenix, and Royal Exchange—and. in the four cars they contributed the evolution of the early fire-engine was to be traced. Firemen of old days wore Saxon green and blue uniforms, but most gorgeous were* the Phoenix men in red tunics and breeches, and stockings. London Assurance armed its firemen with swords, less handy weapons at a big blazo than were the axes carried by others. Then came in the procession the Fire Brigade and Salvage Corps, with standard motor pumps and escapes, leaving a gap unfilled. The horsed engines which used to send a thrill along the streets of all large towns for a generation were absent. . In all the rest the Show was brave and gay, with gold-laoed bandsmen of the Life Guards riding their stately horses, the mounted band of- the Royal Artillery, pipers of the Scots Guards and a dozen other bands afoot in turn filling the City with music all along the way. It was an inspiration to give the old man-carried litters and pack and pillion horses, and other of the earliest methods of transport, with attendants and riders in the costume of their days, and to fill buggy and gig and phaeton with our wonder-fully-tailored and gowned great grandfathers and grandmothers. They made a goodly company. The crowds 6miled, with one common thought. What frights these early Victorians looked. No doubt future generations will regard our plus-foured men and shingled and short-skirted dames of to-day as just as comic. The Farriers' Company, incorporated by Kino; Charles 11. in 1674. sent a fine emblematical car, a shoeing forge of Carolean days, with the iron red from the glowing coal. The musical ring of the anvil accompanied it along the streets. The Feltmakers' Company, too, had a good car; and there were'the Warspite boy?, with their brindled bulldog, and Sea Scouts: a _ sky-pointing anti-aircraft gun. with its crew of fourteen men, workmanlike, in steel helmets, ana much khaki; but this was riot in character a military Lord' Mayor's Show. Never So Popular. It is interesting to recall that when Mr Pepys went 'to see. the pageants" of my Lord Mayor's Day, he pronounced them "good for. amch kind of

things, bub in themselves but poor and absurd." This though ho sat in "a.Company of fine ladies'' and saw the Show "after drinking of some suange and incomparably good claret." His generation thought that the Show was "almost dropping into oblivion." In the nineteenth century things went from bad to worse. It may be found curtly stated in a popular Victorian book of reference that "the yearly procession to Westminster _is nowshorn of all dignity or significance.'-' Middle-aged people can remember Shows of which that is not too severo a condemnation. But now in 1926 it has to be recorded that never in the memory of living man was the Show so popular and so •well approved.

At New Zealand House. Every office window along the route of the procession was a grandstand tor the occasion, and the pavements were crowded all the way. The library at Now Zealand House was an excellent point of vanta.ge and many New Zealand visitors assembled there to see a sight that many of them will perhaps never see again. A number of visitors were the guests of Sir James and Lady Parr, and saw the procession from the High Commissioner's room. These included Mr and Mrs Coates, Mrs H. D. Fulton, Mrs Tully, Mrs A. B. Robertson, and Dr. H. A. H. Gilmer and his daughter. Afterwards they tool; tea with Lady Parr. Oth'jrs at New Zealand House in-cluded-.—Miss A. Hadifield, Miss Cargill, Mrs and Miss Carey, Miss Burden, Mrs and Miss Isemonger, Mrs G. Mulgan, Misses Gilmer (2), Mr and Mrs Wright, Mr and Mrs Mrs Mulgan, Mrs Atwood, Dr. and Miss Meadowcroft, Miss lloberton, Mr and Mrs J. Watson, Mr and Mrs Campbell Hard, Mr and Mrs and Miss Harper, Mrs D. Shale, Mr and Mrs Denton, the Misses Ralstpn, Miss Hales, Mrs Blackie, Mr and Mrs Ludbrook, Mr and Mrs W. G. Reid, Mr T. Horsley, Mr and Mrs G. Crompton Smith. Mr and Mrs Macalister, and Dr. G. Macalister.

A few were given windows at the prospective home of New Zealand in London, a little way nearer to Charing Cross, and some others were invited by Messrs T. H. Hamer and Co. to use their windows. The Lord Mayor's Coach. Humorous reference to the procession of November 9th was made by the Lord Mayor at the annual dinner of the Guild of Freemen. He said it was the fact that no simpler meal could be found in any house in the land than the domestic meal in the Mansion House. It was a ■mistake to suppose that anything more than simple living was the condition of affairs there, and if comparison were desired, ho would say that, if possible, the Mansion House meal was more simple than the meal in many thousands of other homes. As Lord Mayor, Sir Rowland proceeded, he was going to make a severe protest against the antiquity, in some direction of the Lord Mayor's coach. That coach was 60 dark it needed electric light to light tip the occupants. (Laughter.) He had with him in the coach , his chaplain, his maoebearer, and his sword-bearer, and the crowd could see very little of him unless ho put his head out of the window. (Laughter.) He had to display considerable activity by dashing from side to side, because he discovered that if he was more ttan. half a second on one side the crowd on the other side demanded his presence. (Laughter.) Although he had never made 200 runs in his life, he had enough exercise for 300 during the progress of the Lord Mayor's procession. Sir Rowland added that he. had received a letter from a farmer in Canada who asked for assistance in finding a wife. The man said he had fifteen oxen, twentyfive sheep, and forty acres, and his wife must w«igh 12olb; he was 1751b himself. (Laughter.)