THE COEONATION CEKEMONY 449 



this and other functions. Thus on July 1 there was the 

 Astronomer Eoyal's garden party. ' Having, as P.E.S., been 

 chairman of the Board of Visitors for 5 years, I felt bound 

 to go, and met only two persons known to me ! ' 

 Then he continues to Mrs. Lyell : 



On Thursday (the 7th) we go to the grand Indian affair. 

 I shall think of you and wish you could renew your sight of 

 the grand Indian Chiefs. As I was at the Waterloo station 

 yesterday, 4 Indian regiments filed past me they sent the 

 blood tingling to my finger tips, such grand fellows, and such 

 gentlemen, such proud yet pleasant faces, such an air of 

 dignity and self-respect. 



On the 27th, for the Coronation was still a fortnight ahead, 

 he teUs Mr. Gamble : 



What with the * Nature Study ' exhibition and the 

 ' Chelsea Garden Jubilee ' and the dinners given to the ' Most 

 Meritorious ' [i.e. in honour of the members of the newly 

 created English Order of Merit] I have been in a whirl last 

 week, and greatly obstructed in dragging the lengthening 

 chain of my father's life and works. 



His solace lay in being transported to his beloved India as 

 he read the proof sheets of Gamble's Malayan Botany, while 



economising the time spent in toasting my toes, which even 

 in July I cannot keep .warm without a fire. . . . Your 

 sheets have been Godsends, for the moment after I get them 

 I fling myself into my easy-chair and thoroughly enjoy the 

 memories they stir up of collecting, preserving and working 

 up such a lot of old friends in the shape of specimens, and 

 localities of India, and above all old friends of botanists, 

 there and at Kew. 



The Coronation took place on August 9. 



I have to wear a voluminous blue silk mantle with a huge 

 gold star worked on it, and shall feel the ' lean and slippered 

 pantaloon ' that I am, in doll's clothes. (To Mrs. Paisley, 

 July 20.) 



His impressions of the ceremony, taken from letters to 



