Love Conquers All Part 11

Our first glimpse of the Wiglaf who was one day to become ruler of Mercia, the heart of present-day England (music, please), is when at the age of seven he was taken by Oswier, his father's murderer, to see Mrs.

Siddons play _Lady Macbeth._ (Every subject of biographical treatment, regardless of the period in which he or she lived, must have been taken at an early age to see Mrs. Siddons play _Lady Macbeth._ It is part of the code of biography.)

While sitting in the royal box, the young prince Wiglaf was asked what he thought of the performance. "Rotten!" he answered, and left the place abruptly, setting fire to the building as he went out.

Beobald, in citing the above incident in his "Chronicles of Comical Kings," calls it "an hendy hap ichabbe y-hent." And perhaps he's right.

Events proceeded in rapid succession after this for the young boy and we next find him facing marriage with a stiff upper-lip. Mystery has always surrounded the reasons which led to the choice of Princess Offa as Wiglaf's bride. In fact, it has never been quite certain whether or not she _was_ his bride. No one ever saw them together.[1] On several occasions he is reported to have asked his chamberlain who she was as she pa.s.sed by on the street.[2]

And yet the theory persists that she was his wife, owing doubtless to the fact that on the eve of the Battle of Otford he sent a message to her asking where "in G.o.d's name" his clean s.h.i.+rts had been put when they came back from the wash.

We come now to that period in Wiglaf's life which has been for so many centuries the cause of historical speculation, pro and con. The reference is, of course, to his dealings with Aethelbald, the amba.s.sador from Wess.e.x. Every schoolboy has taken part in the Wiglaf-Aethelbald controversy, but how many really know the inside facts of the case?

Examination of the correspondence between these two men shows Wiglaf to have been simply a great, big-hearted, overgrown boy in the whole affair. All claims of his having had an eye on the throne of Northumbria fade away under the delightful ingenuousness of his att.i.tude as expressed in these letters.

"I should of thought," he writes in 821 to his sister, "that anyone who was not c.o.c.k-ide drunk would have known better than to of tried to walk bear-foot through that eel-gra.s.s from the beech up to the bath-house without sneekers on, which is what that ninn Aethelbald tryed to do this AM. Well say laffter is no name for what you would of done if you had seen him. He looked like he was trying to walk a tide-rope. Hey I yelled at him all the way, do you think you are trying to walk a tide-rope?

Well say maybe that didn't make him sore."

Shortly after this letter was written, Wiglaf ascended the throne of Mercia, his father having disappeared Sat.u.r.day night without trace. A peasant[3] some years after said that he met the old king walking along a road near what is now the Scottish border, telling people that he was carrying a letter of greeting from the Mayor of Pontygn to the Mayor of Langoscgirh. Others say that he fell into the sea off the coast of Wales and became what is now known as King's Rocks. This last has never been authenticated.

At any rate, the son, on ascending the throne, became king. His first official act was to order dinner. "A nice, juicy steak," he is said to have called for,[4] "French fries, apple pie and a cup of coffee." It is probable that he really said "a coff of cuppee," however, as he was a wag of the first water and loved a joke as well as the next king.

We are now thrown into the maelstrom of contradictory historical data, some of which credits Wiglaf with being the greatest ruler Mercia ever had and some of which indicates that he was nothing but a royal b.u.m. It is not the purpose of this biography to try to settle the dispute. All we know for a fact is that he was a very human man who had faults like the rest of us and that shortly after becoming king he disappears from view.

His reign began at 4 P.M. one Wednesday (no, Thursday) afternoon and early the next morning Mercia was overrun by the West-Saxons. It is probable that King Wiglaf was sold for old silver to help pay expenses.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Lebody. _Witnesses of the Proximity of Wiglaf to Offa._ II. 265

[2] Rouguet. _Famous Questions in History._ III. 467

[3] _Peasant Tales and Fun-making._ II. 965.

[4] _Fifty Menus for August._--46.

XXIII

FACING THE BOYS' CAMP PROBLEM

The time seemed to have come to send Junior away to a boys' camp for the summer. He was getting too large to have about the house during the hot weather, and besides, getting him out of town seemed the only way to stop the radio concerts which had been making a continuous Chautauqua of our home-life ever since March.

I therefore got out a magazine and turned to that section of the advertising headed, "Summer Camps and Schools." There was a staggering array. Judging from the photographs the entire child population of the United States spent last summer in bathing suits or on horseback, and the pictures of them were so generic and familiar-looking that there was a great temptation to spend the evening scrutinizing them closely to see if you could pick out anyone you knew.

"Come on, read some out loud," said Doris in her practical way.

"'The Nooga-Wooga Camps,'" I began. "'The Garden Spot of the Mica.s.set Mountains. Tumbling water, calls of birds, light-hearted laughter, horseback rides along shady trails, lasting friends.h.i.+ps--all these are the heritage of happy days at Nooga-Wooga.' ... I don't think much of the costumes they give the boys to wear at Nooga-Wooga. They look rather sissy to me."

"That's because you are looking at the Camps for Girls, dear," said Doris. "Those are girls in Peter Thompsons and bloomers."

Hurriedly turning the page, I came to Camps for Boys.

"'Camp Wicomagisset, for Manly Boys. On famous Lake Pogoniblick in the heart of the far-famed Wappahammock district. Campfire stories, military drill, mountain climbing, swimming, wading, hiking, log-cabins, sailing--' they say nothing about horseshoeing. Don't you suppose they teach horseshoeing?"

"That probably comes in the second year for the older boys," said Doris.

"I wouldn't want Junior to plunge right into horseshoeing his first season. We mustn't rush him."

"'Camp Wad-ne-go-gallup on the sh.o.r.es of Cris...o...b..y, Maine. Facing that grandest of all oceans, the Atlantic. Located among the best farms where fresh and wholesome food can be had in abundance'--yes but _is_ it had, my dear? That's the question. Anyway, I don't like the looks of the boat in the picture. It's too full of boys."

"'Opossum Mountain Camp for Boys. Unusual sports and trips'--Ah, possibly condor stalking! That certainly would be unusual. But dangerous! I'd hate to think of Junior crawling about over ledges, stalking condors. And it says here that there is a diet.i.tian and a camp-mother, as well."

"Camp-mother?" Doris sniffed, "Probably she thinks she knows how to bring up children--"

Just then Junior came in to announce that he had signed up for a job for the summer, working on the farm of Eddie Westover's uncle. So in view of this added income, I felt that I could afford a little vacation myself, and am leaving on July 1st for Camp Mionogonett in the foothills of the Rokomokos, "a Paradise for Manly Men."

XXIV

ALL ABOUT THE SILESIAN PROBLEM

So much controversy has been aroused over Silesia it is high time that the average man in this country had a clearer idea of the problem. At present many people think that if you add oxygen to Silesia you will get oxide of silesia and can take spots out of clothes with it.

A definite statement of the whole Upper Silesian question is therefore due, and, for those who care to listen, about to be made.

The trouble started at the treaty of n.o.blitz in 1773. You have no idea what a perfectly rotten treaty that was. It was negotiated by the Grand Duke Ludwig of Saxe-Goatherd-Cobalt, whose sister married a Morrisey and settled in Fall River. The aim and ambition of Ludwig's life was to annex Spielzeugingen to Nichtrauschen, thereby augmenting his duchy and at the same time having a dandy time. And he was the kind of man who would stop at nothing when it came time to augment his duchy.

In this treaty, then, Ludwig insisted on a clause making Silesia a monogamy. This was very clever, as it brought the Centrist party in Silesia into direct conflict with the party who wanted to restore the young Prince Niblick to the throne; thereby causing no end of trouble and nasty feeling.

With these obstacles out of the way, the greed and ambition of Ludwig were practically unrestrained. In fact, some historians say that they knew no bounds. Summoning the Storkrath, or common council (composed of three cla.s.ses: the n.o.bles, the welterweights, and the licensed pilots) he said to them: (according to Taine)

"An army can travel ten days on its stomach, but who the h.e.l.l wants to be an army?"

This saying has become a by-word in history and is now remembered long after the Grand Duke Ludwig has been forgotten. But at the time, Ludwig received nothing short of an ovation for it, and succeeded in winning over the obstructionists to his side. This made everyone in favor of his disposition of Silesia except the Silesians. And, as they could neither read nor write, they thought that they still belonged to Holland and cheered a d.y.k.e every time they saw one.

The question remained in abeyance therefore, for a century and a quarter. Then, in 1805, three years after the accession of Ralph Rittenhouse to the throne of England, the storm broke again. The occasion was the part.i.tion of Parchesie by the Great Powers, by which the towns of Zweiback, Ulmhausen and Ost Wilp were united to form what is known as the "industrial triangle" on the Upper Silesian border.

These towns are situated in the heart of the pumice district and could alone supply France and Germany with pumice for fifty years, provided it didn't rain. Bismarck once called Ost Wilp "the pumice heart of the world," and he was about right, too.

It will therefore be seen how important it was to France that this "industrial triangle" on the Silesian border should belong to Germany.

At the conference which designated the border line, Gambetta, representing France, insisted that the line should follow the course of the Iser River ("iser on one side or the other," was the way he is reported to have phrased it), which would divide the pumice deposits into three areas, the fourth being the dummy. This would never do.

Experts were called in to see if it might not be possible to so divide the district that France might get a quarter, Germany a quarter and England fifty cents. It was suggested that the line be drawn down through Globe-Wernicke to the mouth of the Iser. As Gambetta said, the line had to be drawn somewhere and it might as well be there. But Lord Hay-Paunceforte, representing England, refused to concede the point and for a time it looked like an open breach. But matters were smoothed over by the holding of a plebiscite in all the towns of Upper Silesia. The result of this plebiscite was taken and exactly reversed by the council, so that the entire Engadine Valley was given to Sweden, who didn't want it anyway.