“In the evening we dined with Their Majesties on board the royal yacht over part of which floating palace C. and I had been conducted in the morning. Whatever the yacht’s sailing value may be she certainly cuts out the Kaiser’s _Hohenzollern_ in her internal splendour. When it comes to washstand tops of onyx and alabaster; and carpets of unfathomable depth of pile, and hangings in bedrooms of every shade of delicate colour, ‘toning,’ as the milliners say, with each particular set of furniture; and the most elaborately beautiful arrangements for lighting and warming electrically, and so on, and so on--one rather wonders why so much luxury was piled on luxury in this new yacht which the King, I am told, does not like on the high seas. Her lines are not as graceful as those of the old _Victoria and Albert_, and it is said she ‘rolls awful’!
“Well, to dinner! As we drove up to the yacht, which is moored right opposite the Port Admiral’s house and is the habitation of the King and Queen during their sojourn here, we saw her outlined against the pitch black sky by coloured electric lamps, which was pretty. Equerries, secretaries and Miss Knollys received us at the top of the gangway, and the ladies of the Queen soon filed into the ante-chamber (or cabin) where they and we, the guests, awaited Their Majesties. Full uniform was ordered for the men, and we ladies were requested to come in ‘high, thin dresses,’ as, it appears, is the etiquette on board royal yachts. There were the Admiral and Lady Charles, the Duke and Duchess of Buccleugh, Lord and Lady St. Germans, Lord Walter Kerr, Lord Mount Edgcumbe (‘the Hearl,’ as he is known to Plymothians), the Bishop of Exeter, Lady Lytton and others up to about thirty-six in number. The King, still dressed as an admiral, and the Queen in a charming black and white semi-transparent frock, with many ropes of pearls, soon came in, and, the curtseying over, we filed into the great dining saloon brilliantly lighted and splendid. The King led in his daughter, Princess Victoria. Buccleugh led in the Queen, and so on. How unlike the painfully solemn, whispered dinners of dear old Queen Victoria was this banquet. We shouted of necessity, as the band played all the time. The King and Queen seem to me to have acquired an _expanded_ dignity since they have come to the Throne. Will and I could not do justice to the dinner as it was Friday, but that didn’t matter. After the sweets the head servant (what Goliaths in red liveries they all are!) handed the King a _snuff box_! I was so fascinated by the sight of the descendant of the Georges engaged in the very Georgian act of taking a pinch that my eyes were riveted on him. I love history and am always trying to revive the past in imagination. It is true that ‘a cat may look at a King,’ but then I am _not_ a cat (at least I hope not). I only trust His Majesty didn’t mind, but he certainly saw me!