Roosevelt illustrates the differences between France and America at the turn of the century

In 1910 Theodore Roosevelt was engaged in a speaking tour of Europe, following his Smithsonian-led, Carnegie-sponsored African safari. Roosevelt was in Berlin, speaking with Kaiser Wilhelm, when he received a telegram. President Taft asked Roosevelt to represent the United States at the funeral of the British King Edward VII. What follows is an excerpt of Roosevelt's interactions with the French minister of foreign affairs, Stephen Pichon. Below, italcized text represent Roosevelt as quoted by Edmund Morris in Colonel Roosevelt; standard text represents Morris' writing.

[At a wake prior to the funeral, Pichon] got me aside and asked me in French, as he did not speak English, what colored coat my coachman had worn that evening. I told him that I did not know; whereupon he answered that his coachman had a black coat. I nodded and said Yes, I thought mine had a black coat also. He responded with much violence that this was an outrage, a slight upon the two great republics, as all the Royalties' coachmen wore red coats, and that he would at once make a protest on behalf of us both. I told him to hold on, that he must not make any protests on my behalf, that I did not care what kind of coat my coachman wore, and would be perfectly willing to see him wear a green coat with yellow splashes--"un plaetot vert avec des tauches jaunes" being my effort at idiomatic rendering of the idea, for I speak French, I am sorry to say, as if it were a non-Aryan tongue, without tense or gender, although with agglutinative vividness and fluency. My incautious incursion into levity in a foreign tongue met appropriate punishment, for I spent the next fifteen minutes in eradicating from Pichon's mind the belief that I was demanding these colors as my livery.

[The next day, at the funeral procession]

Friday, 20 May 1910, was a day so beautiful that all London seemed to want to be outdoors and see the procession scheduled to depart from Buckingham Palace at 9:30 A.M. Hours before the first drumbeat sounded, a mass of humanity blocked every approach to the parade route along the Mall to Westmisnter Hall. There was little noise and less movement as the crowd waited under a cloudless sky. Green Park was at its greenest. The air, washed clean by rain overnight, was sweet and warm, alive with birdsong.

Rosevelt arrived early in the palace yard, where horses and coaches were lining up, and was again accosted by a furious Stephen Pichon. The Duke of Norfolk had decreed that because of their lack of royal uniforms, they could not ride with the mounted mourners. Instead, they were to share a dress landau. Pichon noted, in a voice shaking with rage, that it would be eighth in a sequence of twelve, behind a carriage packed with Chinese imperials of uncertain gender. Not only that, it was a closed conveyance, whereas some royal ladies up front had been assigned "glass coaches."

The landau struck Roosevelt as luxurious all the same, and he admitted afterward, in describing the funeral, that he had never heard of glass coaches "excepting in connection with Cinderella." But Pichon could not be calmed down:

He continued that "ces Chinois" were put ahead of us. To this I answered that any people dressed as gorgeously as "ces Chinois" ought to go ahead of us; but he responded that it was not a laughing matter. Then he hadded that "ce Perse" had been put in with us, pointing out a Persian prince of the blood royal, a deprecatory, inoffensive-looking Levantine of Parisian education, who was obviously ill at ease, but whom Pichon insisted upon regarding as someone who wanted to be offensive. At this moment our coach drove up, and Pichon bounced into it. I suppose he had gotten in to take the right-hand rear seet, to which I was totally indifferent.... But Pichon was scrupulous in giving me precedence, although I had no idea whether I was entitled to it or not. He sat on the left rear seat himself, stretched his arm across the right seat and motioned me to get it so that "ce Perse" should not himself take the place of honor! Accordingly I got in, and the unfortunate Persian followed, looking about as unaggressive as a rabbit in a cage with two boa constrictors.

[...]

Roosevelt sat well back, with the strange reticence that sometimes overcame him on ceremonial occasions, avoiding eye contact with the crowd. There was no indicating that he was being subjected to a further Gallic tirade:

Pichon's feelings overcame him.... He pointed out the fact that we were following "toutes ces petites royautes," even "le roi du Portugal." I then spoke to him seriously, and said that in my judgment France and the United States were so important that it was of no earthly consequence whether their representatives went before or behind the representatives of utterly insignificant little nations like Portgal, and that I thought it was a great mistake to make a fuss about it, because it showed a lack of self-confidence. He shook his head, and said that in Europe they regarded these things as of real importance, and that if I would not join him in a protest he would make one on his own account. I answered that I very earnestly hoped that he would not make a row at a funeral (my French failed me at this point, and I tried alternately "funeraille" and "pompe funebre"), that it would be sure to have a bad effect.

A Franco-American accord (Persia abstaining) was reached before the landau made its first stop at Parliament Square. Pichon agreed to wait and see where he was seated later in the day, at lunch in Windsor Castle, before making his placement a casus belli that might prevent France's attendance at the future coronation of George V.

-Colonel Roosevelt, p. 65-66