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KING: How, madame-Russians? PRINCESS: Ay, in truth, my lord; trim gallants, full of courtship and of state. —Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost
They came bearing royal gifts (Mongolian horses and a baby bear) to court British favor, but they were in a hostile land. Russia's Premier Nikolai Bulganin and Communist Party First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev knew it the moment their sleek cruiser Ordzhonikidze slid into Portsmouth harbor last week.
A 19-gun salute boomed from the British aircraft carrier Bulwark, and First Lord of the Admiralty Viscount Cilcennin stepped forward briskly to shake hands. "This is an historic moment," said Bulganin, shuffling past the guard of honor. On the train to London there was Château Lafite-Rothschild '50 for lunch, but when Khrushchev asked whether he could take the bottle along with him, the waiter said: "I'm sorry, I can't do that, sir. Regulations." At London's cavernous Victoria terminal Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden, towering head and shoulders above B. & K., greeted them with an official smile and a correct speech. Bulganin pulled a speech script out of his pocket, keynoted: "We have to live together on one planet." Outside Victoria, thousands of Londoners coolly watched them drive away.
Gumshoes in the Bin. At famed Claridge's, a place for princes, maharajas and others who do not count their money, a Red flag hung from the marquee masthead. Detectives had already checked the coal bins for concealed bombs, replaced foreign-born waiters and busboys with a specially screened British floor staff. A squad of 80 uniformed constables jostled the crowd outside, while inside the hotel scores of bowler-hatted Scotland Yard gumshoes threaded their way among tables crowded by Mayfair society. As B. & K. hustled through the side entrance and up the stairway to the 50-room Russian reservation, there was dead silence. Said a social voice: "Claridge's will never be the same again."
Afterwards, sightseeing around London in a four-car cavalcade escorted by 21 motorcycle cops, Nikita Khrushchev recovered his old form. When the dean of war-damaged St. Paul's Cathedral pointed to the place "where Hitler dropped his bomb," Khrushchev cracked: "Looking ahead, Dean, you won't need a repair job if an H-bomb falls." At the Tower of London, told that Tower ravens are protected because of the legend that if they disappear the British Empire will perish, Khrushchev observed mischievously: "I don't see any ravens."
Next day, as another undemonstrative crowd watched B. & K. enter Buckingham Palace "to sign the book" (the royal family was away at Windsor), police jumped on a small boy with a toy air rifle, hustled him away. At the Soviet embassy luncheon, over vodka and caviar, Khrushchev made an appeal to British reasonableness: "Both in the Conservative Party and in the ranks of the Opposition there are those who are in favor and those who are against our visit. We regard such a situation as natural, and it does not embarrass us." Khrushchev softly pleaded for peaceful coexistence: "As people say, you have to live with the neighbor that God has sent you and not the neighbors you would like to have."