The Quarters of Royalty and Government.
WHITEHALL, PAST AND PRESENT.--DOWNING STREET.--PARIS AND
LONDON.--ENGLISH AND FRENCH STATESMEN.--THE DIFFERENCE.--THE
ADMIRERS OF FRANCE.--ENGLISH RESPECT FOR THE ARISTOCRACY.
Four large streets lead from Trafalgar Square to the East, West, North,
and South. This square (village and garden-ground in the days of Edward
the Confessor) is, in our own days, one of the central points of London
life. Trafalgar Square, which drank the blood and witnessed the agonies
of Hugh Peters, Scrope, Jones, Harrison, and many others, who were
killed in expiation of the execution of Charles I.--where many hundreds
were decapitated, stigmatised, and mutilated, to satisfy the vengeance
of the Stuarts and their adherents--forms, in 1852, the peaceable,
ever-moving, central point, where the roads from the West meet the roads
from the East. Down there, where the equestrian statue of Charles I.
stands, the street leads to Whitehall, Westminster, the Houses of
Parliament, and the Thames. We will walk in that direction; it leads us
to places that are among the grandest and most interesting of which
London, or any other city on the face of the earth, can boast.
We are here--as Leigh Hunt says--within the atmosphere of English
royalty. Each step in this part of the town awakens the strangest
recollections, and reminds one of Wolsey, the gifted, the proud, the
terrible--of Henry, the coarse and cruel--Elizabeth, the cunning and
quarrelsome--James, the pedant and the clown--Charles, the misguided
and melancholic--Cromwell, the harsh and unbending--the contemptible,
dissolute second Charles--and the doubly contemptible, dissolute Stuart,
who succeeded him, and whose Government robbed Whitehall of its glories.
The very air is full of reminiscences of the Tudors and the Stuarts--of
their splendour and feasting--of their intrigues and vulgarities--of
their despotic rule and bloody punishments; and as we walk through the
streets, we cannot divest ourselves of the thought, what a strange and
quaint sight it would be, if those princes, and their ministers and
courtiers, could, for an hour, return to the sunny light of day! What
gravity and merriness, madness and thoughtlessness, guilt, misery, and
ingratitude! Visible and invisible, singly and grouped, here are the
monuments of the history of English royalty, from the downfall of Wolsey
to the downfall of James II. That epoch is grand, important, and
instructive, and a fit study for the kings and nations of our own days.
Whitehall, such as it is in 1852, bears little resemblance to the
Whitehall of 1652.
Wolsey lived in York Palace. He was most vain, fond of splendour,
conceit, and tyranny; but for all that, he was the most remarkable man
among the prelates of England. His palace was the richest booty which
his downfall procured for his master, who at once settled down in it.
Here he married Anna Boleyn; here he died; here did all the great men
meet, who flattered that crowned tiger until he consigned them to the
hands of the executioner, and impaled their heads on London Bridge.
Among them were Cavendish, Thomas Cromwell, and Wolsey. Erasmus, also,
and Hans Holbein, whose low degree alone saved them from sharing the
fate of the king's friends and wives. Among these were the Dukes of
Norfolk and Suffolk, the Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt the poet,
Catharine of Arragon, Anna Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Catharine Howard, Anne
of Cleves, and Catharine Parr, the least unfortunate among these
unfortunate women; and the children that were to wear crowns--Edward,
Mary, and Elizabeth--these were they that passed in and out of York
Palace in the days of Henry VIII.
The spirits of the murdered have probably cast a gloomy shadow on those
golden walls, for after Henry's decease his successors avoided
Whitehall, and Elizabeth was the first to establish her court there. A
change comes over the figures of the past--Cecil and Burleigh, the two
Bacons, Drake and Raleigh, Spenser and Shakespere, Sydney and Lee,
Leicester and Essex, stand before us. And after them James I. and his
darling "Steenie," and Charles I., Cromwell, and--the executioner.
Charles I. was very active in the improvement of Whitehall. Inigo Jones,
the great architect of those days, was employed on it, and Rubens
painted the ornaments of the ceiling, for which he received £3000 and
the honour of knighthood. It is mere calumny, to say that Cromwell, in
puritanic brutality, destroyed the works of art which he found in
Whitehall. On the contrary, he made great exertions to save them; we owe
it to him that the famous cartoons by Raphael may this day be seen at
Hampton Court. But, of course, the Great Protector put a stop to the
dissolute and merry life which formerly ruled in the palace. There was
no end of praying and preaching in Whitehall; the Barebones Parliament
assembled here after the dissolution of the Long Parliament; it was here
that Cromwell refused the crown; and here he died, while a dreadful
thunderstorm convulsed the heavens. His friends said that nature
sympathised with the great man, and his enemies would have it that it
was the devil going off to hell with "Old Noll," his brother.
Richard Cromwell, too, passed his short season of power at Whitehall. He
was followed by Monk, who kept the place for Charles II. But the merry
olden times were gone for ever; they returned not with the dissolute,
gloomy-faced prince, although more money was wasted on the Duchess of
Portsmouth--not to mention His Majesty's other ladies--than ever had
been spent on an English queen.
Evelyn, in his memoirs, thus describes one of the closing scenes of
royal dissipation:--"I can never forget the inexpressible luxury and
prophanenesse, gaming and all dissoluteness, and, as it were, total
forgetfullnesse of God (it being Sunday evening), which this day
se'nnight I was witnesse of, the king sitting and toying with his
concubines--_Portsmouth_, _Cleveland_, and _Mazarine_, etc.; a _French_
boy singing love songs, in that glorious gallery, whilst about twenty of
the greate courtiers, and other dissolute persons, were at _Basset_
round a large table; a bank of at least 2000 in gold before them, upon
which two gentlemen, who were with me, made reflectious with
astonishment. Six days after was all in the dust!"--_Evelyn's Memoirs_,
vol. i. p. 549.
James II. lived here for a few years, until the mass cost him a crown.
His wife fled from the palace on the 6th December, 1688. The king
followed eleven days later; and on the 14th February, 1689, the Prince
of Orange entered the old palace. It was burnt in 1698.
Let not my readers quarrel with this review of the past. Certain
localities are nothing without an occasional glance at the chronicles of
olden times; but with those aids to imagination, the very stones become
gifted with speech, and proclaim the joys and sorrows, the pageants and
horrors which they witnessed in their days.
The remains of Whitehall, like the majority of the buildings which
surround them, have been converted into Government offices. Scotland
Yard is the central office of the London police, and on the other side
of the road is the Admiralty. A little lower down there are two of those
splendid Horse Guards, mounted on black chargers, doing duty at the
offices of the Ministry of War, and guarding the spot where Elizabeth,
in unchaste virginity, and at an advanced and wrinkled age, exacted the
homage of her courtiers as Queen of Beauty. We turn the corner of the
old Banquet-house and enter a blind alley--it is narrow and deserted.
That is Downing Street the famous, where the Colonial and Foreign
Offices guide the destinies of the greater part of the globe. It is a
curious street, small and dingy, beyond the smallness and dinginess of
similar streets at Leipzig, Frankfort, or Prague, and desolate, vacant,
deserted--a fit laboratory for political alchemists. At its further end
is a small mysterious door, the entrance to the Foreign Office, in the
keeping of a red-coated grenadier, with, I doubt not, a couple of
newspaper reporters hidden in his cartridge-box, and intent upon
ascertaining the names of those that enter the office. But the notes,
which the Foreign Office addresses to the Foreign Courts, do not find
their way into the English newspapers--so that even the _Times_ has to
copy them from the German and French journals--and this is owing to the
circumstance, that those who enter or leave the office keep the notes in
their pockets; and that the reporters, though clever, cannot see through
the morocco of portfolios and the wadding of coats. They manage these
matters better in France: a French journalist takes up his quarters in
the reticule of Somebody's lady, or if that cannot be conveniently done,
he places himself under the protection of the said lady's maid. Such
things are of rare occurrence in England, owing to the immoral prejudice
of the islanders respecting the code of morals in matters of politics
and matrimony.
What an amount of idolization have not the German authors of the last
ten years wasted on Paris! How great their enthusiasm even now, in
praise of the men and women of that capital. But if you ask, what the
excellent qualities of Paris really and truly are, they will discourse,
at great length, on the charms of the Boulevards, the gracefulness of
the women, the deep blue of the Paris sky, and the merry, careless,
exciting disposition of the Parisians generally. "Now all this is well
and good," say I to my Paris friend; "and if I understand you, you set
down the Parisians as the A 1. of humanity, because their women are
clever, and because those clever women have very small feet; because the
Boulevards are capital places to lounge in; because Mabile is merrier
than Vauxhall. But as for the blue colour of the sky, allow me, dearest
friend, to remind you of Naples, Spain, Paris, and China, where, as they
say, the skies are much bluer. All those circumstances make a town very
agreeable; but I have yet to learn that they are a fair gauge of the
moral worth of its inhabitants." My Paris friend is silent; but after a
good long pause, he comes forward with some very general phrases,
saying, that there is an unutterable something which embellishes life in
Paris, and that there you live in a world of ideas. There is a good deal
of truth in this general admission. Life in Paris is charming, more
charming than in London and other large towns; but its charms emanate,
in many instances, from the darker sides of the Parisian character; and
it is absurd to say that the people are entitled to our respect for no
other reason, but because we lead a life of pleasure and gaiety in their
city.
Why does London produce so much less agreeable an impression than Paris,
not only on the passing stranger, but also on those who reside here a
considerable length of time? We leave that question for another day. We
are now in Downing Street; and, however gloomy the appearance of that
street may be--perfidious and egotistical as the Downing Street policy
may appear to the Continentals--which, by the bye, proves its popularity
here--we can, at least, say in its favor, that it has, within the last
twenty years, been less open to corruption by means of money and female
politicians, than was the case on the other side of the Channel, in the
country of "la gloire," of blue skies and "unutterable somethings." Of
course the _réunions_ are less interesting; there is not so wide a
margin for intrigue; the ambition of _roturiers_ is kept within the
limits of decency; the fair sex, with all its followers and appendages,
is confined to a narrow sphere of action; and these are the reasons
why--- just as in other matters--English politics have a more sober,
business-like, respectable, and tedious appearance than politics in
France. It is really miraculous that, in a country which is governed by
a Queen, and one who inherited the crown at an early age, there has
never been made mention of court and other intrigues, which influenced
the conduct of public affairs. Say it is merely by accident; say that
such accident is partly owing to the coldness of the blood which runs in
the veins of English women; or, if you please, think of the olden times,
when the women of Whitehall made history in as shameless a manner as any
women in the Tuilleries or Versailles. No matter! It has been reserved
for the 19th century to create a Woman's Court, which excludes all
love-intrigues. Such a thing is impossible in France; and if possible,
the French would not believe it, nor would they put up with it. A
government without female interference, quarrels, and corruption!
Monstrous, at least to the French, who, rather than live under such a
government, would choose to live in an austere Catonian Republic.
The respect for public decency, which in England is sometimes carried to
a ridiculous length, is, nevertheless, of great use for the morality of
the Government. Corruption, indeed, is an important item in English
electioneering tactics; money and drink are lavished on the voters; but
this corruption, however shameless, is confined to the lower classes.
Honourable members, who are very pathetic on the neglected education of
the people, think very little of treating all the inhabitants of their
borough to a preposterous quantity of drink, in order to ensure their
re-election. But the corrupters themselves are not so corruptible as the
men who for the last ten years--for it is not necessary to go back to an
earlier date--held the reins of the government in France. The poor are
now and then bought in England; more frequently they are intimidated;
but in France--the very French confess it--all are venal, from the
highest to the lowest. I am not an admirer of corruption in England; but
I like it better than I do corruption in France. If rottenness there
must be, it had better be partial and one-sided, than a general
corruption of the body politic.
Certainly the small English boroughs, with their electioneering tactics
and venality, are disgusting; but still there is some difference between
the treating and bribing the peasants and small shop-keepers and that
nauseous corruption of all classes of society which is so prevalent in
France, more particularly since the reign of Louis Philippe. In England,
the polling-days have from times immemorial been days of feasting,
drinking, and fighting for the lower classes. The want of political
cultivation, ignorance of the important questions at issue, the
indifference, and, in many instances, the brutality of the lower
classes, make it a matter of small moment to them, whether the barrel of
beer from which they drink at an election is the gift of charity, or the
devil's retaining fee. No hustings without speechifying--no
polling-place without swilling. The witnesses who have been examined by
the Election Committees have generally confessed, that the candidate,
according "to the old established custom," behaved like a
"gentleman"--that he treated the electors to ale and gin, shook hands
with them, gave them money, and hired brass bands for their special
gratification. A melancholy proof this of the neglected condition in
politics and morals of the lower classes in England.
But far more saddening is the spectacle of corruption, which France has
exhibited these many years past. It is not the rude and uncultivated
mass which sins from ignorance of its own abandoned condition;
corruption there extends its sway over the educated, the learned, the
wealthy, the refined. It is the despotism of a cynism of venality, such
as the world never saw since the days of the Roman emperors. The French
aristocracy, the army, the _bourgeoisie_, the church, and the press, are
all in the market. Eloquent morality solicits corruption with the most
impudent eagerness, and drives the hardest bargains. In France
corruption has become the fashion; it is the law, the essence of
politics, and it has almost become a necessity for the attainment of
even honest purposes. The poison pervades all the organs of the body
politic; and ever since the commencement of the first revolution, the
French nation has been convulsed, and caused convulsions among the
neighbouring nations. But never at any one time--no, not among all her
changes--was there a single period, however short, in which personal
liberty obtained that respect which it commands in England. And although
this fact is on record, and though it cannot be contradicted, yet there
are German admirers of France (the majority of them know nothing of
France except the boulevards of Paris), who believe that the French are
the chosen people of liberty, the prophets of the nations, and martyrs
for their political salvation. True, the history of France is
instructive to those who take a warning from it. True the French are a
chosen people; indeed, they are chosen to sound the trumpet of war into
the ears of the nations. But there never was any fortress save one,
which was conquered by the sounding of trumpets--Jericho, in the land
and the age of miracles. Singleness of purpose, and honest perseverance,
these alone can in our days ensure the victory of great principles. But
the sons of France have always been strangers to those two qualities;
and the glory which these can give, they have never coveted. They care
not for substantial liberty, for it not only gives rights, but it
imposes duties also. Freedom is a treasure which requires the most
anxious care; he who neglects it, loses it. France obtained it three
times, and thrice she lost it; and now the French say again--"_Ça ne
durera pas._" But, it is to be hoped, that the phrase will be flung back
again, whenever they shall take it into their heads once more to sound
the trumpet of alarm to the countries of Europe.
England, with all her political and social blemishes, has at least come
to this, that any danger to the personal liberty of her citizens may
almost be considered as an absurd impossibility, while the French are,
as yet, so ignorant of the rudiments of national liberty, that they
still wish for a _strong_ government; that is to say, one which
centralises all the resources, and absorbs all the powers of the State.
The various parties are all agreed on this point; they differ only with
respect to the person who is to preside over this "strong government."
The Legitamists vow that that person must be a Bourbon; the Bonapartists
claim the right, as they have established the fact, in favour of a scion
of the great Emperor; and the Republicans are eloquent in praise of an
elective government; but every one of these partisans reserves to
himself a large prospective share of the loaves and fishes, which, as
all the world knows, are entirely at the disposal of a "strong
government." The ambition of free self-government, which characterises
the English, is altogether unknown to the French. Hence they can die for
liberty, but they cannot live for it.
In drawing a parallel between the darker sides of English and French
politics, I ought not to forget mentioning one important point. In
despite of her free press, the partial degradation of her masses, in
despite of her civic self-government, England is the most aristocratic
country in the world. Whatever modern reformers may strive for or
assert, they cannot deny, nor can they root out, the traditional
veneration of the middle and lower classes for everything and everybody
connected with the nobility. An Englishman, even though he were a
chartist, looks at a scion of the nobility with a very different eye,
than at his neighbour, by the grace of God, citizen of London, or of
Sheffield, or Manchester. A "lord's" presence makes him respectful, even
though the said "lord" had taken too much port wine, A "lady's"
toilette has a mysterious charm for English women, however bad that
"lady's" taste may be. On the continent, too, the aristocracy are looked
up to and imitated and quoted, but not by any means to such an extent as
in England. The continental nations want that ingenuousness of
veneration, that amiable candour which frankly confesses that it "loves
a lord." Add to this that the adoration of a noble pedigree does not
here, as on the continent, move in the sphere of trifles only, which
after all, is, in a manner, excusable. For the wealthy aristocrat is a
privileged person from his cradle; he is a landed proprietor, and he is
not distracted with struggles for sustenance, favour, place, and
fortune. Of course he has leisure to cultivate his taste and form his
manners, and to imitate him in those respects would be a merit, even in
a root and branch democrat. But the Englishman does not stop there. His
desire to imitate the nobility, his craving for titles, make him what is
commonly called "a snob." He has greater respect for a cabinet of
noblemen than for a cabinet of commoners; he cannot imagine a charitable
institution unless it be under the presidency of the Duke of Dumman and
the Earl of Tanitary; he judges the character of a Marquis very
differently from that of any other man. It requires a very long
residence in England and an intimate acquaintance with English society
generally to understand and appreciate this weakness in all its
bearings. But this weakness is the source of very remarkable
monstrosities in the political and social life of England. Their most
salient points and corners, indeed, have given way to the progressive
tendencies of the age. That progress, though slow, is manifest, and its
very slowness is a guarantee against the danger of a relapse.