that they and their belongings are so uncommonly easy to draw. He is Sir
Grosvenor, his wife is Lady le Draughte, his sons, elder and younger,
are Mr. le Draughte, and his daughters Miss le Draughte. The wayfaring
men, though fools, cannot err where the rule is so simple, and
accordingly the baronets enjoy a deserved popularity with those
novelists who look up to the titled classes of society as men look at
the stars, but are a little puzzled about their proper designations.
Miss Braddon alone has drawn more baronets, virtuous and vicious,
handsome and hideous, than would have colonized Ulster ten times over
and left a residue for Nova Scotia. Sir Pitt Crawley and Sir Barnes
Newcome will live as long as English novels are read, and I hope that
dull forgetfulness will never seize as its prey Sir Alfred Mogyns Smyth
de Mogyns, who was born Alfred Smith Muggins, but traced a descent from
Hogyn Mogyn of the Hundred Beeves, and took for his motto "Ung Roy ung
Mogyns." His pedigree is drawn in the seventh chapter of the _Book of
Snobs_, and is imitated with great fidelity on more than one page of
Burke's Peerage.
An eye closely intent upon the lesser beauties of the natural world will
find a very engaging specimen of the genus Baronet in Sir Barnet
Skettles, who was so kind to Paul Dombey and so angry with poor Mr.
Baps. Sir Leicester Dedlock is on a larger scale--in fact, almost too
"fine and large" for life. But I recall a fleeting vision of perfect
loveliness among Miss Monflathers's pupils--"a baronet's daughter who by
some extraordinary reversal of the laws of Nature was not only plain in
feature but dull in intellect."
So far we have spoken only of hereditary honours; but our review would
be singularly incomplete if it excluded those which are purely personal.
Of these, of course, incomparably the highest is the Order of the
Garter, and its most characteristic glory is that, in Lord Melbourne's
phrase, "there is no d----d nonsense of merit about it." The Emperor of
Lilliput rewarded his courtiers with three fine silken threads, one of
which was blue, one green, and one red. The Emperor held a stick
horizontally, and the candidates crept under it, backwards and forwards,
several times. Whoever showed the most agility in creeping was rewarded
with the blue thread.
Let us hope that the methods of chivalry have undergone some
modification since the days of Queen Anne, and that the Blue Ribbon of
the Garter, which ranks with the Golden Fleece and makes its wearer a
comrade of all the crowned heads of Europe, is attained by arts more
dignified than those which awoke the picturesque satire of Dean Swift.
But I do not feel sure about it.
Great is the charm of a personal decoration. Byron wrote:
"Ye stars, that are the poetry of heaven."
"A stupid line," says Mr. St. Barbe in _Endymion_; "he should have
written, 'Ye stars, that are the poetry of dress.'" North of the Tweed
the green thread of Swift's imagination--"the most ancient and most
noble Order of the Thistle"--is scarcely less coveted than the supreme
honour of the Garter; but wild horses should not drag from me the name
of the Scottish peer of whom his political leader said, "If I gave ----
the Thistle, he would eat it." The Bath tries to make up by the lurid
splendour of its ribbon and the brilliancy of its star for its
comparatively humble and homely associations. It is the peculiar prize
of Generals and Home Secretaries, and is displayed with manly openness
on the bosom of the statesman once characteristically described by Lord
Beaconsfield as "Mr. Secretary Cross, whom I can never remember to call
Sir Richard."
But, after all said and done, the institution of knighthood is older
than any particular order of knights; and lovers of the old world must
observe with regret the discredit into which it has fallen since it
became the guerdon of the successful grocer. When Lord Beaconsfield left
office in 1880 he conferred a knighthood--the first of a long series
similarly bestowed--on an eminent journalist. The friends of the new
knight were inclined to banter him, and proposed his health at a dinner
in facetious terms. Lord Beaconsfield, who was of the company, looked
preternaturally grave, and, filling his glass, gazed steadily at the
flattered editor and said in his deepest tone: "Yes, Sir A.B., I drink
to your good health, and I congratulate you on having attained a rank
which was deemed sufficient honour for Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter
Raleigh, Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Christopher Wren."
But a truce to this idle jesting on exalted themes--too palpably the
utterance of social envy and mortified ambition. "They _are_ our
superiors, and that's the fact," as Thackeray exclaims in his chapter on
the Whigs. "I am not a Whig myself; but, oh, how I should like to be
one!" In a similar spirit of compunctious self-abasement, the present
writer may exclaim, "I have not myself been included in the list of
Birthday Honours,--but, oh, how I should like to be there!"
FOOTNOTES:
[23] 1897.
[24] Since this passage was written, a return has been made to the
earlier practice, and an Irish peerage has been created--the first since
1868.
XXI.
THE QUEEN'S ACCESSION.
The writer of these chapters would not willingly fall behind his
countrymen in the loyal sentiments and picturesque memories proper to
the "high mid-summer pomps" which begin to-morrow.[25] But there is an
almost insuperable difficulty in finding anything to write which shall
be at once new and true; and this chapter must therefore consist mainly
of extracts. As the sun of August brings out wasps, so the genial
influence of the Jubilee has produced an incredible abundance of fibs,
myths, and fables. They have for their subject the early days of our
Gracious Sovereign, and round that central theme they play with every
variety of picturesque inventiveness. Nor has invention alone been at
work. Research has been equally busy. Miss Wynn's description, admirable
in its simplicity, of the manner in which the girl queen received the
news of her accession was given to the world by Abraham Hayward in
_Diaries of a Lady of Quality_ a generation ago. Within the last month
it must have done duty a hundred times.
Scarcely less familiar is the more elaborate but still impressive
passage from _Sybil_, in which Lord Beaconsfield described the same
event. And yet, as far as my observation has gone, the citations from
this fine description have always stopped short just at the opening of
the most appropriate passage; my readers, at any rate, shall see it and
judge it for themselves. If there is one feature in the national life of
the last sixty years on which Englishmen may justly pride themselves it
is the amelioration of the social condition of the workers. Putting
aside all ecclesiastical revivals, all purely political changes, and all
appeals, however successful, to the horrible arbitrament of the sword,
it is Social Reform which has made the Queen's reign memorable and
glorious. The first incident of that reign was described in _Sybil_ not
only with vivid observation of the present, but with something of
prophetic insight into the future.
"In a sweet and thrilling voice, and with a composed mien which
indicates rather the absorbing sense of august duty than an absence of
emotion, THE QUEEN announces her accession to the throne of her
ancestors, and her humble hope that Divine Providence will guard over
the fulfilment of her lofty trust. The prelates and captains and chief
men of her realm then advance to the throne, and, kneeling before her,
pledge their troth and take the sacred oaths of allegiance and
supremacy--allegiance to one who rules over the land that the great
Macedonian could not conquer, and over a continent of which Columbus
never dreamed: to the Queen of every sea, and of nations in every zone.
"It is not of these that I would speak, but of a nation nearer her
footstool, and which at this moment looks to her with anxiety, with
affection, perhaps with hope. Fair and serene, she has the blood and
beauty of the Saxon. Will it be her proud destiny at length to bear
relief to suffering millions, and with that soft hand which might
inspire troubadours and guerdon knights, break the last links in the
chain of Saxon thraldom?"
To-day, with pride and thankfulness, chastened though it be by our sense
of national shortcomings, we can answer _Yes_ to this wistful question
of genius and humanity. We have seen the regulation of dangerous labour,
the protection of women and children from excessive toil, the removal
of the tax on bread, the establishment of a system of national
education; and in Macaulay's phrase, a point which yesterday was
invisible is our goal to-day, and will be our starting-post to-morrow.
Her Majesty ascended the throne on the 20th of June 1837, and on the
29th the _Times_ published a delightfully characteristic article against
the Whig Ministers, "into whose hands the all but infant and helpless
Queen has been compelled by her unhappy condition to deliver up herself
and her indignant people." Bating one word, this might be an extract
from an article on the formation of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule
Government. Surely the consistency of the _Times_ in evil-speaking is
one of the most precious of our national possessions: On the 30th of
June the Royal Assent was given by commission to forty Bills--the first
Bills which became law in the Queen's reign; and, the clerks in the
House of Lords having been accustomed ever since the days of Queen Anne
to say "his Majesty" and "Le Roy le veult," there was hopeless bungling
over the feminine appellations, now after 130 years revived. However,
the Bills scrambled through somehow, and among them was the Act which
abolished the pillory--an auspicious commencement of a humane and
reforming reign. On the 8th of July came the rather belated burial of
William IV. at Windsor, and on the 11th the newly completed Buckingham
Palace was occupied for the first time, the Queen and the Duchess of
Kent moving thither from Kensington.
On the 17th of July, Parliament was prorogued by the Queen in person.
Her Majesty's first Speech from the Throne referred to friendly
relations with Foreign Powers, the diminution of capital punishment, and
"discreet improvements in ecclesiastical institutions." It was read in a
clear and musical voice, with a fascinating grace of accent and
elocution which never faded from the memory of those who heard it. As
long as her Majesty continued to open and prorogue Parliament in person
the same perfection of delivery was always noticed. An old M.P., by no
means inclined to be a courtier, told me that when her Majesty
approached the part of her speech relating to the estimates, her way of
uttering the words "Gentlemen of the House of Commons" was the most
winning address he had ever heard: it gave to an official demand the
character of a personal request. After the Prince Consort's death, the
Queen did not again appear at Westminster till the opening of the new
Parliament in 1866. On that occasion the speech was read by the Lord
Chancellor, and the same usage has prevailed whenever her Majesty has
opened Parliament since that time. But on several occasions of late
years she has read her reply to addresses presented by public bodies,
and I well recollect that at the opening of the Imperial Institute in
1893, though the _timbre_ of her voice was deeper than in early years,
the same admirable elocution made every syllable audible.
In June 1837 the most lively emotion in the masses of the people was the
joy of a great escape. I have said before that grave men, not the least
given to exaggeration, told me their profound conviction that, had
Ernest Duke of Cumberland succeeded to the throne on the death of
William IV., no earthly power could have averted a revolution. The plots
of which the Duke was the centre have been described with a due
commixture of history and romance in Mr. Allen Upward's fascinating
story, _God save the Queen_. Into the causes of his intense
unpopularity, this is not the occasion to enter; but let me just
describe a curious print of the year 1837 which lies before me as I
write. It is headed "The Contrast," and is divided into two panels. On
your left hand is a young girl, simply dressed in mourning, with a pearl
necklace and a gauzy shawl, and her hair coiled in plaits, something
after the fashion of a crown. Under this portrait is "_Victoria_." On
the other side of the picture is a hideous old man, with shaggy eyebrows
and scowling gaze, wrapped in a military cloak with fur collar and black
stock. Under this portrait is "_Ernest_" and running the whole length of
the picture is the legend:--
"Look here upon _this_ picture--and--on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two sov'reigns."
This print was given to me by a veteran Reformer, who told me that it
expressed in visible form the universal sentiment of England. That
sentiment was daily and hourly confirmed by all that was heard and seen
of the girl-queen. We read of her walking with a gallant suite upon the
terrace at Windsor; dressed in scarlet uniform and mounted on her roan
charger, to receive with uplifted hand the salute of her troops; or
seated on the throne of the Plantagenets at the opening of her
Parliament, and invoking the Divine benediction on the labours which
should conduce to "the welfare and contentment of My people." We see her
yielding her bright intelligence to the constitutional guidance, wise
though worldly, of her first Prime Minister, the sagacious Melbourne.
And then, when the exigencies of parliamentary government forced her to
exchange her Whig advisers for the Tories, we see her carrying out with
exact propriety the lessons taught by "the friend of her youth," and
extending to each premier in turn, whether personally agreeable to her
or not, the same absolute confidence and loyalty.
As regards domestic life, we have been told by Mr. Gladstone that "even
among happy marriages her marriage was exceptional, so nearly did the
union of thought, heart, and action both fulfil the ideal and bring
duality near to the borders of identity."
And so twenty years went on, full of an ever-growing popularity, and a
purifying influence on the tone of society never fully realized till the
personal presence was withdrawn. And then came the blow which crushed
her life--"the sun going down at noon"--and total disappearance from all
festivity and parade and social splendour, but never from political
duty. In later years we have seen the gradual resumption of more public
offices; the occasional reappearances, so earnestly anticipated by her
subjects, and hedged with something of a divinity more than regal; the
incomparable majesty of personal bearing which has taught so many an
onlooker that dignity has nothing to do with height, or beauty or
splendour of raiment; and, mingled with that majesty and unspeakably
enhancing it, the human sympathy with suffering and sorrow, which has
made Queen Victoria, as none of her predecessors ever was or could be,
the Mother of her People.
And the response of the English people to that sympathy--the recognition
of that motherhood--is written, not only in the printed records of the
reign, but on the "fleshly tables" of English hearts. Let one homely
citation suffice as an illustration. It is taken from a letter of
condolence addressed to the Queen in 1892, on the death of Prince
"Eddie," Duke of Clarence:--
"_To our beloved Queen, Victoria_.
"Dear Lady,--We, the surviving widows and mothers of some of the men and
boys who lost their lives by the explosion which occurred in the Oaks
Colliery, near Barnsley, in December 1866, desire to tell your Majesty
how stunned we all feel by the cruel and unexpected blow which has taken
'Prince Eddie' from his dear Grandmother, his loving parents, his
beloved intended, and an admiring nation. The sad news affected us
deeply, we all believing that his youthful strength would carry him
through the danger. Dear Lady, we feel more than we can express. To tell
you that we sincerely condole with your Majesty and the Prince and
Princess of Wales in your and their sad bereavement and great distress
is not to tell you all we feel; but the widow of Albert the Good and the
parents of Prince Eddie will understand what we feel when we say that we
feel all that widows and mothers feel who have lost those who were dear
as life to them. Dear Lady, we remember with gratitude all that you did
for us Oaks widows in the time of our great trouble, and we cannot
forget you in yours. We have not forgotten that it was you, dear Queen,
who set the example, so promptly followed by all feeling people, of
forming a fund for the relief of our distress--a fund which kept us out
of the workhouse at the time and has kept us out ever since.... We wish
it were in our power, dear Lady, to dry up your tears and comfort you,
but that we cannot do. But what we can do, and will do, is to pray God,
in His mercy and goodness, to comfort and strengthen you in this your
time of great trouble.--Wishing your Majesty, the Prince and Princess of
Wales, and the Princess May all the strength, consolation, and comfort
which God alone can give, and which He never fails to give to all who
seek Him in truth and sincerity, we remain, beloved Queen, your loving
and grateful though sorrowing subjects,
"THE OAKS WIDOWS."
The historic associations, half gay, half sad, of the week on which we
are just entering tempt me to linger on this fascinating theme, and I
cannot illustrate it better than by quoting the concluding paragraphs
from a sermon, which now has something of the dignity of fulfilled
prophecy, and which was preached by Sydney Smith in St. Paul's Cathedral
on the Sunday after the Queen's accession.
The sermon is throughout a noble composition, grandly conceived and
admirably expressed. It begins with some grave reflections on the "folly
and nothingness of all things human" as exemplified by the death of a
king. It goes on to enforce on the young Queen the paramount duties of
educating her people, avoiding war, and cultivating personal religion.
It concludes with the following passage, which in its letter, or at
least in its spirit, might well find a place in some of to-morrow's
sermons:--"The Patriot Queen, whom I am painting, reverences the
National Church, frequents its worship, and regulates her faith by its
precepts; but she withstands the encroachments and keeps down the
ambition natural to Establishments, and, by rendering the privileges of
the Church compatible with the civil freedom of all sects, confers
strength upon and adds duration to that wise and magnificent
institution. And then this youthful Monarch, profoundly but wisely
religious, disdaining hypocrisy, and far above the childish follies of
false piety, casts herself upon God, and seeks from the Gospel of His
blessed Son a path for her steps and a comfort for her soul. Here is a
picture which warms every English heart, and would bring all this
congregation upon their bended knees to pray it may be realized. What
limits to the glory and happiness of the native land if the Creator
should in His mercy have placed in the heart of this royal woman the
rudiments of wisdom and mercy? And if, giving them time to expand, and
to bless our children's children with her goodness, He should grant to
her a long sojourning upon earth, and leave her to reign over us till
she is well stricken in years, what glory! what happiness! what joy!
what bounty of God! I of course can only expect to see the beginning of
such a splendid period; but when I do see it I shall exclaim with the
pious Simeon--'Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for
mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.'"
As respects the avoidance of war, the event has hardly accorded with the
aspiration. It is melancholy to recall the idealist enthusiasms which
preceded the Exhibition of 1851, and to contrast them with the realities
of the present hour. Then the arts of industry and the competitions of
peace were to supplant for ever the science of bloodshed. Nations were
to beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into
pruning-hooks, and men were not to learn war any more. And this was on
the eve of the Crimea--the most ruinous, the most cruel, and the least
justifiable of all campaigns. In one corner of the world or another, the
war-drum has throbbed almost without intermission from that day to this.
But when we turn to other aspirations the retrospect is more cheerful.
Slavery has been entirely abolished, and, with all due respect to Mr.
George Curzon, is not going to be re-established under the British flag.
The punishment of death, rendered infinitely more impressive, and
therefore more deterrent, by its withdrawal from the public gaze, is
reserved for offences which even Romilly would not have condoned. The
diminution of crime is an acknowledged fact. Better laws and improved
institutions--judicial, political, social, sanitary--we flatter
ourselves that we may claim. National Education dates from 1870, and its
operation during a quarter of a century has changed the face of the
industrial world. Queen Victoria in her later years reigns over an
educated people.
Of the most important theme of all--our national advance in religion,
morality, and the principles of humane living--I have spoken in previous
chapters, and this is not the occasion for anything but the briefest
recapitulation. "Where is boasting? It is excluded." There is much to be
thankful for, much to encourage: something to cause anxiety, and nothing
to justify bombast. No one believes more profoundly than I do in the
providential mission of the English race, and the very intensity of my
faith in that mission makes me even painfully anxious that we should
interpret it aright. Men who were undergraduates at Oxford in the
'seventies learned the interpretation, in words of unsurpassable beauty,
from John Ruskin:--
"There is a destiny now possible to us--the highest ever set before a
nation, to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race; a
race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in
temper, but still have the firmness to govern and the grace to obey. We
have been taught a religion of pure mercy, which we must either now
finally betray or learn to defend by fulfilling. And we are rich in an
inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years of
noble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase with
splendid avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour,
should be the most offending souls alive.
"Within the last few years we have had the laws of natural science
opened to us with a rapidity which has been blinded by its brightness,
and means of transit and communication given to us which have made but
one kingdom of the habitable globe. One kingdom--but who is to be its
King? Is there to be no King in it, think you, and every man to do that
which is right in his own eyes? Or only kings of terror, and the obscene
Empires of Mammon and Belial? Or will you, youths of England, make your
country again a royal throne of Kings, a sceptred isle, for all the
world a source of light, a centre of peace; mistress of learning and of
the arts; faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverent
and ephemeral visions; faithful servant of time-tried principles, under
temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; and amidst the
cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped in her strange
valour of good will towards men?"
FOOTNOTES:
[25] Sunday, June 20, 1897.
XXII.
"PRINCEDOMS, VIRTUES, POWERS."
The celebrations of the past week[26] have set us all upon a royal tack.
Diary-keepers have turned back to their earliest volumes for stories of
the girl-queen; there has been an unprecedented run on the _Annual
Register_ for 1837; and every rusty print of Princess Victoria in the
costume of Kate Nickleby has been paraded as a pearl of price. As I
always pride myself on following what Mr. Matthew Arnold used to call
"the great mundane movement," I have been careful to obey the impulse of
the hour. I have cudgelled my memory for Collections and Recollections
suitable to this season of retrospective enthusiasm. Last week I
endeavoured to touch some of the more serious aspects of the Jubilee,
but now that the great day has come and gone--"Bedtime, Hal, and all
well"--a lighter handling of the majestic theme may not be esteemed
unpardonable.