University of Virginia Library

1. THE COURT

AT the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond jubilee in 1897, Caran d'Ache, the famous French artist—perhaps the greatest genius in his peculiar genre that our age has produced—published a wonderful design in which the parallel histories of France and Great Britain, during our Queen's reign, were summed up at a glance with masterly insight. Great Britain was represented by one person under two aspects: Queen Victoria as a girl and as an old woman; France by a long procession of figures: King, Prince President, Emperor, and the series of Presidents of the Republic. The stability of England and the fluctuations of France could not have been pictorially symbolized with greater point. The Victorian age is rightly named, for Queen Victoria in her virtues, her prejudices and limitations was, in many ways, its most commanding figure, and the personal devotion and respect she inspired in men differing so widely in temperament and outlook as Melbourne and O'Connell, Peel and Russell, Disraeli, Lord Salisbury and Lord Roberts, to mention no others, counted for much in securing the country against the violent upheavals from which our nearest neighbour suffered. Yet, when the wave of sentiment created by the romantic conditions under which a girl of eighteen was summoned to wear a crown had died down, the light that beat upon the throne was far from genial; it was often fierce. The controversy over the Ladies of the Bed-chamber threatened to drag the Crown into the arena of party politics. The contention of the Tories was, in the main, sound and constitutional—that these appointments should not be made or maintained in such a way as to expose the Sovereign to influences hostile to the Government in power; and the Queen cannot be acquitted of a certain obstinacy in the assertion of

her rights. But the cry that the Tories were forcing her hand was vigorously taken up, and strange cross currents of feeling were developed, O'Connell's passionate outburst of loyalty being the strangest of all. It was one of the ironies of circumstance that, in the early years of her reign, the Queen's relations with Whig Ministers—always excepting Lord Palmerston—were far more cordial than with the Tories. Yet this was no guarantee for the popularity of the Court, and only those who are familiar with the history of the time can appreciate how unpopular it was. The middle-class element were not enamoured of the Whigs, but whatever they thought of the influence exerted by Lord Melbourne as the Queen's Mentor, they were not prepared to recognize any improvement when, on his retirement, the post was informally, but none the less effectually, filled by a German prince. The Queen's marriage was one of affection rather than policy, and Prince Albert had many excellent qualities. He was a highly educated, in some ways even a learned man; he was industrious, and his private character was without stain. It was not in human nature to expect that he should entirely efface himself in affairs of State; but he played the game better than he was given credit for, and on at least one occasion his intervention was quite contrary to that ascribed to him. At the same time he was lacking in charm and geniality; his manner was stiff, his conversation academic and occasionally gauche. His notions of sport were not those of an English sportsman, and he had a passion for devising new military uniforms. To put it bluntly, he was a foreigner, and the chief ground of the unpopularity of the Court was that it gave an unfair preference to everything foreign language, art, music, letters—and consistently declined to en courage native talent. Satiric references to the royal patron age of foreigners begin in Punch's first volume. "Ride-a-cock horse" is turned into a florid Italian cavatina, and the words translated into Italian—"Su Gallo-Cavallo a Banburi Croce " for the benefit of the nurse of the Princess Royal, Mrs. Ratsey, referred to as "a lady equally anxious with ourselves to instil into the infant mind an utter contempt for anything English." This sets the keynote to a series of complaints which re-echo over many years. For the moment we may turn to Punch's extraordinarily frank comments, cast in the form of a burlesque of the ultra-loyal press, on the rapid growth of the royal nursery, à propos of the birth of the Prince of Wales:—

THE LORD MAYOR AND THE QUEEN
By the Correspondent of the Observer

The interesting condition of Her Majesty is a source of the most agonizing suspense to the Lord Mayors of London and Dublin, who, if a Prince of Wales is not born before their period of office expires, will lose the chance of being created baronets.

According to rumour, the baby—we beg pardon, the scion of the House of Brunswick—was to have been born—we must apologize again, we should say was to have been added, to the illustrious stock of the reigning family of Great Britain—some day last month, and of course the present Lord Mayors had comfortably made up their minds that they should be entitled to the dignity it is customary to confer on such, occasions as that which the nation now ardently anticipates. But here we are at the beginning of November, and no Prince of Wales. We have reason to know that the Lord Mayor of London has not slept a wink since Saturday, and his lady has not smiled, according to an authority on which we are accustomed to rely, since Thursday fortnight. Some say it is done on purpose, because the present official is a Tory; and others insinuate that the Prince of Wales is postponed in order that there may be an opportunity of making Daniel O'Connell a baronet. Others suggest that there will be twins presented to the nation, one on the night of November 8, the other on the morning of the 9th, so as to conciliate both parties; but we are not disposed at present to pronounce a decided opinion on this part of the question. We know that politics have been carried most indelicately into the very heart of the Royal Household. [1] But we hope, for the honour of all parties, that the confinement of the Queen is not to be made a matter of political arrangement.

This is followed up in the next issue by an equally audacious comment from the same fictitious correspondent:—

THE BIRTH OF THE PRINCE OF WALES
(By the Observer's own Correspondent)

It will be seen that we were not premature in announcing the probability of the birth of a Prince of Wales; and though it was impossible that anyone should be able to speak with certainty, our positive tone upon the occasion serves to show the exclusive nature of all our intelligence. We are enabled now to state that the Prince will immediately take, indeed he has already taken, the title of the Prince of Wales, which it is generally understood he will enjoy—at least if a child so young can be said to enjoy anything of the kind—until an event shall happen which we hope will be postponed for a very protracted period. The Prince of Wales, should he survive his mother, will ascend the throne; but whether he will be George the Fifth, Albert the First, Henry the Ninth, Charles the Third, or Anything the Nothingth, depends upon circumstances we are not at liberty to allude to at present, nor do we think we shall be enabled to do so in a second edition.

Our suggestion last week, that the royal birth should take place on Lord Mayor's Day, has, we are happy to see, been partially attended to; but we regret that the whole bog has not been gone, by twins having been presented to the anxious nation, so that there might have been a baronetcy each for the outgoing and incoming Lord Mayors of London and Dublin.

This vein is further developed in burlesque bulletins of the progress of the infant Prince. Punch's serious views as to the Prince's future are to be found in his "Pæan to the Princelet" and its sequel, inspired by the Royal Christening in February, 1842:—

But while taking the Prince's future very seriously, Punch could not emulate those writers in the Press who, with goose-quill in hand, could not approach the ordinary trials from which even Royal infants are not exempt, save on their knees:—

It has been announced to the public, through the medium of the Press, that a most important epoch has arrived in the life of the Prince of Wales. It is a strange fact, that this "important epoch" has not been noted in the biography of any previous Prince of Wales; for we look in vain through the pages of Hume and Smollett, Rapin, Lingard, Miss Julia Corner, and indeed every other corner within our reach, without being able to ascertain when Edward the Black Prince was driven from the breast to the bottle. The Heir Apparent to the English throne has, we are told, been lately subjected to this frightful vicissitude; and though his Royal Highness is said to have borne it tolerably well, it will appear that while he took to the pap-spoon with princely fortitude, there was something of the infant perceptible in his mode of first receiving it.

When another Princess was born in 1843, we read that "there were some apprehensions that the nasal organ of the Heir Apparent might be affected by the birth of a younger sister, but we are happy to say that there are no symptoms of a derangement of the Prince's proboscis at present," also that Donizetti had been requested to arrange a series of concertos for the penny trumpet, and had sent to the Prince one on the noble theme of "This little pig went to market" to the Italian words:—

These familiar jocularities, redeemed by their general good humour from the charge of disrespect, are harmless compared with the sustained campaign of ridicule directed against Prince Albert as tailor and sportsman. German sovereigns and princes have always been great on uniforms, and Prince Albert undoubtedly suffered severely from this hereditary failing. A concise biography in the Almanack for 1842 states that he was born on August 26, 1819, and afterwards invented "a shocking bad hat for the British Infantry, but England refused to put her Foot in it." From this time onward the attacks are constant and malicious. The Prince's bell-shaped hat repeatedly figures in cartoons. He "bresents his gompliments" to Herzog jenkins (of the Morning Post), for whom he has "gomposed a dugal goronet."

In the following year there is a cartoon representing the Prince in his sartorial studio surrounded by designs and models; the following comment is associated with the cartoon:—

Ever since the accession of Prince Albert to the Royal Husbandship of these realms, he has devoted the energies of his mind and the ingenuity of his hands to the manufacture of infantry caps, cavalry trousers, and regulation sabretaches. One of his first measures was to transmogrify the pantaloons of the Eleventh Hussars; and as the regiment alluded to is Prince Albert's Own, His Royal Highness may do as he likes with his own, and no one could complain of his bedizening the legs of the unfortunate Eleventh with scarlet cloth and gold door-leather. When, however, the Prince, throwing the whole of his energies into a hat, proposed to encase the heads of the British soldiery in a machine which seemed a decided cross between a muff, a coal scuttle, and a slop pail, then Punch was compelled to interfere, for the honour

THE TAILOR'S GOOSE—THE TERROR OF THE ARMY

[Description: Cartoon titled "The Tailor's Goose—The Terror of the Army," in which a bird dressed as a soldier holds "New Patterns" and a flag reading "Nothing by the Bill." The Tailor rides upon a goose. Terrified, soldiers run in various descriptions to escape the tailor. ]

of the English army. The result has been that the head-gear has been summarily withdrawn by an order from the War Office, and the manufacture of more of the Albert hat has been absolutely prohibited.

The campaign reached its height in 1845 when Punch was given an irresistible opportunity on the occasion of the Prince being entertained by the Merchant Tailors. The Prince, Punch averred, was a born tailor, the Prince of Tailors, the true British tailor. He sought to make the British Army invincible by rendering them so comical that, by coming rapidly on the enemy, they might convulse him with laughter and paralyse his defence. He had fraternized with the Goose of Great Britain, and might sit cross-legged in the eyes of posterity. After this

outburst of derision Punch gave the Prince a rest as tailor, but took up the running—or baiting—with renewed energy against his sportmanship. Punch, it may be noted, was not an unmitigated admirer of field sports; he denounced otter hunting as cruel, and more than once protested against officers and others who rode their horses to death for a wager. It was part of the humanitarianism which impelled him to support the abolition of capital punishment, though here his argument was based on the view that death was a release for the murderer, who was more effectually punished by being kept in lifelong penance for his crime. Punch was never an enemy of fox hunting. Doubtless the influence of Leech counted for something. But the organized slaughter of game filled him with disgust, and the exploits of the Prince in the Highlands in the autumn of 1842 prompted the first of many tirades.

The pheasant battues at Drayton, when the Queen and Prince Albert were the guests of Sir Robert Peel, are treated in the same spirit, and the Ballad of Windsor Chase, with its grotesque illustration of fat beagles and obese hares, the Prince on horseback, and the Queen in her pony phaeton, carries on the satire in this fashion:—

The battue of hares at Stowe during the Prince's visit to the Duke of Buckingham in January, 1845, is the subject of another derisive ballad modelled on John Gilpin, and of a cartoon showing the Prince shooting down the tame quarry point-blank from an easy chair. The grand climax to this raillery, however, was reached during the Royal visit to Germany in September, when the stag hunt at Gotha was scarified with pen and pencil. In two parallel cartoons of "Court Pastimes" are contrasted the bear-baiting under Elizabeth with the butchery of stags under Victoria; and the hand of Thackeray is unmistakable in the "Sonnick, sejested by Prince

ELIZABETH

[Description: Cartoon entitled "Elizabeth." Queen Elizabeth I sits in a box at a theater watching a man and his dogs bait a bear.]

Halbert gratiously killing the Staggs at Sacks-Cobug-Gothy":—

Even more lacerating is the use made in the same number of the comment of a loyal eye-witness quoted by the Standard:—

TEARS AT GOTHA
The Standard gives the following extract of a letter from Gotha to a gentleman in London:—

"This (the deer killing) was very shocking. The Queen wept.

I saw large tears in her eyes: and Her Majesty tells me that she with difficulty kept the chair during what followed. When the Queen saw the otter hunt in Scotland, the pity that she naturally felt, at the death of the animal was counterbalanced by a knowledge of his propensities, so that it is almost as meritorious to destroy an otter as it is a snake; but this was a totally different case; nor is Her Majesty yet recovered. For the Prince, the deer were too numerous, and must be killed. This was the German method; and no doubt the reigning Duke will distribute them to his people, who will thank Prince Albert for providing them venison."

This incident marked the high-water level of Punch's anti-Albertianism—at any rate, in the domain of sport; we find an address of condolence to the Prince on the conclusion of the shooting season a year and a half later, but, in the main, the criticisms of the Royal Consort henceforth are founded on other grounds of dissatisfaction. What infuriated Punch even more than the ineptitudes of the Court was the fulsome adulation of the Lickspittle-offs of the Press, who were prepared, not only to defend, but to eulogize them. "The amount of good that Royalty can effect in this country is astonishing," Punch frankly admits, while caustically adding: "only less astonishing than that which it has yet to do." But between a generous acknowledgment of what could be done by royal example (as, for instance, its discouragement of gambling) and the "insanity of loyalty," there was an immense gulf, and Punch was never weary of gibbeting those writers in and out of the Press who thought they "could best oppose the questioning spirit of the time—questioning, as it does, the `divinity' that hedges the throne—by adopting the worse than foolish adulation of a bygone age." Assuredly, the absolute reductio ad absurdum of this courtiership, was reached when the Queen was extolled for behaving as any reasonable woman would:—

The excessively loyal man has the ugliest manner of paying a compliment. He evidently takes his king or queen as a carved log dropped from the skies, or he would not marvel as he does when the aforesaid image shows any touch of life or human sympathy. If his idol perform the commonest act of social courtesy, he roars— "what condescension!" If it display the influence of affections,

THE MOMENTOUS QUESTION
"Tell me, oh tell me, dearest Albert, have you any Railway Shares?"

[Description: Queen Victoria sits on a bed with the weeping Albert. She says, "Tell me, oh tell me, dearest Albert, have you any Railway Shares?" ]

he screams—"a miracle!" Her Majesty, on her arrival at Windsor from Scotland, has her babies immediately brought to her: whereupon, says The Atlas—"The woman and the mother for a moment proclaimed the supremacy of nature over the etiquette of a court, and the splendour of a diadem!"

What very ill-breeding on the part of "nature"—but then, we presume, she is such a stranger at courts! Was there no Gold Stick in Waiting to show the baggage to the door?

The same offender is brought to book in the following issue for deprecating royal excursions by railway:—

The Atlas thus sermonizes upon Royalty "by the rail":—

"We are aware that every precaution is taken by the directors and managers of the Great Western Railway, when Her Majesty makes use of a special train, and we are not less acquainted with the courage and absence of all fear from the mind of the Queen. But a long regency in this country would be so fearful and tremendous an evil, that we cannot but desire, in common with many others, that these royal railway excursions should be, if possible, either wholly abandoned or only occasionally resorted to."

There is danger by the railway; and therefore, says The Atlas, the Queen should be only "occasionally" exposed to it. Say the chances against accident are as nineteen to twenty, shall the Queen "take a chance"? "Yes," says loyalty, "the, Queen may occasionally take a chance!"

Punch, as the accompanying cartoon shows, refused to take a serious view of railways where Royalty was concerned, and went to the length of maliciously insinuating that Prince Albert, wearying of his rose-leaf fetters, had been indulging in a "flutter" on the Stock Exchange.

Criticism of the Court on the one hand and obsequious toadyism on the other were much more pronounced eighty years ago. The later vice is well rebuked in the fictitious Royal Proclamation issued in connexion with the Queen's visit to Scotland in the autumn of 1844. It will be noticed that here, as on so many occasions, Punch adopted the device of assuming that the exalted personages adulated resented the adulation:—

Her Majesty has just issued a Proclamation, of which Punch has been favoured with an early copy.

WHEREAS, on each and every of Our Royal Movements, it has been, and is the custom of sundry weakly-disposed persons known as "our own correspondents," "our private correspondents," and others, to write, and cause to be printed, absurd and foolish language, touching Ourself, Our Royal Consort, and Beloved Babies —it is Our Will and Pleasure that such foolish practices (tending as they really do to bring Royalty into contempt) shall be discontinued; and that from henceforth, all vain, silly, and sycophantic verbiage shall cease, and good, straightforward, simple English be used in all descriptions of all progresses made by Ourself, our Royal Consort, and Our Dearly Beloved Children. And FURTHERMORE, it shall be permitted to Our Royal Self to, wear a white shawl, or a black shawl, without any idle talk being passed upon the same. AND FURTHER, Our Beloved Consort shall, whenever it shall so please him, "change his round hat for a naval cap with a gold band," without calling for the special notice of the Newspapers, AND FURTHER, That Our Beloved Child, the Princess Royal, shall be permitted to walk "hand in hand" with her Royal Father, without exciting such marked demonstrations of wonderment at the familiarity, as have been made known to Me by the public Press.

BE IT KNOWN, That the Queen of England is not the Grand Lama; and FURTHER BE IT REMEMBERED that Englishmen should not emulate the vain idolatry of speech familiar in the mouths of Eastern bondmen.

VICTORIA REGINA.

Given at Blair Athol,
September 16, 1844.

In this context should be noted the constant criticisms of the Court Circular—the ironical suggestions that it should be published in French or Italian,[3] and the castigation, under the heading "Genteel Christianity," of the announcement of the confirmation of the "juvenile nobility and gentry" by the Bishop of London in the Chapel Royal, St. James's.

Five years later we come across a truly delightful suggestion, prompted by the vacancy in the Laureateship, for the employment of the new occupant of the post:—

. . . . The chief difficulty we see about the office, is the fact of there being nothing to do in it. The virtues of our Queen are

of too matter-of-fact a sort, and of too everyday occurrence, to be the subject of mere holiday odes, or, indeed, of fiction in any shape. If any duties are to be attached to the Laureateship, we would propose that they should consist of the task of giving a poetical turn to. that otherwise very dull and uninteresting affair, the Court Circular, which fills the somewhat contemptible duty of Paul Pry in constant attendance on what ought to be the domestic privacy of royalty. As an illustration of what we mean, we give the following specimen:—

It is not too much to assume that Punch's ridicule assisted in eliminating some, at least, of these excrescences on the official record of life at Court.

We may pass over the chaff of Prince Albert as a farmer, and of his prize pigs and oxen. The bestowal of the D.C.L. degree at Cambridge in October, 1843, is treated with acidulated

satire, and in his imaginary speech in dog-latin the Prince presents the University with a new academic cap (novus pileus academicus) of his own designing. A month later the Prince's gratuitous distribution, through the clergy, of Professor Buckland's pamphlet on the treatment of the potato—on the eve of the Irish famine—is described as a mockery to hungry people, "but then Princes are such wags," adds Punch. The much-canvassed appointment of the Prince as Chancellor of Cambridge University in 1847 led to sardonic comment:—

Nothing in England has been thought too good for the members of this happy family; but really it is rather too humiliating when we begin to express our doubts whether we can find anything, among the most venerable of our institutions, good enough to place at the feet of a Prince of Saxe-Gotha.

But though the compliment is left-handed, there are symptoms of a friendlier tone in the parallel between Prince Hal (Henry V) and Prince "Al." Punch, furthermore, congratulates the Prince on giving up the hat-business, interesting himself in the welfare of the working classes, and contributing by his speeches and subscriptions to the advancement of social reform. A year later he is saluted as the Prince of Bricklayers:—

His Royal Highness is now always laying the foundation stone of some charitable institution or other. . . . The services of Her Majesty's Consort ought to be duly requited, and Punch, in order to reward him in kind, hereby spreads the mortar of approbation with the trowel of sincerity, upon a Prince who really appears to be coming out like a regular brick.

But, as we have noted elsewhere, it was the Exhibition of 1851 which, more than anything else, tended to enhance the Prince's repute and popularity. It was a great and fruitful idea—and the Prince was its only begetter. The speech of the Prince Consort in explaining the significance of the Exhibition as the realizing of the solidarity of the world, Thackeray's May Day Ode, which appeared in The Times, and other utterances in the Press show, as Professor Bury points out in The Idea of Progress, that "the Exhibition was,

at the time, optimistically regarded not merely as a record of material achievement and technical progress, but as a demonstration that humanity was at last on its way to a better and happier state. . . . A vista was suggested, at the end of which far-sighted people might think they discerned Tennyson's `Federation of the World.' " Punch never failed to give the Prince the credit of initiating the scheme, and, after a little wavering, gave it his enthusiastic support. The change in public opinion towards the Prince is well reflected in the frank but friendly palinode which appeared in the issue of November 26, 1853, as a result of the suggestion made by City magnates to erect a statue to the Prince in Hyde Park:—

A little later on, on the eve of the Crimean War, Punch was evidently impressed by the alleged interference of the Prince in high affairs of State. The cartoon of January 7, 1854, represents the Prince skating on thin ice marked "Foreign Affairs—Very Dangerous," and Mr. Punch shouting to him; and in the same issue the lines "Hint and Hypothesis" warn the Prince against shifting his tactics and adopting the rôle of an intriguer. These rumours were so persistent that Lord Aberdeen felt it necessary to allude to them in the House of Lords at the opening of the Session, declaring that not only was there no foundation for the charge that the Prince had interfered with the Army or the Horse Guards, but that he had declined the suggestion of the Duke of Wellington that he should succeed him as Commander-in-Chief. His interest in the Army was naturally keen, but it was general. That he was the adviser of the Queen, in his capacity of husband and most intimate companion was beyond all doubt, but Lord Aberdeen vigorously maintained that he had never uttered a single syllable in the Council which had not tended to the honour, the interest, and the welfare of the country. Still suspicion was not wholly appeased, and Punch's references to the Prince during

the Crimean War were none too friendly. In 1855 he is credited with the intention of heroically resigning his Field Marshal's bâton and pay, as a "noble beginning of Military Reform," in response to the public cry for the dismissal of "incompetent nobility." And at the end of the year his desire to go to the Crimea is made the subject of ironic remonstrance. As a matter of fact, the reader of to-day must be told, the intention and the desire were both inventions of Punch, who was playing his favourite game of attributing to exalted personages resolves and actions which they never contemplated, but which he wanted them to make or take, and which if they had taken, he would probably have criticized as unnecessary and injudicious. Even more malicious was the picture of Punch regarding a portrait of the Prince, exhibited in the Academy of 1857, in Field Marshal's uniform, and saying to himself, "What sanguinary engagement can it be?" Punch cannot be acquitted of treating the Prince Consort—as he only now began to be generally called—with less than justice in view of the difficult and delicate position he occupied. The impression was given that the Prince wanted to meddle in the conduct of the War, and that it was necessary to prevent him from making himself a nuisance by going to the front. And mixed with this was the impression, which these cartoons and comments prompted, that the Prince was making a request which he knew would be refused; that, in short, he was at once vain-glorious, insincere, and self-protective. It was not the first time Punch had been unjust to the Prince: he had failed to recognize him as a powerful ally in the campaign against duelling in 1843. In the main, however, it may be urged that ridicule gave place to criticism in the latter years of the Prince's life; but the revulsion of feeling in Punch—and the public—did not set in until after his death. Like Peel, the Prince Consort had to die before his services to the country were recognized.

As the Prince Consort was, often without just grounds, the chief cause of the unpopularity of the Court and the favourite target of satire, we have given him priority in this survey. But, quite apart from the influence which he exerted, or was supposed to exert, upon her, the Queen was by no means exempt from

THE GRASSHOPPERS' FEAST: A PROPHETIC VISION.
Queen Butterfly received by Lord Grasshopper—Monday, October 28, 1844.

[Description: Cartoon of a queen with butterfly wings being escorted into a building by a grasshopper dressed in a fine suit; other creatures, with insect bodies and human faces, attend.]

direct censure, remonstrance, and exceedingly frank criticism. In one respect, however, the Queen was treated with invariable consideration. Even in his most democratic days Punch never caricatured the Sovereign. The portraits of the Queen are always pleasant, even flattering. Witness the delightful picture of her visit to the City in 1844. Though Punch's pen was sharp his pencil was kind, though at times extremely familiar, as in the prophetic cartoon published under the heading, "A Royal Nursery Rhyme for 1860[4]":—

As early as the Christmas number of 1842 Punch had given "the arrangements for the next ten years of the Royal family," with the names and titles of eleven princes and princesses! In the spring of 1843 he comments, with mock sympathy, on the Queen's liability to income tax. More serious is the charge, brought in his favourite oblique fashion, against the Queen for the neglect of her duties.—

TREASONOUS ATTACK ON HER MAJESTY
Punch has been greatly shocked by a very treasonable letter in the columns of The Times. Whether Punch's friend, the Attorney General, has had the epistle handed over to him, and contemplates immediate proceedings against "C. H.," the traitorous writer, Punch knows not; but after this information, the distinguished law-officer cannot plead ignorance of the evil, as an apology for future supineness. The letter purports to be a remonstrance to our sovereign lady, the Queen; in a measure, accusing Her Gracious Majesty of a certain degree of indifference towards the interests of London trade, of literature, the arts and sciences. The rebel writes as follows:—

"Buckingham Palace is neither so agreeable nor salubrious a residence as Windsor, but neither is the crown so pleasant to wear as a bonnet. I trust it is not necessary to remind Queen Victoria that royalty, like property, has its duties as well as its rights. One of these duties is to reside in the metropolis of the kingdom, the presence of the sovereign in the capital being essential on many occasions. I could enumerate other duties of the sovereign, such, for instance, as conferring fashion on public entertainments that

deserve to be encouraged by attending such places of amusement, and countenancing science, literature and the arts, by honouring distinguished professors with marks of approbation; in which respect it is much to be regretted there is too much room for those remarks on the remissness of Her Majesty in these respects that are so frequently made in society. When we know how much discontent, engendered by widely spread and deeply-felt distress is expressed by persons not to be numbered among `the lower classes,' it is not without alarm that the influence of these acts of omission on the part of Queen Victoria can be regarded; and it becomes the duty of every friend of the monarchy and the constitution to warn the Sovereign of the danger, not merely to her personal popularity, but to the feeling of loyalty to the throne, that is likely to accrue from such neglect."

In these years, and for a good many years to come, Punch hunted in couples with The Times.

The neglect of native talent and the encouragement of foreign artists, musicians, men of letters, is harped upon in number after number for year after year. Here again the method is sometimes direct, sometimes oblique, as in the fictitious list of people invited to the Court: Dickens, Hood, Mrs. Somerville, and Maria Edgeworth. Another opportunity was when it was announced that the Danish Royal family had attended the funeral of Thorwaldsen in deep mourning, Punch exclaims, "imagine for a moment English Royalty in deep mourning for departed genius!" The often-repeated visits of "General Tom Thumb" to Court in 1844 made him very angry. At the second "command" performance the General "personated Napoleon amid great mirth, and this was followed by a representation of Grecian statues, after which he danced a nautical hornpipe, and sang several of his favourite songs" in the presence, as Punch notes, of the Queen of the Belgians, daughter of Louis Philippe. But Punch had his revenge on this curious and deep-rooted interest of Royalty in dwarfs,— Queen Isabella of Spain had one permanently attached to her staff—by indulging in a delightful speculation on the happy results that would have ensued if George IV, like General Tom Thumb, had stopped growing at the age of five months:—

How much we should have been spared had George IV only weighed 15 lbs. and stopped at 25 inches! How much would have been saved merely in tailors' bills, and how many pavilions for his dwarf majesty might have been built at a hundredth part of the cost that was swallowed by the royal folly at Brighton!

The Georges, it may be remarked, were no favourites of Punch, nor was this to be wondered at when one recalls their treatment at the hands of Thackeray, the least democratic member of the staff. Punch considered that Brummell was a better man than his "fat friend," and consigned the latter to infamy in the following caustic epitaph, one of a series on the Four Georges:—

In the same year Punch, with malicious inventiveness, represented Queen Victoria in the act of unveiling a great statue to Shakespeare on Shakespeare Cliff, adding as her epitaph: "She rarely went to the Italian Opera and she raised a statue to Shakespeare." In these agilities The Times again proved a useful ally, for in the same number we find the following:—

HIGH TREASON

A traitor, who signs himself "Alpha," and writes in The Times, writes thus:—

TRAINING SCHOOL FOR LADIES ABOUT TO APPEAR AT COURT

[Description: Cartoon in which a mob of young ladies in ball gowns race through a room, jumping onto benches and dropping feathers and bows.]

"It is no use to conceal the fact—British high art is hated at Court, and dreaded by the aristocracy. They don't want it; they can't afford it; they think any art, which does not cultivate their vanity or domestic affections, can have no earthly use!"

We trust that the writer of the above will be immediately committed to the Tower, there, in due season, to be brought to the block.

It was a letter in The Times that again prompted Punch's remonstrance, in July, 1845, against the Queen's preference for French milliners, and an historical contrast is rubbed in by the article on the imaginary "Royal Poetry Books," or didactic poems, for the benefit of the Royal infants, of which two specimens may be quoted:—

The Court was certainly not addicted to extravagance, but the Queen's "bal poudré" in June is heavily ridiculed, largely, no doubt, because of Punch's frequently expressed conviction that the British never shone as masqueraders. Cobden's speech in 1848, attacking highly-paid sinecures in the Royal Household, is approved, but Punch was no advocate of parsimony. The new front of Buckingham Palace is severely criticized in March, 1849: its only beauty is that of hiding the remainder of the building like "a clean front put on to make the best of an indifferent shirt." The "mountainous flunkeydom" at Royal

levées is a frequent incentive to ridicule with pen and pencil; Punch is happy in pillorying the Morning Post for the use (A the phrase, "the dense mass of the nobility and gentry" at one of Lady Derby's receptions; while he applauds the Queen for setting a good example by giving early juvenile parties in

CALYPSO MOURNING THE DEPARTURE OF ULYSSES
Calypso, Q—n V—a: Ulysses, K—g of the F—h.

[Description: Cartoon titled "Calypso Mourning the Departure of Ulysses," in which a young woman walks along a shore weeping as a ship sails away.]

the season of 1850. Her visits and visitors were carefully scrutinized and freely criticized, beginning with the Royal tour in Belgium and France in the autumn of 1843, when Queen Victoria is represented as mesmerizing Louis Philippe with a Commercial Treaty. Punch was in frequent hot water with Louis Philippe—whom, by the way, he once represented as Fagin—and the impending visit of the French Sovereign, at the close of 1844, led to some plain talk on his folly in proscribing and impounding Punch, followed up by a burlesque account of his arrival at Portsmouth, with an ironical reference to the omission of all literary men, painters, musicians, sculptors, etc., from the invitations to meet him at Court. When the French King left, Punch burlesqued the situation by representing the Queen as Calypso. Punch, like the Skibbereen Eagle, always kept his eye on the Tsar of Russia—and, indeed, upon all foreign potentates. The Tsar Nicholas stood, to him, for all that was evil in "the King business." His attacks began in 1842 and never ceased in the Tsar's lifetime. The visit to England in the summer of 1844 was the signal for an explosion of bitter hostility. Readers of Punch are advised to carry every penny of the largess he drops to the Polish Fund. They should be polite, but avoid any approval of his looks or manners. The Tsar's misdeeds and acts of harshness to Poles and Jews are minutely recalled. Queen Victoria is shown in a cartoon offering Poland as a bun to Nicholas the Bear at the Zoo. The Tsar's lavish presents are flouted and condemned. A design for the 500-guinea cup he offered for Ascot is made a hideous memento of savage repression. His subscription to the Polish Ball is compared to the action of Claude Duval fiddling to his victims. The Tsar, in short, was "good for Knout"; and John Bull was being led by the nose with a diamond ring in it. Nor has Punch a single good word to say for the King of Prussia right from 1842 to 1857. His visit in the former year, "to strengthen the cast of the Prince of Wales's christening," met with anything but a friendly welcome. When he returned in the year 1844, Punch profoundly distrusted the King's humility when he visited Newgate with Mrs. Fry and knelt and prayed in the female prisoners' ward; and his suspicions were confirmed by his treatment of the refugee Poles, who were handed back to the mercies of Tsar Nicholas. Throughout the entire period the King of Prussia figures as "King Clicquot," from his alleged fondness for the bottle. The King of Hanover comes off even worse. Witness the truly amazing frankness of the comments on his visit in June, 1843:— TRIUMPHAL RETURN OF THE KING OF HANOVER
The King of Hanover is once more among us. After a painful absence of six years—intensely painful to all parties—the monarch returns to the country of his birth, a country to which he will leave his name, as Wordsworth says of Wallace, "as a flower," odorous and perennial. He arrives here, it is said, to be present at the marriage of his niece, the Princess Augusta, with a German Prince, who is not only to take an English wife, but with her three thousand pounds per annum of English money; of money coined from the sweat of starving thousands; money to gild the shabby Court of Mecklenburg with new splendour. Sir Robert Peel has been, it is said, under a course of steel draughts, and other invigorating medicine, the better to fortify himself in his address to the Commons for the cash. Sir Robert, however, acutely alive to our fallen revenue, is still very nervous. It is reported that, on the evening when the demand upon the patience and the rags of John Bull was made, the Prime Minister blushed "for that night only."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Herein is the extreme value of the numberless scions of Royalty with which England is over-blessed. The Duke of Cumberland (we mean the King of Hanover) has £23,000 a year from the sweat of Englishmen. And does not his Highness, or his Kingship, whilst taking a salary, exercise a most salutary effect upon Britons? Does he not practically teach them the beauty of humility —of long suffering—of self-denying charity and benevolence? Why, he is a continual record of the liberality and magnanimity of Englishmen, who, if ever they fall into an excess of admiration for royalty, will owe the enthusiasm to such bright examples as the monarch of Hanover. In the East there are benevolent votaries who build expensive fabrics for the entertainment of the most noisome creatures. Englishmen are above such superstition; and in the very pride and height of their intelligence, allow £23,000 to the King of Hanover.

The wedding of the Princess Augusta, daughter of the Duke of Cambridge, to the Prince of Mecklenburg-Streliiz, was the occasion of a wonderful explosion in the Morning Post:—

Jenkins was present at the ceremony. He was somehow smuggled into the Royal Chapel, and stood hidden in a corner, hidden by a huge bouquet, quite another Cupid among the roses. Let us, however, proceed to give the "feelings" of Jenkins, merely

premising that we should very much like to see Jenkins, when he feels "proud, elated and deeply moved." He says:

"We felt alternately proud, elated, and deeply moved during the ceremony as in turn we cast a glance at the illustrious witnesses to the solemnity. There was our gracious Queen, beaming with youth and beauty, through which is ever discernible the eagle glance and the imposing air of command so well suited to her high station. Next to the Queen, the Royal Consort, one of the handsomest Princes of the age, in whom the spirit of youth is so remarkably tempered by the judgment and wisdom of age. The Queen Adelaide, living model of every Virtue which can adorn a Woman either in private life or on a throne."

So far the Morning Post. What says (perhaps?) an equal authority, The Times?

"The Queen Dowager was prevented from being present at the Ceremony in consequence of indisposition."

The old Duke Adolphus Frederick of Cambridge was another target of never-ending ridicule. He was a great diner-out, and his fatuous after-dinner speeches are cruelly parodied. He was also "the Duke who thinks aloud," whether at the play or at the Chapel Royal:—

A few Sundays ago, the Minister and the Duke proceeded as follows:

Minister. From all evil and mischief; from sin, from the crafts of the devil—

(Duke. To be sure; very proper—very proper.)

Minister. From all sedition, conspiracy, and rebellion—

(Duke. Certainly; very right—very right.)

And thus Parson and Duke proceeded together almost to the end. However, the worthy clergyman had to offer a prayer for the sick. Proceeding in this pious task, he thus commenced:

Minister. The prayers of this congregation are earnestly desired for—

(Duke. No objection—no objection!)

One certainly does not gather from Punch's pages what was none the less a fact, that the Duke was extremely popular, that he was charitable and benevolent, and an enlightened patron of science and art, or that he was emphatically recognized as "a connecting link between the throne and the people."

THE MODERN DAMOCLES

[Description: Cartoon titled "The Modern Damocles," in which a gentleman with a mustache (perhaps Louis Napoleon) broods in a chair as a dagger hangs over his head.]

On the Duke's death in 1850, Punch, with his usual vigour, attacked the grant of £12,000 a year to his son, the late and last Duke of Cambridge, at a time when the claims of Horatia (Nelson's daughter) and Mrs. Waghorn, widow of the pioneer of the Overland Route, were neglected. The immediate sequel led to further caustic remarks:—

FOUR EQUERRIES AND THREE CHAPLAINS
What can a quiet, kind, manly, and simple gentleman, Prince though he be of the British Blood Royal, want at this present period of time with four Equerries and three parsons in the Gazette? Are these ceremonies nowadays useful and decorous, or absurd and pitiable; and likely to cause the scorn and laughter of men of sense? When the greatest and wisest Statesman in England [Sir Robert Peel] dying declares he will have no title for his sons, and, as it were, repudiates the Peerage as a part of the Protective system which must fall one day, as other Protective institutions have fallen —can't sensible people read the signs of the times and be quiet? When Lord John comes down to the House (with that pluck which his Lordship always shows when he has to meet an unpopular measure) and asks for an allowance, which the nation grudgingly grants to its pensioners when the allowance is flung at his Royal Highness with a grumble, is it wise to come out the next day with a tail of four Equerries and three clergymen?

Louis Napoleon stands apart from the other European sovereigns of the mid-nineteenth century in virtue of his origin and his career. But he ran the Tsar Nicholas close, if

he did not equal him, as Punch's pet aversion. As early as 1849 his imperialistic ambitions led to the hostile comment that "empire" meant empirer. The Coup d'État was the signal for the fiercest attacks on his policy of "homicide." His matrimonial ventures prompted the ribald suggestion that the Emperor Louis should marry Lola Montez! His persistent gagging of the Press in France, and his attempts to subsidize or manipulate that in England, are vehemently denounced. Punch's attacks ceased during the Crimean War, but it was a reluctant truce, and they broke out again after the Peace was signed. Douglas Jerrold cordially detested the Emperor, and was responsible for the hardest of the many hard things said against him in Punch.

By a strange irony of fate it was Douglas Jerrold's own son, William Blanchard Jerrold, who, working upon materials supplied him by the Empress Eugénie, produced in the four volumes of his Life of Napoleon III the chief apologia in English of the Second Empire.

But to return to the Queen and the English Royal Family. Amongst Punch's unconscious prophecies room must certainly be found for his reference, in a satire of the Queen's speech when Peel was Premier, to Her Majesty as "Victoria Windsor" nearly seventy-five years before the surname was formally adopted by her grandson. The suggested statue to Cromwell at the new Houses of Parliament gave rise to a long and heated controversy in 1845 in which Punch ranged himself militantly among the partisans of the Protector. He published mock protests from various sovereigns; be considered Cromwell's claim side by side with those of the "Sexigamist" murderer Henry VIII and other kings, and printed a burlesque design of his own, with a sneer at Pugin for his "determined zeal in keeping up the bad drawing of the Middle Ages."

The Queen's visit to Ireland in 1849 is treated in considerable detail, and in an optimistic vein. Punch never believed in the Repeal Agitation or in Daniel O'Connell, whom he regarded as a trading patriot and a self-seeking demagogue, contrasting him unfavourably with Father Mathew. Nor had he any sympathy with "Young Ireland," or Thomas Davis, or

SHOULD CROMWELL HAVE A STATUE?

[Description: Cartoon that shows statues of Charles I, Cromwell, and Charles II.]

the romantic leaders of the movement of 1848; as for Smith O'Brien, an immortality of ridicule was conferred on him in Thackeray's famous ballad on "The Battle of Limerick." The terrible ravages of the potato famine had evoked Punch's sympathy; but his hopes of an enduring reconciliation were small, and he quotes the tremendous saying of Giraidus Cambrensis that Ireland would be pacified vix paulò ante Diem Judicii— or only just before the Day of judgment. Still, the Queen's visit was hailed as of good omen, though Punch reminds her that she had only seen the bright side of the dark Rosaleen— palaces and not cabins. "Let Erin forget the days of old "is the burden of his song; at least he refrained from quoting—if he ever knew of it—that other terrible saying that "Ireland never forgets anything except the benefits that she has received." The Queen's magnanimity and clemency to her traducer Jasper Judge in the same year called forth a warm eulogium. Judge was a thief and a spy, yet the Queen, on the petition of his wife, paid the costs of her vilifier.

In 1849, also, Punch, evidently still in mellower mood, published an enthusiastic tribute to the memory of the Dowager Queen Adelaide, who died on December 2. Punch specialty refers to her generosity to Mrs. Jordan, the mistress of William IV, when he was Duke of Clarence, and the mother of ten of his children. "Let those who withhold their aid from the daughter of Nelson, because the daughter of Lady Hamilton, consider this and know that the best chastity is adorned by the largest charity." Queen Adelaide had long outlived the unpopularity caused by her supposed interference in politics at the time of the Reform Agitation, and Punch's homage was well deserved. It is a sign of the times that Punch begins to allude to the Queen as "our good Queen," or more affectionately as "our little Queen," and this growth of her popularity continues (with occasional setbacks) throughout the 'fifties. At the close of 1852 Punch ridicules as absurd the rumour of the betrothal of the Princess Royal to Prince Frederick William of Prussia, the Princess being only twelve years old. The report appeared in a German paper, and proved true. Punch's chief objection was sentimental:

"The age is past when Royalty respected its family at the rate of live stock," and he could not believe that such a principle would govern the Court, seeing that it was "adorned now at last with the domestic graces." Besides, Punch in the summer of 1844 had published his own New Royal Marriage Act (suggested by The Times's comment on the late Duke of Sussex's love letters), which winds up: "Be it therefore enacted that a member of the Royal Family shall be at liberty to marry whom or how or when, where or anywhere, he or she likes or pleases."

Scepticism of the report animates the set of verses published three years later:—

Whether the German newspaper had been merely exercising "intelligent anticipation" or not, the projected alliance was confirmed in 1856. Punch's comment on the Princess's dowry was unsympathetic, but the betrothal was celebrated in verse at

once ceremonial and friendly. References to the Queen during the Crimean War are noticed elsewhere; we may note, however, that when one "Raphael" published a Prophetic Almanack in which he took liberties with the Queen's name, Punch administered a severe castigation to the offender. Punch did not like his monopoly to be infringed.