Ye men of lawn and stole,
Who call yourselves physicians
And guardians of the soul, —
And own if ye have not hated
Your brethren, night and day,
Because of God’s high altars
They bent another way,
And sought not your assistance
To worship and to pray!
* * *
“Awake! awake! ye sleepers,
There’s danger over all,
When the strong shall be sorely shaken,
And the weak shall go to the wall;
When towers on the hill-top standing
Shall topple at a word,
And the principles of ages
Shall be question’d with the sword,
And the heart’s blood of the nations
Like fountains shall he pour’d!
“When a fierce and a searching Spirit
Shall stalk o’er the startled earth,
And make great Thrones the playthings
Of his madness or his mirth;
When ancient creeds and systems,
In the fury of his breath,
Shall whirl like the leaves of autumn,
When the north wind belloweth, —
And drift away unheeded,
To the deep, deep seas of death!”
No one, save those who have selfish interests to serve, and who for latent purposes of their own may think it advisable to soothe or to flatter the King, will for a moment question the dangers and difficulties which surround our present Monarch at the opening of his reign. His worst foes are not rival nations, for he has inherited from his august Mother a certain fine and courteous tact which is rare to find even in the most accredited diplomat. It is a helpful endowment, and will of a certainty aid him to unknot many a perplexing tangle of dispute. He is undoubtedly regarded by all foreigners with respect and liking, and his broad-minded, liberal views are well known, so that, as a leading Austrian newspaper says, “It is anticipated that he will prove a mild and wise ruler, under whom England will lose enemies and gain new friends.”
It can scarcely be considered, then, too much to say that the whole continent is favourably disposed towards him, and that from this particular standpoint alone he is surrounded by friendly and prospering influences. In our own England he has long been regarded as the “popular” Prince, and so begins his reign as a “popular” King. He is full of kindness and generosity; and there are many who assert that to those who deserve it least he is too kind and too generous. But “a good heart never changes,” as Shakespeare makes his Henry V. say, and we may hope that the King’s reputation for this “good heart,” which he won as Prince of Wales, will be the rock on which the Empire may rest secure. Yet, without assuming the rôle of a soothsayer crossing the pathway of a Cæsar, one may suggest that those who truly “fear God and honour the King,” and who have neither favours to ask nor interests to serve, cannot but entertain, without undue foreboding, certain fears for his well-being. Dark to him, personally speaking, must be this particular turn in his pathway, when he takes up the Imperial Crown, glistening more with tears than with jewels, and dons the heavy robes of ceremonious state; for he has already lived long and lost much. Sorrow has dealt hardly with him in many ways, and the dangerous condition of his dearly beloved sister, the Empress Frederick, is an additional pang to his already grieving heart. Between duty and love his spirit must be sadly exercised.
“A man is not as God,
But then most Godlike, being most a man.”
Scores of nobodies have for years been in the habit of talking glib nonsense about “the Prince of Wales,” and of casually alluding to “Albert Edward” as if they knew him personally, or as if he were hail-fellow-well-met with every little nouveau riche that comes to the social scum-top for a moment like a minnow in a garden cistern; and the present writer has often been vastly entertained to hear persons who have never seen the Prince, much less spoken to him, jabbering about him very much after the fashion of monkeys discussing the habitat of the lion. There was never a great name that was not slandered by the envious, never a high reputation that some coward did not strive to attack and tarnish, never a splendid fame that did not serve as a target for the arrows of the mean and the malicious. And the worst lies and slanders are always said and written of those whose position is too exalted to allow them either answer or self-defence. When persons are themselves ignoble they love nothing better than to defame nobility, and if they could force an answer from those whom they malign, they would be happy to have dragged down the higher than themselves to their own base level. Thus it chances that we have often heard male and female word-mongers mouthing idiot conversation concerning our present King, which has marked them as altogether outside the pale of good manners, and has debarred them from every suspicion of either patriotism or loyalty. “The King can do no wrong” is, of course, too far-fetched a statement in any period or in any country, as has been proved over and over again; but until some wrong has been manifested, the King’s name should surely be set well beyond the limit of vulgar society jesting.
It may be asked, Why should this be said now, and why should I say it? To which reply can be made that there are some few persons who, having been personally admitted to the honour of an acquaintance with his Majesty, and having been treated by him with every courtesy, kindness, and consideration; retain sufficient impression of that kindness as to be conscious of gratitude. It is therefore out of the merest sense of gratitude that I have, whenever I have heard people discussing the Prince (now the King), taken care to exercise those particular privileges belonging to the profession of literature, which are, to hear, to observe, and to chronicle such things as may be useful to remember in the history of the time. And so it has chanced that I, — being deemed altogether unimportant by that particular section of society which judges literature merely as a sort of bill-posting, or press reporting, which giggles foolishly at the names of Homer and Shakespeare, and can never be brought to realize that all day, and every day, millions of pens are constantly at work, writing down such impressions of the hour as will outlast thrones, and be read by future generations — even I, one of the least of these wielders of pens, have had the opportunity of seeing and noting much which it might be well and honest to set down. It can do no harm, and it may do good, to say that I have seen women of birth and position so lost to every sense of the true dignity of womanhood, as to descend to the meanest tricks and subterfuges in the endeavour to secure the notice of, or an introduction to, the Prince of Wales, and that then, when such notice or introduction has been obtained, I have heard them vilify him behind his back with the fluency and choice diction common to the ladies of Billingsgate! It can do no harm, and it may do good, to say that a certain prominent American politician, professing to be a friend of the Prince’s, and having been entertained at dinner by His Royal Highness on a certain evening in Homburg, met the present writer hard by Ritter’s Park Hotel next morning, and did then and there point to the Royal Standard flying above the door, with the remark, —
“See that old rag! It ought to be rolled up and put away with all the racks, thumbscrews, and other useless rubbish of Royalty!”
And, on my replying that it was not customary in Europe to accept the hospitality of a Prince one evening and attack his arms and insignia the next morning, that tall-talking son of the Stars and Stripes “cut” me from henceforth, for which I have ever since been thankful. From such men as these, — and there are, we know, Englishmen who are to the full as ill-mannered as any ill-mannered American, — and from such women as have in the past struggled and fought against each other to obtain the Prince of Wales’s kindly courtesies, merely to gain personal advantage out of them, and who may be trusted to pursue the same old campaign with regard to the King, may and probably will come many vexations and difficulties, not directly from the actual offending persons, but from the pernicious influences such mischief-makers exercise o
n the minds of those who listen to their unwarranted and unwarrantable accounts of the doings of Royalty. Such irresponsible sources are the fountain-heads of all the foolish and erroneous statements which often appear in the press, and though Fleet Street knows “how things get into the papers,” the provinces are ignorant of Fleet Street mysteries, and provincial people have the unfortunate habit of accepting everything they see in the often brilliantly imaginative columns of the cheap London press as truer than Gospel. And although the cheap London press is a very useful institution, there are times when its zeal outruns its discretion. We have had several notable examples of this lately, and the shocking scene described by the Times Special Correspondent, as occurring outside the gates of Osborne House on the night of our great Queen’s death, was a disgrace to the very name of journalism.
“I cannot close,” wrote the correspondent in question, “without a description of a very painful scene witnessed last night, which is described only out of a sense of duty, and in obedience to an instinct of journalistic self-preservation. It happened that I was not at the gates of the lodge last evening when the news of the Queen’s death was announced by Mr. Fraser, nor was there any object in being there, since the news was certain to be received in London; in fact, it was received some minutes before it could be received at the gates. They are about a quarter of a mile from the house, and it was certain that the telegraph from the house to London would be quicker than human transmission from the house to the gate. But a few moments after the news had been made known at the gate, I was driving up the York Avenue to Osborne in obedience to the summons, and in ignorance of the calamity which had befallen the nation, when I was apprised of it in a very shocking and unprecedented way. Loud shouts were heard in the distance, then came a crowd of carriages at the gallop, of bicycles careering down the hill at a break-neck speed, of runners bawling ‘Queen dead’ at the top of their voices. The sound suggested a babel of voices at a fox-hunt rather than the very solemn occasion which had called them forth; and it has to be confessed with shame that they were emitted by persons connected with the Press, although not, of course, with any London paper of long standing. They were an outrage, and, taken in combination with a fictitious and disgraceful ‘interview’ with ‘the Queen’s physician,’ which has caused much pain and annoyance, they contribute a real danger to the better class of journalism, and, through it, to the public. How can journalists expect to be treated with consideration when, on an occasion so mournful, they behave in a manner so horribly contrary to common decency? Individual cases of misconduct one has seen before, but this yelling stampede established a record in bad taste and in humanity. I am told that there was ‘whooping’ at the gates themselves, but that is hearsay, and the evidence of my own eyes and ears is enough and to spare.”
We may unite to this account the very extraordinary statement made in a well-known theatrical journal, namely, that a certain popular actor-manager convened a meeting of his confrères to put forth the proposition that “as vast crowds would be in London on the day of the Queen’s funeral, and as the procession would be over by three o’clock, would it not be advisable for all theatrical managers, especially those of the West End, to ask the Lord Chamberlain whether they might not be allowed to open on the Funeral night!” A more shocking, gross, and unpatriotic proposition was never set forth, and it is to be sincerely hoped, for the actor-manager’s own sake, that the journal which has so written him down, has somehow been misled as to its information. The King has already been called (with a hasty officiousness which borders on excessively bad taste in the hour of his Majesty’s bereavement) by theatrical gossips a “promising patron of the drama”; but if he has been so in the past, a proposal to make profit out of his Mother’s funeral will scarcely commend the stage so much to his future consideration and favour. During the brief time that has elapsed since our late glorious Sovereign’s death, there has been far too much dragging-in of the King’s name, to matters “theatrical and sporting,” in the Press, — and it is of far more interest to the nation to remember how ardently he, as Prince of Wales, has worked for good and charitable aims, how much he has helped to promote the cause of the poor, the weak and the aged, and how generously and promptly he has always given his personal aid and influence to relieve any immediate suffering. I do not think it is possible to appeal to the King for a good cause in vain; I have never heard that he turned a deaf or callous ear to the cry of sorrow. Certain lines I wrote of him once, I have now neither wish nor need to recall, and I venture to quote them here, not that they are worth quoting, but because many of my “gentle enemies” have taken much pains to pretend that I have written “against” our present Monarch, — a disloyal task to which I have never bent my pen. The lines are these: —
“To entertain the Prince, do little; for he is clever enough to entertain himself privately with the folly and humbug of those he sees around him without actually sharing in the petty comedy. He is a keen observer, and must derive infinite gratification from his constant study of men and manners, which is sufficiently deep and searching to fit him for the occupation of even the Throne of England. I say ‘even,’ for at present, till Time’s great hour-glass turns, it is the grandest Throne in the world.... There is nothing the Prince will appreciate so much as a lack of toadyism, a sincere demeanour, an unostentatious hospitality, a simplicity of speech, and a total absence of affectation. Of all the royalties at present flourishing on this paltry planet, I have the greatest respect for the Prince of Wales.”
This, written five years ago, can be repeated to-day without a word of alteration for the benefit of the aforesaid gentle enemies.
Certes, those who are sincerely loyal in their devotion to the King, will not be found in the train of flatterers, snobs and time-servers who are, alas, the inevitable encumbrance attendant on Majesty. Those who would serve him truly are not made in the mould of the Court-parasite, which particular insect feeds on Royal favour while it can, and stings when it can feed no more. Any student of human nature knowing King Edward, and having, taken pains to observe little personal traits of his disposition and character, cannot have failed to perceive how much, that is to the superficial eye unsuspected, lies behind the easy manner, the smiling bonhomie and invariable courtesy of his outward bearing. As one of our leading journalists has aptly said of him,— “He has done a good many wise things, and no one can ever charge him with having said, a foolish one. He is neither a bookworm nor a prig, and he possesses that civilitas which the old Romans lauded so strongly as the soul of social amenity.” Apart from these qualities, we, his subjects, have good reason to believe that in the weighty duties of kingship, which his Mother fulfilled so steadfastly and unerringly, he will be like Shakespeare’s heroic Henry, —
“Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs,
You would say it hath been all in all his study;
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle rendered you in music;
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter.”
And so, as the great Victorian epoch rolls away into the deep shadow of the past, the Empire rests as it were on a rainbow-edge between storm and sunshine, grief and hope, — grief for the Monarch that was, hope for the Monarch that is. One invaluable influence Edward VII. brings with him to the Throne in his Queen-Consort, the “sea-king’s daughter from over the sea,” whom we all love and admire with a boundless love and admiration. Never has there been a more exquisite woman than the beautiful Princess whom we now call Queen Alexandra; her sweet face has been a light in our land for many years, and her generous deeds of sympathy and love are known wherever her name is spoken. All manner of kindly thoughts have moved her spirit, — thoughts which have blossomed into kindliest actions; and the very sorrows she has suffered have seemed merely to increase her sweetness, if such a thing could be possible. It will be strange at first to think of h
er as Queen Alexandra, having known her always as Princess of Wales; but if queenly deeds can make queenliness, then she has been a queen all the time. Of gracious manner and rare dignity, she, too, possesses the love of home and home surroundings which so notably distinguished our late Queen, and it may be prophesied that her quiet influence will maintain the Court at that high standard of combined excellence, brilliancy and intellectuality which shall give the key-note to manners and culture throughout Europe. All the same we shall do well to remember that society is not what it was in the early Victorian days, and also that with the spread of educational systems, the masses of the people equally, are not what they were. In the olden times the middle and lower classes were uneducated and illiterate; now they have sufficient learning to be able to think for themselves, and to judge men and matters more or less correctly. The toiling millions know while they toil that they have a right to an opinion on government and social questions, and they give utterance to that opinion sometimes in unexpected ways. The feudal system no longer works; and the most careful, prudent and painstaking rulers of countries and peoples are sometimes called to account sharply when altogether unprepared. The militarism of the German Emperor is exceedingly picturesque, but it would not find favour with free Britons, despite the eager toadyism exhibited towards “Kaiser Wilhelm” just now by the very journalists who but lately never spared him from taunt and caricature; and though it is well that the ties of amity and good-will should be cemented between nations, the Englishman is not over fond of his German brother, or his German rival in every branch of trade. “Made in Germany,” has become a contemptuous by-word with the British artisan, and the spirit which is at the root of that contempt is a very strong spirit indeed. It can scarcely be called pessimistic to feel, aye, to almost see, much political and social agitation for England in the immediate future, — much trouble and difficulty for all concerned in England’s government, when the last tears have been shed, and the last farewells spoken in pulpit and on platform for the “passing” of the great Queen! For with her passes more than herself; her death sets the closing seal on the scroll of the nineteenth century; and with her departs for ever a Royal dynasty! We do not quite grasp the meaning of the grave historical events through which we have rushed, half blind with amazement, during the first month of the Twentieth Century; many of us do not yet fully understand that we have done with the House of Hanover, and have accepted as reigning Sovereigns the House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. It means nothing very much to our ears as yet, but who shall predict that it may not in future mean something more than we can anticipate? Edward VII. is King over a generation of people whose modes of thought and life are totally different to the modes of thought and life which distinguished the English during the first half of his Mother’s reign. Few will deny that there is much in modern society which would be better eliminated, and that the general callousness and carelessness shown for most things save self and money, are not good signs of the times. People who made our late Queen’s Funeral an excuse for private rowdyism, who engaged “windows with luncheon inclusive,” for 50l. and 100l., and laughed and giggled in their “fashionable” black as the solemn cortêge went by, as if the whole pageant were a circus-fair, are not promising subjects of our great realm. Such persons, however, it must be remembered, were of the ultra-moneyed class, and it is the ultra-moneyed class who are likely to have much to do in the ruling of social matters. The actual People of Great Britain have nothing in common with such; they who in their millions watched the mortal remains of their great Queen carried through the streets of London in a silence that was almost terrible, because so pregnant with unuttered meanings. These millions are they who are most deeply and loyally conscious of their loss in the death of the good Queen, — these are they who take up the labour of their days again with heavy hearts, and doubting, puzzled brains, wondering what is to come next. War is draining out young brave lives from the country, — trade is slipping from British hands to Americans and foreigners, — taxation is heavy; food and fuel are dear. Speculators in South African holdings are preparing largely for their own self-aggrandisement, regardless of the country’s welfare, or the life-blood that has been shed in the long and cruel contest with the Boers; and it is under these circumstances, which are visible to the most casual observer and need no exaggeration to make them more serious, that Edward VII. ascends the Imperial Throne of England. He has what none of his early ancestors had, — a cheap Press ready to flatter him, — to note his every movement, — to eulogize his every smile and nod, to crawl and cringe and clean his boots with paragraph-blacking daily, and editors who want to be “Sirs” and “Barts.” will so demean themselves before him as to make him wonder perchance, in an idle moment, why God made such men! Unfortunately he cannot avoid this kind of thing, only it is devoutly to be wished that the people who read such gratuitous accounts of his Majesty’s doings would once for all understand that they are merely reading “smart” fiction, and that for news of the King which shall be correct and legitimate, they had best pin their faith on the Court Circular. Otherwise they will soon lose their way in the wonderful web of Fleet Street imaginings, which are more potent to transform a truth to a lie, and a wise man to a fool, than the most direful spells of Circe.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 968
