Collections and Recollections Part 12

As, according to Dr. Johnson, all claret would be port if it could, so, presumably, every marquis would like to be a duke; and yet, as a matter of fact, that Elysian translation is not often made. A marquis, properly regarded, is not so much a nascent duke as a magnified earl. A shrewd observer of the world once said to me: "When an earl gets a marquisate, it is worth a hundred thousand pounds in hard money to his family." The explanation of this cryptic utterance is that, whereas an earl's younger sons are "misters," a marquis's younger sons are "lords." Each "my lord" can make a "my lady," and therefore commands a distinctly higher price in the marriage-market of a wholesomely-minded community. Miss Higgs, with her fifty thousand pounds, might scorn the notion of becoming the Honourable Mrs. Percy Popjoy; but as Lady Magnus Charters she would feel a laudable ambition gratified.

An earldom is, in its combination of euphony, antiquity, and a.s.sociation, perhaps the most impressive of all the t.i.tles in the peerage. Most rightly did the fourteenth Earl of Derby decline to be degraded into a brand-new duke. An earldom has always been the right of a Prime Minister who wishes to leave the Commons. In 1880 a member of the House of Russell (in which there are certain Whiggish traditions of jobbery) was fighting a hotly contested election, and his ardent supporters brought out a sarcastic placard--"Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield! He made himself an earl and the people poor"; to which a rejoinder was instantly forthcoming--"John, Earl Russell! He made himself an earl and his relations rich." The amount of truth in the two statements was about equal. In 1885 this order of the peerage missed the greatest distinction which fate is likely ever to offer it, when Mr.

Gladstone declined the earldom proffered by her Majesty on his retirement from office. Had he accepted, it was understood that the representatives of the last Earl of Liverpool would have waived their claims to the extinct t.i.tle, and the greatest of the Queen's Prime Ministers would have borne the name of the city which gave him birth.

But, magnificent and euphonious as an earldom is, the children of an earl are the half-castes of the peerage. The eldest son is "my lord,"

and his sisters are "my lady;" and ever since the days of Mr. Foker, Senior, it has been _de rigueur_ for an opulent brewer to marry an earl's daughter; but the younger sons are not distinguishable from the ignominious progeny of viscounts and barons. Two little boys, respectively the eldest and the second son of an earl, were playing on the front staircase of their home, when the eldest fell over into the hall below. The younger called to the footman who picked his brother up, "Is he hurt?" "Killed, _my lord_," was the instantanteous reply of a servant who knew the devolution of a courtesy t.i.tle.

As the marquises people the debatable land between the dukes and the earls, so do the viscounts between the earls and the barons. A child whom Matthew Arnold was examining in grammar once wrote of certain words which he found it hard to cla.s.sify under their proper parts of speech that they were "thrown into the common sink, which is adverbs." I hope I shall not be considered guilty of any disrespect if I say that ex-Speakers, ex-Secretaries of State, successful generals, and ambitious barons who are not quite good enough for earldoms, are "thrown into the common sink, which is viscounts." Not only heralds and genealogists, but every one who has the historic sense, must have felt an emotion of regret when the splendid t.i.tle of twenty-third Baron Dacre was merged by Mr. Speaker Brand in the pinchbeck dignity of first Viscount Hampden.

After viscounts, barons. The baronage of England is headed by the bishops; but, as we have already discoursed of those right reverend peers, we, Dante-like, will not reason of them, but pa.s.s on--only remarking, as we pa.s.s, that it is held on good authority that no human being ever experiences a rapture so intense as an American bishop from a Western State when he first hears himself called "My lord" at a London dinner-party. After the spiritual barons come the secular barons--the "common or garden" peers of the United Kingdom. Of these there are considerably more than three hundred; and of all, except some thirty or forty at the most, it may be said without offence that they are products of the opulent Middle Cla.s.s. Pitt destroyed deliberately and for ever the exclusive character of the British peerage when, as Lord Beaconsfield said, he "created a plebeian aristocracy and blended it with the patrician oligarchy." And in order to gain admission to this "plebeian aristocracy" men otherwise reasonable and honest will spend incredible sums, undergo prodigious exertions, a.s.sociate themselves with the basest intrigues, and perform the most unblus.h.i.+ng tergiversations.

Lord Houghton told me that he said to a well-known politician who boasted that he had refused a peerage: "Then you made a great mistake. A peerage would have secured you three things that you are much in need of--social consideration, longer credit with your tradesmen, and better marriages for your younger children."

It is unlucky that a comparatively recent change has put it out of the power of a Prime Minister to create fresh Irish peers, for an Irish peerage was a cheap and convenient method of rewarding political service.[24] Lord Palmerston held that, combining social rank with eligibility to the House of Commons, it was the most desirable distinction for a politician. Pitt, when his banker Mr. Smith (who lived in Whitehall) desired the privilege of driving through the Horse Guards, said: "No, I can't give you that; but I will make you an Irish peer;"

and the banker became the first Lord Carrington.

What is a Baronet? ask some. Sir Wilfrid Lawson (who ought to know) replies that he is a man "who has ceased to be a gentleman and has not become a n.o.bleman." But this is too severe a judgment. It breathes a spirit of contempt bred of familiarity, which may, without irreverence, be a.s.sumed by a member of an exalted Order, but which a humble outsider would do well to avoid. As Major Pendennis said of a similar manifestation, "It sits prettily enough on a young patrician in early life, though, nothing is so loathsome among persons of our rank." I turn, therefore, for an answer to Sir Bernard Burke, who says: "The hereditary Order of Baronets was created by patent in England by King James I. in 1611. At the inst.i.tution many of the chief estated gentlemen of the kingdom were selected for the dignity. The first batch of Baronets comprised some of the princ.i.p.al landed proprietors among the best-descended gentlemen of the kingdom, and the list was headed by a name ill.u.s.trious more than any other for the intellectual pre-eminence with which it is a.s.sociated--the name of Bacon. The Order of Baronets is scarcely estimated at its proper value."

I cannot help feeling that this account of the baronetage, though admirable in tone and spirit, and actually pathetic in its closing touch of regretful melancholy, is a little wanting in what the French would call "actuality." It leaves out of sight the most endearing, because the most human, trait of the baronetage--its pecuniary origin. On this point let us hear the historian Hume--"The t.i.tle of Baronet was sold and two hundred patents of that species of knighthood were disposed of for so many thousand pounds." This was truly epoch-making. It was one of those "actions of the just" which "smell sweet and blossom in the dust." King James's baronets were the models and precursors of all who to the end of time should traffic in the purchase of honours. Their example has justified posterity, and the precedent which they set is to-day the princ.i.p.al method by which the war-chests of our political parties are replenished.

Another authority, handling the same high theme, tells us that the rebellion in Ulster gave rise to this Order, and "it was required of each baronet on his creation to pay into the Exchequer as much as would maintain thirty soldiers three years at eight-pence a day in the province of Ulster," and, as a historical memorial of their original service, the baronets bear as an augmentation to their coats-of-arms the royal badge of Ulster--a b.l.o.o.d.y Hand on a white field. It was in apt reference to this that a famous Whip, on learning that a baronet of his party was extremely anxious to be promoted to the peerage, said, "You can tell Sir Peter Proudflesh, with my compliments, that we don't do these things for nothing. If he wants a peerage, he will have to put his b.l.o.o.d.y Hand into his pocket."

For the female mind the baronetage has a peculiar fascination. As there was once a female Freemason, so there was once a female baronet--Dame Maria Bolles, of Osberton, in the County of Nottingham. The rank of a baronet's wife is not unfrequently conferred on the widow of a man to whom a baronetcy had been promised and who died too soon to receive it.

"Call me a vulgar woman!" screamed a lady once prominent in society when a good-natured friend repeated a critical comment. "Call me a vulgar woman! me, who was Miss Blank, of Blank Hall, and if I had been a boy should have been a baronet!"

The baronets of fiction are, like their congeners in real life, a numerous and a motley band. Lord Beaconsfield described, with a brilliancy of touch which was all his own, the labours and the sacrifices of Sir Vavasour Firebrace on behalf of the Order of Baronets and the privileges wrongfully withheld from them. "They are evidently the body destined to save this country; blending all sympathies--the Crown, of which they are the peculiar champions: the n.o.bles, of whom they are the popular branch; the people, who recognize in them their natural leaders.... Had the poor King lived, we should at least have had the Badge," added Sir Vavasour mournfully.

"The Badge?"

"It would have satisfied Sir Grosvenor le Draughte; he was for compromise. But, confound him, his father was only an accoucheur."

A great merit of the baronets, from the novelist's point of view, is 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 t.i.tled cla.s.ses 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 Sn.o.bs_, 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sociations. 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 inst.i.tution 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 gla.s.s, 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-abas.e.m.e.nt, 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage; 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 a.s.sent 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 inst.i.tutions." 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 Inst.i.tute 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 ma.s.ses 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 c.u.mberland 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, _G.o.d 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 fas.h.i.+on of a crown. Under this portrait is "_Victoria_." On the other side of the picture is a hideous old man, with s.h.a.ggy 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 const.i.tutional 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 ident.i.ty."

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 antic.i.p.ated 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 ill.u.s.tration. 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 grat.i.tude 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 G.o.d, in His mercy and goodness, to comfort and strengthen you in this your time of great trouble.--Wis.h.i.+ng your Majesty, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the Princess May all the strength, consolation, and comfort which G.o.d 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."