KINGS AND QUEENS.
There are thirty-six of them in all, ranging from William I., who is "severe," to Victoria, who is just "good." I first made their acquaintance in childhood, when my grandmother gave them me with the laudable object of teaching me history. Each is a little wooden block signifying a monarch. On one side there is a portrait showing the face, collar and upper portion of torso of the monarch in question; on the other side there is written a single word summing up his whole character.
By means of these royal blocks I was brought up to a sound historical sense based on religion and morality. At the age of seven I could and did boast that I knew the innermost souls of all the monarchs of England. I could say their dates by heart, often doing so during sermon time on Sundays, with a grace and ease that only lifelong acquaintance with royalty could have bred. I was even able to triumph through that tricky period between the death of Edward III. and the accession of Elizabeth. I wonder if the late Lord Acton was as learned at that age: I am sure he could not say his dates backwards. I could.
It has always surprised those who have endeavoured to teach me history that my youthful brain should be so strongly grounded in the historical tradition of over half a century ago. Yet all the historians of modern England could not shake me in my faith. To me Queen Victoria was no "panting little German widow," as our latest searcher after truth has affirmed, but the august lady who listened entranced to the beautiful poems of Lord Tennyson and invented electricity and the tricycle. In consequence I was considered a counter-revolutionary, if not bourgeois. My essays were deemed dangerously reactionary. At Oxford I once found my tutor burning one. This shows the value the authorities attach to my work. It is too dangerous to live; it is burnt.
I venture to think, however, that my work, based as it is on the most respectable principles, will survive long after my tutors have subsided into a permanent state of death in life. Like Shakspeare and the present Government I am for all time.
It is easy to see how I came to acquire this stability of thought, owing as I do my early training to the kings and queens of England, who are nothing if not stable. They are my acknowledged guardians and to them I turn in all difficulties. Only a year ago they came to my aid in a most awkward predicament. It was my lot to fill up army forms; of what variety I cannot remember save that they were of a jaundicy colour and connected with the men's demobilisation. On these documents I was expected to enter, besides the usual details as to religion and connubial felicity, the character of each man in a single word. I at once marshalled my wooden royalties before me in chronological order and proceeded to deal with the squadron in rotation.
The first name on my list was that of the disciplinary sergeant-major. It was with a glow of pride that I registered him with William I. as "severe." The designation of Tonks, the Mess waiter (whom we had discovered on the night the bomb fell on the aerodrome making a home and a house of defence in the cookhouse stove), as "heroic" was distinctly happy. It was perhaps unfortunate that the quartermaster-sergeant, an austere man from Renfrew, should have found, on perusing his demobilisation card, that he was to be handed down to posterity as "avaricious." I was also sorry to find the padre, usually so broad-minded, in a nasty temper about the character given to his batman, who was, he assured me, the only pious man in the squadron and in private life a dissenting minister. "Dissolute" certainly was on the face of things inappropriate, but then it was no fault of mine that the merriest of English monarchs should have appeared at the moment when I was filling up the papers of a minister of religion.
The light that my wooden monarchs throw on history is both interesting and, to a modern, precious. For instance, the designation of the first Angevin king as "patriotic" will surprise many readers of the late Bishop Stubbs. "Patriotic" is a wide term and may be applied to almost anything from after-dinner flag-wagging to successful juggling with Colonial stocks and shares; yet there are few who would have described it as the besetting virtue of Henry I. But it was; his little block says so.
John, again, was "mean." I am sorry, for, though in some respects blameworthy, he had many agreeable traits. His views on the honesty of his baronage are most entertaining. He was something of a wit, a good judge of food and wine, and would have made an excellent Fellow of an Oxford college. It is much to be regretted that he was mean.
Poor Henry VI. is "silly." This is a hard judgment on the pioneer of the movement against low backs in evening frocks, but doubtless he was silly in other things.
Some of my monarchs had the most excellent characters. Edward I. was "just," George IV. "courteous," Oliver Cromwell "noble"—a sad blow for the White Rose Club. Our younger monarchs were particularly attractive persons, and it is a pity that they did not live long enough to display their qualities. Edward VI. was "amiable," while Edward V., like all with expectations from their uncle, was "hopeful." Poor child! he had need to be.
I am pained however that Charles II. was "dissolute." It was what Henry VIII. dissolved the monasteries for being—the impertinent old polygamist! For my part I love Charles for the affection that he bore little dogs, for the chance saying on Sussex hills that this England was a country well worth fighting for. Alas! that he should have been dissolute.
Best of all my friends is George III. He is portrayed with a jolly red nose and a mouth that positively yawns for pudding. His character, which is his chief glory, is "benevolent." Who would not rejoice to have been the object of his regal philanthropy? Samuel Johnson himself did not hesitate to accept the bounty of this kindly monarch, though, while his predecessor reigned, the great lexicographer had defined a pensioner as "a state hireling" paid "for treason to his country."
Such are my friends the kings and queens of England. Happy the child who has such majesty to be his guardian spirit. To him life will be a pomp, where vulgar democracy can have no part, and death a trysting-place with old comrades—the child for whom
"The kings of England, lifting up their swords,
Shall gather at the gates of Paradise."
The Super-Tramp. "Madam, if you have any more of that pie you gave me this morning I should be pleased to pay for it."
A HOME FROM HOME.
(An actual incident.)
My fancy sought no English field,
What time my holiday drew near;
I felt no fond desire to wield
The shrimping net of yesteryear;
I found it easy to eschew
All wish to hear a pierrot stating
His lust to learn the rendezvous
Of flies engaged in hibernating.
Beyond the Channel I would range
(I called it "cross the rolling main")
And there achieve the thorough change
Demanded by my jaded brain;
It might be that an alien clime
Would jog a failing inspiration,
Buck up a bard and render rhyme
Less difficult of excavation.
A thorough change? Ah, barren quest,
Foredoomed to fail ere half begun!
Though left behind, my England pressed
In hot pursuit of me, her son;
London was brought again to view
By hordes of maidens out for pillage,
When from the train I stepped into
A flag day in an Alpine village.