All Continental Fair;
Might not a bride be found for Wales,
A distant Cousin, there?
Royal Speeches Criticized
From this onward for a great many years Punch was not content with supplementing the inactivities of the Laureate, but seldom allowed any event in the Royal annals—births, deaths, engagements or weddings—to pass unchronicled in serious rhyme. The art of eulogy is difficult, and the most that can be said of these efforts is that they were generally graceful and appropriate, and that their loyalty seldom degenerated into fulsomeness. On the subject of royal speeches Punch showed good sense as well as great frankness, in connexion with the public utterances of the Prince of Wales on the occasion of his visit to Ireland in 1861:—
WANTED, A COURT PENMAN
Royal personages, in answering loyal addresses, of course speak only that which is set down for them. If they made speeches of their own they would be continually committing themselves, unawares, to this statement and that, and unwittingly treading upon the corns of various people right and left. At least, to avoid making mistakes of this sort, they would have to take an amount of trouble in composing their replies so great that it would very much interfere with their ordinary business, and entirely spoil their pleasure. It is therefore necessary that Princes should be provided with attendants having the office to compose, and put into form, the platitudes in which they are called upon, from time to time, to acknowledge the compliments which are paid to them. But then the platitudes ought to be expressed in proper terms, such as it may become a Prince to utter; that is, in language which a decently educated person would naturally use. Now, is anybody who has been brought up in any school better than a Commercial Academy capable of delivering himself in such a style as that of the subjoined slip-slop which the Prince of Wales had to read in answer to an address presented to him by the Kingstown Commissioners?—
"Gentlemen,—I most heartily thank you for the gratifying terms in which, on your own behalf and that of the inhabitants of Kingstown, you greet me on my arrival at your port, after a voyage performed with such ease and expedition in the admirable vessel considerately placed at my disposal by its enterprising proprietors."
His Royal Highness is also actually made to say:—
"During former visits to Ireland, and particularly in the course of a tour made some years ago through the country, I had considerable opportunities of witnessing the beauty of her scenery."
Some clue to the authorship of the preceding instances of haberdashers' eloquence may perhaps be found in those characteristic forms of speech, "considerable" opportunities, and "witnessing" the beauty of her scenery. These are the notorious idioms of that sort of penny-a-lining which is the least worth a penny. The advisers of the Prince of Wales should cause their own private secretaries to write the speeches which they give the Prince to make, and not employ for that purpose the undermost reporter engaged on the Court Circular. At least let the Queen's son be allowed to speak his Mother's English.
As there is a Poet Laureate, so likewise ought there to be a Royal Professor of Prose, whose office, however, shall not be merely honorary, but shall consist in plainly wording the simple ideas which Royalty is occasionally called upon to express. Mr. Punch could mention some young men who, at a sufficiently high wage, would accept the work.
Whether the hint was taken or not, the fact remains that for a good many years Royal oratory has ceased to deserve such criticism. It may not be Ciceronian; it does not inflame or transport the hearer, but at least it is free from the cheap haberdashers' eloquence which aroused Punch's wrath sixty years ago.
The visit of the Queen and Prince Consort to Ireland in August, 1861, passed off without any untoward incident, but the comments in Punch were mainly ironical, as in the cartoon, "Doth not a meeting like this make amends," in which the Queen observes, "My dear Ireland, how much better you look since my last visit. I am so glad." For the rest there is much pungent criticism directed against the assiduity of the newspaper correspondents in chronicling small beer. The demonstrations were too carefully stage-managed in the operatic style: the odour of the footlights invaded Killarney; and Punch is quite furious with the snobbery of the unfortunate special correspondent who declared that "the Queen and Prince Albert repeatedly expressed their unqualified admiration of the scenery. His Royal Highness said many portions were sublime." It is by such practices, Punch truly remarks, that "the Press is lowered in repute and people think it is the work of a vulgarian to write for it."
In the year 1861 the Queen lost both her mother and her husband. The Prince Consort had outlived a great deal of his unpopularity—faithfully reflected in the pages of Punch. Yet even so late as 1858 he met with scant sympathy in the malicious imaginary conversation between the Emperor of the French, the Queen and himself at Cherbourg. The Emperor figures as the miles gloriosus, boastful of his strength; the Queen is ironically polite: Prince Albert angular and tactless. The mere suddenness and unexpectedness of his death brought a great reaction; those who had depreciated and disparaged him when living were especially vocal in their praises of the dead; but the full extent and significance of his loss to the Queen was not understood till long afterwards. Those terrible cartoons of Leech will keep coming before our eyes as we read the bland elegiac stanzas in which Punch made amends for ten years of scarifying ridicule:—
It was too soon to die.