CHARITY THAT BEGINNETH NOT WHERE IT SHOULD
"And what's all this I hear, Barbara, about your wanting to find some Occupation?"
"Well, you see, it's so dull at Home, Uncle. I've no Brothers or Sisters—and Papa's paralysed—and Mamma's going blind—so I want to be a Hospital Nurse."
The alternations of candour and cordiality continue in the following year. The Duke of Clarence is heartily congratulated on attaining his majority; and the visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to Ireland is chronicled in cartoons in which the Prince figures as a stage Irishman, and Erin is seen reproving a sullen little rebel. The Prince of Wales's visit to Berlin in the same year (1885) is hailed as an omen of more pacific relations—the Prince figuring as a Dove, the old Emperor as a friendly Eagle. This was the year in which Princess Beatrice, the youngest of the Queen's daughters, was married to Prince Henry of Battenberg. Punch makes a remarkably frank allusion to the discussions in the House over her marriage portion in May. The passage is interesting not merely for the matter but for the new manner of the "Essence of Parliament," widely different from that of Shirley Brooks:—
Thursday. Gladstone moved Resolution allotting Wedding Dowry of six thousand a year to Princess Beatrice. On the whole rather a depressing business. More like a funeral than the preliminary to a wedding party. House listened in politely glum silence. Gladstone seemed to feel this, and laboured along making most of argument that this was the last. Also (being the last) promised Committee for next year to go into whole matter. Labby opposed vote, and O'Brien testified afresh to his disappointment at failure of efforts made to spoil success of Prince of Wales' visit to Ireland. W. Redmond gave the proposal a great fillip by opposing it, and House divided: 337 for making the little present; 38, chiefly Parnellites, against.
By way of set-off, Punch descanted melodiously on the "Royal Ring-Doves," alluding to Princess Beatrice as
England's home-staying daughter, bride, yet bound
As with silk ties, within the dear home-round
By many a gentle reason.
Here one cannot forget that terrible Court Journal of four years back, or acquit Punch of irony in the light of the fact (recorded in the Annual Register) that the Queen only gave her consent to the marriage on condition of Princess Beatrice's living in England. The discomforts and stinginess of the Court are satirized in an acid extract from the "Letter of a Lady-in-Waiting" in January, 1886, and there is a good deal of veiled sarcasm in the long account of the opening of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in the summer. The whole ceremony is made to appear tedious, badly rehearsed and trivial, and the Queen is described as speaking with a "slightly foreign accent." Cordiality revives, however, in the verses "Astræa Redux," on the Queen's "happy restoration to public life," à propos of her visit to Liverpool; and in the reference to her patronage of the Carl Rosa Opera Company at the Lyceum.