Ah, then, if your Majesty's self we could see
Sure we'd drop every grumble and quarrel;
Stay a month in the year with my children and me,
'Twould be a nice change from Balmoral.
The Prince of Wales's silver wedding fell in 1888, and furnished Punch with a theme for loyal verse. It was also the momentous year in which three Emperors reigned in Germany, but of the significance of the change from Wilhelm I to Wilhelm II I have spoken elsewhere. Punch's Jubilee fervour had now died down, and Prince Henry of Battenberg's appointment as Governor of the Isle of Wight is recorded in a semi-burlesque picture of the Prince "with new scenery and costumes," and the comment: "Old England is safe at last."
On May 21 Prince Leopold of Battenberg (now Lord Mountbatten) had been born at Windsor: on the following day a meeting was held under the chairmanship of Lord Waterford to discuss the advisability of abolishing the office of Viceroy of Ireland. Accordingly, Punch, more in malice than seriousness, suggests as a solution of the Irish difficulty that a Battenberg Prince should be born in Ireland, and brought up as the future Viceroy, in imitation of the trick of Edward Longshanks as related by Drayton in his "Polyolbion":—
Through every part of Wales he to the Nobles sent
That they unto his Court should come incontinent
Of things that much concern'd the county to debate;
But now behold the power of unavoided fate!