And, other earthly gifts above,
The long-desired, the gift of Peace.
The King is also hailed in a hunting picture as the "King of Sportsmen"; and the grace and kindliness of Queen Alexandra, now as ever, appealed to Punch's chivalry. The dominant "note" sounded in Punch's pages is one of jocularity and good humour. He reproduces the statement that "no fewer than 1,047 poets have sent in Coronation Odes for the prizes offered by Good Words"—no longer, it need hardly be added, the Good Words of Norman Macleod. American visitors are maliciously pictured as attempting to buy coronets; and Punch makes great play with the official announcement of the amount of space allotted to peeresses in the Abbey. Duchesses were to have eighteen inches and ladies of inferior rank sixteen; what was wanted, in Punch's phrase, was "A Contractor for the Aristocracy."
Death of King Edward
The sudden and dangerous illness of the King and the postponement of the Coronation turned all this gaiety to gloom and suspense, happily relieved by a recovery which gave the celebrations, when they were held, the quality of a thanksgiving as well as of a great pageant.
In 1903 the King and Queen visited Ireland, and Punch prefaced his Donnybrook Fair rhymes—a long way after Thackeray—on their entry into Dublin with the audacious but impenitent declaration that he intended to adhere to a method of spelling which bore no sort of resemblance to Irish pronunciation.
Of all the Royal visitors in the years before the war, none was more popular or "had a better Press" than King Alfonso. In 1905 Punch happily contrasted past and present in his cartoon of the Kings of England and Spain in friendly converse, while in the background the formidable shade of Queen Elizabeth remarks with more of amazement than approval: "Odds my life! A King of Spain in England! And right cousinly entreated withal!" King Alfonso's marriage in the following year to Princess Ena of Battenberg is genially commemorated in Sambourne's happy adaptation of Velazquez; and when the infant Prince of the Asturias made his first visit to England, the same artist gave us the wholly delightful picture of Prince Olaf of Denmark pushing the Spanish princelet in his "pram": "Come along, old man," he says; "I'll show you round. I've been here before." Spain was not a royal bed of roses, but it was at least spared the upheaval which convulsed the adjoining kingdom of Portugal. On the assassination of King Carlos and the Crown Prince in 1908, Britannia in Punch's cartoon bade King Manoel take courage: when he was deposed by the Revolution of 1910, he appears as a dignified figure mournfully bewailing the downfall of his House. Simultaneously Punch chronicles the saying attributed to the late Mlle. Gaby Deslys: "I am not ashamed of having the friendship of young King Manoel," and ironically describes it as "the humility of true greatness."
King Edward was born in the same year in which Punch first appeared, and when he died in 1910 the commemorative number goes back to the cartoon of "The First Tooth," published at a time when Punch's comments on the Royal Nursery were more frank than decorous. But whether as a small boy or an Oxford undergraduate, in America or India, in illness or in health, as Prince or King, he had always found a benevolent friend and lenient critic in Punch, who now saluted him in death, in the name of Europe, as a Maker of Peace.
To the mass of obituary literature, mostly uncritical, which was inspired by the passing of a great and popular personality Punch contributed an interesting fact. There was nothing surprising in the statement that King Edward never joined in debate in the House of Lords; but it was curious to learn that he never voted—except for the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill. The King's affection for his little dog Cæsar was one of those personal traits which had moved the popular sentiment, and Punch was fortunate in having on his staff a writer who was a poet as well as a lover of dogs:—
Reft of your master, little dog forlorn,