As for the Coronation, we have heard so much during late years of these celebrations that there is no need to enter into any great detail about it, but it may be mentioned that the event formed a good excuse for contention between the two political parties, and others found it a good peg on which to hang their scorn or their platitudes. The cry of the Banquet was raised, the Government having decided that as that picturesque but mediæval custom had been dropped at the preceding Coronation it should not be revived. This was, of course, sufficient to make the Tories call for one, and to raise a cry of false economy and meanness. The Duke of Buckingham wrote, “The Ministers turned a deaf ear to all representations either of right or of policy, and the British Empire was condemned to stand in the eyes of foreigners as too poor to crown her monarch with the state which, when much poorer, the nation had willingly afforded.”
Yet now, seventy-three years later, we have just been reading of the amusement caused in foreign circles about the way in which we cling to old customs in our coronations. And earlier, when William IV. was crowned The Times published a curious leader in which it more than justified the curtailment of the various functions. The writer of the article spoke of the quackeries played off in the course of the ceremony, “revoltingly compounded of the worst dregs of Popery and feudalism,” and continued, “What a fuss with palls, and ingots, and spurs, and swords, and oil for anointing (greasing) their Sacred Majesties, and whipping off and on of mantles and the rest of it.” The writer closed with an expression of the hope that when a leisure hour should arrive the entire character of the solemnity should be re-cast. It may well be wondered how far the views of The Times of to-day agree with those it held in that yester-year!
The walking procession of all the Estates of the Realm was also dispensed with, and for the last time the Queen’s Barge-master with forty-eight watermen preceded twelve of the Royal carriages.
Marshal Soult, who came as special Ambassador from the King of France, was so much cheered both in and out of the Abbey that he was overcome, and seizing the arm of his aide-de-camp, said, “Ah! vraiment, c’est un brave peuple!” Later he declared publicly that it was the greatest day of his life, for it proved that the English believed that he had fought as an honourable man. He brought over with him a State carriage, which had been used by the Prince of Condé, and had it decorated in the most costly fashion. It was a curious thing that both in Queen Victoria’s and King William’s Coronations there was a great competition in equipages. The Russian Ambassador (Count von Strogonoff) bought for sixteen hundred pounds a carriage for which the Duke of Devonshire had given three thousand when he went on his Extraordinary Embassy to St. Petersburg. Another diplomatist gave two hundred and fifty pounds merely for the hire of a vehicle for the day.
There was also among the Ambassadors—who had the liberty of dressing as they would—what might almost have seemed a competition in dress. Thus the Greek Ambassador was adjudged as the most picturesque, and Prince Esterhazy, son of the Minister Plenipotentiary from the Emperor of Austria, was the most gorgeous—one lady said of him that he looked as though he had been caught in a shower of diamonds and had come in dripping; she almost expected to see them settling in little pools on the floor. Prince Paul von Schwartzenberg, the Austrian Ambassador Extraordinary, wore violet velvet heavily embroidered in seed pearls, the jewels with which he was covered being worth half a million florins, while his boots alone cost sixteen thousand florins.
We have all heard that the old Duke of Sussex embraced the Queen on this public occasion, that old Lord Rolle stumbled and fell down two steps, giving Her Majesty the opportunity of doing one of her pretty acts; and that a large bird hovered over the Palace and was regarded as an omen of good luck. We have all heard, too, of the Coronation ring, which, though made for the little finger by mistake, the Archbishop insisted should be placed on the fourth finger—a painful event for the poor little Queen. As there had been no rehearsal, “little Victory” never knew what to do next, and said once to John Thynne, “Pray tell me what to do, for they don’t know.” Someone who “did not know” made her leave her chair and enter St. Edward’s Chapel before the Archbishop had finished the prayers, much to that ecclesiastic’s chagrin. Then when the Orb was put into her hand she asked, “What am I to do with it?” and on learning that she was to carry it in her left hand, replied, sighingly, “But it is very heavy!”
All these incidents have been told over and over again, but there are some things not so well known, and one is that in consequence of the ceremony extending from noon to five o’clock people would have fainted from hunger, if caterers had not been allowed to sell their wares in the Abbey. At a convenient moment the Queen was conducted into St. Edward’s Chapel, where she found the altar spread with food and bottles of wine. It disturbs one’s sense of the fitness of things that an altar, even to a long dead saint, should be used as a dining table, yet perhaps it is no worse than the irreverent selling of the outsides of churches for the erection of tiers of seats whenever a Royal Procession is coming along.
The author of “The Ingoldsby Legends” described the Coronation very amusingly under the name of Barney Macguire, one verse of which runs:—
“Then the crame and custard, and the beef and mustard,