Foreigners say we English take our pleasures sadly; and so we do in this rushing age. It is well, therefore, that we are being made to realise what the pageantry of ancient times really meant when our land was known as “Merrie England.”
Latterly, our so-called “pageants” have been very tame—a few Venetian masts, some tawdry paper flowers, a little stained bunting, a multitude of dirty flags of all descriptions, and the route is ready.
This tinsel display reached such a pitch in America, that a few years ago an order was made forbidding tawdry decorations, and nothing is allowed but flags—a perfect sea of flags. It so chanced that I was in America during the last two Presidential campaigns, and both in New York and Chicago there were thousands, yes, tens of thousands of flags arranged most beautifully and producing a wonderful effect: nothing more majestic could be imagined, even sky-scrapers looked less hideous. The appearance of our quaint old English streets on such occasions could be much improved by such a systematic arrangement, instead of festoons of damp and draggled pink and green tissue paper we call decoration.
In olden times the houses along the route of a pageant were hung with silks, brocades, and costly cloths. The City Companies marched in gorgeous array along the ill-kept roads, which at an early date were gravelled for the honoured one to pass, just as they are sanded to-day for a Royal procession. The Tyburn waters were checked at the Conduits, and wine—red and white—flowed from them as the goodly company paced by with stately mien. At every landmark along the route were stationed groups of citizens in symbolic costumes. Each forming in itself a picture.
Every movement of Royalty was accompanied by pageantry, a very different state of affairs from these modern days, when the King of England hires a hansom off the rank, or the Prince of Wales strolls through the streets alone shopping. Edward VII. steps into his motor at Buckingham Palace absolutely unheeded by anyone, and starts for Newmarket. His life, except for public functions, is that of a private gentleman; big displays are few and far between, and even then seldom, if ever, reach the gorgeousness of olden times. Maybe our ancestors would be surprised at the great length of route traversed by present-day Royal personages in their Progresses, for it must be borne in mind that the pageants of old relate to a very limited London.
Apart from coronations, many records remain of mediæval pageantry. Edward I., on his return from Palestine in 1274, found wine pouring from the Conduits, and handfuls of gold and silver were showered upon him as he passed. A little girl, dressed as an angel in spotless white, handed wine from the Conduit in Chepe to Richard II. and his Queen; Henry V., after his victory at Agincourt, was greeted at the north end of London Bridge by an “angelic host,” and another “heavenly choir” was stationed in Chepe, while virgins blew golden leaves upon him. When the child-king Henry VI. arrived in London from France in 1432, Enoch and Elias addressed him, while Nature, Grace, and Fortune, each attended by fourteen Virgins, showered gifts upon him.
But to Elizabeth belongs the crowning point of perfection in pageantry. She loved the pomp, the show, the acclamations of her people; she encouraged her subjects to vie with each other in the conception and execution of symbolic groups, asking the meaning of, and bestowing admiration on, the symbolic groups formed to do her honour. Charles I., after a sojourn in Scotland, was the hero of a pageant through London; Charles II. attended the Lord Mayor’s Show for many years, and as time passed this display was the chief remnant of those old Progresses our forbears so enjoyed.
It is strange that the outcome of the Pageant Revival at Sherborne, 1904, by Louis N. Parker, the Master of Pageantry, should have heralded the “Pageant of London” to be held in 1909. No sooner was the idea mooted than ten, nay, twenty, thousand people came forward to take the parts selected.
The love of display is inherent in human nature. The Chinese, the Greeks, the Romans, and the savage of to-day all in turn have enjoyed beating drums, flaring torches, and “dressing up.” A revival such as we are having in London is of the greatest value. The man in the street at Sherborne, Warwick, St. Albans, Oxford, Bury St. Edmund’s, all learnt something of the history of their own towns through the pageants which have lately taken place in their midst.