Mr. Punch's History of Modern England (Vol. 1-4). Charles L. Graves
Times's comment on the late Duke of Sussex's love letters), which winds up: "Be it therefore enacted that a member of the Royal Family shall be at liberty to marry whom or how or when, where or anywhere, he or she likes or pleases."
Scepticism of the report animates the set of verses published three years later:—
ABSURD RUMOUR OF AN APPROACHING MARRIAGE IN THE HIGHEST LIFE
They say that young Prussia our Princess will wed,
Which shows that we can't believe half that is said.
What? she marry the nephew of Clicquot the mean!
The friend and ally of the foe of the Queen?
Why, nothing keeps Clicquot from standing array'd
Against her in arms, but his being afraid.
His near kinsman the spouse of Her Majesty's child!
Pooh!—the notion is monstrous, preposterous, wild.
The Princess is—bless her!—scarce fifteen years old;
One summer more even o'er Dinah had roll'd.
To marry so early she can't be inclined;
A suitable Villikins some day she'll find.
Moreover, in her case, we know very well,
There exist no "stern parients" her hand to compel,
Affording the Laureate a theme for a lay,
With a burden of "Teural lal leural li day."
Whether the German newspaper had been merely exercising "intelligent anticipation" or not, the projected alliance was confirmed in 1856. Punch's comment on the Princess's dowry was unsympathetic, but the betrothal was celebrated in verse at once ceremonial and friendly. References to the Queen during the Crimean War are noticed elsewhere; we may note, however, that when one "Raphael" published a Prophetic Almanack in which he took liberties with the Queen's name, Punch administered a severe castigation to the offender. Punch did not like his monopoly to be infringed.
11. The imbroglio of the Ladies of the Bedchamber had been settled in 1840. But Scribe's Verre d'Eau, under the title of The Maid of Honour, with the real incident turned into farce, had been adapted to the English stage and produced at the Adelphi.
12. In reference to the then prevalent mania for railway speculation.
13. … "Buckingham Palace, where, it is said, if a person puts a question in English he is asked in German or French what he means."
14. See Illustration.
THE OLD NOBILITY
Between the aristocracy as depicted in the pages of Punch and in those of the Morning Post in the 'forties and 'fifties there is a wide gulf. As we have seen, Punch's admiration of the Duke of Wellington stopped a long way this side of idolatry. Yet even when the Duke was criticized most severely as a politician, the recognition of his greatness was not denied. A good example is to be found in the cartoon of the "Giant and the Dwarf," which was inspired by Napoleon's legacy to the subaltern Cantillon, who was charged with an attempt to murder Wellington. Wellington himself had been approached with a view to similar action against Napoleon, and here was his reply:—
"—— wishes to kill him; but I have told him that I shall remonstrate; I have likewise said that, as a private friend, I advised him to have nothing to do with so foul a transaction; and that he and I had acted too distinguished parts in these transactions to become executioners; and that I was determined that, if the sovereigns wished to put him to death, they should appoint an executioner, which would not be me."15
The cartoon is accompanied by this comment:—
The Duke has made his political blunders and in his time talked political nonsense as well as his inferiors. Moreover he exhibits a defective sympathy with the people. … Nevertheless, contrasting Wellington's answer to the proposed death of the ex-Emperor with Napoleon's reward of the would-be assassin of the General (i.e. Wellington himself), need we ask which is the Giant and which is the Dwarf?
Other dukes cut a less dignified figure in the lean years which preceded the repeal of the Corn Laws—whether as coal-owners, Protectionists, or strict enforcers of the Game-Laws.
HENRY MARQUESS OF WATERFORD: A NEW STATUE OF ACHILLES
Cast from Knockers taken in the vicinities of Sackville Street, Vigo Lane, and Waterloo Place.
The first hint of the long campaign against the Dukes of Bedford in connexion with "Mud Salad Market" occurs in February, 1844. The Dukes of Sutherland, Atholl, Norfolk and Buckingham all came under the lash. When Lord William Lennox's plagiarisms from Hood and Scott in his novel The Tuft-hunter were exposed, Punch printed this jingling epigram:—
A Duke once declared—and most solemnly too—
That whatever he liked with his own he would do;
But the son of a Duke has gone farther, and shown
He will do what he likes with what isn't his own!
Marquesses under the Microscope
And the marquesses came off even worse. The eccentric Marquess of Waterford is celebrated for his knocker-hunting exploits in the very first number. The Marquess of Hertford—the original of Thackeray's Marquess of Steyne in Vanity Fair—is subjected to posthumous obloquy, à propos of the claim of his valet on his executors, who "were compelled to bring the dead Marquess into Court, that the loathsome dead may declare the greater loathsomeness of the living." The Marquess of Londonderry came under the lash not merely as a rapacious coal-owner, but as a bad writer: "the most noble but not the most grammatical Marquess." So again we are informed respecting the Marquess of Normanby's novels that "they have just declared a dividend of 2½d. in the pound, which is being paid at all the butter shops." One has to wait for nearly ten years for acknowledgment of virtue in the marquisate, but then it is certainly handsome. The occasion was the entrance into power of the Derby-Disraeli (or "Dilly-Dizzy") Cabinet:—
THE MARQUIS OF LANSDOWNE AND THE NEW MINISTRY
The first act of the Ministry in the House of Lords was done with the worst of grace. The Marquis of Lansdowne took farewell of office and of official life. And who was there, among the new men, to do reverence to the unstudied yet touching ceremony? Nobody, save the Earl of Malmesbury. The Times says, and most truly:
"A public life, which has literally embraced the first half of this century, and which last night was most gracefully concluded, deserved an ampler and richer tribute than our new Foreign Secretary seemed able to bestow."
Nothing could be colder, meaner, and certainly more foreign to the heartiness of English generosity than the chip-chip phrases of Lord Malmesbury. It is such men as the Marquis of Lansdowne who are the true strength of the House of Lords. He is a true Englishman. In fifty years of political life his name has never been mixed with aught mean or jobbing. In the most tempestuous times, his voice has been heard amongst the loudest for right. In days when to be a reformer was to take rank a little above a fanatic and a public despoiler, the Marquis of Lansdowne struck at rotten boroughs. He has ever been a patriot in the noblest sense. And there