In a period of change and transition, in which the decline of the influence of the old "governing classes" was attended by the rise of a new type of statesman, the stability of the throne and the prestige of the Sovereign remained unshaken; the veneration in which the old Queen was held in the last ten years of her reign was based on a respect which rendered her almost invulnerable to criticism. Punch, who in earlier years had appropriated the rôle and privileges of the Court Jester, and in the middle Victorian period had frankly regretted the Queen's long seclusion, never alludes to her in the closing years of her reign save in a spirit of gratitude and chivalrous devotion. We hear no more of the "Royal Recluse," for the phrase no longer applied to one who in advanced years was strenuous in the discharge of her duties. There is a pleasant story that when the Queen was informed that she had reigned longer than any of her predecessors, she said: "Have I done well?" and Punch supplied the answer: —

"Have I done well?" Most gracious Queen,
Look on the record of your life;
Think of What is, What might have been.
Empress of Peace 'mid constant strife!

The last year of her reign was sadly clouded by the uncertainties of the South African war, and she paid the inevitable penalty of those who live to fourscore by surviving many of those who were nearest to her; but age brought her consolations as well. The marriage of the Duke of York in 1893 inspired Punch with a genial ode, full of classical tags and headed "Hymen Hymenæe!" He would not "trill a fulsome lay," but contented himself with showing "good will to goodness," typified in his cartoon of the royal pair seated on a Lion led by Punch with a bridle of roses. A year later the birth of the present Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria's great-grandson, is celebrated by an ingenious adaptation of Shakespeare: —

Now is the Winter of our discontent
Made glorious by this Son of York.

"Do you often attend the sittings in the House of Lords, Duke?"

"I did once – if I remember, to vote against some measure of Mr. Gladstone's – but I caught a bad cold there, so I never went again!"

The customary official congratulations of Parliament did not escape a protest from Mr. Keir Hardie, who was "indisposed to associate himself with any effort to do special honour to the Royal family," though he was "delighted to learn that the infant was a fairly healthy one." This unfortunately-worded concession only served to exasperate the loyalists, and Punch drew a picture of Mr. Hardie, in his deer-stalker cap, severely apostrophizing the royal infant in his cradle. A propos of the Prince's seven names, it may be added that Punch noted the inclusion of all the four patron saints of the United Kingdom – George, Andrew, Patrick and David – a choice which, as he put it, ought to help him to dodge ill luck in after years.

Little Lord Charles: "Oh, I'm going to be an Omnibus Conductor, when I grow up."

Fair American: "But your brother's going to be a Duke, isn't he?"

L. L. C.: "Ah, yes; but that's about all he's fit for, you know!"

Punch on the Duke of Cambridge

No charge of courtiership, however, could be brought against Punch for his treatment of the question of the retirement of the Duke of Cambridge in 1895 from the post of Commander-in-Chief. In "All the Difference" Lord Wolseley is shown saying to the Duke: "In September I have to retire from my appointment," and the Duke replies, "Dear me! I haven't." The same idea is developed in some satirical verses glorifying the "Spirit of Eld," which was allowed to dominate the conduct of high affairs of State. But when the Duke did go in November, Punch was more gracious. His "parting salute," put into the mouth of Tommy Atkins, forms a friendly gloss on what Lord Wolseley had said in his first Army order; and when the Duke died in 1904, Punch's four-line tribute is a model of laconic and judicial appreciation: —

The years that saw old customs changed to new
Still left his spirit changeless to the end,
Who served his kindred's Throne a long life through
And died, as he had lived, the soldier's friend.

Modern Royal Annals are largely made up of "marriage and death and division," and laureates, unofficial as well as official, are largely concerned with the two former. The death of Prince Henry of Battenberg from fever incurred while on active service in Ashanti in 1896 enabled Punch to pay decorous and not extravagant homage to the "servant of duty." He had a much better theme in the death of the Prince's brilliant and ill-starred brother Alexander, in 1893, and the verses are not unworthy of one who was too great a gentleman to be a successful adventurer: —

Europe's Prince Charming, lion-like, born to dare,
Betrayed by the black treacherous Northern Bear!
Soldier successful vainly, patriot foiled,
Wooer discomfited, and hero spoiled!
Triumphant champion of Slivnitza's field,
To sordid treachery yet doomed to yield.
An age more chivalrous you should have seen,
When brutal brokers, and when bagmen keen
Shamed not the sword and blunted not the lance.
Then had you been true Hero of Romance.

The coronation of the Tsar Nicholas in 1896 is chronicled in the cartoon in which Peace says to him: "I was your father's friend – let me be yours," and his visit to Balmoral suggests another variation on the same theme. Under the heading "Blessed are the Peacemakers," Nicholas is seen taking an affectionate farewell of the Queen. Ten years later Punch was to realize how vain were the dreams of good will when hampered by infirmity of purpose. For the moment, however, the pleasures and pastimes of Royalty were more in evidence. The Prince of Wales was alleged to have taken to bicycling, and Punch, still wedded to an old habit, proposed the new title of "the Prince of Wheels." The Prince is also congratulated on winning his first Derby with Persimmon, and encouraged to pay no attention to the Nonconformist stalwarts of Rochdale and Heywood who had begged him to abandon racing and withdraw from the turf. When Princess Maud of Wales was married to Prince Charles of Denmark, Punch was not content with a loyal cartoon and a suitable Shakespearean quotation. He seized the opportunity to combine humanitarianism with allegiance to the throne by issuing a Plea for the Birds to the Women of England – begging them to discontinue the wearing of egret plumes on this and every other occasion.

Tributes to the Queen in the year of her Diamond Jubilee are unqualified in their admiration. Perhaps the most hearty and impressive, if not the most polished, is the "Song Imperial" printed in June: —

Stand up England, land of toil and duty,
In your smoking cities, in your hamlets green;
Stand up England, land of love and beauty,
Stand up, shout out, God save the Queen!

Stand up Scotland, up Wales and Ireland,
Loyal to her royalty, crowd upon the scene;
Stand up, all of us, we who are the sire-land,
Stand up, shout out, God save the Queen!

Stand up ye Colonies, the joy-cry reaches you,
Near lands, far lands, lands that lie between;
Where the sun bronzes you, where the frost bleaches you,
Stand up, shout out, God save the Queen!

Stand up all! Yes, princes, nobles, peoples,
All the mighty Empire – mightier ne'er hath been;
Boom from your decks and towers, clang from all your steeples
God save Victoria, God save the Queen!

Why not? Has she not ever loved and served us,
Royal to us, loyal to us, gracious ever been?
Ne'er in peace betrayed us, ne'er in war unnerv'd us;
Up, then, shout out, God save the Queen!

But now our sun descends, from the zenith westward,
Westward and downward, of all mortals seen;
Yet may the long day lengthen, though the fall be rest-ward,
May we long together cry, God save the Queen!

When in the coming-time, 'neath the dim ocean line,
Our dear sun shall sink in the wave serene,
Tears will fill these eyes of mine, tears will fill those eyes of thine,
Lowly kneeling, all will pray, God save the Queen!

Jubilee Tributes

In his "Jubilee Celebrator's Vade Mecum" Punch did not spare criticism of the arrangements and the profiteering of speculators in seats. Yet with all deductions and drawbacks the Jubilee "was a gigantic success, for it has shown that a quarter of the world loves and appreciates a blameless Queen, and rejoices to be her subjects." The visit of the Duke and Duchess of York to Ireland in July prompts the usual cartoon attributing to Erin the familiar suggestion of a Royal residence in Ireland, a cure for discontent which Punch was never weary of prescribing. Queen Victoria's eightieth birthday fell in 1899, and in the same number in which Punch welcomes the anniversary he indulges in an unflattering pictorial comment on "Imperial Bruin" breathing forth compliments and pacific professions while carrying on dangerous intrigues in the Far East. Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, had renounced the succession to the Dukedom of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in the lifetime of his brother, the Duke of Edinburgh, who had succeeded to the title in 1893. Punch in 1899 congratulated the Duke of Connaught on a decision the wisdom of which was amply justified in the sequel. Here Punch made no claims to prophecy: he merely showed the Duke of Connaught waving aside the proffered honour and gave as his motto Gilbert's often-quoted lines: —

In spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations,
He remains an Englishman.

Punch's lines on the death of the Duke of Edinburgh in the following year attain to a positively "lapidary" excellence in their discretion and brevity: —

Summoned to lordship in a stranger land,
He left his English birthright of the main,
Now, swiftly touched by Death's restoring hand,
He is the Queen's again.

The cartoon which linked Italy with Britannia as "Sisters in Sorrow" – King Humbert had been assassinated two days before the death of the Duke of Edinburgh – strikes the ceremonial and conventional note avoided in the epitaph quoted above, and noticeable in the cartoon prompted by the Queen's visit to Ireland earlier in the year.

(Wishing "Godspeed" to the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, who are starting for Australia.)

To 1900 also belongs the first appearance in a Punch cartoon of the ex-Crown Prince of Germany. In consonance with German Court tradition he was now about to learn a trade, and as his tastes were said to lie in the direction of typography, Punch offers to take him on as a printing apprentice.

I have spoken elsewhere of the death of Queen Victoria in 1901; for it was a great deal more than an event in Court history; it marked the end of an era. Punch, in a commemorative number, reprinted a great many of his cartoons, good and bad, but omitting the disparaging or satirical pictures to which reference has been made in previous volumes; but even with this limitation, the collection is a valuable contribution to the pictorial history of our times. In discussing the National Memorial Punch makes Art express the pious hope that London will get something worthy of a great city and a great Queen, and, as we have seen, in later years he acknowledged that she had done so. The start of the Duke and Duchess of York for their visit to Australia in March forms the theme of the pleasant fantasy reproduced on the preceding page.

In August the Empress Frederick of Germany, the most highly placed, the most gifted, and the most ill-starred of the Queen's daughters, followed her mother to the grave. Here Punch's tribute, in which Germany and England figure as chief mourners, does not represent the hard facts, and overlooks the bitter antagonism of Bismarck to "the Liberal English woman," as he called her, her failure to inspire affection in the German nation, and the estrangement of her meteoric son. But Punch's attitude was natural, for the Kaiser's visit to Osborne during Queen Victoria's last illness had touched the heart of England; and the description of the Empress Frederick as "gentle, brave and wise" was a venial misreading of the character of one whose fortitude, intrepidity and intellectual gifts were beyond question, but whose individuality was too pronounced to accommodate itself to her political surroundings.

(After the well-known picture by Velazquez in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. With Mr. Punch's respectful congratulations to their Majesties of Spain.)

Coronation Humours

The preparations for the crowning of King Edward furnished Punch with material for a display of abundant good will to the Sovereign, tempered by an explosion of irresponsible frivolity. In the "Overflow Fête," designed by Punch as "Bouverie King of Arms," he seized the opportunity of making game of all his favourite butts. A court of "overflow claims" considers the applications of Lord Halsbury, Sir J. Blundell Maple, Mr. Gibson Bowles, "Brer Fuchs" (Emil Fuchs, an Austrian artist much in Court favour but heavily derided by art critics), Mr. G. B. Shaw, Mr. Alfred Austin the Poet Laureate, and many others. Most of their alleged claims are declined, but a few exceptions are made, as, for example, that in favour of Mr. G. R. Sims being allowed to supply the fountains in Trafalgar Square with "Tatcho." A procession of emblematic cars is mainly satirical, and includes a "sleeping car" typical of British industry. The programme of the Gala Performance at the National Opera House introduces Dan Leno, and includes a masque of "Poets in Hades" on the lines of the Frogs of Aristophanes. Punch also added what purported to be an Official Coronation Ode by Mr. Alfred Austin – a masterpiece of deliberate ineptitude – and a "Chantey of the Nations" in which Mr. Rudyard Kipling's imperialism is burlesqued in none too friendly a spirit. Punch provided a jocular epilogue to the masque: he also dedicated a set of serious verses to the King wishing him

health and years' increase,
Wisdom to keep his people's love,
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,
To one dear mistress you shall now be sworn,
And in her queenly service you shall dwell,
At rest with one who loved your master well.

And she, that gentle lady, shall control
The faithful Kingdom of a true dog's soul,
And for the past's dear sake shall still defend
Cæsar, the dead King's humble little friend.

Evidence of the unabated popularity of King Alfonso continue to appear in 1910, when that sovereign's visit to the Duke of Westminster prompted some frivolous rhymes on "the Merry Monarch": —

Oh, why does Eaton all her banners don so?
To feast the roving eyes of King Alfonso.

Why was it that the sun last Wednesday shone so?
It loved the polo feats of King Alfonso.

What spectacle delights the footman John so?
The riding-breeches worn by King Alfonso.

What is it fascinates the Eatonian bonne so?
It is the winning ways of King Alfonso.

What puffs the plumage of the ducal swans so?
The notice they receive from King Alfonso.

Why are the Kaiser's courtiers jumped upon so?
He's sick with jealousy of King Alfonso.

Why does the British Press keep on and on so?
It cannot have enough of King Alfonso.

Kaiser, King, and Laureate

The mention of the Kaiser is ominous. Punch had, for reasons mentioned above, given him a brief respite, but one of his periodical outbursts at Königsberg in August, 1910, provoked a cartoon representing the Imperial Eagle re-entering his cage "Constitution" to the relief of his keeper, whom he reassures with the remark: "It's all right: I'm going back of my own accord. But (aside) I got pretty near the sky that time. Haven't had such a day out for two years." This was not exactly respectful treatment, but it was not so frank as Punch's heading "Thank Goodness!" prefixed ten years earlier to the statement made, by an American paper, that in a Boston Lunatic Asylum there were eleven patients, each of whom believed himself to be the German Emperor, but that they had no means of communicating with the outer world.

King George's coronation in 1911 gave Punch another occasion for mingling jest with earnest, loyalty to the Sovereign with chaff of notorieties. The King's serious concern with his country's welfare had already been illustrated in the cartoon in which he is seen, like his namesake saint, attacking a dragon – that of "Apathy." At the time of the coronation Punch lays stress on the heritage of sea-power that had fallen to him, a sailor prince. In July the Prince of Wales was welcomed in his Principality – this time, in Punch's picture, by a dragon the reverse of apathetic.

In June, 1913, the office of Laureate fell vacant by the death of Mr. Alfred Austin. After Southey, Wordsworth and Tennyson, the anti-climax had been so painful that Punch may well be excused for the cartoon in which Pegasus appeals to Ringmaster Asquith to disestablish him: the Steed of the Muses was tired of being harnessed to the Royal Circus. There are some who think that, in the best interests of the distinguished author who was appointed, it would have been well if Punch's advice had been followed.