Passing likeness

They both have that piercing look of hard men, as if they might have had something in common, but they probably didn't, apart from having had tough childhoods. 

 Yehudi                               Philip

The Palace, Ottawa

It seems that most Canadians have taken the Cambridges to their hearts, and everyone knows what warm hearts Canadians have. Some Québécois did hold up some handmade banners: "Parasite go home", "Kate go UK yourself" and so on, but most did not strongly oppose the visit, merely grumbling about its cost. And the prince got an undeserved cheer for his schoolboy French.

This raises an appealing possibility. When the time comes for the by-then ageing couple to take their thrones, why should they not become permanently resident in Canada? Presumably they will be considered King and Queen of Canada anyway, as well as of Britain, and there seems no reason why they would have to go on living over here: they could appoint a Governor-General to represent them here, and of course they could come over and make a state visit whenever they felt like it.

This scenario is rather less unlikely than the one that Nevil Shute set out in his novel In the Wet. Shute wrote it in 1953 when he had become disenchanted with socialism and such vile institutions as the National Health Service, and he describes how the Queen had become frustrated by her government's treatment of her. While she is on a visit to Ottawa the heir to the throne indicates that he will not succeed her while this situation persists and then, with the support of the "heavily royalist" Australia and Canada, leaves England. The Government falls and the Prince of Wales becomes Governor-General while the Queen confines herself to Commonwealth matters.

(Actually, the plot is much more complicated than this; Shute was strongly anti-racist, and though a naive or even simple-minded writer in some ways, had some ideas which were ahead of his time (metal fatigue in aircraft, for example) and an extraordinary ability to tell preposterous stories with conviction: in Round the Bend he describes the life and death of an aircraft engineer who founds a new religion and may indeed have been divine.)

Australia in recent years has not been strongly royalist, but Canada with a bit of encouragement might one day be persuaded to give a permanent lodging to Kate and Wills, for this would do wonders for their tourist trade and be one in the eye for the Americans, who would be green with envy.

We could still use all our experience of mounting gorgeous spectacles and pull in the tourists every year or two when the couple and their offspring make state visits, while saving ourselves the huge sums of money they cost us as long as they go on living here, and the BBC could dispense with whoever has replaced Nicholas Witchell as Royal Crawler Pursuivant.

The Firm

With this lovely bit of Photoshopping on the cover and under the title President Windsor, Dominic Sandbrook in New Statesman last month lauded the political nous of the Queen, who has spent 60 years giving the impression that the monarchy is somehow detached from everyday political life. She is most certainly a political animal, having worked with 12 British prime ministers and 14 New Zealand prime ministers, 12 Australians and 11 Canadians. Without any training for the job, she has never, almost without exception, made a false move; we often underestimate just how much self-discipline and skill ;this must have taken.

The big problem with republicanism is that it is hard for us to imagine anyone else who could possibly make such a perfect Head of State. Sadly, although her sense of duty might induce her, in the interest of the country, to give up two or three of her residences, tell her awful family to pipe down, allow her head to be removed from our stamps and drop some of the pomp (and some of the duties) surrounding her present role, the fact that if she were to stand as a candidate in our first ever presidential election she would unquestionably get the kind of majority only previously enjoyed by leaders of totalitarian countries is irrelevant: she is too old.  

Big Nuptials

"Nuptial" can mean relating to marriage or weddings, but in zoology it refers to the characteristic breeding behaviour, coloration, or structures of some animals, e.g. nuptial plumage. There was a great deal of that on the women in the Abbey this morning and some little fellows like Rowan Atkinson and Elton John had to stand on tippy toes to find their way through the throng.

The big news of the day was, of course, Nepalese choir go missing after landing at Heathrow; immigration officials were investigating whether the group had absconded or simply decided to give the Cornwall International Male Voice Choral Festival a miss.

But I am joking. That event was momentous enough, but, except in Cornwall, of little importance compared with the royal wedding—sorry, Royal Wedding—which was going to be watched on TV, so they told us this morning, by two billion people, only half a billion less than the number who watched the funeral of a dodgy Egyptian playboy's mistress in 1997.

There were many moments and sights to treasure: the man opening the offside door of the grandparent's car when it arrived at the Abbey and holding it open while standing smartly at the salute as they both got out of the other side was a splendid bit of knockabout humour, and there was much quiet enjoyment to be had from noting the soppiness of most of the hats and some of the get-ups; those of Prince Andrew's daughters, for example, were hugely comic. It must be said, though, that the top echelon of male participants looked terrific in their military finery with gold decorative bits dangling all over them, and the Dean's golden robe was a dream, making the Primate of All England look positively dowdy.

Nuptials, 1902 state Landau, jingling escorts, kiss-kiss, surging crowds, flypast, don't we do these things well? Those Americans who have heard of Great Britain are consumed with envy. Anyway, it's all over: Nicholas Witchell, Huw Edwards and the rest of the commentators and royal correspondents—sorry, Royal Correspondents—can now get up off their knees.

The noisome Earl Spencer said afterwards that it was a jolly good show but a pity that Diana wasn't there.

Playing Mummies and Daddies

Feature article on page 12 of the Sunday Times, April 10th 2011:
"...research found that 88% of parents feared that children were under pressure to grow up too quickly, with concern about adult behaviour where children do not realise what they are doing... fears about children acting older than their age have been heightened ..."

Article in the same edition of the same rubbish newspaper, page 3:
This is three-quarters of a page under the headline "Playground princes get their big day", with two photos of small children. One shows a pair in wedding dress walking down the aisle of a church, the other has a little boy in military uniform and a little girl with veil and a froth of pink and white. The article drools on about the news that "Primary schools across the country [100 of them, apparently] are ringing wedding bells, with pupils playing the roles of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The boys and girls will be blessed by local vicars, sometimes dressed as the Archbishop of Canterbury, at pretend services in parish churches...".

At a school in Staffordshire the deputy head reported that "Each of the children designed 10 top honeymoon destinations for William and Kate...", but amid all this drivel there is a refreshing note of sanity: each of the children has "... sent a letter to Kate warning her to think carefully about marrying into the royal family".

There has been no mention of pretend honeymoons to follow the pretend weddings, but the Sunday Times article thoughtfully tells us that "the ceremonies are naturally on a smaller scale than the real thing on April 29th" and presumably this will apply to the honeymoons too; behind the bike sheds would be traditional, but not many schools have these nowadays.

And I suppose they don't do pretend divorces until the sixth form. 

Bustling over large balls

For at least seven hundred years efforts have been made to stop people playing football. Sadly, this noble cause has never had much success.

In 1314 the Mayor of London issued the following proclamation on behalf of King Edward II:
For as much as there is great noise in the city caused by bustling over large balls...from which many evils might arise which God forbid: We command and forbid on behalf of the king, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in future.

In 1349, Edward III sent a letter of complaint to the sheriffs of London declaring that "the skill of shooting with arrows was almost totally laid aside for the purpose of useless and unlawful games such as football."  The danger attending the pastime occasioned King James I of England, in the rules drawn up by himself for the recreations of his son Henry Prince of Wales, to give the following instructions:
From this court I debarre all rough and violent exercises, as the foote-ball. meeter for laming than making able the users thereof; but the exercises I would have you to use, although but moderately, not making a craft of them, are running, leaping, wrestling, fencing, dancing, and playing at the caitch, or tennise, archerie, palle-malle and suchlike other fair and pleasant field-games.

Richard II in 1389 and Henry IV in 1401 tried again to little avail.

In 1424, under James I of Scotland, an Act of Parliament was passed outlawing the game:
It is statute, and the king forbiddis. that na man play at the fute-ball under the paine of fiftie schillings, to be raised to the lord of the land als oft as he be tainted. or to the scheriffe of the lands or his ministers if the lords will not punish sik trespassours.

(On the other hand, in 1526 Henry VIII ordered a pair of football boots of leather, handstitched by the Royal Cordwainer; they cost four shillings. But perhaps he was more serious about footwear than football: at the same time he ordererd seventy-seven other pairs of boots, buskins, shoes and slippers.)

It is regrettable that our later sovereigns did not attempt to continue this salutary if fruitless campaign, and it seems unlikely that the Windsors will ever renew it.

Cheerio everybody!

No 31 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century

July 1927:  Dear Nellie, writes Ada to her friend, also in Tunbridge Wells. Congratulations on you reaching the age of discretion. Now you are able to think for yourself. 
The good-time Prince of Wales has a smoke, or perhaps (for once) not, since the cigarette looks to be added. What then was airbrushed in would now be airbrushed out.

A Good Prince

Here is a delightful essay by Max Beerbohm in which he paints a portrait of the Prince of Wales, later to become King Edward VII. In it he tells the true but little known story of the prince's violent and unprovoked assault on the wife of an elderly statesman. At some point while reading the piece you will understand why there is no record of a public apology ever having been made.

I first saw him one morning of last summer, in the Green Park. Though short, even insignificant, in stature and with an obvious tendency to be obese, he had that unruffled, Olympian air, which is so sure a sign of the Blood Royal. In a suit of white linen he looked serenely cool, despite the heat. Perhaps I should have thought him, had I not been versed in the Almanach de Gotha, a trifle older than he is. He did not raise his hat in answer to my salute, but smiled most graciously and made as though he would extend his hand to me, mistaking me, I doubt not, for one of his friends. Forthwith, a member of his suite said something to him in an undertone, whereat he smiled again and took no further notice of me.

I do not wonder the people idolise him. His almost blameless life has been passed among them, nothing in it hidden from their knowledge. When they look upon his dear presentment in the photographer's window—the shrewd, kindly eyes under the high forehead, the sparse locks so carefully distributed—words of loyalty only and of admiration rise to their lips.

For of all princes in modern days he seems to fulfil most perfectly the obligation of princely rank. In the heroic age, princes were judged according to their mastery of the sword or of the bow . We are less exigent now: we do but ask of our princes that they should live among us, be often manifest to our eyes, set a perpetual example of a right life. Too often they do not attain to our ideal. They give, it may be, a half-hearted devotion to soldiering, or pursue pleasure merely—tales of their frivolity raising now and again the anger of a public swift to envy them their temptations. But against this admirable Prince no such charges can be made. Never (as yet, at least) has he cared to 'play at soldiers.' By no means has he shocked the Puritans. Though it is no secret that he prefers the society of ladies, not one breath of scandal has ever tinged his name. Of how many English princes could this be said?

Upon the one action that were well obliterated from his record I need not long insist. It seems that the wife of an aged ex-Premier came to have an audience and pay her respects. Hardly had she spoken when the Prince, in a fit of unreasoning displeasure, struck her a violent blow with his clenched fist. Had His Royal Highness not always stood so far aloof from political contention, it had been easier to find a motive for this unmannerly blow. The incident is deplorable, but it belongs, after all, to an earlier period of his life; and, were it not that no appreciation must rest upon the suppression of any scandal, I should not have referred to it.

For the rest, I find no stain, soever faint, upon his life. The simplicity of his tastes is the more admirable for that he is known to care not at all for what may be reported in the newspapers. He has never touched a card, never entered a play-house. In no stud of racers has he indulged, preferring to the finest blood-horse ever bred a certain white and woolly lamb with a blue riband to its neck. This he is never tired of fondling: it is with him, like the roebuck of Henri Quatre, wherever he goes.

Suave and simple his life is! Narrow in range, it may be, but with every royal appurtenance of delight. Round the flower-garden at Sandringham runs an old wall of red brick, streaked with ivy and topped infrequently with balls of stone. By its iron gates, that open to a vista of flowers, stand two kind policemen, guarding the Prince's procedure along that bright vista. As his perambulator rolls out of the gate of St. James's Palace, he stretches out his tiny hands to the scarlet sentinels. An obsequious retinue follows him over the lawns of the White Lodge, cooing and laughing, blowing kisses and praising him. Yet do not imagine his life has been all gaiety! The afflictions that befall royal personages always touch very poignantly the heart of the people, and it is not too much to say that all England watched by the cradle-side of Prince Edward in that dolorous hour, when first the little battlements rose about the rose-red roof of his mouth. I am glad to think that not one querulous word did His Royal Highness, in his great agony, utter. They only say that his loud, incessant cries bore testimony to the perfect lungs for which the House of Hanover is most justly famed.

As yet, when we know not even what his first words will be, it is too early to predict what verdict posterity will pass upon him. Already he has won the hearts of the people; but, in the years which, it is to be hoped, still await him, he may accomplish more. Attendons! He stands alone among European princes—but, as yet, only with the aid of a chair.

The Order of the Garter

...was founded by Edward III in 1348 to fulfil a vow made at the end of the Great Windsor Tournament of 1344. Its foundation legend is probably true: the beautiful Countess of Shrewsbury dropped her blue garter as she was dancing with the king at a ball; ladies at that time did not wear pants. The king stooped, picked up the garter and bound it round his own knee as a favour for the next day's tournament, silencing the sniggers of the bystanders with the words, long since the motto of the Order, Honi soit qui mal y pense (Evil be to him who thinks evil of it). Her husband was killed at the tourney and this placed the king under a moral obligation to fulfil the oath.

from A Companion to British History

[You are awarded this honour for who you are, not for anything you've done; Lord Melbourne said of it: "There's no damn nonsense about merit". Those whose know that soie is the French for silk may be confused by the false suggestion that the motto actually means "Honey, your silk stocking is hanging down".]

Getting down to it

The other day Prince Philip gave an interview celebrating the 50th anniversary of a Design Council prize which bears his name, and it was good to see that age has not diminished his notable lack of discretion.

The duke said that the quality of design had in some areas declined, and he picked television sets as an example. Harking back to an age when the sets were simple, he said that nowadays to work out how to operate a TV set you "practically have to make love to the thing".

And then he went on: ..."so you end up lying on the floor with a torch in your teeth, a magnifying glass and an instruction book".

No title

Actually he has nine major ones and many others; it was just that I couldn't think of a caption for this magnificent picture.

Please, no comments.

King Bill

By way of light relief to the discussions about the world economy, we might give some thought to another current news item, the prospect of amending the 1701 Act which bans Catholics from marrying into the royal family. Gordon Brown is said to be in favour of this and of the proposal to amend the primogeniture rules, which state that the first-born son of the monarch takes precedence in the succession over older sisters. Both these ideas are likely to evoke a great wave of indifference in the British public, but it is the second which is the more interesting, not because it is likely to have any effect for many years, but because one can speculate what would have happened if it had become law during Victoria's reign.

For a start, her eldest daughter, Princess Victoria, would have inherited the throne in 1901. She was the dowager Empress of Germany at the time and died only seven months later. Her son Kaiser Wilhelm II would then have succeeded her and although his upbringing had made him less than enthusiastic about the British he might after a few years have got to like us better and prevented his two realms from going to war in 1914. He might even have changed his family name to, say, Hohenzollern-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Balmoral (he liked the Scottish castle: the photo shows him and his father Frederick III there, heavily be-kilted*, in 1862).

The Kaiser-King-Emperor lived on until 1941, and his son Frederick would then have reigned over the vast Anglo-German Empire until he died in 1951, to be succeeded by Princess Marie-Cécile (or Louis-Ferdinand? I've lost track). It is possible that all this would have been worse than keeping the Windsors, though of course not having two world wars wouldn't have been altogether a bad thing.

*mit der Schottenrock

Style icon takes over Wales

No 15 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century

January 1970: A cryptic message from EP in Kensington to Mr Keatey in Brooklyn: So far no action. Everything else is AOK.
One almost feels sorry for the young Charles in the mad regalia of the investiture, whose symbolic staff and sword he grips as if his knuckles would break. He is trying hard to look like someone in history. Norman Parkinson, a royal regular, was responsible for the high camp of the photograph. The fatal design mismatch is the old style ermine cape over a modern military uniform, making neither look distinguished or convincing,

Fitba' crazy

After being caught (momentarily) last Wednesday by a hoax news item, I merely smiled indulgently when I saw in the same edition of the Guardian a rather silly joke in the last paragraph of an article by their Arts correspondent about an exhibition of Henry VIII's armour and weapons at the Tower of London:
Another quirk to the exhibition is the display of what is thought to be the oldest football in the world. It was discovered in the 1980s in the roof above Mary Queen of Scots' bedroom at Stirling Castle, and it is thought that Mary—a keen football fan and possible player—may have put it there to ward away demons.

It was cheating a bit, I thought, to slip an April Fool joke into the last paragraph of a perfectly serious and accurate, if boring, article. But I was wrong, for it was not a joke: Mary's love of sport has been quoted by her biographers since the sixteenth century, though it is definitely not true that she was the highest scorer ever for St Mirren.

The song from which I took the title of this post goes as follows:
Noo ye a' ken my big brither Jock,
His richt name is Johnny Shaw,
We'll he's lately jined a fitba' club,
For he's daft aboot fitba''
He's twa black een already
An three teeth oot by the root,
Whaur his face did come in contact wi'
Some ither fellow's boot.
CHORUS
He's fitba' crazy fegs,
He's clean stane mad,
His fitba' capers robbed him o'
Whit wee bit sense he had'
It wid tak a dizen servents
His clase tae patch and scrub,
Since Jock's become a member o' the Dooley fitba' club.

This is the first known song about organised football but it was written by one James Curran in the nineteenth century so Mary couldn't have sung it on the terraces.

An earlier Prince Charlie

"So it's agreed. We support your claim to the

throne if you appear on our shortbread tins."

David Haldane, 1982 (The Best of Punch)

Harri Tudur

The Tudors provided five sovereigns who reigned over us, one after another, for 118 years. The first, Henry VII, was perhaps the cleverest, and certainly the most hard-working man to wear the English crown, his son was the most colourful, and his three grandchildren were successively a sickly and short-lived boy, an excessively devout woman whose only achievement was to make the English the undeviating enemies of Rome for three hundred years by publicly burning at the stake three churchmen and three hundred humble Protestants, and finally one with the body of a weak, feeble woman but the heart and stomach of a king, who gave her name to an age.

The founder of this royal dynasty had a very poor title to the throne and seized it by force of arms, then by his cunning, industry and skill held it without more executions than were strictly necessary for nearly a quarter of a century, ending the Wars of the Roses and leaving England with a modernised government and legal system, richer and happier than it had been under his predecessor Richard III.

So it is unfair that he has been less celebrated on stage and screen than his flashier descendants. Shakespeare was a propagandist for the Tudors but gives Henry VII only walk-on parts, and in TV and films he scarcely features at all. There was an excellent six-part 1972 TV series called The Shadow of the Tower which did him justice, but it made little impression and was never repeated, and, as a (literally) crowning insult, in Olivier's Richard III Henry pops up at Bosworth Field played by Stanley Baker, an appropriate casting for a Welsh tough, but ruined by giving him a silly auburn wig.

Charles wins the prize

From Counterknowledge.com:

We can now announce that the winner of the Counterknowledge Award for 2008 is HRH The Prince of Wales. Prince Charles received 25% of the 2000 votes, beating the Church of Scientology by just over 2%.

The Counterknowledge Award goes to the person or institution that has done most to disseminate dodgy science or bogus history during the year.

In early January, the Prince became the longest-serving king-in-waiting in British history—not one of the most sought-after sobriquets. But Prince Charles isn’t one for twiddling his thumbs, so what did the old boy get up to?

In August, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, the Prince announced that food corporations were “conducting a gigantic experiment with nature”. Totally disregarding, or perhaps ignorant of, science, the future King of England remarked, “if they think it's somehow going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another then again count me out, because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time.”

In November, Prince Charles caused consternation by telling Jonathan Dimbleby that when he is monarch he will speak out on “matters of national and international importance”. Now we’re not 100% clear on what those matters might be, but December saw the Prince’s organic food company, Duchy Originals, announce the imminent arrival of a “herbal remedies” line. According to Duchy, it will be available early next year and reflects “the prince’s passion for adopting an integrated approach to healthcare”. Gawd help us.

As promised, the prize, a bottle of snake oil, will be delivered to Clarence House in January.

The National Health Executive (the Independent Journal for Senior Health Service Managers) asked for an article about quack medicine and David Colquhoun, professor of pharmacology at UCL wrote this before Christmas. Here is a paragraph from it describing some of the major quackeries, several of which Prince Charles recommends for consideration as part of his "integrated approach to healthcare".

Homeopathy: giving patients medicines that contain no medicine whatsoever.
Herbal medicine: giving patients an unknown dose of a medicine, of unknown effectiveness and unknown safety.
Acupuncture: a theatrical placebo, with no real therapeutic benefit in most if not all cases.
Chiropractic: an invention of a 19th century salesmen, based on nonsensical principles, and shown to be no more effective than other manipulative therapies, but less safe.
Reflexology: plain old foot massage, overlaid with utter nonsense about non-existent connections between your feet and your thyroid gland.
Nutritional therapy: self-styled ‘nutritionists’ making unjustified claims about diet to sell unnecessary supplements.

Substitute

The mention of Raymond Chandler's fondness for Bourbon in one of last month's posts reminded me of a story:

The scene is a glittering reception at the U.S. embassy in Vienna. An American matron dripping with jewels is clearly having trouble with the barman and becoming more and more agitated.

A white-haired gentleman, his chest covered with the insignia of noble orders, approaches her and asks if he can be of help:

"Yeah, I wanna Bourbon!"

The old gentleman inclines his head in a courtly bow:

"Would a Habsburg do?"

Rejoicing in Thimphu

Over the past five years forty-four hats have been featured in Other Men's Flowers. They are variously impressive, frightening, preposterous, awe-inspiring, puzzling, of historical significance or just good for a laugh, and have nothing in common except that at some point in history they have been put on someone's head.

Until now, none of them have been pretty, but this one is. So too is its wearer, who could easily be a new and instantly popular character in any soap. In fact, he is the fifth king of Bhutan and his name is Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck. He was crowned earlier this month by his father, the former king who resigned in 2006.

His crown is unusual as crowns go in that it looks really comfy (and certainly it is much more fetching than the one his fellow Himalayan monarch, King Gyanendra of Nepal, was forced to wear). The thing on top of it I took to be a model of a Buddhist monk, but in fact is a raven's head, and the whole thing is called the Raven Crown, which inexplicably makes its wearer the druk gyalpo, or Dragon King.

Three Royal Princes

No 5 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century

September 1922: D from Harrogate to Miss Bowling in Hutton le Hole: We have called to see Miss Bellamys. They have a nice house & Dr Bellamy has just been nice and invited us out on Friday... Es gibt etwas unterschied zwischen Ellie and Miss Bellamy but I suppose they'll get on all right. I shall come early on Saturday it gets so busy later - so if you've asked a tennis crowd I shall be back in time.

D breaks into slightly misunderstood German to convey secretly that Ellie and Miss Bellamy are at odds.

Here are the princes at the races, young men seemingly at large and only just emerged from an almost brutal upbringing. Had they met Macbeth's witches they would have been amazed at at their prophecy that two of them would be King but only one crowned, that one would be King and Duke thereafter and another the reverse.

On the left and looking more at home than the others in sporty gear is the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII/Duke of Windsor). In the middle is Prince Henry (later Duke of Gloucester). On the right is the future King George VI.