TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF CLARENCE.
THERE is something truly tragic in the fate of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale, though he died in his own bed, surrounded by loving faces, and of what has now become the most ordinary and, so to speak, domestic of all forms of disease. The contrast between his expecta- tions and his destiny, his career as it might have been and his career as Providence willed it to be, is so amazing that it might touch, and we believe has touched, the dullest imagination among the myriads in all lands who, from the moment his illness was known to be of a dangerous kind, watched with the keenest interest for the bulletins. Born the heir to the first place among the hundred millons who speak English, destined by law and nature to occupy the only throne which looks out on dominions on every con- tinent, he might have reigned over two generations of our children, and have given a name, as his grandmother has done, to a division of a stirring century. Men say he was not a strong man ; but we English ask little of our Kings, and he could have sat there, at the top of the pyramid, the apparent pivot and centre of the action of our race, the silent but every- where visible standard-bearer of the flag which represents the unity of our people, their history, and their pride. There can be no prouder position on earth, and he has passed away, struck down, as it were, in a moment, though by no human hand, to join that group of shadowy English figures, the only son of Henry I., the eldest son of James I., the only son of Queen Anne who outlived babyhood, the eldest son of George II., who all died without reaching the throne, and whom, therefore, great as their rank was in life, history scarcely remembers, and the memoir-writer passes by with a few scarcely intelligible and utterly useless notes. Each of them might have changed the course of history, and each passed like a shadow flitting across a camera obscura, never defined, never recognised, rousing only the interest of a puzzle. There is tragedy in all those figures, and in this one it was deepened by all surrounding circumstances. The fullness of life was just opening before the Duke of Clarence. He had been kept, perhaps wisely, perhaps accidentally, rather in the shade ; but he had just won, not without struggles, the bride he had chosen for himself ; he was to be married in six weeks, and was then to take his natural place in a world-wide society, when the summons came, a mere cold caught at a funeral, developing into influenza, and deepening into what is now almost the deadliest of all quick-killing diseases. His death, a blow to the Royal House, and a great shock to the English people, must be a crushing misery to his affianced bride, the Princess May, who suffers a lot almost harder than his own, who sees her lover and a throne torn from her by the same blow, and who, about to enjoy a full cup at once of affection and ambition, finds it, when scarcely tasted, turned to gall. The deep sympathy of the whole country, always touched by domestic tragedy, will bring, we trust, some consolation, as time will bring some healing, to the heart of this most luckless of Princesses, only yesterday the subject of showers of congratulations and presents from all con- tinents, an object of loving envy to the maidens of the whole civilised world. There is no help for her sorrow, but the profound pity of mankind, including the enemies of her House, may take something, however little, from its sting.
It is vain to say, as Radicals when all is smiling always say—in grief they have a different note—that the feeling we have described is nearly all factitious. Much of it often is, especially the slavish court paid by society to the cadets of the Royal House, whose absurd pretensions only throw into relief the unrealities of their position ; but the feeling for the Throne, and therefore for all its inevitable occupants, is deep and genuine. Let a Prince of Wales be never so unpopular, if he has a fight with death and wins it, his victory acts as a new baptism, all that preceded being quietly wiped out. It is of the essence of Monarchy that the monarch and his household should seem to his subjects the central household of them all, one in whose joys, and more especially in whose griefs, they have all a personal sympathy. That sympathy, in spite of the spread of a vague kind of Republicanism, chiefly displayed in petty meannesses about Royal grants, is, we may depend upon it, still a living force within the British community. Nothing that occurs in the small group which is really Royal—which may, that is, be called one day to occupy the throne—ever escape's the attention of the public; and that attention, whenever an event, whether joyous or sad, breaks the monotony of ceremonial, is transformed into the keenest interest. The world knew nothing of the Princess May until told that she was to become "bride of the heir of the Kings of the sea," and then from English com- munities all over the earth, it rained telegrams, congratu- lations, promises of gifts the details of which it had racked human fancy and ingenuity to devise. The Duke of Clarence was but a name to the majority ; but the bulletin announcing his danger turned multitudes cold, and millions upon millions would have made serious sacrifices if only through them he might escape. It is foolish to doubt the fact of this common and vivid interest, and we fail altogether to understand why it should be condemned, or even criticised. If devotion to the State be a virtue —and we do not understand any English Radicals to question that—there will be devotion to its symbol ; and whether that symbol be an eagle, or a flag, or a monarch, seems to us immaterial save only in this, that the masses will always feel most for the symbol which it has been their habit to regard with reverence. Grant that the Republic is the higher ideal—and we certainly should grant the proposition if we believed mankind to be civilised enough to accept it—the Monarchy exists, and while it exists, to be interested in it, to be devoted to it, to care for its prosperity and grandeur, is to the nation which maintains the institution a strong cement. Nothing whatever is gained by loosening the bond, by chipping it, by boring here and there little holes in it so that it may bind less firmly. When the fitting hour arrives, if it ever does arrive, let us replace it by another bond ; but in the meantime, the Englishman who is genuinely careless of what becomes of those who occupy or must hereafter occupy the throne, will rarely be found to care what be- comes either of his country or his race. The emotion of loyalty is the antiseptic which prevents, or, if you will, delays, for all things perish, the rotting of the mighty fabric we call Great Britain. We believe that, with that strange political instinct which has supplied to them for ages the place of reflective thought, the English, some unconsciously, some consciously, accept this view in their hearts, and that while the Monarchy stands, the joy or grief of the Sovereign, or of an heir to the Throne, will be to them as their own. A death like that of the Duke- of Clarence moves them not only to emotion, but to thought, and in scores of thousands of households the succession is anxiously discussed, always with the conclu- sion which, because of their interest in the Throne, they have a right to reach, " Let Prince George be married quickly." That is the instinctive thought of the people even in its sorrow, and it certainly shows no lack of the desire that the dynasty should continue in the unbroken line which, by keeping up the sentiment of as it were inevitable continuousness, has in all ages and all countries been one source of the strength of Thrones. That, however, though an unavoidable thought, is not the governing one of to-day, which is rightly given to sorrow for a Prince before whom such a destiny seemed stretching, and who has sunk, disappointed of every earthly hope, into a premature grave.
Previous page
