THE QUEEN IN WHITECHAPEL.
THE visit paid by the Queen on Tuesday to the London Hospital is one of the wisest and most gracious things her Majesty has lately been advised to do, and this not only because
the Queen presented herself in public. It is true her Majesty's habit of secluding herself at the extremities of her kingdom—in Balmoral and Osborne—and avoiding London as if she had some personal dislike to the metropolis, annoys her people, makes loyalists say sharp things about the grandeur to be derived from invisibility, and encourages Republicans to point out how well the kingdom gets along without a Court. England, they say, prospers not only without a Tuileries, but without an Elysee. It is not, however, " the rich who make revolutions"' and the discontent of "society," even when "society" talks epigrams, signifies little more to the Monarchy than the grumblings of the West-End tradesmen, who fancy that a resident Sovereign would make money circulate, and throw an extra per- centage of profit into their tills. The Throne will not fall in England because the Sovereign does not give parties, nor will the " realm " become a " Commonwealth " because silk-mercers and fashionable dress-makers retire with great fortunes in twenty years, instead of in fifteen. London, as the Mayor told James L, may lack a Court, but the Thames is always happily left behind. But there is always a danger in England, and especially in London, lest the central idea of monarchy, that which has preserved it through so many ages, should gradually fade away out of men's minds, and be replaced by another less favourable to the continu- ance of the institution. That central idea is the equality of classes before the Monarch, the notion that the Sovereign, and the Sovereign alone, has a direct and equal relation to every class, however humble; that he or she is the King or Queen of the working tailors, as much as of the well-to-do, and as much interested for their well- being, if not in it. An aristocracy, however wise or chivalric, necessarily seems self-regarding ; a bourgeoisie, however well- meaning—and ours took up the Income-tax to take off taxes on food—necessarily seems selfish. A universal-suffrage assembly, however full of ideas, necessarily submits too generally to the con- trol of the most numerous single class. But a Sovereign is, in theory at all events, above classes, opens her Courts to the smallest tinker equally with the highest peer,—is as much con- cerned if poor women are crushed in a procession as if rich ladies are run down in the Solent by a Royal yacht. All are on an equal basis before the Sovereign, all equally entitled to his grace when its display is required, all equally required to pay obeisance to the national standard. The Sovereign, like the Church, if not national, has no right to be established. There is some risk of that idea being forgotten in this kingdom. There is no danger of the people accusing the Queen of despotism, or harshness, or undue interference with her advisers ; but there is danger of their thinking of the Throne as a toy of the upper classes, some- thing which pleases them, which may be very good, but which has no relation to the people at large ; as a statue on a pyramid, which may be beautiful, but is too high up to be visible ; as an article of useful luxury, but one with which the non- luxurious have nothing to do. An excellent thing is a silver fork, but the plating of the fork, be it ever so good, is not a question which concerns more than, say, twelve people in a hundred. The rest forget the forks, or are even contemptuous that they should be wanted. It is one of the misfortunes of England that classes, though they do not hate one another, are so separated by cir- cumstances that they have few pleasant interests in common; and the special misfortune of London, that those who work and those who enjoy—or are supposed to enjoy, which is politically the same thing—live so absolutely apart, in different cities, with different names, different architecture, we might almost add—for though it sounds absurd, it is in some respects literally true—a different climate. The London smoke, the London crowding, the London inability to keep houses white, all do their worst at the East End, till West-enders constantly say, and sometimes feel, that the very air of the two divisions of the same metro- polis is as different as the air of Leeds and Craven. The East End does not hate the West End as Belleville hates the Boulevards, but it is very liable to a fancy that the West End is no part of itself, is a different entity, with a society and a set of Courts and a Parliament and a Sovereign, all of its own, all excellent, perhaps, in their way, but all intended for the cities of W. and S.W., and not for the great towns E.C., E., and S.E. The Athenaeum Club is not an evil institution, but what is it to Shadwell ? No idea not involving hostility to esta- blished order could be more dangerous to its continuance, and any incident, however trivial, which helps to dissipate it, is an incident to be welcomed. No act of the Sovereign could be better adapted to keep her existence fresh in the popular mind than a Royal visit to the grey region where the hard-fisted live in such endless multitudes ; and we think the journey of Tuesday, so far from being absurdly ceremonious, was only a little too deficient in state and pageant, the visit being too short, the paraphernalia too few, the pace of the Queen's horses too fast, and the notice in the Court Circular too formal. Philosophers may smile or sigh, but the people in Whitechapel were charmed with their guest, felt more content because they had seen a middle- aged lady driving past in a baroache, and were distinctly complimented by her visit to the only building in their midst which they all alike recognise as beneficial. She was Queen of them, then, also, and not of the " big folk" and the Highlanders only ; that was right, and now the grey sky would have more red in it. That was their feeling, and though we can conceive of a higher one—loyalty to the ideal State, which is made by all, yet contains all—still the lower feeling is, in its way, good, is English, and is certainly one with which people " whose role it is," as Francis of Austria said, "-to be royalist" have no cause to quarrel. They ought to feel, even if philosophers are unwise enough not to see, how imuch a semi-civilised State like ours, resting always on a .crowd which perpetually sways and shifts, owes to the feeling so naively expressed by the burnt little child, Kate Ambler, who thought, being four years old, that she should get well immediately if only she might see the Queen. It is as silly to neglect such a feeling as it would have been of her Majesty to neglect the little sufferer, whose name, merely because the Queen hissed her, is now familiar throughout the islands ; and there 'cannot be a doubt that it is too often neglected, that the dim 'multitudes on whom the structure rests are too seldom .allowed an opportunity of expressing an interest in the one institution which is as close to them as to the richer or snore highly placed. They express it heartily enough when they get the chance, and not ungracefully, putting all their best in front, with a sense quite pleasant to see, that they are not spec- tators of a show, but hosts of Royalty for the time being. We fancy, from the reporters' hints, that the Queen, who was, for a wonder, a little late, was driven too fast, at a rate which sur- prised and provoked the crowds till they almost forgot to cheer ; but the careful preparations, all voluntary, the immense masses in the streets, and the general tone of the district, all testified to a genuine sentiment of welcome which on such an occasion is loyalty. In some of the preparations there was a trace of humility, a consciousness of poverty, which was quite pathetic: Many of the inscriptions touched antithetically on the difference between the poverty of the district and the wealth of its hearti- ness in welcome ; paper on many houses supplied the brightness which the West-End seeks in silks and carpeting, and one man at all events, owner of a shop with a beehive for sign, stumbled on an inscription fuller of meaning and truthfulness than the West-End has yet managed to invent, " The Bees welcome their Queen ;" while another was much happier in his quotation, "I was sick and ye visited me," than 'those who use texts generally are. The inscriptions to " the Empress" showed that Whitechapel appreciated the grandiose, as well as the Premier, and like him, did not perceive that the heiress of Egbert is not exactly elevated by being promoted to the rank of .Josephine Be,auharnais ; while dozens of mottoes testified to the personal liking and reverence felt for the Queen, and the satis- faction of the district that an errand of mercy should take their Sovereign among them. No doubt, curiosity entered into the matter, and love of excitement too, but then curiosity and ex- citement alike proceed from an interest it should be the policy of Royalists to cultivate. Forgetfulness is more fatal to Royalty than any ideal preference for an elected head, and the fierce indivi- dualism of Englishmen is not the virtue which specially requires oultivation.
The arguments we have advanced about Whitechapel apply, though in a less degree, to the greater portion of the kingdom. Few districts in Great Britain or Ireland are quite so devoid of colour as Whitechapel, nor can life in the country ever be quite so dull as life in the East End. But we regret, in the interest of the Monarchy, that the old custom of the Sovereigns moving about the country has been so entirely given up. No country town, however great or however important in the Empire, ever receives the smallest recognition from the Throne, except, indeed, it be through a flying visit from the Prince of Wales. The Queen goes to the extremity of the Highlands, or even to Germany, but Ireland has never seen her since she was a widow, nor has Wales ever been honoured with her presence. The Eastern Counties know the Prince of Wales; but not the Sovereign ; and Cornwall and Lincolnshire, the Ridings and the Midland Counties, are equally unvisited. Their gentry do not mind that,
for they come to London, and when there, are incurious about the personality of a Sovereign of whom they have all learned as much as they will ever know—which is very little—until the memoirs begin to throw a flood of light upon the Victorian age. But their people are less mobile, less able or inclined to leave their own abodes, and would like, if only from an intelligent curiosity, to see the person who in theory bears so singular a relation to them all, at least once in a generation. If it cannot be, it cannot be, and there is an end ; but the impossibility is not favourable to loyalty, more especially when its reasons are so faintly understood. The Queen would be as warmly received in Liverpool as in Whitechapel, in Bristol as in the City, and her visit to either town would do much to rekindle, or if that word is not courtly enough, to confirm personal loyalty among her subjects of the South and West. The educated understand that a Progress involves much labour, much tedium and many harassing incidents, but the vulgar will never see that their affection can be more oppressive than the attentions of the Sovereigns between Dover and the centre of Germany. They will do very well without a visit, as Whitechapel also would have done, but we do not know that indifferent content is the condition of mind which it most benefits Royalty to produce. If the Queen dislikes visiting her dominions, there is no more to be said, and no serious interest will be greatly the worse; but the most loyal may be permitted to regret a seclusion which leaves the old with only the recollection of a Court and the young without an idea of one.
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