THE PLACE OF PAGEANTRY IN NATIONAL THOUGHT.
IT is only on rare occasions, such as the coronation of a King, the opening of Parliament, or the reception of a foreign Monarch, that the people of these islands are re- minded—and the reminder comes to most of them nearly always with a slight shock of surprise, and also, we believe, of pleasure—of the pomps and pageantries which belong to an hereditary Monarchy. Of late years, perhaps, the mind of the people has become rather more accustomed to the gilt and the ceremony of Royal processions than was the case in the years during which Queen Victoria lived in almost unbroken seclusion after the death of the Prince Consort. Until King Edward drove from Buckingham Palace to Westminster three years ago, forty years had passed since Parliament bad been opened in full state; and though between 1861 and 1901 there were the two Jubilee processions, there were few other Royal ceremonies which took place to remind the nation of the official existence of such a person as the Earl Marshal. When those ceremonies did take place, there was nearly always to be heard a new note struck in the chorus of the thought of the day. Men were reminded that the life of a nation ruled over by a Monarch is more than mere grey business, hardly won progression, and successful bargaining ; they were carried back in thought to the days when Henry VIII. rode with Francis I. on the Field cf the Cloth of Gold, or when Raleigh threw his cloak before Elizabeth at Tilbury; and if any thought was uppermost, it was, perhaps, one of pride in a national ancestry To some, possibly, such ceremonies might seem unnecessary, but to none could they appear meaningless.
There was an echo of the sound of these great pageantria
in the news which was published last week of the death of Sir Albert Woods, the Garter King-at-Arms. How many of the thousands who lined the streets and the drives in. the Parks at the funeral of Queen Victoria, or the Coronation of the King, or at the opening of Parliament, knew what were the precise duties and the history of the offices of the Earl Marshal, the three Kings-at-Arms, the Heralds, and the Poursuivants? Or for that matter, how many average Englishmen could tell you offhand how many Kings-at- Arms there are, or how many Heralds and Poursuivants, and what is the derivation of the name Norroy, or what is the constitution of the Scottish and Irish Heraldic Colleges, and whether there is a Welsh College of Arms ? Probably very few persons could answer such questions readily, since heraldry is not a science which is widely studied. It stands, indeed, so far as most people are concerned, on very much the same plane as higher mathematics. Its intricacies are deep, and do not appear to lead anywhere in particular; it does not help any one to succeed in business, or even to get on in society; in a word, it is regarded as Macaulay regarded it, as " useless." In just the same way certain branches of mathematics have been regarded even by the greatest of mathematicians. There is a well-known story of a Cambridge Professor who burst into the dining-room of a fellow enthusiast in mathematical research with the exclamation: " My dear So-and-so ! I must tell you the news—the glorious news. I have to-day dis- covered—discovered for myself—a branch of mathematics leading into a region which no one has ever explored before, and which will be totally useless to anybody !" By many, perhaps, the science of heraldry is regarded in mach the same spirit. Yet heraldry has, after all, its uses.
At first sight, it may seem contradictory that a nation such as ours should view with approval and pleasure the trappings, the ceremony, the gilt, and the punctilio of great Royal functions. For, to all appearances, we are a nation caring very little for show, and certainly making no attempt either by the decoration of our cities, or by the manner in which we dress ourselves, to make pomp or colour part of our daily lives. The scheme of the life of London is, as Whistler might have put it, an arrangement in grey and black. It happens now and then, in a day in April or June, that the great buildings of the city take their colour from the clouds and the sky, and that pink and orange and green and purple gleam on old walls and bridges ; but the keynote is grey and black. Smoke-stained pillars, drab squares, grey open spaces, drifting curtains of mist and fog ; men in black coats, women in grey gowns ; that is the sum total of the picture. And does the prevailing greyness of it all form any kind of reflec- tion of the immanent attitude towards life of the city's workers ? Is their outlook upon existence tinged with shadows, suffused with dark monotonies ? If so, has there been a change in the trend of the national thought, from the highest to the lowest, since the days when Pepys took serious thought every morning as to whether he should wear plum- colour or puce, and when for poorer men murrey and blue, or some other bright arrangement, took the place of black merino P Are we, that is, less high-spirited, less addicted to gaiety and display, less irresponsible or optimistic, than in the days when pageantry formed so much larger a feature of our national existence ?
It is not-a very easy question to answer; but there is some kind of conclusion to be drawn, we think, from a contempla- tion of the attitude of the nation towards great issues, when great issues are raised; and a comparison of that attitude with the obvious pleasure which processions of gilt chariots, heralds in gorgeous tabards, and horses in velvet trappings give to the mind of the watching people. The outlook of the nation upon life as a whole, and the national life in particular, cannot be said to be pessimistic or down-hearted when, as happened five years ago, the people eagerly, almost gaily, embark on a war carried on six thousand miles away, and involving the expenditure of hundreds of millions of pounds ; when, too, after such a war has revealed all sorts of weaknesses and deficiencies, only to be remedied by years of hard work and thought, tbeir minds are capable of being suddenly diverted from that hard work and thought by a single throw of the dice by one of their popular politicians. The glamour and-the colour of the great adventures of life must still appeal to them with immense insistence if after
such a war they can still regard with a kind of complacency the prospects—however vague—of another war, involving who knows what huge changes and suffering? And is that spirit of complacency, of readiness to face any issue, whether of wars of the sword or wars of commerce, a bad sign, a sign of decay ? Not, certainly, if it is unaccompanied by a spirit of listlessness and carelessness ; if we have not come to believe that our heritage is so great that we can do what we please with it without diminishing its power. But that involves a question which only the years can answer.
In any case, we believe, the spirit of mind which is stirred by the spectacle of great Royal pageantries is just that spirit which, if it is not allowed to develop into contemptuous pride, does tend to make and keep a nation great and happy. To the cynic, perhaps, watching the heralds proclaiming the slow procession ; the outriders, the crimson-and-gold trappings of the cream-coloured horses ; the huge swaying gilt chariot in which the King and Queen ride ; the escorts of scarlet guards on black horses,—to him the whole stately proces- sion may seem to be something merely childish, a step back into the atmosphere of the nursery and Hans Andersen. But to the great numbers of the people who, however philosophical they may be, are never cynical in the mass, the heralds and the outriders and the chariots mean some- thing much more. No doubt, in the first instance, the pleasure which they feel in gazing at them is partly derived from the fact that men and women in the mass, like children, are attracted to what is bright and glittering. The scarlet and gold and silver come as a sudden splash of colour into their grey lives, and they are pleased just as children are pleased when brought into a well-lighted room. But deep beneath that surface of easily stirred pleasure there is somewhere a strong current of pride. It is the pride which all old nations have in their past—in the knowledge that what they are watching to-day was watched by their fathers hundreds of years ago— that they are taking part in the life, not only of their contemporaries, but of the Kings and great men who have gone before them. They feel deeply that they have traditions which they must not dishonour ; that the leaves of a huge book are suddenly opened to them, for reflection on the past and the forming of purpose for the future. The procession passes, and the grey shadows again come down. But thought has been stirred,—thought, perhaps, which will influence action. Men always dislike being warned of evil to come, but they are never made angry by being reminded of good that is past. It is the greatest of the provinces of pageantry that it reminds.
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