Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2222 page)

Similar exhibitions of ludicrous ostentation and wretched taste took place at Lisbon and at Malta with this noticeable difference, however, that the reception at Lisbon was directed by a foreign sovereign, and was, on that very account, an excusable piece of folly. The King of Portugal might naturally enough fall into the mistake of supposing that he was bound out of common politeness (to say nothing of common regard for his own diplomatic interests) to take formal public notice of the Queen’s son, as some return for the attention which he himself received from the Court when he visited this country. The King of Portugal was not to be expected to feel with Englishmen on such a purely national question as that involved in the professional education of the Prince. For these reasons we can look composedly enough on the arrival of the Portuguese Royal Barge alongside of the Euryalus; and we can be well content to be merely amused by the reported astonishment of everybody at the alacrity with which the Prince jumped into the barge-an astonishment arising, we presume, from a general idea that the descent of a Queen’s son from a Queen’s ship’s side, could only be accomplished by a species of solemn procession, or by a stage-walk, or by any other means, except the means natural to a lively lad of fourteen who can make good use of his legs.

But the case is altered, when we get to Malta. Here, in an English possession, where the authorities had no excuse for awkwardly thwarting the Queen’s intentions, and mischievously elevating her son above the free sea-training and the impartial sea-discipline which can alone make a sailor of him here, the sickening servility of these receptions of the young Prince reached its climax. The governor, the council, the judges, the archbishop, the Protestant bishop, the clergy, the nobility, and all the other grandees in the island received the midshipman in solemn assembly on the steps of the palace. Whether they fell on their knees at his approach, or whether they walked backwards till they got in-doors, is not mentioned-but it is asserted, quite seriously, that a levEe was held; and that, wherever the Prince went, there a procession persistently went with him, both before and behind. There was a ball. too (the Midshipman’s partners duly chronicled), and an illumination; and there would have been more to-do, if the Midshipman had not “greatly chagrined” the Maltese, by graciously condescending to allow his Captain to proceed on his cruise! But the crowning absurdity of all was accomplished by making the midshipman of the Euryalus publicly review the troops of the garrison. When we had arrived at this part of the newspaper narrative, nothing else that it might have contained would have astonished us. After reading of all the soldiers in Malta being reviewed by a sailor of the age of fourteen, we should not have felt the least surprised at being further informed of the governor boxing the compass, the judges holystoning the decks, or the Archbishop borrowing the boatswain’s whistle, and piping all hands, out of compliment to the Prince, in the very pulpit itself.

What is to stop this fawning perversion of Prince Alfred from the plain professional purpose to which his parents have so wisely devoted him? Who is to prevent these abject authorities from doing their best to spoil a frank, straightforward, natural lad, who is promising so well at the fair outset of his career? It is not easy to suggest an answer to these questions. How are people, who have no tact, no taste, no natural sense of what is appropriate and no instinctive terror of what is ridiculous-who seem to be influenced, partly, by the childish pleasure of putting on fine clothes, with the adult folly superadded of feeling proud at publicly exhibiting them; and, partly by the imperious necessity of cringing and crawling, which is the motive power that works in mean natures-how are such people as these to be reached by any ordinary process of remonstrance? Argument, entreaty, reproof, contempt; the pen of the writer, the tongue of the orator, are all shivered alike against the adamantine insensibility to every species of intellectual attack which distinguishes the genuine Flunkey nature. The one idea which occurs to us, in connection with this very disheartening part of the subject-and which we beg leave, in conclusion, to express with all possible respect is, that the Queen her self might possibly come to the rescue of her son before it is too late to save him. Her Majesty has been pestered with tens of thousands of Addresses from her subjects. What if she were suddenly to turn the tables, and actually present her subjects with an Address from herself? May we hope to be excused, if, following out this idea, we venture to lay the following few lines at the foot of the Throne, as a rough sketch of the new kind of Royal Address which we are bold enough to suggest?

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR FLUNKEYSHIPS,

 
I, your much-wearied and much-persecuted Sovereign, do hereby beg and entreat that you will, for the future, allow my second son to pursue his profession in peace and quietness, unencumbered and unperverted by Receptions, which separate him from his messmates, among whom I wish him to mingle as one of themselves. Governors, Generals, Admirals, Archbishops, Authorities civil and military, Corporations of every degree of obesity,
 
be so good as to learn, once for all, from your Queen, that true loyalty is one of the forms of true politeness, in which the delicacies of restraint, and the graces of good-sense, count among the chiefest and the most necessary of courteous accomplishments. Understand, distinctly, that when I send my son to sea as a midshipman, it is a flat contradiction of my intentions for you to receive him as a Prince. Reserve your spare gunpowder, therefore, for my enemies; keep your fine clothes and your processions for yourselves; and by no means consider it any part of your duty towards Midshipman Alfred to spoil a good sailor by reminding him, to no earthly purpose, that you are Flunkeys and that he is a Prince.

If some such pithy expostulation as this should ever happen, under an extraordinary stress of circumstances, to be prepared by direction of the Queen, there is no office within the gift of the Sovereign which it would give us half so much pleasure to receive as the useful, enviable, and patriotic office of presenting the Address.

First published in
Household Words
15 January 1858

 
BEFORE the dawning of the twenty-fifth day of January, eighteen hundred and fifty-nine, it might have been reasonably supposed that all intelligent people in these realms were well acquainted with the nature of the obligations which society owes to ROBERT BURNS. We all knew, as well as we know anything, that the Ayrshire Ploughman had written some of the noblest poetry that ever fell from mortal pen. We all knew that this great genius had established undying claims on our gratitude by contributing in the highest degree to the most ennobling and the most intellectual of our pleasures. And, lastly, we all knew, from the story of his life, how gloriously his own example had helped to enforce the great and useful truth, that the means of winning the highest and the most enduring of earthly distinctions, rest with the man himself, and not with the station, high or low, in which he may be placed by the accident of his birth.

We knew all this long before the present year. Was it possible to know more? Yes: on the twenty-fifth of last January another discovery burst on the world. We of the Public had only learnt to regard Burns previously as a great Poet. On that memorable day he was revealed to us in a new light, as a great Hat-Peg.

This is very gratifying; and these are, indeed, remarkable times. To be well aware
 
that the memory of Burns is something to be proud of, is only to possess an idea which has been the common property of former generations. But to know that the memory of Burns is likewise something on which the smallest of us can hang up his own individual importance; something which may help the greediest of us to grub up our little handful of money, and the obscurest of us to emit our little speech, is to make one of those rare and remunerative discoveries which we of the present generation may claim as peculiarly our own.

So far as mere Englishmen are concerned (we write of ourselves deferentially, in consideration of the Scottish nature of the subject), the honour of discovering that the memory of Burns might be profitably used in the capacity of a Hat-Peg, rests with the Directors of the Crystal Palace Company. Who first started the idea, has not transpired; but, the discovery once made, there can be no question of its vast capabilities of application to the commercial necessities of the great Sydenham speculation. Here we are, a struggling Crystal Palace Company, taking, in a theoretical point of view, the highest ground as dispensers of public instruction; but reduced, in a practical point of view, to descend to the humbler position which is occupied by proprietors of public amusements generally; and forced to consider the great and difficult money question under these two aspects only: first, how to make as much as possible flow in; secondly, how to let as little as possible flow out again. What in the world will help us, on some early, given day, to answer this complicated double purpose, and to look impressively intellectual and literary, at the same time?

The memory of Burns. What in the world will provide us with an excuse-when we have taken the public shillings-for giving the cheapest and shabbiest of musical entertainments, and trying to palm it off as a compliment to the visitors, by granting them permission to join in the choruses? The memory of Burns. What in the world will enable our enterprising contractors for feeding the public, to get a fresh start; to try some striking novelties; to appeal to economical nationality on one side of the Tweed; and to rash curiosity on the other, with cock-a-leekie and haggis, at three shillings a-head? The memory of Burns. Was there ever a Hat Peg discovered before on which so many small personal necessities could so profitably be hung up as great public benefits to the general view? Here is a new use found out, not in Burns only, but in all other great men besides. A few more inexpensive commemorations-easily arranged beforehand by a reference to the almanac for the current year-and who shall say what prodigal dividends the Crystal Palace Company may not end in paying, after all?

But, the expansive utility of the new discovery is not confined to Companies. The convenient Burns Hat Peg, which serves assembled bodies of men, will answer the purposes of solitary individuals just as well. I am a member of any national society; and, which is more, an orator, if the world only knew it; and, which is more, as pretty a piece of Scotch flesh as any in Caledonia; and one that likes to dine to the sound of bagpipes. Go to! And all this is generally private, and unknown to everybody but me and my own set. What will help me, Mr. MacAnybody, to make a long speech, and to get it reported in all the newspapers? What will procure me the privilege of telling an assembly of my much-enduring fellow-creatures that I have
 
sauntered with delight along the Banks o’Doon; that I have stood in rapture on that spot where Ayr gurgling kissed its pebbled bed;
 
that I have climbed up this place, and
 
wandered through that; and
 
looked with emotion
 
here, and gazed with sorrow there; and what will give me the pride and pleasure of actually seeing it in print the next morning? Hech, sirs! Just the memory of Burns.