The Victorian age reached its grand climacteric in 1887, the year of the Queen's Golden Jubilee and the gathering of the Kings and Captains. Of the celebrations we speak elsewhere. Punch , no longer anti-Papist, linked them with those at the Vatican in honour of Leo XIII, who had been ordained priest in 1837 in his lines on "Two Jubilees":
St. Peter's and St. James's face to face
Exchanging with a more than courtly grace
Their mutual gifts and greetings!
A sight to stir the bigot; but the wise
Regard with cheerful and complacent eyes
This pleasantest of meetings.
It was also the Centenary year of the United States, welcomed by Punch in John Bull's song on Miss Columbia's Hundredth birthday to the air of "I'm getting a big boy now." Mr. Gladstone was invited to the celebrations but did not cross the Atlantic. John Bull abounds in professions of good-will, but there is a slight sting in the last chorus:
You are getting a great girl now,
May you prosper, and keep out of row;
Shun Bunkum and bawl
All that's shoddy and small,
For you're getting a great girl now.
armoury were so vigorous and pointed, that it is rather strange to find Punch assailing him in March, 1887, for his pacificist tendencies:
The white flag, John, may bid all battle cease,
Not the white feather! In defence of right,
Despite your dogmas, men perforce must fight
With swords as well as words: be it their care
With either, to heed honour, and fight fair.
You would "speak daggers" only; be it so;
But a word-stab may be a felon blow.
Germany's Momentous Year
Punch So the arena's coarser heroes mocked
This antique fighter. And his place was rather
Where Arthur's knights in generous tourney shocked
Than where swashbucklers meet or histrions gather:
Yet yet his death has touched the land with gloom;
All England honours Chivalry at his tomb.
THE VIGIL
"Verse-moi dans le cœur, du fond de ce tombeau
Quelque chose de grand, de sublime et de beau!"
Hernani , Act iv, Scene 2.
The prayer of Charles, that rose amidst the gloom
Of the dead Charlemagne's majestic tomb,
Might fitly find an echo on the lips
Of the young Prince, whose pathway death's eclipse
Hath twice enshadowed in so brief a space.
Grandsire and Sire! Stout slip of a strong race,
Valiant old age and vigorous manhood fail,
And leave youth, high with hope, with anguish pale,
In vigil at their tomb! Watch on, and kneel,
Those clenched hands crossed upon the sheathèd steel.
Not lightly such inheritance should fall.
Hear you not through the gloom the glorious call
Of Valour, Duty, Freedom?
And youth must face
What snowy age and stalwart manhood found
A weight of sorrow, though with splendour crowned.
Young Hohenzollern, soldierly of soul,
Heaven fix your heart on a yet nobler goal
Than sword may hew its way to. Those you mourn
Heroes of the Great War when France was torn
With Teuton shot, knew that the sword alone
May rear, but shall not long support a throne.
William has passed, bowing his silver crest,
Like an old Sea King going to his rest;
Frederick, in fullest prime, with failing breath,
But an heroic heart, has stooped to death:
Here, at their tomb, another Emperor keeps
His vigil, whilst Germania bows and weeps.
Heaven hold that sword unsheathed in that young hand,
And crown with power and peace the Fatherland!
Only a fortnight before the death of the old Emperor, Bismarck's Army Bill had awakened Punch's misgivings. He reluctantly admired the strength of the lion combined with the shrewdness of the fox; and put into Bismarck's mouth the sonorous couplet:
I speak of Peace, while covert enmity
Under the smile of safety wounds the world.
But by September it was the young Kaiser, not Bismarck, who invited "A Word in Season." The counsel was prompted by a speech in which he declared, "It is the pride of the Hohenzollerns to reign at once over the noblest, the most intellectual and most cultured of nations," a sentiment mild when compared with later utterances, yet sufficiently thrasonic to earn a rebuke for indulging in demagogic flattery, coupled with the advice to read Lord Wolseley's article in the Fortnightly on Marlborough, Wellington and Napoleon, and to emulate the reticence of Moltke. In less than a month the inevitable cleavage between the Kaiser and his Chancellor is foreshadowed in the splendid cartoon reproduced, where Bismarck as Dædalus warns Wilhelm as Icarus, in a paraphrase of Ovid:
My son, observe the middle path to fly,
And fear to sink too low, or rise too high.
Here the sun melts, there vapours damp your force,
Between the two extremes direct your course.
Nor on the Bear, nor on Boötes gaze,
Nor on sword-arm'd Orion's dangerous rays;
But follow me, thy guide, with watchful sight,
And as I steer, direct thy cautious flight.
Metamorphoses , Book VIII, Fable iii.
When Fox with Lion hunts,
One would be sorry
To say who gains, until
They've shared the quarry.