Category Archives: 19th century

How to Crown a British Monarch: Pomp versus Precedence in Children’s Books about Coronations

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The coronation of King Charles III—the first since his mother’s in 1953—has caused a lot of ink to be spilled on both sides of the Atlantic.  Much of the commentary has revolved around the question, can such an expensive ceremony, a relic of the feudal and imperial pasts, be meaningful in a diverse secular society?As acts of national communion, coronations have never been ossified, but rather evolving rituals.  Their history shows that accommodations to political circumstances have always been necessary to make the transfer of power appear legitimate, seamless, and inevitable.  And they have always been subject to snafus, being magnificent events enacted in real time by real people, that dynamic further complicated by their capture in illustrations and broadcasts for future consumption.

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Important changes in ideas for the presentation of the coronation’s pageantry to little subjects are reflected in children’s books.  The earliest picture I found in the collection was a wood cut 25 x 30 mm in a sixpenny school book, The New Universal Primer, an easy Book…authorised by His Majesty King George to be used throughout Great-Britain and Ireland (Derby: J. Drewry, not before 1769). Unsurprisingly it offers neither an accurate likeness of the monarch nor a description of the magnificent 1761 ceremony.  The only important points the text makes are that subjects must kneel hatless in the sovereign’s presence and that his sons are princes and his daughters princesses.  Prints would have provided more satisfyingly detailed representations of the event..

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A more lavish, detailed book was published in 1820 by John Harris on the occasion of the accession of George IV, Sir Harry Herald’s Graphical Representation of the Dignitaries of England; shewing the Costume of the different Ranks, from the King to a commoner; with the Regalia used at the Coronation.  (George, always ruinously extravagant, had vowed his crowning would “eclipse” Napoleon’s.) The frontispiece shows the King’s Champion, a hereditary office whose duties required the holder to ride in full armor into Westminster Hall during the traditional banquet ready to fight any challenger of the new monarch’s claim to the throne. This coronation was the last time it was performed.

The first edition, which had to be ready in advance of July 1820, was issued before the embarrassments of the ceremony’s delay because of George’s unsuccessful attempt to divorce his consort, from whom he had been estranged for years, and Caroline’s exclusion when she asked for admission to Westminster Abbey.  The earliest Sir Harry Herald upheld the monarch’s dignity, which was yet to be tarnished, with its solemn procession of the ranks in their robes, beginning with the archbishop of Canterbury and ending with the livery, which the artist cleverly created across the double-page spreads.The traditional hierarchy of ranks are shown quite differently in the panoramas like the one Robins published in 1838 (Cotsen 14359) capturing the spectacle of Victoria’s progress from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey. The young queen can be glimpsed through the state carriage’s windows and her power is manifested in the show that precedes her, a long orderly procession of bands of mounted musicians, Life Guards, equerries, Officers of her Majesty’s Household, splendid carriages of the royal family, foreign diplomats and dignitaries from around the world.   Crowds line the scaffolds on the streets, wave flags on balconies and perch on rooftops, a reminder that the queen’s investiture rests on the assent of her subjects, as well as the support of the society’s ranks and orders.  The organizers’ decision to make the coronation a day of popular celebration for working people was condemned by at least one powerful faction as degrading the majesty of the occasion.The coronation of Edward VII and Alexandra as king and queen of the United Kingdom and British Dominions, and emperor and empress of India in 1902 (thirty-one rulers of the Indian princely states attended for the first time) was to be well-rehearsed to insure its spiritual character and brevity. The Coronation Picture Book by Duncan Tovey and illustrated by John Hassall punctured the pageantry in a good-humored fashion by commemorating the British nation, to whom it was dedicated.  Among the well-known types are the raffish artist drawing from his eyrie on a chimney in Parliament Street, the bobby restraining the gawking bystanders, and the old tar.  Representatives of the aristocratic ranks are comical, like the peer hiding a snack in his coronet or the other falling asleep on his feet. The king and queen do not make an appearance, but the crowd of their loyal subjects throw their hats in the air and cheer lustily as they pass by beyond the page.The Bairn’s Coronation Book (London: J. M. Dent, 1902, Cotsen 4675) by Clare Bridgman and illustrated by Charles Robinson offered an introductory account for young readers of the same event designed to draw them into the religious ritual, teach them some interesting facts about the regalia—scepter, orb, golden spoon, swords of state, and throne—and thrill them with colorful, stately pictures of the people in the processions.  In addition to pictures of pages and choristers, real-life children who had important parts to perform in the ceremonies, Robinson provided whimsical sketches and drawings of chubby toddlers playing at the responsibilities delegated to grown-ups.  The last pictures in the book evoke the excitement of staying far past one’s bedtime to enjoy the magical effects of torchlight, bonfires, and fireworks in the darkness as one in the crowd of merrymakers.

As the spectacle of the coronation was opened up to ordinary people as an elevated kind of popular entertainment, the importance of parade of the ranks and orders continued to diminish as a feature of the ritual.  Pomp was gradually trumping precedence.

“All the Fun of the Fair as if You were There:” A Writing Sheet from the Collection of Ricky Jay

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Fairs and their attractions have always been a destination for entertainers, gawkers, pickpockets, prostitutes, children, vendors of food, drink, and cheap trinkets.  The carnivalesque atmosphere has been celebrated and reprobated, often in the same breath.  Artists with a taste for satire, like William Hogarth, captured the press of people on the grounds in one of his most famous prints, “Southwark Fair.”

Eighteenth and early nineteenth-century children’s books and prints also depict young people visiting fairs, although the representations are somewhat tame in comparison with Hogarth’s seething engraving.    Cotsen has just acquired a very rare writing sheet, “The Humours of the Fair”  (London: W. & T. Darton, 1807), illustrated with an engraved headpiece and seven vignettes capturing the sights, sounds, and smells of the grounds.

While there are no agricultural displays or tractor pulls so characteristic of  American state and county fairs, some things have hardly changed from the 1800s. Competitive eating contests, it seems, were not invented in the late nineteenth century.   Here a yokel and a gentleman are seeing who can finish first his steaming basin of whitepot straight from the oven. They are allowed the use of spoons, although they could not have prevented serious burns on the lips and the insides of the cheeks.  Whitepot, originally a specialty of Devonshire, is a bread-and-butter pudding loaded with cream and topped with a sugar crust.

Then there were the shows.  On view were amazing displays of strength and dexterity, such as this rope walker balancing on his chin a pipe, upon which is resting another pipe with an clutch of pipes arranged like a bouquet of flowers in its bowl.   The wire looks to be only a few inches above the floor.  Children were always warned away from the tables where games of chance were being operated, which might explain why they are frequently shown gathered there watching or trying their luck. The conjurer looks just like the rope walker, so he seems to have more than one string to his bow as an showman–unless the engraver was working against a deadline and saving time.  Perhaps he gathered a crowd with the balancing act and then moved on to sleigh-of-hand tricks, drawing in the marks with the assistance of a clown, who pretends that his eyes are just as quick than the magician’s wand.  No trip to a fair would be complete without the purchase of souvenirs then called fairings—cheap toys, ribbons, sweets.  The children troop up to their mother to show her their treasures, probably to be broken, discarded, or forgotten the next day.

This writing sheet, which was known only from a minimal description in a British dealer’s catalog from the 1970s, is a perfect addition to Cotsen’s superb collection of these illustrated prints.  Nicholas Wallin, a student at the Bettesworth School (location in England unknown) filled the center, with sentiments about the meaning of Christmas in his best handwriting, probably for presentation to his parents when he came home for the holidays.

It was purchased at the third of a series of auctions dispersing the magnificent collection of magic, the allied arts, and their ephemera by the late, great,  light-fingered laureate of legerdemain Ricky Jay (1946-2018).
Ricky was unusual for being honored in three worlds which rarely collide—conjuring, collecting, and curating.    A sorcerer of sleight of hand, he could confound people standing a foot away with cup and balls as easily as crowd  watching him on stage propel playing cards into “thick, pachydematous outer melon layer” of the “most prodigious of household fruits” at the distance of ten paces. He also did mean turns as conmen on the silver screen and as the sole star of several stage shows.    His delight in the search for materials documenting the peculiar history of his confraternity, which comprised cheats, hustlers, hoaxsters, pranksters, jokesters, impostors, pretenders, sideshow showmen, never flagged, any more than his glee in sharing them with the uninitiated in a series of books and exhibition catalog, among them Cards as  Weapons, Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women, Many Mysteries Unraveled, The Magic Magic Book, Jay’s Journal of Anomalies, Dice: Deception, Fate, and Rotten Luck, and mesmerizing learned lectures at museums and rare book libraries, sometimes accompanied by demonstrations.  His lecture on Dr. Graham’s Celestial Bed, an aide to conception which famous aristocratic ladies like Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, resorted to in desperation, brought down the house at the Grolier Club.   As generous as Ricky was with his collection and knowledge, he never revealed the secrets of the techniques that astounded onlookers with the pleasure of being hoodwinked.There were three words that could never be uttered in  his presence: “children’s birthday parties.”   In spite of his well-known aversion to the infant race,  I would like to think he wouldn’t have minded at all that this engraving illustrating raffish popular entertainments has found its way to the Cotsen Children’s Library, where it will  be in the company of operators of peep shows, a Dutch blow book, magic lanterns, and Cajanus the Swedish Giant.