Read Angels and Absences: Child Deaths in the Nineteenth Century Online

Authors: Laurence Lerner

Tags: #History, #Modern, #19th Century, #Social Science, #Death & Dying, #test

Angels and Absences: Child Deaths in the Nineteenth Century (4 page)

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Page 5
nothing, and could understand nothing respecting those great political questions which involve the happiness of those over whom she was destined to rule.
Then comes the comment on the executions, which claims that they are quite as infused with private grief as the Princess's death:
They had sons, and brothers, and sisters, and fathers, who loved them, it should seem, more than the Princess Charlotte could be loved by those whom the regulations of her rank had held in perpetual estrangement from her.
2
Princess Charlotte was the only legitimate grandchild of George III, and therefore virtually certain to succeed to the throne: the son she bore, if he had lived, would one day have been king of England. The newspapers now indulged their passion for research by printing lists of the heirs to the throne of England, right down, in the
Times
, to no 123: after the sons and daughters of George III (all of them over forty) none of the names are English. It looked as if England would once again have to import its king from Germany. The matter was, of course, resolved by the Duke of Kent dismissing his mistress and taking a wife who gave birth to Victoria two years later, so that the ascent of a pious and respectable young woman to the throne (also with a foreign husband) simply took place in 1837 instead of 1830; but at the time it looked as if the political consequences of the double death would be enormous. All the newspapers were careful to distinguishh between the personal and the political aspects of the calamity, and all of them observed the proprieties by insisting respectfully that the personal came firstall, that is, except the rumbustious Cobbett:
The
political consequences
of the death of the Princess is all that we, any of us, can have anything to do with. We cannot have any
personal
feeling upon the occasion. It is a young wife dead in child-birth; and this happens, in many parts of every great country, every twenty-four hours. It is nonsense, and, indeed, worse: it is vile hypocrisy to talk about
personal sorrow
, or personal feeling of any sort. (
Cobbett's Political Register
, 25 April 1818)
It was obvious to contemporaries that the event posed the question of how to distinguish between the public and the private, and it is to this that I now turn; but it will not be possible to be as clear cut as either the conventional papers, on the one hand, or Cobbett, on the other. The distinction
 
Page 6
is one that constantly needs to be deconstructed and reasserted: its boundaries are established even as they are transgressed. There is, first of all, the very conception of public grief. What does it mean to speak of a "universal burst of sympathetic grief," as the
Scotsman
did? What persuaded the Brighton correspondent of the
Times
that "chilling regrets and unavailing laments seem the mournful inmates of every mansion, house and cottage" (17 Nov.)? And how can we judge if such claims are true? Several papers drew an interesting distinction but put it to questionable use:
To assert that we, or that the whole British nation, is at this moment dissolved in tears would be absurd, though many a tear will be shed for her fate by those who have never seen her; but if we say that deep regret, that calm sorrow, produced by pity for her sufferings, and a rational calculation of the loss we have sustained in her death, are universally prevalent, we say no more than every tongue confirms.(
Times
, 7 Nov.)
This seems a commonsense observation, but in one respect it is the opposite of the truth: for it is perfectly possible to say whether people are inn tears, but whether they are feeling deep regret or pity or are calculating rationally can only be a deduction. We can always ask of references to national grief or public mourning whether they refer to emotions or to behaviour, to the internal experience that others must deduce or to external signs that can be observed; but once we draw this distinction, it is striking how much of the relevant vocabulary is ambiguous. The clearest example is the term "mourning" itself. The claim that the expression of public sympathy is genuine, unlike the usual mourning for princes, clearly refers to the sentiment, but when we are told that in Carlisle "mourning has become general," the word refers to clothing and means that most people are wearing black. The claim that in Plymouth "every thought of amusement ceases" possesses the same ambiguity: it can mean that very few amusements are going on or that no one wants any. To speak of "most solemn and devout observance" can refer either to feelings of devotion or to the ringing of bells and the saying of prayers. When we speak of the feelings of a group or a community, something in language itself discourages us from being too confident about the distinction between emotion and behaviour.
The /files/04/37/96/f043796/public/private dialectic concerns not only the relating of national grief to individual emotions, but also the relation between the individual sorrow of those personally involved and the process of its becoming a spectacle
 
Page 7
to the world: that is, it involves both the internalizing of national grief and the publication of individual grief. So I turn now to the Princess's family. The two people most concerned were her husband and her father, and the press not only reported their actions but speculated about their feelings. Running through all the comments there is, not surprisingly, an element of doubt about what is proper to saywhether personal grief should be published at all. When the Prince Regent left Claremont to visit his mother and sisters at Windsor, he "went alone, and travelled with the blinds of his carriage down"
(Times
, 10 Nov.). That glimpse could be seen as one version of the right relationship with the public: his need for privacy and the improprietyeven the impossibilityof finding out what he felt.
The newspapers certainly toyed with this opinion. Both the
Times
and the
Observer
, stating that they had not heard the particulars of the interview between Leopold and the Prince Regent, added, "nor are we curious to intrude upon the overwhelming grief of a father and a husband" (12 Nov.). But to expect such lack of curiosity to govern everything in a newspaper is virtually to ask journalism to self-destruct; and for the next few days the private feelings of Prince Leopold, at least, led a very public existence. Here, for instance, is the account in the
Times
of his behaviour at the funeral:
Prince Leopold followed the coffin as chief mourner; his appearance created the deepest interest; his countenance was dejected; his manner was full of despondency; and though he made evident efforts to preserve calmness and fortitude, yet he every now and then burst into a flood of tears. He walked along with unsteady steps, and took the seat provided for him at the head of the coffin. During the whole time of the funeral service he preserved one fixed but downcast look towards the coffin of his beloved wife: he never once raised his eyes to the congregation: he was totally absorbed in his grief. The Royal Dukes who sat or stood beside him, watched him with much solicitude, as if they were afraid he would sink under his affliction. His distress, however, was tolerably subdued till the moment when the coffin was gradually lowered into the grave; at this awful crisis, when his deeply regretted consort was to be separated from him for ever, he was alarmingly moved, but by a strong effort he seemed also to conquer this emotion.(
Times
, 19 Nov.)
here are two struggles taking place here: Leopold's struggle to control his emotion and the observers' struggle to interpret his appearance. In the former, the subject is aware of his feelings and struggling for an outward
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