The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-06
DICKENS AND VICTORIA.
From the N. Y. Tribune.

EfVHN VIC Is a =
One of our contemporaries publishes an &C
count of Mr.. Dickens Intercourse with royalty,
giving as full a description of his last inter
view with the Queen as though the reporter
lad been furnished with private quarters be-
hind the back door:-"During the long inter-
view, we are told, ''Mr. Dickens remained
half kneeling on the sofa, while the Queen
stood" We are afraid this most willing of
reporters has drawn upon his imagination for
his facts, and that his imagination has OK
tracted its Yankee ideas of royalty from
Mother Goose or Lothian, in which queens
and duchesses wear their sceptres and straw
berry leaves, in or out of bed, as faithfully
as Captain Cutie his tarpaulin hat. Is the
reporter sure that motherly Mrs. Victoria is
not served by captive princes on Bonded
knee, and does not take a morning bath in
infants blood, as is recorded of some of her
ancestors? Why did he not describe Mr..
Dickens as fiat on the carpet, shaking himself
in and out, according to Chimes etiquette ?
The picture would have been more effective,
and quite as probable. Majesty, whether
wisely or not, is being fast stripped of its
externals in England; that the old riddle is
not fulfilled, and that it is not thereby left
"a jest, is owing more to the respect for the
personal character of the Queen, than any
undue appreciation of her rank or it's insignia.
If MIR. Dickens was invited to the palace in
order that Victoria might do him honor and
present him with her book, she certainly did
not leave him kneeling on a sofa, like a fowl
going to roost, but received him as simply as
any well-bred woman would receive a we'll
bred man to whom she wished to show hospi-
tality and kindness.
Nothing, by the way, more clearly marks the
increasing disappearance of this old subser-
yiency to rank in England than the significant
contrast of the ceremonies attendant upon
Dickens burial and that of some other inter-
ments occurring about the same time. Lord
Clarendon died-a good man and able, who
had played not unsuccessfully a role in the
foremost line of actors in the national his
tory; a peer among peers, SO predominant
was his rank among all the facts that con-
cerned him in his own eyes and those who
surrounded him; "a noble" says the Re0jeU,
who held infiexibly to the creed in which so
few believe in the present day, that the desti-
MES of nations are shaped by a few
well-born and well-bred Individuals"
Perhaps more than any other man
in England he was a type of the
highest caste, the aristocrat, thoroughbred,
and thoroughly believing in his own order.
He was inferred with the state BETTING such
rank. Once being dead and buried, however,
death, as usual, pricked the bubble of his
name, and its glitter and Fictitious proper
ton speedily collapsed and disappeared. He
was weighed and labelled most critically, per-
haps, by the press of his own party, rated as
any ordinary man would be by ordinary men,
damned with praise so faint as to be scarcely
audible Another peer, the son of one of the
Oldest houses in England, dying about the
same time under a criminal charge, is,
whether innocent or not, hurried to the
grave, the hearse followed by a single car
riage.
Dickens, humbly born, the object of whose
life had been to elevate the poor and decry
rank, was buried as a man of the people. The
simplicity of his funeral touched us all. But
they made room for him among the kings and
rulers of the nation. Thousands of mourn
ers came hat day to look in at his grave and
pass silently away. The sexton, coming at
night to fill the pit, found it level with the
hoor with flowers, not costly, wholesale
tributes such as money would buy, but single
blossoms, each cast in by a loving hand, and
the tribute of a heart which he had made
better and brighter. No matter whether the
government be a republic or a monarchy,
the people choose their own rulers after all,
and pay to them only allegiance.