A Queen who can't be seen: pageants and censorship in the 1930s
Perhaps the one constant in historical pageantry across the twentieth century was the prominence given to royalty. From patrons to characters, almost all pageants featured a King, Queen, Prince or Princess in some way, all the way back from the Anglo-Saxon rulers to even legendary figures, like King Arthur. Providing an opportunity for spectacular crowd scenes and fabulous costumes, the visit of royalty in a pageant episode was also one of the most obvious ways to show the importance of a small place to the larger national story. Some of the earliest Edwardian pageants were dominated by such motifs - every episode in the Dover Pageant in 1908, for example, featured the visit of a monarch.
Undoubtedly the queen of Queens in Edwardian pageants was 'good old Bess', who ruled from 1533 to 1603. As one magazine wryly noted when 'pageant fever' took over the town of Oxford in 1907, Elizabeth seemed 'to have managed a state entry into most towns at some time or another’. As Paul has written about in his Past and Present article, the enthusiasm for Elizabethan episodes reflected the value given to a supposed 'merrie old England' and the life and times of Shakespeare , 'animated by good-natured communal pleasures, particularly folk song and dance.' A powerful symbol of military naval might after defeating the Spanish Armada, Elizabeth also provided an obvious model for an English ruler in the early 1900s. More pragmatically, the father of pageantry, Louis Napoleon Parker, also believed that ending a pageant's narrative in the Elizabethan age would avoid the awkward contentiousness of the Civil War that had followed forty years later.
In spite of Parker's preferences, pageants in the 1920s and 1930s increasingly went far beyond the sixteenth century, sometimes even ending their story in the present day. This development was probably for several reasons. Pageants increasingly spread to larger urban places that depended on industry; not depicting the source of their wealth and prestige, from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries especially, would have seemed odd. As a tool of propaganda or community encouragement, pageants also also spread to working-class causes, like the Co-Operative movement or the Communist Party. For these organisations, re-enacting the rise of workers rights and power in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was vital. After the First World War, too, many places chose to depict and honour the sacrifice of the people for the nation; as pageants were frequently a tool in encouraging patriotism, this was another logical development. Perhaps more simply, as Parker criticised, pageants underwent a certain amount of popularisation (or even 'dumbing down'); more up-to-date scenes afforded an opportunity to show exciting scenes of railways, motor cars, and modern fairs.
Even following this shift, the Royal influence in the early scenes pageants persisted - especially around Royal celebrations like the Silver Jubilee in 1935. Yet conspicuous by her absence in interwar pageantry was the emblem of British imperialism: Queen Victoria. Out of the fifty or so pageants I've researched over the past year, Victoria has barely featured. Examples of her actually appearing only draw attention to the lack of attention she was really given. In the Ilminster Pageant of 1927, for example, though the penultimate episode was entitled 'Queen Victoria's Visit', it took place in 1819, when she was just a baby - and so obviously had no speaking part! In the Taunton Pageant of 1928, she she appeared as an adult, but no more than a 'walk-on' cameo. Even in an episode of the Southampton Silver Jubilee Pageant of 1935, she was nowhere to be seen in the Queen Victoria Jubilee episode.
Up until now I've been confused by the continued absence of Victoria in the interwar years. Over the last week or so, after looking at the Ramsgate Pageant of 1934, it has all become clear...
Produced by well-known pageant-master Nugent Monck and organised by the also prominent Edward Baring, the original plan was indeed to feature Queen Victoria and Albert in the seventh episode. The Lord Chamberlain, Rowland Thomas Baring, 2nd Earl of Cromer, however, would only grant a license for the pageant 'on the understanding that the appearance of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort is omitted'. This diktat aroused considerable consternation in Ramsgate. Edward Baring told the press that he was 'dumbfounded by the Lord Chamberlain's decision' while the Mayor was more tacit when he said 'Doubtless the Lord Chamberlain has very good reasons for his decision, but it has come to a great surprise to us.' Monck, in replying to the Lord Chamberlain, pointed out that the Queen had already been portrayed in pageants (I wish Monck was here now to give me a list!). The Lord Chamberlain was unmoved, replying that such impersonations 'must have been unauthorised'. In the end Edward Baring and Monck assented to the request, and the pageant went ahead - without Victoria.
After a bit of digging, the logic of the Chamberlain and the lack of Victoria has become a lot clearer. The Lord Chamberlain's Office was set up by Charles II in a time when the theatre was the main means of expressing political opinion and dissent. After the Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737 the Lord Chamberlain could restrict, modify, or veto altogether any play for any reason, and prosecute any theatre owners for staging a play without prior approval. Due to the Theatres Act of 1843 his powers were restricted to only prohibiting the performance of places in order to preserve' good manners, decorum or... the public peace', but the Office remained powerful; in the mid-1930s the Lord Chamberlain employed a staff of three readers, about nine clerks, and an unofficial committee of six people. One of the biggest mistakes a theatre producer could make was to represent recent royalty - especially if they had not long been dead. According to Rowland Baring in relation to Ramsgate, he was merely acting in deference of the wishes of George V - Victoria's grandson.
In December 1936 the Lord Chamberlain announced that, by permission of his Majesty the King, Edward VIII (only a few days before his abdication), plays dealing with the life of Queen Victoria could now be considered for production after June 20th 1937 - the centenary of Queen Victoria's ascension to the throne. By this point, of course, George V was dead, and as the press pointed out, two generations had passed since the reign of Queen Victoria; Edward VIII, and his sibling successor, George VI, were just small boys when she had died. While depicting Queen Victoria was now permitted, it is likely that the Chamberlain's Office still kept a close watch on the pageant-masters. As we continue with our project, and look more at post-WWII pageants, we will be interested to see if Victoria featured more frequently.
Tom