“Merry England!”

The Weekly Machen

There is much in the following article that makes the topic interesting to Arthur Machen. Beyond the history and pageantry, the production was produced by his old stage boss with music supplied by an old friend. With his ever-present skill, Machen describes the scenes vibrantly for the Evening News readership. Yet, for my part, the most interesting aspect is his meditation on merriment and its absence from the modern world. It ties neatly with a later essay, “The Merry Month of May.”

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“Merry England!”
The Old Epithet and the Army Pageant 
by
Arthur Machen
June 27, 1910

“Merry England!”

How the phrase rings in one’s ears. It was sounding in mine as I made my way to the Army Pageant at Fulham, and I could not help wondering whether the old epithet was quite appropriate to our England of to-day.

We ought to be merrier than ever if our popular leaders are right.

Only the other day an “advanced thinker” said to me:

“The Middle Ages! What were the drains like in the Middle Ages? Tell me that.”

My friend was moderate in confining himself to drains. He might have asked what about the motor-omnibuses, the taxi-cabs, the electric lighting, the “tubes” in the Middle Ages. And yet, granting our superiority in these and many other matters. are we merrier than of old? Are we merry at all? I have a shrewd suspicion that we have lost mirth and gained comfort—a very different thing.

And then I took my place, and saw, at least what “Merry England” did not mean. It did not mean loafing about and leading a sort of cotton-wool existence. The fight of Agincourt was before me; and the England of that day was in the heat and agony of the battle. High and low were fighting for King and Country. The armour of the knights glinted in the sun, the arrows of the old English yeomen flew through the air, the earth shook beneath the fury of the onset, terrible was the array of England in arms. Our men on that far-off October day: King and lords and knights and esquires and yeomen were valiantly contending amidst things—blood and wounds and death—for one common end; suffering all things, enduring all things.

The Balance ‘Tween Duties and Rights

And I wondered how the weedy loafers lounging about the Fulham-road would have fared on Crispin’s Day in the year 1415. But the Army of Agincourt was merry; possibly because they had a better idea in those days of the balance between duties and rights, because they had not discovered that comfort is the sole end and aim of existence.

I suppose I need scarcely say that the Pageant is a superb spectacle. Mr. F. R. Benson who, in my opinion, is the greatest stage manager that we possess, has created a splendid picture of warring England, of England, stern and disciplined and victorious, terrible as an army in banners. One cannot but wonder at the marvellous skill which has marshalled all these contending hosts. And as an aid to Mr. Benson’s work, we have the thrilling and martial strains written by Mr. Christopher Wilson, to whose music for “King Lear” you must listen, if you would know how Shakespeare can be set to sound.

I have only a very minor cavil. That is that the precautions taken by the management to make it difficult for any Pressman to witness the spectacle are irritating, though elaborate and ingenious.

Oh, and there is another question. Why do the Roundheads at Naseby sing “O God, our Help in ages past”? Dr. Isaac Watts, the author of this excellent metrical psalm, was born in 1674, and Naseby was fought in 1645. The “Old Version” of the Psalms would have supplied melody more proper to the times.

War by Parade

The medieval battles belong to the heroic age of warfare; we see in them all the shining splendour and glory of arms.

Now our men at arms, clothed in that hideous khaki, are scattered far abroad, each man taking every advantage of ground and position. Or the fight takes that horrible shape described in the ‘‘Débâcle,” in which poor wretches crouch down in a turnip-field, to be shattered and mangled hideously by guns that they cannot see.

But between these extremes there is that sort of battle which began with the seventeenth century, and was not ended when Waterloo was fought. I call it the Battle of Parade; and it does summon to one’s mind the evolutions of the barrack-yard.

I had often seen old pictures of these old fights; there are rigid lines of men standing shoulder to shoulder, each man holding his musket at present; behind these lines are other parallel lines; flags are flying, drums beat, the gunners stand ready by their cannon; there is a group on horseback, bewigged and glittering, and the commanding officer holds a baton in his hand.

It is war, no doubt, but to the war of to-day it is in the proportion of a minuet to a cakewalk. One understands how these brave men went “into winter quarters” year after year; one can scarcely imagine those trim and ordered lines tramping through slush and snow.

Well, it struck me that the Pageant rendered this stage in the history of arms to perfection. The scenes were exactly like the old engravings which I have mentioned, only the figures were in motion. There were the rigid lines one behind another, advancing in perfect, disciplined order, halting at the word of command with all the iron accuracy of the drill-ground, discharging their muskets, reloading, firing again, moving mechanically so many paces forward as if a hundred men were but one man. And there were the flying colours, and one heard the sharp tap and then the heavy roll of the drums, and the periwigged generals careered grandly to victory. It would have been a pure delight to “My Uncle Toby,” and he would have been all the happier in that no one swore terribly.

The eighteenth century was a wonderfully homogeneous period; these Pageant battle-pieces have a certain strong analogy to the poetry of Pope and the prose of Dr. Johnson.

Pure Pageantry

I think that the great success of the show was the retreat of the English Army on Corunna.

Before the stand in a interminable array our troops filed slowly by. Gazing at the retreating host was a blazing group of Spanish peasants, all scarlet and yellow and queer frippery; and before them and before us advanced those long and weary files, clad in the strange uniforms and stranger hats that were worn during the Peninsular War.

Regiment after regiment trailed away into the distance, and one noted how Mr. Benson had broken the monotony of such a sight with curious art. Here a man stumbled from sheer fatigue, here one limped from a wound, here a soldier leaned lightly on his fellow, here a dying man was carried by his companions.

It was a singular and a touching spectacle; and it seemed to be in the perfect spirit of pageantry: movement and show and silent drama without that violence of action that belongs rather to the drama of the stage.

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