Of Cabbages and Kings

Lewis Carroll's Walrus and Carpenter thought that the time had come to talk (among other things) "of cabbages and kings", but in the month of the Queen's Golden Jubilee we allow kings (and queens) to speak themselves as we listen to the voices of earlier sovereigns and their families ("the family firm" as George VI put it), as well as to what has been said about them.

Physical appearance has often been the subject of remark. The 18th-century Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, seeing Caroline of Ansbach, George II's wife, dressed in pink and attended by maids of honour, described her as "Superior to her waiting nymphs As lobster to attendant shrimps." Leigh Hunt unwisely said of the Prince Regent in middle age that "This Adonis in loveliness was a corpulent man of fifty," and found himself imprisoned for libel. The Prince Regent's niece Victoria recorded in her diary her first view of her future husband: "It was with some emotion...that I beheld Albert - who is beautiful." In the 1930s the diarist Chips Channon noted that "We saw Queen Mary looking like the Jungfrau, white and sparkling in the sun."

Family life itself has not always been easy. Queen Caroline, in a moment of irritation, described her eldest son as "the greatest beast in the whole world", and Elizabeth I's crisp summary of her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, was that she was "the daughter of debate". An unidentified lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria, on the other hand, having seen Antony and Cleopatra, is said to have exclaimed, "How different, how very different from the home life of our own dear Queen!" Difficulties have sometimes been summed up trenchantly: "Well, Mr Baldwin! this is a pretty kettle of fish!" exclaimed Queen Mary to the Prime Minister, as news of the Abdication Crisis became public. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother encapsulated the unity of her family when it was suggested, during the war, that her daughters should be evacuated to Canada: "The Princesses would never leave without me and I couldn't leave without the King, and the King will never leave.". Perhaps the key element needed in any age was the one identified by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1997, giving his recipe for a successful marriage during celebrations for their golden wedding: "Tolerance is the one essential ingredient...You can take it from me that the Queen has the quality of tolerance in abundance."

The sovereign is traditionally above politics, although relations with ministers have sometimes occasioned comment. Charles II, responding to Lord Rochester's criticism that he "never said a foolish thing, Nor ever did a wise one", pointed out that "This is very true: for my words are my own, and my actions are my ministers'." Queen Victoria's comment on Gladstone ("He speaks to Me as if I was a public meeting") is well-known, but she could be critical too of more supine politicians: "Lord Granville has not the courage of his opinions and therefore is of not the slightest use to the Queen." Elizabeth I valued her chief minister Burleigh for not being afraid of her: "This judgement I have of you that...without respect of my private will you will give me that counsel which you think best." And it was Elizabeth I who, in a speech at the end of her reign, summed up what she had most valued in her life as Queen: "this I count the glory of my crown: that I have reigned with your loves."

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