Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy (45 page)

but perpetually defers the end of the war)70 and an attempt to make

“the world” complicit in his version of the story.71 Lockhart glosses

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over the point that he too passes judgment on the By rons’ marital

disputes. Like Mrs. Elton, he supposes that Lady Byron was more

likely to be “in the wrong” than her husband. He prefaces this state-

ment, however, with so many disclaimers and qualifying clauses that

the effect is to establish not Byron’s rightness but Lockhart’s caution

and disinterestedness as a judge, in contrast with the gossiping world

represented by the Austenian ladies:

God knows, I am one of the last people in the world that would wish

to set the example of interfering improperly in the private, and more

particularly in the domestic affairs of any man. But, if I were to permit

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myself to hazard an opinion on a matter, with which, I confess, I have

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so very little to do, I should certainly say that I think it quite possible

y ou were in the right in the quarrel with Lady By ron. . . . But this is

nothing. (106–7)

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His judgment on the marriage, however temperate and properly

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expressed, is “nothing” in comparison with his judgment on Byron’s

interference, not with the domestic affairs of men, but with their

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opinions. Lockhart is permitted to hazard an opinion (with many

pompous cautions); Byron is not permitted to try to influence that

opinion, at least not publicly or undisguised by the cleverness of
Don

Juan
.72 “Eric Eisner calls both “Fare Thee Well!” and
Don Juan
“pub-

lic events . . . texts whose meaning depends on their public life” (24).

This is the understanding of the text upon which Lane draws when he

quotes from “Fare Thee Well!” in his engraving. Lane doesn’t share

Lockhart’s professed scruples about interfering improperly in the pri-

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vate affairs of men (despite the timing of his pamphlet and the obvi-

ous parallels, Lockhart makes no mention of the royal marriage). His

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motto invokes the poem’s status as a public event and once again calls

upon “the world” to render judgment—although the judgment he

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is asking for turns out to be closer to the one Lockhart renders than

the difference in medium and the broadness of Lane’s satire might

suggest. By summer of 1821, the world had mostly lost interest in

the story of Caroline’s victimization by a corrupt monarchy leagued

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with a corrupt aristocracy, and was absorbed in the spectacle of the

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upcoming coronation, which her presence might spoil. Her unruli-

ness in this and other engravings is not just evidence of adultery but

an unpleasant fact to be avoided for its own sake. She is messy; she

will make a mess of things if she isn’t contained.73 By positioning his

engraving in the context of Byron’s public attempt to assert owner-

ship over the story of his separation, Lane connects Caroline less with

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B o d y D o u b l e s i n t h e N e w M o n a r c h y

165

Byron’s little eccentricities than with his self-serving and ill-timed

celebrity. Byron renounced influencing the opinions of English read-

ers when he left for the Continent in April 1816, never returning to

England. Lane attaches his poem to a depiction of Caroline’s depar-

ture from Europe for England, suggesting that it would have been

better if she, too, had never returned.

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C o n c l u s i o n

Th e L at e Q u e e n a n d

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t h e P ro gr e s s of Roya lt y

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n August 12, a little more than three weeks after George IV’s

coronation and five days after Caroline’s death from a bowel obstruc-

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tion, Lane published the last engraving in his series (figure C.1). This

picture has no accompanying verse or dialogue, only a banner below

the frame with the words “Honi. Soit. Qui. Mal. Y. Pense.” (“Evil be

to him who evil thinks”), the motto for the Order of the Garter and

the royal coat of arms. In it, an audience of women and men gaze

at a shop window plastered with engravings recognizab le as earlier

items in Lane’s series, interspersed with some anti-Caroline engrav-

ings by Cruikshank.1 “Honi. Soit.” is a retrospective anthology; its

marketing strategy is the grouping in one place of already familiar

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engravings. Like a songbook or garden of verse, its coherence lies in

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its collection rather than in the local relevance of its individual ele-

ments. As a collection, the print memorializes the Queen Caroline

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affair at a moment when neither Caroline’s status nor the Crown’s

accusations matter any longer to the structure of the monarchy. They

have become history.

Like Gillray’s 1808
Very Slippy-Weather
, on which it is modeled

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(BM Satires 11100), “Honi. Soit.” depicts the outside of Humphrey’s

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print shop at 27 St. James’s Street.2 The figures mimic the viewer by

standing with backs to the frame. They gaze and point but also con-

verse with one another. Their dialogue cooperates with the title of the

print, which stresses the relativity and subjectivity of judgment.3 The

voyeuristic figures typical of Lane’s earlier Caroline engravings have

become those responsible for their production and distribution: Lane

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Figure C.1
In Theodore Lane’s “Honi. Soit. Qui. Mal. Y. Pense.” (1821), a crowd

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outside Humphrey’s print shop looks at a collection of Caroline engravings.

and his publisher, George Humphrey. The glee on their faces high-

lights their profit-making motive, while identifying them as show-

men. They stand in the wings looking at the audience watching.

This picture and the engravings in it were reproduced in a folio vol-

ume published by Humphrey, titled
The Attorney-General’s Charges

against the Late Queen
, and accompanied by a summary of the charges

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read in the Lords on August 19, 1820.4 The organization of the printed

volume imposes a narrative on the series of fifty engravings that is not

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present in the single print, in which the pictures in the window are

arranged as if for sale. The pamphlet translates the print’s static scene

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of commerce into a narrative of the Crown’s case against the Queen.

Following the summary of the charges, the first twenty engravings

illustrate the Attorney General’s speech, beginning with those that are

either meant or can be used to reference the beginning of Caroline’s

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affair with Pergami, followed by depictions of the specific charges.5

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After
A Parting Hug at St. Omer
, more than half the prints are devoted

either to representations of Caroline’s return to England or to horri-

fied predictions of her possible ascendancy. The pamphlet ends with
A

Coronation Stool, of Repentance
, printed on July 19, 1821, the date of

the coronation.6 In it, Caroline, alone and in profile, sits on an over-

sized crown, partly hiding her pained expression behind a fan.

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T h e L a t e Q u e e n a n d t h e P r o g r e s s o f R o y a l t y 169

Viewers of “Honi. Soit.,” however, will not be able to see the

Queen’s expression. To be legible, the print’s meaning requires the

context of the pamphlet. In addition to being on the cover, “Honi.

Soit.” is reproduced within the pamphlet, the first print after the

summary of the charges. It introduces and summarizes the prints

that follow, its rough sketches designed for recognition rather than

perusal. Viewers who look at this print without reference to the origi-

nals cannot discern their details. They must either know the prints

already (like the gazers in picture), as separate images outside of this

collection, and supply details missing from the rough outlines, or else

understand the print as an index and flip through the pamphlet to

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find the originals.

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This index has its own organizing principle. The prints depicted

in “Honi. Soit.” are estab lished signifiers that exist either in the

viewer’s imagination or in the pages that follow (or b oth). Lane’s