BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

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CHAPTER SIX
Political Subculture
Some nations have a gift for cermonial. No poverty of
means or absence of splendour inhibits them from making
any pageant in which they take part both real and
impressive. ... In England the case is exactly the
reverse. We can afford to be more splendid than most
nations; but some malignant spell broods over all our
most solemn ceremonials, and inserts into them some
feature which makes them all ridiculous. . . . Some­
thing always breaks down, somebody contrives to escape
doing his part, or bye-motive is suffered to interfere
and ruin it all.
Lord Robert Cecil, the future third Marquis of
Salisbury. Excerpt from an article published
anonymously by The Saturday Review 9 February
1861.
Beaconsfield dead is quite as useful to the Tories as
Beaconsfield alive.
Attributed to Lord Randolph Churchill, England,
23 April 1892.
Lord Beaconsfield is much more than a memory--he is a
religion to the party he led.
Lady St. Helier, Memories of Fifty Years (1910)
I
Salisbury was correct in his observation concerning the lack of
grandeur associated with public cermonies in mid-Victorian Britain.
Nevertheless, the last quarter of the nineteenth and first decade of
the twentieth centuries were to provide a striking contrast,
constituting in Cannadine's words, the "golden age of 'invented
traditions. ,H
The introduction of elaborate rituals for state
functions were made manifest most visibly at the apex of society
through the lavish proceedings initiated to commemorate monarchical