The Royals Are Racist? Surprise!

I received, a few hours ago, an injection of the drug Eylia in each eye, and ‘can’t see a thing’--so why not blindly type a blog entry? It just might be of interest, however slight, to those of you who come across it.

1.

Our family, most of whom live abroad, have formed a What’s App group. We are notified of each new post by a harp arpeggio on our smart phones. We’ve been getting lots of arpeggios lately.

A frequent subject  recently has been the royal family of Britain. As you undoubtedly know by now, two prominent members of the House of Windsor, Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have absconded to California, where they were interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. Meghan, who is not only biracial but American as well, was, she asserts, driven to despair by the treatment she received in Buckingham Palace;  apparently, and undoubtedly, racism (surpise!) had a significant role to play in her feelings of isolation. Some of my relatives were for the abolishment of British royalty altogether, others thought the often not-so-merrie-England was better off with the tradition, symbolism and pageantry the royals provide. What’s my take on all this? (Not that you should care much what I think; I hardly do myself. But the slurs of the Sirs and the shade-conscious Ladies have been a subject of conversation around the world, so why not cast my penny's worth of opinion onto the  heap of worthless, pound-foolish, nugatory crap?)

First, I’d like to discuss my connection to British royalty, which is admittedly a thin one, and growing thinner as the years pass. My great-grandparents on my mother’s side, James and Ella Hammond, migrated to the United States in 1888. Prior to that, they were employed in a large estate somewhere around Manchester, England. She was the chief cook there; he was the chief butler. They were in charge of many employees, cooks, scullery maids, butlers, etc. (Do you remember the PBS series Upstairs/Downstairs from the 1970s? I imagine it was like that, although I’m not sure). My relatives were both of the Downstairs variety; the closest they got to royalty was serving them steak and eggs in the morning and fussing over other household needs.  The entire family, as far as I know, came no closer to those of so-called  noble birth than that. (Note the ironic 'so-called'—I am a proud member of the proletariat).

Something happened around 1888 which led to the secret elopement of Ella and James; they disappeared without a trace. I imagine he got her pregnant, a major scandal in those days—what else?

After my grandfather was born, after Ella and James were properly married, they retuned to Manchester for a visit. Their arrival caused a big to-do. The sudden disappearance of the couple—they apparently did not leave a note—startled many of the downstairs people, and undoubtedly some of the upstairs ones as well; many expected that foul play had occurred, perhaps a double suicide. It had been covered in the papers. (England had her tabloids even then).  A local body of water had been drained in a search to find them, perhaps locked in a skeletal embrace. (It made the tabloids again—wish I had a copy of one of them!)

I have no documents to support any of this, but I don’t doubt its accuracy. James, my great-grandfather, was, I imagine, at a loss in the United States. My grandfather told me that at one time he was peddling eggs in lower Manhattan. I know nothing else about him,

Grandfather, Walter Hammond, went into business making lamps. Clients would present him with vases and other such things;  he would subsequently fashion them into lamps. He had a shop on 49^th Street in Manhattan; while it lasted, which included my early years, the business did very well. He eventually had enough money to purchase a three-story house on Congress Street in Jersey City in1948. This was the house I grew up in. He rented the upper two floors to his daughter, Mabel, my mother, and to his son-in-law, for a nominal fee. My father, Robert, was a troubled man; without my grandfather’s help, I don’t know what we would have done.

Now you know how close we got to royalty. I picture my great-grandfather ordering a white-gloved lackey to go upstairs and present the Master with the mail on a silver plate. If I had been asked to do such a thing, my reply would have not been polite. (Yankee individualism? For many Americans, it’s a comfortable disease.)

 

2.

I guess I have inherited some Yankee antipathy toward royalty. Opposition to monarchy has a long tradition in the United States. Regarding our founding fathers, Hamilton at one point wanted a king, presumably Washington, but he met with still opposition from Jefferson, Madison and others. (Our current royalty are the greedy-for-green masters of untrammeled capitalism.)

One can’t fail to appreciate, however, the long list of English kings and queens, that began with King Æthelstan in the 10^th century, and is still, while not going strong, still going. This makes the study of English (and, to a lesser degree, French) history not only more consequential, but more comprehensible as well. Comparing English history, to, say, the history of Eastern Europe, is like comparing a Bach cello suite to the suite for toy piano by John Cage.  The latter might be interesting, but the former is essential. The chaos, say, of the history of the Holy Roman Empire compared to the history of England, is striking. The success of the latter is in no small part due to England being a unified country ruled by kings and queens.

The English, unique in history as far as I know, have had the genius to be able to progress from absolute rule to a functioning democracy without having to cut off heads. French and Russian royalty, along with their power, disappeared by guillotine at the Place de la Concorde for the former, and by bullets at Yakaterinburg for the latter. Only England, among the major nations of Europe, made a fairly smooth, gradual transition from royal power and tradition to royal tradition only. (I chuckled at a comment by a Britisher regarding the kerfuffle that swept America when a fundamentalist refused to bake a cake for a homosexual wedding: “Religious arguments, religious strife? We’ve been there, we’ve done that.” Where are American versions of William and Mary when you need them?

Carrying on a tradition of pomp and uncircunstance as if the royals still mattered more than, say, the Kardashians, is, it can be argued, ridiculous. But the English apparently still love it; it’s their business. We Americans who spend more on defense than the next ten powerful countries combined have no right criticizing the Brits for the pennies (relatively speaking) they spend spoiling anachronistic icons.

I imagine that those Brits who are the curtsy- and bow-craziest of them all come from the so-called (like my great-grandparents) lower class who voted for Brexit. They Brexiters can still pretend that, as they tip their hats to some lord or other, that they are still on top of the world. (They aren't).

I must admit, as the only white member of my family, that I was pleased when the biracial Meghan married into royalty. If Britain succeeds as a multiracial state--and I hope it will--it will need to have some royals that look more like my son than some Lord Higgenbottom does. Well, that pleasant daydream didn't last long, did it?

Britannia rules the waves? Not any more. The loss of power from Henry Vlll to Elizabeth ll is as unidirectional as time’s arrow. Yes, Britain is still an important power--But all good (and bad) things come to an end. What if some day Britannia’s rule of the waves is limited to undulations produced by a princess and a pauper playing footsie in a hot tub?

(At last I see clearly!)

Who cares?