Peter Parley’s Visit to London During the Coronation of Queen Victoria
By Samuel Griswold Goodrich
“The Queen having advanced to a chair which had been provided for her, about midway between the throne and the south side of the altar, the noblemen and others who composed the procession took up the stations which had been appropriated for them; the choir in the meantime continue to chant the anthem. “The cadences of the anthem had scarcely died away among the aisles of the Abbey when Peter Parley was startled at the sound of youthful voices, singing at their highest pitch. He directed his eyes towards the spot whence the sound proceeded and found it was the Westminster scholars, who, according to an ancient and established custom, greeted their sovereign with a kind of chant, ‘Vivat Victoria Regina!’ ”
After this chant, which, though not the most harmonious, struck Peter Parley as certainly not the least exciting part of the greeting, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Great Chamberlain, and the Earl Marshal advanced and commenced the ceremony of the Coronation by what is called the Recognition; that is, reaching towards each side of the theatre in succession, they thus addressed the assembled spectators:— “‘Sirs, we here present unto you Queen Victoria, the undoubted Queen of this realm; wherefore all you who are come this day to do your homage, are you willing to do the same?’ “As the question was repeated on each side, the Abbey rang with the joyful response ‘God save Queen Victoria!’
A flourish of trumpets added to the enthusiasm of the scene; even Peter Parley, carried away by the feeling of the moment, shouted forth his acclamations in as heartfelt a manner as the most devoted of her Majesty’s subjects. “During this part of the ceremony, the Queen stood by the chair on which she had taken her seat and turned her face successively toward that part of the Abbey to which the question was addressed. “When the enthusiastic cheering subsided, her Majesty resumed her seat, and preparations were made for the Oblation part of the altar service. The Bible, the chalice, and the patina were placed upon the altar, before which two officers of the wardrobe spread a rich cloth of gold and laid a cushion for Her Majesty to kneel upon. The Bishops who were to be engaged in the service also advanced and put on their copes.
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Samuel Griswold Goodrich
Goodrich was born in Ridgefield, Connecticut, the son of a Congregational minister.
Biography.
Goodrich was largely self-educated and became an assistant in a country store at Danbury, Connecticut, which he left in 1808, and later again at Hartford, Connecticut, until 1811. From 1816 to 1822, he was a bookseller and publisher in Hartford. He visited Europe from 1823 to 1824 and moved to Boston in 1826. In 1833 he bought 45 acres (180,000 m2) in nearby Roxbury and built a home in what is now Jamaica Plain.
There, he continued in the publishing business, and from 1828 to 1842, he published an illustrated annual, The Token, to which he was a frequent contributor in prose and verse. A selection from these contributions was published in 1841 under the title Sketches from a Students Window. The Token also contained some of the earliest works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nathaniel Parker Willis, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Lydia Maria Child. In 1841 he established Merry’s Museum, which he continued to edit till 1854. Goodrich was associated with his brother Charles A. Goodrich in writing books for the young. His series, beginning in 1827 under the name of Peter Parley, embraced geography, biography, history, science, and miscellaneous tales.
Of these, he was the sole author of only a few, but in 1857 he wrote that he was the author and editor of about 170 volumes and that about seven million had been sold. An English writer, George Mogridge, also called Peter Parley, raised objections from Goodrich, who had the prior claim.
Samuel Griswold Goodrich
