The Return of Grand-Master Parker!
Louis Napoleon Parker was, as I am sure regular readers of our blog are now fully aware, the ORIGINAL pageant-master. His invention at Sherborne went national - nay global - and defined historical pageants for a generation. But, by the time the guns of 1914 interrupted his blossoming movement, he had actually stopped mastering grand historical spectaculars. In his 1928 autobiography, Several of My Lives, he reflected on what he thought had happened to the movement:
...imitators arose right and left. They did not come to me and
frankly ask to be shown how the thing was doine; they sneaked; they spied; they
stole; they vulgarised; they were absurd. I have heard of signalmen posted all
over the arena, wagging flags in full sight of the audience; of a magnificent
“Master of the Pageant” in patent-leather boots, check trousers, white
waistcoat, frock coat, straw-coloured gloves and a dazzling topper, coming on
in the final tableau and making his bow like a prima donna. O ye gods and little fishes!
...speculators began to try to commercialise pageants; advertising crept in; also they were organized for the benefit of specific charities – sometimes sectarian... Pageants, having sacrificed most of the attributes which should characterise them, got into bad odour. Then the word Pageant was affixed to almost everything. I collected such curiosities as a Pageant of Rain; a Pageant of Sunshine; a Pageant of Motor-Cycles; a Pageant of Fog; a Pageant of Summer Hats; and this masterpiece: A Pageant of Lingerie.
Up until this week, I thought that Parker had had no more engagement with the movement. But I've been looking at the Kenilworth Historical Pageant, which took place in 1939 on the eve, and under the shadow, of the Second World War. Local notables decided that, to raise money for a local hospital, they should stage a historical pageant. Remembering the massive Warwick Pageant of 1906 they approached the man responsible: Louis Napoleon Parker. But, by now in his late 80s, he declined. Yet he seemingly instead suggested his grandson Anthony Parker, who was working in the theatre.
If this had been any normal man, that would have been the end of it. Yet, now involved through his grandson, the bombastic Parker seemingly could not help himself. Despite his rejection of the official pageant-master title, he was forthright in telling the organisers that he didn’t ‘like’ the charity objective: pageants, he always maintained, should be their own justification. This quibble, however, did not stop him from contributing a wholly new episode, ‘The Golden Wedding’; arranging Episode IV and Episode V from Marlowe and Shakespeare respectively; and writing the final traditional ‘Triumph Song’. He was also happy to write a foreword to the Souvenir Programme, describing his pride in his grandson, and reasserting the importance of pageants as ‘genuine and necessary expressions of national life and national feeling’. He even managed to make his presence felt at public meetings, through pre-recorded messages, imploring pageanteers to ‘wake and think, sleep and dream, walk and talk, and eat and drink Pageant!’ As well as exciting those in Warwickshire who still remembered 1906, he also clearly influenced his grandson. Anthony even read out loud from his father’s autobiography when speaking at public meetings, reminding the audience that pageants had been ‘abused’ with events that had come since.
Unsurprisingly, Kenilworth's pageant - apart from some more modern techniques and simplified dialogue - ended up being a mostly faithful example of the Edwardian pageants. By 1939, this was a bit of a throwback. Pageants by Frank Lascelles and others had become increasingly fantastical and technical; many pageants featured narration or no dialogue at all; it was common for history to be portrayed right up to the present day, including the horror of the First World War; and semi-professional actors were even beginning to be employed. In the end, it is perhaps a tragic coincidence that the Second World War interrupted this revival of the Edwardian form, much in the same way that, as Parker senior put it, ‘the tragedy of 1914-18’ had as well. As the Leamington Spa Courier sadly reflected, ‘A bare six weeks elapsed between the Pageant’s joyful finale and the opening of the grim drama at which we are now unwilling spectators.’