When is a pageant a pageant – or not?
Many people ask us not just what our project is about, but what it’s not about. The word ‘pageant’ covers many activities, only some of which we are studying in our work. Some of our Twitter followers (@Pageantry_AHRC) seem to think we are looking at beauty pageants. (Perhaps if we were, we would have even more followers!)
But more seriously, we have discussed at length what ‘counts’ as a historical pageant and what doesn’t, for the purposes of our work. We can’t look at everything that has called itself a pageant – we only have three years of funding, after all.
Ultimately we agreed on a definition: any theatrical pageant, with or without dialogue, that presented more than one event. So for us, an historical play based on a single episode would not be a pageant. Nor would an event such as the Carlisle pageant of 2013, which involved a procession of historical characters but was not a theatrical event as such. (Having said this, we are working with Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle, to produce an exhibition that considers the history of pageantry and related events in the town.)
We have to stop somewhere, of course. But it is perhaps unfortunate that our definition of pageants excludes some interesting events from the past. One example is the St Albans pageant of 1909. This fascinating event – held in the city’s Clarence Park – celebrated the historical links between St Albans and Caen in Normandy, as well as the more recent entente cordiale of 1904 between Britain and France.
A group from St Albans visited Caen in June 1909, attending a civic event at the Hotel de Ville, and there was a return visit to St Albans shortly afterwards, in July. Forty-three visitors, including the mayor of Caen, went to St Albans, which was decorated with tricolours and unionn flags. Another civic reception was held, and there was a large banquet at the city’s drill hall.
The pageant took place the following afternoo – it was a children’s pageant set to music by Professor W. H. Bell. It was in the style of May Day, with a maypole dance featuring 24 children from local elementary schools. The pageant depicted the four British nations, as well as celebrating the recent political entente with France. In total 2,500 children participated in the ‘drill’, as it was called, in St Albans’s newest park.
The pageant also marked the official unveiling of a new window in the nave of St Albans cathedral, known as the ‘entente cordiale window’. According to one account, the mingling of French and British flags formed ‘a truly moving patriotic scence’.
This event was not a historical pageant as such, but it was in the pageant tradition, and most of those who took part would have very clear memories of the historical pageant at St Albans two years earlier.
Luckily, the involvement of project partners, such as Tullie House and St Albans Museums, allows us to examine some events like this as part of our project. We are able to emphasise the variety of community events that could be considered as historical pageants.
Mark Freeman