Portrait of a Prince
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The extraordinary portrait of Henry Frederick, Stuart Prince of Wales, which hangs in the South Block stairwell, is worth more than a cursory glance by those students who pass it daily, says Jan Piggott, former Head of English and previous Keeper of the Archives. (Reprinted from The Alleynian, Summer, 2021) In the South Block hall, as you pass the Day House scoreboards before walking upstairs for a History lesson, the mobile phone in your pocket turned off , please log on to that Facebook portrait, high up: Henry Frederick, Stuart Prince of Wales (1594–1612) (see right). His Highness died at 18 of typhoid, your fellow Sixth Former, as it were; historians say we lost a noble Henry IX and got Charles I, his tragic younger brother. A mile of 2,000 mourners in black walked at his funeral. There was more grief than for Gloriana: many poets wrote elegies, such as John Donne and George Herbert, lachrymose in Latin. Sir Walter Raleigh, though imprisoned by James at the Tower, where he was sought out for advice by the Prince, was indeed writing The Historie of the World explicitly for his young patron. However, Raleigh abandoned the projected second and third volumes, ending his chronicle (so critical of monarchs) abruptly: since God had taken away that glorious Prince , something vnspeakable and neuer enough lamented , he was left tearful as Job in the Bible. For Henry, the King his father wrote Basilikon Doron , read over all Europe, about how to be King – Christian, peaceful and just. Henry’s mother, Queen Anne, was the King of Denmark’s sister; his godmother was Elizabeth I. He received the Order of the Garter at 10 years old. Sporting and martial, he was also highly cultivated. The household of this teenage heir to the throne at St James’s Palace in 1610, numbering nearly 500, was referred to as a ‘collegiate court’, entertaining academics, churchmen, scientists, soldiers and explorers. Henry’s was the first serious Royal Library and Collection, with works of art from the continent, Greek and Roman coins and 10,000 medals. Lavish entertainments and patronage rivalled the Medicean and Prague courts. He intended to defeat the might of Catholic Spain, discover the North-West Passage and colonise Virginia; his carved and gilded ships were magnificent, as were his palaces and gardens. Edward Alleyn bequeathed this portrait to Dulwich College. Alleyn, impresario in the entertainment industry, was ‘Master of the King’s Games of Bears, Bulls and Dogs’. Howard, the Armada Lord High Admiral, was patron of Alleyn’s acting company, which the King assigned to Prince Henry; Alleyn and ‘the Prince’s Players’ wore Henry’s scarlet livery in the coronation procession. Arriving from Scotland at nine years old, Henry attended a private royal family treat, Alleyn’s production of a Lion Hunt inside the chambers and stairs of the Tower; afterwards he ordered Alleyn never to allow the English mastiff who had fought the King of Beasts to fight any inferior creature. Henry also attended the welcome that Alleyn (already called ‘servant to the young Prince’) gave the King. Alleyn delivered a stirring speech, written by Ben Jonson, on behalf of the city from a triumphal arch in the streets. Alleyn was involved with Inigo Jones in Jonson’s court masques, which would have out-dazzled Las Vegas floor-shows. They involved poetry, song, dance, elaborate moving scenery and coloured lights; allegory and mythology asserted political and ideological themes. On New Year’s Day, 1611, at the Whitehall
By Endurance We Conquer Tim Jarvis AM
Last year, we were contacted by Alastair Fisher (78-84) to let us know that his long-time friend, British-Australian environmental explorer Tim Jarvis, had recently followed in Sir Ernest Shackleton’s footsteps to reveal the impacts of climate change on the Antarctic. Tim was there to produce Thin Ice , an immersive VR documentary film showing what is left of the icy environment that Shackleton and his peers once explored. We were also fascinated to discover that, in 2013, Tim led the first authentic retracing of Shackleton’s “double” - sailing a replica James Caird across the Southern Ocean from Elephant Island to South Georgia and climbing over South Georgia’s mountainous interior, all using the same rudimentary equipment, period clothing and technology as Shackleton and his men. Tim’s epic journey got him thinking about how the global approach to climate change is falling short, and what we can do to set it right.
The Endurance was discovered on 5 March 2022, exactly 100 years after Shackleton's funeral. With news of the discovery, some local and national news crews were keen to interview Calista Lucy and Freddie Witts, who form part of our formidable Archives team, and to film the James Caird in its centre-stage location in The Laboratory. Even before the momentous discovery, there had been increased interest in our weekly public visits to the James Caird due to it being Shackleton’s centenary year. The College even welcomed the Chilean Ambassador and historian Dan Snow ahead of his Endurance22 expedition. In November, November, the James Caird Society marked the discovery at its annual dinner, and some of the College’s Geography students were honoured to be invited. Dr Mensun Bound, the Director of Exploration for Endurance22, discussed the difficulties and the joy of finding the ship which sank on the 21 November 1915.
INIGO JONES (1573–1652) COSTUME DESIGN FOR PRINCE HENRY AS OBERON, 1610. © The Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth. Reproduced with permission of Chatsworth Settlement Trustees.
“ Alleyn and ‘the Prince’s Players’ wore Henry’s scarlet livery in the coronation procession ”
What of the outcome if we had applied this global approach to retracing Shackleton’s journey? What if we had made grand statements about achieving the goal but set off without the resources or know-how, relying instead on sailing in the right direction and committing to improve as we went? Painfully slow progress would eventually give way to us running out of time and provisions before reaching the island, only to ultimately flounder in the Southern Ocean only halfway towards our destination Thankfully, we prevailed, and so we can, and must, with climate change; we know what we need to do. Our 1.5°C temperature cap means we must emit no more than 400 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from now on in order to meet it. At current emission rates, this gives us only eight years before a potentially catastrophic level of warming becomes unavoidable. However, the Science Based Targets methodology shows countries and organisations how to quantify what their fair share looks like and set out a framework to achieve it. What about my most recent trip south? This time there was no chance at all of pack ice entombing our ship, as we did not encounter any. In fact, the temperatures did not dip below freezing once in almost two months. A further to call to action, as if one were needed. If Shackleton’s mission was to save his men from Antarctica, ours is now to save Antarctica from humankind.
In 2013, my team retraced the journey that Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men made to reach Stromness whaling station after the Endurance became stuck in pack ice on 18 January 1915. I am often asked how we did it, the short answer to which offers some useful guidance on how we combat climate change. In essence, we committed to making the journey, worked out what it would take to reach our destination, acquired the necessary skills and resources, applied them, and did not rest until the job was done. The key point is that we worked out where we needed to be and we worked backwards. Climate change is an issue that many, myself included, have been working on for many years. On first pass, it would appear we have all committed to following the same methodology. Science tells us that we must not exceed 1.5°C of warming above pre-industrial levels. Accordingly, nations have committed to achieving this under the legally-binding Paris agreement, via pledges and policies that sees everyone doing their bit. When we aggregate what those pledges and policies actually deliver, we find ourselves missing the 1.5°C cap by almost the same amount again, consigning the world to almost 3°C of warming. The culprit: many countries’ pledges and policies are disconnected from where they need to be for them to be making their fair contribution, with ‘continuous improvement’ being too heavily relied on.
AFTER ISAAC OLIVER (1565–1617), HENRY, PRINCE OF WALES. ‘THE FLOWER OF HIS HOUSE, THE GLORY OF HIS COUNTRY AND THE ADMIRATION OF ALL FOREIGNERS.’
©Shackleton Epic Expedition
Banqueting House, Prince Henry himself performed the title role in Oberon , Spenserian knight and Roman imperator. The Prince was pulled in a chariot by two polar bears Alleyn probably brought (recently acquired) from his stinking, noisy Bear Garden on Bankside (rather near Tate Modern). The Prince’s Barriers , also by Jonson, boasted about a Stuart revival of chivalry and glorious Arthurian Britain, with England, Scotland and Ireland united; this was combined with an absurd indoor jousting tournament lasting till dawn – a ‘Have at You’ across something like a tennis net, where Henry himself took 32 pikepushes and 360 sword-strokes. About 10 years after Henry died, Alleyn wrote regretting the loss of his ‘most excellent Master’ who would have backed him up in some legal difficulty. In the portrait above, Henry practises military exercises, posed à l’antique in cuirass with his tiltyard lance. ‘Second to no Prince in Christendom’ as horseman, this muscular Christian would have made an obvious School Captain at Dulwich (in spite of his birth), balancing the intellectual and the sporting in a way Wodehouse would have approved in his Dulwich College school stories about the conflict between Sports and Study. Ben Jonson wrote how Yor favor to letters [literature] & those gentler studies, that goe under the title of Humanitye, is not the least honor of yor wreath. Prince Henry was the antithesis of his father, who was seen to envy his popularity. In manner he was reserved; he enjoyed solitary walks at Richmond Palace on Thames-bank by moonlight, listening to his trumpeters and kettle-drummers.
Credit: Jo Stewart
Credit: Magnus O'Grady
Credit: Jo Stewart
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