"England's Darling": The Victorian Cult of Alfred the Great (review)

In recent years, Arthurianism, the interest in all aspects of early Britain's mythical King Arthur, has remained a strong current in popular culture. In contrast, Alfredianism, a similar interest in the figure of Saxon England's historical King Alfred, is barely recognizable as a word. Yet as Joanne Parker comprehensively shows in England's Darling, in Victorian Britain, enthusiasm for the ninth-century King Alfred, all he achieved or was credited with achieving, and all that he was seen to represent functioned as a powerful cultural force in literature, the visual arts, and national consciousness. Indeed, such divine qualities were attributed to Alfred that the word "cult" in Parker's title seems entirely appropriate. The result is an expertly researched and intriguing book drawing together literature, history, art, and popular culture that should appeal to any reader seeking to understand Victorian cultural self-construction.

The book opens with an overview of the King Alfred Millenary celebrations of 1901, which were centered on Winchester. As Parker notes, both the location—Alfred died at Winchester, but it was not necessarily his capital—and the date—Alfred died in 899, not 901—were questionable, but the lavish event was the culmination of the Victorian reverence for all that Alfred represented. The following two chapters contextualize the discussion to follow. Chapter 2 provides a useful overview of nineteenth-century medievalism and particularly Anglo-Saxonism, while chapter 3 surveys the sources of Victorian representations of Alfred. Parker briefly sketches the major controversies over the reliability of key sources such as Asser's Life of King Alfred or William of Malmesbury's chronicle, but she spends little time weighing the validity of the information since her focus is not the historic Alfred but what the Victorians thought they knew about him. Justifiably, she credits later antiquarians such as Sir John Spelman as much as the early sources for the stories that appealed most to the Victorians, so that enthusiastic Alfredians might credit Alfred with practicing constitutional monarchy; establishing trial by jury and the English navy; founding Oxford University; and, the story that the Victorians most liked to retell, burning a countrywoman's cakes. Parker's historical overview also notes that eighteenth-century British monarchs were able to draw upon Alfred's popularity in creating their own royal images, something that Queen Victoria's admirers were also later to do by suggesting that both Victoria and her German husband Albert embodied a common Saxon ancestry. Here, as throughout, the book is illustrated with fascinating examples of the many depictions of Alfred in the fine and decorative arts.

The rest of the study is arranged thematically as Parker considers how Alfred provided an exemplum for nineteenth-century politics, progress, and morality. In terms of politics, Alfred offered the Victorians an unthreatening method of discussing the ideal monarch and the roles of monarchy in a modern state. Chapter 4 adeptly charts how Alfred was a model both for a warrior-king and for a peacemaker, and the ingenious ways that Victorian commentators explained why such a high-minded king continued the system of bribing Danish raiding parties to stay away and allowed the Danes to settle northern England. As Parker notes, representations of the story of Alfred burning the cakes demonstrate changing attitudes toward monarchy: in earlier versions, Alfred's innate royalty was difficult to disguise, but the Victorians preferred to see him as an ordinary man who had taken on the duty of protecting and governing the nation.

The chapter "Alfred and Victorian Progress" perhaps most demonstrates the tension between past and present in Victorian thinking. As Parker notes, Alfred was credited with having originated a wide variety of institutions, including the foundations of English law. This presented a problem for notions of linear progress. If, as many Victorians argued, historical progress is the forward movement of society to a state of civilization supported by scientific and technological innovation, the...