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In“Jane Austen’s ‘Tribute’ to the Prince Regent: A Gentleman Riddled with Difficulty” (posted a month earlier in this issue of Persuasions On-Line), I argue that Austen’s novel Emma contains numerous barbs aimed at George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales and Prince Regent of the United Kingdom. I also claim that there is a second answer to the charade in chapter 9 of the novel. Once again, here is the second charade:
My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings,
Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease.
Another view of man, my second brings,
Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!
But, ah! united, what reverse we have!
Man’s boasted power and freedom, all are flown;
Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a slave,
And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone. (71)
Emma quickly and confidently dismisses Harriet Smith’s guesses to the charade and readily offers the solution: court and ship, or courtship. While this is a perfectly credible solution to the riddle, I do not think it is the only one.
Harriet’s more literal guesses to the charade include kingdom, Neptune, trident, mermaid, and shark. If unlike Emma we are not so quick to reject the more literal approach to solving the charade, then
“Lords of the earth” could be princes or, in the singular, prince. (Since in later lines “Lords” becomes “Lord,” we are encouraged to change plurals to singulars, and vice versa.)
And the “monarch of the seas” is certainly whale or, in the plural, whales.
United? Well, you have it: Prince [of] Whales!
On 15 March 1812 a satirical poem about the Prince was published in the Examiner, the English periodical edited by James Henry Leigh Hunt and his brother John Hunt. The poem was entitled “THE TRIUMPH OF THE WHALE,” replete with kings, sharks, mermaids, and a Regent to boot:
Io! Paean! Io! Sing
To the funny people’s King.
Not a mightier whale than this
In the vast Atlantic is;
Not a fatter fish than he
Flounders round the polar sea.
See his blubbers—at his gills
What a world of drink he swills,
From his trunk, as from a spout,
Which next moment he pours out.