"On the evidence of novels, poetry and paintings, the Victorians were obsessed with the English Revolution. Imagining the British past as prototype of an idealized present, the Victorian cult
of domesticity drew upon the image of the Caroline royal family. Frederick Goodall's 1853 An Episode in the Happier Days of Charles I (fig. 1) depicts Charles I, Henrietta Maria and their young
children feeding geese, while on a royal shallop barge moving slowly down the Thames. A characteristically van Dyckian Charles I, sporting long hair, brushed-up moustache and pointed beard,
dressed in a black silk doublet with falling ruff collar, and wearing his lesser George medallion, stands over his seated wife and daughter. Henrietta Maria, her hair stylishly dressed in side
ringlets, wears a deep rose satin gown with an elaborate collar and large, puff sleeves; holding a King Charles spaniel in her lap, the queen attends closely to her rosy and plump-cheeked young
daughter, who is feeding two large swans"--
