In the Abbey
BY LAIN HAMILTON OLLOWING Scotland Yard's instructions on the inside of the sticker on the windscreen, we turned in a wide arc from the north to come at Parliament Square, and on the Way talked more of the cold, dank, deserted desolation of the peripheral streets than of the astonishing ritual which we were approaching. For the more or less rational, sceptical skin which normally encases us is slow to be sloughed, and the abominable weather Which was the south-west's compliment to the Queen and her aPital on June 2nd delayed the process further. The berpentine lay blank, grey and inert, a dead pool of water below mirroring the fog of water above. But in a moment or two We came on a gorgeous chariot with gold flunkeys outside and 'a Peer, peeress and page inside, and from that fortunate moment the glass began to rise. On the pavement of Lupus Street an ecstatic soldier saluted all and sundry, arid a little further on some short-sighted spectators mistook us for nobility and gave us such a welcome that-in decency we could do no less than affect the gracious manners of a higher estate and return the compliment suitably. Towards Millbank the streams of ears began to congeal and for a few minutes ours was halted alongside the vaster limousine of a Press baron, whose chin Was sunk in ermine, whose eyes were resolutely closed. Ahead Was a car smaller than ours and badly battered, but glorified by t grew late: one grew worried : the stream the of cars grew longer. the viscount's coronet perched on the ledge at le back.
A rational man might have shrugged his shoulders, but rationalism was already cast off, and one bit one's nails instead. Just as I had come to the agonising conclusion that confusion Was to be complete, the stream suddenly thawed; we swept forward in a mighty tide, top-hats, coronets, tiaras and all, and were gently beached on the golden shores of Westminster Abbey. Who could count the number of words spilt generously over newsprint in the days preceding the Coronation to explain the rites and the precious symbols used during them; to set the event properly in the foreground of a perspective which reaches its historical vanishing point in the dim tableau of Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet and Solomon the anointed King? I have unhappily, no .stone to add to that mighty cairn; nor Can there at this stage be any late intrusion into the meta- physical regions which have already been so rapturously explored by those otherwise at a loss to explain just why the crowning of a queen should be, as indeed it is, an event of such enormous significance for a people in our peculiar predicament. Yet the temptation is great, as one recalls how profoundly the emotions were stirred by a spectacle so incomparably rich in texture; so lavishly nourished by so many histories; so intricately rooted—a polychromatic blossom on the topmost branch of the tree of our civilisation. So the pen runs when it has a chance, but I make no apology for it; for on Tuesday morning as I watched the 'peers and Peeresses come to their places, I' recalled how a friendly American who sat beside me during the rehearsal four days before had brought me sharply to the point. North America, generally, he said, had its eyes glued to this Coronation out of a sort of pity as well as admiration, the widespread feeling being that Britain was finished and that this great act of State was, in a sense, its last fling, its last claim to the undivided attention of its friends. I should be surprised,. though, if he left the Abbey on Tuesday with this feeling of friendly condescension intact, for if he could not sense the reservoir of energy behind the solemnities he must have been singularly unperceptive—or uncommonly envious. For what in the abstract might seem to be a ceremonial only remotely concerned with life as it is necessarily lived here in the middle of the twentieth century was in the event, by popular will, transformed into an extra- ordinary expression of buoyancy and confidence. There was no Byzantine stiffness of death about the ceremony itself or the way in which it was regarded inside or outside the church. Everyone was in his place in good order for the flat pro. cessions, the form and order of service open at the right page, the sandwiches, chocolate, and barley-sugars stowed away safely in coronets, top hats, or such meagre pocket-room as formal dress provides. Opera glasses came out, and the demeanour and appearance of acquaintances and grander strangers closely scrutinised. Gold Staff Officers conferred in the aisle, between the blue-green drapings of the Great West Door and the Screen, and one of them, an officer of fierce aspect, with a few signs deftly disposed a group of subordinates more decoratively round a pillar. A gentleman in a kilt climbing the steps of the south aisle neglected to manage his basket- hilted broadsword correctly and so came close to knocking a civic dignitary's nose off. The lights for television came to full intensity and reflected as dazzlingly from the imposing array of learned, respectable bald heads as from the jewels of the women. A choirboy scratched himself vigorously and one of his senior colleagues gave a strong impression of momentary panic at having lost his place in the bundle of sheets he held before him. A hum of conversation mounted from tier to tier and lost itself in the Gothic heights where the Abbey is still its own gaunt self. Somebody fainted and came to without difficulty in a few seconds. The veils were pretty, and the tiaras, and so were a great many of, the faces beneath them. There was, altogether, a great deal to occupy the attention in the moments when no procession happened to be in progress. In the transepts the tiers of seats climbed as high as the great rose windows near the roof, and one could see the justice of calling the Sanctuary in its transformed aspect the " Theatre." Across the gold carpeting of the stage, which had the altar at one end and the raised throne at the other, the peers observed the peeresses, and no doubt considered them to be as handsome en masse as they were singly.
But time was passing more quickly than one could have imagined. Those marvellous survivals the pursuivants had already conducted a procession to the royal gallery, and group by group the representatives of foreign States had moved to the Choir: Scandinavian, Greek, Belgian and other Highnesses were succeeded by a host of Excellencies represent- ing States large and States small, States which enjoy as much tranquillity as the century allows and States where questionable deeds are the order of the day. But the ogres walked as gently as the others. Next had come the rulers of States " under Her Majesty's protection," a small but singularly decorative collection of Sultans with that magnificent figure, Queen Salote of Tonga, stalking with easy regality behind them and looking clean over the heads and shoulders in front of her. The clerics, preceded by the choir, had borne the Regalia to the Vestibule; the Princes and Princesses of the Blood Royal had made their way to the Theatre, the Duchess of Gloucester checking her son Richard's too eager pace. The Queen Mother and Princess Margaret had followed them, the dazzle of their pass- ing proportionately greater, and a foretaste of what was to come. But the stage had to be held first by a platoon of white-coated cleaners who rushed out with sweepers and brooms and in a swift flurry restored the gold carpet of the Theatre and the blue carpet of the processional way to a state of unsullied magnificence. Across which magnificence the Queen soon walked in actual radiance, her hands clasped before her, the simplicity of her demeanour contrasting most strangely with the hard glitter of her jewels. So, later, did the slightness of her figure contrast with the immense weight of the ceremonial in the Theatre, where bishops and peers hemmed her in, and where the catalogue of her responsibilities was formidably pro- claimed. This was the heart of the matter and it has -alreday been admirably described down to the smallest tremor; but most of us, I fancy, were struck not so much by the magnifi- cence of the scene or the grandeur of its associations, or the surge of the music, or the sonorous liturgical periods, as by the impression of the Queen as a sacrificial figure to whom things are done and who must willingly bear them, helplessly but not unhappily at the mercy of an entire , population's emotion. It must have been so, of course, in the days when the monarchcould readily have had the heads of all around, but the paradox here was surely more striking than ever it could have been before; for here was a monarch with virtually no temporal power for good or evil, yet on whose much loved shoulders the people have manifestly placed the sum. Of their aspirations for some sort of renaissance which in essence would go far beyond anything within the management or contrivance of rational government. And as the Queen returned from the Sanctuary, the ordeal over, resplendent in purple velvet, the Sceptre with the Cross in her right hand, the Orb in her left, and on her young head the Imperial Crown, one had some faint idea of the fearful task of being at one and the same time an ordinarily fallible person and a living symbol of absolute perfection and flawless unity.
Such, more or less, must have been the nature of the thoughts that occupied most of us as we now, without impropriety, gnawed our sandwiches and chocolate and summed up the aches and pains which eight hours of sitting and stand- ing had visited upon us. It had been a memorable day, and the more memorable no doubt for those who had seen their rational prejudices routed and their reasonable reservations pushed aside. "0 for Orange may now move," proclaimed the loudspeaker in a well-bred manner as the elaborate busi- ness of clearing the Abbey began. " The bishop's wives in O for Orange may now move.' And the bishop's wives in O for Orange moved in a dignified body towards the buffet. So did we all, in time, and since hunger and thirst came close to prevailing over our gentler instincts, no more need be said on the subject of the buffets.
I went home at last in a taxi, and the driver asked me if I had had a good Coronation. Wonderful, said I, and asked him if he had done well himself. But he had only just come on duty, having been out most of the, night before. It was good to hear him confess that until two o'clock that very afternoon he had been "in the arms of my lady Orpheus." He clearly felt that the day demanded a flourish or two of figurative speech. Each in his own way, we all did our best to rise to the occasion.
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