The Coronation Souvenir number of Picture Post includes an interesting Behind-the-Scenes piece by Tom Driberg. A journalist and politician, Driberg cut quite a controversial figure in his day (though I hadn't known quite how controversial until I read this) and I'll admit to gasping a little when I read his description of the serried ranks of Peeresses...
'It was the lowest tier, however, whose occupants held the eye the longest, not by diversity but by uniformity : for here was a solid phalanx of peeresses, hundreds of them, row upon row in flowing crimson robes and white ermine... when I saw the TV close-ups of these peeresses in the evening papers, I was shocked : some were beautiful such as the Duchess of Argyll (once Miss Margaret Whigham, then Mrs Charles Sweeny) who had the best seat in the Abbey...others were gaunt or decayed, obese or scrawny...'
Checking out the Duchess of Argyll I discover yet another colourful character of whom I knew nothing but would now hope that someone somewhere has written the book (?) and if not someone should, but how times have changed. Such statements would be enough to make Tom Driberg the instant scourge of Twitter sixty years on, and I'm not sure if the Peeresses read Picture Post so who can know what they would have made of the assessment.
He does redeem himself everso slightly...
'But in the Abbey, from our eyrie, they looked collectively radiant; and when the Queen was crowned and they all lifted their white-gloved arms to form, for an exquisite moment, several hundred delicate Gothic arches above their heads and put on their coronets ...well I'm afraid, if it isn't irreverent to say so, that they nearly stole the show.'
Phew, almost rehabilitated, that's good, they look better from afar, but then Tom drops himself right back in the proverbial turtle soup...
'About 20 per cent of them had to go and spoil the effect a few moments later, by putting up cautious hands again in case the things weren't on straight.'
That's him done for.
But whilst the Peeresses were waiting for the ceremony to begin, and no doubt catching up on the society gossip, this had also happened just before the Queen's arrival ...
'A quaint incongruous incident - the sudden arrival in a gorgeous spruce Theatre, round which all the nobility and clergy were now disposed, of a team of energetic, white-clad women with brushes and vacuum cleaners, removing any slight speck of dust that less exalted feet might have carried in. In the acute expectancy of the moment - after hours of waiting - this excited a convulsive bursts of laughter; the formality of the ordered rows of peeresses was suddenly dissolved in heaving merriment; the organist tactfully played fortissimo.'
Pulling themselves together when it mattered what a wonderfully affirming GOD SAVE QUEEN ELIZABETH didst the Peeresses render at the Recognition when their moment came, quite outdid their male counterparts.
To my astonishment, given that this is 1953 and the 1960s have yet to happen, A.L. Rowse then makes some amends over the page with his piece entitled Queens Made England Great, arguing that matriarchy is a very successful way of running a society...
'It seems that a woman at the head of our society, putting herself in touch with the spirit of an age, can express it more naturally and unaffectedly than a man. And people can express themselves more easily towards, and about, her than they can towards a man who happens to be King.'
I have only known a matriarchy in that case, and I'm not sure this was something I had even given much thought to before, having always taken it for granted that this is just the way it is. I have been trying to imagine how different the last sixty years may have been under a King... and somehow I can't.
According to Rowse who reflects in some depth on the reigns of both Elizabeth 1 and Victoria, people apparently 'respond with gallantry to the idea of a woman on the Throne', to her charm and good looks when younger and to the mother-figure as she ages. Female monarchs, he suggests, are more likely to accept the implications of the constitutional role whilst men are more tempted to out-step that role...
'Europe is full of monarchs who have overplayed their hands and had to step down and every one of them is a man.'
In Rowse's summing up ...
'Certainly women throughout the world have reason to be pleased.'
And we can only hope the 'gaunt or decayed, obese or scrawny ' peeresses thought so too.
Being in Coronation-mode I watched the 60th Anniversary Service from Westminster Abbey yesterday.
A memorable hour-long celebration with some of the same music, including a repeated soaring rendition of I was Glad as the Queen stepped in to the Abbey. But as we caught the highlights later I am afraid I spluttered into my tea.
David Dimbleby, casually approaching and standing in front of the High Altar of the Abbey, as if he was out shopping and had happened upon something of interest, and then describing the objects thereon... the Imperial Crown, the ampulla that had held the anointing oil. It should have been a wonderful moment of family and filial continuity given that his father had done the original commentary in 1953, and done it with such respect and sincerity and gravitas, and it almost was, but for the fact that David was standing in one of the most sacred of Anglican spaces... and talking with his hand in his pocket.
May be it's just me, but lapsed Anglican even though I am I still feel some reverence and respect on behalf of others towards chuch altars. I'll bet his Dad would have clipped him around the ear for that.
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