Hand on heart I can't say that I have remembered the significance of this day every year since it happened, but today, if my maths is right, it will be eighteen years since the tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales. One of those days when most of us can remember the moment that we heard the news, and how normal life seemed to be on hold for the duration of what was to follow.
I doubt I would have remembered but for two coincidental mentions in my reading in the last week or so and then some music on the radio.
While I quilt I have been listening to audio books and the most recent one has been Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel. Bookhound and I are fortunate enough to be going to hear Hilary Mantel speak at the Budleigh Literary Festival soon and we can't wait. There aren't many authors that Bookhound gets excited about unless they are talking about salmon weighing more than 50lbs and caught on a fly, but he makes an exception for our 'ilary even though this seems unlikely to be the main topic of her talk.
If you have read Beyond Black (more of which soon and I can highly recommend the audio version) you will know that medium, clairvoyant and psychic Alison foresees the death of Diana some time before it happens...
'It's Diana,' Al said. 'Dead.'
Always Colette would say later, she would remember the shiver that ran through her : like a cold electric current, like an eel....
'I'm sure it will be clearer, 'Al said, 'when it actually happens.'
'What do you mean? You mean is hasn't happened yet?...Al we must do something.'
Obviously there is nothing to be done but wait and Al is in for a very busy few weeks after Diana's death. Regular customers want readings, and there are sightings and visitations to be dealt with, which all reminded me how sad, and odd and strange that time was...and how really anything seemed possible and feasible. I can well remember feeling pinned to the sofa for much of the day, not wanting to miss a minute of the news coverage and being as complicit as the next person in that national sense of grief that many ridiculed and others felt duty-bound to try and explain.
Hilary Mantel doesn't ridicule, but she does have a way of casting an eye over a situation and seeing the ridiculous, and there is a subtle difference I think. It is all pierced on a fork and raised for everyone to see before she carves her way through it with the most perceptive of narratives. I have absolutely loved listening to Anna Bentinck's reading and choked with laughter more than I can say.
And then, as if I was meant to take more notice of this anniversary, I was reading one of the British Quilt Studies Group Quilt Studies journals that I am enjoying so much (Issue 13 - 2012) and a fascinating paper entitled Commemoration and Grief : Two Coverlets and the Death of Charlotte Augusta Princess of Wales. Anita Loscalzo highlights the discovery of two coverlets (pieced but not quilted = coverlet) relating to Charlotte, another Princess of Wales, who died in childbirth in 1817. Whilst not directly related to her death both coverlets had a connection, and comparisons were made with the death of Diana.
Princess Charlotte was the daughter of the Prince Regent and Princess Caroline of Brunswick and had been named after her grandmother Queen Charlotte, the long-suffering yet devoted wife of George III. Young Charlotte must have been mightily relieved to marry Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in May 1816 if only to escape the dysfunctional life that her warring parents inflicted on her, and indeed Charlotte and Leopold were considered the golden couple of the age; in love and giving hope to the future of the monarchy after the profligate lifestyle of the Prince Regent.
In July 1816 Charlotte suffered an early miscarriage but fell pregnant again in 1817 eventually going into labour on November 6th. It's hard to imagine the agonies and fears of a fifty hour labour in 1817, nor the impact of a stillborn son, nor the fulminating post-partum haemorrhage that would cause Charlotte's death some five hours after delivery. We might have taken that unnoticed injection of Oxytocin for granted as we all gazed at our newborns but imagine how many lives it has saved.
What may have been equally unimaginable and unexpected was a nation distraught with grief, and they were...
'It was as if every house had been suddenly bereaved of a child.'
The entire nation observed the day of the funeral and memorials and mourning items were mass produced for public consumption. Etchings, ceramics, jewellery and printed handkerchiefs among the most popular. Six months of deepest mourning was declared, sales of black textiles soared and the beleaguered obstetrician who had presided over Charlotte's labour would eventually commit suicide, whilst the recriminations against the Royal family were legion. To make matters worse, the memorial to the Princess, funded by public subscription, was erected in the chapel at Windsor Castle where no one could see it and there was apparently much disgruntlement amongst the populace.
It all sounds vaguely familiar doesn't it.
Honestly we think we invented all these trials and tribulations and memorials surrounding the death of a princess in sad circumstances but it would seem but plus ca change twixt 1817 and 1997...
Likewise the marriage of Charlotte and Leopold had been marked by more memorabilia including the production of a pre-printed panel for incorporation in home furnishings, especially quilts, many of which (especially if I had been making them) were probably still a work in progress at the Princess's death, and they do occasionally appear in auction rooms...
A coverlet containing one of these panels sold at Christie's in 2008 for £1875...
Anita Loscalzo also makes reference to a quilt completed by Catherine Tebay two days prior to the death of Princess Charlotte and marked as such...
This one can be found in the New England Quilt Museum.
The music...I almost forgot the music, Pavane pour une infante defunte by Ravel on my potting shed radio while I was trying to prick out the foxglove seedlings...a fiddly task and I was grateful for a stop and stare moment from my little window...
I love it when reading and listening synchronises in this way, but I wonder, going back to that date August 31st 1997...do you remember the day.
We woke up to the news here, others must have heard it later at night...
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