Charles Moore
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Even republicans must see that jubilees, occurring sufficiently rarely (Diamond ones only twice in our history) to stick in the mind, provide a valuable moment. In our village, the Jubilee has prompted us to remember that our church is — or anyway might be — 650 years old, and to link this with the great day. We shall have a medieval banquet in the nave that night, and I hope to convince our American guest that the present Queen was on the throne when the church was built. Ken, who formerly kept the village shop, has also embarked on a project of interviewing present residents who were living in the village 60 years ago. (Our oldest resident is Jacqueline, Lady Killearn, who is 102, but she blew in late — c. 1960 — and so does not feature.) I have listened to the first cut. The most striking thing is how many businesses there were. In a village of 300 houses, there was a pub, a post office, a butcher, a slaughterhouse, a timber yard, a fencing firm, two builders, a garage, a sweetshop, a ‘snob’ (which is the old word for a cobbler), a shed that sold newspapers, a creamery, a club, a grocer, and a temperance hotel. Strange how prosperity has erased small enterprise.
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Queen Victoria was not well enough to enter St Paul’s Cathedral for the thanksgiving service at her Diamond Jubilee in 1897. She stayed in her barouche beneath the steps, and the service came out to her. A book on which I was brought up called A Baby Patriot’s Alphabet was produced shortly afterwards. ‘Q is our Queen: it fills us with pride/ To see the Queen’s coach when the Queen is inside,’ it said. The joke consisted in the fact that the Queen was so small that she was invisible. The illustration shows the coach, and a black bombasine bosom with the Garter on it, but the head is concealed by the coach’s bodywork. I know of no incident, recorded either by painting or photograph, where one sees the old Queen interacting with her people. Apart from anything else, there was no Buckingham Palace balcony from which to make a royal wave until 1913. Traditional though our present Queen is, she would have shocked her great-great grandmother with her beautiful public smile. Smiling at the throng was considered vulgar. Queen Mary rebuked the future Queen Mother for indulging in this practice. Today, it is compulsory.
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A sad thing about the combination of age and royal-ness is that there is almost no one left on earth who calls the Queen by her Christian name. I gather that Margaret Rhodes, who was brought up with her, calls her by her family name of Lilibet, but quite possibly no one else does. (Prince Philip, apparently, calls her ‘Darling’ or a nickname of his own.) When her mother was alive, they talked on the telephone every single day (‘Your Majesty, it’s Her Majesty,’ said the Clarence House operator); but Queen Elizabeth died in 2002, just after her other daughter Margaret, who invented the name Lilibet by childish mispronunciation. The eminence has grown lonelier.
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Sixty years is a long enough space of time in all conscience, but it understates the story. The Queen has prepared for or performed her present role since December 1936, when her uncle David abdicated. In the entire history of the world, there can be only half a dozen others of whom something similar could be said. In theory, these 75 years devoted to one great thing make the Queen a wonderful subject for interview. Obviously it is prudent of her never to have submitted to cross-examination, but also I suspect that if she did, she would not play by the rules of the game. She would not like or even understand the inevitable ‘How does it feel?’ question. It is part of the secret of her success that she has always quietly repudiated its premise, which is that one’s feelings in this matter are of any account. I rather long to ask her what she always asks others: ‘Have you come far?’ But, as Dr Johnson said, one must not bandy civilities with one’s sovereign. What an unimaginably long way she has come since, aged 11, she learnt her fate.
Because you read about royals
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