 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Queen Mother's funeral this week finally brought down the curtain on a slightly feverish period in British life that began with the death and funeral of Princess Diana. It united a country Diana had divided and it gave the British a better opinion of their own history, traditions and institutions. It was a national catharsis that purged the body politic of the occasionally poisonous emotions that had coursed through its veins since Diana's car had descended forever into the underpass. Diana's untimely and dramatic death initially evoked a genuine outpouring of grief and sorrow from the allegedly phlegmatic British. She was young, beautiful, wronged and sad. Her tragedy, wrote Anthony Lejeune, was that every man in England loved her except her husband. And her death meant that none of the wrongs done her could be put right. There was another side to Diana's domestic tragedy, of course, but in the aftermath of her death and transfiguration, no one wanted to hear it. Instead of being tempered by realism, therefore, national sorrow was magnified and distorted into a general indictment of the people and forces which had "destroyed" her — Prince Charles, the royal family, the church, rank and title, the "stiff upper lip" tradition of emotional reserve and anything that smacked of the ancien régime. At this point all the forces hostile to traditional Britain — republicans, the new capitalist entrepreneurs, tabloid journalists, radical egalitarians — rushed in to exploit these discontents. Polls were commissioned to show the declining appeal of Monarchy; newspapers demanded "Show Us Your Grief, Ma'am;" silently hostile crowds greeted the Queen returning to London in what Mark Steyn called a display of "aggressive empathy" — or "show us your grief, Ma'am, or we'll give some grief of your own to feel." Emotions even acquired party colors. Prime Minister Tony Blair celebrated the "People's Princess" as the symbol of a young, compassionate, and emotionally open country of which New Labor was naturally the most suitable governing party. And on the day itself the funeral of a young and complacent aristo was highjacked by spin doctors in the service of a showbiz vision of equality. Within a week of Diana's burial her cult began to fade. Her anniversaries now pass by unnoticed and unmourned. But the negative detritus of Dianamania — the further division of Britain between "young" and "old," traditional and radical, ancien and modernizing — had not been dissolved until the Queen Mother's death and funeral. And that united Britons of every class, race, political sympathy and emotional disposition in a ceremony of uncontroversial sorrow. It may seem slightly macabre to compare two funerals. But the comparisons force themselves on our attention. Diana's funeral was jagged with emotion. It teetered throughout on the edge of hysteria. The Queen Mother's — drawn up by herself — was the essence of emotional self-control. It was a militarily precise religious ceremony that celebrated a life and commended a soul to God. Diana's funeral had Elton John singing a reworked version of "Candle in the Wind," a song originally devoted to Marilyn Monroe. The Queen Mother's farewell music was drawn from Hymns Ancient and Modern. Diana's funeral was attended by her own aristocratic connections and the new informal aristocracy of pop music and Hollywood — Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman, Sting. The Queen Mother's was a splendid representation of traditional Britain with military men, loyal servants from her own retinue, holders of various honors (some of modest social standing), and what the British call "the great and the good," namely serious public figures of one kind or another. Glitz replaced by old-fashioned class? To some extent. But it was also a case of success subordinated to the ideal of service. Diana's funeral had sidelined the Queen and elevated the prime minister who read the lesson "appassionato." The Queen Mother's had the Queen as central figure — "with the burial of her mother," wrote the Daily Telegraph — "the Queen can at last step out of the shadow of her parents." Blair was scarcely noticeable this week, though he and other cabinet ministers were criticized by some people for not bothering to get fitted out with morning suits by Moss Bros. Britain's constitutional order in which the prime minister is a servant of the Sovereign, not a president under a different name, was visibly restored. Above all, Diana's funeral was a divisive event. It even included, in Lord Spencer's speech, an attack on the royal family sitting in front of him. The Queen Mother's funeral united all but the bitterest anti-monarchists in a celebration of the nation's life and history as well as her own. This unity was not, however, a triumph of tradition over modernization and openness — as Diana's funeral had been at times a slightly ugly growl by modernizers at the forces of tradition. It was a reconciliation between them. Many of those singing, or being moved by, the hymns, the pomp and the ceremonial this week were themselves from "the marginalized." Not the poor or working class, both of whom have long been emotionally incorporated in the British social structure and who bonded with the Queen Mother as long ago as 1940, but groups who might once have felt morally excluded such as gays, single mothers and ethnic minorities. The Queen Mother herself was famously tolerant, in particular of homosexuality, her idea of a perfect evening out being the theater and dinner with Noel Coward. And her own ceremonial arrangements included non-Anglican clergymen for the first time at a royal funeral. This openness towards others was returned in full measure. The British press this week has been running letters like this one to the Daily Telegraph from the British branch of an Indian Hindu organization: "Her transition from Queen and Empress to a much loved and respected icon of the Commonwealth mirrors Indian's own transition from the pride of the British Empire — indeed, "the jewel in the Crown" — to becoming a close friend and partner of Great Britain, sharing a unique relationship." It's a curious thought that such old-fashioned expressions of loyalty and affection, heard everywhere this week, will be mystifying and vaguely ominous in the modernizing New Labor ghetto of Islington But then inclusiveness
has been a New Labor slogan only for the last decade; it has been the
social strategy of the British upper classes since the Restoration. — Mr. O'Sullivan is editor-at-large of National Review. This piece first appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times. |
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
icholas
Garland's cartoon in the Daily Telegraph, as so often, caught the
national mood in Britain precisely. It showed a determined John Bull,
brush and paint pot in hand, striding away from a wall on which a "Cool
Britannia" poster had been defaced, with "Cool" brushed
out and "Rule" painted in. 
