When Sgt. Damian Gascoigne signals the men and horses of the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery to join Saturday morning’s procession to Westminster Abbey, their gun carriage will be bearing more than the remains of Diana, princess of Wales.
Any funeral, as clergy and psychologists remind us, is a rite of passage for the living, a prescribed antidote for the human inertia induced by loss of a loved one.
But the death of a public figure has an additional dimension. By robbing us of someone who has galvanized our collective consciousness, it psychologically questions the very stability of society. Accordingly, the funeral of a monarch or other notable must be writ large, observed Queen Victoria.
“One ought to be properly arranged,” she wrote in the instructions she left for her own burial, a parade-style procession in 1901 when a gun carriage first served as the British royal hearse.
Such grandeur offers ceremonial reassurance that others will take the place of those who died and that they and their successors will become part of a historic continuum.
Diana’s death, though, has triggered a disorientating sense that the English have lost “a unique person,” as the royal court has lately come to style her, for whom no successor is in sight. Whether that notion survives the emotions of the moment or whether history reduces her to mere celebrity remains an open question.
Still, burial rites of great men or women often put history on conspicuous display, evidence that society has previously survived abrupt breaks in the continuity of its leadership.
Among the ancient Romans, a noble’s funeral procession included not just living relatives but also professional actors costumed to represent his ancestors.
Similarly, Princess Diana’s coffin will be borne on a turn-of-the-century vehicle whose 13-pounder gun wouldn’t stand a chance in a battlefield duel with contemporary artillery. Yet its very anachronism is also its virtue.
Attended by troopers from a military unit that can trace its origins to 1793, that wagon, accompanied by the haunting clip-clop sound of horseshoes, will pass near such monuments to England’s traditions as the Houses of Parliament and No. 10 Downing Street, home to the nation’s prime ministers.
At Westminster Abbey, she will receive a prayer offering in a sanctuary that serves as the final resting place of a line of kings going back to Edward the Confessor, the 11th Century monarch for whom it was a favorite chapel. It also contains the tombs of notable commoners, like the poet Geoffrey Chaucer and scientist Isaac Newton, making it an especially appropriate place to honor the memory of a woman who lost her royal status–but not her standing with the people.
Yet while courtiers and statesmen can set the order of march and religious services for a notable’s rites, the public’s part is not so easily scripted.
When Victoria died, London’s prostitutes (no doubt without seeking royal approval) wore mourning garb as they went about their evening business strolls.
Prince Albert, Victoria’s consort, long walked in the shadow of his wife, who lent her name to an era and way of life. Yet his death in December 1861 triggered unprecedented scenes of mourning for a non-royal personage. “Every shop in London has kept up mourning shutters,” reported William Hardman, editor of the Morning Post. “A heavy gloom has been cast over this Christmas.”
The similar outpouring of grief for Princess Diana has already forced British authorities to triple the length of the course of her funeral procession. Trying to catch up with her subjects’ sentiments, Queen Elizabeth II is now scheduled to make a speech about her former daughter-in-law the evening before Saturday’s ceremonies.
The royal family didn’t realize that, in the public’s eye, Diana seemed more regal than they. Her personal warmth evoked memories of earlier rulers who moved easily among the common folk, quite unlike the cold and aloof present occupants of Buckingham Palace.
In World War II, King George VI and his wife visited bombed out sections of London’s working-class districts–a gesture that still makes the Queen Mother a beloved figure.
Historically, the nation’s rulers’ have usually favored the common touch–for which their subjects were willing to forgive them sexual indisgressions even as the divorces and adulteries of Elizabeth II’s children have raised questions about the monarchy’s present value.
When Charles II, a notable collector of mistresses, died in 1685, the royal concubines were given the privilege of wearing official mourning dress. The king had endeared himself with the public by personally inspecting the devastation after the Great Fire of London.
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“Almost every living soul cried before and at his Decease, as for the loss of the best Friend in the World,” a contemporary wrote of the popular response to Charles’ death.
But even though Princess Diana revived that royal role–visiting AIDS patients and crusading for a ban on land mines–there is a traditional part of the monarchy’s story she couldn’t fulfill with her passing.
On the death of Victoria, her son and successor, Edward VII, asked why the flags were at half staff. A courtier replied that the queen was dead. “But the king lives,” Edward noted, motioning for the flags to be raised.
With a “people’s princess,” there is no such orderly succession. When Diana’s rites are finished, her subjects will be left with a renewed sense of loneliness–as Elton John will note in his musical tribute to her at the Westminster ceremony:
Goodbye, England’s rose,
from a country lost without your soul,
who’ll miss the wings of your compassion
more than you’ll ever know.