The joyous hysteria of VE Day was back
... and so, amid wild scenes, was classless comradeship of the Blitz
LONDON was delirious with enthusiasm, wild with joy, blazing with pageantry and alight with colour.
Only the weather was grey when Philip Mountbatten, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Princess Elizabeth were married in Westminster Abbey.
From Hyde Park Corner to Admiralty Arch; from Trafalgar Square to the Houses of Parliament; from Palace Green to Victoria, the crowds stood and sat, waved and cheered, rocked and swayed.
Densely packed and closely ranked they stood — a solid bulwark of loyalty, an unbreakable shield of devotion.
It is an occasion like this that must make the weary duty of royalty seem really worth the doing.
The high ceremony did not start until 11am, but the hours since the drizzly dawn were tense with anticipation. The people thronged to the route by train, by bus, by car, on foot.
They edged and manoeuvred their way to any and every vantage point, sometimes to be summoned away from this tree or that railing by the ubiquitous police — there were 6,750 on duty, reinforced by 300 City constables, 600 specials, and 450 plain-clothes men.
The hours of waiting were filled, as ever, by the small incidents and excitements that make for a great day — the dog that walked the length of Whitehall; the men selling periscopes ( a pair of mirrors in a flimsy cardboard case costing 4s); the hawkers with their rosettes; the pedlars with balloons crudely stencilled with ‘Elizabeth and Philip’.
And that is not to mention one unfailing source of comment — the casualties.
The faints, the collapses, the falls, the swift efficiency of the St John Ambulance Brigade; the smooth sweep of the Red Cross wagons… and, unseen, the deft ministrations of the cases that were taken to hospital. Up to 2pm 1,250 casualties were handled, 23 of them serious.
There were 15 first-aid posts and five dressing stations manned by 1,000 volunteers, and a little enclosure near the Palace where a constable and four policewomen cared for a score of lost children — a tiny island of misery in a sea of rejoicing.
Swigs from vacuum flasks and sandwiches to munch on helped to pass the time.
Strangers swapped cigarettes and shared lighters. The classless comradeship obliterated by austerity since the glad hysteria of VE Day, and the solidarity of the
Blitz, was here again. The cluster round Carlton House Terrace saw an unexpected face: that of comedian Bob Hope, doing his famous ‘double take’ above the chaos of autograph books.
The sun struggled to break through the mass of cloud. A twinengined plane roared over Westminster, suddenly visible then quickly obscured. Down Whitehall, sweeping round to the Great West Door of the Abbey with its canvas canopy fringed with scarlet, came the cars. Vast, shining limousines and scruffy workaday cars.
The occupants set down were stared at but unrecognised. Half the women in them, it seemed, wore orchids.
Most of the men were in morning coats, their toppers showing traces of a pre-war vintage. Car flags were scanned but were often unfamiliar. ‘Flags have changed so much,’ people said.
But the Soviet Union’s crimson field with its gold hammer and sickle, on the car of the Ambassador, was instantly recognised.
The momentum gathered. A cheer for Ernest Bevin, massive and leonine; another for Anthony Eden, sitting solitary in a huge car. Premier Attlee came and went.
The periscopes were put into position and women experimented by holding vanity mirrors over their heads.
Suddenly a whole busload of scarlet and gold, with white plumes waving on helmets, proclaimed the arrival of the Gentlemen-at-Arms. But it was the Duchess of Kent, who travelled in neither of the main processions, who gave the first real thrill to the now crazily excited crowd.
Her children, who were with her, were as controlled, carefully trained and perfect in deportment as she herself.
Great blue Daimlers rolled up with the bridesmaids — figures from a dream, in ivory dresses glittering against the grey light.
And then came the jingle of cavalry; the exciting clash of sabre on breastplate; the clop of horses’ hooves. Queen Mary, superb and regal as ever.
Though the bridegroom passed almost unnoticed, his uncle Earl Mountbatten was cheered wildly. Winston Churchill, his fingers in the traditional V-sign, was still the hero of the people.
But it was the last coach that held every eye — the Cinderella coach for a girl waiting for, not dreading, the clock to strike 12.
Timed to the fraction of a second — after all, ‘Punctuality is the politeness of Princes’ — the splendid coaches, with scarlet outriders on sleek Windsor greys, rolled to the door.
The Queen was magnificent with the Garter blue diagonally slashing her dress of apricot. The King wore the sober blue and bright gold of the Navy.
But all the way from Buckingham Palace it was Elizabeth who held the eye, and her father was content that it should be so.
It is a tradition of royalty that they must never seem bored. Yesterday there was no pretence. Joy radiated out of the slim, whitedressed, white-veiled figure in the fairy coach.
Then the anti-climax. The Horse Guards and Life Guards vanished; the Captains and the Kings departed into the great Gothic abbey.
Then the bells broke out in a jangle of joy, as brazen tongues cried abroad the news that the heiress-presumptive to the throne was wed.
Far away in Bath a baby was born, and christened ‘Elizabeth’. Far away in Glasgow a cinema opened its doors to anyone who wanted to see the show for free. Far away in the West Country the magistrates of a children’s court themselves paid the fine of an offender they dismissed.
The band played the National Anthem thrice: once for the bride and groom, once for the King and Queen, and once also for the Queen Mother. The air was a joyous battleground between the music of Church and State.
The cavalry reformed and the bride and groom drove away. The great ones of the earth followed them. And for the crowds in Westminster and Whitehall the day was done.