CROWDS THRONG LONDON FOR THE WEDDING OF THE CENTURY
A LONDON delirious with enthusiasm, wild with joy, blazing with pageantry, a london alight with colour.
Only the sky was grey when Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh, Knight of the Garter, and Princess Elizabeth of England were married in Westminster Abbey. From Hyde Park to Admirality 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.
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 from 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, that railing, the other corner by the ubiquitous police — there were 6,750 on duty, reinforced by 300 City of london constables, 600 specials, and 450 plainclothes men.
A CHEER FOR BEVIN
The hours of waiting were filled, as ever, by the small excitements that go to make a great day. The dog that walked the length of Whitehall; the men with the periscopes; the hawkers with their rosettes; the pedlars with their balloons crudely stencilled ‘Elizabeth and Philip’.
Swigs from vacuum flasks, a munch of sandwiches, helped to pass the time. Strangers swapped cigarettes, shared lights. The classless comradeship, obliterated by austerity since the glad hysteria of VE-Day and the solidarity of the Blitz, was here again.
Eight, nine, ten, when — the crowd did not know — the visiting Kings and Queens left for the Palace: Michael of Romania and his mother, Queen Helen of Greece and Denmark; Rene and Margaret of Bourbon-Parma; Don Juan of Spain with his wife Princess Maria and his mother Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg.
Out in the streets the crowd waited, taking what comfort they could from the loudspeakers’ tunes. The sun struggled to break the mass of cloud.
The momentum gathered. A cheer for Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, massive and leonine; another for his predecessor Anthony Eden, sitting solitary in a huge car. Prime Minister Clement Attlee came and went.
THE BELLS RANG OUT
But it was the Duchess of Kent, travelling in neither of the main processions, who gave the first real thrill to the now crazily-excited crowd. With her were her children: as controlled, as carefully trained, as perfect in deportment as she herself.
Great blue Daimlers rolled up with the bridesmaids: figures from a dream, ivory dresses glittering against the grey light, hair gleaming beneath the white ornaments, faces delicately etched against the cushions of the car.
And then came the jingle of cavalry; the exciting clash of sabre on breastplate, the clop of horses’ hooves. The bridegroom passed almost unnoticed, the elder 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, not dreading, that the clock would strike twelve.
Timed to the fraction of a second — it was Elizabeth’s great-grandfather who coined the aphorism: ‘Punctuality is the courtesy of Princes’ — the coaches, splendid with scarlet outriders, sleek with Windsor greys, rolled to the door.
The Queen — magnificent with the Garter blue slashing diagonally her dress of apricot. The King in 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 figure, white-dressed, white-veiled, in its 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: Jangle of joy, the brazen tongues crying abroad the news that the HeiressPresumptive to the Throne was wed.
The bells clashed together, as the ringers say, in the firing of cannon. The band played the national anthem thrice: Once for the bride and groom — first occasion for the new Duke to receive royal honours; once for King and Queen; once for the Queen Mother. The air was a joyous battleground between the music of the Church and State.
‘WE WANT THE BRIDE’
The cavalry re-formed: The bride and groom drove away. The distinguished guests followed them. And for the crowds in Westminster and Whitehall, the day was done.
Back went the royal party to the three-course wedding breakfast, the champagne, the traditional toast proposed, as always, by the bride’s father.
Philip drew the sword he had clasped throughout his drive to the Abbey — grandfather