Sitting alone, the Queen bids her final farewell
It was a heartbreakingly beautiful day, almost too glorious for a funeral, but the spring sunshine in which Windsor Castle was bathed felt true to the remarkable warmth (love, even) which the nation felt for the dearly departed. This was the first great royal occasion of most of our lifetimes without Prince Philip. It is fair to say it took a while to adjust.
We may just about have held it together through the clockwork perfection of the Armed Services in the great courtyard, their shadows creating a spectral army on the lawn. (God, they make you proud to be British.) We may even have managed not to cry when Elgar’s Nimrod, that great melody of memorial, came to a sobbing climax and the cymbals crashed in glittering cacophony. But tears finally flowed – mine at least – when the camera zoomed in on the seat of the Duke’s carriage and discovered his gloves, neatly folded, his peaked cap and a tub of sugar lumps. The Fell ponies, Notlaw Storm and Balmoral Nevis, waited, and waited. Their master was gone.
If that keen sense of loss was experienced by perfect strangers, imagine the void felt by the Queen with the Duke no longer by her side. She paused and turned, just for a second, as she entered St George’s Chapel, but there was no one there. Seventy-three years of marriage. That’s not a relationship, it’s a Bayeux Tapestry. Thousands of tiny threads that sewed the two of them together and wove a backdrop for all of us.
Owing to the Covid restrictions, the Queen sat alone in her pew at the front of the chapel, a tiny, hunched figure sporting a mask and a diamond brooch the size of a saucer.
At one point, her head bowed so low that her eyes disappeared altogether and her hat merged with her coat.
It was shocking how shrunken she looked. Prince Andrew was several feet to her left; Prince Charles (clearly distressed), Princess Anne (ramrod straight, every inch her father’s daughter) and Prince Edward were across the aisle. Her Majesty’s children, all out of reach. There was no hand to hold, no reassuring pat on the arm.
Elizabeth’s comforter and protector was in the casket with the wreath she had chosen on top. “In loving memory,” the card on the white flowers said, but you couldn’t read her name.
Was it Elizabeth or Lilibet? The Duke was the last person who called her by her childhood pet name.
The brutality of social distancing only heightened the widow’s loneliness. How many millions of viewers yearned to reach out and metaphorically embrace their beloved Queen?
In years to come, stern questions may well be asked about why St George’s Chapel (which seats 800) could have a congregation of more than 100 on Easter Day, yet funeral rules still dictated that a mere 30 people could be present yesterday. Such arbitrary cruelty has been experienced by thousands of Her Majesty’s subjects who lost loved ones this past year. She will not have sought, nor wanted, any special dispensation for herself and her beloved Philip. On the contrary. As Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, said during the war, “I’m glad we’ve been bombed. It means we can look the East End in the face.” In any case, it made for the kind of unfussy send-off the Duke wanted.
Like his equally great predecessor as prince consort, Prince Albert, his “express desire” was for his send-off at Windsor to be “of the plainest and most private character”.
The specially adapted Land Rover hearse was peak Philip, a perfectly practical, ingenious form of transport to the next life, which thrummed like a London cab.
But this was not a modern service that focused on celebrating the individual personality. (The Duke’s name was hardly mentioned, except, almost unbearably, when the Dean prayed for “Our son Philip… who has left us a fair pattern of valiant and true knighthood”. He certainly did.)
Instead, it was the kind of austere ritual preferred by a man who liked formality because he knew what good form meant. The Duke specified liturgy, anthems and prayers that, to any traditional Christian, would be well known and sufficient unto death – and the life to come.
For anyone who thought Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding service in the same chapel, almost three years ago, was a breath of fresh air, yesterday’s ceremony may have seemed chilly to the point of bleak. But for the Queen, who is Defender of the Faith, it will have been of immense spiritual consolation.
Pity the other members of the congregation who were denied a cathartic bellowing of hymns such as that naval favourite, Eternal Father, Strong to Save. The singing was confined to a small, but heavenly choir.
As the coffin was lowered into the Royal vault, a lone piper played a haunting lament, turning and leaving the chapel through an archway so the tune faded softly away.
The Duke will wait there for the Queen. When the time comes, the reunited husband and wife will be moved to join the late King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in their tomb.
The service drew towards a close with Action Stations, the alarm that sounds to summon sailors on deck to engage with the enemy as young Philip did 80 years ago in the Battle of Crete. You could almost hear the Duke saying, “Right, that’s over. Doom and gloom, end of. Get on with it!”
Will members of the Royal family heed his parting shot? I think they might.
Outside the chapel, the Duchess of Cambridge engaged Prince Harry and his troubled, thousand-yard stare in conversation. She appeared to jolly her husband into joining them. (What a trouper that girl is.) It wasn’t peace exactly, but suddenly the warring brothers seemed less estranged. Grandpa would be glad.
Asked once by his biographer, Gyles Brandreth, if it had been a good or worthwhile life, the Duke of Edinburgh replied, “I don’t know about that. I’ve kept myself busy. I’ve tried to make myself useful. I hope I’ve helped keep the show on the road. That’s about it really.”
I think any reasonable person would agree he more than fulfilled that modest ambition. Thank you, Sir, and bon voyage. All is well. Safely rest. God is nigh.