The National Portrait Gallery’s final exhibition before it closed for renovations in 2020 was a retrospective of Cecil Beaton’s photography focusing on the so-called “Bright Young Things” and it seemed fitting that one of its two exhibitions on its recent reopening is devoted to one of Beaton’s contemporaries – Yevonde Cumbers Middleton (1893-1975) or Madame Yevonde as she became known.
Born to middle class parents, Yevonde stumbled upon photography as a career through her work with the Suffragette movement via selling and distributing literature. In her autobiography In Camera, she wrote that her foray into the suffragette movement and finally photography was partly due to her desire to earn her way after deciding early on that marriage and motherhood was not for her. After an apprenticeship with photographer Lallie Charles, Yevonde opened her own studio with her parents’ support which took off after the First World War.
She soon proved to be a canny businesswoman with an interest in technology to perfect her craft. Not satisfied with merely photographing society figures for publications like The Sketch, she experimented with colour photography through her utilisation of the Vivex process from the Colour Photography Limited company. This was a risky move as colour photography was not taken seriously, but her gamble paid off as she received commissions ranging from photos accompanying magazine articles, capturing the interiors of the Queen Mary and her photos of leading figures of the day including several peers & peeresses who were present at the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1937.
The apogee of her engagement with the Vivex process was her series of photos entitled “Goddesses” based on a charity ball in 1935 where many of the guests were dressed as figures from Greek and Roman mythology. However, this engagement would come to an end in 1939 with the outbreak of the Second World War and closure of the Colour Photography Limited. For the rest of her life, Yevonde returned to black & white for portraiture using only colour for her commercial work such as creating book covers for Pan Publishing.
The exhibition draws on photographs from the NPG’s own collection together with a selection of her business cards, magazines that featured her photographs, samples of her commercial work, catalogues and equipment used for the Vivex colour process. On the plus side, we thought that the exhibition was interesting and informative, showing Yevonde as a pioneering photographer and businesswoman. She was also a rarity as following her marriage to journalist and playwright Edgar Middleton in 1920, he encouraged her to continue her career and even supported her by modelling for her portfolio. Her work also engaged with the leading artistic movements of the day such as surrealism and crucially chronicled the change in women’s roles – during the 1920s and 30s her subjects were society women, actresses, dancers and athletes while during the 1950s and 60s there were artists such as Dame Barbara Hepworth; which demonstrated the number of upper and upper middle class women entering the workforce or developing careers out of choice or necessity.
Our main criticism of the exhibition could be summed up in the phrase, “lots of faces” as many of the names such as Tilly Losch, Margaret Sweeny, Alexandra Haig and Sheila Milbanke would now be greeted with a shrug and a blank look. This goes to show that her photography was very much a product of its time with household names then now forgotten and consigned to obscurity. Frankly, and without wanting to detract from the considerable and impressive corpus of Yevonde’s work, the second half of the exhibition went a bit Butch Cassidy. You know the line – ‘who ARE these people?’
The “Goddesses” selection could have simply been abbreviated with photos from the set that were interesting and demonstrated Yevonde’s technical skill such as the triptych of the Duchess of Wellington. We would have also preferred to have seen more of her commercial work especially for Pan Publishing as the display of her cover for Ian Fleming’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was in our opinion another example of her view of photography as art.
In a speech in 1936, Yevonde declared that photographers should adapt the creed “be original or die” and throughout her career that spanned over a half century, she took this maxim seriously thereby leaving behind a body of work that remains as fresh and original as when they were first photographed.
The National Portrait Gallery is one of our favourite places to visit – you can drop by and see a section then come back and see another, ad infinitum. When the Gallery closed in 2020 for a much-needed refurbishment, we were excited when it was announced that it was reopening in June 2023, and apprehensive about how much a loved institution might have been changed.
So finally, after three years and £41 million, what did we think? For a start, its brighter and there are now two visitor entrances which makes it less congested, and it also allows aspects of the original fixtures to shine. Some of the hang is also much improved and allows visitors to see the portraits, photos or busts better.
The presentation is still more or less chronological with a few themes thrown in. We also get to see portraits, busts, and photos that either have never been seen before or have not been displayed for years, even decades. In addition, there were features on techniques in portraiture such as engravings and mezzotints as well as chronicling the early history of photography. Old favourites and iconic likenesses from the collection are back. It’s a place where you can go to again and again.
However, there’s also a lot to nitpick with the new National Portrait Gallery. First, with the building itself – the new visitor entrance as pointed out at the beginning eases congestion as it allows visitors to enter and exit via two different doors, but the design of the doors in the new entrance leaves a lot to be desired. I can understand the rationale behind the design as its meant to echo the doors of several churches and cathedrals in Italy; but to commission Tracey Emin who in our opinion is not a good artist displayed poor judgement. The best thing that can be said about her engravings is that they look as if they have been done by an untalented five year old using their non-dominant hand, and the worst that they’re a puerile embarrassment. If the management wanted to go for childish illustrations, then they could have done better and saved money by commissioning children from across the UK to submit in works to adorn the new door.
Next is with regards to the subjects. We can understand that not everyone can be accommodated and there’s not enough space to display everything in the NPG’s collection, but it does beg the question – who makes the decision as to who to include and exclude? Some glaring omissions include Captain Robert Falcon Scott; the women who made up the suffragist movement; Margaret Bondfield, first female cabinet minister and Privy Counsellor; Daley Thompson, a double Olympic champion who dominated his field during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, among others. And for some reason medieval English kings have been enclosed in large boxes despite having perfectly good frames.
There’s also what we suspect is the usual employment of the box ticking exercise. It seems to us that the NPG is desperate to increase representation among women and minorities to the point that they even shoehorn people who have absolutely nothing or little to do with the UK. The likes of Anna May Wong and Florence Mills are American, sure they might have worked in the UK for a time but what makes them deserve of a place in the NPG pantheon at the expense of someone homegrown? The most baffling however is the inclusion of a portrait of Toussant L’Ouverture who was the leader of the Haitian independence movement against France. Why? He has nothing to do with Britain and British history at all.
And finally, there’s the employment of the familiar trope that seems to be de rigueur with British museums & heritage sites now and that’s the obsession with race and slavery. Many of the interpretation of some key figures especially from the 18th and 19th centuries are focused on slavery as if that’s the only aspect of their lives. Others are crouched in the usual “white person bad, UK bad” bellyaching that’s blighted our intellectual discourse and as a result yet again reduces the subject to the level of a pantomime villain or victim. Other captions are almost patronising to the point of insulting the visitor’s intelligence. We’ve noticed this over the years that we have been visiting museums and galleries – that the captioning is pitched at the level of an intelligent 10 year old, which is fine if that’s what you are. Not so good if you like being treated like an adult.
The one saving grace perhaps is despite the one-dimensional focus on race, gender, and slavery with some of the displays, the NPG have not decided to go in the way of the Tate and the National Trust when it comes to indulging in cancel culture. As the director Nicholas Cullinan told the Daily Telegraph, “We’re not here to make moral judgements about people, [m]ost [people] understand that everyone does good and bad things.” It would be great if this view was consistent along the interpretation of the displays.
The shop is slightly disappointing as well. For an establishment with a huge collection of portraits the postcard collection is poor. However, should you be in the market for a plaster death mask of John Keats, the NPG has it. A snip at £ 265. Don’t all rush.
Finally, NPG, if you’re going to demand that people go paperless with their tickets, make sure your Wifi network can cope.
The National Portrait Gallery is open every day. Admission to the permanent collection is free, there is a charge for special exhibitions. For more information go to: https://www.npg.org.uk/
On January 1936, King George V died, and his oldest son and heir Edward Prince of Wales succeeded him, becoming King Edward VIII. His coronation was set for 12 May 1937 but owing to complications with his personal life regarding the woman he wished to marry, Edward chose abdication which took place on 10 December. His younger brother Albert Duke of York became King taking the name George VI.
It was decided to keep the date in order to limit and contain the damage caused by the abdication and with 5-6 months left, preparations carried on as usual albeit with changes such as making provisions for the crowning of a queen consort. Another way of containment was the promotion of “Us Four” as the new king called his family, as the media devoted reams of coverage of the king, queen and their two daughters – Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose.
Much of the coverage was sugary by today’s standards but the articles, profiles and photos fulfilled a very specific purpose – the new king’s family life was shown as a beacon of stability in a rapidly changing world and was held up as deliberate and marked contrast to the bachelor lifestyle of the previous king in order to appeal to the conservatism of the British public. This is also why the former Duke of York born Albert Frederick Arthur George chose the latter for his regnal name as a way to identify with his father George V and a signal to reign as he had done and carry on with the values of duty, simplicity, dignity as well as act as a unifying force for the British people and the Empire.
The reworked coronation would be a celebration of continuity and tradition, and it was embraced enthusiastically by the public; apart from official decorations lining the streets, homes and businesses also made their own giving public spaces a festive air. When Coronation Day came, not even the rain dampened enthusiasm as thousands lined the processional route from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey and back.
The ceremony also accommodated changes to reflect new political realities. For instance, during the oath, George VI also agreed to govern according to the laws of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa as set out by the Statue of Westminster in 1931. The requirement to maintain the Protestant faith was restricted to only the United Kingdom in deference to the several of the Dominion Prime Ministers who were Roman Catholic.
Much like the coronations of Queen Victoria and Edward VII, George VI’s was also beset by several mishaps that happened during the ceremony itself – Queen Elizabeth’s procession was delayed as one of the Presbyterian chaplains who was part of her entourage fainted and had to be taken away to be attended to, while the Lord Great Chamberlain (Earl of Ancaster) who was supposed to dress the king was so nervous that his hands shook and in the end, George VI had to fix the belt of the sword himself. The king also nearly tripped as one of the bishops accidentally stepped on his robe. Finally, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang fumbled around with the St Edward’s crown so much that in the end, no-one was sure if the crown was put the right way.
As for Queen Elizabeth, she followed in her mother-in-law, Queen Mary’s footsteps with buying British for her clothes. Her coronation gown was made by Elizabeth Handley-Seymour who had designed and made her wedding dress back in 1923 and while the new queen’s dress sense was conservative and somewhat dowdy her coronation gown did reflect the shape of the 1930s. The gown was bias cut in white satin with a square neckline and slashed sleeves flounced with lace. Embroidered on the gown were the floral emblems of Great Britain, the Dominions, and the empire while the purple velvet robe of state was embroidered with roses, thistles, shamrock, leek, maple leaf, mimosa, fern, and lotus in gold thread all topped with her personal cypher.
Since Queen Mary decided to break with tradition and decided to attend the ceremony to support her son and daughter-in-law, a new crown had to be made for Queen Elizabeth. Garrards designed a crown made in platinum with the traditional British four arches and to cut on costs, diamonds from the Royal Collection (taken from Queen Victoria’s regal circlet) and Elizabeth’s own collection were used while the Kooh-i-Noor was removed from Queen Mary’s crown and affixed into Elizabeth’s.
For the new king and queen, the ceremony was moving and touching as Queen Elizabeth’s biographer William Shawcross observed:
“There is no doubt that for both of them the Coronation was an act of great spiritual significance. Each of them was a devout Christian with a simple faith; each of them believed strongly in the sacred nature of monarchy and of the vows that they were about to take; they both believed that they were offering themselves before God and were being consecrated in the service of their people.” (p. 400)
This was a sentiment shared by many of those who attended and one of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters, Princess Alice Countess of Athlone claimed that she was deeply moved by the ceremony. Perhaps it was the king’s slim physique with the air of nervous vulnerability around him was what gave the ceremony a human aspect and as Sarah Bradford observed “the coronation ceremony was both beautiful and moving, its historic ritual obliterating the sad, sordid memories of recent months and elevating the idea of kingship.”
Another human element of the coronation was the presence of the two little princesses, eleven year old Elizabeth and six year old Margaret. Dressed in identical clothes made by Norman Hartnell, robes and coronets designed by their father, their presence solidified the concept of “Us Four” even during the most solemn and important moment of being crowned king. However, given their ages it was usual for those given the task of looking after them to be concerned about the impact of such a long ceremony. The governess Marion “Crawfie” Crawford was worried about how Princess Margaret would cope, a sentiment shared by the older sister as she confided: “I do hope that she won’t disgrace us all by falling asleep in the middle, Crawfie. After all, she is very young for a coronation, isn’t she?”
Princess Elizabeth was also encouraged by her father and governess to write down her memories of the coronation. Her efforts which are now kept in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle is a rare document, a solemn event seen through the eyes of a child:
“When Mummy was crowned and all the peeresses put on their coronets it looked wonderful to see arms and coronets hovering in the air and then the arms disappear as if by magic…..What struck me as being rather odd was that Grannie did not remember much of her own coronation. I should have thought that it would have stayed in her mind for ever……Then we went to the balcony where millions of people were waiting below. After that we all went to be photographed in front of those awful lights.”
The royal couple were touched by the multitudes of people who lined streets during the procession and those who repeatedly cheered as they appeared on the balcony following the coronation and again during the evening following the banquet. As Queen Elizabeth wrote in a thank you letter to Archbishop Lang: “I was more moved & more helped than I could have been believed possible…..our great hope now, is that so many millions of people were impressed by the feeling of service and goodness that came from Westminster Abbey, perhaps that day will result in strength and good feeling in individuals all over the world, and be a calming & strengthening influence on affairs in general.”
LEGACY:
Continuing the engagement with new technology, the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested that the ceremony be broadcast live over the radio, a move which was endorsed by the king and queen who had wanted their wedding broadcasted back in 1923 but was thwarted by an earlier Archbishop who was worried about men in pubs listening without removing their hats.
A request to televise the ceremony however was turned down on the grounds that a live broadcast would affect the king’s nerves due to his stammer and tendency to have muscular spasms in his cheeks and jaw when he became even more nervous and struggled to enunciate a word. Instead, newsreel cameras were allowed into the Abbey to film the ceremony which was later screened in cinemas nationwide.
The present frame of the Imperial State Crown dates back from 1937 to replace the old frame made for Queen Victoria’s coronation in 1838 which had deteriorated due to age. While the design has remained the same, the new frame at weighing at 283 grams (10 oz) was lighter than the original.
And finally, King George VI was the first monarch to deliver a post coronation speech where he emphasised that this was the first time a monarch had spoken directly to his people “the Queen and I will always keep in our hearts the inspiration of this day. May we ever be worthy of the goodwill which I am proud to think surrounds us at the onset of my reign.” His daughter Queen Elizabeth II did the same in 1953 and it remains to be seen if King Charles III does the same on 6 May.
FURTHER READING:
Sarah Bradford. The Reluctant King: The Life & Reign of George VI (London, 1989)
William Shawcross. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: The Authorised Biography (London, 2009)
Denis Judd. George VI (London, 1973)
Marion Crawford. The Little Princesses (London, 1950)
Matthew Dennison. The Queen (London, 2021)
Suzy Menkes. The Royal Jewels (London, 1990)
Anna Keay. The Crown Jewels: The Official Illustrated History (London, 2012)
Unlike the coronations of Victoria or Edward VII, that of George V was devoid of any drama and mishaps. In addition, unlike his father Edward VII but like his grandmother Victoria, the new king was shy and man who disliked pomp and ceremony but did them out of a sense of duty and the belief that it was important that his people saw their monarch in Matthew Glencross words “in person as much as possible.”
This was due to the influence of his naval training and earlier career as an officer in the Royal Navy; where the future King George V was more exposed to his fellow compatriots rather than royal relations which gave him a much more “localised” outlook than his father and grandmother and something that guided him when it came to making decisions throughout his reign, namely, how would it benefit Britain and its people.
Part of this desire to make the monarchy “quintessentially British” and for the people to be part of Royal events was the king and his advisers’ stage management of the monarchy through “public displays that people could participate in.” The coronation, which was set for 22 June 1911, was the first major royal event of the new reign which would include massive public participation; around 50 viewing stands were built to accommodate spectators along the route to and from Westminster Abbey. George V himself was mindful of people coming from great distances and waiting for hours to see him and his wife Queen Mary as he began his diary entry for Coronation Day that“[i]t was overcast & cloudy with slight showers & a strongish cool breeze, but better for the people than great heat.”
The king’s diary entries tend to be dry but there’s no mistaking that his entry for 22 June was filled with emotion as he continued “[t]he Service in the Abbey was most beautiful & impressive but was a terrible ordeal” which could be the reference to the heavy St Edward’s Crown then he added “[i]t was grand, yet simple & most dignified & went without a hitch.” His cousin Crown Princess Marie of Romania (together with her husband Crown Prince Ferdinand representing King Carol and Queen Elisabeth of Romania) agreed as she recounted in her memoirs:
“And then Westminster Abbey, sombre for all the superbness of its time darkened Gothic; half-tones – greys, blacks and browns – in place of Moscow’s golden shrine. Sober also the chants, more angelic perhaps but less overwhelming than those stupendous Russian bass voices chanting without instrumental accompaniment…….[I] was fascinated by the solemn beauty, by the order and dignity of the different processions, the Peers of the Realm, the Princes and Princesses of the Royal House, the Prince of Wales, the high clergy and finally, the King and Queen. The chants rose higher and higher like an angel chorus, filling the old building with hymns of praise and thanksgiving.” (p. 205)
Like his father before him, Edward Prince of Wales was the first to pay homage and as he recalled years later when he was Duke of Windsor and referencing his diary entry on that day:
“There is no occasion that rivals the solemn magnificence of a Coronation, when Church and State united in the glorification of the majesty of kingship……I had to go & do homage to Papa at his throne, & I was very nervous…[k]neeling at my father’s feet, I swore: ‘I, Edward, Prince of Wales…..’ When my father kissed my cheeks, his emotion was great, as was mine.” (pp.77-8)
The feeling was mutual as the king later wrote “I nearly broke down when dear David came to do homage to me, as it reminded me so much of when I did the same thing to beloved Papa, he did it so well.”
As for Queen Mary’s role, there was no headache unlike eight years ago when courtiers and experts scrambled to find any record about the role the consort would play in the ceremony and what she would wear. Unlike her mother-in-law Queen Alexandra, Mary steadfastly bought British when it came to clothes and for the coronation, she turned to her favoured couturier Reville & Rossitier to design and make her coronation gown. It was made of silk satin in cream with embroidery in gold thread and the neckline was trimmed with needlepoint lace made in Ireland. On the bodice and skirt were the floral emblems Great Britain and the Empire, namely the rose of England, the thistle of Scotland, the shamrock of Ireland, and the lotus flower of India. Other symbols embroidered on the gown included the Star of India, acorns, and oak leaves. The pattern for the gown was traced by a tutor at the Royal School of Needlework, Jessie Charlotte Robinson while the embroidery was done by students at the Princess Louise Needlework School.
Queen Mary’s Coronation Dress by Reville & Rossiter, Royal Collection Trust (c) King Charles III 2023, RCIN 75030
For the music, Sir Frederick Bridge once again took charge and much like with Edward VII’s coronation, the music for the 1911 service was meant as a celebration of 400 years of British music with works by Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Tallis and George Frederick Handel featured. Bridge himself composed an anthem – “Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous” while Sir Hubert Parry wrote an orchestral introduction to “I was Glad” which was again performed. This time, Sir Edward Elgar was commissioned to compose a Coronation March which was performed as the newly crowned King and his Queen recessed out of Westminster Abbey. The ode which he composed for the 1902 coronation was again performed at a concert, but the lyricist Arthur Benson reworked the section for the Queen. In 1902, he had written:
Daughter of ancient Kings,
Mother of Kings to be,
Gift that the bright wind bore on his sparkling wings,
Over the Northern sea!
Nothing so sweet he brings,
Nothing so fair to see,
Purest, stateliest, daughter of ancient Kings,
Mother of Kings to be!
The lyrics were a reference to Queen Alexandra’s Danish heritage. In 1911, as a nod to Queen Mary (despite being a German princess) being British born and raised, Benson wrote:
True Queen of British homes and hearts
Of guileless faith and sterling worth,
We yield you ere today departs,
The proudest, purest crown on earth!
We love you well for England’s sake,
True you shall prove, as you have proved;
The years that come shall only make
Your name more honoured, more belov’d.
Oh kind and wise, the humblest heart
That beats in all your realms today
Knows well that it can claim its part
In all you hope, in all you pray.
Following the ceremony, the newly crowned King and Queen travelled back to Buckingham Palace in reverse order but a slightly longer route to allow as many people as possible to see the royal procession. They also made an appearance at the balcony at Buckingham Palace which was – as Queen Mary’s biographer James Pope-Hennessey observed – in the shadow of the recently unveiled Victoria Memorial which was seen as “an ever-present reminder of their new responsibilities and obligations.” Queen Mary later wrote that the ceremony and the drive to and from the Abbey made her proud to be “British from top to toe” and that the reception from the crowds was “magnificent.”
LEGACY:
The present appearance of the Imperial State Crown and the Sovereign’s Sceptre with Cross dates from 1911 as both were partially remodelled to accommodate the two largest stones from the Cullinan diamond which Edward VII had named the Star of Africa – the First or Great was placed on the sceptre while the Second or Lesser was inserted into the Imperial State Crown. The Stuart sapphire which since 1838 graced the front of the crown was placed at the back. Two of the Cullinan’s larger stones were set in Queen Mary’s crown which like her mother-in-law’s had eight half arches together with the Koh-i-Noor diamond which was removed from Queen Alexandra’s crown and set into Mary’s.
The 1911 coronation would mark a bigger role for the Dominions as David Cannadine observed: “it affirmed the sacred nature of the coronation rite and the historic continuity of the British monarchy, and also its recent transformation into an authentically imperial crown, as the standards of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the Indian empire were borne in procession.”
The most crucial point, however, was that George V’s coronation was also the first to be photographed inside the Abbey. The Birmingham MP, Sir Benjamin Stone himself a noted amateur photographer was given permission to take photos during the ceremony save for the anointing and thereby creating the first photographic record of a coronation which would be followed by George VI and Elizabeth II. Hence, this set a precedent for engaging with new technologies that would be seen with every subsequent coronation.
FURTHER READING:
Kenneth Rose. King George V (London, 1983)
David Cannadine. George V (London, 2018)
Jane Ridley. George V: Never a Dull Moment(London, 2021)
James Pope-Hennessey. Queen Mary(London, 1959)
HRH the Duke of Windsor. A King’s Story (London, 1951)
Queen Marie of Romania. The Story of My Life (London, 1934)
Anna Keay. The Crown Jewels: The Official Illustrated History (London, 2012)
Jeffrey Richards. Imperialism & Music (Manchester, 2001)
Matthias Range. Music and Ceremonial at British Coronations: From James I to Elizabeth II (Cambridge, 2012)
Suzy Menkes. The Royal Jewels (London, 1990)
Matthew Glencross. ‘George V and the New Royal House’ in Matthew Glencross, Judith Rowbotham and Michael D. Kandiah (eds) The Windsor Dynasty 1910 to the Present. ‘Long to Reign Over Us’? (Basingstoke, 2016), pp. 33-56.
On 6 May King Charles III will be crowned at Westminster Abbey in a ceremony that has its origins dating back a thousand years to King Edgar the Peaceful. It will also be the first coronation in nearly 70 years and much like his mother Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation which was the first to be televised, Charles III’s coronation will be the first to utilise both social media and YouTube as well as traditional communication channels.
Since the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the ascension of King Charles III to the throne, there has been a lot of speculation about what his coronation will be like; ranging from the sensible for instance, what sort of coronation will it be owing to the current economic climate? to the ridiculous and fanciful such as what tiaras will be worn. It has also not been helped either by the continuing drama surrounding Prince Harry and his wife Meghan – will they attend the coronation or not? Only time will tell if they do turn up or not.
From initial press reports (many of which should be taken with a pinch of salt anyway), the coronation will be markedly shorter, the ceremony will be around an hour and a half compared to 4 to 5 hours in 1953. Due to costs, the Coronation Review of the Fleet has been scrapped and Queen Camilla has returned to the pre-1831 practice of using a previous consort’s crown instead of having a new one made. There’s also the acknowledgement that the Britain of 2023 is very different from 1953, as politicians and peers have reportedly been told that they will not be guaranteed invitations.
Contrary to popular belief, the coronation is not a ceremony that is unchanging or set in stone. True, there are some elements such as the recognition and anointing that remain more or less the same but certain parts of the ceremony have been altered or removed to fit the changing times and make concessions to economic realities. Any cost cutting has its historical precedent – for instance when William IV did away with certain practices such as the coronation banquet, the King’s Champion making an appearance in full medieval armour and axing the position of herb strewers – ladies who proceeded the Sovereign’s route inside the Abbey by strewing sweet smelling herbs and floral petals.
Changes to the coronation ceremony have also been made especially in the last century, as there is the acknowledgement that the main role of the Monarchy is to act as a unifying force and that the coronation is for the people regardless of status, colour & creed, not only for the aristocracy and members of the Established Church.
In the run up to the event on 6 May, we shall be looking at three of the coronations that took place in the last century, how they have changed, how they have left their mark for the 1953 ritual and how they can influence the upcoming ceremony.
KING EDWARD VII AND QUEEN ALEXANDRA:
When the coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra was scheduled for 26 June 1902, there was a general state of speculation about what the coronation would be like since the last one took place in 1838 and hardly anyone who witnessed it was still around by 1902.
The new king (unlike his mother) loved ceremony and pomp. Anna Keay observed that, “he loved the theatre and had a strong sense of both drama and romance.” This love of theatre was corollary to Edward’s strong sense of the importance of the visibility of the monarch and the royal family to the public. As he remonstrated with Queen Victoria, “the more people see the Sovereign, the better it is for the country.” As king, he revived much of the pomp and ceremony abandoned by Victoria after Prince Albert’s death and his renovation of Buckingham Palace was to reassert its status as the centre of the monarchy and to fulfil its main function of welcoming and entertaining guests from all over the country, the Empire, and the world.
Despite King Edward VII’s love of pageantry, he felt that many aspects of the ascension and coronation ceremonies were out step with the times. He objected to the anti-Catholic wording in the ascension oath and when told that it would not be possible to change it, got his own back by mumbling through the words: thereby signifying his disapproval of the continued prejudice against many of his subjects and his desire to be a “king of all the people.” For the coronation however, he was persuaded by the courtier Reginald Brett, Viscount Esher that its “ancientness was precisely what gave the occasion its solemn majesty, and that he should retain, even enhance ‘all the ancient practices and traditions,’ omitting only those that were actually ‘ridiculous.’”
In the run up to the coronation, Edward VII was not feeling well, and doctors diagnosed an abscessed appendix. He was persuaded to undergo an operation, but the king refused, telling his doctor Sir Francis Laking, “the Coronation cannot be postponed. I won’t hear of it. I cannot and will not disappoint the people…..I will go to the Abbey on Thursday if I die there.” To which the doctor replied, “If Your Majesty did go on Thursday to the Abbey in all human probability you would die there.” In the end the king reluctantly gave way, the coronation was postponed to a later date, and the operation was performed in the Music Room at Buckingham Palace.
Despite the postponement, Edward VII insisted that regional celebrations and the planned Coronation dinner for London’s poor should go ahead. He and Queen Alexandra paid for the festivities and meals out of their own pockets while businesses and wealthy friends such as Sir Thomas Lipton also contributed. The dinner was bolstered by food prepared for the postponed banquet which the king ordered should be given to the poor to avoid waste. One wonders what the poor of London made of the amounts of lobster and other rich foodstuffs they were served together with the regular fare of roast beef, potatoes, and ale.
The coronation was finally held on 9 August and as most of the representatives from other countries had left London due to the postponement, the ceremony had more of a domestic and Empire wide flavour as various African chiefs, Indian princes & sultans from Malaya joined the Dominion prime ministers in Westminster Abbey. Despite the postponement, Edward VII still felt weak, and parts of the ceremony had to be shortened further to avoid any strain and fatigue. Much to his disappointment, the king was crowned with the lighter Imperial State Crown rather than the St Edward’s Crown which was heavier. Ironically, Edward VII would have the opportunity to wear his namesake’s crown when it was placed atop his coffin in 1910.
Despite the solemnity of the occasion, Edward VII saw the lighter side of things. As he and Queen Alexandra made their way down the stairs at Buckingham Palace, he saw his grandchildren looking at awe in him. He approached them with a smile and asked, “Good morning, children. Am I not a funny looking old man?” At his insistence, a special section of the Abbey was allocated for his special lady friends and previous and current mistresses which the wags described as “The King’s Loose Box.”
The actual ceremony went smoothly despite a few mishaps, as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Frederick Temple refused to delegate some of his duties despite his great age and infirmities. Throughout the ceremony, Temple had to be supported by two other bishops as he was struggling with his legs and during the actual crowning, his hands were shaking so badly that he placed the crown the wrong way round on Edward’s head and the king had to discreetly turn it around the right way. Temple’s eyesight was also so bad that he had to read the service from large scrolls written in large print.
The Coronation of King Edward VII by Laurits Tuxen, Royal Collection Trust (c) King Charles III 2023, RCIN 404487
When the time came for the peers to perform their homage, it was George Prince of Wales who went first and observers noted that as George rose, his father pulled him closer to him and kissed him on both cheeks, a sign of the affection the king held for his only surviving son.
As for Queen Alexandra, the question was regarding her role in the ceremony and what she would be wearing as the last Queen Consort to be crowned was Queen Adelaide in 1831 and hardly anyone who witnessed that event was still alive to recall it. While courtiers scrambled to find records of previous coronations to ascertain what role the new consort would play, Queen Alexandra was seemingly unconcerned with precedent especially with regards to dress. Which was unsurprising as ever since the Danish-born queen came to Britain to marry the future Edward VII in 1863, Alexandra had been known for her beauty and style – other women copied what she wore and for the coronation, the new queen had a clear idea of what she wanted, “I know better than all the milliners and antiquaries. I shall wear exactly what I like and so will all my ladies – basta!”
Alexandra was in her way a rule breaker and unlike her mother-in-law Queen Victoria and her daughter-in-law, Queen Mary she didn’t exclusively patronise British designers and stores for her clothes. For the coronation Morin Blossier, a Parisian dressmaker, made Alexandra’s gown from fabric produced in India and designed by the vicereine of India, Lady Curzon. The gown was two pieces made up of a boned bodice and a long skirt, from a cloth of gold and over it a net of Indian embroidery containing the motifs of the British Isles and the Empire. Completing the gown were long hanging sleeves and a standing collar that was trimmed with gold lace. The only part of her coronation ensemble that was British made was her robe of state made by Marshall and Snelgrove but instead of the traditional violet and crimson, it was in petunia purple. The robe was carried by eight pages of honour instead of the traditional maids of honour. Unlike the maids of honour who were the daughters of dukes, marquesses and earls, Alexandra’s pages were drawn from all ranks of the aristocracy and gentry.
For her crown, Alexandra decided against the traditional four full arches and decided to have eight half arches as a nod to her homeland, Denmark. Denmark was also reflected in one of the pieces of jewellery she wore – a replica of the Dagmar Cross which was given to her by her uncle Frederick VII on her wedding day. On her crown as well was the Koh-i-Noor diamond which later adorned the crowns of Queens Mary and Elizabeth in 1911 and 1937 respectively. However, there is an intriguing mystery about the many of the stones in Queen Alexandra’s crown; we know that the Koh-i-Noor was removed and replaced with a crystal version but the way the other stones were placed would have made it difficult for jewellers to prise them out without damaging the frame. Suzy Menkes who closely examined the crown now held at the Tower of London mused:
Can it be that Queen Alexandra (“I shall wear exactly what I like…..Basta!”) chose to be crowned with a lightweight more comfortable crown rather than to have her head weighed down with real stones? Did the splendid, stately Queen Alexandra, a vision of Majesty in her maharajah’s ransom of jewellery, became Queen of England before God and her King in a crown of paste? (p. 49)
Perhaps Menkes has a point here as it wasn’t only comfort that Queen Alexandra seemed to be after during the Coronation but also a mix of religious belief and vanity. Due to Temple’s frailty, it was decided that the Archbishop of York, William Maclagan would preside over the crowning of the queen. Prior to the ceremony, Alexandra had a meeting with Maclagan to go over the ceremony and was anxious with regards to the anointing. Traditionally, the oil would be poured on the head but as the queen would be wearing a toupee to conceal her thinning hair, she was worried that the liquid would damage the hairpiece. Maclagan solved the problem by anointing Alexandra over the forehead and according to Consuelo Duchess of Marlborough, one of the canopy bearers, the queen didn’t flinch when the oil trickled from her forehead down her nose.
The Anointing of Queen Alexandra at the Coronation of King Edward VII by Laurits Tuxen, Royal Collection Trust (c) King Charles III 2023, RCIN 404466
When Alexandra was finally crowned, it was the cue for the 400 peeresses in the congregation to put on their coronets and since they were also wearing tiaras, they had to arch their hands high to put them on. The sight of 400 white gloved hands high in the air in an almost balletic fashion was one of the highlights of the ceremony; as it was when following the short ceremony, Queen Alexandra wearing her crown and carrying both the consort’s sceptre and ivory rod, dropped a deep bow as she passed her husband the king. As Jane Ridley observed, “[Alexandra] was fifty-six, heavily made up, allegedly bald and almost stone deaf, but she seemed like a queen from a fairy-tale.”
LEGACY:
The 1902 coronation would set many of the templates that would be followed in subsequent coronations. On Edward VII’s orders, the coachman’s box in the Gold State Coach was removed and the carriage was driven by postillion riders to enable the crowds to get a good view of him and the queen as they drove past. The box was never returned and since then, the coach has always been driven postillion style.
A new state landau was also built for a post-coronation drive down the East End of London and its large body was built to accommodate the king’s rotund frame. This carriage has been widely used since then for various state and ceremonial occasions.
New State landau built for the Coronation of King Edward VII, 1902. Illustration for The Coloured Pictorial, 28 June 1902.
Edward VII’s coronation also saw the first large scale participation by soldiers from the Empire and Dominions which again would be a defining feature in subsequent coronations.
However, the biggest legacy of the 1902 coronation was in music. Sir Frederick Bridge, the man in charge of the music for the coronation, decided to use music from the great English composers of the 16th and 17th centuries – Thomas Tallis, Orlando Gibbons and Henry Purcell as well as those from the 19th century such as Sir Arthur Sullivan. There were also new commissions from contemporary British composers such as Sir Walter Parratt and Sir Hubert Parry. The latter has had the most impact on the ceremony as his version of “I Was Glad” together with the traditional “vivats” as performed by the King’s Scholars of Westminster School has been used in subsequent coronations.
An even bigger impact was Edward Elgar’s music. Although he was not commissioned to contribute to the music during the actual coronation service, he composed theCoronation Ode with words provided by the poet, essayist, and academic A.B. Benson. It was commissioned for a gala concert at the Royal Opera House on 31 June 1902 which was subsequently cancelled because of the postponement. The ode eventually had its debut performances at Sheffield and Bristol where it was well received. As Jeffrey Richards wrote:
The Coronation Ode of 1902 is ceremonial music of the first rank, the lyricism and splendour animated by genuine emotion and belief….[i]t is a celebration of monarchy and a hymn of hope to all the virtues and qualities that were expected of the new reign – peace, prosperity, freedom. (p. 63)
The sixth movement of the ode has now lived on as “Land of Hope and Glory” as Benson modified the original lyrics which included the famous chorus that has remained sung to this day at sports events and the Last Night of the Proms.
Further Reading:
David Duff. Alexandra: Princess and Queen (London, 1981)
Richard Hough. Edward and Alexandra (London, 1992)
Deidre Murphy and Cassie Davies-Strodder. Modern Royal Fashion: Seven royal women and their style (London, 2015)
Colin McDowell. A Hundred Years of Royal Style (London, 1985)
Kate Strasdin. ‘Empire Dressing: The Design and Realization of Queen Alexandra’s Coronation Gown’, Journal of Design History, vol. 25 no. 2 (2012), pp. 155-170
Suzy Menkes. The Royal Jewels (London, 1990)
Jane Ridley. Bertie: A Life of Edward VII (London, 2013)
Richard Davenport-Jones. Edward VII (London, 2016)
Anna Keay. The Crown Jewels: The Official Illustrated History (London, 2012)
Jeffrey Richards. Imperialism & Music (Manchester, 2001)
Matthias Range. Music and Ceremonial at British Coronations: From James I to Elizabeth II (Cambridge, 2012)
Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan. The Glitter and the Gold (New York, 1953)
David Starkey. Music and Monarchy, BBC documentary, first telecast on BBC 2, 2013
It’s not only the homes, castles and palaces of royalty and the aristocracy and gentry that are open to the public to visit but also homes of well-known writers, scientists, and artists. From the likes of Beatrix Potter, Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Gainsborough, and Charles Darwin – the length and breadth of Britain is filled with houses that give us a sense of the time its owners lived.
London is no exception, and the capital boasts several houses that the public can visit. One of them is Sambourne House or 18 Stafford Terrace which was the home of the noted artist and cartoonist, Linley Sambourne (1844-1910) who worked for Punch magazine for 40 years and was responsible for many of the cartoons published by the magazine that have become defining images of late Victorian Britain. He also accepted commissions for book illustrations, advertisements, magazine covers and illustrations.
Sambourne and his wife Marion moved into 18 Stafford Terrace in 1875 a year after their marriage and this became their family home where Sambourne also created a studio and used the bathroom as a photo darkroom, and Marion raised their two children – Maud and Roy. The house was also located not far from those of other artists such as Frederic Lord Leighton and fostered the idea of this part of London as an artists’ colony.
The house on the outside looks no different from the rest of the neighbourhood but once you enter you feel as if you’ve stepped back in time. Thanks to Sambourne’s descendants (via his daughter Maud) and the Kensington and Chelsea Council (who administer the site), the house is preserved very much as Linley and Maud lived in it with their two children and three servants.
18 Stafford Terrace gives the visitors a glimpse into the lifestyle of the Victorian middle class and is a wonderful example of the Aesthetic Movement which fostered the idea of “art for art’s sake,” that art was meant to be beautiful. One of the most famous proponents of the movement was William Morris and in Samboure’s house, we see examples of Morris’ work particularly with the wallpaper used.
The house is clearly designed as a place to live and entertain as Judith Flanders in The Victorian House described below how the Sambournes entertained and what was served during these dinners:
“Marion Sambourne kept a notebook with dinner party menus. In 1879 at a dinner for eight people she served artichoke soup, fillets of salmon, leg of lamb; salad a new potatoes, stewed celery; wild duck, watercress; Aldershot pudding, plum pudding; soft roes and herring and biscuits. In the 1890s, as the Sambournes became more prosperous, another menu, this time for a ‘gentleman only’ dinner for Linley Sambourne’s friends, consisted of; caviar; clear soup, cold salmon, pigeons, tomato salad; roast lamb, peas; haricots verts, roast chicken, salad, Russian salad; jelly, macedoine of fruit; anchovy savoury, cream cheese; ices – pineapple cream, raspberry water (that is, pineapple ice cream and raspberry sorbet). Along with 22 bottles of wine and 15 of champagne. Linley Sambourne complained the next day of a slight bilious headache that lasted all day.”
Apart with regards to entertaining, the house was also designed for work. Sambourne created a studio where he drew and where he used himself and staff as models for his cartoons.
One main impression we had during our visit was how dark the interiors were due to the dark wood panelling and furniture also made from dark wood. Some rooms also felt cluttered in the typical Victorian fashion of decorating every nook and cranny of the house with various furniture, bibelots, photos and other bric a brac. We felt sympathy for the maids who in an era of open coal fires had to keep these rooms clean and dusted – the Sambournes might have embraced the Aesthetic movement but they also embraced to the full the Victorian idea that an empty space exists only to be filled.
On the positive, the house is well laid out and there is no intrusive and patronising interpretation. There is information about the objects in the house but again its unobtrusive and while there are staff and volunteers around, they let visitors go around the house at their own pace but are available if you have any questions or want to learn more about the house and its history.
My main criticism is that there is no helpful signage that would direct visitors to the house from Kensington High Street. But other than that, the house is worth visiting as a perfect showcase of how the middle class lived during the late Victorian era.
The bloggers visited Sambourne House on 14 December 2022. Photos of the interiors taken by bloggers.
The shenanigans of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are beyond the remit of this blog, but while browsing something on Twitter, this caught my eye:
Thanks S for sharing this. It’s apparently their Netflix Reality… I mean doc is going to be based off of images from other people in the royal family and not them. This came from children’s princess account on Instagram. What is the purpose of them doing this? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/NpOp6WiHYU
It was a comment pointing out an image from the teaser trailer for the Sussexes’ upcoming documentary on Nelflix and out of curiosity, I decided to have a look:
Infuriatingly I’m unable to take a screenshot but it’s there on the 0:36 mark after brief clips of soldiers marching and someone handing out newspapers to passers-by, the next image is of children smiling, cheering, and waving Union flags. Prominent in the image are three black boys smiling broadly while two of them were getting ready to wave the flags in their hand.
Eagle eyed commentors on Twitter were able to identify that the image of the children was taken from photos documenting Queen Mary’s visit to Brixton, South London to open an extension to Lambeth Town Hall in 1938. Unsurprisingly, British Pathe has a newsreel of the event complete with commentary and there it was, the children all waving their flags and cheering as the car carrying Queen Mary arrived at the main entrance to the Town Hall:
It was a homecoming of sorts for Queen Mary as she had opened the building together with her husband King George V when they were still Prince and Princess of Wales in 1908. Looking at the photos and watching the newsreel from the 1938 visit, it showed how much both things had changed and how they haven’t changed. Royal visits then were much more formal but then as it is now, there were the multitudes of crowds that turned up to cheer and welcome a member of the royal family visiting their area.
I have no idea why Netflix would insert an image from 1938 for their documentary about the Sussexes but this raises questions about the integrity of the finished production and how they thought they could get away with this. Especially in the age of the internet where even ordinary members of the public can cross check things simply by looking it up on Google or any other search engine they’re using. Someone, somewhere along the production team obviously didn’t think this through and they’re now reaping what they’ve sown.
An unknown fighting man, bearer of no great name, builder of no great fame…yet no illustrious general ever had a great homecoming, for a King followed humbly on foot behind his coffin…
Despite the ending of war and the Peace Parade it was clear that while the dead had their memorials in the Cenotaph and the war cemeteries, there were still many families whose menfolk were missing or unidentified and who needed something to reconcile them to their loss. The idea of an unknown soldier to represent all those men is thought to have originated with the Rev David Railton, who served as an army chaplain in France. In 1916 he saw a burial with a cross marked ‘An Unknown British Soldier,’ and had the idea that a national memorial in Britain to an unknown soldier could come to represent all those who had fought and died, especially those with no known grave, and bring comfort and courage to those who had no body to bury to bring home to them the finality of death. As Nicholson observed: “His invisible face could be invested with thousands of familiar faces, all much missed and much loved.”
In 1920 he wrote to the Dean of Westminster, who was enthusiastic about the notion and started campaigning for the unknown warrior to be buried in Westminster Abbey. The church establishment in England had been deeply unhappy about the secularism of the war cemeteries and the Cenotaph – what the Catholic Herald called ‘that pagan monument insulting to Christianity’ in the middle of Whitehall. Public demand for the Cenotaph to be made permanent were derided in the Church Times as a cult of ‘Cenotaphology’: by having the unknown warrior buried in the Abbey as a rival shrine to the Cenotaph was the church’s riposte to the secularism it deplored and enable it to have its own focus of mourning.
Railton’s idea was accepted by the government as long as he would be known as the ‘Unknown Warrior’ to include sailors and airmen. The Prime Minister Lloyd George was enthusiastic about the idea, but George V feared the proposal would open the mental and emotional wounds that were starting to heal, and that the idea was distastefully sentimental. As with the Cenotaph, he was talked around to the idea by Lloyd George.
Once the idea had governmental and royal approval a body had to be chosen, and under conditions of the greatest secrecy, so he could never be named. All that was known was that four (some reports say six, one eight) bodies were disinterred from the four battlefields on the Western Front where the slaughter had been greatest – Somme, Aisne, Ypres, and Arras. Identified as British by insignia and uniform buttons, the bodies were taken to St Pol en Ternoise, where one was chosen on November 8, 1920, by Brigadier LJ Wyatt, general officer in charge of troops in France and Flanders. Some accounts have him making the selection blindfolded, others not, but however the selection was made, the body chosen was from then on treated with all the solemn honour and mourning due to a warrior king fallen on a foreign battlefield. Placed in a pine coffin, he was transported to Boulogne, and placed in a coffin of English oak. The coffin carried a crusader sword from the Tower of London as a gift from George V, and an iron plate bearing the epitaph ‘A British Warrior who fell in the Great War 1914-1918 for King and Country’; and was draped in the much worn and mended Union flag used so often by Railton during the war as both altar cloth and funeral pall.
November 10 1920 – Accompanied by six barrels of Flanders earth (to be packed around the body at burial so that in the words of Brigadier General Wyatt ‘the body should rest in the soil in which so many of our troops gave up their lives’) and bidden farewell by Marshal Foch, the body was transported to Britain on HMS Verdun, with a destroyer escort flying lowered flags and was greeted by a nineteen gun salute at Dover. The man who when alive would have travelled crammed into a carriage with wooden benches or with his pack for a seat now was carried in the same luggage van that had carried the bodies of nurse Edith Cavell and merchant seaman Captain Charles Fryatt. Draped with purple cloth and strewn with flowers, the van had a white painted roof, so the thousands watching along the line could identify where the coffin was. When the train arrived at Victoria Station on the evening of 10 November, police were almost overwhelmed by the numbers waiting to greet it. Sentries from the Grenadier Guards kept vigil by the casket overnight.
November 11 1920 – when the funeral cortege left Victoria en route to the Cenotaph and Westminster Abbey it was accompanied by the highest ranking officers in the army and navy. Four admirals, six senior generals were the pallbearers, as guns in Hyde Park boomed a salute to a field marshal. A silent crowd twenty deep watched as the casket was carried on a gun carriage drawn by horses of the Royal Horse Artillery, and resting on top a battered steel helmet, a webbing belt, and a bayonet. This was the real significance; the accoutrements on the casket drew attention to the fact that this was an ordinary man who anyone might identify with and claim as their own – father, son, brother, fiancé. As a reporter for a newspaper, the Daily Chronicle, Philip Gibbs describes the scene:
It was the steel helmet – the old tin hat – lying there on the crimson of the flag, which revealed him instantly…as one of those fellows, dressed in the drab of khaki, stained by mud and grease, who went into the dirty ditches with this steel hat on his head.
And nearly a hundred years later, Jeremy Paxman mused that “[t]he corpse being buried could have been anyone – sniper or cook, hero or malingerer. That was the point, of course. The grave contained a body which anyone who had lost a son or husband could regard as theirs.”
The cortege passed the newly unveiled Cenotaph followed by pallbearers, clergy, royalty, former servicemen and ministers of government to an Abbey crammed with mourners; among them a guard of honour of Victoria Cross winners, one thousand widows, and one hundred nurses wounded in service. In his wildest dreams he would not have imagine a homecoming like this.
After a brief but deeply emotional service – Queen Mary, usually so stoical and controlled, wept openly – service flag and accoutrements were removed, and the casket was lowered into the grave, which had been positioned so that anyone approaching the altar, whoever they were or are, would not be able to avoid that memorial and would have to step aside – a move of deep importance in a society so hierarchical and intent on everyone knowing their place. The Times called it ‘the saddest, stateliest, most beautiful ceremony that London had ever seen.’
Once the ceremonies were over, the public homage began. The queue started at the Abbey and stretched to the Cenotaph and was four deep; over the week the grave remained open people stood for hours, day and night, in queues stretching for 7 miles, for the chance of a few seconds at the gravesite. People from all classes, and the majority women. An estimated 1,250,000 people paid their respects and left their tributes of flowers – everything from ornate wreaths to single flowers before the grave was finally sealed.
As Gavin Stamp says in ‘Further Reading’ in his book about the missing of the Somme, there is a depressingly huge literature on the Great War. The blogs posted are no more than the most cursory accounts of events, using the books below:
Richard Van Emden. The Quick and the Dead (London, 2012)
Simon Heffer. Staring at God: Britain in the Great War (London, 2019)
Juliet Nicolson. The Great Silence: 1918-1920 Living in the Shadow of the Great War (London, 2010)
John Lewis-Stempel. Where Poppies Blow: The British Soldier, Nature, the Great War (London, 2017)
Neil Oliver. Not Forgotten: The Great War and Our Modern Memory (London, 2006)
Jeremy Paxman. Great Britain’s Great War (London, 2015)
Andrew Richards. The Flag: The Rev’d David Railton and the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior (London, 2017)
Gavin Stamp. The Memorial to the Missing of the Somme (London, 2007)
Sarah Ridley. Remembering the Fallen of the First World War (London, 2015)
Illustrated London News – The Illustrated First World War
English Heritage – London’s Great War Memorials
Notes:
For a detailed account of how the body was chosen, repatriated, and buried, along with a discussion of the different accounts about how any bodies were exhumed; the organisation behind the process and the day itself – The Flag pp 165-200.
The Great Silence pp 333-342 has a moving and detailed account of the selection, final journey from France and the events of 11 November 1920.
After the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919 the Prime Minister David Lloyd George suggested that a Peace Parade should be held to celebrate the signing and the end of the Great War; not only to celebrate victory and the coming of peace but commemorate the dead and make sense of the sacrifice of over a million Imperial soldiers. It was felt that the parade needed a central object and a symbolic heart on which people could focus their attention; in Lloyd George’s words in early July 1919 “a point of homage to stand as a symbol of remembrance worthy of the reverent salute of an Empire mourning for its million dead;”* and he asked architect Edwin Lutyens to design a monument to be ready for the parade on 19 July. It was to be non-denominational and carry no Christian symbolism. This decision was opposed by the Church, but Lutyens was aware from his work with the IWGC that many soldiers who had fought and died for the British Empire were not of the Christian faith, and he wanted his memorial to encompass the sacrifice of all.
Lutyens had already discussed the building of a suitable monument with the Commissioner of the Board of Works, and he had a design ready. The speed of the building meant that it was built of materials easy to use – plaster and wood – but the structure was not meant to be permanent. Lutyens called it a Cenotaph – from the Greek meaning ‘empty tomb.’ It was ready for the Peace Parade ceremonies and the official unveiling by George V.
The Cenotaph : original design for the structure in Whitehall (Art.IWM ART 3991 a) Lutyens was first approached informally by Sir Alfred Mond, First Commissioner of Works in Lloyd George’s government in June 1919, to design a monument to mark the signing of the Peace Treaty. Following discussions with Clemenceau and the Peace Celebrations Committee, Lloyd George met Lutyens in early July 1919 and asked him to design a catafalque for Whitehall, to be part of the Peace Day events… Copyright: � IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/17076THE CENOTAPH AT WHITEHALL, 1920 (Q 31488) The unveiling of the permanent Cenotaph at Whitehall, by King George V, 11 November 1920. Copyright: � IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205191592
Once the official ceremonies in July 1919 were over, people started to project their own grief onto the monument – it provided a symbolic coffin in which people could imagine laying their dead and where they could come to grieve. As Juliet Nicolson describes in The Great Silence:
“To be in the silent presence of the Cenotaph, the mind paradoxically was free to express anything it chose…lacking any inner substance of its own, it seemed to be the silence of grief made visible the absence of the missing men made real…The Morning Post noted that ‘Near the Memorial there were moments of silence when the dead seemed very near. “
The temporary Cenotaph became a place of pilgrimage, ever since its unveiling heaped with wreaths, bouquets and floral tributes laid ten feet high, with people queueing for hours to leave their flowers; poignantly one little boy who brought flowers saw it as if standing in its own garden cried out “Oh mummy, see what a lovely garden my daddy’s got!”
Officialdom was taken by surprise at the depth of the emotional and spiritual public response, as officialdom so very often is. First, it was suggested that the temporary Cenotaph should be moved. Then the Commissioner of Works, Sir Alfred Mond, irritated by the smell of decaying flowers in the hot summer of 1919, suggested that the laying of flowers should be severely restricted – too messy and too popular. The Cenotaph was too mournful a memorial, it disrupted the traffic, which was missing the point. Lutyens had placed it where it was deliberately, to intrude upon day to day life and make people think about what it represented. It was not meant to be triumphal and celebrate victory, it was a memorial to what that victory had entailed in terms of human sacrifice – men dead, maimed, missing, women widowed, children fatherless, parents bereft. Where it stands is a permanent reminder even now to government and passers-by of that cost, both in 1914-1918 and later.
Demands by the public and MPs to make the Cenotaph a permanent memorial started almost as soon as the Peace Parade was over, and Lutyens was commissioned to recast his memorial in Portland stone less than two weeks after the parade.
The Cenotaph was finally unveiled by the King on Armistice Day 11 November 1920 just before the cortege of the Unknown Warrior passed on its way to Westminster Abbey. Such was the hush as people waited to see the unveiling that onlookers recalled the rustling of autumn leaves as the only sound. Described by one journalist as ‘grave, severe and beautiful,’ this memorial did not hold a body or exalt a victorious general. It had no statues of soldiers trampling fallen enemies, no boasting of battles won, or lands conquered; nothing that might disturb or alienate the onlooker. It held three words only – The Glorious Dead – and the only decorations were carved wreaths of ribbon and three flags along each flank (Lutyens wanted these to be carved in stone but was overruled). The lack of imagery or religious symbolism allowed each mourner to project their own personal grief and derive their own meaning and consolation. In the words of one writer, Richard van Emden: “with the decision to leave the remains of all who had died where they lay overseas, the Cenotaph was carefully representative of the nation’s acceptance that there would be no bodies to bury at home.” The Church establishment did not approve at all of this secularism – one reason why it was so ready to accept the idea of the burial of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey as an alternative shrine.
*The loss to the British Empire was actually 1,104,890 dead. Commentators at Armistice and later Remembrance Sunday broadcasts used a visual metaphor to indicate the magnitude of the loss if the dead of the Great War marched in rows of four past the Cenotaph, the head of the column would be in Whitehall while the tail would still be in Durham (270 miles/448 km).
In August 1915, two days after his death and thanks to an appeal by his family to both the Prime Minister and the King, the body of Lieutenant William Gladstone, a grandson of the great prime minister, was brought home from a cemetery in France and reburied with full military honours at Hawarden. His loss was keenly felt by the crowds who watched the funeral procession, but Lieutenant Gladstone was to be one of the few men killed in action to be buried at home; in 1915 his case prompted Fabian Ware to ask the Adjutant General of the army to issue a blanket ban on all repatriations of the dead. (This was later reinforced by an announcement from the government in late November 1918 that bodies would not be repatriated, and that the IGWC believed that this would have been the wish of the soldiers themselves ‘in whom the sense of comradeship was so strong.’ (Times article, 28 November 1918). The message was clear and firm – the Empire had asked these men to fight and die for it, the Empire would look after them in death. As Gavin Stamp in Memorial to the Missing of the Somme observed: “Equality in death… had to be enforced by the state, and the British people had to learn that liberty is incompatible with war, and that once a man had enlisted, dead or alive, his body belonged to the King.”
Although difficult, the original decision was psychologically and logistically sound. There was not just the consideration of the blow to national morale and mental well-being of thousands of coffins arriving week after week, but also the stark reality of the state of the bodies within – shattered, maimed and in many cases mere fragments gathered into a sandbag. The death lists were distressing enough, but the arrival of bodies would have been a brutal reminder of the scale of conflict and the numbers of deaths. There were also practical issues to consider. Who would contact the families of Imperial troops and fund the repatriation of their bodies? To whom did a body belong, the family or the dead man’s wife? Whose wishes took precedence in the event of a family dispute, and what about the families who could not afford to bring their dead home? And of course, not everyone had the influence to appeal to the prime minister or monarch for permission, or the money to erect a fitting memorial. To a society that placed enormous significance on the rituals of death, however, having no funeral to attend or a grave to visit was a deeply wounding and upsetting experience.
Repatriation would have also breached the guiding principle of the Imperial War Graves Commission – that of equality and comradeship in death. Rich families would be able to bring home their dead, erect a memorial and have a focus for their mourning, poorer families would not. It was hoped that families would come to look on the war cemeteries as the proper place for the dead, and that they would appreciate both the solace afforded by the ambience of the gardens and the reflection that their menfolk were lying with the comrades with whom they had fought. In May 1920, a parliamentary debate made the decision to recognise the principles of the IWGC, among them that the dead lay abroad and there they would stay; a policy that was unique to Britain.
There may have been another unspoken political reason for the government’s stance in 1918. Russia and Germany were in the throes of revolution, and in 1917 more than one million days had been lost to strikes in Britain, which intelligence reports attributed to discontent stirred up by revolutionary organisations. Whether it was a fear with any basis in reality or not, government and monarchy might have been apprehensive that allowing those who had the influence or money to bring home their dead while many poor families could not, might be an excuse to harness working class discontent and incite revolution.
It was inevitable that the government and IWGC stance would be bitterly opposed by many families who had sacrificed their menfolk and who were now denied, as they saw it, even the right to bring them back to their families to be buried at home. Not only could they not bring back sons, fathers, and husbands but they could not even erect a headstone or memorial of their choosing and were limited to a few lines of personal message, and one for which they had to pay. One mother wrote bitterly that she had sacrificed her son to be butchered, and was livid that the government, not his mother, would decide where he was buried, erect the memorial over his grave and limit the space in which she could leave a message. Presumably, she raged, she was also to be told how much time she could spend at his graveside.
Families issued powerful emotional demands for the return of the bodies of their loved ones, and some became fixated on the issue. In 1919 the British War Graves Association was set up by a group of parents, and for the next six years the Association made repeated requests and conditions that the government re-address the issue of exhumation and repatriation of war dead. Petitions were raised and sent to Queen Mary, the Prince of Wales and the IWGC, which would not change its stance when the establishment of war cemeteries using public money was well under way. Not until 1925 did the Association give up its demands for their dead to be returned to them.
Enough of this Tomfoolery! 