“For the British people, Victoria was more than an individual, more even than the queen,” Robert K. Massie wrote in “Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War.” “She was—and had been as long as most of them could remember—a part of the fabric of their lives. She embodied history, tradition, government, and the structure and morality of their society. They trusted her to remain there, always to do her duty, always to give order to their lives. She did not disappoint them. In return, they gave her their allegiance, their devotion—and their esteem.”
We all knew it was coming yet it feels like a blow. A mighty presence has passed, one who meant more to us perhaps than we’d noticed.
The reign of Queen Elizabeth II surpassed Victoria’s (1837-1901) in September 2015. For the vast majority of her people, she was the only monarch they had ever known. Her life spanned almost a century, through wars, through empire and its decline, through every cultural and political shift. And in all that time she was a symbol of continuity, stability and soundness.
There will be, mostly but not only in Britain, a surge of sentiment as if a big page has been turned and we very much don’t want it to turn—we don’t want to get to the end of that book, don’t want to close it.
Her virtues were old-school virtues.
• She accepted her life with grace. When she became queen at 25 she recognized it as her duty and destiny. She was a member of a particular family and the heir to a particular throne. She had a duty to the people of her country and would sacrifice a great deal—privacy, leisure, some faint sense of control of one’s life—to meet it. She represented the permanent over the merely prevalent.
Sally Bedell Smith, in her great biography “Elizabeth the Queen: the Life of a Modern Monarch,” quoted the British journalist Rebecca West, who observed that the monarch is “the emblem of the state, the symbol of our national life, the guardian of our self-respect.” But it was more than that, too; you didn’t have to be English to appreciate what she was doing.
• She did what she said she’d do. After her father’s death, she met with the leaders of Britain at St. James’s Palace. In a clear voice she declared: “By the sudden death of my dear father, I am called to assume the duties and responsibilities of sovereignty. . . . I shall always work, as my father did throughout his reign, to advance the happiness and prosperity of my peoples. . . . I pray that God will help me to discharge worthily this heavy task that has been lain upon me so early in my life.” She did, and everyone watching over the years could see it.
• She gave it everything she had. She was conscientious, serious-minded, responsible. Every day but Christmas and Easter Sunday and wherever she was, she directed her energies to the red leather dispatch boxes of official government papers, Foreign Office cables, budget documents, intelligence reports. She was deskbound as long as needed, often working into the evening. After that the private audiences, public events, consultations. She didn’t flag.
• It wasn’t about her. The important thing was the institution, the monarchy, and its responsibility to its subjects. She wanted to be a queen the country adhered to and was proud of, so she maintained dignity. She knew her role. She didn’t show moods or take sides, never tried to win the crowd, didn’t attempt to establish a reputation for wit or good nature. She was in her public dealings placid, as a great nation’s queen would be. “She has been, as someone once said, the light above politics,” Ms. Smith said Thursday on CNN. “Even when I’d watch her at royal events she would hesitate to clap or smile because she didn’t want to show favoritism. She has wanted to be a force for everybody and a glue for the nation, and that sort of exterior has been important.”
• She was a woman of faith. At her 1953 coronation in Westminster Abbey, the most important moment happened outside of television range. It was when the archbishop of Canterbury poured holy oil and anointed the new queen, “making a sign of the cross on the palms of each of her hands, her forehead, and exposed upper chest,” Ms. Smith wrote. (Victoria hadn’t allowed her archbishop to touch her chest.) Elizabeth felt the anointing “sanctified her before God to serve her people.” Her friends said it was the anointing, not the crowning, that made her queen.
• She understood her role. She was the longest reigning monarch in British history, a continuous thread to the past. Decades passed but the thread remained and never broke, which suggested things would hold together, and everything in the end would be all right. She understood that in the tumultuous 20th century the idea of continuity itself was a gift to her country. She had to be reliable, and was.
• Because of all this, when she entered the room, Britain entered the room. Majesty entered, something old and hallowed and rich in meaning, something going back to tribes that painted themselves blue and forward to the Magna Carta. It was mysterious, but I saw it once: She entered a hall full of voices and suddenly, silence. It was only a few years ago, but I realized that in a time when personal stature is mindlessly thrown off or meanly taken, hers had only increased.
There is something so touching in the way she had begun in the past few years to laugh and smile so much, to show her joy, her simple pleasure in being there. You saw it in pictures taken this week, which showed her seeing off an old prime minister and seeing in a new one, wearing a plaid skirt and long gray cardigan, holding her cane and laughing merrily. I think of how moved I was by the clip a few months ago of the queen and Paddington Bear, in which she divulged what she kept in her purse—a marmalade sandwich. The royal band outside struck up Freddie Mercury, and she kept time with a spoon on her teacup. I didn’t know when I saw it why it moved me so much, and realized: because my mind was saying don’t go old friend, we’ll miss you.
The great of Britain have been talking for years about how sad it will be when she departs. They’re about to be taken aback by how deep and pervasive the mourning is. Britain is braced for hard times; people won’t easily lose such a figure of stability and continuity. “King Charles” will sound strange on the tongue.
And they loved her.
Now I am imagining the royal funeral, the procession, the carriages of state going slowly down the mall, the deep crowds on each side. The old will come in their chairs and the crowd will kindly put them in front, the best view, to wave goodbye to their friend, with whom they had experienced such history together.
Requiescat in pace, Elizabeth Regina.
