The Edwardians

by Vita Sackville-West

  His life passed him by as slowly as the familiar streets passed the windows of the swaying coach. The rockings of the springs lulled him into a resuscitation of his childhood. The closed-in atmosphere induced a retrospection of his more recent years. The past, both distant and immediate, became oppressive. He noticed that there was no handle on the inside of the door. So he could not get out, even if he wished! He leant forward to lower the window. It stuck. The family coach itself had entered into the conspiracy to imprison him and to deny him air.

  Sebastian’s coach drew up with commendable swagger at the West Door of the Abbey. On his way, he had passed numerous peers and peeresses who, having abandoned their carriages or cars, were hastening on foot in their robes and feathers down the damp of Victoria Street—for a fine, drizzling rain had now begun to fall. Sebastian looked with amusement at the unusual sight presented by these ladies and gentlemen in their finery at nine o’clock in the morning; the sobriety of Victoria Street was transformed into an appearance of gaudiness and dissipation. He espied the Templecombes; Lady Templecombe was grasping her skirts with one hand, and the feathers in her hair trembled unhappily in the breeze. Sebastian was glad that he was not obliged to walk, but that the Earl Marshal’s pass secured him a way through. At the gates of the Abbey he had to face a larger crowd than had speeded his departure at Grosvenor Square, but here at least he had the comfort of reflecting that the personal interest was negligible; no one in the crowd had had time to ask the footmen whose coach it was; he could sweep hurriedly into the Abbey without a whisper murmuring his name to the spires of Parliament or the reverberations of Big Ben. He had become, merely a participant. He had ceased to be himself.

  Within the Vestibule, all was quiet and dignity. Such business as reigned was conducted in the hush that befitted so august an occasion and so venerable a fane. Some officer, detailed for the job, approached Sebastian, received his name, and instantly preceded him, soft-footed, to the allotted place. Sebastian looked round, and nodded to the men he knew. He no longer felt so self-conscious, in the company of other men attired as he himself was attired. He straightened his shoulders beneath the heavy cloak. He even felt inadequately dressed, in so far as these men—older men—all displayed the insignia of some Order, which he, by his youth, was denied. There was the Duke of Northumberland with the Garter; Lord Waterford with the Star of St. Patrick. They were all men of a certain age and experience; Sebastian either knew them personally, or had heard them speaking in the House of Lords. He felt apologetic for his youth, and for the rank which entitled him to a place in their midst. Young boys, their pages, in white and scarlet dress, clung closely behind them; and Sebastian himself felt that such a rôle would have become him better than the active rôle he had to play. His own page joined him; a little cousin, an Eton boy; joined him with evident relief at his arrival, and took his coronet from him, tucking it under his arm much as he might have secured a passed ball at football. Sebastian smiled at him with sympathy. He was a shiny-cheeked little boy, more delighted by the special permission which had released him from school than by the privilege of attending the Coronation.

  Sebastian looked round again as he waited. There on the table lay the Regalia; there stood the great Officers of State; there stood the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and seven bishops with their great lawn sleeves; many peers, and a number of Gentlemen-at-Arms. They were waiting for the moment when the pieces of the Regalia should be delivered to them, passing first from the hands of the Lord Chamberlain of the Household to the hands of the Lord High Constable, and from the hands of the Lord High Constable to the hands of the Lord Great Chamberlain, and from the hands of the Lord Great Chamberlain to the hands of the peer or prelate destined to bear them in the procession. The crown of Edward the Confessor lay there; the orb, the sceptre ; the golden spurs; the swords of justice; Curtana, the sword of mercy. They seemed to Sebastian to hold about as much significance as the staves of a Tarot pack, yet something within him responded to these strange emblems of centuries and sovereignty. He looked with humorous but affectionate proprietorship at the crabbed, mediaeval little object which would fall to his own lot; and remembering that the hands of his ancestors had likewise closed upon it, wondered whether they also had had a moment’s anxiety lest they should drop it? Had old Sebastian, the first duke, following Queen Elizabeth up the aisle of this same Abbey, borne it as cautiously and looked forward as anxiously to the moment when he should restore it safely to its keeper? Sebastian stared at the little object, which he alone had the right to carry; and as he stared he felt the long line of his ancestors rise up and stand about him like ghosts, pointing their fingers at him and saying that there was no escape.

  In the body of the Abbey, the assembled congregation passed the time as best they might by watching the arrival of the distinguished guests. They saw the Royal Representatives escorted to their seats in the Choir; the German Crown Prince and Princess were there, the Archduke Charles Francis Joseph of Austria, the Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovitch, Prince Chakrabhongs of Pitsanulok, and Dejasmatch Kassa of Ethiopia. The Ethiopian wore a bristling lion’s mane swathed about his headdress, which tickled the face of his neighbour in the next choir stall every time he turned his head to observe the movements of some fresh dignitary taking up his position. This misfortune, however, was concealed from the gaze of the smaller fry in the body of the Abbey. It was revealed only to the privileged few assembled in the Royal Box and the Transepts. These privileged few beguiled the time likewise by observing the arrival, the hushed and almost stealthy arrival, of the forerunners of the main ceremony. They had, indeed, need of something to beguile the time. Most of them had been in their places since eight o’clock. They were already beginning to look dubiously at the little greasy packets of sandwiches that they had brought with them. They were already beginning to wonder about the practicability of other, more intimate, arrangements. Meanwhile, they could solace themselves by taking in the details of those preparations which had closed the Abbey for so many days while carpenters in their aprons went about, and the vast space, now murmurous with the strains of the organ, had echoed only to the tap of hammers on tin-tacks. The light at first was dim, falling only from the high windows of the clerestory; some hours passed before the golden lights in the candelabra began to pale and the shadows to lessen, revealing many motionless figures, such as those of the Yeomen of the Guard in the nave, who hitherto had gone almost unperceived. There was indeed much to notice, and the eye strayed alternately from the overhead architectural splendours of vault and column to the tiny figures moving across the floor, stiff as dolls in their multi-coloured robes. The blue-and-silver of the velvet hangings, the blue mantle of the Prince of Wales, the grey heron-plumes in his cap, the silks of the Indian princes, the lozenges on a herald’s tabard, the crimson of the peers and peeresses massed in the transepts, the motley of a jewelled window, the silence of the Throne, the slight stir, the absence of voices, the swell of the organ, the hushed arrivals, the sense of expectancy—all blended together into one immense and confused significance. I t is to be doubted whether one person in that whole assembly had a clear thought in his head. Rather, words and their associations marched in a grand chain, giving hand to hand: England, Shakespeare, Elizabeth, London; Westminster, the docks, India, the Cutty Sark, England; England, Gloucestershire, John of Gaunt; Magna Carta, Cromwell, England. Vague, inexplicable epithets flitted across the mind, familiar even in their unfamiliarity: Unicorn Pursuivant, Portcullis, Rouge Dragon, Black Rod, O’Conor Don, the Lord of the Isles, Macgillycuddy of the Reeks. What did all those words mean? What could they possibly mean to a foreigner? What could they mean to Dejasmatch Kassa of Ethiopia, whose lion’s mane was even now tickling the face of his neighbour? No more than the war dances of Dejasmatch Kassa could mean to the King of England. The organisation of a planet was a very strange thing indeed.

  So thought Sebastian, bearing his little mediaeval object in the train of the Kin
g. Somewhere in the galleries above him was a choir five hundred strong, shouting, “Vivat! vivat Rex Georgius!” as the procession came up the narrow path of the blue carpet and paused for a moment before the empty thrones. There was the King, in his Robe of State, the Cap of State upon his head, escorted by Bishops, his train borne by eight young pages, flanked by twenty Gentlemen-at-Arms, and assisted—indeed, he had need of assistance, thought Sebastian—by the Master of the Robes. There was the tiny figure of Lord Roberts, and the towering figure of Lord Kitchener. There were the Standards, hanging limp on their poles. There was the Queen—but enough. The ceremony had begun.

  Sebastian stood, carefully holding his little object. He must stand as still as a statue, his heavy cloak flowing out round him; he must not turn his head, nor show by any relaxation of muscle that he lived. He was like a piece in a game of chess; he must move, woodenly, to the square next prescribed for him. But his eyes might wander. They wandered; they found Alice among the flock of girls round the Queen’s train; they found Sylvia, as beautiful as ever, among the peeresses. She was looking at him, and their eyes met across the church, searching each other for some sign of change after these five years. This was the moment that Sebastian had dreaded; now that it had come his heart remained dead; neither Alice nor Sylvia had any power to restore him to reality. He imagined that all life had been suffocated forever within him, stifled under the magnificence of ceremonial and the shroud of his crimson cloak. Since he had consented to lend himself to this mummery, he allowed a spirit of complete abnegation to possess him; henceforward he would stand woodenly, move woodenly; go where he was bidden; bow; respond, according to what was expected of him; a terrible passivity overwhelmed him, and he accepted it with fatalistic superstition. He had never felt so lost, so forlorn, yet at the same time so resigned, as in that moment when he gave up his freedom. He recognised the moment as having an immense importance for him. Westminster, and the lords temporal and spiritual, had beaten him. (But even then, it seemed to him a huge paraphernalia to have set in motion for that pitiable purpose.) He would marry Alice. He would propose to her at the Russian ballet on Saturday; Prince Igor should furnish a fitting accompaniment. He would fulfil Anquetil’s prophecy, even to the last detail. He would cease to struggle. He would satisfy Society, his mother, and the ghosts of his ancestors who had stood where he was standing now.

  Meanwhile, the pageant went superbly forward from rite to rite. The undoubted King of this Realm had been presented to his people at each point of the compass, and at each point of the compass had been recognised with loud and repeated acclamations and with the blare of trumpets echoing against the stones from the pavement to the roof. The waiting Altar had received the Bible, the paten, and the chalice. Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet had been invoked, and the crowning of Solomon recalled. Four Knights of the Garter had raised a canopy of cloth of gold over the King. Oil from the Ampulla, poured from the beak of the little golden eagle, had anointed his head, his breast, and his hands. His hands had been dried with cotton wool. The white tunic of the Colobium Sindonis and the golden pall of the Supertunica had replaced his robes of state, revealing the mark of sunburn at the back of his neck. The golden spurs had touched his heels; the Armill had been flung about his shoulders; the Sword had been girded on and redeemed with one hundred shillings in a red velvet bag; the Orb, the Ring, and the Sceptres had been delivered to him; the Lord of the Manor of Worksop had offered a glove. The Crown had been placed upon his head, the trumpets and drums had sounded, the people had cried God save the King.

  And at the moment when the Queen was crowned the peeresses had likewise put on their coronets, in a single gesture of exquisite beauty, their white arms rising with a sound like the rushing of birds’ wings and a proud arching like the arching of the neck of a swan. Then out came the little mirrors, and, with furtive peeps in that cluster of femininity, hands had stolen upwards again to adjust, to straighten. Many dowagers, looking down from the galleries above, tut-tutted. In their day, they said, ladies were not in the habit of producing mirrors in public. It was easy to see, they said, that the reign of Edward the Seventh was over and the days of decent behaviour ended.

  Everybody streamed out of the Abbey, greatly relieved. They were tired, but how impressive it had been! and, thank heaven, no one had thrown a bomb. Groups of lords and ladies stood about, chattering while they waited for their carriages. Incongruous sights were to be observed: one backwoodsman peer had put on a straw hat which contrasted oddly with his robes, another had wrapped his coronet in a piece of newspaper. Someone was saying that old Lord—had placed his sandwiches loose in his coronet and had upset them all, over his head, at the moment of the crowning.

  One by one the coaches, carriages, and cars rolled up and rolled away. Sebastian found himself once more shut into his musty box, alone. He was exhausted, not so much by the long hours of waiting and of standing, as by the spiritual catastrophe which had befallen him and from which he felt that he would never recover. Vainly he told himself that he had been defeated by mere symbolism: it was by the reality behind that symbolism that he had been defeated. He must remember that. It was important. The reality behind the symbolism.

  He pressed his hands to his head, where his coronet had weighed upon it.

  Then a block in the traffic caused the coach to stop, and glancing idly out of the window into the faces of the crowd that lined the streets Sebastian looked straight into the eyes of Leonard Anquetil. He recognised him instantly, though he had not seen him for six years. There was no mistaking that strange countenance, pitted with the blue gunpowder, scarred by the sword-cut; a countenance sallow and sarcastic between the two black puffs of hair. Anquetil wore no hat, and his clothes might have been the clothes of an artisan. His hands were plunged into his pockets. He had the air of a street urchin who has wriggled his way to the front to look at the passing show. He had not aged at all; he looked hard and healthy; his mouth had lost its bitter twist; he looked extraordinarily happy.

  Sebastian frantically sought the door handle before he remembered that it was not there. He turned, tore away the little flap, and banged on the tiny window at the back with such violence that he broke it. Through the shivered glass he could see the four white silk calves of the two footmen. Air rushed into the coach. He shouted to the white silk calves, remembering, as he did so, the way that one had shouted to the cabby through the trap door in the roof of a hansom. “Open the door,” he said; “open the door!” In dismay, thinking his master must be ill, Wilfrid clambered down and hurried round to struggle with the unwieldy fastenings. The traffic in front had moved on, and a policeman, concerned with his duty but still anxious to conciliate a young peer who drove in so magnificent a coach, came up to see what had occasioned the delay. “Get in,” said Sebastian, craning forward and gesticulating; “get in; we can’t hold up the traffic forever. Never mind the step,” he said impatiently to the footman, who was groping after it; “I daresay Mr. Anquetil can do without it.” Mr. Anquetil could. A jump took him into the coach; Wilfrid slammed the door, and Sebastian proceeded on his way with Anquetil beside him.

  “Well,” said Anquetil surveying his companion, “you’re very smart to be sure, and what a pretty bauble,” he added, picking up Sebastian’s coronet and turning it round and round in his strong hands. “Strawberry leaves. Ermine. Balls.” He put it down again on the seat opposite. “How very delightful to see you after these long years.”

  The complete conventionality of the phrase relaxed Sebastian’s tension as nothing else could have relaxed it. He laughed as he had not laughed since he last played with Henry and Sarah. “Oh, Leonard, Leonard!” he said then, putting his hand over his eyes and shaking his head helplessly because he had no words. He was flooded by an inexplicable happiness. “Oh, Leonard,” he said, “why did you desert me?”

  “Lama sabachthani?” said Anquetil.

  “Lamasabachthani.” The coach rolled
on. “What have you been doing? The Daily Mail said that you were missing. Then there was a little paragraph in the Times to say that you were found. What have you been doing, all this time?”