EShe was undoubtedly the greatest queen of the 19th century.e century. However, her coronation was not really a model of success: controversies, confusions, errors and omissions, nothing was spared her, even if the young queen put on a good figure until the end, frail and shy under her ceremonial clothes. , as if crushed by the pomp and magnificence of an archaic ceremonial that we wanted to reinforce at all costs to consolidate its aura and make people forget its young age…
It must be said that Victoria is still very frail to become queen: she was only 18 when her uncle King William IV died in June 1837, childless, leaving her the crown of one of the most powerful kingdoms in the Western world. Hardworking and conscientious, often angry, still ingenuous and deeply solitary, the young girl was not associated with the throne and quickly fell under the thumb of Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, champion of the Whig party, widower and childless, who quickly considered her like his own daughter. It is up to him to organize the next coronation, for which he has the sum of 200,000 pounds voted – he will ultimately spend 70,000.
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Choices have to be made: Melbourne decides to abolish the grand banquet in Westminster Hall to invest massively in a long procession that crosses the capital from Buckingham to Westminster, reviving the one organized for the coronation of Charles II in the 17th century.e century. We choose to make a new crown because that of Saint Edward, three kilos, is too heavy for the young girl: the queen will wear a ceremonial crown adorned with jewels taken from the royal treasury, pearls, diamonds, rubies from the “Black Prince” and, surmounting the whole, the sapphire of Saint Edward.
Stands are built all along the route, expenses criticized by the radical left, who find them useless and expensive. As for the lords, they consider it dangerous to offer such a young girl to the public in the streets of London and bitterly regret the disappearance of the traditional banquet and its medieval rites, where it was customary to see the champion of the crown in full armor throw down his glove to defend his monarch.
Improvisation
On the said day, June 28, 1838, the queen was awakened at 4 a.m. by salvoes of cannon fire. Impossible to go back to sleep… At 7 a.m., official wake up, light breakfast, then she gets dressed by her ladies-in-waiting and climbs into the Gold State Coach, this heavy carriage covered in gold and cherubs built for George III in 1762, flanked by the Grand Chancellor and the Mistress of the Wardrobe. Seeing the crowd piling up on the roadway, she takes the measure of her popularity – nearly a million Britons throng the streets -, but worries for the future: the rehearsals were botched, she would have had to listen more to Lord Melbourne who wanted to guide her with precision the day before in Westminster Abbey…
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In fact, the ceremony will often switch to improvisation, with some officials not really knowing when their turn came in the scheduling of the ceremony. The queen, with her small height of five feet, seems crushed in the nave stretched with purple and gold hangings, the floor covered with carpets. There are more than 200 musicians there, an orchestra and choristers, but no hymn for the occasion, the composer responsible for writing it having died three months earlier… the stands built on the sides and the lords rub shoulders for the first time with the deputies of the Commons invited to the coronation. In the front row, the Duchess of Kent, mother of the new sovereign, who holds back her tears.
” Tell me what I should do… “
Victoria seems a little lost, but the clergy even more so. As for the bridesmaids, they maneuver as best they can to avoid tripping over their long trains… Errors in protocol accumulate, litanies start early, the Archbishop of Canterbury uses the wrong finger to pass the ring, so much so that Victoria had great difficulty removing it afterwards by plunging her phalanx for a long time in the icy water… already has in hand. “Please tell me what I should do, the young queen asks the deputy dean at some point, because they don’t know. »
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Towards the end of the ceremony, the clerks realize that some pages have been skipped and go back to look for Victoria who is resting in the chapel of Edward the Confessor, transformed for the occasion into a place of rest and a pantry, with sandwiches and bottles of wine piling up near the altar – to the great displeasure of the queen… And, for the homage of the greats of the kingdom, Lord Rolle, 82, trips on the steps and collapses in front of the young girl who hastens to meet him. Failures that were hidden from the general public, amassed in the streets. But, for the coronation of Edward VII, the specialists will take care to delve into the texts in order to definitively settle the ceremonial.
After five hours spent in stifling heat, Victoria, “pale and trembling”, finally descends the central nave with the royal insignia and retraces the opposite route to reach Buckingham Palace by coach, where dinner is served for a hundred of people, while the day ends with fireworks. The young sovereign can finally go to bed, not without having, it is said, given her bath to Dash, her favorite spaniel…
To read : Queen Victoria by Philippe Chassaigne, Gallimard editions