Great Day in the Morning

Grey curtains of rain trailed over the slates and chimney pots of London as the night-before-Coronation fell. Under the square miles of rooftops, in the slums and swank mansions, in suburban villas and the fine hotels, "Coronation" was the word most often on every lip as Greater London's 8,000,000 inhabitants, plus at least 1,500,000 visitors from the provinces, from the Dominions and colonies, from the U. S. and from every country in Europe, Asia, South America, even from the larger States of India and tribes of British Africa, all thought and spoke and made last things ready for the great event of the morrow. London was like a gigantic brain, every cell of which was focussed on one central thought. Like parts of a vast body conditioned by that brain, the world-wide Empire pulsed and stirred to the same thought--Coronation, England's 37th since William the Conqueror and the beginning of modern British history.

Squatting on a sand-bin in Whitehall, a 62-year-old Mrs. Heggs from the Isle of Wight sheltered her sandwiches, cigarets and a bottle of wine under her umbrella and declared: "I'm used to these all-night waits. I sat up for 24 hours to watch his father's Silver Jubilee procession. I claim to be the first arrival on the Coronation procession route."

In one of the royal stables late in the evening, an old cream mare whinnied feebly, gasped for breath and died. She was Amazon Leader, last of the train of eight which had drawn George V to his Coronation 26 years before.

The rain dripped all night from miles of waterproofed flags and bunting. Last revelers from the gayest nightspots had not reached home before operators in the telephone exchanges began plugging in wake-up calls to subscribers. Ordinarily there are about 800 such calls in London, this morning there were 10,000. It was barely light and still drizzling when the long streams of humanity began flowing in toward the heart of the spectacle, on foot, in motors, on the subways. . . .

On the Victoria Embankment, 40,000 school children in berets of maroon, green and blue swarm into their places. Peter Suffren, 6, with a row of tin medals on his chest and clutching a bottle of milk, a bag of potato chips, says: "I wish I had a princess for a girl."

A curly-haired urchin drops his threepenny Coronation mug. It breaks, he sobs for his mother. Kind bystanders give him much more than three pennies. Sniveling he moves away, into another street to repeat the racket.

The route is now lined with soldiers giving their buttons a last polish with their cuffs. Out of the corner of his mouth one of them says to an old lady in the crowd: ''Why don't you join the Army, Ma? You'd get a better view. . . ." The King's Company of the Grenadier Guards proudly flaunt their new King's Color.

A knot of footsore Cockneys jabber like magpies to pass the time. Says one, "Did you see about them there busmen in the Honors list. That's the way to treat the bastards--choke 'em with cream." The reference is to Driver Arthur Butterfield and Conductor John Coalter, two of London's 25,000 striking busmen who have been awarded the Order of the British Empire (TIME, May 17), one for having no accident in 29 years, the other for being "the best-tempered conductor in the service." Declares another Cockney, "That feller Shaw gives me the bleedin' 'ump. Why don't he larn to keep his marf shut?" This reference is to an article written for London's Daily Worker by George Bernard Shaw, professional bad boy. Excerpts: "As I am by profession a creator of theatrical illusions, these amateur pageants only bore me. . . ." Another rude Coronation composition is read to reporters at a middleclass dwelling in suburban Finsbury Park:

Archbishop Lang's holy oil Will not make Bertie Wettin royal.

The author is one Anthony Hall, an export broker and former policeman. Mr. Hall, who calls himself cousin to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, claims the British Throne by virtue of descent from an unrecorded son of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. "Bertie Wettin" is his name for George VI, whose family changed their name from Wettin to Windsor during the War. This morning Pretender Anthony is ill, having eaten too much rhubarb.

"I've always been a sucker for rhubarb, but not sucker enough to let all this Coronation rot bother me. I'll be sitting on that throne myself by 1940."

The morning advances, still rainy. A haughty Duchess, stiff as a ramrod, munches a sandwich in her car as it proceeds tortuously to the Abbey. . . . Lady Astor, U. S.-born Conservative M. P., minces out of her house in St. James's Square. . . . U. S. Ambassador Bingham, his legs spindly below satin knee-breeches, his wife imposing in silver-embroidered white lace, emerge from the U. S. Embassy. . . . President Roosevelt's special delegation--Admiral Hugh Rodman, James W. Gerard and General Pershing--head for the Abbey, all looking worn but patient. Mr. Gerard, once Ambassador to Germany, wears knee-breeches, and a ribbon across his shirtfront. . . .

The Aga Khan, head of India's Moslems, steps out of his hotel with his slim French wife. He is enveloped in what looks like a fancy nightshirt. . . . Pitch black, bejeweled Alake of Abeokuta ("Under the Rocks"), ruler of one of the largest tribes in West African Nigeria, is escorted to his car by a servant holding a tasseled state umbrella as big as a tent. Day before he went shopping, under the umbrella even in the store, for electric iceboxes. With him are his limber black daughter Omaba Aderomi and his friend Chief Ajaba Otumbade of Igbone. ... At the Abbey they will see Paramount Chief Yeta III of Barotseland with his white chin whiskers and horsehair flyswatter.

The British Broadcasting Corp.'s announcer seated in a glass box in Victoria Memorial Circle breaks his flow of descriptive chitchat. With rising excitement he tells the world that the royal procession is winding out of Buckingham Palace. . . . At a country home, the Charles Augustus Lindberghs are listening; they hate and fear crowds. ... At "Wall Hall." his manor in Hertfordshire, J. P. Morgan lies in bed. A heart attack has kept him from the Royal Box, where the only American is Grace Vanderbilt Davis.

Lady Astor, 25 minutes late, arrives in the Abbey and immediately picks a literary quarrel with Viscountess Rhondda. shrewd editor of Britain's Leftist weekly Time and Tide. . . . The 59-year-old Duchess of Hamilton twitches the robe trimmed with artificial fur that she bought for the Coronation of George V. She is an antivivisectionist. . . . Douglas Charles Lindsey Gordon, 29, Marquess of Huntly, is dressed in robes bought with borrowed money. He is a motor mechanic who earns $15 a week. . . . Australian Lionel Logue, expert in speech defects, is proud to be sitting in the Royal Box--reward for continuously treating King George since last December, for rehearsing with him again & again the royal Coronation broadcast (see below).

The service begins. A country mayor clutches his shoulder, grows giddy. He fell on the steps coming into the Abbey and now he can no longer bear the stabbing pains of a broken collar bone. Ushers lead him out. ... In an anteroom a baby is parked in a bassinet. Every hour Mrs. William Shepherd Morrison, wife of the Minister of Agriculture, steals out to breast-feed the child. When the newlywed Duke of Norfolk, master of ceremonies, arranged for her to do this. Husband Morrison declared, "That's organization for you!". . . . Concealed but handy-by in one of the Abbey's first-aid stations is a straitjacket, in case someone goes cuckoo during the ceremony. Through all the long morning, no one does.

Excited whispers suddenly break out in a corner. With drawn face the Hon. Mrs. Gustavus Lascelles Hamilton-Russell, whose husband is helping in the ceremony, gets up from her seat, leaves hurriedly. Her father goes out with her. They get to a hospital just in time to see her four-year-old daughter, Charmian Joan breathe her last. The child had been sent to the house of Lord Bearsted to watch the Procession. Somehow she fell down an 80-ft. elevator-shaft. This is the Coronation's only headline tragedy except the death three days later from old causes of crippled little Philip Snowden, Viscount Snowden of Icornshaw, distinguished Chancellor of the Exchequer under James Ramsay MacDonald.

Throughout the long ceremony six-year-old Princess Margaret Rose is bored. She squirms. She vainly searches the prayer book for pictures. She sticks a finger in her eye, pulls her ears, tickles Sister Elizabeth, who shakes her off with great dignity, tells her to be good. Margaret Rose tries hard, but it is no use. She swings her legs, scratches her hair, yawns, puts her elbow on the front of the box, rests her head on her arm. Queen Mary at last quiets her with a pair of opera glasses to peek through.

The pace of the whole performance, from the start of the Procession to the march up the Abbey's aisle, has been prodigiously slow, sedate, the cadence of Empire. King George breaks his tempo when, before being robed in the garments of state and beneath a canopy that screens him from nearly all, he whisks off the red robe that he has been wearing, passes it briskly to the Lord Great Chamberlain, who was supposed to divest him ceremoniously. The Lord Great Chamberlain looks bewildered. Lady Reading, widow of the onetime Viceroy of India, observes: "Like a man handing his bathrobe to a valet.". . . In a Yorkshire cave 300 ft. underground a knot of people sit round a radio, listening intently. They are members of the British Speleological (scientific cave study) Society. . . .

As the ceremony draws to a close, Abbey carrilloneurs ring 5,040 changes of "Stedman triplets.'' Conductor H. N. Pitstow boasts proudly: "This will be the first time a full peal of 5,000 changes has ever been rung at a Coronation." The music is scarcely appreciated by queues and clusters of tired peers who, upon emerging from the Abbey, find at last one spot in the planning that has broken down: the car-parking and call system. Crouching on the steps in their finery, leaning against pillars, some of them must wait as much as four hours to get home and out of their regalia (see cut, p. 17).

After luncheon at the Palace, the Queen tells an inquiring guest: "Oh no, the King and I are not the least tired." That night at 8 with London's millions back in their homes or celebrating in public places, the King's voice is warm and strong--and he does not stammer--as he ends the great day with a fireside talk:

"It is with a very full heart I speak to you tonight. Never before has a newly crowned King been able to talk to all his peoples in their own homes on the day of his Coronation. . . . The Queen and I wish health and happiness to you all, and we do not forget at this time of celebration those who are living under the shadow of sickness. ... I cannot find words with which to thank you for your love and loyalty to the Queen and myself. ... I will only say this: that if in the coming years I can show my gratitude in service to you. that is the way above all others that I should choose. ... 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 outset of my reign. I thank you from my heart, and may God bless you all."

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