Royal Procession

London tossed restlessly through a cold, damp night. Hours before dawn, thousands packed the route between Buckingham Palace and the Abbey and strung along the five-mile return route. Chill showers drenched them. As they waited for daylight and a glimpse of history, they squirmed under umbrellas, mackintoshes, soggy blankets and newspapers. "Mad, that's what we are," said one woman to another. "But there's thousands like us."

Here and there, a hairdresser rushed to a stately town house for a 5 a.m. appointment to arrange a peeress' coiffure. Special trains shuttled underground from South Kensington to Westminster Station to take dignitaries to the Abbey in time for the 8:30 closing of doors. The "Peers' Specials" were crammed with lords clutching cardboard boxes containing their robes and coronets, with pages suffering the chilly embarrassment of tights. At the Abbey entrance, a coronet fell from one peer's hand, clattering along the wet pavement until a soldier retrieved it.

The dismal, fitful rain stopped at last, or seemed to, shortly before the Queen was to appear. A hoarse command went up, and a bright red ribbon seemed suddenly to unroll along both edges of the Mall--the guardsmen, still beneath their big black bearskins, had doffed their raincapes by the numbers. The thousands cheered. A workman somehow got onto the Mall on a bicycle, pedaled incongruously past, tipping his hat from side to side in Chaplinesque solemnity while the crowd cheered him.

From Mac & Smith. Inside Buckingham Palace, the royal household pulsated with hundreds of last-minute tasks. Breakfast had to be cooked and silver tea trays arranged for 70 extra royal relatives--more house guests than had slept there in 42 years. The Queen arose at 7:30 and kneeled briefly to pray. Her tea tray was brought in the same as everyday, except for a small bouquet of fresh flowers and a note: "With every possible good wish today and always. From Mac and Smith"--her personal maids. For the moment, the handmaidens ruled the Queen. Her beauty expert applied make-up specially concocted for its versatility in daylight or Abbey shadows, or under TV klieg lights--"a peach-tinted liquid foundation, a touch of red-blue powder rouge . . ." The coronation gown, bejeweled and embroidered white satin, swished softly. On top of it went the crimson parliamentary robe to be worn to the Abbey. The Duke of Edinburgh, blond and handsome in the uniform of an admiral of the fleet, joined her, and together they visited the nursery to say good morning to their excited children, Prince Charles and Princess Anne. Then it was time to go.

A moment experienced before by only 52 men and six women in the 1,100-year history of England's throne had come to the fresh-faced yet stately young mistress of Buckingham Palace. In storybook raiment, with a storybook prince by her side, she stepped down to the courtyard and entered a coach of scarlet and gold.

Around her, cold and damp, 2,000,000 people (200,000 of them from across the seas) cheered and sang out, clung to curbing and to banner-hung viewing stands or leaned from rooftops to watch. It had been 16 years between coronations, and most of that time had been weighed down with war, austerity and the cares of diminishing empire. "It really should be possible," snorted the Bevanite left-wing Tribune, "to crown a constitutional monarch in a democratic country without giving the impression that Britain has been transformed into Ruritania." "Luxury and flunkyism," said the Communist Daily Worker. But for most Britons, it was a day to cheer and to remember.

Long before they glimpsed the Queen, they feasted on pageantry. A few cars shot down the Mall in the early-morning gloom to take secondary dignitaries and royal relatives to the Abbey. But after that, through six triumphal hours of pomp & circumstance, neither backfire nor exhaust fume profaned the air. On Her Majesty's order, it was strictly an old-fashioned pageant of horses, carriages and marching men. To the beat of bands and pipers, the paraphernalia of past empire and modern Commonwealth assembled with cloth of gold, polished armor, high-prancing horses, gilded carriages and coaches, proud flutter of battle banners--1,250 troops to escort the Queen.

The satraps and plenipotentiaries of her realms preceded her. Small, two-horse Clarence coaches spun past with the eleven Commonwealth Prime Ministers and their escorts--featuring, of course, Sir Winston Churchill, beaming from behind the most elaborate badge of Garter in existence, a 150-diamond monster originally made for the Duke of Marlborough.

It was 10:26 to the second, just as the official program said it would be, when the drumbeat of the Brigade of Guards echoed down the Mall. The great state coach, a 192-year-old dinosaur of four tons, rolled at a three-mile-an-hour crawl through the gates of Buckingham behind smart-stepping soldiers.

Cheers. The rain held off. The coach lurched disconcertingly past the acres of roaring people. Its rococo windows framed the sparkling countenance of the Queen, as she bowed and waved, side to side, to her cheering subjects. At the Victoria Embankment where special stands had been raised for schoolchildren, the ear-piercing scream of 60,000 serenaded the Queen. Her smile became almost a laugh. "The Queen!" they shrieked. "The Queen!"

At the entrance to the Abbey, a great roar went up. The state coach grumbled to a halt. The prince stepped out and gave his hand to his radiant wife. Solemn-faced again, she walked inside to be crowned Queen.

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