Thinking of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II
She was not my queen, but I often felt she was in spite of
that revolution against the monarchy that created our country. I watched her coronation on black and white
television. When my wife and I made our
first visit to Great Britain in the summer of 1963, London was entering the
“swinging sixties” of Carnaby Street and the Beatles. It was the real beginning of our love affair
with Britain. While on that first visit we saw many plays. According to my
still saved journal, we saw Lionel Bart’s Blitz about the second world
war, Joan Littlewood’s Oh What a Lovely War, a production of The Tempest at
Stratford Upon Avon that I called “the best play production I had ever seen,
John Gieldud in The Ides of March at the Haymarket Theatre (where you
could have tea brought to your seat at the interval and they still played God
Save the Queen at the end of the performance with a live orchestra), a
performance of Noel Coward’s Private Lives, an RSC production of John
Gay’s The Beggars Opera and the straight from the Edinburgh Festival of Beyond
the Fringe. This was a show that Kenneth Tynan, a budding theatre critic at
that time, helped bring to the attention of London audiences. It was my first
exposure to Mr. Tynan, whose rise to the pinnacle of the critic world was to
become the subject of my doctoral dissertation.
That 1963 visit was followed by thirteen more visits to
London. One was for a full year (1972-73) as director of the ACM Arts of London
program. A second long term was in the
1980’s and again for the ACM London program. The other visits were for
sabbaticals, escorting London tours for Monmouth College with students, faculty,
and townspeople, and taking our daughter’s grandchildren there to introduce
them to our love of London and of travel.
Along the years we got glimpses of the Queen in person. We made
the trek to the Mall to join the crowds when she rode out to Parliament or to
review the Guards. I got a glimpse of her through a veil of bushes when she
visited Holland Park to make an award to children. We saw the coronation coach
at the London Museum and toured Buckingham Palace when it was opened to the
public. Our visits to London in essence changed or made our career paths. It
opened my wife’s eyes to the challenges and excitement of good primary
education. It resulted in the major achievement of my academic career as it
resulted in the publication with my good English friend John Miller of our book
London Theatre Walks. It went through two editions in 1998 and 2002. So you see the reign of this Queen
accompanied most of our lives and the England she ruled was in our blood for 59
of the 70 years she was on the throne.
I think also of her important chosen title. Elizabeth II.
She took the namesake of a great Queen who had an age named after her “The
Elizabethan Age (1558-1603)”. Arguably we may see that we have just experienced
the second great Elizabethan Age. One fascinating note mentioned on TV, I think
by Katty Kay, was she bought her wedding dress in 1952 with ration coupons, but
was known along with her quiet imperial presence and her political acumen, as
the wearer of magnificently colored outfits and hats. It was also brought out by
Michael Beschloss that Elizabeth was an accidental Queen in the sense that she
was not in the line of succession until Edward VIII resigned the throne and
turned It over to her father in 1936.
I have only vague memories of Harry Truman though I heard a
lot about FDR from my parents in later years, and voted for the first time for
Dwight Eisenhower in his second term. I
met (obviously quite briefly) two of the 13 US presidents the Queen met. I
shook hands with Ronald Reagan when he visited Monmouth when he was running to
become a candidate, and Bush Senior when he appeared at the college to get an
honorary degree long after his presidential turn. I saw President Obama when he
spoke in the Monmouth Auditorium while he was running for the nomination, but
never got close enough to shake his hand.
I cannot leave my memories of the Queen without mentioning a
text from my son who now lives in Finland with his wife and our two precious
granddaughters. David reported that his
youngest daughter six year old Selma said at bedtime, “It’s the saddest thing
that’s happened in my whole life.”
I think also of Charles III. The first Charles was beheaded
in London in 1649 and the 2nd Charles, known as the “Merry Monarch,”
brought the monarchy back from a long period of war and had a mountain of
repairs--politically, socially, and artistically facing him. Charles III
probably will not be known as “merry” but he will have as many problems facing
him as did the second. And I probably won’t
come close to thinking of him as my sovereign. Yet I do wish for him success
and the chance to earn his own place in history. God rest the soul of a great
Queen and
GOD SAVE THE KING!
Jim De Young 9/8/22
