Coast Chronicles: Long live the values of a long-lived queen

Published 5:30 am Monday, September 12, 2022

Queen Elizabeth II, a quiet heart

We thought she’d live forever because she’d been with us forever. In my second grade class at Nob Hill Elementary, I gave a special report on Queen Elizabeth II. We had United Kingdom pen pals that year because one of the Yakima Valley elementary school teachers was part of an exchange program and ended up, as I recall, in Wales, a country on the rugged coast of England. I can clearly see the photographs of the two Welsh roundy-faced students I wrote to, though I only remember the full name of one: Stephen Sutcliffe.

My pen pals sent me a local magazine with Queen Elizabeth II prominently featured, the cover story. Her coronation in Westminster Abbey on June 2, 1953 was still recent news and all UK citizens were elated and proud of their vibrant young monarch.

Pull Quote

As that rogue Boris Johnson stated at her passing, ‘The queen could be trusted to be above any party political or commercial interest.’ Can we even imagine that is still possible?

Miss Irene McPherson, my second grade teacher, looked through the magazine with me and commented on the equanimity of the queen. “Look at her hands — those are the hands of a queen!” She was bedecked with jewels, a gloriously brilliant gown, a fur wrap, and, of course, a gleaming crown, and her hands were folded calmly in her lap. I took note of my teacher’s remark, as only a child can — that comment and image would stick in my mind over all these years.

I guess her composure, as illustrated in those hands, was more prescient than I thought as her queenly problems began immediately in both sublime and ridiculous ways. Evidently the pile of the Westminster Abbey carpet had been laid in the wrong direction which meant that during her coronation “the queen’s robes had trouble gliding easily over the pile. The metal fringe on her golden mantel caught on the pile and clawed her back as she tried to move forward. The queen had to tell the Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘Get me started.’” (Coronation and other UK history here: tinyurl.com/ybnym9j8.) How many of us have been stopped by or worried about “wrong-way pile”? — we’ve got more plebeian problems.

Another crisis was that the holy oil they needed for the coronation had been destroyed in a World War II bombing raid and the firm had gone out of business. Ah, just the beginning of Elizabeth’s royal concerns during her 70-year reign.

Public service

It seems old fashioned now, or is it just so rarely attained as to be unthinkable in the 21st century? The queen’s life of service was a strangely Faustian bargain. She had every luxury and financial need met; yet, she had little personal freedom. Nearly her every waking hour was spent in the service of her country. As she pledged at the ripe old age of 21,“If we all go forward together with an unwavering faith, a high courage, and a quiet heart, we shall be able to make of this ancient commonwealth, which we all love so dearly, an even grander thing — more free, more prosperous, more happy and a more powerful influence for good in the world — than it has been in the greatest days of our forefathers. To accomplish that we must give nothing less than the whole of ourselves. There is a motto which has been borne by many of my ancestors, a noble motto, ‘I serve.’ I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.”

It seems we have stopped demanding or even expecting anything near this commitment to public service. We need go no further to understand what we’ve lost in America than to contemplate the criminal and narcissistic personal-gain that informed every action of president #45. And it’s not just the loss of this unselfish passion for public service, the American problem goes much deeper: it’s the basic disregard for even kindness or compliance with democratic norms and the rule of law.

In January 2016, #45 said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.” That’s not a joke anymore. Lie about losing an election. Spark an insurrection at the Capitol. Scoop up money from your supporters for fraudulent purposes. Take home for your ‘personal use’ nuclear secrets. It’s evidently all fine and dandy.

Then reflect on the queen. It’s not that the Royal Family hasn’t had its own problems — every family does. Would Meghan’s baby have skin that was “too dark” (revealed as a “royal worry” in an Oprah interview). Prince Andrew’s case of underage sexual exploitation was quietly brushed under the rug. Prince Charles’ — now King Charles III — treatment of Princess Diana and his sexual indiscretions with now Queen Consort Camilla were forgiven. And on and on. But through it all there was the queen, calmly doing her job right up until two days before her death when she met with the new Prime Minister Liz Truss — from Churchill to Truss was quite a run! (For an excellent article by media-maven Tina Brown on the queen: tinyurl.com/57rj7mka.)

Close encounters

Let’s not forget that many of us came from UK-stock. Our foremothers and fathers ventured across the wide ocean to found a new country. And those adventurers would not bend to the yoke of British imperialism. We might count ourselves as the first rebels to successfully flee the idea of empire, of being ruled by a royal family. (Historians count the height of the British Empire as 1919, at the end of the first World War.) We set the standard for self-governance, and by 1916 our financial output eclipsed Britain’s, just as the British empire began to wain.

But there’s one aspect of that staid British character we may want to consider emulating and re-establishing on our shores: the passion for public service. As that rogue Boris Johnson stated at her passing, “The queen could be trusted to be above any party political or commercial interest.” Can we even imagine that is still possible?

In our divided nation, we lack the trust that anyone, of any party, can serve with a dedication to the country as a whole, to the continuance of our great democratic experiment, to (as the queen said so many years ago) creating a country “grander, more free, more prosperous, more happy and a more powerful influence for good in the world.” We can’t even agree on what that is.

What would it take for our nation to revive the values this queen held dear? What would we — each of us — need to do to support this revival? This is my meditation now as I think about my life, and the overlaying of my life since second grade with the life of this devoted leader.

Adjectives describing the queen have been flying. She was elegant yet humble, dignified and generous, stately yet famous for her temper, reserved yet possessed of a quick wit, extremely hard-working yet enjoyed her private time at Balmoral, charismatic yet down to earth as embodied by the love she had for her corgis, dorgis, and horses. In short, she was both a public servant of the first order and a complex human being.

There must be a few others of that ilk in the U.S. who also aspire to public service. Let’s find some of those honest, respectful, talented people — convince them to run for office and vote for them.

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Reminder: Saturday evening Sept. 17 from 4:30-5:30/6ish at the Sou’wester workshop room, there will be a literary gathering and poetry reading including local poets Bob Pyle, Florence Sage, Tony Pfannestiel, and John Ciminello. Free and open to the public.