MARGINAL COMMENTS
By E. L. WOODWARD
ON Easter Tuesday, in a cold north-east wind, and under a clear sky, I climbed to the high plateau of Golden Cap. I met four men and four girls. They were dancing to a concertina, there, on the top of the world, with all England behind them, the Chesil Beach away to the east, and headland after headland stretching towards the sun.
I wish there was more dancing on hills. I wish I had the money to buy Golden Cap and present it to the nation. If no one buys it out of pure love, some idiot will build a bungalow immediately below it, with a pink roof, and a hencoop, and a tin garage for a Morris Minor.
I thought to myself, as I came down the hill: if I go to the Coronation, I shall see this place in my mind, the gorse, and the great arc of the Chesil Beach, while I am looking across a waste land of heads and hats and helmets. I may funk the thing. If I do, it will not be because I am high-minded, or because I have already seen a coronation. I do not agree with the people who pretend to be blasé about coronations. These processions recur, but, after all, they do not recur very often. There have not been very many of them since that bizarre crowning of George IV, when Lord Hood and the queen were turned away from the door because they had only one ticket, and the Dean and Chapter of Westminster cut down some fine trees near the Abbey in order to make an extra ten pounds out of letting seats. I am sure that the people whom I most respect in the past would have taken great pains to see the ceremony. We know that Socrates went out of his way to watch a procession. If you are blasé about coronations, you might as well shrug your shoulders at a solar eclipse, or say that you did not bother to look at Halley's comet. No one will believe you.
My trouble is the time of the Coronation. Not the time it begins, but the time at which I shall have to begin in order to get anywhere near to it. I do not aim at a place in the front row ; no curbstone for me. I merely ask to see the distant scene. Yet if I am to catch sight of the grandees and the ministers I shall have to make a start at a very abnormal time for a good bourgeois.
I know that enough suggestions have been made about the Coronation. Wise men, compelled to say a word about the ceremony during the next few weeks might well remember the example of the pagan philosopher who was consecrated a bishop somewhat against his will. It happened in the early days of the Church, when it was less difficult than it is today to become a bishop. The philosopher was chosen because he was the most popular figure in his town. Modern methods of choice are different, and philosophers, as such, do not seem to have the reputation today which they enjoyed in the ancient world. The new bishop was asked to preach a sermon on the festival of the Trinity. He was still a little out of his depth when it came to theology, so he got up into the pulpit, and said : " We are here to celebrate a great mystery, so great a mystery that it is fitting for us to celebrate it in silence." Then he sat down, and they sang a hymn. Therefore I will not enlarge upon my simple suggestion that this Coronation would even be more im- pressive in itself, and more conveniently timed for ordinary citizens, if it took place at dawn. I would merely point out that it is far easier to go to bed at 8 or 9 a.m. than to get up at 4 or 5 a.m. ; that the dawn slowly breaking upon line after line, ridge after ridge of policemen would be a remarkable sight ; that the newspaper men could let them- selves slide into lusciousness about the beams of early morning light falling slantwise across the tiered seats in the Abbey ; that, as far as I know, it rains less often at sunrise than at ro a.m.
But, obviously, it is too late to make a proposal of this kind ; and in any case, it is better to follow the example of the philosopher-bishop.
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