More mantel Mary.
We did watch the Coronation in recording on YouTube after dinner last night, having gotten into the spirit with a supper of Coronation Chicken Mac and Cheese, a recipe I made up on the spot. I used this recipe as a guide (didn't have sultanas, as I hadn't planned ahead, and didn't feel like going out to get them, so left them out; also didn't have mango chutney, but did have frozen mango, so used that with some chutney spices), substituting Neufchatel cream cheese for the mayonnaise, and mixing the chicken in its sauce with pasta, since it seemed to need something more. It turned out pretty well, really a very pleasant warm-weather comfort-food dish, creamy and a little spicy (but not much).
Here's the history of that dish, which I suppose has become something of a cliche in English cooking, in the way that the tuna casserole with cream-of-mushroom soup has done here --- really though, I far prefer Coronation Chicken to tuna casserole.
So we watched the Coronation itself. The ceremonial, of course, is like nothing else. Nobody does this kind of drama the way the English monarchy does, with the depth and overlay of so many centuries: all the matched black horses outside, all the clergy in their regalia within. The music, of course, was sublime --- it was nice to see girls singing in the choir, for the first time at such an occasion. The two baritone soloists were, each in his own way, both marvelous and riveting as presences to watch. Bryn Terfel, the Welsh singer, gave a stirring performance of the Kyrie in Welsh, while Roderick Williams, who also collaborated on the arrangement of "Be Thou My Vision," simply radiated the joy of singing.
Overall --- and the extensive musical offerings in the liturgy were part of this --- the ancient ritual seemed like a framework for presentations of a diverse new Britain, which . . . well, about which I'm not sure I'm really entitled to an opinion. Britain has long been, culturally, a post-Christian society. This is something I thought twenty-plus years ago when I lived there, though paradoxically, on our return to the U.S. in August of 2003, what struck us most forcefully was how comparatively secular the U.S. felt. I was trying to explain this to an Australian friend the other day, and I'm not sure I succeeded: how a culture that talks about Jesus all the time could feel so disconnected, in its daily life, from any deep religious identity, while a culture that doesn't, mostly, talk about Jesus all the time could still feel so rooted in such an identity. To a great extent, this was probably a function of living in an Oxbridge university town, rather than anywhere else in the UK: time, for example, is still measured liturgically in the universities, with Michaelmas, Lent, and Trinity terms. School and bank holidays are still keyed to Christian feasts, even though they're not named. In Cambridge, too, disproportionately to the rest of the UK, people do go to church a lot, even if only to hear choral music.
But watching the Coronation, I couldn't help thinking that the Christian ritual, in its very Christianness, felt like motions to go through. It was beautiful --- and of course I believe it (though I'm not a Protestant and feel that something more should have happened on that altar at Communion, though maybe it's just as well that it didn't quite . . .). But if there had been Communion for everyone, how many people would have gone up? I suppose the answer might be either everybody who wasn't actually a member of another religion, or nobody. Either it would have been as meaningless as nibbles at a party, or meaningless as a thing to get out of your seat for at all. But I really don't know. How many people would have known the words to "Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven," if they hadn't been printed in the leaflet? Again, I don't know.
When I lived in Cambridge, I knew a generation, all dead now, who had an entire tradition of hymnody, and of personal piety, in their very bones. Those people still live in my imagination as images of what it means to believe, quietly and humbly and every day, and not be particularly at odds with their own culture in doing so, though of course by the time I knew them, all that was changing fast. They didn't change; they simply died, and the world went on without them, becoming more and more a world that would have mystified them.
Still, there were the things, the material evidence of a deep tradition: the Abbey itself, the ancient, battered throne with choirboys' names carved into it. There were the ancient symbols, sword and scepter, orb and crown. You recognize them from medieval images, like this one of Richard II. And maybe it's just as well to reflect that in this deep tradition, a lot of people have held those symbolic things in their hands, and whatever the men and women were like, on a personal level, the things made them larger than that. Depending on how much power they could wield, this might have been good, or it might have been disastrous. Often, given whatever the contingencies were, it was good for some people and disastrous for others. The anointing of a monarch, the receiving of these symbols, both did and didn't fundamentally change the person to whom they came, but what they did mean, inescapably, was that that person's life no longer belonged solely to him- or herself.
That's more or less the large theme of The Crown, and what makes compelling drama out of increasingly tawdry lives. Now, The Crown is drama, not history, and it's good to remember that watching it doesn't mean that we know anything about the people themselves. But I don't know how I feel about the fact that I do remember an awful lot about the particular two people who were crowned yesterday, not all of it . . . that great. I found myself wondering why Princess Margaret couldn't have married the divorced Peter Townsend, if the way the road was going was to yesterday's event. Why did any of that matter? Why does anything matter? What does any vow taken in the presence of God mean, if you can publicly pick and choose which ones you take seriously?
I don't mean to be some kind of puritan killjoy, but I find myself wishing we didn't know nearly as much as we seem to about the private histories of the dramatis personae of yesterday's event, but at the same time, since it was on offer to the international public, it was hard to look away. And while all this ritual and symbolism isn't about the person, and shouldn't be, it was hard not to notice the people, and to feel that there was something a little small at the heart of it all.
Not that I don't think that the King has risen to his new role with a measure of grace. He has. And I think he's probably genuinely a more thoughtful, reflective person than his public persona has often indicated. Had his life been his own, anonymous and ordinary, he might have been quite a decent, good man on his own terms. On the other hand, perhaps being king is making him more decent and good than he was before, waiting and waiting for his life's purpose to come and find him. Now it has.
I realize that, as an onlooker from across the ocean, I'm really not entitled to any of these opinions and speculations. Perhaps my own onlooking is tinged with envy: we have literally nothing in America to unite an entire diverse and fragmented country in the same way that yesterday's happening seems to have united Great Britain. This is frankly kind of frightening. Maybe it's the very inevitability of the monarchy that makes even staunch anti-royalists lay down their resistance for the day, to join in the national party just a little. Maybe it's that, to date, nobody has yet voted out kings and queens in Britain, that forces a certain amount of at least grudging goodwill, or at least makes the most adamant of republicans keep their vituperations to themselves for the moment. Again, in America, we have nothing like this. We have no cultural center. And again, it's frightening that we don't. No wonder so many of us tuned in yesterday. To us, a coronation is like my Coronation Chicken Mac and Cheese: a little comfort food in an anxious time.
Well, enough off-the-cuff cultural critique for one morning. It's another beautiful May day in North Carolina, and it's Sunday, and we're going to Mass, where Christ will give himself to us, body, blood, soul, and divinity: not comfort food, but real food.
Wearing today:
Marine-blue Maggie, for her first May outing, seen here just as she comes. As I'm sure I've said before, this dress is a medium long, and while I love her and feel good in her, I've been a bit on the fence about the sizing.
My Willow, which is a medium regular, confirms for me that there is such a thing as too short. That is, that dress isn't quite too short for everyday wear, but I wouldn't wear her to church without something under. And I probably wouldn't wear her for a dressy occasion, because both the style and length just read play dress.
In many ways I really prefer the length of this Maggie, as well as my small long Sierra. I like for my dress to hit above my knee, but just. Still, I think this dress could be a smidge shorter, and I'd like that even better (ditto Sierra, incidentally). And I've always felt that there was a little too much fabric. The neckline feels just a tad loose, or as if there's a fraction too much fabric across the front (also water-spotted, because I just ran wet hands through my hair):
And there's maybe more fabric under my arms than I strictly need:
When I got this dress, I toyed with returning it for a small, but dithered too long and didn't. And I'm not really sorry, because I do love the dress and wear her often. Overall, I love the drape and flow, and she's served me well in all kinds of situations for the last year.
But my new Aegean Teal Maggie, which is set to arrive Wednesday, is a small long, and I'm both interested and anxious to see how that size works. I do wear a small in Audrey, as well as Sierra, so I'm not that anxious. Still, I want it to work, and not to need returning.
Here's my complete outfit, with a duster cardigan over:
This is a look I reliably love and feel great in: the long, slimming line of this thrifted linen-blend cardigan, the flow and glow of the dress in this lovely sheeny fabric. I look forward to making similar outfits with my new teal Maggie when she arrives. Meanwhile, marine blue continues to be a bomb of a color (in the best way): neutral, but with some personality. I like the light contrast my minimalist sandals provide, too. Nothing matches, but it all harmonizes.
And it's off to walk the dog, then to Mass.
LATER:
It occurred to me to wonder, in the middle of Mass: was there a creed as part of yesterday's coronation liturgy? I didn't notice one. I don't know why there would have been one, except that they did enact the communion liturgy . . . do we understand all the coronation oaths to fulfill something like that (in the way that baptismal vows/renewal of baptismal vows do in the Easter Vigil liturgy)? And then there's the problem of who would recite that creed . . . who among that gathering, other than clergy, maybe, actually would subscribe to it in all its parts?
That is the difficulty doing a deeply, traditionally Christian thing as a public ritual in a pluralistic society. On the one hand, from the Christian point of view, there is the opportunity to witness to the beauty of that tradition, as something maybe you don't want to discard altogether. A lot of babies in that bathwater. On the other hand, also from the Christian point of view . . . what if nobody believes a word of it?
I thought about this listening to the Prime Minister read the Epistle: he did it beautifully and stirringly, but those words are not what he believes. Are the words of St. Paul in his Letter to the Colossians just beautiful words that anybody can read, the way anybody can recite Shakespeare? Or do they demand some assent to the truth claims that they represent? Of course, I wonder how it feels to be a Hindu and to be called, because of your public role, to put on momentarily an entirely other faith. But then maybe a lot of people didn't think they were participating in something religious at all, but merely cultural, and these really were just words like Shakespeare's, part of the English patrimony, but nothing more.
I don't know why these questions occurred to me, or why I think it would matter (to anybody but me) what I think. If I have any thesis about any of this, it's definitely in development, and I am feeling my way toward it, though again, why? As in, why do I need a thesis at all? At any rate, I'm turning it all over in my mind, because it all does seem to mean something.
Meanwhile, we're going walking in a while on the river trail, so I will change out of Maggie, who always feels a little too nice for outdoor pursuits, and into Camellia, probably, since I've designated her my summer hiking dress.
Because every time I think I want to think about something, it turns out that I really just want to think about clothes.
Or go walking by the river. Everything is better when you walk by the river in the springtime.