A Royal Proclamation
Mourn the Queen? Really?
I’m writing this just after the passing of Betty Windsor and her death seems to be an all consuming concern for a large proportion of the Australian population. Yes, I’m no longer English but she was the head of state of Australia as well so some respect is due perhaps. Or is it?
In truth, probably not. Do we really need weeks of mourning, handwringing and sobbing on the boulevards; twenty page commemorative wraparounds on the newspapers; a shutdown of normal media programming and news broadcasts for days; a public holiday for goodness sake?
She was, it seems to me at a great distance, geographical and social, a woman of some pleasant charm and moderate intelligence like so many others. Good company, who by accident was born into a life of such unimaginable privilege and wealth that she –
- Never had to cook her own meals and could have whatever she wanted if at home and was offered something very special when food was provided to her by others.
- Never had to clean, wash, iron, lay out, put away her own clothes and in fact even had someone to help dress her! And design them for her personally. And advise her on what was suitable for the occasion. And bring several changes each day if necessary.
- Or to clean her own kitchen, toilet or anything else around the house.
- Or to lift a finger to do absolutely anything at all unless she chose to do so.
- Or carry keys as every door was immediately opened for her by a flunky.
- Or carry money or a card as no-one charged her for anything directly, if at all.
- And she could have anything she wanted for the asking, right now. Yes, now.
- And she never had to queue for anything.
- And if she felt a bit unwell today or had a little pain, just here, she did not have to book an appointment to see a doctor in a week or two’s time but could oblige one to attend in under an hour. Only star footballers get better medical attention.
- And she was surrounded by expert people who pandered to her every whim.
- And was never told ‘no’ directly or denied anything she wanted or needed.
- And she never had to persuade a government that she couldn’t survive on a pension.
- And she was always surrounded by people who never, ever disagreed with her.
- And she was surrounded by advisors who made sure that she always knew what to say, wear and behave in any circumstance to avoid any problems or embarrassment. It’s easy to be dignified and ethical in those circumstances. PR on tap, like a senior politician.
- And she didn’t even have to feed the pets – I was reliably informed that there really was/is an official, royal ‘Keeper of the Budgerigars’!
In fact, while the job had its own special difficulties, she was constantly eased through them by her entourage and was spared all the minor, time consuming and irritating difficulties and embarrassments of normal lives – the undergrowth was constantly cleared away before her noble passage.
In exchange for all the duties of her life and position, she had a quite interesting job, a civic duty, that was occasionally a bit annoying or uncomfortable like any such job and involved some often onerous tasks, equivalent perhaps to the head of a very large corporation which, of course, she was. However she was very well paid despite her wealth, estates and other assets amassed over centuries, often violently, from the indigent wights below her and, importantly, she could not be fired. Except by revolution and we seem to be beyond that. And only recently did she have to pay any tax on her astonishing income. Her Majesty’s Government found it difficult to charge Her Majesty!
True, she had to shake the hand of some appalling creatures, murderous dictators for instance, and to be polite to them. But on the other side of that equation it also allowed her to meet the most interesting people on the planet who themselves had to be nice and polite to her. A celebrity musician once told me to ‘fuck off’. That wouldn’t have happened to her, even if she’d been hanging out backstage. And she could even reward those celebrities with various permanent honours that they really wanted. A Beatle returned such an ‘honour’ in disgust but on the whole, they don’t.
She was reputed to have had a really good sense of humour but when you examine that claim in detail she wasn’t actually that funny – most of the witticisms were only amusing because it was the Queen who was saying it. If it were your Mum speaking it would barely raise a smile. This principle extended to many other areas as whatever she had to say would be listened to carefully and repeated endlessly by the starstruck. So it is perhaps fortunate that she was often merely the mouthpiece of much cleverer people, political and social advisors who were advising her and writing her speeches. I think of this as a benefit of office, the praise accorded to those who own celebrity as a matter of course when their words or actions are somewhat unremarkable.
Then she claimed often to be a servant of the people and probably believed that nonsense concept but she did not qualify as a ‘servant’ in any sense of the word I can identify – in fact, we behaved on the whole as if we were her servants and inferiors, her subjects. Which we were. I suspect that she sometimes felt herself to be at the beck and call of the great unwashed when she had to attend an event to break a bottle of champers or shove a sapling in the ground.
Just how difficult it is to live a life like that? On a personal level, in her reasonably adequate free time it might have been, “Which palace shall we spend a nice quiet weekend in this week? The one where I can go and fondle the Renoir I own? Advised by my personal art curator. After a meal of fresh trout from my own streams followed by a little shot by the boys grouse and perhaps some well hung venison from my estates? Or just a really good steak and kidney pudding made by my personal chef – well one of them anyway. Oh, how super! And interrupted only by the need to nip out and slice through a ribbon somewhere and pretend to be happy about it? Such a dreadful burden is the regal round of duties!”
I think she should be thought of now rather as somewhat like a old and fond auntie passing, an Auntie Madge perhaps who would have been a kindly, even-tempered soul. Who, born unprivileged, made not the slightest dent in the body politic unless she had some soon forgotten special talent. At her funeral the family would have shown up and a few surviving friends, probably less than fifty in the church and a nice chat afterwards over the ham or egg and cress sandwiches about how really nice she was and what a good life she lived and how much we’re going to miss her and…. And then she is, consumed by fire and the ashes scattered, consigned to family memory and mostly soon forgotten. There but for that accident of birth.
All Betty Windsor was really required to do in her personal social contract with her subjects was to behave like a normal, decent human being, quite unlike so many of her forebears, the ones who gathered up that eye-watering wealth by hacking each other and a lot of forgotten peasants to pieces. She usually did that, at least in public, and deserves some respect for it. Just like our poor, late, imagined Auntie Madge. A good person, we think. But it isn’t hard to behave well, morally and ethically when you are surrounded by some very intelligent people whispering in your ear that you should say this and perhaps not that Ma’am, wear this because, go there and say please and thank you for the tidal wave of ludicrous adulation breaking over you – an advisor like the slave whispering in Caesar’s ear. And so you do all that as a queen when you know that your every single move is being carefully watched unless you take extraordinary care, though some members of the family past and present, as we now know, have managed to do quite a bit of skulking in the moral shrubbery. I’d have had more respect for her perhaps if she’d just kicked Idi Amin in the shins and told him what really needed to be said, for us all to hear. Or got Prince Andrew, Charles’ spare, under better control.
It all seems like a bargain to me. A number of dull, daily tasks performed while assisted by experts and functionaries in exchange for absolute, overwhelming luxury and wealth. Clothed in little power and less responsibility. Where can I sign up? I can talk a bit posh, very posh if I try, cut a ribbon or two, plant a tree, deliver a speech written for me, tolerate tyrants, smile down on the vile unwashed and take good advice when I know I won’t get the blame. Oh…I can’t can I? The jobs are all taken, no vacancies short of bloody revolution. Damn.