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Show mm n Wednesday, the one subject of overwhelming curiosity in Britain will not be Mrs. Thatcher, or even the Queen, but a shy and beautiful girl with wide eyes and a broad smile a girl, hardly known of six months ago, who will walk down to the altar of St Paul's Cathedral in London to marry the heir to the British throne. What is so special about the wedman of 32 ding of a with no political power and a teacher? Why should they produce a surge in the British tourist business, a boom in the It's not just the pomp there's still A?- plenty oi circumstance 1h l.'l semi-employ- y, - , umph of this paradox is to be seen in the royal wedding, "You can't separate the private and Public functions of the Queen," one of her chief courtiers once explained t me. "That's the main difference between a monarchy and a repub- lie. In a republic, you know that the president's life is arranged by the state and that eventually he'll retire back to his own home. What most impresses the visitors to Windsor or the royal yacht is the feeling that they are in a private home that it's part of family life." The Queen has always insisted on living a family life on her own terms, with all the elaborate protection of her courtiers. It is that seclusion that has shares of souvenir-makerand a flood of books and journalism that has overwhelmed every other form of s, show business? It is not a new puzzle. "No feeling could seem more childish than the enthusiasm of the English at the marriage of the Prince of Wales," wrote maintained the so- - constitutional expert Walter Bagehot a century ago after the last such occasion, when Queen Victoria's son, the future King Edward VII, married the Danish Princess Alexandra. Bagehot offered his own explanations for the magic and importance of a monarchy that had already been shorn of much of its power It strengthened religion, he wrote, and was "the head of our morality." But nowadays, the influence of religion has declined, the Queen's own sister has been divorced, and the morality of the monarchy is less than obvious. The old network of European royal houses has dwindled to a few modest Scandinavians, the Dutch monarchy and a recently reinstated Spanish monarchy, leaving the British royal family much more isolated and unusual. Yet the spell of a royal wedding appears stronger than ever. As religion has declined, monarchy has taken part of its place to the point where attacks on it are regarded almost as blasphemy. Only a few British critics have dared to complain about the extravagance and absurdity of the royal wedding. There was, for example, the irreverent republican Member of Parliament Willy Hamilton, who complained about "six months of mush." But he found little support even from skeptical businessmen: "About 600 million televiewers will watch this wedding in an English July," reckoned The Economist magazine. "If each gets only one pennyworth of enjoyment, that will more than defray the cost of the flummery What is the secret of this fascinating anachronism in a world of republics, agnostics and computers? It is not so much, suggest, the obvious fact that monarchy has its own glittering pageantry. It is that it combines a very public life with a very private life, and that it has both massive publicity and extraordinary secrecy. The final tri- - by Anthony Sampson jf I 4 PAR"yf JUIY .6. 1981 |
