Chapter Twenty-Six ‘Our Chance to Say Thank You for the Way You Brightened Our Lives…’ #3
‘In her life, Diana profoundly influenced this nation and the world. Although a princess, she was someone for whom, from afar, we dared to feel affection, and by whom we were all intrigued. She kept company with kings and queens, with princes and presidents, but we especially remember her humane concerns and how she met individuals and made them feel significant. In her death she commands the sympathy of millions.’
I had not seen the dean’s words before. They reassured me that I was going to be pretty much on target when my turn came, as our themes were similar.
The rousing first hymn was, I felt, the ideal choice for getting the congregation engaged in the business of properly saluting Diana.
‘I Vow To Thee, My Country’ had been one of two hymns sung at Diana’s wedding.
Back then its theme of patriotic duty, underpinned by love, had been almost a pledge from Diana that she would do her best on her country’s behalf in her new role as royal wife.
It seemed even more perfect for Diana in death.
I thought then, and I think now, that my sister had always represented her country on the world stage so damned well.
Her magnetism had gained Britain new respect and interest from overseas, injecting into its fuddy-duddy Royal Family a fresh appeal and relevance, wrapped up in a unique blend of old-fashioned glamour and innovative humanitarianism.
Her first foreign tour as princess had been to Australia and New Zealand, in 1983, when it was thought she and Prince Charles should be deployed to help quell calls for republicanism in lands long ruled by Britain’s monarch.
This royal progress was, The Times would record, ‘…an unqualified success, due in large part to the Princess’.
Two hundred thousand people turned out to see Diana in Melbourne at the otherwise humdrum event of Prince Charles opening a shopping mall.
The city’s evening paper carried a cartoon showing a map of Australia with the caption ‘A permanent imprint’, written out under images of a heart, and the name ‘Diana’.
Diana visited Japan in 1986, with Prince Charles, to strengthen ties between the two countries.
On the day of her arrival the Japan Times dedicated six pages to Diana.
The Japanese acknowledged that they were caught up in ‘Diana Fever’.
NTT, the telecoms company, put her image on their phone cards.
Seibu, the department store, spent three million yen on a replica of Diana and Prince Charles’s wedding cake.
A popular magazine ran a quiz about Diana’s life and likes, including a question about her favourite rock band.
(Their answer: Duran Duran. Correct answer: Supertramp.)
Taking part in a tea ceremony at Nijo Castle on the day of her arrival, Diana wore what would come to be called the ‘Rising Sun dress’.
This was white, decorated with dozens of the bold red discs reminiscent of the one that sits at the centre of the Japanese flag.
The Aoyama and Akasaka districts of Tokyo came to a standstill when a crowd of 90,000 massed to witness her open-top motorcade passing through.
The American First Lady, Nancy Reagan, visited Tokyo in the same week and received a fraction of the media coverage that Diana attracted.
Diana added to the diplomatic triumph of her tour with her easy way with simple gestures that mattered greatly to her proud hosts: she donned a kimono, then ordered two more as gifts for William and Harry back home; she sipped green tea; she gleaned tips on sumo wrestling from Yasushi Aoki, the 434-pound champion.
In 1989, still aged just twenty-seven, Diana undertook her first solo royal tour, flying on Concorde to New York City. She did this while under threat of terrorist attack by the IRA, entering Manhattan in a ten-vehicle SWAT convoy.
Her New York schedule included support of non-profit projects close to her heart. In the Lower East Side she visited the Henry Street Settlement, an organization supporting deprived communities with healthcare, education and social services.
She also went to the paediatric AIDS unit of Harlem Hospital, to cheers from medical staff.
She hugged a terminally ill seven-year-old boy out of compassion – and to underline, once more, that this condition was not as contagious as many feared – and allowed an eleven-month-old baby to cling to her finger.
As she left, one of the medics rushed up and said: ‘Princess Diana, thank you for bringing love and youth and vitality to Harlem! God bless you – you’re so pretty! ’
She deployed her glamour to further good effect, luring a room full of New York’s social elite to a gala that saw them donate heftily to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She was also guest of honour at an evening in the World Financial Center.
All the while Diana promoted Britain’s business interests, including fashion designers.
She attended a cocktail party for a Scottish clothing firm, and wore dresses by her favourite homegrown brands, including Catherine Walker.
She also visited FAO Schwarz, to support a section of that children’s dream factory that had been made over to British-made toys.
Diana not only flew the flag for Britain on her many diplomatic forays, she also planted it triumphantly in the most unlikely settings.
The Daily Mail reported how her Manhattan tour had ‘enchanted hardened New Yorkers and turned thousands of ordinary Americans into avid royalists’.
The outcome was similar wherever she went in the world.
And here we were, that September day, marking the end of a truly remarkable life that had played so well around the globe.
I found there was something particularly poignant in ‘I Vow To Thee, My Country’s lines about ‘the love’:
…that lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.
Diana’s death felt, in some ways, like a sacrifice, the ending of her life taking place on the altar of celebrity.
Much later I found out that Martin Neary, the Organist and Master of the Choristers at Westminster Abbey, was responsible for inserting the spine into the exceptional body of music that celebrated and mourned Diana that day.
A stickler for precision, Neary was mocked behind his back for being behind the times.
He insisted that his boy choristers always present themselves for duty with their hair neatly combed, and that they sit up straight when representing the Abbey.
These unfashionable values led to him being nicknamed ‘Dreary Neary’.
But maybe only someone with such an eye for seemingly minor detail could have contributed quite so much to an astounding ceremony, put together after just a few days of rehearsals.
That week, Neary thought beyond the obvious.
He wanted his twenty-four choristers – some of whom were boys of Harry’s age – to understand what their task was that day, beyond the technical.
He told them to try to imagine what it would be like suddenly to lose their mother.
This helped to put his choir in the right frame of mind, adding even greater sensitivity to their singing.
Despite the extraordinary scale of the occasion, and the drama of the performances, there was still a family element to the funeral, with both of Diana’s and my older sisters giving readings.
Sarah was first to the lectern. Having worked with Diana as one of her ladies-in-waiting, she chose to pay tribute to her younger sister with words that underscored Diana’s public work:
If I should die and leave here awhile,
Be not like others, sore undone, who keep
Long vigils by the silent dust, and weep.
For my sake – turn again to life and smile,
Nerving thy heart and trembling hand to do
Something to comfort other hearts than thine.
Complete those dear unfinished tasks of mine
And I, perchance, may therein comfort you.
Sarah’s lesson was an exhortation to leave grief to one side, as soon as the time was right, and to seek comfort in doing good works for others.
The words also gave a hint of what Diana would most likely have done, if her young life had not been so cruelly and suddenly cut short.
It was right that Sarah should progress from this thought, at the funeral, to becoming one of the prime movers behind the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, the charity that had already been established in the aftermath of Diana’s death to continue her work.
As Sarah finished and returned to our family section in the North Lantern, the focus of the funeral became even more dramatic as the opening bars played of a choral spectacular.
I checked the Order of Service and saw that it was, as I had supposed, from Verdi’s Requiem – Ah!
I thought. So you can have music from a requiem in a Church of England funeral after all!
Verdi’s Requiem was a family favourite. My father frequently listened to it on the eight-track tape-player in his Jaguar, and it was often on the turntable of the record player in Park House’s drawing room.
The part of the Requiem selected for Diana’s funeral was ‘Libera Me’ (‘Deliver Me’), a responsory song from the Roman Catholic Office of the Dead.
It features a fearful bowing down before Judgement Day, accompanied by a plea for mercy on behalf of the dead before burial.
Its words seemed entirely appropriate on that day, as billions of people were still, six days later, in a state of shock and disbelief at Diana’s death:
Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.
Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death eternal in that dread day,
shaken,
And you will come to judge the world by fire.
I tremble in awe of the judgment and the coming wrath. Day of wrath, day of calamity and woe, great and exceeding bitter day.
Rest eternal grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.