Coronation Day 1911

22 June 1911 dawned ‘overcast and cloudy with slight showers’ according to George V, who had good reason to record every detail of the day on which he was to be crowned.

George had succeeded his father Edward VII on 8 May 1910. ‘I have lost my best friend and the best of fathers’, he wrote in his diary. A year later, he and his wife had adjusted to their new life, although as Queen Mary wrote to her aunt, ‘The position is no bed of roses’.

Scottish peers arrive at Westminster Abbey

By the time of the Coronation they felt more settled, although were tired by all the preparations. Quite apart from the logistical organisation, there was the question of where to house the large numbers of royal relatives who had invited themselves to the great occasion. The king numbered among his first cousins the Tsar of Russia, the Kaiser of Germany, the King of Romania and the Queen of Spain; among his uncles were the kings of Greece and Denmark and his brother-in-law was king of Norway. ‘All George’s first cousins of all nationalities have asked to come, it will be a motley gathering’, wrote Queen Mary to her 89-year-old aunt, the Grand Duchess of Mecklenberg-Strelitz (whose son attended to represent the family).

One person who did not attend the ceremony was Queen Alexandra, the widow of Edward VII. Traditionally, queen dowagers were absent from coronation ceremonies, but in 1911, the old queen was haunted by an obsession that her first-born son Prince Albert-Victor (‘Eddy’) should have been the one to be crowned. Eddy, of course, had died in 1892, but Alexandra was repeatedly heard to say, ‘Eddy should be king, not Georgie’.

In the end, the ceremony was splendid and the new king and queen were relieved when it was all over, while being only too aware of the enormity of the event. ‘We felt it so deeply and taking so great a responsibility on our shoulders’, wrote the queen. 

The Times recorded that Westminster Abbey had a ‘congregation such as has rarely been assembled [with] Royal and other guests many of them in gorgeous dress, peers and peeresses in the robes of their Orders . . . We are unable even to name all the States and peoples who have united in honouring our King and nation . . .  we thank them for their courtesy’.

Or as Queen Mary wrote rather more trenchantly, ‘The foreigners seemed much impressed’.

Take a look at Mrs Symbols' blog about the symbolism of the Coronation Medallion:
 http://t.co/4w3WeBN