CORONATION

Gisborne Times, Volume VII, Issue 439, 11 June 1902, Page 4

CORONATION

London, April 26. Queen Alexandra has chosen the Duchess of Marlborough, it is said, as a special compliment to Americans, to be one of her attendants at the coronation. The other attendants, it is reported, are to be the Duchesses of Sutherland, of Portland and of Montrose.

This selection is purely arbitrary, and the senior Duchesses are affronted because their claims have been overlooked. The peeresses are more than ever distressed about their coronation robes. They simply loathe themselves in them. The robes are thick about the waist, heavy, unbecoming, and the smart ones complain that there is nothing to distinguish them from the dowdies. Then the peeresses are dying to know what kind of a crown the Queen is planning to wear, but the Queen won’t tell, and even keeps secret the place where her diadem is being made. They only know it will contain the Ilohinoor and that she has refused to wear the trying kind of robes she prescribed for them. When one of their number deplored to the Queen that the peeresses would look indifferently, the Queen is said to have replied: “ Individually you may not look smart, but the mass of crimson velvet and gold should make a very fine effect in the Abbey.” After a prolonged tussle with the Archbishop of Canterbury and other ecclesiastical dignitaries, King Edward succeeded in cutting out of the coronation ceremonial ail of its most tedious and uselessly costly parts. The ceremony of first oblation is to be excised. This consists in King and Queen each presenting an expensive cloth-of-gold altar cloth to the Archbishop, together with a wedge of solid gold .weighing one pound. He has also abolished the reading of the Ten Commandments and his solemn adjuration to faithfully observe them. Also the Hallelujah, the anthem and long final prayer. He compromised on the Litany, which is to be reduced one half, and on the benediction, which is to be curtailed. Only the senior peer of each degree of the nobility is to make an act of homage, instead of the whole lot of them.

The coronation oath is to be altered by omitting reference to the Church in Ireland, which has been, disestablished since the last coronation.

No mention is expressly made of the communion, but that is believed to have gone with the rest.

The King’s declared object is to save time, but it is felt that he has also sensibly denuded the ceremonial of formalities which would not be edifying under the circumstances.