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For the enduring roots of British monarchy are nurtured not in autocracy but in consent, the consent of the people to revere the symbol of monarchy, the consent of the monarch to bow to the will of the people. "It may well be," wrote a thoughtful London editorialist at the time of Elizabeth's accession, "that we here in Britain, by accident rather than design, have stumbled back to the original, the true and abiding function of monarchy, which lay in the magical power of kings ... to represent, express and effect the aspirations of the collective subconscious."
A Sailor's Wife. Indeed, few of the thousands who listened in London last February to the tabarded heralds proclaiming her Queen, "with one consent of heart and tongue," bothered or needed to rationalize Elizabeth's accession. No more did millions throughout the English-speaking world who read the medieval words with a sudden new consciousness of wellbeing. For a generation of Sunday-supplement readers, Elizabeth's life story had provided a quiet, well-behaved fairy tale in which the world could believe. All of them confidently expected her to go right on living it. It was not an easy job, this being Queen of Britain. It meant diverting but never offending a polyglot family of 500 million subjects, many of them as outspokenly critical as a spinster aunt. It meant being regal without arrogance, glamorous without extravagance, gracious without familiarity. It meant setting an example of domesticity as a wife and mother and still commanding an empire's respectful devotion.
Tory and Laborite disagreed on the subject of their Queen as they disagreed on almost everything else in Britain, but the disagreement was only doctrinal; both parties believed in her. "The young Queen needs the love and protection of us all," wrote Nye Bevan's wife Jennie Lee in her leftist Tribune soon after the accession.
"We insist she be given not only time enough but peace of mind to live her pri vate life." Many a Conservative, on the other hand, yearned to caparison his new sovereign in all the pomp and panoply of bygone days. It was not the least of Elizabeth's tasks to find the proper balance between simplicity and sumptuousness, the balance that would lend maj esty to her being and still not outrage those who demanded a 'more democratic example. In this, as in many other as pects of her new position, she was helped by her 31 -year-old husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
Ever since their royal marriage, Brit ain's maiden aunts and Mrs. Grundys had watched Philip with eagle eyes for the traditional signs of the sailor ashore; but, beyond causing a handful of Canadian debutantes to gush ecstatically over his good looks at Elizabeth's first presenta tion party, or setting Washington society aflutter on the royal visit to the U.S., the Queen's husband has given no sign of reviving his bohemian bachelor ways, mild though they were in actuality. He still strives hard to lure Elizabeth out of the stuffy circle of bluebloods considered by the most conventional the only proper hosts for royalty. Last month he offended many a Tory by persuading the Queen to accept an invitation to dine with Actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr.