Clarke's Trumpet Voluntary was on my car radio as I drove south-west that day in 1981 when Diana and Charles were married; and it was on my car radio the day of her death as I again drove south-west. Between those two journeys down that same road, a callow and pallid virgin was transformed into the most powerful single icon in this odd global broth that we call mass culture.
Yet those who prefer the old ways might be reassured that the two days, one of wedding, the other of death, were connected by the Trumpet Volun- tary, a reminder of the old England now vanishing in that strange new broth. Jeremiah Clarke, a contemporary of Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St Paul's where Diana was married, was organist there when he wrote the voluntary in 1700.
Except he didn't. Clarke composed a piece for harpsichord entitled The Prince of Den- mark's March, which was forgotten until rescued by Sir Henry Wood, more than 300 years later. Wood, the begetter of the Proms, and thereby begetter of much modern musical myth, transcribed the original Clarke piece for trumpet and named it The Clarke Trumpet Voluntary, which popular misunderstanding has transformed, in the way of all myth, into Clarke's Trumpet Voluntary. It was appropriate that a mythically ancient piece of music should have been associated in my ears with the greatest mythic creation of our times, Diana, Princess of Wales.
Power of myth
The power of her myth is unrelated to what she actually was - which was truly infuriating, truly captivating, truly enchanting, truly vulnerable, truly manipulative, truly misunderstood, truly insufferable, truly insecure, truly golden-hearted. In other words, a child. She carried into adulthood those very same paedomorphic qualities which many great and charismatic begetters of myth possess, and which enable them to captivate their audiences with child-like simplicities. What is important here is the vulnerability of the throng to the charismatic mythmaker, whether that person be John F. Kennedy, Eva Peron or, most diabolically of all, Adolf Hitler. He too conducted public fantasies which were embraced by huge, uncritical and enthusiastic crowds. Most of what he said appears anodyne on paper, but it could transform assemblies of the most intelligent, best-educated, most creative people in Europe into gibbering fools. He seldom adumbrated at his rallies upon things he hated; but he spoke of his visions for a Germany, at one in prosperity and in peace, and they seemed such reasonable things, and he talked of his longing for them with such passion and simple fervour, that only a churl could argue against them.
Beware, beware, the childlike mythic visionary, before whom the reticences and restraints of even the most diffident and intellectual of human beings can be swept aside. The mythic visionary becomes the perfect embodiment of human virtue, even though the physical and personal deficiencies of the mythic visionary are no secret. (For example, the two opposites in this spectrum, Hitler and Diana, had well-publicised eating disorders, both had obsessions with their bowels, and both appeared uneasy with mature adult relationships).
The eyes have it
Of course, what is really interesting in all this is not them but us. How can these mythic visionaries exercise such mastery over the genuine emotions and feelings of millions of reasonable adult human beings? What need have we that they can satisfy? And why do the eyes have it? Why are we haunted by their eyes? Certainly with Diana, the dependency was mutual. She was addicted to publicity, to swivelling her eyes to the right photogenic angle, as the world was addicted to publicity about her, and to those eyes. We and she, together, we shared the same opiate-needle of the lens. No photographer grew poor selling photographs of Diana; few days could go by without her presenting photographers with a photoopportunity, especially if she knew her hated rivals in the Palace planned something similar - and always, it was no contest.
If you are outside the circle of charm, as I certainly was, it is all something of a mystery. But we can at least say this: Diana's mythic visionary was truly benign, often infuriatingly and infantilely so. There are no known harmful side-effects to a hug, she once simpered. No? Tell that to a child being hugged by Brendan Smyth. Her observations on the use of landmines had the intellectual profundity of a third-form debate on world hunger, viz., it's wrong.
For all that, she aroused decent responses in decent people, because within that riddle inside an enigma and surrounded by a mystery was a good heart. I expected to find her funeral service disgusting, but it was instead deeply moving; I thought I would find the crowds bizarre and hysterical, but they were instead disciplined and dignified and sincere. At a time of genuine national mourning, that is all you can hope for.
Symptoms of Mariolatry
The Irish middle classes have long been uncomfortable with the symptoms of Mariolatry in Irish life; Knock and Ballinspittle have seemed to us to be evidence of an embarrassing peasant backwardness. But we have seen in the past week that the need for a single icon of virtue is not confined to the Irish; and in post-Christian England, the figure of Diana, playgirl, adulteress and society star, is surely no less ridiculous as a spiritual assurance than a gable-end or moving statue in Ireland bearing the image of the mother of the Risen Christ, the saviour of mankind.
For simply, we are not a rational species. We live lives steeped in myth, endlessly requiring more myth as sustenance, always and ever. Diana, Princess of Wales, has reminded us of that. RIP.