Sir David Wilkie, who was present at the coronation, wrote simply, "The Queen looked most interesting, calm, and unexcited; and as she sat upon the chair with the crown on, the sun shone from one of the windows bright upon her."
Leslie, another painter who witnessed the scene, remarked, "I was very near the altar, and the chair on which the Queen was crowned, when she signed the coronation oath. I could see that she wrote a large, bold hand…. I don't know why, but the first sight of her in her robes brought tears into my eyes, and it had this effect on many people; she looked almost like a child."
"The Archbishop of Canterbury then went to the altar. The Queen followed him, and giving the Lord Chamberlain her crown to hold, knelt down at the altar. The Gospel and Epistle of the Communion service having been read by the Bishops, the Queen made her offering of the chalice and patina, and a purse of gold, which were laid on the altar. Her Majesty received the sacrament kneeling on her faldstool by the chair."
Leslie afterwards painted this part of the ceremony for her Majesty. In his picture are several details which are not given elsewhere. The Peers and Peeresses who had crowned themselves simultaneously with the coronation of the Queen, removed their crowns when she laid aside hers. Among the gentlemen of the royal family was the Duc de Nemours.
After receiving the communion, the Queen put on her crown, "and with her sceptres in her hands, took her seat again upon the throne. The Archbishop of Canterbury proceeded with the Communion service and pronounced the final blessing. The choir sang the anthem, 'Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.' The Queen then left the throne, and attended by two Bishops and noblemen bearing the regalia and swords of State, passed into King Edward's chapel, the organ playing. The Queen delivered the sceptre with the dove to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who laid it on the altar. She was then disrobed of her imperial robe of State and arrayed in her royal robe of purple velvet by the Lord Chamberlain. The Archbishop placed the orb in her left hand. The gold spurs and St. Edward's staff were delivered by the noblemen who bore them to the Dean of Westminster, who placed them on the altar. The Queen then went to the west door of the Abbey wearing her crown, the sceptre with the cross being in the right and the orb in the left hand…. It was about a quarter to four o'clock when the royal procession passed through the nave, in the same order as before, at the conclusion of the ceremony in the Abbey."
The coronation lasted three hours, and must have been attended with great fatigue of mind and body to the young girl who bore the burden of the honours. Even the mere spectators, who, to be sure, had been in their places from dawn of day, the moment the stimulus of excitement was removed, awoke to their desperate weariness. "I watched her (the Queen) out at the doors," said Harriet Martineau, "and then became aware how fearfully fatigued I was. I never remember anything like it. While waiting in the passages and between the barriers, several ladies sat or lay down on the ground. I did not like to sink down in dust half a foot deep, to the spoiling of my dress and the loss of my self-respect, but it was really a terrible waiting till my brothers appeared at the end of the barrier."
But the day's business was not ended for the great world, high and low. The return of the procession, though the line was broken, had the special attraction that the Queen wore her crown, and the Peers and Peeresses their coronets. The Queen's crown was a mass of brilliants, relieved here and there by a large ruby or emerald, encircling a purple velvet cap. Among the stories told of the coronation, foremost and favourite of which was the misadventure of poor Lord Rolle, and the pretty gentle way in which the young Queen did her best to help the sufferer; an incident was reported which might have had its foundation in the difficulties described by Miss Martineau as besetting the fair Peeress in the Abbey. It was said that the Queen's crown was too cumbrous, and disturbed the arrangement of those soft braids of hair, the simple, modest fashion of which called forth Sir David Wilkie's praise, and that as her Majesty drove along in her State carriage, she was seen laughingly submitting to the good offices of her beautiful companion seeking with soft hands to loop up afresh the rebellious locks which had broken loose. Leslie, from whom we have already quoted, gives an anecdote of the Queen on her coronation-day, which serves at least to show how deeply the youthfulness of their sovereign was impressed on the public mind. He had been informed that she was very fond of dogs, and that she possessed a favourite little spaniel which was always on the look-out for her. She had been away from him longer than usual on this particular day. When the State coach drove up to the palace on her return, she heard his bark of joy in the hall. She cried, "There's Dash!" and seemed to forget crown and sceptre in her girlish eagerness to greet her small friend. [Footnote: In the list of Sir Edwin Landseer's pictures there is one, the property of the Queen, which was painted in 1838. It includes "Hector," "Nero," "Dash," and "Lorey" (dogs and parrot).]
In spite of the ordeal her Majesty had undergone, she entertained a party of a hundred to dinner, and witnessed from the roof of Buckingham Palace the grand display of fireworks in the Green Park and the general illumination of London. The Duke of Wellington gave a ball at Apsley House, followed next day by official dinners on the part of the Cabinet ministers. The festivities lasted for more than a week in the metropolis. Prominent among them was a fancy fair held for the space of four days in Hyde Park, and visited by the Queen in person. On the 9th of July, a fine, hot day there was a review in Hyde Park. The Queen appeared soon after eleven in an open barouche, with her aides-de-camp in full uniform. The Dukes of Cambridge and Wellington, the Duc de Nemours, Marshal Soult, Prince Esterhazy, Prince Schwartzenburg, Count Stragonoff, were present amidst a great crowd. The Queen was much cheered. The country's old gallant foe, Soult, was again hailed with enthusiasm, though there was just a shade of being exultingly equal to the situation, in the readiness with which, on his having the misfortune to break a stirrup, a worthy firm of saddlers came forward with a supply of the stirrups which Napoleon had used in one of his campaigns. And there might have been something significant to the visitor, in the rapturous greeting which was bestowed on the Iron Duke, round whose erect, impassive figure the multitude pressed, the nearest men and women defying his horse's hoofs and stretching up to shake hands with "the Conquering Hero" amidst a thunder of applause.
The rejoicings pervaded every part of the country from John o' Groat's to
Land's End, from the Scilly Isles to Sark. There was merry-making among the
English residents in every foreign place, as far as the great colonies in
the still remote continents.
To many simple people the Queen did not seem to reign, hardly to exist, till she had put on her crown and taken up her sceptre. It was to do the first honour to their youthful liege lady that June garlands were swung over every village street, bonfires gleamed like carbuncles on mountain cairns, frightening the hill foxes, or lit up the coast-line and were flung back in broken reflections from the tossing waves, scaring the very fish in the depths of the sea, where hardy islanders had kindled the token on some rock of the ocean.