Ablative Absolutes. Queens and Corgis

An Ablative Absolute with a perfect passive participle is widely used in classical Latin to express the cause or time of an action.

Years ago, our little, daughter, drawing a picture asked about, “That lady, you know, the Queen of Dolphins.” Puzzled, my husband and I looked at each other—“the one who died,” Miranda insisted, “and Mommy was sad, early in the morning.”

Diana. Princess of Wales. I was sad when she died, too soon, a victim of a car-chase, maybe pregnant, definitely pursued. I was sad and mad at Charles for cavorting with Camilla, now his Queen Consort.

When I wake on Monday morning to watch the rigamarole, the sendoff for the Queen, Diana’s mother-in-law, I am conscious of her absence, conscious of little Charlotte, smaller than her brother and lower than many of the cameras. The Queen, one year older than my own mother, who has been gone a dozen years.

This Royal family about whom we know so little and assume so much: the dutiful Princess Anne; Harry being punished by not being permitted to wear his military dress; Andrew, a pedophile, restored to temporary honor by his brother; the feuding beauties: Kate and Meghan.  A real-life soap opera that draws us in and titillates—there is the personality and the person; it’s hard to keep track of which is which. Diana and I are the same age; when she married Charles, we believed in Laura Ashley fairy tales. As her sons followed their grandmother on the gun carriage today, I wondered if they were thinking about their mom. How lucky they were to have their grandmother alive so long. Maybe lucky. Who can know, really, what went on at Balmoral or Sandringham or Buckingham Palace? The Royals were curated long before Instagram.

 Say what you want about the British Empire—and, to be clear, we could say a lot—the pageantry is extraordinary. I wonder where they kept all those uniforms and how they knew the uniforms would fit because when was the last time all those people wore them? I wonder if all the shops stocked up on black dresses and coats and hats and stockings—just in case.  It bugs me that the standard on the Queen’s coffin clashes with the flowers placed with orb and scepter and crown on top, a note from Charles, the new king, tucked into the bouquet. The flowers are crimson and pink, rosemary and myrtle, from her wedding bouquet, planted after that big ceremony in 1947, when the queen was just a girl…I suspect she, who left nothing to chance, left instructions about which flowers to choose.  And when did they rehearse all these elaborate and elegant machinations?

Listening to my son prep for a Latin quiz on Monday night, I marveled that I once knew how to identify forms reliably in Latin. By now, I have forgotten more than I ever knew absolutely. Perfect passives.  All those translations. Gone. A man drones from a laptop about the ablative absolute.  Did the use a drone in the top of Westminster Abbey?  Nouns with participles.  Dolphins swimming; the Queen of Dolphins. The Princess of Wales.  Having marshalled the troops, Ceasar…Why couldn’t Harry wear his uniform when he’s one of the royals who actually served in the military in Afghanistan. Protocol. Etiquette. Still, there are always choices that can be made; there is always kindnesss, isn’t there?  There is nothing absolute or fixed about my mind on Monday. Later, after I have turned off the funeral and gone to school, but before the Latin studying, my daughter phoned, sad about her sister’s grandmother-in-law, whose hold on life is ebbing. “There’s nothing I can do,” she says, her voice throbbing. Nothing. Death is absolute. Having finished her life, she died. Woman, mother, sister, daughter, wife, aunt, grandmother, Queen—it doesn’t matter.  Death doesn’t discriminate—that’s from Hamiton—but the line floats through my mind all day. Even Queens and princesses and grandmothers  succumb, are missed and mourned, their absence notable.

I wonder again if they used a drone in Westminster Abbey; the choreography from above looks like ants moving deliberately. Did rehearsals begin the moment after the Queen died? IT was a huge production, flawless and with very little time to pull it off—was there a stage manager or the royal equivalent? They even stopped the planes. For two minutes, all of Great Britain went silent, a tribute to the Queen, the only monarch most of us have ever known. The Queen’s piper played a melody before the Grenadiers lifted her—how heavy is a casket carrying a not very large queen? They move carefully, one step at a time, around to face the entrance of the abbey.  I wonder what she’s wearing in her coffin? I imagine her in a bright canary yellow with her handbag but shake away the thought. What will I wear before I am burned up? No coffin for me, no gun carriage or bag pipes, either. She wore those colors to be seen, so her subjects could find her easily, to be noticed in a sea of men. She was a head of state and a woman.

“And then the dogs,” my daughter continued. Two corgis waiting for their mistress, wondering in Winsdor, perhaps, where she had gone off to. In photos, the dogs are darling, lolling at the end of their leads, quizzical.  And her pony, Emma, also waiting.  The  black pony is 26 and had a headscarf tied around her saddle.  It’s the headscarf that makes me weepy. The Queen loved her dogs and horses. I remember my own trip to St. George’s Chapel, listening to the boy choir at Evensong. The Queen was not in Windsor that night though she could have been. She was still riding at 90.

 “In my father’s house are many mansions.” The new Prime Minister, who was asked to form a government by the Queen only two days before she died, reads clearly, carefully.  “If it were not so, I would have told you.” I love those verses. Having gone and returned, the speaker promises there will be enough room. I imagine the Queen sipping tea, reunited with her Prince.  I imagine Diana and wonder what she would make of the Queen’s arrival in her world.  Would they be glad to see each other or would they avoid one another.

Other than the perfect participle, ablative absolutes are translated like any other participles—nouns behaving like adjectives. Camilla, behaving like a Queen, since Diana is long-gone. What other characters are not what they seem? And what is absolute, anyway, except for death and the loyalty of pets?