A Tribute of Silence That Speaks Volumes

After a week of shock, denial, anger and grief came the overwhelming silence.

As the closed casket of Diana, princess of Wales, wound slowly through central London on Saturday on a horse-drawn gun carriage, more than 1 million people bid farewell in the most respectful way they could: with a long, collective hush.

There were tears, of course, and murmured conversation. Later, during and after the memorial service at Westminster Abbey, there were even shouts and applause. But when it was over, what mourners remembered most about this cathartic day was their own haunting silence.

“Even the babies stopped crying,” said Neil McArthur, a pianist.

The quiet and restraint of the crowd, the largest in London since the end of World War II, enhanced the simplicity of Diana’s three-mile procession in sunshine from Kensington Palace to the abbey.

“Very elegant, like she was,” Laurie Robinson said after the carriage had passed a few feet away. “Nothing complicated. Nothing fussy. Very stark.”

Robinson, a 47-year-old Londoner, watched the procession from Constitution Hill, a leafy boulevard that runs through Green Park to Buckingham Palace. He arrived at 2 a.m., claimed a place along the police barrier and plunked down in a sleeping bag, one of dozens of campers lying end to end.

By 9:08 a.m., when Diana’s carriage began its journey, the people at the metal barrier stood 10 deep. Behind them, later arrivals sprawled on the grass, reading newspaper supplements about Diana’s life or following the cortege’s progress by radio with earphones.

It seemed that everyone who wanted a glimpse of the coffin found some vantage point--thanks to Buckingham Palace’s decision, in response to mass mourning for Diana, to make the route three times longer than planned.

“For one day, at least, the nation has come together for this pilgrimage,” said Nila Farhad, a teacher. “There’s no pushing, no shoving, no stupidity. Everyone is giving each other space.”

As the crowd in Green Park swelled, stewards from Wembley Stadium stood watch in orange vests, joining thousands of volunteers deployed to help keep order. Such was the crowd’s restraint that the stewards had little to do but hand out packets of tissue.

Three Peruvians hoisted a banner saluting Diana from their South American country--until a police officer reminded them politely: No signs today. A schoolgirl climbed a lamppost for a better view of the route; a steward asked her father to coax her down.

A few minutes later, a truck pulled up near Buckingham Palace to unload portable toilets.

“In normal times the people and the traffic would have drowned out the sound of that lorry’s engine,” said Michael Ingram, 60. “I used to drive tour buses along Piccadilly and curse the traffic, but today [with the road closed] there’s not a vehicle in sight. The sheer volume of people and the terrible quiet--it just takes your breath away.”

At 10:15 a.m., as the cortege approached Constitution Hill from Hyde Park Corner, a woman stood on a stool and began joking loudly with friends. Glares shot up at her, and she shut up.

For the next few seconds, the only sound came from the hoofs of the horses escorting the carriage.

Cameras and video recorders sprouted into the air, held as high as hands could reach. A bouquet of white carnations flew over the rail and struck Diana’s casket. The procession passed Ginny and Clive Tinker in less than a minute.

“It was so quiet and so quick--so lovely in its simplicity,” said Ginny Tinker, a surveyor’s secretary from Portsmouth in southern England. “Until that moment, none of this seemed real.”

A few feet away, Megan Terrell, 25, an Australian nurse at a hospital in Romford, leaned over the rail in tears, watching the cortege recede past Buckingham Palace.

“We’ve been seeing photos of the living Diana all week,” she said. “They say she’s dead, but it isn’t like she’s really gone. Then you see the horses and that gun carriage and then you realize, oh my God, she’s in that coffin. She’s really gone.”

Kevin Watkins, 21, had been watching the throngs from about 10 feet back, on duty for Crowd Recruiting PLC, a crowd-control company. When the horses approached, he turned his eyes away.

“I can’t watch,” he said. “It will only bring back the disastrous news of her death. I keep hoping this is a movie that will soon be over.”

As the procession passed, mourners drifted away from the railing in hushed twos and threes and walked to Hyde Park to watch the memorial service on two giant television screens.

Many sat on the rolling lawn or chatted quietly on the fringes of the growing crowd. But most people surged toward the screens.

Thousands of them wore black, but it was the kind of demotic black more often seen at rock concerts, shopping malls or nightclubs than at funerals--jeans, platform shoes, T-shirts and backpacks. One man in his 50s had dressed in the striped trousers, waistcoat and black silk top hat of Britain’s tradition of grief. But even he wore rakishly modern reflector sunglasses.

It was not a day for popular anger or for politics. Despite a week of furious criticism of the royal family, mourners rose spontaneously to their feet when the national anthem, “God Save the Queen,” drifted out of the loudspeakers and the service began.

By then, the crowd in front of the screens was a quarter of a mile deep.

Tears reddened eyes when Diana’s friend, singer Elton John, appeared on the screens to sing a new version of his song “Candle in the Wind.” There were more soundless tears during Prime Minister Tony Blair’s emotional Bible reading from 1 Corinthians, on the importance of love.

At the end of a fierce address by Diana’s brother, Charles Spencer--an attack on royal stuffiness and media viciousness, and an affectionate remembrance of the princess--the silence dissolved into applause and cheers.

“That’s what everyone was waiting for the queen to say all week, but she couldn’t say it,” whispered Bronwyn McLaren, a 31-year-old Australian nurse.

“Well, he told ‘em,” yelled a middle-aged man in the crowd as the address ended. The comment drew applause.

But quiet returned to the park as, the service over, the coffin began its journey to Diana’s family home for burial and Britain marked a formal minute of silence.

As they drifted away from the screens, Britons spoke quietly about lessons drawn from a week of mourning.

“The royal family rejected her, the press people chased her, but we all wanted to know more about her,” said Labuda Sultana, 27, a trainee dentist from Bangladesh. “And now we should all feel sorry because we’re all a little bit guilty.”

“A lot of people are reflecting on themselves, looking at their own lives and how they relate to others,” said Martin Procter, 35, a Defense Ministry clerk.

Perhaps the most unpopular person in Hyde Park was Heiko Khoo of London, who carried a big sign inviting people to a debate today at Speaker’s Corner in the park on the future of the monarchy.

He was harassed repeatedly by mourners leaving the park.

“It’s improper to even think about this today,” said Kevin Wright, who agreed that the subject was worth debating at some point. “Can’t you wait until the mourning is over?”