Spectator

Royal fever returns. Season 4 of "The Crown" released on Netflix November 15th. The saga of the House of Windsor. Philip, Elizabeth, Charles, Margaret, Anne and Diana - but the character that most intrigued me in season 3 was Princess Alice.

Princess Alice of Battenberg was the mother of Prince Philip, mother-in-law of QE2.  She is quite a story.  She was diagnosed as congenitally deaf as a young child and learned to communicate by lip reading in multiple languages, becoming fluent in German.  She married Prince Andrew of Greece in 1903 at the age of 18.  They had 5 children, Philip the youngest, the only son.  During the Greek-Turkish war, 1919-1922 the family fled Greece, becoming royal refugees. Philip was sent to boarding school in England. Alice converted to Greek Orthodox and became deeply religious. In the late 1920's, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalized, garnering interest from Sigmund Freud.  In the mid-30's, she left treatment and returned to Greece, volunteering with the Red Cross and soup kitchens and a life of poverty.  During the occupation of Greece by the Nazis, she hid a Jewish family friend and her daughter in her apartment.  When questioned by the Gestapo, she pretended she could not hear or understand. While Philip served in the British Navy during WWII, his four sisters were married to German men who fought for the Nazis. None of these sisters were invited to Philip & Elizabeth's wedding in 1947.

In 1949, Alice, taking the name Sister Alice-Elizabeth founded the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, an order of nuns caring for the sick in Greece.  In 1967, after a military coup in Greece, she moved to Buckingham Palace. She formed a special bond with her granddaughter Princess Anne.  She died in 1969 at the age of 84. She was interred in Jerusalem. 

She makes a fairly brief appearance in The Crown, but she makes a statement that caught me on the chin:

    "When I hit 70, I realized that I had become a spectator, no longer a participant."  

Ouch. 

A spectator!  In this age of vile name-calling, this one might be the most wounding. To be complacent and fiddle while the world crumbles certainly begs self examination.  

But what to do?  I fall back on my mother's words: "Bloom where you're planted." Regardless of your age, do what you can, as long as you can, where you are, to better the conditions for others.  You don't need to change the world, rather work on "your" world. That is sufficient.  Share a pie or hotdish with neighbors, volunteer, give money if you can, speak out against injustice, be kind.  Imagine if this were a universal ethic.

One of my favorite poems and inspiration is Lord Tennyson's Ulysses with this to the point section:

...

   Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

    Death closes all: but something ere the end,

    Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

    Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

    The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

    The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

    Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

    T'is not too late to seek a newer world.

...

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

T'is not too late. T'is never too late.

Copyright © 2020 Dave Hoplin