Here is the video clip of Earl
Spencer's Eulogy. It starts at 1:24. Scroll down for the transcript.
It follows the full text transcript of
the Eulogy to Diana, Princess of Wales,
delivered by Lord Spencer at Westminster Abbey, London, UK —
September 6, 1997.
I stand before you
today,
the representative
of a family in grief, in a country in mourning,
before a world in shock.
We are all united,
not only in our desire to pay our respects to
Diana, but rather in our need to do so.
For such was her extraordinary appeal that the
tens of millions of people taking part in this
service all over the world, via television and
radio, who never actually met her, feel that
they, too, lost someone close to them in the
early hours of Sunday morning. It is a more
remarkable tribute to Diana than I can ever hope
to offer her today.
Diana was the very essence of compassion, of
duty, of style, of beauty. All over the world
she was a symbol of selfless humanity, a
standard-bearer for the rights of the truly
downtrodden, a very British girl who transcended
nationality. Someone with a natural nobility who
was classless and who proved in the last year
that she needed no royal title to continue to
generate her particular brand of magic.
Today is our chance to say thank you for the way
you brightened our lives, even though God
granted you but half a life. We will all feel
cheated always that you were taken from us so
young, and yet we must learn to be grateful that
you came along at all. Only now you are gone do
we truly appreciate what we are now without, and
we want you to know that life without you is
very, very difficult.
We have all despaired at our loss over the past
week, and only the strength of the message you
gave us through your years of giving has
afforded us the strength to move forward.
There is a temptation to rush to canonize your
memory. There is no need to do so. You stand
tall enough as a human being of unique qualities
not to need to be seen as a saint.
Indeed, to sanctify your memory would be to miss
out on the very core of your being, your
wonderfully mischievous sense of humor, with a
laugh that bent you double. Your joy for life
transmitted wherever you took your smile and the
sparkle in those unforgettable eyes. Your
boundless energy, which you could barely
contain.
But your greatest gift was your intuition, and
it was a gift you used wisely. This is what
underpinned all your other wonderful attributes,
and if we look to analyze what it was about you
that had such a wide appeal, we find it in your
instinctive feel for what was really important
in all our lives. Without your God-given
sensitivity we would be immersed in greater
ignorance at the anguish of Aids and HIV
sufferers, the plight of the homeless, the
isolation of lepers, the random destruction of
landmines.
Diana explained to me once that it was her
innermost feelings of suffering that made it
possible for her to connect with her
constituency of the rejected. And here we come
to another truth about her. For all the status,
the glamour, the applause, Diana remained
throughout a very insecure person at heart,
almost childlike in her desire to do good for
others so she could release herself from deep
feelings of unworthiness, of which her eating
disorders were merely a symptom. The world
sensed this part of her character and cherished
her for her vulnerability whilst admiring her
for her honesty.
The last time I saw Diana was on July 1, her
birthday, in London, when typically she was not
taking time to celebrate her special day with
friends but was guest of honor at a fundraising
charity evening. She sparkled of course, but I
would rather cherish the days I spent with her
in March when she came to visit me and my
children in our home in South Africa. I am proud
of the fact that, apart from when she was on
public display meeting President Mandela, we
managed to contrive to stop the ever-present
paparazzi from getting a single picture of her -
that meant a lot to her.
These were days I will always treasure. It was
as if we had been transported back to our
childhood when we spent such an enormous amount
of time together - the two youngest in the
family.
Fundamentally, she hadn't changed at all from
the big sister who mothered me as a baby, fought
with me at school and endured those long train
journeys between our parents' homes with me at
weekends.
It is a tribute to her level-headedness and
strength that despite the most bizarre life
imaginable after her childhood, she remained
intact, true to herself.
There is no doubt that she was looking for a new
direction in her life at this time. She talked
endlessly of getting away from England, mainly
because of the treatment that she received at
the hands of the newspapers. I don't think she
ever understood why her genuinely good
intentions were sneered at by the media, why
there appeared to be a permanent quest on their
behalf to bring her down. It is baffling.
My own and only explanation is that genuine
goodness is threatening to those at the opposite
end of the moral spectrum. It is a point to
remember that of all the ironies about Diana,
perhaps the greatest was this: a girl given the
name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in
the end, the most hunted person of the modern
age.
She would want us today to pledge ourselves to
protecting her beloved boys William and Harry
from a similar fate and I do this here, Diana,
on your behalf. We will not allow them to suffer
the anguish that used regularly to drive you to
tearful despair.
And beyond that, on behalf of your mother and
sisters, I pledge that we, your blood family,
will do all we can to continue the imaginative
and loving way in which you were steering these
two exceptional young men, so that their souls
are not simply immersed by duty and tradition,
but can sing openly as you planned.
We fully respect the heritage into which they
have both been born, and will always respect and
encourage them in their royal role.
But we, like you, recognize the need for them to
experience as many different aspects of life as
possible to arm them spiritually and emotionally
for the years ahead. I know you would have
expected nothing less from us.
William and Harry, we all care desperately for
you today. We are all chewed up with sadness at
the loss of a woman who was not even our mother.
How great your suffering is we cannot even
imagine.
I would like to end by thanking God for the
small mercies he has shown us at this dreadful
time, for taking Diana at her most beautiful and
radiant and when she had joy in her private
life.
Above all, we give thanks for the life of a
woman I am so proud to be able to call my
sister: the unique, the complex, the
extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana, whose
beauty, both internal and external, will never
be extinguished from our minds.
