Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin
The next day – on July the 13th – Y. A. Gagarin’s visit to the United Kingdom continued. The Soviet cosmonaut visited the London Tower, which was filled with unprecedented number of young people and schoolchildren. At the “Queen’s House” Y. A. Gagarin was welcomed by field marshal Lord Alexander. Y. A. Gagarin visited the Wakefield Tower where the Royal Treasuries are kept, including the British monarchs’ crowns, their scepters and diamonds. Lord-mayor of London Sir Waley Cohen pompously welcomed the hero at the building of Mansion-house, located in the northern block of the City. Together with the cosmonaut he walked out on the balcony, under which London dwellers were gathered. As they were parting, the Lord-mayor of London presented Y. A. Gagarin with a book about the British capital with an inscription, “With admiration – from London dwellers.”
Y. A. Gagarin put a wreath of purple roses at Cenotaph – the monument to British soldiers and officers, who died in two world wars. There was an inscription on the ribbon, “From Major Yuri Gagarin.”
In the second half of the day, Y. A. Gagarin visited the prime-minister of Great Britain Harold Macmillan and had a talk with him. The meeting with the prime-minister lasted for about half an hour. The Soviet cosmonaut presented a copy of his book “Road into the Space” with his autograph as a gift to the English prime-minister. Harold Macmillan presented to the cosmonaut a silver tray of the work of British masters.
On the same night there was a reception held in honour of the Soviet cosmonaut by the association Great Britain-USSR. The Prime Minister of Great Britain H. Macmillan was present at the reception, as well as the association’s president sir Fitzroy Macklin, representatives of trade unions, commercial and industrial organizations.
The delegation was already preparing for the return to the Motherland, when it became known that the British Queen Elizabeth II desired to invite Y. A. Gagarin for breakfast. The departure from London had to be postponed for one day. For, since the times of old a visit to the Crowned Head had been considered the highest honour for foreigners; and not all, even the most eminent guests of the Albion are honoured with such a privilege.
The breakfast was appointed at the Buckingham Palace; early in the morning, at the high iron gate a huge crowd of Londoners gathered. Four people were invited to the Palace: Y. A. Gagarin, N. P. Kamanin, Soviet ambassador A. A. Soldatov and Pravda newspaper reporter N. N. Denisov. They arrived at the Palace in the embassy’s Chaika. Clothed in gold embroidered bright jackets, in tall hats of bear fur pushed down to the eyebrows, stalwart, perfectly trained sentinel guards presented carbines, saluting the soviet people.
Wide staircase, covered with a precious decorated rug led from the main entrance up; it was absolutely empty. On the right and on the left of it there were similar staircases. But, unlike the first one, they were all filled with people from the top step to the bottom one. On the left side, before the welcoming group there was a child carriage. A baby was sitting up in it – it was the Queen’s son, Andrew.
The participants of reception from the Soviet side were ushered into the parlour. Gagarin was welcomed by Lord Mountbatten – the chief of Imperial Headquarters; Mr. Kate Kalder – the chief elder of London; Paul Brian – one of the leaders of the Conservative Party and others. Lord Mountbatten, addressing Gagarin, said, “I am already an old man. I witnessed many things in my lifetime, many things that I had to go through or experience will stay in my memory till the end of my days… But there is an event, which was mostly deeply cut into my consciousness and I am proud of it. It was in the days of my distant childhood: the Queen of England was holding me in her hands. Andrew will also remember for his whole life, how he welcomed from his cart the first cosmonaut of the world.”
In a spacious reception hall, covered with a huge rug of pale-green tones, with windows facing a park trimmed in the English Style, about a score of gentlemen and ladies were waiting for the guests. And here is an interesting detail: two participants of the same event give absolutely different descriptions of the beginning of the Royal audience.
N. N. Denisov, Pravda newspaper reporter, “In a few minutes, a prim butler, who looked more like a minister widely opened a side door and, minting every word, solemnly declared, “Her Majesty Queen of England!”
N. P. Kamanin, on the contrary, writes in his book the following, “At this moment without any notice, a pleasant woman in her middle age entered the reception room, clothed simply, without any jewelry or traces of cosmetics – it was the Queen of England. Beside her there were walking Prince Philip, her husband and their ten year old daughter.”
By the way, this situation is quite typical when the same event is narrated by several witnesses.
But here is another detail of the meeting observed by the journalist’s pen, “And then, all of a sudden, startling all the guests, a small lap dog flew in through the opened door. As it rushed into the room and wheeled on its short legs, it rested, full of dignity, in front of the door, waiting for her mistress and showing with her entire looks – here, it seems, everything is fine.
Elizabeth II, accompanied by her husband, walked into the room light-footed – she was an apparently young lady in a modest dress. As she greeted everybody by the hand, she started laughing, making jolly remarks and asking Yuri Alekseyevich about his wife and children.”
- How do you like London and its dwellers? – The Queen asked her soviet friends.
- Up to this moment I judged about the English people from the novels by Dickens and Galsworthy – Gagarin answered. They always seemed to me to be reserved and self-composed. And here we met people with open smiles and burning hearts.
- You are right, – Elizabeth II remarked, – there is less and less of Foresights here. Other times breed other tempers…”
From the very first minutes of their visit, the friendliest atmosphere filled Buckingham Palace. According to N. N. Denisov’s opinion, one of the main reasons for it was Gagarin’s ability to conduct himself with ease and dignity in any company.
This easy atmosphere reigned also over the table, laid in the so-called White Hall, in Room 1844; more than one hundred years ago Russian Tsar Nicholas I was received in this very room. Together with the soviet guests there were only sixteen people here.
Of course, Y. A. Gagarin was informed of the peculiarities of the protocol, lest he makes some awkward mistake. But he found quite an unexpected solution that nobody could have calculated. Speaking to the Queen, as some assure, he said, “I have never been in such a high society and I absolutely do not know what I should do. Please, help me with it.” The Queen reassured Y. Gagarin by saying that the details of the etiquette are also prompted to her by the specialists in those matters.
At the breakfast Gagarin was sitting next to the Queen, opposite of them – there was her husband, Duke Philip of Edinburgh, who performed many flights on airplanes as a pilot and who knew aircrafts and aviation technology quite well. Quite soon, he came with Gagarin to common professional terms.
All those sitting at the table participated in an active conversation. They were not only talking about the space affairs – they touched the matters of politics, literature, art and sports. They spoke on the past and the future of our countries; remembered such prominent scientists as Mikhail Lomonosov and Isaac Newton; remembered the friendly visit of Soviet leader Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev to the United Kingdom, highly appraised his efforts in the struggle for peace. The Englishmen showed their wit in a lively conversation, but Gagarin remained the heart of the company. His smart answers and jokes now and then raised friendly waves of laughter.
The reception at Buckingham Palace lasted altogether for over two hours: as she was saying goodbye to Gagarin, the Queen with some womanish curiosity asked,
- Would a girl fly into the outer space in the Soviet Union?
- Definitely, – assured Yuri Alekseyevich, “Since we have full equality in our country, and women are doing everything on a par with men.”
Gagarin turned out to be right, as always. The first among all women of the world, who traveled into space, was a Soviet girl Valentina Tereshkova, who also made a visit to the English nation and also met with the Queen of Great Britain, Elizabeth II.
After the breakfast at Buckingham Palace, Gagarin attended the soviet industrial exhibition and then laid a wreath at the grave of Carl Marx at Highgate Cemetery. On the wreath made of red and white carnations there was an inscription, “From Major Yuri Gagarin.”
This is how the visit of the first cosmonaut of the planet to England ended.
Just in 1961 alone, Y. A. Gagarin visited Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Finland, Great Britain, Poland, Cuba, Brazil with a stop on the island of Curacao, Canada with a stop in Iceland, Hungary, India, Ceylon (present Sri Lanka), Afghanistan. Starting from the visit to Brazil, his wife, Valentina Ivanovna Gagarina also participated in these trips together with Y. Gagarin.
On September 1 of 1961, the cosmonauts of the first selection began to study in the Military Air Force Engineering Academy named after N. Y. Zhukovsky. They were accepted to the academy without the entrance examinations. To some extent, it made the studying more difficult, because in the process of education they had to fill up the blanks in their knowledge caused by the lack of special training before the entrance – this kind of preparation was necessary for all those who took the entrance exams. It became clear after the first examination session that their preparation in physics and mathematics was not adequate. The grades of the first group of cosmonauts turned out to be lower than the average grades in the academy. They had to study intensively these subjects and the next session demonstrated that their level was up to the overall standard of preparation among other students from other groups.
It was not easy to study, because of constant distractions to different events within the country and foreign trips. Besides, there was work to do in the cosmonauts’ team.
When we are talking about such burdens on our cosmonauts as participation in different solemn meetings, foreign trips, one might think that it was all because the soviet authorities tried to gain special propagandistic benefits out of it. It is true, but the same thing happened in the life of American astronauts. They were also forced to pay tribute to the public interest to their work and to their personalities. They were also “used” for the same purposes. In this sense the life of such public figures was similar in many ways.