I was too young to see the Queen Mary, but my mother told me that the Queen Mary may have seen me.
In her later years the Queen was often taken for an afternoon stroll through the parks from Marlborough House, and I was a Hyde Park baby in my pram.
To me, she is not remote. However, for the current generation, Queen Mary, grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II is an otherworldly figure.
She wore long skirts and coats, she was famous for her touches and. Although she had good hair, she wore a wig: silver hair during the day and golden hair at night.
Queen Mary had an austere, even imposing appearance. But she had intelligence and humor, writes Hugo Vickers.
Queen Mary, accompanied by the Duchess of Beaufort, in the railway canteen following a civic reception in Swindon
Prince Philip accompanied the Queen on the Gold State Coach on her way to the Coronation in 1953. Queen Mary had disapproved of the plan.
She looked statuesque and menacing, but there was humor and intelligence beneath that exterior.
She had a strong influence on the Queen, taking her to London’s great sights and exhibitions as a child.
When Queen Mary died on March 24, 1953, he commented that it was difficult to think of the world without her in it.
Of course, there is a persistent myth about Queen Mary. The thing is that she was a kleptomaniac, that people hid her antiques when she visited them, since she would point out some piece of furniture or porcelain that she liked and she hoped they would give it to her.
It must have happened once or twice for the rumor to form, but in my long research into his life, I never found a concrete example.
Throughout the war he remained with his niece, the Duchess of Beaufort, at Badminton and no items were stolen.
He was lucky to have the teacher James Pope-Hennessy as his biographer.
He was able to craft an elegant and comprehensive biography, telling his story with enthusiasm. His work was so subtle that he got away with some memorable lines.
His description of Queen Mary in her later life at Marlborough House is classic: “In the midst of this resplendent Georgian enclave in scruffy post-war London, visitors found Queen Mary herself, upright, distinguished, dressed perhaps in velvet blue or pale grey, around her neck her incomparable pearl necklaces.’
Outsiders considered her “a representative of another era,” but, Pope-Hennessy wrote, this was a miscalculation, since she was out to attend juvenile court proceedings or to enjoy Oklahoma or Annie Get Your Gun. .
Queen Mary had her particular rules.
When his housekeeper was stabbed by intruders in 1947 and ended up in St George’s Hospital, the main cause of his indignation was that a royal palace had been invaded.
She disapproved of the idea of Prince Philip accompanying the Queen in the Gold State Coach on her way to the Coronation in 1953, but was impressed by Prince Philip’s scientific speeches in the late 1940s.
More seriously, he could not understand how his son, the Duke of Windsor, could abdicate.
She pointed out to him that while so many young people had given their lives in the war (World I), he “was not prepared to make a lesser sacrifice.”
Queen Mary achieved a position of great majesty, but her life had not been run along conventional lines. She was born at Kensington Palace in May 1867.
His mother was Princess Mary Adelaide, daughter of Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, granddaughter of George III and first cousin of Queen Victoria.
Princess Mary Adelaide was immensely fat.
In seeking to find her a husband, Lord Clarendon became somewhat desperate.
He wrote: “No German prince would dare undertake such a vast undertaking.”
Except maybe an impoverished one. She married the Duke of Teck, a morganatic member of the Royal House of Württemberg.
Princess May (as Queen Mary was called as a child) lived a peripatetic existence. Always lacking money, her parents moved to Florence for two years to avoid her creditors.
Princess Mary Adelaide, daughter of Prince Adolf, was the mother of Princess May of Teck.
The Duchess of Teck, formerly Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, sitting with her daughter May, later Queen Mary, at White Lodge in Richmond Park, 1893
King George V and Queen Mary board the liner Medina on a visit to India in 1911.
The royal garden party at Balmoral. From left to right are: the Duke of York, King George V, Queen Mary and the Duchess of York. Princess Elizabeth is in the stroller.
King George V and Queen Mary with their granddaughter, the future Queen, Elizabeth II
King George V and Queen Mary celebrate their 1935 Silver Jubilee with Princess Elizabeth
Princess Elizabeth next to her grandmother as they celebrate their silver wedding anniversary.
There came a time when Queen Victoria’s eyes fell on the young Princess May and she decided that she would be the perfect bride for her degenerate grandson, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, eventual heir to the British throne.
They were engaged in 1891, and the only real attraction for Princess May was the prospect of one day becoming queen.
But within weeks, in February 1892, the Duke of Clarence died at Sandringham.
This left Princess May in limbo, her prospects dashed. But Queen Victoria wasn’t going to let her go.
To her discomfort and embarrassment (for fear of being seen as insensitive), it was agreed that she would marry the next heir in line, Prince George, Duke of York.
This was not a love marriage. However, soon after marriage they fell in love and supported each other throughout their lives together, from 1893 to 1936.
In 1901 they made a long visit to Australia and in 1905 they toured India. On the death of Edward VII in 1910, they became King George V and Queen Mary.
In 1911 they returned to India to attend the Delhi Durbar. His reign spanned the First World War and the difficult years of the 1920s.
Queen Mary suffered deeply from the abdication of Edward VIII, but during the reign of her next son, George VI, she assumed the role of matriarch, even breaking with tradition to attend the Coronation in 1937.
In this way he reintroduced important stability in the monarchy.
Queen Mary was not eccentric. She would insist on being read to while she knitted.
She apparently fell asleep during this process, but her fingers worked somewhat imprecisely. The lady she was waiting for would have to undo the stitches later.
She enjoyed a dirty comment. There was a dinner at Buckingham Palace. Prince Philip’s mother told George V that a Swedish official had made a big deal by showing her sister, Crown Princess Louise, some important Swedish jewelry.
He took her to a vault, which involved opening many doors. Once inside her, she said: ‘And now I’m going to open my drawers and show you my treasure!’
Queen Mary heard the king burst into laughter. They told him the punch line. —And he did it? she asked.
She took a great interest in the upbringing of her granddaughters, the Queen and Princess Margaret, and was not at all impressed with the way Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) was raising them.
Marlborough House, with Queen Mary’s personal banner flying overhead
Princess Margaret did not join her grandmother. Other young members of the Royal Family were in awe of her, although Princess Alexandra enjoyed spending time with her, often at Badminton, where Queen Mary spent the Second World War.
Anthony Eden visited Sandringham in January 1953, shortly before she died, and wrote: “She is a wonderful old woman with a mind as alert as that of a woman thirty years younger and more knowledgeable than most.”
She would make an admirable Foreign Minister.
Queen Mary died at Marlborough House shortly before the 1953 coronation.