THE UNDESERVING STINKING RICH: Episode 2 — Queen Mary (1867-1953) by Donal Kennedy

 

Born Princess Mary of Teck (the German Kingdom of  Wurtemberg) in 1867, Mary was, successively Duchess of York, Duchess of Cornwall, Princess of Wales, and, from 191o to 1936 Queen Consort to King George V. On his death she had the title Queen Mother until George VI died in 1952.

George V, as King Emperor, had devoted most of his waking moments to shooting game and collecting postage stamps. His children were neglected and emotionally abused. The Duke of York, who became George VI was left-handed and the humiliation he suffered gave him a stammer for the rest of his life. The Prince of Wales who became Edward VIII was probably as mentally wobbly as his parents and developed a cordial hatred of Mary, his mother.

The rest of my narrative derives from a review by Max Hastings, a former Editor of the Daily Telegraph, a right-wing paper of ill-repute, published in the Sunday Times (owned byRupert Murdoch).  Caveat Lector!           

Max Hastings’s review is of “The Quest for Queen Mary” by James Pope Hennessy  edited by Hugo Vickers. Pope-Hennessy was commissioned to write the authorised biography and stuck to his brief and published a hagiography. But he took notes, whose publication Hastings thinks may be the funniest book of the year.

It can’t have been much fun to have known the woman when she was alive. When she went visiting she went with an entourage and would admire artefacts in her hosts’ homes God help the hosts who did not feel obliged to surrender their property to their avaricious guest

with their  compliments. (It was, perhaps still is, the custom for social-climbing husbands, to lend their wives to royalty, a corrupt institution in the body politick.)

In 1940, during the Blitz, Queen Mary was evacuated from London to become a guest of the Duke of Beaufort at Badminton.She arrived with a retinue of 52, and spent the rest of the war (five years) there. Her hosts were confined to two rooms in their own home. (The Royal Family has numerous properties, well away from London, where Mary and her entourage could have been easily accommodated in safety.

“The queen, bored and accustomed to her own way, amused herself meanwhile by listening to incessant records of military bands and ordering the felling of trees she felt Badminton would be better without, while her unhappy hosts wrung their hands.”

In the middle of one night, the Duchess was awakened, to be told the Queen wanted her in the air-raid shelter.”There I was” she said “with my hair all anyhow and in a filthy old dressing gown; and there in the shelter sat Queen Mary, perfectly dressed in her pearls, doing a crossword puzzle.” In fact her unfortunate retinue had to do most of the puzzle for her.

Doing his researches, Pope-Hennessy interviewed the Duke of Windsor (the abdicated Edward VIII) and his Duchess  ( the former Mrs Simpson) in Paris. The Duchess “displayed her disdain for Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, mentioning that she (the Duchess) had once made the mistake of employing a lady’s maid who had been in the QM’s service –‘I thought that, after all those years with the Queen Mother, if she hadn’t learnt how to iron a crinoline, then what had she learnt?……I had to get rid of her.’  “

Of all the many fine achievements of Eamon de Valera perhaps the finest was the removal of the British Crown from the Constitution of the Irish State, so that its citizens could be republicans without being regicides.

 

The British have never been so lucky as to have a leader like Dev. They may yet produce ( for themselves alone!)

another Cromwell.

 

Perhaps Max Hastings might yet fill that role?

 

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