Her Majesty

During the first days of World War II, when King George's mother was sent from London to the comparative safety of the ancient Gloucestershire estate of Badminton, one of the first things to catch her eye was an untidy tangle of hawthorn. She promptly resolved to clean it up, and every day thereafter from lunch until tea time, Britain's Queen Mother led a party armed with pruning shears, billhooks and mattocks, against the undergrowth. "No one who came to Badminton, whatever their rank or position, was exempt," says her latest biographer. "Queen Mary . . . worked with a will herself, lopping off branches, all the time keeping an eye on the rest of the party, making sure that no on-flagged."

The Silhouette. Ever since her coronation with George V in 1911, Britain's Mary had been keeping just such a wellpeeled eye on her relatives, her subjects and the empire, making sure that no one flagged his duty. Her rigidly towering silhouette in the last three decades has become a symbol of British royalty as familiar to newspaper readers the world over as France's Eiffel Tower. Last week in Her Majesty Queen Mary (Sampson Low, London; 125. 6d.), Press Association's Buckingham Palace Correspondent Louis Wulff provided a semi-official but nonetheless intimate glimpse of Mary during her years as Queen Mother. It reveals a Victorian as stern as she is self-disciplined, a queen who takes herself seriously.

At Marlborough House, Queen Mary's day begins promptly at 7:15 each morning. She dresses completely and punctiliously before breakfast alone in her dining room. At 9:30 she summons one of three noble Women of the Bedchamber who serve her in shifts of two weeks each, and together they go over the morning mail. "It is Queen Mary's inflexible rule," writes Wulff, "that every letter she receives shall be answered [in longhand] with the extremely rare exceptions of importunate letters from undesirables and occasional missives from unfortunates out of their senses."

Hale & hearty at 82, the Queen Mother has no use for weakness of any kind. Her standards are as rigid and unchanging as her styles in hats and dresses. At one of her rare visits to an exhibition of modern art, says Wulff, "Queen Mary frankly did not like what she saw . . . Rather than offend the feelings of the artist by expressing her opinion, she remained silent."

Isn't It Nice? When she finds it necessary, Queen Mary can speak her mind. Once she was opening a training center for girl domestics. Up-to-date kitchens gleamed with all the latest appliances. The anxious ladies in charge cocked their ears for the queen's words of approval. "It's too hot in here for those girls," said Queen Mary. "I'll send round an electric fan tomorrow." Next day the fan arrived. In an age marked by universal uncertainty on moral questions, Britain's elder Queen is plagued by few if any doubts. She is as certain of the rectitude of her position as she is of the rectitude of the empire she represents. At an Empire Exhibition in 1938, Queen Mary watched a small boy perusing a globe on which Britain's possessions were tinted with the traditional color. "Isn't it nice," she remarked in the nearest thing to a political pronouncement she has ever permitted herself, "that so much of it is in red?"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.