Life & Death of a Queen

The bulletin pinned to the gate of Marlborough House late at night, to be read by a little knot of silent Britons, was but twelve words long: "While sleeping peacefully, Queen Mary died at 20 minutes past 10 o'clock." Next day Winston Churchill's voice was husky as he moved a "humble Address" from the House of Commons: "She looked like a Queen; she acted like a Queen . . ." On the Labor benches opposite, Clement Attlee was as visibly moved. "There has never been a Queen," he said, "who was so beloved by everybody, and I think this is because of her extraordinary kindness."

A Certain Conflict. Victoria Mary Augusta Louisa Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes, for 26 years Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India, was not always so beloved among her subjects. For all that she had been born in England, a cousin of Queen Victoria and a great-granddaughter of George III, the shy, penniless German Princess who in 1893 married the future George V, then Duke of York, was not welcomed with open arms. British sentiment was affronted by the fact that she had previously been affianced to the Duke's elder brother, heir presumptive to Victoria's throne. Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, whose elegant dress earned him the nickname Prince Collar & Cuffs, died of flu six weeks after his betrothal. His place in the succession and at Princess Mary's side was taken by brother George. Even the London Times admitted that the substitution of bridegrooms "presented to every mind a certain conflict of emotion."

Banished Belles. Austerely handsome, upright and proper to a degree unusual in Edwardian England, the new Duchess of York stood in severe contrast to her radiant mother-in-law, Queen Alexandra, a woman whom Britons loved as much for King Edward VII's well-known unreliability as for her own beauty. Soon after the accession of husband George, in 1910, Queen Mary let it be known that "I will not have anyone around me about whom there is a breath of scandal"--a statement which automatically banished dozens of Edwardian belles from the royal court.

At home in York Cottage, a villa on the royal estate at Sandringham, George and his Mary lived a life of unruffled domestic felicity that became a national legend.. Five of their six royal children were born at "dear old Sandringham," and during his wife's confinements, the King himself prepared and served her morning cup of tea. Mary, who was better schooled and sharper-witted than he, repaid his gruff affection by curbing his profanity (learned in the Royal Navy) and by teaching herself "to push the little balls around"--her phrase for the King's favorite game of billiards. In January 1936, the Queen wrote in the diary that her husband had kept each day for almost 56 years: "King George V was much distressed at the bad writing above, and begged me to write his diary for him next day. He passed away ... at five minutes before midnight."

Queen Mary's grief was soon to be compounded by the news that her eldest and, as many thought, dearest son had chosen to abdicate in favor of a woman who was a commoner, an American, and a divorcee. Through the rest of her life, Queen Mary refused to receive the woman whom Edward loved, but as a mother, she pleaded for her son. "I know," she told the people of Britain that irrevocable day in 1936, "that you will realize what it has cost him to come to this decision." Windsor, without his wife, rushed from Florida to be at his mother's bedside when she died.

Lady in Lavender. In the last two decades of her life, Queen Mary's subjects had come to revere in her the traits which they had so coolly regarded in her youth. They appreciated her downrightness: "It is perfectly clear to me," she told the abashed mayor of Bethnal Green, "that when I visit the poor districts, I am taken mainly by the highways and not the byways." They enjoyed making kindly fun of her indomitable, unchanging hats. They smiled at her reluctance to compromise with such "novelties" as telephones and airplanes. They were pleased to hear that she took sherry before lunch, freshened up with a dab of lipstick, and smoked an occasional cigarette in her boudoir.

Best of all, they liked the infrequent glimpses of her straight-backed figure, in long, lavender coat and jeweled turban, stalking through the rubble of wartime London with her inevitable, restless, prying umbrella, authoritative as a royal mace, or the sight of the old Queen pottering in & out of antique shops, slipping into the back row of suburban movie theaters, sweeping down Pall Mall in her towering automobile. "I think they call it a Daimler," she told a bemused G.I. to whom she gave a ride.

Mellow & Gracious. Queen Mary came to embody that enduring sense of the past that lives in the present, which is the Englishman's special love. As the court went into a 30-day mourning period (which will end before the coronation), one who strongly shares this sense of past & present spoke her requiem:

"When she was born," said Winston Churchill, "Napoleon III ruled France, and Palmerston had only recently ceased to be Prime Minister of this country . . . Yet she lived into this atomic age, through two fearful wars which cast almost all the thrones of Europe to the ground . . . but also transformed the world.

"Queen Mary did not cling to the insubstantial shadows of what had been. She moved easily through the changing scenes . . . She died in the knowledge that the crown of these realms, worn so gloriously by her husband and by her son and so soon to be set with solemnity on the head of her granddaughter, is far more broadly and securely based on the people's love . . . than in the sedate days of her youth, when rank and privilege ruled society.

"Queen Mary will long live mellow and gracious in all our memories . . . We pray that she may now rest in peace."

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