On the other hand you can tell it's an authorized biography, because very little that's negative gets said about the Queen Mother (see Note of June 6, 2010). Most of the negative things are slipped in via letters or other writings of other people. For example, when there's concern over how long it's taking the Queen Mother to decide which of her ladies in waiting she's going to let go, now that she is no longer The Queen, a friend of hers writes to another friend: "The Queen, bless her heart, has cultivated procrastination to a degree which is really an art -- when one is vexed, as I fear I often am, one should recall that the Bowes Lyons [the Queen Mother's family] are the laziest family in the world. Against this reflection it becomes remarkable that she accomplishes so much."* He goes on to say, "I think it possible that this omission may be the reflection of what has been apparent from the first, a sturdy repudiation of any idea that HM has any intention, because she is widowed, of relinquishing all to which she has become accustomed."** And the author adds: She did not give up any of her ladies.
In other words, once a queen, always a queen.
It is just the very occasional, slight dig like this -- or the admission of her growing matronliness of form during the '40s -- that suggests Elizabeth Bowes Lyons Windsor was anything less than perfect. And there is absolutely nothing to suggest that the marriage of King George and Queen Elizabeth was anything less than ideally happy, though the times and the situation they lived through were very hard on them both, especially the king, who lacked physical resilience, and had to make up for it with strength of character (and isn't it inter-esting what a difference there was between him and his older brother, who was very briefly Edward VIII, in terms of character. It suggests the dangers of getting by on charm and good looks for too long.)
But come on, every grownup knows that all marriages have their problems, even the most loving, even the happiest. You have two individuals trying to live together day after day, year after year. There is bound to be some conflict, some disagreement over how things should be done. Arguments, upsets. I realize that the British tend to be much more reticent about personal matters than we let-it-all-hang-out Americans -- and of course this was even truer of earlier generations -- but my guess is Elizabeth did confess in a letter of two, to some close friend or family member, that she really wished "Bertie" did not require quite so much bolstering up, or, during the months preceding the abdication, that she thought the behavior of Bertie's older brother truly reprehensible.
The only "complaining" she does do -- and i'm glad to see it, because it does show that she's human -- is over how hard it was to visit the areas that had been bombed during the war, which she and her husband did religiously. In a letter to her sister she wrote, "It makes one furious seeing the wanton destruction. Sometimes it really makes me feel almost ill. I can't tell you how I loathe going round these bombed places. I am a beastly coward, and it breaks one's heart to see so much misery and sadness."^ She loathed doing it, but she did it. More character. We get lots of examples of character, precious little in the way of flaws.
Still, for all that the book may have left out, it continues to interest.
*Shawcross, William. The Queen Mother: The Official Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, p. 672
**Ibid, p. 673
^Ibid, p. 529
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