Minus the warts

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

Courage under pressure

I've been reading the authorized biography of Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (called, appropriately enough, The Queen Mother). It was moderately interesting, reading about her youth, her marriage to King George VI (when they were married he was Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George, and throughout his life was called Bertie within the family, but when he became king in 1936 he used the last of his Christian names, to provide the country with a sense of continuity from his father, George V), the dreadful period when "Bertie's" older brother, Edward VIII, decided to abdicate so he could marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, which resulted in the shy, nervous Albert, inflicted with a stammer, and with no desire to be king, being forced to become exactly that.

Yes, all quite interesting, but what has been most interesting is the section on the Second World War, and how the royal family, and all of Britain, coped. As was the case when I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Note of May 25, 2010), I've gotten a much better sense of just what the war meant to the British. I think I, perhaps like many Americans, have been more aware of happenings in the European war from D-Day, in June of '44, on. But the people in England had been enduring the ravages of war for four years by that time (they had officially entered into war with Germany in September of 1939, but there followed several months of what came to be known as the Phony War, when not much happened. Beginning in early 1940, things started happening.)

People in England suffered with the same food shortages that they did on Guernsey, but also had to contend with bombing raids. For four years. This was especially true in London, which was practically flattened. Reading about it reminded me of my first trip to London, in 1974, when I learned that so many of the historic sites I was looking at were not the originals, but had been rebuilt after the war. They had survived for many centuries, and then been wiped out by modern warfare within a four-year span.

And the British people as a whole really do seem to have been amazingly staunch, impressively resilient and determinedly cheerful through it all. And their king and queen were in there suffering with them, and being just as staunch, resilient and determinedly cheerful. One wonders if we Americans, as a people, would bear up so well, for so long. We all like to think so, of course, but selflessness and a disinclination to complain seem to be less in the way of American national traits.

We have been so lucky in this country. True, our ancestors lived through the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War, both taking place on our soil, and producing the tragic losses that all wars produce. But except for the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was an attack on a military target (the ships within the harbor, and the harbor itself), and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, this country has been spared so many of the outrages and devastation of war.

The Queen Mother, by the way, is coming off almost as the Princess Diana of her era -- much loved by the masses of common people, charming everyone she met with her graciousness, her ability to seem to be genuinely interested in whomever she was talking to. Although by middle age she had become plump and somewhat dowdy -- especially by American standards -- when she was younger she was considered quite lovely, with gorgeous skin, beautiful eyes and smile, and her good humor and kindliness. And she appears to have been a true helpmeet to her husband (unlike Princess Diana).

But I can't help wondering: why was she the Queen, when she was married to King George, but Prince Philip has not been the King, while married to Elizabeth II?