by Anne Edwards
MATRIARCH
BOOKS BY ANNE EDWARDS
Biography
A Remarkable Woman: A Biography of Katharine Hepburn
Matriarch: Queen Mary and the House of Windsor
Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell
Sonya: The Life of Countess Tolstoy
Viven Leigh: A Biography
Judy Garland: A Biography
Autobiography
The Inn and Us with Stephen Citron
Novels
The Survivors
Miklos Alexandrovich Is Missing
Haunted Summer
Shadow of a Lion
The Hesitant Heart
Child of Night
Children’s Books
The Great Houdini
Barnum
A Child’s Bible
MATRIARCH
Queen Mary and the House of Windsor
Reprint Edition of the Classic
ANNE EDWARDS
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
The author would like to thank the Radio Hulton Picture Library, Illustrated London News, and British Museum for permission to reprint the following photographs: Princess Mary Adelaide; Duke of Teck; Prince Franz, Duke of Teck, with children; Princess May at 7; the Teck family in 1891: Radio Hulton Picture Library; The Prince of Wales: Illustrated London NewS; Page from North London Press, November 30, 1889: British Museum; Duke of Clarence in hunting outfit; Duke of Clarence in uniform; Balmoral, c. 1891; Queen Victoria in cart with dog and Tsar and Tsarina, c. 1896: Radio Hulton Picture Library; Princess May, c. 1891: Illustrated London NewS; wedding picture; Prince George and the future Nicholas II, 1892; York Cottage, Sandringham; Sandringham; Princess May with Edward, Prince of Wales; Queen Victoria and her family, 1895; Princess May, Duchess of York, with two infant sons; Two future Kings of England; Prince George and Prince John, 1909; The four oldest York children; Princess May as Duchess of York; Interior York House; The drawing room at Sandringham; Edward VII with Caesar; Princess May in dress worn at Coronation of Edward VII; King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra on Royal Yacht; Mr. and Mrs. George Keppel: Radio Hulton Picture Library; Mrs. George Keppel: Illustrated London NewS; Nine kings; Funeral procession, King Edward VII; The new Prince of Wales: Radio Hulton Picture Library; Coronation, interior Westminster Abbey: Illustrated London NewS; Queen Mary, Coronation procession; Queen Mary in Coronation robes; Entering Delhi; Leaving the train; The Durbar Coronation: Radio Hulton Picture Library; King George as big-game hunter: Illustrated London NewS; Under pavilion, Indian Durbar; King George and Queen Mary: Radio Hulton Picture Library; Princess Victoria Louise and Prince Ernest Augustus; Kaiser Wilhelm and King George: Illustrated London News; Queen Mary wearing the Durbar Emeralds; Queen Mary and King George with President and Mrs. Wilson: Radio Hulton Picture Library; Prince of Wales with King George in France: Illustrated London News; Queen Mary reviewing arsenal; Review of American troops; King George and his four sons: Radio Hulton Picture Library; Queen Mary in car; Royal brothers; Royal guests; Wedding of Lord Mountbatten and Miss Edwina Ashley: Radio Hulton Picture Library; Prince of Wales at the Derby, 1926: Illustrated London NewS; Queen Mary smiling; The Prince of Wales and Mrs. Simpson; Freda Dudley Ward with Sir P. Sassoon: Radio Hulton Picture Library; Gloria Vanderbilt and Lady Thelma Furness; Royal group on balcony: Illustrated London NewS; Queen Mart with granddaughter Elizabeth II: Radio Hulton Picture Library; State funeral: Illustrated London NewS; Queen Mary and King Edward VIII; Queen Elizabeth and Osbert Sitwell; Eleanor Roosevelt and King George VI; Three Queens; The Royal Family at Royal Lodge; Four Generations: Radio Hulton Picture Library; Queen Mary at the Festival of Britain; Queen Mary with grandson (Duke of Kent); Queen Mary’s last photograph; a Royal Matriarch’s funeral: Radio Hulton Picture Library.
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
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Copyright © 1984 by Anne Edwards
First Rowman & Littlefield edition 2015
Lyrics from “A Room with a View” by Noel Coward copyright 1928 by Chappell & Co., Ltd. Copyright renewed. International copyright secured. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.
Book design by Patrice Fodero
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
The first edition of this book was previously cataloged by the Library of Congress as follows:
Edwards, Anne, 1927–
Matriarch : Queen Mary and the House of Windsor
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Mary, Queen, consort of George V, King of Great Britain, 1867–1953. 2. Windsor, House of. 3. Great Britain—Queens—Biography. I. Title.
DA574A2E38 1986
941.083’092’4 [B] 85-24462
ISBN 978-1-4422-3655-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4422-3656-1 (electronic)
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
For Hilary
who helped me to span an ocean
CONTENTS
Preface
When Grandmama Was Queen
Uncle Wales Becomes King
Papa and Mama Are Crowned
Mama—Matriarch and Queen Mother
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
PREFACE
In the first half of this century, wars came and went, foreign powers fell, countries disappeared in alarming numbers from the maps of the world, but the English monarchy and Queen Mary remained to provide an element of continuity. Although consort and not part of the direct line, her maternal grandfather was the son of George III and had been fourth in line to the throne after Victoria. Queen Mary was the daughter-in-law of Edward VII, wife of George V, mother of Edward VIII and George VI, and grandmother of Elizabeth II. Close examination of her character, her dedication to the cause of monarchy, the influence she had on lives inextricably linked with hers solves a great many mysteries on how Great Britain survived the eclipse of other European monarchies and maintained its strength and stability even—and perhaps especially—during the trying days of the Abdication of King Edward VIII, Queen Mary’s eldest son and the future Duke of Windsor.
On a clear winter night in 1936, King Edward VIII publicly renounced the throne “for the woman I love.” After his famous broadcast, made from Windsor Castle, he returned to nearby Royal Lodge where his mother, sister, and three brothers (the oldest of whom was now King) had listened to his radio speech.* His youngest brother could not contain his emotion. He shook his head and cried almost fiercely, “It isn’t possible! It isn’t happening!” Tall and elegant, her silver hair piled high, ropes of pearls swirling down the front of her grey chiffon gown, Queen Mary showed no outward signs of emotion. She asked for her coat, and her daughter prepared to leave with her for London and her home at Marlborough House. Her four sons followed her out into the hallway.
“Goodbye David, God go with you,” she said to the son who for ten months had been Great Britain’s uncrowned King. Then
she turned to her second son, the lean, nervous, stuttering young man, with the slightly bulging rabbity eyes, to whom she knew this unexpected happening in his life was a severe blow, and she curtsied. “God save the King,” she said clearly and then departed, leaving her eldest son with the distinct feeling that with her words one King had been unthroned and another created. For him, his mother, Queen Mary, had always been the very essence of monarchy.
Footnote
*His sister was Princess Mary, his three brothers Prince Albert (soon to be crowned George VI), Prince Henry (Duke of Gloucester), and Prince George (Duke of Kent).
I live with bread like you, feel want
Taste grief, need friends; subjected thus,
How can you say I am a king?
SHAKESPEARE
King Richard II, Act III, Scene III
P A R T O N E
WHEN GRANDMAMA WAS QUEEN
ONE
The rumours were correct. The summons to Balmoral Castle by Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, could be interpreted only one way. Princess May of Teck was being considered as a suitable wife for Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, known as Prince Eddy and second heir to the British Throne. Even to contemplate the possibility of one day becoming Queen Consort of England was a heady experience for the twenty-four-year-old woman. The fact that Prince Eddy was one of her less endearing Wales cousins and that he had never taken the slightest interest in her was no deterrent. Royalty was a profession, and she was being given a chance to audition for its most highly coveted role.
November 4, 1891, was blustery cold and London a hard, metallic grey. Princess May’s parents, the Duke and Duchess of Teck, drove with her and the eldest of her three brothers, Prince Adolphus (“Dolly”) from their home, White Lodge, Richmond, to see her safely aboard the train at Euston Station for Aberdeen. At first glimpse, the young woman would not have been called beautiful. A touch of merriment gleamed in her deeply set, clear China-blue eyes, and when amused, her softly curved mouth twitched into a fleeting smile. Yet, little diminished the gravity of Princess May’s expression. (“I always have to be so careful not to laugh,” she once confided to a friend,* “because, you see, I have such a vulgar laugh.”)
Princess May’s natural beauty was easy to overlook for she combed her shiny wheat-coloured hair into an unflattering style, too high and tight at the sides and with a frizzled, low fringe in front that had prompted the Queen to remark that Princess May resembled nothing so much as a poodle with her hair so low on her forehead. Nonetheless, the style was distinctive, adding inches to her height (she was five foot, six inches tall) and giving her a statuesque elegance, an impression she much enjoyed and was to nurture throughout her life.
The young woman sat between her slim, moustached brother and her aristocratic, if foppish-looking, father in the front seat. The entire rear seat of the luxurious carriage was occupied by her flamboyant mother, Princess Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck, who—though handsome of face and possessing a charismatic personality—was a woman of extraordinary girth, the most conservative estimate of her weight having been put at seventeen stone.† Fortunately, Princess Mary Adelaide was tall and carried herself well. She also dressed in exquisite taste and had the same startling blue eyes that she had bequeathed to her daughter. “Fat Mary,” the people called her affectionately. She had always been popular because of her irrepressible high spirits and her accessibility at a time when the widowed Queen so seldom appeared in public (and on those rare occasions was to be seen swathed in black mourning clothes). Even now as she stifled her injured pride at not being invited by her cousin, the Queen,‡ to accompany Princess May and Prince Dolly to Balmoral, Princess Mary Adelaide smiled broadly; chatted merrily away; leaned out a window, exposing her face to the raw winter day, and enthusiastically raised a pudgy hand to people on the streets who had recognised and waved at her, craning their heads to get a good look at her stylish hat and new furs. Princess Mary Adelaide had a passion for beautiful clothes and, as the superlative quality and lavish detail of her daughter’s travelling outfit revealed, had passed on this extravagance to Princess May. Otherwise more conservative than her mother, Princess May did enjoy being well dressed.
The price of Princess Mary Adelaide’s hat would have been a fortune to the countless men who had lost their jobs in the tottering economy. Yet, ironically, the majority of London’s masses of poor did not begrudge the aristocracy their finery. Anarchists and revolutionaries existed, but the greater segment of the poor looked to the Royal Family for the colour and pageantry missing from their own drab lives. Princess Mary Adelaide with her ornate jewels and her fine feathers and opulent furs had become a pet of the public, a substitute perhaps for the mourning Queen.
Until the invitation had come from Balmoral, Princess May had not expected more than marriage to a sensible man of mediocre means and acceptable rank. She had been only too aware that among the royal houses of Europe a marriage between herself and one of their princes would have been deemed a misalliance because her own father, Prince Franz, Duke of Teck, was the son of a morganatic marriage.* To add to this difficult situation, the Duke of Teck was penniless, his wife impossibly extravagant, and the family had more than once barely sidestepped the bailiffs. In fact, Princess May’s parents had often been the butt of sharp comment among royalty and the aristocracy.
Before their marriage, the Duke of Teck, who loved the good life, had been living on his meagre military pay and an occasional handout from the Austrian Emperor. Though oversized, as well as being four years older than he, Princess Mary Adelaide was the impoverished Duke’s greatest hope come true. Not until after the wedding did he learn that his bride was as penniless as he.
Queen Victoria had arranged for the Tecks to live in the South Wing of Kensington Palace where she had been brought up as a girl. On the stroke of midnight, on May 26, 1867, in the same room and bed where the Queen had been born, Princess Mary Adelaide gave birth to a daughter, christened Victoria Mary Augusta Louisa Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes, but always called “May” by her parents and family because of the month in which she was born. When the new baby was one month old, Queen Victoria made a rare expedition to London to see her son’s—the Prince of Wales’s—firstborn daughter, Princess Louise, whom she found “puny and pigeon breasted.” After leaving Marlborough House, the Prince of Wales’s home, the Queen headed westward in an open carriage-and-four through “the densely crowded Park to see dear Mary Teck. It seemed strange,” she wrote in her journal, “to drive into the old Courtyard and to get out at the door, the very knockers of which were very old friends. My dear old home, how many memories it evoked walking through the well-known rooms!” At the top of the house, in the room that had heard her own first lusty cries, the Queen saw Princess May and deemed her “a very fine child, with quantities of hair—brushed up into a curl on top of its head!”
In the next seven years, Princess May was to have three brothers, the eldest being Prince Adolphus. The Tecks were always in humiliating debt. In 1883, when Princess May was sixteen, they were in such “short street,” with bailiffs set to seize their possessions, that to escape their creditors they had run off to Florence. There they fell upon the charity of relations and friends. Only the Queen’s grace permitted them to return to England two years later to live modestly at White Lodge in Richmond Park. Though not one of the Crown’s most luxurious houses, White Lodge had an historic past. On a table in the study of this house, Lord Nelson “had dipped his finger in a glass of port and sketched his plan for the Battle of Trafalgar.” Edward, Prince of Wales, had been established at White Lodge when he was seventeen “under conditions of strict security so that he might be away from the world and lose himself entirely to study.” The Prince of Wales was always to think of the house as a prison, and his time spent there—a sentence. But the Tecks had found it a prestigious home, and Princess Mary Adelaide, with her great flair for decoration, had added much to its charm, pretentious and overly elaborate thoug
h her additions might have been.
What saved the Teck family from ruin during Princess May’s youth was her mother’s keen ability to wheedle the Queen into advancing her large sums of money. But the importuning on the Crown had not made the family popular with their royal relations.
Princess May was never to forget the circumstances of her forced exile in Florence, and she was determined to turn this embarrassing period to her own advantage, learning German and studying art. At nineteen, she had made an unsuccessful London debut, for no beau appeared on the scene. Aware that her marriage prospects were grim and being a practical young woman, Princess May had lived quietly with her family at the understaffed White Lodge, assisting her mother with her household accounts and correspondence, giving much time to the London Needlework Guild, and reading six hours daily under the tutelage of Madame Bricka, “a tactless Alsatian woman with radical good brains.” Yet, here she was on her way to Balmoral Castle with the possibility of becoming betrothed to the second heir to the British Throne.
The long ride to Euston Station could well have afforded Princess May time to think of how she, the most unlikely of all Princesses, was being considered. She knew Prince Eddy had become a serious problem to his parents, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and to his grandmother, the Queen. He had always been slow and immature, unable to grasp most situations, awkward in all sports except shooting, and frail in health. And, however steadfastly Princess May refused to consider it true, scandal was attached to his name.
In 1889, a police raid on a male brothel at 19 Cleveland Street, not far from Euston Station, had spawned much private speculation about Prince Eddy’s proclivities. The establishment catered to titled and wealthy homosexuals, and during that raid it was alleged that Prince Eddy’s close friend, Lord Arthur Somerset, had been found with a young man. A warrant was issued in connection with these offences, but Lord Arthur (known in Court circles as “Podge”) was able to flee the country before it could be served.
