Mum's still the word
Nicholas Coleridge
QUEEN ELIZABETH: A LIFE OF THE QUEEN MOTHER by Penelope Mortimer
Viking, £12.95
In the course of researching an article about the Queen Mother's circle for the Spectator, I dipped into several of her biographies. There are about 15 of these and I do not exaggerate when I say that they are among the worst books I have read: poorly written, anodyne, obse- quious. They tell you almost nothing about the Queen Mother's friends, taste or opin- ions on anything at all. The majority of anecdotes (mostly childhood adventures at Glamis) are simply copied from one biography to the next. Penelope Mortimer in her introduction says that she was unaware of the vast industry that thrives on royalty before beginning her researches. Perhaps she hoped to avoid depending on it altogether, so fresh would her own discoveries be. In this, I'm afraid, she must have been disappointed, because on the whole she has failed to infiltrate 'the carapace of praise more impenetrable than the walls of the Royal Vault' that so quickly daunted her. I can understand how she got involved in the project. Penelope Mortimer is an excellent novelist and publishers are al- ways trying to deflect excellent novelists into writing non-fiction. She was doubtless advised that the combination of an intelli- gent mind and a major but mysterious subject like the Queen Mother would be compelling, and good for sales. Perhaps this book will sell well. My hunch is not. I suspect that those people who want to rod a whole book about the Queen Mother require either a sugary or a prurient one. Penelope Mortimer's biography falls some' where in between. • As you would expect, it is well written. The story of the Queen Mother's career is deftly and wittily rehashed. 'The York- Bowes-Lyon wedding was not broadcast,' as the Archbishop of Canterbury feareo that men in pubs might listen to it with their hats on. In every other way it was much like any Royal Wedding in living memory.' The same could be said of 1VIrs Mortimer's biography. Her only 'scoop' is a fellow called Jamie (apparently James Stewart, an equerry to George VI) whom the Queen Mother might have wished to marry had he asked her. There is a suggestion that she married George VI ‘011 the rebound', but it's all pretty tenuous. There are some strange statements in this book. The Queen Mother is 'the most successful sex-symbol that British royalty has ever known'. Surely not. What about l the Princess of Wales and Princess of Kent, or even Princess Margaret? Lady Helen Windsor is another royal trans:e` parently sexier than her great aunt. 13 Mrs Mortimer is adamant on this point. It doesn't mean that she invited anyone t° bed. On the contrary. High moral princiPles' by inhibiting activity, produced an enormous reserve of sexual power. It was this power , that transformed Bertie from an inarticulate nobody into a man of some stature, hYPII.°- tised the general public and eventually rat' stated the throne in the public's fantasy.
Penelope Mortimer has not herself fallen victim to the Queen Mother's sexual ltYP,,: notism. Often she is snide. 'The Yorks were responsible for maintaining the high standard of mediocrity that was character- istic of his [George V's] reign'. Describing the economic crash of 1931, Penelope Mortimer concludes, 'Concerned as they [the Yorks] were about the crisis, they contented themselves to begin with by restoring the great Wyatville saloon rat Royal Lodge, Windsor], building a new wing and putting in a few bathrooms.' Penelope Mortimer takes Wallis Simp- son's part in the abdication crisis, the Queen Mother emerging as snobbish and unbending. 'While sitting about miserably at home, Elizabeth heard gossip from Well-meaning friends: at the Brownlows, Mrs Simpson had rocked the room by declaring that she hadn't worn stockings since she gave up the can-can.' She pities Wallis Simpson for experiencing 'the appalling manners of the British upper classes. She must have known how much Elizabeth disliked her . . . If the Duchess of York had been understanding, future events might have been no different, but they would have been a lot less painful.' Quite a lot is made of the Queen Mother's apparent 'instinctive distaste for disease, maiming, malformation of any kind'. This is followed by a long inventory of her medical upsets over the years, most of them trivial: 'in the first decade of her vv. idowhood she was prone to stumbling Into unexpected furniture'; 'in 1960 she knocked her leg at Royal Lodge'; 'in 1982 she choked on a fishbone during a dinner party'. As ailments go, the Queen Mother doesn't strike me as unusually accident prone, so why the list? Penelope Mortimer has a keen eye for this kind of minutia. Elsewhere she tells us about the Queen Mother's special Scrabble set on a turn- table.
She has an amusing line on the Clarence House courtiers. 'It is men who find Elizabeth so overwhelmingly maternal; or, conversely, she has qualities which bring out the little boys lurking in their hearts. This may be the reason why her closest friends and greatest admirers, as well as the members of her personal staff, have nearly always been bachelors disinclined for marriage.' She quotes Cecil Beaton on the Queen Mother in the same context: he great mother figure and nannie to us all, through the warmth of her sympathy bathes us and wraps us in a counterpane by the fireside.' We are told that the Queen Mother has mellowed with age. Next to Charles, it looks as though Margaret's son and daugh- ter, Viscount Linley and Lady Sarah Ann strong-Jones are the favoured grand- children. They belong to a milieu — artistic yet definitely top drawer, a touch raffish yet a credit to the Queen's Lawn at Ascot in which during her widowhood the Queen Mother has come to feel very much at home. Feeling at home, being among friends, emerges as the key to the Queen Mother's character, and provides Penelope Mortimer with her most vivid passage: It
may be increasingly difficult for an octogena-
rian to climb into a helicopter, but once air- borne the flight is effortless, skimming over the dull pedestrian world, skimming over empty Paces and uneasy silences, over neglect and indifference, landing only where the lights shine and the climate is entirely dependable. One day she will simply spin out of sight, emerging God knows where to carry on with the angels.
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