A VERY GALLANT LADY
▪ HAT is the aspect of Queen Mary's personality which strikes us most as we think, naturally, of these latest and nearest years in which the youngest at any rate of her granddaughter's subjects have known her best.
hrough everything, bereavement, the ordeal of war, the inevitable pressure of advancing years, she has borne herself with a gallantry which caught the imagination and inspired iiversal admiration and respect. Her vitality was remarkable. given in this last year, since the blow of the death of her second 'oo. King George VI, fell on her, it was difficult to think of this gallant lady as really old. Old she may have been by the measure of calendar years, but old in spirit she never has been. Yet, great-granddaughter of King George III and &Teat-grandmother of the future Charles III as she was, what sPan of time she covered, even if the •earliest years are forgotten and the span stretches only from the day in 1893 \then, as Princess May, she was married to the Duke of York, to the evening of last Tuesday when, her life moving slowly 10 its close, as King George V's had done, she died peacefully her sleep so.,near to the Palace where she had lived for a quarter of a century as Queen. In February, 1936, she closed °Ile chapter in the history of a Royal House by adding to the diary her husband had kept since 1880 the entry : " My dearest husband King George V was much distressed at the bad handwriting above, and begged me to write his diary for him the next day. He passed away on January 20th at 5 minutes before midnight—Mary R. Yet in a sense that Qhapter was not closed. The writer of those words most Worthily continued it. For a moment grief exercisecl,,its sway, but duty soon put grief behind, and a Queen Mother was Serving her people as she had served them for more than 'oily years as Princess and Queen. Now the chapter is closed finally, and the book is shut.
It was the fortune of the two last King Georges to have their own qualities of sound sense and unswerving integrity most fitly and most valuably complemented by consorts of much more than normal intelligence and breadth of interests: Queen Mary was possessed of a strong critical faculty. She Was never unsympathetic or harsh, but she always knew her mind, and always, so far as lay within her sphere, acted as her convictions dictated. Sir Osbert Sitwell, in an appreciation on a later page, tells how Queen Mary once said to him: " I am afraid I am losing my memory," and then, " but I mean to get it back." That was characteristic. The will is not omnipotent. There are limitations that relentless time imposes. But that Queen Mary should determine to triumph over disabilities, even if in the end capitulation had to be, was example of a trait which she manifested throughout her life. It was of a Queen Regnant, not of a QueerrConsort, that Tennyson wrote : " A thousand claims to reverence closed In her as Mother, Wife and Queen," but the words are as appropriate to Queen Mary as they were to Queen Victoria. Queen Mary, indeed, filled another role, of which the importance can only be partially assessed. Her devotion to her two granddaughters was intense, and how much Queen Elizabeth owes, and will owe, to contact with her ripe wisdom and experience even the Queen herself perhaps can hardly realise. But this is certain, that much that was best in the aged Queen whose work is over will persist in the young Queen before whom life, with all its exacting duties, stretches.
With Queen Mary there passes something stable, something strengthening, something fine. She had come to be looked on as a national possession, and the nation will miss her consciously and greatly. Her mind was acute and wide-ranging. She was extremely well read. " She had great knowledge of antiques. She liked visiting exhibitions of all sorts. She loved London and she loved Sandringham, and in later years rarely travelled except from one to the other. She cared about the daily activi- ties of her people. She liked to visit factories and take her elder granddaughter with her to see what they were like. Her hands were rarely idle. The carpet she made herself is historic. Needlework, knitting, all came alike to her—small things, but signs of a ceaseless activity which no doubt gave relaxation to a ceaselessly active mind. Now that, both hands and mind have ceased to labour, there is room only for thankfulness both for the fullness of the life and for the calmness of its ending.
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