Queen's House (36 page)

Queen Mary must have been delighted to find a souvenir of the forgotten, beautiful Hungarian countess, her grandfather's morganatic wife. She discovered

some old lengths of very beautiful brocaded silk of European Chinese design, dating from the early part of the 18th century. The silk came from St. Georgy in Transylvania, the home of the Queen's paternal Grandmother, Countess Claudine Rhedey, wife of Duke Alexander of Württemberg.

The walls have been panelled to frame this brocade, and lacquer mouldings and stiles as well as doors and mantelpiece were made in keeping.

The carpet, specially designed and woven in grey wool, is in keeping with the brocaded wall panels, the ground colour of which has been copied for the curtains, the design of which is reproduced from an old key pattern damask. The curtain valance and architraves are of special interest.

For this room the Queen collected ‘very choice old pieces of lacquer work' found in the Palace and elsewhere.

There is a beautiful Chinese lantern in the room, of 18th century enamel work; in its enamelled metal frame some most picturesque panels of painted glass are displayed; from it hang some beautiful pendants of silk linked together with enamelled panels; the prevailing colour of the silk is celadon green. This harmonises perfectly with the room, and adds to its Chinese atmosphere.

In the Chinese Chippendale Room

The panels of the walls are filled in with wallpaper of very fine design, the blocks for which were specially cut by Her Majesty's wish, from an old piece of silk in the Chinese taste, which was itself reproduced to form the curtains of the room, and to cover some of the furniture.

Some of the chairs came from the Pavilion at Brighton, designed for the Pavilion when Nash restored and added to it in 1820 and 1821…

Two prominent features of this room are the organ case which has been turned into a bookcase, and the beautiful bookcases, which originally held the barrels for the organ, the design for which may be seen in Pyne's book …

The furniture has been covered in some instances with pieces of Chinese silk from some old Mandarin's robes formerly in the Pavilion, and in other cases in the same Chinese Chippendale design silk as has been used for the walls and curtains …

At each side of the fireplace are exceptionally fine examples of the Chinese style of painting on glass, which were found in the Palace store room; these have been reframed simply by the Queen's order, and will always remain extremely interesting examples of this work, in which the Brighton Pavilion collection was once so strong …

The chandelier hanging from the centre of the ceiling was designed for Her Majesty by her decorative artist, and is quite unique as an example of modern work designed in the feeling of Chinese Chippendale; the centre lights are screened with old Chinese paintings, and in the niches at the bases of the branches, stand small old Chinese porcelain figures.

This room may be said to have received its interest from the fact that its main features are old fragments which Her Majesty has had restored and developed.
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It may seem surprising to those who remember the Blitz in the Second World War that in 1914 a new glass roof should have been made for the Picture Gallery. But in 1914 the action was across the Channel, and
the threat came in the trenches, not from the air. Only at the end of the war did the Zeppelin bring a foretaste of the future.

In 1914 the problem of the Picture Gallery was regarded as most urgent. Just as Nash's roof of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton had leaked, so did his glass roof of the Buckingham Palace Gallery. The delicately engraved glass was beautiful and ‘the hammer beams with pendant arches and seventeen little saucer domes' were graceful, but, once again, Nash had put beauty before practicality. The pictures had not even been properly lit. So in 1914 a new glass roof was built, with a deep frieze decorated with elegant plaster swags, which were echoed in the carved wooden doorcases in the style of Grinling Gibbons, which replaced Nash's white scagliola. Did Queen Mary know that Gibbons, the supreme master of the art of carving, had been introduced to Lord Arlington by John Evelyn in the reign of Charles II and had worked in the house on the site of Buckingham Palace? It is possible: the Queen, who loved history, would have been delighted to salute the old craftsman, but she must have regretted the loss of Nash's elegant engraved glass.

The Gallery walls were hung with new sober green damask chosen by the Queen. She and the King both disliked gold: she had complained to Lady Airlie that there had been a surfeit of ‘gilt and orchids' at the Palace in the time of Edward VII. She had admired the old design of a damask at Welbeck Abbey, the Duke of Portland's country seat, and copied it. It was an excellent foil for the superb paintings, now rehung with the advice of Sir Lionel Cust. The new arrangement created ‘a perfectly symmetrical hang'
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in the tradition of Palace rooms since the sixteenth century.

The Queen paid special attention to the room behind the Balcony known as the Centre Room. It was one of the first rooms she rearranged in 1911. It was described in detail at this time.

The furniture and fittings of this room were formerly in Brighton Pavilion or Carlton House …

The two finely carved Carrara marble mantels, richly mounted with ormolu, &Chinese figures mounted in niches in the jambs, with the grates & richly mounted fenders and dogs were formerly in Brighton Pavilion.

On these mantels are two rare clocks by Vulliamy and candelabra, the one on the right on entering is a striking clock in an ormolu case carried on the back of a beautiful model of a bull in bronze, with a female figure on each side & surmounted by an ormolu figure with sprays of flowers, the whole mounted on a green base containing a bird organ. Vulliamy 1817. This clock formerly stood in the Library at Brighton Pavilion …

In 1923 the Queen supervised its redecoration, and as the memorandum notes,

This Room was re-decorated by Messrs White Allom & Co.

Three pairs of new green silk Curtains, the applied Chinese design embroidered panels were made from old silk found in the Stores.

Three new pelmets & three pair of rope holders.

Six panels of yellow Chinese embroidered silk, found in Stores.

Three new giltwood cornice poles with carved dragon ends.

Six giltwood banner poles with carved dragon ends.

Five panels of white lacquer as fitted in doors & overdoor, found in Stores.

Three new, native wood oblong tables, one fitted with a panel of white lacquer, found in Stores.

Four new, reeded wood pedestals.

A bamboo tray top Table was placed here.

The furniture was cleaned and re-upholstered in Chinese silk, from old silk found in Stores.

Two Chinese State junks, were transferred from the Principal Corridor.

The China was re-arranged.

The Carpet was cleaned.
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But, after the charismatic Edward VII and the magical beauty of Queen Alexandra, King George V and Queen Mary seemed a dull pair indeed. The King, gruff and unsmiling, moved stiffly through his noble duties. To his critics he would rap, ‘a sailor does not smile on duty'.
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Queen Mary was equally unbending, a formidable figure in her singularly outdated clothes. Talking to her, the diarist Chips Channon remarked, was ‘like addressing a cathedral'. In fact, Queen Mary would have liked to follow the fashion suitable for wartime and shorten her skirts, but the King frowned on such a sartorial revolution. Mabell, Countess of Airlie, remembered,

Having been gifted with perfect legs, she [Queen Mary] once tentatively suggested to me in the nineteen-twenties that we might both shorten our skirts by a modest two or three inches but we lacked the courage to do it until eventually I volunteered to be the guinea pig. I appeared at Windsor one day in a slightly shorter dress than usual, the plan being that if His Majesty made no unfavourable comment the Queen would follow my example.

The next morning she had to report failure. The King on being asked whether he had liked Lady Airlie's new dress had replied decisively, ‘No I didn't. It was too short.' So I had my hem let down with all speed and the Queen remained faithful to her long full skirts.
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Had it not been for the First World War they might well have remained remote, unbending figures, frozen in outmoded costume and ceremonial in a somewhat forbidding Palace. But the war drew them out, giving them the chance to meet their people at work and at home, and to show their genuine concern and humanity. The Queen's unchanging style, with her toques and long skirts, became reassuring – a symbol of stability in a shaken world. Ordinary women, visited by the Queen in their kitchens, were surprised and warmed by her understanding of their problems. As she toured the hospitals, her eagle eye missed no detail and her advice was always common-sense and practical. It was not enough to bring sympathy to the limbless; the Queen realized howimportant it was to give wounded men their independence. So she encouraged research into rehabilitation and took particular interest in the workshops at Roehampton and Brighton where artificial limbs were made.

During the war the sheer hard work and dedication to duty of the King and Queen became appreciated. When the King went to the battlefront in France, the soldiers who met him in the trenches were glad of his undemonstrative sympathy. His courage was tested when, on 28 October 1915, he was thrown from his horse while visiting men of the Royal Flying Corps near the village of Hesdigneul. His horse had been trained to accept the gunfire and drumbeats, but not cheering men. It reared up like a rocket and came over on top of the King. He was taken back to England in great pain and was later discovered to have broken a bone in his pelvis, from which he never completely recovered. The accident did not improve his notoriously short temper.

As for the Queen, there were times when even her phenomenal energy flagged, for her programme was punishing. During the King's convalescence she took his place at many of his engagements as well. On 8 November 1915, for example, she inspected the troops on Salisbury Plain.

When the King recovered and began again his tours of workshops, factories and shipyards throughout the country, Queen Mary went too, and the King valued her support. He wrote to her after a particularly gruelling tour of the north – Newcastle, Liverpool and Barrow-in-Furness:

I can't ever express my deep gratitude to you my darling May, for the splendid way in which you are helping me during these terrible, strenuous and anxious times. Very often I feel in despair and if it wasn't for you I should break down.
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These tours together brought them close to the people. While other European thrones were rocking, King George V and Queen Mary took the Palace to the country and mutual understanding brought a new stability to the throne.

From the beginning of the war, the Queen was determined that women's voluntary work should be properly organized. She had learned much from her mother Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck, who had worked tirelessly for many charitable organizations.

The war stretched the Queen to the limit, but it also widened her horizons, bringing her into contact with people she would otherwise never have met.

During the war Queen Mary was to entertain Labour and trade union women at Buckingham Palace. This caused some surprise, but in the past she had accompanied her mother on expeditions to the East End of London, where the enormous figure of ‘Fat Mary' was greeted with affection. As a girl the Queen had helped her mother in her charitable projects and had been much influenced by their friend the wealthy philanthropist Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who had always come to their aid when they were ‘in short street'. Her kind of charity, practical and productive, had made a lasting impression on Princess May.

At the beginning of the war, as she recorded in her diary, the Queen ‘set to work to make plans to help existing organisations with offers of clothing, money, etc'.
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The Red Cross had its headquarters at Devonshire House; the National Relief Fund – backed by the Prince of Wales – was based at York House; and the King allowed the Queen to use the State Apartments at St James's Palace for her ‘Relief Clothing Guild'. She could now call on her own organization, the Needlework Guild – now called ‘Queen Mary's Needlework Guild' – which her mother had run from White Lodge in the old days, and which was now well organized in Surrey and London.

In the first years of the reign the Queen had been mainly concerned with the preservation and conservation of all that was interesting and beautiful in the past. Influenced by Aunt Augusta, she had little patience with, or understanding of, the radical politics that, as she saw it, produced disorder and threatened the throne, although she had also seen the result of blind reaction in other countries and accepted the need for change.

Queen Mary had, however, always been exceedingly brisk in her condemnation of those who would change society by revolutionary or violent means. Her own dedication to the monarchy was total: its protection and preservation came before any personal considerations. Therefore the fiercely republican attacks by some of the early socialists and trade union leaders were deeply offensive. She had not given much thought to political theory, and had been unaware of distinctions between Fabians, Christian Socialists, Marxists – all were equally dangerous.

But Queen Mary was always ready to learn, and on 17 August 1914 an announcement came from Buckingham Palace that a new committee was to be set up of industrial experts and representatives of working-class women unemployed on account of the war. Out of this grew the ‘Queen's Work for Women Fund', which was to be a subsidiary of the National Relief Fund. To administer this fund a new committee was set up called the ‘Central Committee for Women's Training and Employment', under the Chairmanship of the bright young Lady Crewe. To this the Queen gave her enthusiastic support, and through the work with this committee
her horizons were widened, again introducing her to women she would never otherwise have met.