The Queen Mother (168 page)

Her horror at the prospect of another war so soon after 1918 led her, like the King, to support Chamberlain’s efforts to avoid it, but once war was declared she committed herself totally to victory.
‘Humanity must fight against bad things if we are to survive, and the spiritual things are stronger than anything else, and cannot be destroyed, thank God.’
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No one can measure the importance of the Queen’s presence alongside the King in London throughout the war. During the brutal days of the Blitz their unannounced appearances among the rubble of bombed homes brought immense comfort. There could perhaps never be a better symbol of the difference between constitutional monarchy and dictatorship than the way in which the King and Queen endured the war alongside their people until victory was achieved. ‘For him we had admiration, for her adoration’ summed up the views of many.
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And for her part she never faltered in her belief in the British people.

Peace in 1945 brought new anxieties, particularly for the King, as Britain’s Labour government embarked upon not only reconstruction but also radical reform. The Queen was not naturally predisposed to such changes, but she never lost her optimism; she and the King looked forward eagerly to the future and when he fell ill she always believed that he would recover.

When the King died in February 1952, grief overwhelmed her. Perhaps only her family and a few close friends knew how much she had depended on her husband and how much his loss undermined her. Her anguish was profound. Her spontaneous purchase of the Castle of Mey was a symptom of her grief, but it was a happy decision. Though impractical and expensive to run, the only home she ever owned gave her and her friends much pleasure for the rest of her life.

Once she had recovered her equilibrium, she brought to her new role a distinctive combination of wisdom, sympathy and vivacity, underpinned by a sturdy determination. She sometimes said to friends, ‘I am not as nice as I seem,’ and as a young woman she had written, ‘What a lot of our life we spend in acting.’
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But that’s true enough of most of humanity, after all; what matters is the use to which the ‘seeming niceness’ and the acting are put. Queen Elizabeth’s natural charm and inbred good manners undoubtedly helped her achieve what she wanted, both personally and in her public role. But it would be wrong to dismiss those qualities as a façade. In personal terms, the devotion of her family, friends and, perhaps above all, employees speaks for itself. In public the enduring, unflagging interest and sympathy she showed for others over so many decades – no doubt with occasional bouts of acting – surely reveals a genuine engagement,
answered by the genuine popularity she earned. Her unaffected enjoyment of the good things of life, especially dry martinis and champagne, and her indulgence in horseracing, both the most aristocratic of sports and the most popular form of gambling, won her great affection. Her
joie de vivre
was such that all of her life she lit up not only rooms that she entered but every occasion in which she took part. The name which she took, Queen Mother, she did not at first like but the title came quickly to symbolize the role she played in both her family and the nation.

She loved to preserve. The England in which she grew up was a home, filled with familiar and well-loved rituals. Many of these became unfashionable in the second half of her life. But she still treasured them – in her regiments, her ships, her universities and her 300 or so charities and other organizations. By celebrating traditions, she both enriched and prolonged them in a more impatient age. The remarkable breadth of her patronages gave her a public presence and, indeed, influence in many areas of national life. This could have been difficult for the Queen but her mother never usurped her daughter’s position. Deeply conscious of the monarch’s role, Queen Elizabeth always remained in the picture but never placed herself in the centre of the frame. She was always aware that it is a principal task of a hereditary monarch to pass the crown to someone well prepared for this unique responsibility, and she rejoiced in the success of her daughter. Indeed, during the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, which was celebrated only weeks after her mother’s death, millions of people across the country displayed their enthusiasm for Elizabeth II, providing remarkable proof of the affection which the monarch and the institution still enjoyed. They sensed that both Queens embodied the Shakespearean royal ideal of ‘Christian service and true chivalry’.

Queen Elizabeth’s dislike of change may have slowed down the pace of royal reform which is always necessary to retain consent. There were changes which the Queen and her advisers might have chosen to make earlier, had there been no concern about upsetting Queen Elizabeth. Against this must be weighed the fact that her remarkable popularity helped soften criticism of the monarchy, particularly in the miseries of the 1990s. The press had become unforgiving of almost everyone else in the family, but she remained largely above criticism. Even her extravagance was accepted, and usually with a smile – because of who she was. In those family crises, she was
sometimes criticized for not intervening directly in the lives of her grandchildren. But that is never easy in any family; she saw her task rather to support and sustain the Queen in any way she could throughout not only the
annus horribilis
but the rest of that painful decade.

The core of her popularity and the major feature of the second half of her life was surely her permanence, both in her principles and in the pattern of her life. As she grew older, she showed great courage in not allowing the infirmities of the years to compel her into retirement. There was something immensely reassuring in her insistence on carrying out her commitments year after year, and the stamina which enabled her to do so. Britain changed enormously but she remained constant. This had particular resonance for all those who were feeling rudderless in the wake of the immense social upheavals of the late twentieth century. Her high spirits and her love of the traditions and the quirkiness of Britain were an inspiration to millions.

In closing, one could recall that at the beginning of the Second World War, the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to her, ‘I feel inclined to say to Your Majesty what was said in the Bible story to Queen Esther – “Who knoweth whether thou art come to the Kingdom for such a time as this.” ’
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That was true in 1939 and it remained so to the end of her life.