The Quest for Queen Mary by James Pope-Hennessy & Hugo Vickers

Author:James Pope-Hennessy & Hugo Vickers [Pope-Hennessy, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2018-09-20T07:00:00+00:00

Sunday 26 May

(Queen Mary’s birthday)

At eight-thirty Mr Maude came in.

‘Will you be taking a bath this morning, Sir?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘A cold one, Sir?’

‘No, no.’

‘How cold, though? Tepid I expect, Sir.’

This seemed so much to be expected that I said yes. He came back in a few minutes:

‘It doesn’t look to me like nine-thirty breakfast Sir, more like ten I should say. I’ll tell you what, you just lie in bed and I’ll pop in and tell you how His Royal Highness is getting on.’

At twenty to ten came the news: ‘His Royal Highness has just begun to shave’, so I scampered into the by now stone-cold bath.

Breakfast I fancied would be a silent meal. Prince Henry came down in a tweed suit, remarking, ‘aren’t I terribly late’, with a sort of satisfaction.

There was a silver tea-kettle and a good deal of messing about with china and tea and spirit lamps. ‘Give yourself an egg.’ The cups were so large they needed two hands to hold them, and he had filled mine to the brim with scalding tea.

‘I’m afraid this wind is going to make me very cross and irritable’, he said.

‘There was quite a gale in the night, Sir.’

‘Still is.’

After a long silence and at the marmalade stage he suddenly said:

‘And you’re sure there’s no written evidence to show that the Duke of Clarence was a homosexualist?’

‘Absolutely none, Sir, that I know of. It’s pure hearsay from a generation ago, and may be quite untrue. It’s the sort of thing people might say.’

‘People don’t say that sort of thing if there isn’t something in it. Funny chap, Uncle Eddie. Neck like a swan.’

‘Like a swan, Sir?’

‘Yes, I saw his collars in his room at Sandringham. They were so high’ (holding his hands ten inches apart). ‘I always say, a bloody good thing he died when he did.’ (Squeals of laughter.)

After breakfast he sauntered off towards a small room off the hall, so I vaguely followed him. It was a very nice workroom, with a desk covered with photographs, piles of books on every table and on the floor. Like all the rooms, full of flowers and plants.

‘Is this Your Royal Highness’s own room?’

‘Yes, it is. Rather cosy I think.’

We looked at a gouache copy of a Winterhalter group of Queen Victoria, her husband and the children, trying to identify the children (which Princess Alice later did for me), and discussing whether it was water-colour or a print. I said it was clearly gouache. ‘Well you may be right. I thought it might be a print. I thought I’d wet my finger and rub it along the edge to see if the colour came off.’

‘But it’s already come off on the mount, Sir, when the picture was first framed’ (it was now unframed).

‘So it has. Water-colour I suppose.’

‘Or gouache, Sir.’

‘Yes. Watercolour. Or gouache.’

He then told me that the secret about the Prince Consort was that he was very, very small. Once at Balmoral, King George V had said, ‘I rather think Mackinnon* has the Prince Consort’s stalking suit’.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.