QUEEN MARY
A BELOVED FIGURE When Queen Mary recently celebrated her 84th birthday, the “Daily Telegraph,” London, in common with other British papers, discussed the reasons why she enjoys so strong a hold on the affections of the Royal Family and the public. “Peterborough” points out two reasons for her keeping so much before the public eye. She likes going out to see everything new. This, with her practical outlook, makes her more modern than many people to whom she is 30 years senior. In despising a wheelchair, unless forced to make use of it to complete a tour without excessive fatigue, she gives a glimpse of that sturdy courage which has taken her through her great sorrows with extraordinary outward calm.
She never inflicts her troubles on others, and her equable temperament makes life agreeable at Marlborough House. Hardly a member of her household, most of whom have served her for years, has ever seen her in a temper or even more than occasionally slightly muffled. This does not mean she has no dislikes. She has. Waste heads the list.
Her “by-product mind’’ is well known to factory managers who always win her approval most by showing her a new product evolved from waste. Another dislike is for modern sculpture such as is now to be seen in Battersea Park.
Her high personal code also makes her critical of untruthfulness and broken promises. Being direct and natural in manner herself, with a horror of "wrapping things up,” she does not care for artificiality in others.
Perhaps the direction in which Queen Mary can be called oldfashioned is in her dress. This even in spite of the swing of fashion’s pendulum in her favour—and in spite ■ of her milliner giving a slightly newer line to her turbans.
Young people admire her use of discreet make-up. She herself has no brief for the attitude that “I am too old to bother.” .She is always perfectly dressed with everything to match and has quite a number of new things made, although she still wears some of her pre-war clothes. People ask how much Queen Mary smokes. The answer is two or three cigarettes a day. She has smoked for years and was once among the women to be considered “advanced” in this respect. She usually has her first cigarette after lunch, and the others after tea and dinner.
QUEEN MARY
Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26441, 7 June 1951, Page 2
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