THE QUEEN MOTHER

Southland Times, Issue 19458, 24 January 1925, Page 11

THE QUEEN MOTHER

LADY OF SANDRINGHAM. Queen Alexandra, who recently celebrated her eightieth birthday, cannot go far from home these times. When it is such a home as Sandringham one does not need to go far afield. She loves Sandringham as deeply and intimately as a humbler woman can love the cottage where she has spent the happy and sacred days of her married life. Every year Queen Alexandra gives a prize to a girl in King’s Lynn School, and year in, year out, the little scholars have gone to Sandringham House to receive the prize from Queen Alexandra’s own hands. Last year, after she had received her prize, the girl was shown over the famous house by Queen Alexandra herself, and had its historic treasures pointed out to her. “I LOVE IT ALL.” They stopped at a window which looked westward over the park, the smooth grass, the firs, the rhododendrons. “Isn’t it beautiful?” said Queen Alexandra; “I love it all. I love to be here.” From her windows she can see the little Sandringham church among the trees not a-quarter of a mile away. For 60 years she has looked across to it every birthday morning. Never, when she has been at Sandringham has she failed to attend the Sunday service. She has been there now for 12 months—the longest continual stay she has ever made—and though her health has varied, she has been able to go to church every Sunday. She may motor on other occasions, but she always goes to church in a coach drawn by two white horses. She sits in the corner of the pew Dy the chancel wall, hidden from those who sit in the nave, by the pillar of the chancel arch. All round her are memorials of the past—and they mostly have a touch of sadness. At her left hand, so close that she can touch it, is the memorial tablet with a portrait of King Edward with some texts from the Bible and the simple words: “In deepest sorrow from his loving and devoted wife, Alexandra.” THE FIRST-BORN. „ Her prayer-book lies on a brass plate, fastened to the pew, and with the words engraved: “This place was occupied for 28 years by my darling Eddy, next his ever-sorrowing and loving mother-dear, January 14, 1892.” This was Edward, Duke of Clarence, her first-born. Those who remember him about the estate, say that he was “his mother’s son”: like her in face and manner and disposition, and deeply attached to her. Few can tell what a sorrow it was to her when he died. The little brass plate is for her own eyes only. It is before her as she sits in the pew to worship. Just behind her is a niche in the wall, so low down that she conceals it when she stands, and in it a crystal crucifix. It is “a thank-offering to Almighty God placed in Sandringham Church by one whose joy it was to serve his King and Queen,” placed there by Sir Dighton Probyn, whose death after 50 years of service has been, perhaps, Queen Alexandra’s most bitter loss since the death of King Edward. In the old days Queen Alexandra would slip across to the church alone, would let herself in with her private key, and spend quiet minutes there among these memorials of her life as a wife and a mother. Not all her memories were sad at those times, for it was in that little chancel that the radiant young Princess took her first sacrament on Easter Sunday, 1863. As frailty came upon her and she could no longer walk out alone, she had to give up these quiet, solitary visits, but she prizes the more the service on Sunday morning. MEMORIES OF THE PAST. In Sandringham House she now dwells much with the past. She has many albums of photographs of events and scenes in her life as Princess of Wales and Queen of England. These she sometimes looks over, recalling all the thrill and glow of life that they meant in the years gone by. There are the old books, too. It is one of her regrets that her hearing is not as good as it was, so that she cannot find the old pleasure in music and in being read to. She cannot go among the cottagers as of yore. There was a time when each day had its kindly visit to some one in the villages bn the estate who had sickness or trouble. It was then that she created that reputation for impulsive human generosity in word and deed that hangs round her name like a rich perfume. There is scarcely a cottage on the whole 11,000 acres where she has not visited, and none that was ever so honoured has forgotten that gracious presence, that delicate, almost girlish, sympathy, that arresting sweetness of word and manner. She has still great joy in her flowers. She loves to be taken whore they are growing, and she loves to see them around her in her rooms. Her constant companion just now is “Tootsie,” a little dog. She is never seen without him, and indoors he is always by her fireside. AMONG THE PEOPLE. Though she is so happy at Sandringham, with its beauty and stillness, its ancient trees, its herds of deer, its shy birds, its shrubberies, Queen Alexandra sometimes longs to be again among the people she has loved so well and who have loved her. Every Saturday afternoon for some time past, when the narrow streets of King's Lynn are crowded with shoppers, Queen Alexandra in an open car has driven slowly from one end of the town to the other. All greet her eagerly. Every man takes off his hat, and every woman bows. Queen Alexandra returns these greetings with the sweet smile and bow which London learned to know so well. It would seem almost impossible to believe that she is 80. There are those who say that she has scarcely changed in appearance for 40 years. She sits as upright as ever and glances about with as quick an eye. This birthday with its quiet family celebration must contrast with the great birthdays she had when King Edward was alive. He always made December 1 the biggest shoot of the year. On that day illustrious guests would be at Sandringham to shoot in his favourite coverts. Queen Alexandra would drive out to have lunch with the party. KING EDWARD’S SURPRISE. Then in the evening there would be a brilliant dinner party with kings and princes round the table. Flags would be flying from every cottage and every mast in the neighbouring towns. The school children would come up to the big house and have a wonderful tea, with kings and queens, princes and princesses, to wait upon them. Later would come some entertainment —King Edward’s surprise for his Queen. He never would let her know what it was to be. Sometimes it was a great orchestra from London, or a party of West End actors and actreesea.

Now on her eightieth birthday, she looks back through the years to her first glimpse of King Edward, in a foreign cathedral, when she was just 17; to her arrival in England, a shy and happy girl of 19, with a flotilla of warships to escort her, to the kiss of greeting from the Prince—“in a blue flock coat and grey trowserer"—and then all London wild with joy and eager to catch Sight of her peerless beauty.