Article by John Derbyshire |
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| 102
Years of Small Talk I
was twice in the presence, approximately, of the Queen Mother, who died on
Saturday. The first time was
when, in my twelfth year, she came to open a new wing of my school.
(That a senior royal should turn up to open a new wing of an
undistinguished provincial boys’ school was testimony to the tremendous
political skills of our headmaster, a formidable personality of whom we
boys, the school staff, and also I believe the education bureaucrats at
the town hall were all terrified.) The
second time was shortly before I left the ould sod for good in 1985, when
she showed up in the royal box at Covent Garden opera house for a
performance of Der Rosenkavalier.
Of the first occasion I remember only an overpowering impression of
pastel, and noticing that she had very bad teeth.
(This, in England.) Of
the second, I recall being somewhat surprised at how little attention was
paid to her. She was applauded briefly when she appeared in the box, but
people sat down without waiting for her to do so, and nobody was a tenth
as interested in the Queen Mother as they were in Kiri te Kanawa up on the
stage. I
am sorry to speak so unenthusiastically of a lady so recently departed.
The truth is, I am not much of a monarchist, and I don’t know
many English people that are. When
the news came out on Saturday I got several very touching emails from
readers offering condolences. I
thank them all, and take their words of sympathy as characteristic
expressions of American warmth and open-heartedness.
At the same time I can’t suppress a small voice inside me saying:
Was the battle of Yorktown fought in vain, then?
The Queen Mother, after all, represented the monarchical order in
its older style, before the openness and reforms — not to mention
scandals — of recent years. She
was, amongst other things, the last Empress of India.
As red-blooded rebels against the Crown, shouldn’t you Yanks be
shaking your fists in defiance at all that? The
Queen Mother was, in fact, the very emblem of all that anti-monarchists
detest. Even among lukewarm
monarchists, you will often hear the cliché:
“I don’t mind the Queen and Philip, but I don’t see why we
should support all these secondary royals.”
The Queen Mother took some supporting.
As well as her palace in London, she had another home on the
Queen’s vast Balmoral estate in Scotland, and a castle of her own, also
in Scotland. (She used to
boast that this castle was “the coldest house in Britain.”)
Her permanent personal staff numbered about 50.
To some degree, she got away with this by trickery.
When the royal finances came under intense scrutiny in the early
1980s, the Queen Mother — who was born in 1900 — begged that an old
lady not be deprived of her familiar comforts for what must surely be, on
an actuarial basis, the last year or two of her life.
The government yielded, whereupon she mocked the actuarial tables
by living another 20 years, no doubt enjoying many a secret chuckle into
her gin at the vexation she was causing among the cost-cutters. There
was precious little monarchist sentiment in my upbringing.
My parents both came from coal-mining families, stalwart Labour
Party voters all. Mum and Dad
themselves were merely republicans; but
some of my uncles and aunts were strong socialists, who nursed fantasies
of themselves brandishing the red flag over the ruins of Buckingham
Palace. The town I grew up in
was strong for Parliament in the Civil War;
a great center of leather-working, we made the boots for Oliver
Cromwell’s army. (He never
paid us.) Americans generally
do not realize that republicanism is rather common in England, and even
more so in Scotland and Wales. Large
swathes of the British working class are indifferent or hostile to the
monarchy. There are some
exceptions, but they are in the same relation to the rest of the working
class as the “church ladies” of black America are to the black
proletariat at large. A
typical British monarchist would be the elderly widow of a professional
man — a lawyer, army officer or small businessman — living genteely on
a modest pension in some seaside bungalow. The
general, though I believe very mild, affection in which the Queen Mother
was held seems to contradict this — as does, more obviously, the clear
popularity of the late Princess Diana.
In fact these two women were both liked, in so far as they were
liked, for anti-monarchical reasons.
To be more precise, for anti-Windsor reasons.
The Windsors are, let’s face it, an unappealing lot, even if your
theoretical inclinations run to hereditary monarchy.
The best that can be said of them is that they have a sense of
duty, a willingness to spend their lives making small talk with strangers
in return for being allowed to continue in the extravagant lifestyle of
their ancestors. Not all of
them have even had that: for
example, when the late Duke of Windsor (briefly Edward the Eighth, before
he abdicated) found that he could have the lifestyle without the chores,
he jumped at the chance. And
even the best of them, like the current Queen, are a cold, dull lot.
The tone was set by the first monarch of her line, George the
First, of whom Doctor Johnson observed:
“He knew nothing, and desired to know nothing; he did nothing,
and desired to do nothing.” My
father used to refer to them as “these bloody Germans.”
That was a bit unfair to the Windsors, who are five generations
removed from the House of Hanover, but something of the stage-German still
clings to them, something puddingy, unimaginative and humorless. The
Queen Mother in her time, and Princess Diana in hers, brought a little
color and sparkle into this drab performance.
Neither of them was at all German, or “German”.
The Queen Mother, a Scot, was in fact the first Queen Consort of
actually British origins since Catherine Parr, who died in 1548;
and Princess Di, if she had attained the title, would have been the
first English one since that date.
(English people like to grumble, again a bit unfairly, that we
haven’t had an actual English dynasty since Harold Godwinson fell at the
battle of Hastings in 1066. Subsequent
dynasties have been, in order: Scandinavian,
French, Welsh, Scottish, Dutch and German.)
The presence of these two women on the team roster thus enabled
people who didn’t like the Windsors — which is to say, pretty much
everybody — to none the less like the monarchy. Some
years ago the historian Paul Johnson wrote a very fine essay* about the
interaction between charm and power.
He started out with some American examples, comparing Herbert
Hoover with FDR: Hoover was a much abler and more knowledgeable man
than FDR, and their policies did not substantially differ, but whereas
Hoover radiated a repellent gloom, FDR made people feel good, wanted,
useful and so happy. J.F.
Kennedy’s charm successfully concealed an abyss of weaknesses;
Richard Nixon’s lack of it, despite many stirling assets, was a
key factor in his downfall. Ronald
Reagan, overcoming his age and limitations, made his charm work hard for
him; Jimmy Carter and George Bush, without the gift, remained one-term
presidents. Johnson
then continued with a quick canter through the history of the British
monarchy, ending with the charmless Windsors, and the advice: “Royals who lack charm should marry it.”
Prince Charles did just that, but then threw it away.
(Although it must be said that while Princess Di possessed charm,
she had no other worthy attributes, unless you count her much-advertised
virginity.) Sixty years
earlier, poor stuttering Albert, Duke of York, had done the thing much
better, getting himself a bride who smiled her way doggedly through an
infinity of petty social engagements, produced two healthy children to
continue the dynasty, cheered up her country during a ghastly war,
invented a title and role for herself when her husband died, was a devout
Christian, became an expert and dedicated angler, consumed untold
quantities of gin, and lived to be nearly 102. The
Queen Mother’s life was more useful than that of most modern royals (I
am thinking of her exemplary behavior in the war) and she did no harm that
I can see. I hope she may
rest in peace. That’s about
all I can summon up for the occasion.
With only seventeen more days as an Englishman, and never having
had any strong feelings about the Crown in any case, I view the whole show
with cool anthropological detachment.
I
hate to end on such a flat note, though; so in a spirit of service to
fellow members of Britain’s lower orders, I’d like to point out that
fifty well-trained flunkies are now without employment. If you are looking for the very best in butlers, footmen or
Ladies of the Bedchamber, it’s a buyer’s market for a while. ------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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