Mark Steyn: Detecting the steel fist beneath her pastel chiffon

Her subjects prepare to bury the most beloved of royals: The Queen Mother could always look her people in the face

Preparing King Edward VII's grand Durbar in Delhi in 1903, the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, thought it best to delete Onward, Christian Soldiers from the program. Not because of any lily-livered multicultural sensitivity (most of the soldiers present were Hindu or Muslim) but because of one offending stanza: "Crowns and thrones may perish Kingdoms rise and wane ... "

Two years after the King's durbar, His Majesty's grandson, "Bertie", went to a children's birthday party and met a nice girl called Elizabeth, who gave him the cherries off the top of her cake. Born to an age of durbars, Queen-Empress of a quarter of the world's population, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother saw almost all the world's other crowns and thrones perish -- those of her husband's cousins in Germany and Russia, Austria, Turkey, Italy, all the great empires. The nations dominating today's headlines -- Israel and its enemies, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia -- didn't exist, nor, for that matter, did the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Kingdoms waned, but rarely rose. In a demotic age, Yankee Doodle came to London in the form of a peanut farmer who, on being presented to Her Majesty, kissed her smack on the lips. Long after the rest of the world had forgotten Jimmy Carter, the Queen Mum included him in her list of post-prandial "anti-toasts" to various bêtes noires -- Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe and the former U.S. President, "the only man, since the death of my dear husband, to have had the effrontery to kiss me on the mouth."

Any long life is humbling, for it reminds us that all the great fixtures and features of our world are, in the course of one human span, no more than passing fancies.

The Queen Mother was the last Empress of India, which means the last Empress -- the last with an empire, as opposed to, say, the Empress of Japan or whoever the self-proclaimed Emperor (and cannibal) Bokassa was married to, back in Central Africa in the Eighties. If you're a real, live Empress, it must, if we're honest, be something of a comedown when the highlight of your centenary is receiving Adrienne Clarkson so she can induct you into the Order of Canada. But it also represents a kind of survival. The Kaiser, the Romanovs, the Soviet Politburo are gone, but the Queen Mum hung in there to bequeath her daughter the monarchies of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Bahamas, Papua New Guinea, Belize, Tuvalu.... Today, over half the thrones in the world are the Queen's, which given the way things were looking in, say, 1919 isn't bad.

For the Queen Mother's generation, the impermanence of the world was defined by the Great War, which the British Empire entered on her 14th birthday, August 4th 1914. A year later, her brother Fergus was killed in action on the western front. By then, her family's Scottish home, the Macbeth-haunted Glamis Castle, was a military hospital for convalescing soldiers, and Lady Elizabeth an orderly. It's easy to mock the idea of rough Dundee Tommies being ministered to by some silly debutante, and no doubt, even as I write, some Fleet Street contrarian is gleefully putting the boot in. But it gets to the heart of how the Queen Mum lived her entire life: noblesse oblige. Toffs had it good, they got to live in the big house, that meant they had an obligation to give something back -- or, as she put it, "The work you do is the rent you pay for the room you occupy on Earth." The Queen Mum occupied a swankier room than most and so worked hard, until the end.

She came from an illustrious line, a descendant of Sir John Lyon, Thane of Glamis, who married Jean, daughter of King Robert II of Scotland, in 1376, which I mention only because we columnists have very little opportunity to use the word "thane" these days. But her character was that of the late Victorian Imperial ruling class, whose devotion to duty was almost vaudevillian: For her, monarchy was a show, and the show must go on. At the racetrack, she'd pick up the binoculars and peer through them every few minutes, not because it helped her see any better but because it proved to the gawping crowds that she was paying attention: she was acting the part of a racegoer.

She was the first member of our Royal Family to smile in public: Queen Alexandra usually looked sad and distracted, as well she might; Queen Mary opted for severe, as if it were only Royal disapproval that held her subjects in check. But, as Duchess of York and then Queen Consort, the Queen Mum put on a happy face. She wore a smile, professionally, for nearly eight decades. She also invented the Royal "walkabout", in Ottawa in 1939, when she paused to chit-chat with some Scottish stonemasons. But that's where it stopped. In 1923, Lady Elizabeth gave a prototype Royal interview referring to her fiancé, HRH The Duke of York, as "Bertie". King George V was furious at this breach of protocol, and in the ensuing 79 years the Queen Mum never again gave another interview. If she was a performer, she was an old-fashioned one -- the kind who does the show and lowers the curtain, rather than heading off to Diane Sawyer to talk about sex and battles with alcohol. She had the "common touch" -- look at that marvelous photo of her playing snooker on the cover of Mordecai Richler's recent book on the subject, or the picture of her pulling a pint behind the bar that you can still find hanging in East End pubs. But a touch was all you got. You never knew what she really thought, only what various intermediaries passed on. She disapproved of her grandchildren's divorces because she thought public dysfunctionalism broke the compact between rulers and subjects: the price of a life of privilege was that you never let the mask slip. Her brother-in-law, the Duke of Kent, was a bisexual drug addict and lover of Noel Coward, but he didn't give confessional interviews sobbing that he'd been living a lie and he and Noelie wanted to move in together. In the Queen Mum's view of monarchy, weakness delegitimized you. That's why she despised King Edward VIII: he was unprofessional. He couldn't do his job without the woman he loved! Get a grip, man! As Elizabeth was happy to concede, her marriage was arranged; love came afterwards.

She seemed, in that sense, even older than she was. Even as a gel about town in the early Twenties, she was never quite at home in bobbed hair and flapper dresses. If you look at those early photos -- the moon-faced girl, barely 5-feet, but with that impressive bosom -- she seems much more suited to those tight-waisted formal dresses with the plunging neckline, a post-war approximation of the Edwardian hourglass figure her grandfather-in-law so appreciated. Her nemesis, Mrs. Simpson, was the modern woman, the Jazz Age fast liver who thought Buckingham Palace was just another stop on the cocktail circuit. Privately, the American divorcee called the Duchess of York "Cookie" after her soft, plump Scots cook. The Duchess proved a tougher cookie.

For that reason, she was the only Royal I ever really wanted to meet, just to see if I could discern a hint of the steel fist inside the pastel chiffon. The closest I got was being in a room with her, surrounded by her retinue of elderly queens and pursed-lip ladies-in-waiting. From the look of it, she travelled with more servants than the Queen. She had a four million pound overdraft at Coutts, the Royal bankers who must sometimes have wondered what they'd done to deserve the honour. Unlike the downwardly-mobile Prince Edward ("Hi, Edward Windsor here") or Princess Anne (who travels up to London on a cheap-day Super-Saver rail ticket), the Queen Mum was queenly to the hilt. Not once in her 101 years did she have to draw her own curtains or run her own bath. The only reason I know she could answer the phone is because, in the early days of their marriage, Andy and Fergie liked to amuse their friends at late-night parties by dialing her private number and saying, "Hello, is Dick Head there? Dick? Dick Head?"

There were, to be frank, a lot of dickheads in the Queen Mum's class. But, for most of the modern age, they were the class that ruled much of the world. Mouldering old castles like Glamis sent forth the chaps who manned not just the British political establishment but their Imperial branch offices. The master plan, if there was one, was to have enough social mobility to co-opt anyone promising. That was the point of that 1903 durbar: to bring the Indian princes and middle classes within the British system. They did it in Canada, too. Wander into the Mount Royal Club in Montreal, past the gallery of portraits and marvel at the way fellows with quite ordinary names like Smith wound up as "Lord Strathcona" or "Lord Mount Stephen". It's a world that endures only in Fleet Street obituaries, such as that last month for the widow of Sir Ewan Forbes, who spent his first 40 years as Miss Elizabeth Forbes-Semphill and whose sex became a matter for the Scottish Court of Session when he attempted to inherit a Nova Scotia baronetcy created in 1630. Perhaps if Conrad had been willing to change his sex, Mr. Chrétien might have looked more kindly on his peerage.

Lots of people are changing their sex these days. The surgeon who performed the Queen Mum's hip surgery, William Muirhead-Allwood, is now Sarah Muirhead-Allwood. I expect Her Majesty took it in her stride, quite literally. The British upper class had a good innings, from James II to the Second World War, but it ran up against forces it couldn't co-opt, submerge, assimilate. The Queen Mum exemplified these changes personally: an impossibly grand woman, during the war she succeeded in reinventing herself, the King and their daughters as the apotheosis of the modest, decent, unassuming middle-class Home Counties family. The Duke of Edinburgh, being Greek and not quite so attuned to these things, took the whole thing too far and modernized the Royals into the quintessential dysfunctional family. But by then the Queen Mum was no longer in charge, and could only rail in private as one fad after another chipped away at her world. She was instinctively conservative. She thought decolonization had come too soon, that the European Union was absurd, that Prince Philip's uncle, Lord Mountbatten, had made a complete pig's ear of India, and that Tony Blair was a modish twerp. On all of these matters, I agree with Her Majesty. She would have made an excellent National Post columnist.

The Queen Mum summed it up well in a phrase that came back to me a couple of weeks after September 11, in those panicky days when a trace of confectioner's sugar from some janitor's Danish was enough to send Senators and Congressmen stampeding from the Capitol. Buckingham Palace received nine direct hits during the Blitz, including one occasion when a single German bomber flew low up the Mall and dropped its load directly above the living quarters. The King and Queen were in their drawing room and showered with shards of glass. The first bomb fell on the Palace 61 years almost to the day before the attacks of 9/11, on September 13th, 1940. Afterwards, Queen Elizabeth said, "I'm almost glad we've been bombed. Now I can look the East End in the face."

The Queen Mother's remark captures precisely the unspoken pact between the rulers and the ruled: they should be able to look us in the face. For 79 years, when it came to the things that matter, she could.

Sounds like the Queen Mum had a big admirer in Mark Steyn! And it sounds like the lady was a real trooper! I had to laugh at her anti-toast about Jimmy Carter! He REALLY kissed her on the mouth? What a jerk!

Any long life is humbling, for it reminds us that all the great fixtures and features of our world are, in the course of one human span, no more than passing fancies.

Who can live such a long life as this, or write such a line?

had to laugh at her anti-toast about Jimmy Carter! He REALLY kissed her on the mouth? What a jerk!

Have to forgive Jimmie. After all he comes from a country that did away with all the King and Queen and royalty stuff over 225 years ago. Although some boobs in this country act like the Kennedys were royalty

..... it gets to the heart of how the Queen Mum lived her entire life: noblesse oblige. Toffs had it good, they got to live in the big house, that meant they had an obligation to give something back -- or, as she put it, "The work you do is the rent you pay for the room you occupy on Earth."

There is a very high price to be payed for being a Queen.

Or a princess.

Or a duchess.

Are you listening "princess" Dianna?

Whoops.

Too late.

Are you listening Fatty "duchess of york" Fergusen?

Whoops.

Too late.

[Next?]

The only reason I know she could answer the phone is because, in the early days of their marriage, Andy and Fergie liked to amuse their friends at late-night parties by dialing her private number and saying, "Hello, is Dick Head there? Dick? Dick Head?"

I'm sorry, but harrassing your grandmother for the amusement of your friends is tacky.

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