Royalty Digest

On a rather more seemly note, Miss Gray quotes Bernard Berenson in July, 1955: "Tea with Duchess Anna d'Aosta [Prince Christopher's sister-in-law] in her villa …. Delightfully laid-out garden in steep decline, exquisitely kept. Indoors the same, the acme of comfort and cosiness, no pretence, no display. The Duchess, a bulky woman with a Valois profile and delicate young daughter. A friendly, familiar atmosphere, ease of chat, all a result of high breeding." Not so impressed was Count Ciano, whose diary for March, 1938, included: "Lunch at the Volpis, with the Duchesse de Guise … an insignificant, painted old thing. She showered me with commonplace questions, to which I could make nothing but commonplace replies."

Paolo Manelli, in his Mussolini, is quoted as (to) have told the King that "20,000 weak-minded Italians would be sorry for the Jews". To which the King rejoined: "I am one of them". There is a revealing quote from Rudolf Bohlmer's book Monte Cassino on Queen Marie José, who died fairly recently: "In the preparations for the coup d'etat [against Mussolini], a particularly active part was played by the Crown Princess, who had never been friendly disposed towards the Dictator". Antoine, the hairdresser, thought that, of all the royalties he knew, Marie José "had the most allure. She looks like a madonna, tall with a profile of classical perfection and honey-coloured hair that holds a natural wave." Her sister-in-law, Queen Astrid of Belgium, patronised Antoine once: "She was smaller than Marie José, with thick, lovely hair of the same honey-coloured shade. In arranging it, I did it rather low, in a kind of pompadour. She was going to the opera, and was to wear a tiara. Like most of the others, she was usually dressed in a quiet tailored suit - which was a rather effective background for her long strings of exquisite pearls." Pierre Balmain is quoted as being proud and happy to be entrusted by Marie José "with the expression through her clothes of her dignified reserve". I think that would probably sound better in French. In about twenty snatches recorded about the late Queen of Italy, not one has an adverse word to say of her.

Arthur Ponsonby's life of his father Henry Ponsonby is full of cuttings and quotations. The Times obituary of the son, by then Lord Ponsonby, describes this book, of which there are many copies around, as "a contribution to historical literature of the first importance", being "a brilliant picture of the Queen and her Court and of the manners of the time …… As a social study, it is a work of art". A typed insert quotes Viscountess Byng of Vimy on the Duchess of Albany, to whom her mother was lady-in-waiting: "The 22-year-old widow found herself alone in a big family and not an easy one for a stranger to deal with - because some were jealous of Queen Victoria's affection for the newcomer. So in this rather unhappy state of affairs she turned to my mother for help and found it in full measure …… They had been mutually attracted to one another, for the Duchess was intelligent, repressed in childhood by a stern old mother, and beginning to blossom under my mother's influence". In another quote, Sir Richard Redmayne tells how the Duchess "disliked intensely Strachey's book on Queen Victoria. The charm of Queen Victoria, she said, lay in her being so human. One of the proudest memories of her life was that the Queen liked her to call her 'Mother' ."

The Duchess of Albany
with her children, Alice and Charles Edward

There is a quotation debunking a Hugh Dalton story that Queen Victoria said "Poor, poor Lady Ponsonby" when hearing that Arthur had become a Labour MP. This in fact happened after the Queen was dead. Arthur, who sprang from a line of Royal courtiers, was a Labour MP for years and eventually a pacifist. His son, Tom Ponsonby, led the Lords for Labour and was secretary of the Fabian Society. I used to meet him at the late Peter Eaton's house, The Lilies. Hugh Dalton, a Labour minister, was himself the son of a Royal Canon.

An ink quotation from Mrs. R. L. Stevenson confirms a picture familiar from a recent film on Queen Victoria: "The road to Balmoral ran not far behind the late Miss McGregor's cottage, and as the Queen always drove in an open carriage, with her tea basket strapped on behind, we could see her very plainly. Our admiration for the sturdy old lady was very much tempered by our sympathy with the ladies-in-waiting, with whom driving backwards on the front seat did not apparently agree. Their poor noses were very red, and the expression on their faces anxious, not to say cross, as they miserably coughed and sneezed". In 1887, according to another slip, the Queen's daughters were scandalized by a grinning Jubilee photograph of her being sold in the streets. She wouldn't interfere to have it stopped. "Well, really I think it is very like. I have no illusions about my personal appearance." She was always formidable, however. Mrs Belloc Lowndes wrote that she had a nervous dislike of receiving more than three foreign diplomats in one day. Through Ponsonby, Lord Sanderson persuaded her once to see four. Ponsonby sent the required consent, with a separate sheet saying: "The Queen said damn!" Sanderson told Mrs. Lowndes that Victoria had an astonishing power of making those with her feel, and that without saying a word, when she was angry, annoyed or grieved."

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