
QUEEN ELIZABETH, THE
QUEEN MOTHER
Born August 4, 1900
Died March 30, 2002
Married Prince Albert of Great Britain April 26, 1923
Children: Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret
Elizabeth
was born at the beginning of the twentieth century, in London,
just a few months before Queen Victoria’s long reign
ended. She grew up in idyllic circumstances, surrounded
with what she would call "fun, kindness and a marvelous
sense of security," as the scion of an ancient but
down-to-earth Scottish noble family. When she was four,
her parents became the fourteenth Earl and Countess of Strathmore,
inheriting fifty thousand acres, an annual income of five
million pounds, an ironworks, and a staff of over a hundred
at their estates and their London home. In her wide-ranging
interests and her vitality, the girl took after her talented
and supremely competent mother, who painted, created spectacular
Italian gardens, played the piano, and entertained magnificently,
all while rearing ten children. Like her mother, Elizabeth
had the gift of vivacious attentiveness, making each person
feel as if he or she was the only person in the room.
During the First World War, her family’s ancestral
castle, Glamis, was turned into a convalescence hospital
for soldiers. Elizabeth spent her time knitting, tending
wounded soldiers and looking after her mother, who mourned
one son who was killed in action and another who was a prisoner
of war. After fire broke out in the castle’s central
tower in September 1916, The Dundee Courier, proclaimed
Lady Elizabeth a "veritable heroine" for her
fast-thinking action in saving the castle.
Elizabeth first met Prince Albert at a tea party when she
was five years old. They met again at a dance in the summer
of 1920. The prince, now Duke of York, courted Elizabeth
for two years before she agreed to marry him. She was the
first commoner to wed an heir to the throne since the 17th
century. After their April 1923 wedding, they did charitable
work, represented the king on tours of Africa in 1925, and
Australia in 1927, and were popular with the British public.
The late 1920s and the early 1930s were an idyllic period
for the happily married couple and their two daughters.
The death of King George V in January 1936 and the abdication
of Prince Albert’s older brother, King Edward VIII
in December of that year brought a sudden halt to their
comfortable domestic life. All during 1936 the Duke and
Duchess of York had watched in mounting horror as the king
continued an affair with American divorcee Wallis Simpson
and ignored many of his monarchical duties. When the king
decided he could not reign without Wallis at his side, the
shy and stammering Prince Albert was forced to take on a
role he never wanted and for which he felt ill-equipped.
Queen Elizabeth was crowned with her husband King George
VI on May 12, 1937 and devoted herself to strengthening
his self-confidence and restoring the wholesome reputation
and popularity of the monarchy. She scored a sartorial triumph
during the royal state visit to Paris in the summer of 1938,
and won over isolationist Americans and skeptical Canadians
with her charming democratic manner during a month-long
visit to both countries. In Washington DC and Hyde Park
she and the king began a friendship with the Roosevelts
that would sustain them during the difficult years ahead.
From September 1939 until April 1945 she rallied her people
to heroism in the fight against the Axis powers during the
Second World War. Showing great courage, she refused to
leave London during the Blitz. When Buckingham Palace was
bombed and she narrowly averted serious injury, she said,
"I am glad we have been bombed….it makes me
feel like I can look the [heavily bombed] East End in the
face." She spent the war crisscrossing the country,
visiting the troops, and providing comfort and compassion
to subjects who had lost their homes or their relatives
in the bombing.
After the war ended in 1945, she supported her ailing husband,
his health ruined by the strain of war, as they faced the
new post-war challenges of socialism and the decline of
the British Empire. When the king was diagnosed with cancer
in 1951, the doctors told her; she bore the news alone.
After his early death in February 1952, her daughter ascended
the throne as Queen Elizabeth II. The newly styled Queen
Mother was devastated by her husband’s death and spent
a year in deep mourning. When she was invited to visit the
United States in 1954, she asked, "Who would be interested
in the middle-aged widow of a king?" Nonetheless,
she visited America alone, beginning thirty-five years serving
as an international ambassador for Britain, and serving
as the link between many of the disparate countries of the
Commonwealth. She also served as a chancellor of the University
of Southern Rhodesia and the University of London, and became
the patron or president of over 300 charitable and artistic
organizations. She was an avid lover of the arts and a passionate
racehorse owner.
Britain celebrated her 80th, 90th and 100th birthdays with
big celebrations in London. She died in March 2002 in her
102nd year. She came to represent the stability, and enduring
spirit of Great Britain.
Historian John Grigg said that
her "sympathetic and cozy way of talking to individuals
made her visits to blitzed streets and towns [during World
War II] so memorable that they have passed into legend."