Mary of Teck

• 1. Introduction

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  Mary of Teck was born on the 26th of May 1867 at Kensington Palace in London, in the very room where Queen Victoria had been born 48 years and two days earlier. Victoria came to see the baby and wrote that she was "a very fine one, with pretty little features and a quantity of hair".

  The child was christened Victoria Mary, but her family, her friends and the public all called her May, after the month of her birth. Her family was royal only in a minor key. Her future held no obvious crown.

  Yet she would become Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India. How did the daughter of a nobleman without a fortune end up beside the throne? What did a queen consort actually do through war, grief and a royal crisis? And what did she leave behind when she died?

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• 2. A Minor Royal

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  Francis, Duke of Teck, had a title and very little else. He was the son of Duke Alexander of Württemberg and a morganatic wife, Countess Claudine Rhédey von Kis-Rhéde. That marriage left him with the lower style of Serene Highness and no inheritance.

  His wife, Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, was a granddaughter of King George III. Parliament gave her an annuity of £5,000, and her own mother, the Duchess of Cambridge, added about £4,000 a year. Even so, the Duchess of Teck gave lavishly to dozens of charities, while Francis sank deeply into debt.

  On the 27th of July, the baby was baptised in the Chapel Royal of Kensington Palace by Charles Thomas Longley, Archbishop of Canterbury. She was the eldest of four children and the only daughter, with three younger brothers. Settling their petty boyhood squabbles taught her, in one description, "native discretion, firmness, and tact". The household itself was "merry but fairly strict". The children played with their cousins, the children of the Prince of Wales, who were close to them in age. Home was Kensington Palace and White Lodge in Richmond Park, which Victoria had granted on permanent loan.

  Hélène Bricka, her governess, taught her at home alongside her mother. Bricka urged wide reading and intellectual discipline. She stayed on as a trusted adviser into May's adult life and later helped with the early education of May's own children. The Duchess of Teck also took her daughter to visit the tenements of the poor, which was unusual attention for a lady of her class.

  In 1883 Francis moved the family abroad with a small staff to economise. They toured Europe visiting relatives, and in Florence May spent happy hours in galleries, churches and museums. She grew fluent in English, German and French. The family came back to London in 1885 and settled in Chester Square, where May acted as her mother's unofficial secretary.

  She also wrote every week to her aunt Augusta, Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. When war later made Augusta an enemy subject in Germany, the Crown Princess of Sweden carried May's letters across the lines until Augusta died in 1916.

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• 3. Two Brothers

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  In 1886, May was a debutante in her first season and was presented at court. She was the only unmarried British princess who was not descended from Queen Victoria. That fact made her a natural match for the family's most eligible bachelor, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, the eldest son of the Prince of Wales.

  On the 3rd of December 1891, at Luton Hoo, the country home of the Danish Ambassador Christian Frederick de Falbe, Albert Victor proposed and May accepted. Victoria's fondness for her counted heavily in the choice, as did her strong character and sense of duty.

  Six weeks later Albert Victor was dead, killed by a recurrence of the pandemic of 1889-1890. May was 24, and the future she had just accepted vanished.

  His younger brother George, Duke of York, was now second in line to the throne. He and May grew close during their shared mourning. Victoria still saw May as the right wife for a future king, and the public was anxious for the Duke of York to marry and secure the succession. In May 1893 George proposed, and she accepted.

  They married on the 6th of July 1893 at the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace. They were soon deeply in love. George wrote to her on every day they were apart, and unlike his father he never took a mistress.

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• 4. Nursery and Needlework

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  York Cottage, on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, was a modest house for royalty, and George loved it for exactly that reason. The couple also kept apartments at St James's Palace. They had six children: Edward, Albert, Mary, Henry, George and John.

  The nursery did not run smoothly. The first nanny was dismissed for insolence and the second for abusing the children. This second nanny wanted the boys to prefer her. Before Edward and Albert were presented to their parents, she would pinch them so that they cried and were swiftly returned to her. When she was found out, she was replaced by her assistant, the effective and much-loved Charlotte Bill.

  Mary and George seem at times to have been distant parents. They failed at first to notice the abuse. Their youngest son, John, was housed at a private farm on the Sandringham Estate in Charlotte Bill's care, perhaps to hide his epilepsy from the public. Still, behind an austere public image and a strait-laced private life, Mary was a caring mother. She comforted the children when their father's discipline was harsh.

  Edward's memoirs recall her "soft voice" and "cultivated mind". He described how she started an album for each child to record each stage of childhood. His private letters to his wife after her death were far colder. He wrote that he could not believe any mother had been so "hard and cruel" to her eldest son, and that her veins had always run "icy cold".

  In 1897 Mary became patron of the London Needlework Guild, succeeding her mother. The guild had been founded in 1882 as The London Guild and, between 1914 and 2010, carried Mary's name. Her own embroidery ranged from chair seats to tea cosies.

  On the 22nd of January 1901, Queen Victoria died, and Mary's father-in-law took the throne as Edward VII.

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• 5. Crown and Empire

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  For most of 1901, George and Mary were styled the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, and they spent eight months touring the empire. Their route took in Gibraltar, Malta, Egypt, Ceylon, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Mauritius, South Africa and Canada. No royal had attempted so ambitious a tour. Mary wept at the thought of leaving her children so long with their grandparents.

  On the 9th of November 1901, nine days after they got home and on the King's 60th birthday, George was created Prince of Wales. The family moved from St James's Palace to Marlborough House. In 1904 the couple visited Austria-Hungary and Württemberg. The next year Mary gave birth to John after a difficult labour. She recovered quickly, but the baby developed respiratory problems.

  In October 1905 the Prince and Princess of Wales set out on another eight-month tour, this time to India, and again the children stayed with their grandparents. The journey passed through Egypt in both directions and stopped in Greece on the way home. Almost at once came a trip to Spain for the wedding of King Alfonso XIII and Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, where the bride and groom narrowly escaped assassination. A week after returning, Mary and George travelled to Norway for the coronation of King Haakon VII and Queen Maud, George's brother-in-law and sister.

  Edward VII died on the 6th of May 1910, and Mary became queen consort. George asked her to drop one of her two official names, Victoria Mary. She chose to be Mary, since she did not want the same style as his grandmother. She was the first British-born queen consort since Catherine Parr took the title in July 1543.

  The transition brought friction with her mother-in-law, Queen Alexandra. They were on friendly terms, but Alexandra could be stubborn. At Edward's funeral she demanded precedence over Mary, and she was slow to leave Buckingham Palace. She also kept royal jewels that should have passed to the new queen.

  Mary was crowned beside her husband at Westminster Abbey on the 22nd of June 1911. Later that year the pair sailed to India for the Delhi Durbar on the 12th of December 1911, touring the sub-continent as Emperor and Empress. They returned to Britain in February.

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• 6. War and Loss

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  At the palace, Queen Mary ordered an austerity drive during the First World War and had food rationed. She also visited wounded and dying servicemen in hospital, which put her under great emotional strain.

  After three years of war with Germany, anti-German feeling in Britain ran high. The Russian imperial family had been deposed by a revolutionary government and was refused asylum in Britain. News of the Tsar's abdication encouraged those who wanted to replace their own monarchy with a republic. The war ended in 1918 with Germany defeated and the Kaiser, her husband's cousin, in exile.

  Two months after the war ended, Prince John died at the age of thirteen. Mary wrote in her diary that "our poor darling little Johnnie had passed away suddenly". She added that the first break in the family circle was hard to bear, but that people's kindness had helped.

  The postwar years brought civil unrest over social conditions, Irish independence and Indian nationalism. Through them Mary kept a self-assured calm in public. In private she advised George on his speeches and drew on her deep knowledge of history and royalty. He valued her discretion, intelligence and judgement.

  In the late 1920s George developed lung problems, made worse by heavy smoking, and Mary watched over his care. During his illness in 1928, someone asked his doctor Sir Farquhar Buzzard who had saved the King's life. He answered, "The Queen".

  In 1935 the couple marked their silver jubilee, with celebrations across the empire. George wanted his tribute to her placed last in his speech. He told his speechwriter, "Put that paragraph at the very end. I cannot trust myself to speak of the Queen when I think of all I owe her."

  George V died on the 20th of January 1936, after his physician, Lord Dawson of Penn, gave him an injection of morphine and cocaine that may have hastened his death.

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• 7. The Dowager Queen

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  Her eldest son took the throne as Edward VIII, and she became Her Majesty Queen Mary. Within the year, his plan to marry the twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson ended his reign.

  Mary disapproved of divorce, which ran against Anglican teaching, and thought Simpson wholly unsuitable as a king's wife. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and the Dominion governments advised that Edward could not stay king and marry her. He abdicated. Mary stayed loyal to her son but could not understand why he put personal feelings before royal duties. Simpson had once been presented at court to George V and Mary. Mary later refused to meet her in public or in private.

  She saw it as her duty to support her reserved second son, Albert, Duke of York, who became George VI. At his coronation she was the first British dowager queen to attend. Her love for Edward never faded, but neither did her disapproval.

  She returned to Marlborough House, her main London home. She took a keen interest in her granddaughters Elizabeth and Margaret and led them on outings to art galleries and museums. Their parents thought a demanding education unnecessary. In May 1939 her car overturned in a crash, and she escaped with minor injuries and bruises.

  In the Second World War, George VI wanted his mother out of London. She was reluctant, but she agreed to live at Badminton House in Gloucestershire, with her niece Mary, Duchess of Beaufort. Seventy pieces of luggage carried her belongings there. Her household of fifty-five servants filled most of the house, and only the royal servants complained that it was too small.

  From Badminton she visited troops and factories and directed the collection of scrap materials. She was known to offer lifts to soldiers she saw on the roads. In 1942 her son George, Duke of Kent, was killed in an air crash while on active service. She went back to Marlborough House in June 1945.

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• 8. Collector and Legacy

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  Queen Mary collected objects and pictures with royal connections. She paid above the estimates for jewels from the estate of Dowager Empress Marie of Russia. For the Cambridge Emeralds she paid almost three times the estimate, buying them from Lady Kilmorey, the mistress of her late brother Prince Francis. After his death she had arranged for a court to seal his will to cover that affair, which set a precedent for sealing royal wills.

  In 1924 the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens created Queen Mary's Dolls' House for her collection of miniatures. She was sometimes criticised for aggressive acquisition. She would tell hosts how much she admired something they owned, expecting them to donate it. She also studied the Royal Collection closely. Old inventories let her trace pieces lent out over earlier generations, and she wrote to the holders to ask for their return. She commissioned jewellery too, including rings for her ladies-in-waiting when they became engaged.

  In 1952 George VI died, the third of her children to die before her, and her granddaughter Elizabeth became queen. Mary told Princess Marie Louise, "I have lost three sons through death, but I have never been privileged to be there to say a last farewell to them." She also told Prime Minister Winston Churchill that she opposed the House of Mountbatten replacing the House of Windsor.

  Mary died in her sleep at Marlborough House at 10.20 pm on the 24th of March 1953, aged 85, ten weeks before her granddaughter's coronation. She had asked that the coronation not be postponed. Her body lay in state at Westminster Hall, where large numbers of mourners filed past. She was buried beside her husband in the nave of St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. Her will was sealed, and her estate was valued at £406,407.

  An ocean liner, a battlecruiser and a university took her name. So did Queen Mary Reservoir in Surrey and Queen Mary College in Lahore. On screen, Flora Robson played her in A King's Story in 1965, and Claire Bloom in The King's Speech in 2010. Candida Benson played her in The Crown in 2022.

  Sir Henry "Chips" Channon summed her up as "above politics... magnificent, humorous, worldly, in fact nearly sublime, though cold and hard. But what a grand Queen."

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