Glamis Castle, site of a convalescent Christmas in 1914.
Given the air of timelessness that surrounded her until her death seven years ago at 102, it’s hard to imagine England’s venerated Queen Mum before she entered the royal family. But, as a lighthearted adolescent, she sang ’round the piano, danced the Cake Walk, and endured her brothers’s teasing about girlish gluttony. (“Excellent lunch — beefsteak — 3 helps — ham and roley poley. I eat a good deal,” they graffiti’ed in her diary.) No episode better illustrates the warmth and noblesse oblige that motivated her family than the memorable Christmas of 1914, spent at Glamis Castle, their turreted country home in Forfardshire, Scotland, detailed in William Shawcross’s recently published The Queen Mother: The Official Biography:
In late summer and fall, writes Shawcross in his biography of the Queen Mother, “shooting was at the heart of life at Glamis,” parts of which date to the 15th century. Festive parties of 20 or more regularly descended, personal maids and valets in tow, to hunt partridge, grouse, woodcocks and other game. Loading into horse-drawn carts in the morning, they would ride up to the moor for the day, often shooting more than a hundred birds in a single outing.
Not yet wired, the castle was lit by gas jets, lamps and candles in the years before World War I. But legions of servants (including six in the laundry alone), ensured a life of ease and comfort for its denizens and guests. “The maid brings in tea — lights my candles & goes off with my sponge and towels” to prepare the bath, wrote one awed arrival, a new governess. “Arrived there, I find a huge hot bath set — the Bath is enormously deep — a large blanket spread on the ground & beside the bath a carpeted step ladder by which one mounts in order to descend into the Bath.”
Evenings during the hunt season “were also lively” at Glamis, Shawcross recounts. “The Castle was lit by hundreds of candles; there were immense fires; there was dinner in the great dining room, which the twelfth Earl [of Strathmore] had renovated in ‘Jacobean’ style and which boasted an enormous carved sideboard, family portraits and wooden armorial shields illustrating family alliances.” In the drawing room afterward, “the focus of the room was often the piano at which Lady Strathmore or one of her daughters would play in the evenings while the rest of the party gathered around to sing traditional Scottish ballads or popular songs of the day.”
Remarked one guest, there was “no stiffness, no aloofness anywhere, no formality except the beautiful old custom of having the two pipers marching around the table at the close of dinner, followed by a momentary silence as the sound of their bagpipes died away gradually in the distance of the castle. It was all so friendly and so kind … No wonder little Elizabeth came up to me once as my visit was nearing its end and demanded, ‘But why don’t you beg to stay?’”
Elizabeth had four brothers in the service.
Glamis was usually dark at Christmas. December 1914 was the first year in 20 that the family stayed for the holiday, to the delight of 14-year-old Elizabeth. With the shadow of war cast across her country and her family – her four elder brothers were off soldiering, two of them at the front — perhaps she relished the manor’s cozy familiarity. And she undoubtedly felt needed there, having helped to tend soldiers at one of the two convalescent hospitals established by her energetic mother.
By summer of 1914, Glamis was devoted to the all-out effort to defeat the Kaiser. “[T]he billiard table was stacked with thick shirts and socks, mufflers, belts and sheepskins to be made into coats and painted with a waterproofing varnish” to plug a shortfall in supplies of greatcoats, Shawcross writes. Lord Strathmore, Elizabeth’s father, turned his attentions to territorial defence, instructing local farmers on preparations for invasion.
Perhaps most important, Glamis, “like many great homes … was at once converted for hospital use,” and commended especially for its care of shellshocked patients, writes Shawcross. Elizabeth’s “task was generally to make the soldiers feel at home. She did rounds of the ward, talked to them all, made friends with many and went to the village shop to arrange large quantities of vital purchases — Woodbines, Gold Flack and Navy Cut tobacco.”
Like many great homes, Glamis was converted for hospital use.
The teen-aged Elizabeth’s ease and curiosity endeared her to soldiers from all classes, homesick for towns in Britain and Commonwealth countries alike. Arriving with horrible stories and frightening wounds — to the stomach, the lungs, the “nerves” — the soldiers were lovingly tended at Glamis, only to be sent back to the front as soon as they recovered. A new lorryful of broken men arrived for every group that left.
It was in this atmosphere that Elizabeth “jumped up in delight & kissed her Mother exuberantly” on learning that Christmas would be celebrated at Glamis, with a diminished family of five, absent its soldier sons. With 20 wounded soldiers in their care, as Shawcross describes it,
family and staff at Glamis did their best to bring good cheer to the soldiers, setting up an immense tree in the crypt and distributing presents. ”The fun was fast and furious,’ according to Elizabeth. Everyone ate too much and she and [younger brother] David danced wildly with the soldiers in the ward. All in all, she said, it was ‘a dandy Xmas, you bet your bottom dollar’.”
Christmas candlelight photo by GearedBull.
Author Info - AngloFiles publisher Mandy Katz also writes for the New York Times and Moment magazine. Read more from this author
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A fascinating article. I can really imagine the young Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon bringing a ray of sunshine to the wounded soldiers.
A loosely connected thought – whilst idly trawling Google images this afternoon, looking at tiaras (as is my wont!), it struck me once again how Her Majesty The Queen has come to resemble her grandmother.
If you’ve nothing better to do, try putting Queen Mary of Teck into Google images and peer curiously at the pictures!