Queen Mary could drop awful clangers from time to time, as in that query to the slum dwellers. I suppose, however, that to her, reared in the Victorian tradition of sellf-improvement (even if her own family didn't exactly follow it!
), it was an honest, if simplistic, question. She probably thought that honest effort would lift them out of their poverty - the same attitude is prevalent today in many quarters.
On the oft-discussed issue of children: she may, like Queen Victoria, simply not particularly have enjoyed or understood their company. Not everyone does; the post-enlightenment cult of sentimentalising the child is just as inaccurate and harmful as it is to go to the other extreme. Victoria, for one, certainly thought so: she considered what she called 'baby-worship' in her daughters to be quite wrong. Queen Mary had to cope with occasional, explosive rages on the part of King George (as did Queen Mother Elizabeth with 'Bertie'), an irresponsible, somewhat embarrassing family of origin, and the presence of 'Motherdear' hovering over her 'Georgie-boy' - a difficult mix for anyone. Perhaps she just didn't have much emotion left over for children, faced as she was with doing the best she could in a very demanding job, and doing it rather well, too. Catherine the Great is another figure routinely pilloried for her failure as a mother. I wonder: do male or female historians have a more difficult time with such women?
