King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (nee Bowes Lyon)

[Constantinople]

Martyn
       We were sharing a house at the time.  My friend was quite interesting in his own right.  His cousin was a Wimbledon class player named Woodforde. He was leftist and when he got home from a day with the Queen, he liked to play Jimi Hendrix at full volume, much to the ire of his wife and delight of his daughter.  In the couple of months nothing at all leaked outand i think this may have reflected that they had a working relationship not a social one.  Philip was also not there for most of the time so there were no loose canons.  The stories I related about the Queen Mother occurred in a social millieu, which was different and there was quite a bit of booze flowing.  My friend did get a nice signed picture and a pair of cuff links from the Queen, which he showed me and let me borrow once when I had a meeting with a minister (part of my job was working on a government subcommittee on infrastructure.  The minister who was chairman kept looking at my cufflinks.  finally he asked to take one off and show him/  I did and he recognized it immediately ( it had the royal coat of arms on it) he asked me where i got it from and I told him it was gift from a friend and at meetings my treatment increased stratospherically.  Alas there is nothing to pass on about HM.

[Martyn]

What a great anecdote Constantinople - thanks so much for sharing it!

I love the story about the cufflinks - just goes to show the significance of small details to those in the know........

[Tdora1]

I have been giving some thought recently about Cookie and her various family orders. 







While Duchess of York she wore the family order of George V, but once her husband came to the throne and then her daughter, she seems to have ceased wearing the George V family order.  At least I can't think of a photo of her wearing George V along with George VI. 
My question for anyone who wishes to answer is, do you think she stopped wearing George V's order because it was given to her from her father-in-law as 'just' a daughter-in-law and that she preferred to wear orders that were given to her as Queen Consort (by her husband) and Queen Mother (from her daughter) because those orders underscored her own rank?

  Sorry to anyone with a slow load for having the repeat all these photos but it is the topmost one that has just caught my eye (been away and am trying to catch up!) The facial features seem uncommonly large although that may be an effect of hairstyle and maybe angle. But it is the proportions of the head to the body that seem so out of whack as to be almost monstrous. I am also looking at the neck area now...and wonder - Emeraldeyes, is this from a website that you sourced this photo...? I'm curious because I've never seen anything quite like the way this looks. Has GettyImages done a Cookie cut n' paste...?

[Tdora1]

Thinks "no, Getty are one of the largest and most reference image libraries in the wrold!" And I'd be confident EmeraleEyes wouldn't tolerate anything suspicious amirite?! maybe its the angle BUT it still looks to me strangely out of proportion...

[emeraldeyes1969]

You know, I've never noticed that before you pointed it out - that head is HUGE!  It must just be the angle - with the right shoulder receding so far back and head turned to the left - that makes it look so odd.  I'll never look at that pic the same way again! 
Maybe it's the first known bobblehead.

[Constantinople]

It is the picture.  I have seen her in person a few times and she was not disproportionate.  I think its the typs of lenses that they used in those days.

[Tdora1]

Well, in real life it was a bit hard to tell, what with those hats : ) though I never meant to imply that QEQM was actually giving a real-life physiological clue as to the Monster of Glamis though! Anyway, yes, Emerald Eyes I now can see what you mean about the R shoulder. Its the odd combo of darker and more focused head area, along with the paler-shaded and faded and turned-away angle of the body. Still, tis an unfortunate effect.

[Constantinople]

When I had lunch with her, she wasnt wearing a hat or any other head covering or tiara.  She did not seem disproportionate, other than her height, which was short.

[Lucien]

http://members3.boardhost.com/Oranjes/msg/1217840401.html

courtesy Marianne & the posters at the GREMB.

[Martyn]

Those awful Hartnell faux crinoline gowns are so hideous.....she looks simply ridiculous in that get-up, stood next to Queen Ingrid, whose restrained dress is a the perfect foil for her splendid jewels......like chalk and cheese.......

[gogm]

As a rule (there have been exceptions), UK royals have not been noted for their flair in dress.

[Leuchtenberg]

Those awful Hartnell faux crinoline gowns are so hideous.....she looks simply ridiculous in that get-up, stood next to Queen Ingrid, whose restrained dress is a the perfect foil for her splendid jewels......like chalk and cheese.......

I recall seeing a photograph taken at Fort Belvedere by the pool.  In the picture were the Duke and Duchess of York, Thelma Furness, Princess Ingrid of Sweden, among others.  Everyone in the photograph were in bathing suits except for the Duchess of York (future Queen Elizabeth).  She had on a dress, pearls, and a hat... all very ludicrous in comparison.  Talk about chalk and cheese in that instance.

Three women who were known in England for their fashion sense, particularly in the 30s, were the Duchess of Kent, Edwina Mountbatten, and Wallis Simpson, and Cookie loathed them all.

I've often wondered how she got on with Ingrid of Sweden and other relations of her husband.  I read somewhere that she found Irene Carisbrooke "amusing".  I doubt she had much to do with her though as Lady Carisbrooke was really an outer fringe member of the family. 

Interesting too would have been how the European royals viewed Elizabeth upon meeting her as Duchess of York.  By their standards of the time the marriage of Prince Bertie to a mere "Lady" would be considered unequal, regardless of the non-existence of morganatic marriages in Britain.

[Martyn]

Cookie in a bathing suit with that kind of sartorial competition would have been perhaps more ludicrous!  Let's face it, she was not blessed with height so that the minute that she started to spread, the effects were more visible than perhaps they might have been on a taller woman.

The 20's and 30's were eras in which the woman with curves was perhaps at a disadvantage; this was definitely the case for the QM.  Leuchtenberg, that's a good point about her loathing of those three stylish women; it is quite possible that all of these women made her inadequate for differing reasons. We know that Wallis never missed a trick in mocking Cookie for her lack of sartorial elegance and found her dull in the extreme; Marina came at it from a different angle, considering that Elizabeth and Alice Gloucester were inferior to her in terms of pedigree.  As for Edwina, she was of course sufficiently wealthy, beautiful and soignee not to give a stuff about what some short fat bourgeoise thought about her, and made up her own rules for life as she thought appropriate.  Small wonder that Cookie felt intimidated and diminished by these three exceptional women.

When she married the Duke of York, there was little notion that one day the couple would be called to perform duties for which neither were born, so her status was perhaps less of an issue.  After the war of course, the royal marriage market had collapsed and thus the choices of matrimonial partners for the children of George V was much more proscribed than it had been for him and his father's generation.  Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon and Alice Montagu-Douglas- Scott were perhaps not such bad choices as brides for the Windsors; both did their jobs well and became very popular, as well as introducing some fresh blood to a clan that probably needed it.

Perhaps Cookie had the last laugh anyway.  She lived longer than all of these women whom she despised, was revered by many (in spite of those teeth!) and lived off the fat of the land, every inch a queen long, long after they had shuffled off this mortal coil..........

[gogm]

Wallis had issues as did her husband. Their pro-Nazi leanings were intolerable and Cookie blamed David for thrusting George into the role of King that ended his life prematurely. Wallis was stylish, but not a beauty in my opinion.

[Grace]

Wallis had issues as did her husband. Their pro-Nazi leanings were intolerable and Cookie blamed David for thrusting George into the role of King that ended his life prematurely. Wallis was stylish, but not a beauty in my opinion.

Yes, that was apparently her rigid view, but as we've discussed before, his smoking and drinking habits were what drastically shortened the life of King George VI, not the stress of becoming king.