An Ex-Ex-Pat’s thoughts on the woman, her reign, and her passing.
Everyone knows that no one lives forever, but Queen Elizabeth seemed like a possible exception. She always appeared in public with dignity but not austerity, with warm smiles and that vertical hand-wave. And of course the pocketbook. Always perfectly coiffed and dressed, except for the days she spent in the country with her dogs and horses, scarf around her hair, tartan skirt swinging, thick jacket, and sturdy shoes, she was somehow always human but never common.
At least, that’s how I saw her. I barely remember her ascension to the throne, and like millions of other people, have no memory of another British monarch. She was always there, through my tumultuous teen-age years, the years of young motherhood, my escape to Europe, and return to a United States I barely recognize. She was a rock, a symbol of stability, weathering difficult times with a steadfast devotion to duty. She was there, through thick and thin.
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My reaction to her death surprised me with its sorrow. But I realize it was not only about her, but about the the end of an era, the world as I and millions of people had known it. People younger than I am will have never known another monarch, nor a world without her in it. For me, though, as a woman nearing the conclusion of life, it’s saying goodbye to my past. Not that I don’t have a future at all. Just that a phase of my life has ended, and her death puts a period at the end of that part of it – dances I will not be dancing anymore, songs I won’t sing again.
In the nineteen seventies I went with my family to live for a year in London. It was swinging London, crackling with energy. My boys went to school at Moss Hall in Finchley, where they learned to chant, “Margaret Thatcher, milk snatcher!” when as secretary of state for education and science (1970–74) in the Conservative government of Edward Heath, Thatcher eliminated a program that provided free milk to schoolchildren.
The Fulbright my husband had earned meant we had the opportunity to meet the Queen Mother, Mary. That meant an introduction to the formalities of how to behave in the presence of Royalty. As Americans, though ideologically against the notion that curtsying or bowing to another human being because of the family they were born into should, I suppose, have been anathema, it wasn’t. It was a lark.
We were advised about protocol before we went, which meant hats for the women, gloves, not speaking unless spoken to, and of course instructions on how to curtsy. The Queen Mother was gracious and smiling, a royal mum. Like her daughter Queen Elizabeth she smiled through all that long, tedious line of Americans like us, visitors to her world. It took hours. She was 71.
We didn’t hang out with many Monarchists at the time – we enjoyed the colorful spectacles available: the changing of the guard, the Mounted Police in Hyde Park, and all the historic tourist sites enriched by my former devouring of English literature – Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot. It was a time of social and intellectual ferment, and yet no one seriously questioned the existence of the Monarchy. No one we knew, anyway.
Later, through the twists and turns of fate, I married an Englishman who was steeped in traditional behavior and mores of the culture and I was exposed to a different view of modern Britain. I met people who thought the monarchy should disappear, others who panted to be as close as possible to anyone connected to the Royal entourage. I heard gossip about Prince Harry’s parentage, watched the rehabilitation of Camilla Bowles, and learned that Queen Elizabeth never carried money in that pocketbook. I know that because on my walks to the greengrocer in the village where we lived, I sometimes forgot to bring money.
“Oh, like the Queen” I was told!!
I do wonder what was in the Royal pocket book. I mean, did she even have to shop?
Janet Beech, any ideas?