Mary of Peck: Queen of Order & Chaos

Mary of Teck, Queen Consort of King George V (1867-1953)

"The [Second World War] presented [the last great] Master [of Fox-hounds] with another, most unusual problem. His wife, Mary Beaufort, was the niece of Queen Mary, who descended on him with an entourage of fifty servants, having chosen his stately home, Badminton, as a suitable place to sit out the war and avoid the dangers of the London air-raids. After the royal invasion had taken place, the Duke and Duchess were left with only two bedrooms at their disposal.

The royal biographer, James Pope Hennessy, described Queen Mary as being 'fundamentally very, very German; the two things she liked most were destruction and order.' The destructive side of her nature was to affect the lives of the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort, for they soon discovered that they were unable to go out for a day's hunting without receiving an unpleasant shock on their return. Queen Mary had a passion for felling trees, and when they came home tired and muddied it was to find to their distress that yet another beautiful tree on the Badminton estate had been axed at the Queen's command.

James Pope Hennessy describes one episode, which conjures up the problems that confronted Master [of Fox-Hounds] during the wartime sojourn of his royal relative.

On leaving for hunting one day, the Duchess said, 'Now Aunt Mary, remember that the shrubs outside the stable wall are not to be touched.' The next day Queen Mary led her round to the stables and every shrub was gone, revealing a naked wall which then had to be cemented and painted. Before the Duchess could say anything, Queen Mary, like a naughty child, said quickly, 'I'm glad you like my yesterday's work.'

The Germanic, order-loving side of the Queen also caused inconvenience for the Duke and Duchess. While they were out hunting, the Queen liked to collect all the agricultural implements that she found in the fields on the Badminton estate. She would arrange to have the farm equipment brought back to the stable-yard, not realising that it had been left out in the fields for sound agricultural reasons.

When impeccably run hunting stables were reduced to something closely resembling a junk yard by the daily whims of the Queen, a terrible burden was thrown on the gallant and ancient grooms who were battling to preserve pre-war hunting standards during a difficult period when all the younger men had been recruited into the armed forces."

-In the Pink by Caroline Blackwood