‘The Quest for Queen Mary’ by James Pope Hennessy, edited by Hugo Vickers

1959 did not only see the publication of Richard Ellmann’s superb biography of James Joyce which I read last month. It was also the year in which James Pope Hennessy published his biography of Queen Mary which in its own way was just as celebrated and also remains in print almost seventy years after first being issued. (NB: Iris Origo's 'The Merchant of Prato' was also published in 1959).

This highly entertaining little book consists, in the main, of extracts from diaries, letters and notebooks that Pope Hennessy wrote during the period that he was researching his Queen Mary biography. There is an introductory essay by Hugo Vickers and he has also provided further explanatory notes all the way through.

James Pope Hennessy (1916 – 1974) was a biographer, historian and travel writer who deployed his ability to write exquisite prose in the services of non-fiction. Like many great writers of the twentieth century he was from a well-healed background, very well-educated but also pretty impecunious. After the second world war he had to earn a living and chose to do so by writing.

He was an eccentric man; gay, tall, charming and good looking. He wrote a number of well-received biographies and was working on a life of Noel Coward when he was murdered in his London flat, according to James Lees Milne’s article in the Dictionary of National Biography, by ‘some ruffianly associates of the unscrupulous youths with whom he chose to consort’. He was just fifty-six and might well have gone on to write a number of further definitive biographies, including quite possibly one of Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor who he befriended while researching his Queen Mary book.

He was asked to commissioned by the Palace to write the ‘official biography’ of Queen Mary in the summer of 1955 and spent the best part of the next three years researching it. He did an extraordinarily thorough job, making full use of all the archives he was granted access to. In addition he travelled widely to interview mainly older people in the UK and in Europe who were related to Queen Mary, had known her or had worked for her. The interviewees included her surviving children, including the Duke of Windsor and his younger brother Henry, Duke of Gloucester, as well as the Queen and the Queen Mother.

This book details these encounters. James Pope Hennessy was not here writing for publication, and so his personal observations can be judged to be authentic and the account he provides accurate. The material is very revealing and also highly entertaining as he sets out more or less verbatim what his interviewees said.

Most of the time his interviews appear to have been accompanied by copious amounts of food and drink, often served up to him over lunches and dinners in the interviewees’ own houses. The brief pen portraits he includes describing the dress, features and general deportment of each interviewee are just splendid.

It is clear that James Pope Hennessy was able to gain people’s confidence with ease by being courteous and deferential, as well as very well-informed. They all – with the interesting exception of the Queen (who is not so pleasantly portrayed here) – opened up to him, and often said some pretty indiscreet things. The result, as Hugo Vickers explains in his introductory chapter, that Pope Hennessy ended up knowing a great deal more about Queen Mary and other members of her family than he was ultimately able to include in his biography. He left much gossip out, but alluded to what he had been told in subtle and general ways.

The book interested me as an account of how an official biographer – namely one who writes with the full co-operation of his subjects’ friends and family – goes about carrying out the necessary research. But it is also informative and highly entertaining. I particularly enjoyed the sections in which he recorded his meetings in Paris with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (who he warmed to greatly) and, above all, the section in which he gives an account of staying for a long weekend at Barnwell Manor in Northamptonshire with the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, at which Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone was also a guest. This passage is hilarious, largely because of the Duke’s indiscretions and squealing laughter. He is respectful, but also just so funny when describing the Duke. This encounter could be the basis of a really wonderful stage play.

His interviewees were often somewhat bitchy and had different views about many people in the Royal Family. Queen Alexandra and George V were clearly not to everyone’s taste. But aside from her not being a mother who was given to displays of affection towards her children, the key point made here is that Queen Mary was a great deal warmer and much better company than her public image suggested. She was also very well-read.

Having now read about the research that went into writing it, I guess I am now going to have to tackle the full Pope Hennessy Queen Mary biography. By all accounts it is a classic that can not and will never be rivalled.