That she died peacefully at house in her personal mattress would have been simply the way in which she would have needed it. No fuss, no pointless pleasure, definitely no blaze of glory.
Along with her headband, perm and smart footwear, Margaret Rhodes represented the polar reverse of a contemporary world the place tv and social media bestow superstar on the trashy, the flashy and the undeserving.
And but what a narrative she had, and what a life she lived. Introduced up in a draughty, turreted Scottish fort, she was the childhood playmate of her cousin, the Queen, spent the warfare years as an MI6 operative when she lived with the Royal Household at Windsor Citadel and Buckingham Palace, and was one among solely a handful on the bedside of her aunt, the Queen Mom, when she died at Windsor in 2002.
The Queen and Woman Margaret get pleasure from a relaxed lunch at Glen Beg, Her Majesty's log cabin on the Balmoral property
Corgis discover as Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Rhodes relaxation throughout a trek via the deer-stalking space at Balmoral
By some means, it was becoming that the Honourable Mrs Rhodes must also cross away in Windsor, at her treasured house, the Backyard Home, a brief drive from Windsor Citadel, that the Queen gave her 35 years in the past. Shut sufficient, certainly, for the monarch to drop in on her cousin most Sundays after matins on the Royal Household's personal church in Windsor Nice Park.
Their lives had been entwined since earlier than the abdication of King Edward VIII — these carefree days when the shadow of the throne had not but stretched over the younger Princess Elizabeth. Her dying at 91 can be a horrible blow to the Queen.
They spent holidays taking part in video games corresponding to 'catching joyful days' which concerned chasing after leaves falling from the timber, and cavorting as make-believe horses. At picnics, they dared each other to see who may eat most slices of brown bread and golden syrup. (Margaret, who was ten months Elizabeth's senior, apparently held the document for this sickly problem, with 12.)
The Queen Mom, sporting tartan and a sprig of heather in a jaunty hat, shares a joke with Margaret Rhodes on the log cabin at Birkhall she named the Outdated Bull And Bush
Many years later, Mrs Rhodes was to put in writing about these instances in a fascinating memoir she entitled The Closing Curtsey. Shorn of boastfulness and intrusion, it took us gently contained in the personal world of the Queen Mom and the Queen.
After initially being rejected by publishers and literary brokers, it grew to become an sudden success, reaching No 1 within the Sunday Instances bestseller listing. Critically, it was neither fawning nor sensational. The affectionate tone was matched by delightfully intimate household pictures of her and the Queen at play.
In it, she advised the outstanding inside story — one which has assumed nearly legendary standing — of VE Day in 1945 when the teenage Elizabeth, her sister Princess Margaret and their cousin slipped out of the Palace to mingle unnoticed with the crowds celebrating the tip of World Warfare II and the place they danced the conga.
Princess Elizabeth, left, Princess Margaret, centre, and their cousin Margaret Rhodes, loved a blissful childhood
A younger Princess Elizabeth, Princess Margaret and their cousin Margaret throughout the Royal Highland Society in Princess Royal Park
That the Queen not solely authorised the manuscript however allowed her cousin to verify particulars together with her personal personal diaries served to indicate the distinctive bond they shared.
So trusted was Mrs Rhodes, who excluding Prince Philip in all probability knew the monarch higher than anyone else, that in recent times, as royal jubilees and anniversaries got here and went, no documentary was full with out a contribution from her.
For the Queen, nonetheless, one of many downsides of getting such an extended life has meant having to say farewell to so many mates.
'Make no mistake, this can be a giant loss,' says a royal determine. 'Margaret Rhodes has been a part of her life for greater than 80 years. The Queen was a daily customer to Mrs Rhodes' house.' It's understood she visited her confidante after she fell unwell earlier this month.
The Queen and Woman Margaret had been bridesmaids on the wedding ceremony of the Hon Mrs V. Cary Gibbs, her Woman-in-Ready, and Capt. The Hon. A.C.V. Elphinstone
Normally these visits had been marked with laughter. They spoke plainly to at least one one other and gossiped as shut mates do. No topic was off-limits as a result of Mrs Rhodes was by no means actually indiscreet.
No episode, absolutely, summed up their outstanding relationship greater than the profoundly transferring description in her e book of the Queen Mom's dying at her house, Royal Lodge, on Easter Saturday 2002.
That it was included within the 2011 memoir was important as a result of, up till then, the Queen had not authorised particulars of her mom's dying to be made public.
'As I arrived at Royal Lodge, I noticed the Queen's automotive was there,' Mrs Rhodes wrote. 'I went straight to my aunt's bed room and located her sitting in her armchair.
'The Queen was beside her sporting driving garments. She had been alerted whereas driving within the Park — her groom at all times carries a radio hyperlink to the Citadel.
'The nurse from the native surgical procedure and my aunt's Dresser had been additionally there. My aunt's eyes had been shut, and thereafter she didn't open them or converse one other phrase.
'The medical doctors got here and went, however the nurse, the Dresser and I stayed all through.'
She described how the Queen's chaplain, the Rev John Ovenden, prayed and recited a Highland lament. After being persuaded to take a break, she went for a stroll within the backyard.
Along with her headband, perm and smart footwear, Margaret Rhodes represented the polar reverse of a contemporary world the place tv and social media bestow superstar on the trashy, the flashy and the undeserving
'Once I got here again, she had been put to mattress. She seemed so peaceable. At that time the Queen returned, accompanied by Princess Margaret's kids, David Linley and Sarah Chatto. John Ovenden additionally got here again and all of us stood around the mattress when he mentioned the prayer, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace". All of us had tears in our eyes, and to today I can not hear that prayer being mentioned with out desirous to cry.'
The next day, Mrs Rhodes returned to see her aunt one final time. 'She seemed beautiful and nearly youthful, dying having wiped the strains away. I knelt by her mattress and mentioned a prayer for her. Then I stood up and gave her my closing curtsey.'
There was a postscript when Mrs Rhodes went to register her aunt's dying on the Windsor registrar's workplace. After going via the formalities with a 'relatively fierce-looking woman', she was requested the occupation of the deceased's husband.
'After a second hesitation, I answered "King". I believe Queen Elizabeth may need discovered that nearly amusing.'
Woman Margaret with husband Denys Rhodes with daughter Victoria Ann Rhodes of their Devon house
Elsewhere within the e book, she revealed how the Queen Mom was a fan of the TV exhibits Two Fats Women and Dad's Military, appreciated the poetry of the aristocratic Dame Edith Sitwell and had struck up a friendship with the previous Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, who was a daily visitor.
Her e book can be an perception right into a now nearly forgotten world of privilege, whereas Margaret Rhodes herself emerges from it as a formidable and succesful determine, who shot her first stag at 15 and who emptied her gun at a German fighter aircraft when it dared swoop low over their Scottish house.
She was born the Hon Margaret Elphinstone in 1925. Her mom Woman Mary Bowes-Lyon — generally known as Might — was the Queen Mom's eldest sister. Her father, the 16th baron, was a diplomat on the Imperial Russian court docket, the place one among his kinfolk was Prince Felix Yusupov, who participated within the assassination of Rasputin.
Away from diplomacy, Lord Elphinstone travelled the world capturing. In 1896 alone he bagged 13 tigers, three leopards, 39 buffalo, 21 rhinos, ten bison and three pythons, in addition to numerous quail, deer and peacocks.
His daughter solely gave up discipline sports activities in her 70s, writing that 'the joys of a profitable shot, after an extended, moist crawl via the heather, was an distinctive pleasure'.
In celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, Woman Margaret revealed tales and footage from behind the palace doorways ø which have by no means been revealed.
In Africa, on the age of 64, she shot two Thomson's gazelle with a single bullet.
She estimated that she had killed some 350 stags. As a teen she shot an eagle — then considered pests. However then Margaret, the youngest of 5, was raised in a world of castles and nation homes, which went hand-in-hand with an outside life. 'We had been raised to imagine that it was positively immoral to remain indoors, whatever the climate,' she recalled.
The household house, Carberry Tower, close to Edinburgh, was run by a employees that included a butler, a housekeeper, a footman, three housemaids, a prepare dinner, a scullery maid and numerous others.
However regardless of the servants and its dimension, the home 'was a contact spartan. There was no central heating and the water within the bowl on my washstand in my bed room would typically freeze over.'
Woman Margaret pictured in 2014 accompanying her cousin to Sunday service at St Peter's Church Wolferton, close to Sandringham Home
Whereas her brothers went away to high school, Margaret — like her cousin — obtained no critical training.
'Princess Elizabeth and I had been actually the final technology of women from households like ours who didn't go to high school,' she mentioned.
'I did, nonetheless, have dancing classes and I used to be on the dancing faculty, in Edinburgh, the day the abdication of King Edward VIII was introduced. To my everlasting disgrace, I hopped across the room chanting: "My uncle Bertie goes to be King."'
Uncle Bertie grew to become 'Sir' and the younger Margaret was on the palace for his coronation as King George VI.
From the age of 5 onwards, she spent a lot of the summer season together with her cousins Elizabeth and Margaret. They had been there collectively on the day that warfare was declared, on September three, 1939.
After they weren't speeding round outdoors, that they had a gramophone to play, however with only one document: 'Both Land Of Hope And Glory or Jerusalem, I can't keep in mind which — however we performed it on a regular basis.'
She recalled how Princess Margaret, 4 years youthful than the Queen, would hold her awake at evening singing Outdated MacDonald Had A Farm.
In 1941, aged 16, Margaret was despatched to a ending faculty in Oxford earlier than becoming a member of a secretarial school in Surrey, the place she discovered to kind. After that, house grew to become Windsor Citadel the place she was reunited with the 2 princesses, who had been evacuated from London and away from the Blitz.
Life was removed from luxurious, although. 'We had been allowed solely three inches of water within the bathtub and the King commanded black line be painted as a form of ablutionary Plimsoll line,' she wrote.
Her seat as she watched the historical past of the 20th century unfolding was extraordinary. She was at Balmoral when information of a really private tragedy reached the Royal Household — the dying in a flying accident of the King's youthful brother, George, Duke of Kent
'Typically there have been air raids. I keep in mind one significantly heavy assault after we all needed to go to the shelter. We had been roused in the midst of the evening and brought first to the King and Queen's bed room, the place I believe I noticed the King take a revolver from the drawer of his bedside desk. It was a defensive precaution, making an allowance for the potential for an enemy parachute drop geared toward his seize.
'I do know, too, that Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mom) practised revolver capturing within the backyard of Buckingham Palace, significantly after the palace was bombed, which meant an enormous variety of rats ran free, so she was in a position to practise on transferring targets.'
Her seat as she watched the historical past of the 20th century unfolding was extraordinary. She was at Balmoral when information of a really private tragedy reached the Royal Household — the dying in a flying accident of the King's youthful brother, George, Duke of Kent.
After finishing her secretarial course, she went to work on the headquarters of the Secret Service, MI6 — 'a small cog within the shadowy world of espionage. It was all dreadfully hush-hush and, for an impressionable 18-year-old, tremendously mysterious. I reported every day to an workplace disguised as "Passport Management" close to St James's Park Underground station.
'One among my day by day duties was to learn each single message transmitted by our spies everywhere in the world. It was fascinating however horrifying, too.'
The Queen sporting a headband with Margaret Rhodes (centre) and, proper, lady-in-waiting Susan Hussey outdoors one of many log cabins she makes use of for picnics at Balmoral
As a bridesmaid at Princess Elizabeth's wedding ceremony to Prince Philip in 1947, she discovered herself on the Buckingham Palace balcony. Three years later she was married herself, to Denys Rhodes, 'a really engaging pauper' who earned his dwelling writing thrillers. The King and Queen attended their wedding ceremony.
They started married life in a big county home in Devon — purchased by her father — the place the royals had been common friends. Princess Margaret, she notes, may very well be 'demanding'. On one event the bathroom seat within the toilet she and her husband Lord Snowdon had been utilizing, fell aside.
'They needed a alternative put in without delay, but it surely was simply not potential over a weekend and we firmly advised them so. For a pair whose each whim was pandered to, they took it fairly nicely.' Her tales had been fused with wry observations. David Stirling, celebrated founding father of the SAS, was a house-guest when the Queen Mom got here to remain. Charades was the order of the day.
Stirling needed to act out the Taming Of The Shrew, which concerned 'this immensely tall man pretending to be a mouse working up the Queen Mom's skirts. We had been all crying with laughter, however David obtained fairly huffy as a result of we thought his performing was not of Outdated Vic requirements.'
The couple had been pioneering travellers, and had been as soon as caught up in a coup within the distant kingdom of Bhutan the place they had been arrested together with the Hollywood star Shirley MacLaine.
When Denys Rhodes grew to become unwell, the Queen supplied her cousin a grace-and-favour house in Windsor Nice Park, asking: 'Might you bear to come back and reside in suburbia?'
After her husband's dying, Mrs Rhodes went to work for her aunt the Queen Mom as a 'lady of the bedchamber'. From the Backyard Home, she may go to each her cousin and her aunt.
Crisp of voice and of thoughts, she welcomed guests to her barely higgledy-piggledy house, the place Wellington boots had been lined up contained in the entrance door. If the event demanded, she would slip on excessive heels — even on the age of 89. (On turning 90, she stopped sporting them, although, as a result of 'they make you just a little bit extra prone to a wobble'.)
It was to this cosy house that the Queen cherished to come back, a refuge from her day by day routine as monarch. With out her spirited cousin, life won't ever be fairly the identical once more.
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