A happy marriage?

 

I love a mystery.  There’s something about one that captures my imagination and like a dog with a bone, I can’t let it go until I’ve solved it.  You never know when you might stumble across one. On a recent visit to Harewood House, near Leeds, a chance remark by my Mum ignited something, which then took hold of me for the next three days. 

Harewood was the home of our present Queen’s Aunt, Princess Mary, only daughter of King George V and Queen Mary.  She married a wealthy aristocrat, Henry Lascelles, the 6th Earl of Harewood, in 1922.

We were just nearing the end of our tour of the house when my Mum told to me she had previously read that Princess Mary was unhappily married and that her much older husband could be ‘cold and abusive’.  She said that there had been rumours that Mary did not want to marry Lord Lascelles, that she had been forced into the marriage by her parents and that Lascelles had proposed to her after a wager at his club. 

Her brother the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, to whom she was very close, was said to be against the marriage because he did not want his sister to marry someone whom she did not love.  She had apparently ‘cried her eyes out’ the night before the wedding.  

Princess Mary was no longer this distant figure from history, she had become real to me, human and tortured.  I wanted to know everything about her, right now.

Thank God for the internet.  Back home that evening, it took just a few clicks and my search began.  Within seconds up popped specialist websites, by people with a fascination with European royalty.  I obsessively trawled through blogs and forums, scanning the text for any titbits of information that would confirm or deny the rumours about Mary.  Hours passed.  Just when I was about to tear myself away and go to bed, I hit upon a nugget of gold.  Someone called Angele had posted the following comment on a thread about Mary’s marriage:

‘It is my understanding that Mary was very much in love with Walter Montague Douglas Scott, son and heir to the Duke of Buccleuch and these feelings were reciprocated.  Unfortunately though, for various reasons, it was not thought to be a suitable match. I do think that Mary made the best of the situation, probably helped by her sense of duty, which I believe she had in abundance.’

 

The romantic in me wanted to believe that that Mary had known true love before she had to marry Lascelles.  My imagination was now running riot, visualising Mary homesick and miserable at Harewood, pining for her lost love.  Further research revealed that Mary’s brother Henry ended up marrying Walter’s sister Alice.  Mary and Walter must have met again in later life.  Was the spark still there?  Did their eyes ever meet across a crowded room?  And did Mary, who had always been taught to negate her own feelings, ever wonder ‘What if?’’