Word: queenly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Turkish baths go, the establishment beneath London's Imperial Hotel in Russell Square is one of the best. From its Gothic galleries, stone monarchs and prophets (Queen Elizabeth I, Erasmus) have gazed through the steam at generations of bare, Blimpish backsides. One night last week the steam rooms and massage parlors presented a shocking sight: crowds of people who were fully dressed, or almost. To celebrate the London premiere of Auntie Mame, starring Bea Lillie, Producer David Pelham had picked the Turkish bath as the logical place for a party. The result was as wacky a shindig...
...this underworld, shy, sickly, dowdy and dull Princess Anne-later Good Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart monarchs-groped for a hand to guide her. She turned to one of her childhood friends, Sarah Jennings, and found that her hand was dexterous, hard and tipped with eagle's claws...
...looks, her quick mind, her unfettered personality; this inveterate stickler for form would put aside for Sarah the one great advantage she possessed, her rank." After they were married (Anne to Prince George of Denmark, Sarah to dashing young Colonel John Churchill, future Duke of Marlborough*), Sarah, at. the Queen's suggestion, addressed her royal mistress as "Mrs. Morley," became herself "Mrs. Freeman." Their husbands, joining in this playacting, were cast as "Mr. Morley" and "Mr. Freeman...
...life that was dramatic, intimate and unique in the annals of British monarchy. Almost annually, Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman became dutifully pregnant, suffered the usual miscarriages and infant deaths, played godmother to each other's surviving offspring. On the great day in 1702 when the newly proclaimed Queen made her first grand entrance into Parliament, she did so with Sarah Churchill as her attendant and John Churchill marching in front, carrying the great sword of state. And after Churchill's victory over the French at Blenheim, everyone knew the lines...
...role of "dust broom" (as Sarah put it) to a titled lady. What happened next seems, as Author Kronenberger says, "too much in the flashy traditions of the theater to have happened in real life." Slowly, week by week, Abigail, the dowdy waif, replaced Sarah as the dowdy Queen's bosom friend-largely because Sarah had become haughty and downright rude to the Queen. When Sarah at last discovered that the ungrateful "dust broom" had swept her off the royal doorstep, she pelted the Queen with abuse, venting her spleen in "thunderclaps of fury and rage." Before a horrified...