Royal Letter-Opener

HENRY PONSONBY--Arthur Ponsonby --Macmillan ($3.75).

Every morning for 25 years (1870-95) a solemn, bearded man in frock coat, droopy trousers and elastic-sided boots opened Queen Victoria's mail. General Sir Henry Frederick Ponsonby was the Widow of Windsor's Private Secretary. Over the years, in daily letters to his wife and in countless jottings, Ponsonby charted the awesome complexities of his job. Out of this mass of papers his son, Arthur (Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede), a onetime page at the Queen's court (see cut), has contrived a book which is both a biography of his father and a candid portrait of the Queen in her most fractious, most politically influential years.

As Secretary, Ponsonby had two chief functions: to present the Queen's opinions to the Government; to present the Government's opinions to the Queen. To succeed in both functions at once was almost impossible, but Sir Henry Ponsonby made a career of tact. The Queen had a virulent hatred of what she termed the "communistic" fantasies of "desperate radicals"--by which she meant Home Rule for Ireland, Reform of the House of Lords and her Liberal arch-antagonist and recurrent Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone. Gladstone was at once a passionate monarchist, reformer, and pillar of brazen endurance. Monarch and monarchist battled for 20 years. Much of the time the widowed Queen was unpopular with her subjects because she insisted on secluding herself in her country palaces.

Sir Henry Ponsonby devoted his career to healing the breach between the Widow and the Grand Old Man.

Black Is Grey. "Women are easily managed in these things," confided the canny Dean of Windsor, "by a little humouring and caution without any departure from truthfulness." Ponsonby learned that anyone who contradicted the Queen was "never given a second opportunity." When she said black was white, as she frequently did, Ponsonby agreed (with reservations), but reached a delicate compromise on grey. When she wrote that Mr. Gladstone was a "half-crazy ... deluded . . . excited . . . ridiculous . . . wild . . . fanatical old man," Ponsonby communicated her views to the Prime Minister in a letter so gracious that Mr. Gladstone was quite pleased. When a general informed the Queen of an African victory but ventured to suggest further military reforms, Ponsonby reworded the Queen's furious reply into compliments on the victory (and a paragraph covering the unhappy gaff).

Soon the Ponsonby finger was in every royal pie. But the bulk of his day was filled with the endless routine of court problems, royal disapproval and viewing-with-alarm. "The Queen would be grateful," he wrote to a diplomat, "if you would request her Charge d'Affaires at Dresden to take a less humorous view of Royal funerals." From the Dean of Windsor he had to find out whether the British Government "officially believe in Purgatory." There were hundreds of importunate requests to submit to the monarch: Oscar Wilde asked permission to copy some of the poetry "written by the Queen when young." ("Really!" snorted Her Majesty, "Never could the Queen in her whole life write one line of poetry serious or comic or make a Rhyme even.") A Miss Low asked "if she can be informed whether Your Majesty as a child liked dolls." ("The Queen has no hesitation in saying that she was quite devoted to dolls. . . .")

There were awkward situations with foreigners (many of the royal relatives were Germans who never quite mastered English). Prince John of Glucksburg nearly caused a rising of the clans by shouting enthusiastically at a Highland ball: "I am agreeable to see the Queen dances like a pot." (He meant "top.")

No Faith in the Devil. Church attendance was obligatory for members of the royal household. "One Sunday the minister [at Balmoral], Mr. MacGregor. preached on the devil. Afterwards he asked Princess Louise whether the Queen liked his sermon. 'She said she ... should think not, as the Queen did not altogether believe in the devil.' " Said the Rev. Mr. MacGregor: "Puir body." Even more amusing is the story of wealthy, eccentric

Lord Errol, who used to read prayers in the family chapel. One day he read: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God," then paused and snorted: "Oh, that's damned nonsense. Let us pray."

Life in the Queen's rural retreats was excruciatingly dull. "It was not," says Biographer Ponsonby, "that the Queen was markedly inconsiderate, but she was thoughtless of all other considerations where her own comfort and convenience were concerned." No one was allowed to leave the castle while the Queen was inside. No one could leave except at times appointed by the Queen. Because she disliked fires, everybody shivered.

The Queen respected robustness in everyone except Mr. Gladstone. After royal dinners, the unhappy guests stood interminably in a row against the wall. Once a Dr. Powell fainted. The Queen was shocked at such frailty. "And a doctor, too!" she exclaimed.

One morning in 1895 Secretary Ponsonby also collapsed (of overwork), died ten months later. "Dear kind Sir Henry," his Royal Taskmistress wrote, "so universally beloved ... so kind and so fair and just."

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