I wonder what it's thinking? Nothing at all of course, stupid little thing

Princess May was never maternal. Showing Juliet one of the babies in its cot she once remarked: 'I wonder what it's thinking? Nothing at all of course, stupid little thing.'

....

In a later, earnest and somewhat pathetic conversation the Duke [of Gloucester] related that the biggest compliment his mother ever paid him, and which delighted him, was at her second tour of inspection at Barnwell Manor, after his alterations: she turned to him and said, 'Well, Harry, I would never have thought you could make this house habitable, but you have'. High praise, he indicated.


J. Pope-Hennessy, The Quest for Queen Mary, ed. H. Vickers (2018), 138, 200

The list of Queen Mary's lack of interest in small children is extensive. These were my favourites.

A good deal of is time is spent not listening

[Henry, Duke of Gloucester] He is not at all the stupid man he is thought to be. He simply works on a different system to most ordinary people. He has, to begin with, the royal trait of expecting you to know what he is thinking about, and tosses out apparently irrelevant remarks at intervals which you have to catch ad return like longstop in cricket. He treats himself as if he were somebody else, e.g., coming down to Sunday breakfast: 'I'm sorry to say this wind is going to make me very cwoss and irritable today, very cwoss and irritable I'm afraid.' A good deal of is time is spent not listening.

J. Pope-Hennessy, The Quest for Queen Mary, ed. H. Vickers (2018), 187-88