The Queen's Handbag

[Ricordanza]

Perhaps someone from the UK can answer this question: Why does the Queen always carry a handbag? What does she need that her hundreds of staff members can't get for her? Money? Driver's License? Tissues?

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/eur ... ctionfront

I realize that this is not the burning question of the day, but I'd like to know.

[John F]

Discreet signals and Clarins lipstick: the secrets of The Queen's handbag revealed
Victoria Ward Juliet Eysenck
3 March 2017 • 10:10am

The Queen is rarely seen in public without her handbag by her side. Indeed, along with her favourite Anello and Davide block heels, it is her steadfast sartorial signature. From Sunday church visits to official engagements, private audiences and official portraits, it is rare that Her Majesty is not accompanied by her patent top handle bag.

But despite the ubiquity of the Queen's handbag, we know very little about what she carries around with her- and the meaning behind it. Here, we take a look at what we do know...

Her Majesty’s personal bag is used as much to send secret signals to staff as it is to carry personal items. If the Queen places her handbag on the table at dinner, it signals that she wants the event to end in the next five minutes. If she puts her bag on the floor, it shows she’s not enjoying the conversation and wants to be rescued by her lady-in-waiting.

The Queen is said to own more than 200 Launer handbags. Her preferred styles are the Royale and the black patent Traviata (23cm x 20cm x 10cm). The bag has a longer handle to ease the process of handshaking. But what's does she carry round with her?

Surely the usual clutter of coins, keys and ticket stubs would be unnecessary for Her Majesty—after all, she doesn’t own a passport, has no use for bus tickets and keys aren’t particularly handy when you have a doorman at hand. But perhaps the Queen does succumb to human needs on occasion - surely even Her Majesty can rummage around for a stray mint.

In 2012, a royal biographer disclosed that buried alongside everyday items such as a mirror and lipstick is always a crisply folded £5 note to donate to the church collection on Sundays.

Sally Bedell Smith, author of "Elizabeth the Queen: The Woman Behind The Throne," claims that among the bag’s other secrets are a portable hook, which is used to hang it discreetly under tables. Bedell Smith suggests that there is “no more familiar symbol” of the Queen than the classic Launer handbag that dangles from her left arm on public occasions from informal walkabouts to state dinners.

Her inside knowledge has been pieced together from anecdotes of those who claim to have snuck a peek inside the royal bag and ladies in waiting. Bedell Smith, writing in "The Lady" magazine, disclosed that the handbag usually contains reading glasses, mint lozenges and a fountain pen, although rarely cash, except for the “precisely folded” £5 or £10 note on Sundays.

A dinner guest at the Berkshire home of Jean Wills, the Queen’s cousin, is said to have been surprised to see the Queen spitting into a plastic suction cup before attaching the hook under the table. “I watched the Queen open her handbag and remove a white suction cup and discreetly spit into it,” the guest is quoted as saying. “The Queen then attached the cup to the underside of the table. The cup had a hook on it, and she attached her handbag to it.”

Bedell Smith alleges that the most important items in the Queen's bag are a small mirror and lipstick which she has been known to apply whilst still sitting at the table. “At the end of a luncheon or a dinner, even a banquet set with silver gilt and antique porcelain, she has the somewhat outré habit of opening her bag, pulling out a compact and reapplying her lipstick,” she writes. “When First Lady Laura Bush made a similar cosmetic fix during a Washington ladies’ luncheon, she cheerily commented, ‘The Queen told me it was all right to do it.’”

In 2000, the Queen was spotted reapplying her lipstick at the Royal Cornwall Show and in 2014, she did the same at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. The lipstick looked like Clarins, which is known as one of the Queen’s favourite brands—the make up company wouldn’t comment on her choice of lipstick, but revealed the Queen is a fan of the brand’s Hand and Nail Treatment Cream.

Bedell Smith claims that ladies-in-waiting are responsible for carrying necessities such as extra pairs of gloves, needles, thread and safety pins for emergency repairs. However, one long-serving member of staff described the Queen as “a very practical, down-to-earth lady”. “She needs a comb or lipstick or Kleenex, and if she hasn’t got it, what does she do?” she said.

The Queen’s handbag has often been described as her “comfort blanket”. She has been said to use it to indicate to subtlety communicate with her staff.

Does she have a mobile phone? The idea of those white-gloved hands swiping an iPhone screen sounds ridiculous, but royal biographer Penny Junor insists that she might well carry a mobile. “She does have a mobile and she speaks to her grandchildren on it,” says Junor. “I don’t know whether it’s a smartphone though.”

Another royal handbag investigator, Phil Dampier, claims that the Queen’s bag is filled with more personal items. A collection of good luck charms given to her by her children, including miniature dogs, horses and saddles, clutter up the bag, Dampier wrote in What's In The Queen's Handbag: And Other Royal Secrets. Family photos are also tucked inside, including one of Prince Andrew on his safe return from the Falklands in 1982.

The bulk of the Queen’s clutter is carried by her ladies-in-waiting, who travel with spare tights and gloves, as well as a moist, lavender-scented cloth in case of heat.

And so the Queen’s compact leather handbag paints a fitting portrait of our monarch. Practical, discreet, and with strong family bonds—we should have known all along.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/peo ... r-handbag/

[jbuck919]

Excellent reply, John F, to which I will only add that all women in decent society carry a handbag. What would be weird would be if the Queen did open parliament without one.

[Chalkperson]

The Queen always carries a handbag, even to the toilet.
The Duke of Edinburgh walks with his hands behind his back.
The reason is that the both felt they were shaking way too many hands back in the 60’s and 70’s. So between themselves the decided on the plan.

Good for them, smart thinking.

[Ricordanza]

Excellent reply, John F, to which I will only add that all women in decent society carry a handbag.

I'll also thank John F for posting that informative article.

My question about the Queen was prompted when I looked at other women leaders during Trump's European trip. I suppose that Theresa May and Angela Merkel carry handbags on some occasions, but never at a meeting with other world leaders.

[lennygoran]

My question about the Queen was prompted when I looked at other women leaders during Trump's European trip.

Maybe she should have had something in the bag to prod Trump with when he dared to walk in front of her! Regards, Len [fleeing]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/us/t ... abeth.html

[jserraglio]

Maybe she should have had something in the bag to prod Trump with when he dared to walk in front of her!

I'm sure she's thankful he didn't try to lip lock with her the way Carter did with her mama.

The Queen's Handbag. That sounds like a cool title for a one-act comic opera a la Poulenc or Wolf-Ferrari.

[lennygoran]

I'm sure she's thankful he didn't try to lip lock with her the way Carter did with her grandmama.

Thanks, I hadn't known about this! Regards, Len

"U.S. President Jimmy Carter only visited the British Royal Family once during his presidency but, in that short time, he made a very strong impression. In London for an economic summit in May, 1977, Queen Elizabeth II invited Carter to Buckingham Palace. While meeting her and other members of the royal family, Carter broke protocol and kissed the Queen’s mother right smack on the lips.

Carter’s Southern hospitality did not sit well with the Queen Mother (1900-2002) who snapped,

Nobody has done that since my husband died.”(1)

Her husband, King George VI, died in 1952.

The Queen Mother took an instant dislike to the former peanut farmer from Georgia. Later, she wrote about the unpleasant encounter. Evidently, she had seen Carter leaning in for a smooch and had tried to dodge his ample lips:

I took a sharp step backwards – not quite far enough.” (2)

While there are no obligatory ways to greet the Queen and the royal family, often a man bows his head or simply shakes hands. An American is not required to bow or curtsy. Planting a kiss on the royal lips is definitely out of bounds!

https://lisawallerrogers.com/2010/07/07 ... ogue-kiss/







What about Bush's mistake!

"She didn’t complain, for example, in 1991 when poor White House planning meant that only her hat was visible when she addressed a crowd in Washington along with President George H.W. Bush — the podium height had been set for the tall president, not the diminutive monarch.

The queen is known to dislike revealing clothing, so it is expected that Mrs. Trump will wear a fashionable but conservative outfit. The president is likely to wear his traditional blue suit and a tie.

Some standard rules apply — it’s considered poor form to turn your back on the queen or to photograph her. Still, the days when there was a “proper” or “improper” way to hold a tea cup disappeared at about the time of the Beatles."


http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1009922/ro ... -the-queen

[jbuck919]

The Queen has impeccable manners. Forget about the "hat of state" event. I was home for the holidays after graduating from college in 1976, and I watched every minute of the coverage of the royal attendance at the state dinner in her honor. To begin with, the White House chef at the time had prepared a perfectly dreadful menu, so much so that when Julia Child interviewed him live it was all she could do to keep from making a yucky face. Then, because the state dining room in the White House is famously small for what it was intended for, they held the dinner in a tent. Excuse me? A state dinner held in a tent in the middle of July in Washington? The final indignity, though, was the royal couple's introduction over the PA system. The guy got the Queen right, but then he said "and his royal highness, the Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh." That is also correct, but he pronounced it Eddin-berg instead of the correct way.

[RebLem]

The final indignity, though, was the royal couple's introduction over the PA system. The guy got the Queen right, but then he said "and his royal highness, the Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh." That is also correct, but he pronounced it Eddin-berg instead of the correct way.

Perhaps he was a Scot? This is an example of why the Scottish National Party exists. The Scots say the name of the city is Edinburgh, and they have an annual festival there partly to encourage the use of that name. But the English, with their poke-in-the-eye crappy attitude, insist on calling it Edinborough.

[jbuck919]

The final indignity, though, was the royal couple's introduction over the PA system. The guy got the Queen right, but then he said "and his royal highness, the Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh." That is also correct, but he pronounced it Eddin-berg instead of the correct way.

Perhaps he was a Scot? This is an example of why the Scottish National Party exists. The Scots say the name of the city is Edinburgh, and they have an annual festival there partly to encourage the use of that name. But the English, with their poke-in-the-eye crappy attitude, insist on calling it Edinborough.

No, he had a distinctly American accent, and Rob, I'm not sure you're right.

[lennygoran]

The final indignity,...their poke-in-the-eye crappy attitude, insist on calling it Edinborough.

We tried haggis in Edinburgh-that was crappy for sure! Regards, Len