Card of the Day: The Railway Centenary Exhibition

You are a member of the British Royal Family. We are never tired, and we all love hospitals.

--Queen Mary to her son, the Prince of Wales (King Edward VIII) following the Great War.

Post-World War I, King George V and Queen Mary set about on a decided campaign of trying to bring the empire back to a sense of normalcy. As much as they could, they encouraged the nation to both grieve and repair, and attempted to remind the British people of the myriad accomplishments that wanted celebration.

By this point, of course, the King was exhausted. Physically, he never really recovered from the war, but he carried on—fervently supported by his wife who ensured, as best should could, his continued enthusiasm, if not strength--until 1937. Queen Mary had a strong and understandable dislike for sick people (owing to her unpleasant paralyzed grandmother, The Duchess of Cambridge, as well as her own fears during the illness of her father, the Duke of Teck, while the family lived in exile in Florence when Mary was a teenager). So, I can’t imagine what Mary was feeling as she traveled with her increasingly infirm husband. Queen Mary loved one thing above all else, however—Great Britain. And, so, I’m sure she was willing to make any necessary sacrifice to ensure the comfort of her people.

As part of this campaign, the King and Queen helped to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the British railway system. Since their time was limited, they enlisted the Duke and Duchess of York (the future King George VI and Queen Mother) to attend as the ambassadors of the Royal Family. This event is captured in the twenty-fourth in the series of Silver Jubilee cards produced in 1935 by Wills’s Cigarette Company, shortly before the King’s death.

The reverse of the card reads:

THE RAILWAY CENTENARY EXHIBITION


Over the route between Stockton and Darlington on which a century before, the first passenger train its fitful run, there passed on July 2nd, 1925, a procession of engines and rolling stock which summarized a hundred years of railway progress. The Duke and Duchess of York were the chief guests at the centenary, and from a point between the two towns, watched some of the earliest locomotives labour slowly past, drawing wagon-loads of passengers, wearing the dresses of 1825. These old warriors of the day of Stephenson, Hackworth, Trevithick and Watt had a “guard of honor” of some of the finest modern locomotives on the railroads.