29th & 30th July, 2004
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Bruce Bellingham
A Thought for Today
No one dies at the right moment.
BELLINGHAM’S A LIFE WELL - LIVED
This headline simply grabbed
me. "Queen Susan of the Albanians." It sounds like a Marx Brothers film
or maybe one of those Crosby and Hope's road pictures. My faves. "The
Road To Morocco" is the best. Catch the tunes. Johnny Burke was the
personal lyricist to Bing Crosby. You know you are a star when you have
a personal lyricist. I'm counting on it. But I am afraid I will have to
be it. I will have to serve until the end of my days. A court jester; an
in-house smartster. In short, someone who might serve in the purview of
Queen Susan of Albania.
Perhaps we have to serve someone all the time. We had better pick the
right mistress. Perhaps not. Maybe we should call the whole thing off.
How exotic or obscure is this? Albania must be the most arcane of
European countries. You know that British intelligence would lose more
agents there than anywhere else?
We are off on the "The Road to Tirana."
A graziers daughter? It is so much fun to read between the lines. An
inherent putdown. What the heck is a grazier? I am a city boy. Someone,
I surmise, who grazes for his cattle feed. You don't see them around
much anymore. I guess I am that way in an urban sense but we are off the
topic. I am sure a grazier's daughter is as wholesome and sweet as a
farmer's daughter. Then again, how are you gonna keep them down on the
farm after they've seen Albania?
Who could resist this obit? Back in Atlanta, Sherilyn Bottoms was
berating me this afternoon. She said I did not include enough women in
this column. Now I include a woman who surpasses all women: Susan, the
"Queen of Albania." It reminds me of the old Dorothy Parker joke, "And I
am Marie of Romania." I did not know there were queens in Romania. What
the hell am I saying, there are queens everywhere. We have plenty of
them here in San Francisco, though perhaps they have lost a little of
their old regality over the years.
In the old days, royalty was a living; a treasured artifact. Monarchy is
specious, for sure --- but inexplicably attractive.
Above all, this piece is wonderfully written. What is a level-headed
wife anyway. I never had one. I like this in the second paragraph: "not
unusual for middle-class girls to marry into the fading respectability
of the of dispossessed monarchs."
Ever have a bad day? I really hate being a dispossessed monarch. Or
queen for a day.
Consort to a gun-toting giant? I've seen enough of those in the
Tenderloin of San Francisco. And some of them were queens, as well.
Sherilyn is right: they might be dangerous.
There are so many elements to this story that are so bizarre, it makes
me wonder. Friends of the CIA, Richard Nixon? Well, I guess that doesn't
surprise me at all. But this "level-headed queen," I have to tax my
imagination what it was all about. The chaos, the crime, the lunacy ---
the state of simply trying to stay alive.
The writer describes her as "Young Sue." She must have been. She was
only 63 when she died the other day. And she taught art. What kind, I
haven't a clue. We would like to dismiss people who align themselves
with the wrong persons. But perhaps we should not castigate them
automatically.
I don't know. Judging people is always a bad premise. This is such a
weirdly ornate story, I don't know what to make of it. Did she align
herself with racist and creepy people? Yes. Do I condemn her? I don't
know.
Sue's life is one well-lived because she made hard, determined choices.
We may decide how we would like to live our own. That will give me
pause. I am sure you will catch the stab from the London Telegraph
reporter: "buried in a grave next to her mother-in-law and bridge
partner."
I don't know which is worse: having a mother-in-law or bridge partner.
Meanwhile, let's keep up our practicing to curtsey ...
Bruce Bellingham, San
Francisco bellsf@mac.com
Queen
Susan of the Albanians 1941 – 2004
Queen Susan of the
Albanians, who has died in Tirana aged 63, was the level-headed
Australian wife of King Leka I, claimant to the Albanian throne.
It is unusual, though not unknown, for middle-class girls to marry into
the fading respectability of dispossessed monarchs. But when in 1975 the
petite Susan Cullen-Ward married Leka, son of King Zog I, she became
consort to a 6ft 9in tall, six-gun-toting giant who has never shaken off
the aura of his country's bandit
Leka was born at Tirana just before the Second World War and left with
his family two days later when Mussolini invaded Albania. After his
father's death in 1961, he was crowned in Paris, from which he was
expelled because of the ill effects he was having on French relations
with Albania's Communist regime; he was once arrested on suspicion of
arms smuggling in Thailand. In the course of his restless travels, he
met Susan Cullen-Ward at a dinner party in Sydney.
They discovered that they both had claims of royal lineage; she was
descended from King Edward I and he was a ninth cousin once removed of
Queen Elizabeth II. When later she was on holiday in London, a courtier
suggested that she visit the King in Madrid. Leka's mother, Queen
Geraldine, realized that the couple's friendship was turning into love,
and proceeded to groom the Australian girl as her royal successor. This
involved teaching her to speak Albanian and steeping her in the history
and customs of the country.
Leka and Susan were married in a civil ceremony at Biarritz, then held a
reception at a five-star Toledo roadhouse, which was attended by members
of other exiled royal families, loyal Albanians and Spanish friends. An
Anglican clergyman flew from Australia to give the couple a blessing.
Queen Elizabeth II sent a telegram of congratulations. Queen Susan
looked suitably regal in a 200-year-old gold embroidered Royal Albanian
shawl and the guests cried, "Long live the King”
A grazier's daughter, Susan Cullen-Ward was born at Waverly, a suburb of
Sydney, on January 28 1941 (Australia Day). She was brought up on a New
South Wales sheep station, where she remembered practicing to curtsey to
Her Majesty The Queen before a royal visit, but also being taken with
the achievements of Colonel Harry Llewellyn and his showjumper
Foxhunter, which won a gold medal at the 1952 Olympics;
Young Sue went to the Presbyterian Ladies' College at Orange, then
Sydney Technical College, before teaching art at a private studio and
contracting a brief marriage. After returning with her husband to Spain,
she told the press at the reception, "I don't feel like a queen. I feel
a happy bride. Nothing has changed except I have the responsibility of
helping His Majesty back on to the throne of his country."
The couple returned to Madrid, where they were befriended by King Juan
Carlos and continued to enjoy the attentions of Albanians while awaiting
what they knew must be the fall of Communism. But when it was discovered
that Leka not only retained some Thai bodyguards but had what was
described as an arms cache in their home, the Spanish government asked
him to leave.
That Leka had some reason for his fears was proved when he arrived at
Gabon to find his plane surrounded by local troops, who were said to
have been hired to capture him by the Albanian government; he saw them
off by appearing at the plane's door with a bazooka in his hand. The
couple went on to Rhodesia. But after Mugabe took power they settled in
a large compound at Johannesburg, where they were given diplomatic
status by the apartheid regime
There were always questions about how Leka lived. Such good friends as
the Shah of Persia, President Richard Nixon (a distant cousin) and the
CIA are thought to have helped.
The royal couple enjoyed a close personal relationship. They both had a
keen liking for smoking. He affectionately called her "Roo", and showed
some signs of allowing her to check some of his more outlandish
instincts. For more than a decade she tried to lead as ordinary a life
as her roles of housewife, mother and queen permitted. Out shopping, she
often called herself Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Jones because shop assistants
were so bamboozled by her title that they would ask "Queen? That's a
funny name, Mrs. Susan."
When her son, also called Leka, was born, her hospital room was declared
part of Albania for an hour. The boy used another name at school, though
she once heard him tell a friend: "You can't say that to me, because I'm
a prince." Entering the room, she said: "Well, I am queen, so I outrank
you. Bend over."
But as Communism looked increasingly shaky in Eastern Europe, she felt
lonely with Leka so frequently away; and she was always delighted to
receive visits from old Australian friends, replete with gossip. Her
relationship with the dominion's government proved a problem when she
wanted a passport. The Australian authorities declined to recognize her
as a queen, and eventually, after a friend had a word with the Foreign
Minister Andrew Peacock; the document described her as "Susan
Cullen-Ward, known as Queen Susan".
There was also trouble when her son, aged four, had wanted to visit a
dying grandfather whom he had never met. He was asked to sign an
undertaking not to address any dissident groups. By the time it was
clear that Leka's dream of returning to his country was to be fulfilled,
she showed signs of preferring the simple life, saying she had no desire
to live in a castle and was sometimes tempted to laugh when grown men,
in their confusion, had curtseyed to her.
But she duly went to Albania where a referendum was held on his offer to
become king in 1997; it was lost. But he was invited to return by 74
members of parliament in 2002; and it is thought that the royalist party
could join a government after next year's general election, thanks to
proportional representation.
The Saturday after her death Queen Susan lay in state at the royal
palace outside Tirana. Hundreds paid their last respects before she was
buried in a grave next to her mother-in-law and bridge partner Queen
Geraldine.
© Copyright 2004 Telegraph
Group Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Summer scrambles on, sleep
warm and I’ll see you over the weekend.
RM 7/29/2004 2:49AM PDST
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