The Queen Mother Part 14
CHAPTER TWELVE.
ACROSS THE ATLANTIC.
1939.
'This has made us'
'I AM STARTING to read the unexpurgated edition of "Mein Kampf",' wrote Queen Elizabeth to Queen Mary, who may have been rather startled to be asked, 'Have you read it, Mama?'1*
The letter to Queen Mary was written on 8 May 1939 from the Canadian Pacific liner Empress of Australia. The King and Queen were at the start of the journey to Canada and the United States which was to take them away from the tense and anxious atmosphere in Europe for the next six weeks. The Queen's choice of reading matter showed where her concerns lay. The King had been reluctant to leave Britain as it became ever clearer that Hitler could not be appeased. But the government's advice was that war was not yet imminent, and that the international crisis rendered the tour more, rather than less, advisable. The visit would both demonstrate and strengthen the solidarity of the Empire against the threat to world peace, and boost Anglo-American friendship.
A tour of Canada had first been proposed by Lord Tweedsmuir, the Governor General, in early 1937 and was promoted by the Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, when he came to London for the Coronation. President Roosevelt encouraged the idea of combining the tour of Canada with a trip to the United States. The President invited the Princesses too, but the King felt that they were too young.2 The announcement of the visit was well received, particularly in Canada. 'People talk about nothing else,' Lord Tweedsmuir reported. 'I suggest a very informal and unofficial visit to the United States, as being far more likely to please the American people. That I know is President Roosevelt's own idea, which he confided to my Prime Minister.'3 This cautious, indeed downbeat, approach to the American visit was Roosevelt's preference for both political and personal reasons. He could not afford to antagonize the isolationists in Congress and the press who believed that the United States should remain outside any European conflict. But, certain that war between Britain and Germany was inevitable, he hoped that the presence of the King and Queen on American soil would strengthen the friendship between the two English-speaking nations and sway Congress towards Britain. As his wife Eleanor later wrote, Roosevelt thought that 'we all might soon be engaged in a life and death struggle, in which Great Britain would be our first line of defence'.4 The American part of the tour was thus of enormous significance, but it was also important to Canada that the King's journey should be seen to be primarily for the benefit of Canadians.
Much has been written about this tour.* Despite the hopes of Canadian officials, the American visit came to outweigh the Canadian journey because of the personal relationship the King was able to form with President Roosevelt and the effect this, as well as the public success of the tour, had upon American att.i.tudes to the war when it came. But the visit to Canada was especially significant. Not only was it the first visit by a British sovereign to an overseas dominion, but King George VI was the first sovereign to be crowned king of Canada, since the 1931 Statute of Westminster had established the status of Canada and the other Dominions as autonomous dominions under the Crown. From Britain's point of view, furthermore, the visit was vitally important in guaranteeing the support of Mackenzie King and Canada in the event of war, for the Canadian Prime Minister had been a convinced appeaser, determined to keep Canada out of any European hostilities.
The trip also gave both King and Queen their first opportunity to gauge, in person, the feelings of the people of the wider Empire towards them and that in a country where King Edward VIII had acquired popularity through his visits as Prince of Wales and his purchase of a ranch in Alberta.* The challenge was political as well as personal: there were isolationists in Canada as well as in the USA the support of French Canadians for the British cause could not be taken for granted. In the event, they succeeded beyond all expectation and for Queen Elizabeth this tour was the beginning of a long and affectionate relationship with Canada; she would visit it more than any other country, returning thirteen times.
They were to have travelled in the battlecruiser HMS Repulse, but the King considered it unwise to deprive the navy of a warship at this dangerous time. So it was in the liner Empress of Australia that they set sail on 6 May from Portsmouth, accompanied by a suite of ten. The two Princesses, aged thirteen and eight, came to see them off, together with Queen Mary and other members of the Royal Family. 'I hated saying good-bye to you & Margaret,' their mother wrote to Princess Elizabeth next day. 'I shall miss you horribly, but be good & kind,' she said, adding, 'P.S. My handwriting is very wobbly, because the ship is shivering like someone with influenza! P.P.S. Papa is writing to Margaret.'5 Their first few days afloat were not improved by rough seas and by what looked like a deliberate attempt by the Duke of Windsor to cause trouble. He accepted an invitation to broadcast an appeal for peace to the American people direct from the First World War battlefield of Verdun. The timing was not entirely of his choosing and his speech was an uncontroversial plea to statesmen to do all they could to avoid war. But it was tactless to make the broadcast while the King was on his way across the Atlantic. The Queen could only have seen it as an attempt to steal her husband's thunder. 'I see on the news bulletin today, that David is going to broadcast to America this evening,' she wrote to Queen Mary on 8 May. 'I do wonder whether this is true, and if it is, how troublesome of him to choose such a moment.'6 The Duke spoke fluently and his speech was well received by many listeners;7 but it did seem to be a gesture of appeas.e.m.e.nt designed to upstage the King. The Duke of Kent agreed with the Queen, and Alec Hardinge, writing to the King, commented that it was 'ludicrous' of the Duke to think that such a speech could do any good.8 Three days later the Duke seemed a minor irritant the whole journey suddenly appeared to be in jeopardy. The ship was enveloped in thick fog and surrounded by icebergs. She stopped, not for a few hours, but for days. The Queen wrote home to her daughter: Here we are creeping along at about one mile per hour, & occasionally stopping altogether, for the 3rd day running! You can imagine how horrid it is one cannot see more than a few yards, and the sea is full of icebergs as big as Glamis, & things called 'growlers' which are icebergs mostly under water with only a very small amount of ice showing on the surface. We shall be late arriving in Canada, and it is going to be very difficult to fit everything in, and avoid disappointing people. It is very cold rather like the coldest, dampest day at Sandringham double it and add some icebergs, & then you can imagine a little of what it is like!9 The blasts of the ship's foghorn echoed off the icebergs 'like the tw.a.n.g of a piece of wire. Incredibly eery,' she told Queen Mary. 'We very nearly hit a berg the day before yesterday, and the poor Captain was nearly demented because some kind cheerful people kept on reminding him that it was about here that the t.i.tanic was struck, & just about the same date!' It was an alarming experience: 'one kept on imagining that a great iceberg was bearing down on the ship, & starting up at night with a beating heart,' the Queen wrote.10 The fog finally cleared on 14 May, 'and we saw the sea covered with floating ice, a few big bergs, and a great ma.s.s of pack ice hemming us on three sides. We went round it for a bit, and then ploughed through one side of the pack into open water. It was an amazing sight,' she reported.11 Tommy Lascelles, the King's acting Private Secretary for the trip,* faced with reorganizing the beginning of the tour, commented that it was a near-run thing: any longer delay would have thrown the entire programme off track. Thanks to 'ingenious juggling', condensing the Ottawa visit from four days into two and a half, 'we have re-mosaic'd the first four days so that nothing is left out.' And there was a silver lining the delay had provided the King with a longer rest: 'it is the only really idle & irresponsible spell he has had since he acceded; there has been nothing for him to do, & Hitler has hardly been mentioned since we left England.'12 On the morning of 17 May, in fine weather, the Empress of Australia and her British and Canadian naval escorts finally steamed up the St Lawrence to L'Anse du Foulon Wolfe's Cove where the royal party was to disembark. The cliffs above the harbour were lined with thousands of spectators who had been gathering since early morning. At 10.30 Prime Minister Mackenzie King and the Justice Minister Ernest Lapointe went on board to welcome the King and Queen. Mackenzie King's diary, recording their conversation, showed that the Queen was well aware of the personal contribution she could make to the success of the tour as a Scottish queen: she spoke at once of Scotland's links with France, and the number of Scots who had come to Canada.13 Nor were Canadian Scots about to forget this. The demands for her attention from emigre Scots became a leitmotif of the tour.
A few minutes later they came ash.o.r.e. The King was wearing the full-dress uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet, the Queen was elegant in a pale-grey dress of light wool, with long slit sleeves edged with fur and a hat with a becomingly upswept brim. She stepped off the gangway first, remarking as she did so that this was the first time she had set foot on Canadian soil.14 (It was the King's second visit: he had been to Canada as a naval cadet in 1913.) After being presented with a long line of dignitaries, they were driven to the Quebec Parliament to receive provincial and munic.i.p.al addresses.
Both the luncheon which followed and dinner that night were held at Chateau Frontenac, the grandiose Canadian Pacific Railway hotel whose towering green roof still dominates the Quebec skyline. The lavish luncheon was followed by a speech by Mackenzie King expressing pride that Canada had been chosen for the King's first visit to his Dominions and stressing, for the benefit of French Canadians, that the King and Queen had come ash.o.r.e at the same spot as the French founders of Canada. The King's reply, beginning in English and ending in French, betrayed his nerves but was well received. 'When the King began to speak, he was certainly moved and it was a little difficult to understand him,' wrote one of the French Canadian officials organizing the trip. 'He quickly recovered himself and continued his address in a firm voice. He was warmly applauded.'15 After lunch, the King and Queen drove round the city to a warm, if quiet, welcome. But crowds of excited children in the Parc des Champs de Bataille on the Plains of Abraham, site of the b.l.o.o.d.y battle between the armies of General Wolfe and the Marquis de Montcalm in 1759, cheered loudly and waved flags; others sang 'Dieu benisse notre Roi et notre Reine'.
Yousuf Karsh, the Governor General's official photographer for the tour, photographed the party. For tea at the residence of the Lieutenant Governor of Quebec the nuns of the Hotel-Dieu in the city had worked for a month creating two towering cakes surmounted by replicas of the King's and Queen's Coronation crowns. At Chateau Frontenac in the evening, the Queen wore a diamond tiara and a pink crinoline dress adorned with gold sequins and 'La France' roses. The Lieutenant Governor, Esioff-Leon Patenaude, seated next to her, was struck when she correctly identified three guests as having the air of 'educators' they were all heads of universities and two others as judges; she asked to meet them, and they were sought out after dinner. Only the intervention of Lascelles, announcing that it was time for the King and Queen to leave, prevented further presentations at the end of this exhausting first day.16 They spent the night at the Citadel, the Governor General's Quebec residence.
The first twenty-four hours had certainly been a success. One observer commented, 'Sa Majeste la Reine avait conquis tous les Quebecois.'17 Asked what impression the King and Queen had made in Quebec, and whether French Canadians were loyal to England, Patenaude replied that less than 5 per cent of the French Canadian population shared the anti-British feelings expressed by certain soapbox orators, and that it had been a great thing for the people to see the King: they now felt that he belonged to them, as king of Canada. Indeed, French Canadians were eager to play a part in the visit. They clamoured for invitations to Chateau Frontenac; a country priest wrote to ask for commemorative medallions for the schoolchildren in his parish, although they would not see the King and Queen; a mayor begged for the couple to stop at his town.18 At Quebec the King and Queen embarked on a train which was to be their base for most of the rest of the tour, covering some 9,510 miles in twenty-nine days. It was the Governor General's official train, which had been redecorated and extended to twelve carriages to carry the large party. The two royal carriages were painted in silver and blue, with the royal arms on each; the bedrooms were furnished in grey-blue and pink for the Queen and blue and white for the King. There was a wood-panelled office for the King, sitting rooms and a handsome dining room; and pull-down maps on rollers to follow their route across Canada. There was a carriage for the Prime Minister, who accompanied them throughout the tour. The train was comfortably, indeed luxuriously, appointed, although there was scarcely room for the Queen's clothes: she needed a prodigious wardrobe for the multiple occasions and climate changes ahead, and Norman Hartnell had provided for all.19 Towards the end of the tour, one of the accompanying journalists calculated that she had made forty-eight appearances in thirty-two different outfits.20 The royal staff of nineteen included three British police officers. But at the King's special request there were also four stalwart Royal Canadian Mounted Police orderlies in the party. Their task was to act as bodyguards in case of over-enthusiastic crowds.21 Eight more Mounties travelled with the train.
After a brief stop at Trois Rivieres, where the King and Queen alighted to meet the Mayor and City Council, they arrived at Montreal in the early afternoon of 18 May, to a welcome as warm as that in Quebec City but far noisier. 'So far, this tour is a roaring success,' Tommy Lascelles reported. 'I've never seen such splendid crowds ... we must have seen well over a million people in Montreal alone.'22 The guard of honour was provided by the Black Watch of Canada,* affiliated to the British regiment of which Queen Elizabeth had become colonel-in-chief in 1937. She became colonel-in-chief of the Canadian regiment ten years later, and maintained a close interest in it throughout her life.
Montreal had been preparing for the nine-hour royal visit for months, and the arrangements were lavish. The street decorations alone cost hundreds of thousands of dollars the city was decked with floral arches, royal portraits and immense pylons covered with coloured bunting. Houses were painted and balconies rented out to spectators. As the King and Queen arrived, the schoolchildren ma.s.sed in the East Baseball Park forgot to sing the National Anthem and burst out into spontaneous cheering instead.23 Their host in Montreal was the Mayor, Camillien Houde, a colourful character. Earlier in the year he had made a speech a.s.serting that if there were a war between England and Italy, the French Canadians, who were Roman Catholics, Latins and natural fascists, would side with Italy.24 He posed the kind of challenge that the Queen enjoyed she had charmed hostile 'Bolshevik' politicians in Australia; a maverick right-winger should prove no more difficult. Houde was indeed entranced by her and he is reputed to have said to the King, as huge crowds cheered them, 'You know, Your Majesty, some of this is for you.'25*
The thousand guests bidden to the dinner given by the City of Montreal had kept dressmakers and tailors employed for weeks, according to the local press. The Queen, this time, wore not a crinoline but a close-fitting silver-blue brocade gown embroidered with silver sequins and rhinestones, and a diamond tiara, three-strand necklace and earrings. When she and the King entered the hall, the guests abandoned protocol and broke into applause and cheers. Thereafter the dinner proceeded with much gaiety through its six courses and vintage champagne. The Quatuor Alouette sang traditional French Canadian folk songs as well as Scottish, Irish and English tunes, and the press reported that the King and Queen joined in with 'Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes' and 'Alouette, Gentille Alouette', of which the Queen asked for a copy of the lyrics to take home.26 Next morning, 19 May, the royal train arrived in Ottawa, to be greeted by Lord and Lady Tweedsmuir. The Governor General's role in the tour was small: as the King's representative he stepped down, symbolically, while the King himself was in Canada. But during the two and a half days the King and Queen spent in Ottawa, days crammed with pomp and ceremony, Lord Tweedsmuir was able to observe them at first hand, and his comments were perceptive, particularly about the Queen. The city was thronged with spectators who had come in from the surrounding countryside; thousands of Americans also came. The princ.i.p.al event of the first day in Ottawa was the session of Parliament over which the King presided. For the ceremony the Queen wore one of the more spectacular crinolines designed for her by Hartnell, with a long golden train.* 'The Q. is looking radiantly beautiful, & has them all gasping like goldfish particularly the American press-men,' Tommy Lascelles reported.27 Sat.u.r.day 20 May had been designated the King's official birthday, since he would be in the United States on 8 June, the date on which the birthday was normally celebrated. To mark the day, Trooping the Colour was held on Parliament Hill. While the King took the salute, the Queen watched from a window with Lord Tweedsmuir. 'When the crowd saw her,' Tweedsmuir observed, 'nothing would induce several thousand of them to look at the Trooping. They simply kept their eyes glued on Her Majesty and shouted like dervishes.'28 The Canadian government had been anxious for her to perform a ceremony to commemorate her visit, so after the Trooping she laid the foundation stone of the Supreme Court Building. Her deftly worded speech acknowledged the compliment to women which the ceremony represented, and also used her Scottish heritage to advantage. 'Perhaps it is not inappropriate that this task should be performed by a woman, for woman's position in civilized society has depended upon the growth of law,' she began. She continued in French, pointing out that Scottish and French Canadian law shared their source in Roman law.29 Afterwards, showing her instinct for the unexpected but welcome gesture, the Queen asked Lord Tweedsmuir to take her and the King to meet the masons working on the building. Some of them were Scots, and, as Tweedsmuir recorded, 'they spent at least ten minutes in Scottish reminiscences, in full view of 70,000 people, who went mad!'30 This episode has been seen as the first instance of a royal 'walkabout', though it is worth remembering that the King and Queen had done much the same as Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of York in Australia in 1927. The following day, in beautiful weather, the King unveiled the National War Memorial and then, Tweedsmuir reported, A most extraordinary scene followed. The King and Queen, and my wife and myself were absorbed in a crowd of six or seven thousand ex-soldiers, who kept the most perfect order among themselves, and opened up lanes for Their Majesties to pa.s.s through. There was no need of the police, and indeed the police would have had no chance. It was a wonderful example of what a people's king means, and it would have been impossible anywhere else in the world. One old fellow shouted to me, 'Ay, man, if Hitler could see this!' It was also extraordinarily moving, because most of these old fellows were weeping.31 Writing to a friend about these two occasions, Tweedsmuir declared that the Queen had 'a perfect genius for the right kind of publicity. The unrehea.r.s.ed episodes here were marvellous.'32 Both King and Queen, he remarked to Hardinge, had an infallible instinct for 'the small unscheduled things that count most'.33 Throughout the tour, the press reports are peppered with accounts of impromptu breaks in the official programme when the pair stopped to talk to individuals, or appeared unannounced from the royal train. One Ottawa journal described the royal couple as 'democracy enthroned, not enthralled'.34 At the garden party at Government House on their second day in Ottawa, Lord Tweedsmuir was amazed to see, among the cheering guests, the Archbishop and other French Canadian ecclesiastics shouting, 'Vive le Roi!' and 'Vive la Reine!' This was followed by a Parliamentary dinner at Chateau Laurier. After it the King and Queen appeared on the balcony to acknowledge the cheers of a crowd of some 100,000 in the central square, and then surprised officials by returning to shake the hands of all 800 of the guests at the dinner.35 Rufus Pope, one of the Senators, said to the Queen, 'Ma'am I would fight for you. Yes I would fight for you until h.e.l.l is frozen.'36 All this was noticed in Europe. Georges Vanier,* the Canadian Minister in Paris, reported on the close attention the royal visit was receiving in France. 'The departure of the King and Queen from England at a time of acute national anxiety is seen as a proof of the cool, phlegmatic, and solid character of their Anglo-Saxon ally,' he wrote. Accounts of the King's speeches in French were well received, as was the attention paid to French Canadians.37 In Italy, predictably, reactions were less favourable. The Italian press 'has paid studiously little attention' to the visit, the British Amba.s.sador wrote, and such reports as it published were derogatory. Some newspapers mocked the idea that the visit augured well for Anglo-French collaboration, expressing surprise that the French had ever given up this former possession.38 In Germany, meanwhile, having reported that the bad weather in the North Atlantic had spoiled the trip, the press did its best to play it down.39 'Their Majesties are very well, and in excellent spirits,' commented Lord Tweedsmuir the day after their departure from Ottawa. 'I am just a little doubtful as to how they will last the course. Canada has given them a pretty heavy programme, but they seem to want to add to it.'40 On the way to Toronto, the King and Queen waved to the crowds from the rear platform of the train as it ran slowly through towns; this was often repeated as they travelled west.
In Toronto next day, in addition to the provincial and munic.i.p.al welcoming ceremonies, the Queen had another engagement of her own. She had accepted the colonelcy-in-chief of the Toronto Scottish Regiment in 1937; now she inspected her regiment and presented them with new colours, making a short speech alluding to the ties uniting Canada and her native Scotland. 'Rousing Cheers Given for "Girl from Glamis" ' announced the Toronto Globe and Mail.41 There were more echoes of Scotland: while officially the King and Queen were enjoying periods of rest in the Lieutenant Governor's Chambers in the Legislative Buildings that day, they were in fact receiving individuals privately, including the son of a shepherd at Glamis whom the Queen had asked to meet,* and Sir William Mulock, a distinguished Canadian elder statesman, who presented her with funds collected by the Black Watch in Toronto to endow beds at a Black Watch Home in Scotland.
She had also asked to meet in Toronto the President of the Canadian Mothercraft Society. This was the only Canadian society to which she had as yet given her patronage, underlining the importance she attached to the teaching of maternal skills, for the Mothercraft Training Society was one of her earliest patronages in England. The Queen's public role in promoting charitable work was, in theory, suspended during the Canadian tour, but in this way she contrived to give a favourite cause a private boost;42 she did the same for the Canadian Toc H League of Women Helpers in various cities across the country.43*
Their final engagement in Toronto was another landmark for Queen Elizabeth: the Woodbine Spring Meeting, to which they were invited at the suggestion of the President of the Ontario Jockey Club.44 The King and Queen drove round the course in the state landau before watching the highlight of the meeting, the King's Plate, for which Queen Victoria had given fifty guineas in 1860. No one could have guessed then that racing would become the Queen's pa.s.sion, or that she would return frequently to Woodbine, where she watched the running of what became the Queen's Plate six times, culminating, in 1989, on the fiftieth anniversary of this visit. After the race the King and Queen drove through the crowded streets of Toronto again, stopping at the Christie Street Military Hospital, where they overran their schedule, talking to war invalids.
That night, as the royal train journeyed west, a crowd estimated at 20,000 at Sudbury stood silently during a twenty-minute stop at 1 a.m. the press had published a request that the King and Queen be allowed to sleep. On another occasion they were not so lucky: the steward of the royal carriages, Wilfred Notley, recorded that he was awakened at 6 a.m. by an out-of-tune rendering of the National Anthem attempted by patriotic citizens who had spent the night camped beside the train at Kenora, one of its overnight stopping places. Summoned by bells to the royal car, Notley found a half-awake King in the pa.s.sageway, protesting at the noise. The Mounties diplomatically silenced the din with a.s.surances that the King would come out later, which he duly did.45 The temperature dropped as the royal train headed north and westwards. On 23 May, as they travelled along the sh.o.r.es of Lake Superior, the Queen wrote again to Princess Elizabeth: I am afraid that I never had one single minute in Ottawa to write to you, and this is the first opportunity on the train. All day we have been pa.s.sing through lovely wild country. Rather like Scotland on a large scale. Great rivers & lochs and pine woods, and for hours right along the great Lake. It was bright blue, with many little wooded Islands ... Papa & I have had a wonderful welcome everywhere we have been. The French people in Quebec & Ottawa were wonderfully loyal; & in Montreal there must have been 2,000,000 people, all very enthusiastic ... Yesterday in Toronto it was the same, and we feel so glad that we were able to come here ... Papa & I are bearing up very well. Tho' we are working very hard from morning to night, we go in open cars & the good air keeps us well. The train stops at little stations to get water or coal or ice, & there is always a crowd, & we go out & talk to the people. Yesterday there were some Indians with a baby in its wooden cradle, & always someone from Scotland! Usually Forfar or Glamis!46 It was raining when they arrived in Winnipeg on 24 May, but the King and Queen kept their car open for their drive around the city and were cheered by large crowds including many Americans: forty-two special trains had been run from the United States. In his Empire Day broadcast, the King described their journey as 'a deeply moving experience'. Across the Atlantic, he said, 'the Christian civilization of Europe is now profoundly troubled and challenged from within'. He pointed to the example of Canada in overcoming internal strife, and to the success of Canada and the United States in resolving differences between them without force or threats.47 Late that evening, when the train had made its customary stop at a small station for the night, the Queen took up her letter to Princess Elizabeth again: 'We spent the day in Winnipeg, a large town where all the business is done for the thousands of miles of farms round about. It rained in the morning, but cleared up in the afternoon, when we drove 28 miles, with cheering people & children all the way!'48 The train had now taken to stopping at deserted spots on the line so that they could get out and walk about, a relief from the hours they spent in the public eye at one reception after another. At one such halt, the Queen organized a race for members of their suite which had them all puffing along the track. 'She is full of life and charm,' commented Mackenzie King.49 In Saskatchewan on 25 May they were given another vociferous welcome at the provincial capital, Regina. Their host was the Lieutenant Governor, Archie McNab, who had to be reminded to remove his unaccustomed silk hat for the National Anthem. His homespun manner, the local press reported, 'called forth a happy response from the sovereigns'.50 The royal train left Regina after a state dinner at Government House. Later, during a short stop in heavy rain at Moose Jaw, the King and Queen again faced a drenching in their open car as they drove through the town. In Calgary, home of the celebrated stampede, as the Queen wrote to Princess Elizabeth, 'we saw a lot of Indians, and quite a lot of cowboys on "bucking broncos" who came dashing along with us'.51 They made an unscheduled stop at an Indian encampment on their drive through the city and shook hands with Duck Chief, head of the Blackfoot tribe. 'R. Dimbleby, BBC announcer, gave an atmosphere broadcast, a.s.sisted by Interpreter Little Dog,' the Calgary press reported.52 It was the first royal tour on which Richard Dimbleby, later one of the BBC's most renowned correspondents, reported.
The seemingly endless journey across the prairies was enlivened by several incidents recorded by Wilfred Notley, the steward in the royal carriages. In his somewhat macabre words, a beautiful box not unlike 'a child's coffin' was delivered to the King: it proved to contain a dozen ducks, frozen solid, a present from one of the lieutenant governors. 'Remind me to have this man arrested for shooting game out of season,' said the King to Notley.* In Banff, where the royal party were to spend the night at the Banff Springs Hotel, the train crew took some rare time off in the village while their charges went hungry: someone had forgotten to order dinner either at the hotel or on the train.53 A late dinner was eventually served at the hotel. The Queen wrote to Princess Elizabeth that the hotel was 'boiling' like all Canadian houses. 'We opened every window, and I expect all the poor habitants will get pneumonia! This morning we climbed a mountain nearby which took about 50 minutes. It was very like Balmoral only much bigger, & the pine trees smelt delicious in the hot sun. This afternoon Papa & I went for a Buggy ride!! ... Two nice grey horses & we rolled along on high old wheels very wobbly but great fun.'
They watched a moose feeding on waterlily bulbs, and beavers building a dam, and also saw black bears and other animals. It was a relief to get away from 'roaring crowds and incessant noise even tho' one is glad that the people are pleased to see us'. The Queen felt that they were bearing up well and added that the next two weeks would be tiring but worthwhile work, 'for one feels how important it is that the people here should see their King, & not have him only as a symbol'.54 Banff was supposed to be a day of rest from the press as well, but the King and Queen had long since learned the importance of good relations with journalists and allowed themselves to be photographed outside the hotel after lunch. They had held a reception in Ottawa for the eighty-strong press corps accompanying them on the tour in a pilot train, and the Queen later commented to Queen Mary that the journalists were 'really very nice, and were so shy and polite! The Americans are particularly easy and pleasant, and have been amazed I believe at the whole affair. Of course they have no idea of our Const.i.tution or how the Monarchy works, and were surprised & delighted to find that we were ordinary & fairly polite people with a big job of work.'55 Lascelles was delighted: 'I hope people at home realise what a wow this adventure is being,' he wrote. 'It is on a crescendo rather than a diminuendo I hope T[heir] M[ajesties] will be able to stand the strain for another 17 days.'56 In his diary, Mackenzie King recorded a frank dinner conversation with the Queen about the dangers of fascism and war. The Queen told him how much all those men who had died in the Great War were now missed; she felt that a great struggle had begun between right and wrong, but that right would win in the end. According to Mackenzie King, she agreed with him that Hitler himself probably did not want war and she still thought that Chamberlain had acted correctly; war would otherwise have been certain. 'She said that England had done splendidly: had gone as far as she could in every way for peace. Was prepared to go to any length but to be strong to save the situation. She thought other nations were looking more and more to Britain for leadership. I was quite impressed with the earnestness with which she spoke.' At the end of the meal she said, 'I have been talking pretty freely. It is very nice to be able to say what you think.'57 Almost every day brought more bad news. 'Europe seems to be moving dangerously nearer to war,' Mackenzie King wrote on 25 May. He added, nonetheless, 'I am not without hope that this visit may help to let the peoples of Europe see how firmly the democracies are standing together.'58 The King too was pleased with the trip, but became uneasy as they travelled ever further from Europe. Commenting on the situation to Alec Hardinge, he wrote, 'I am glad Hitler & Mussolini are behaving fairly well but they may blow up again at any moment. I am longing for this visit to be over & to be back again.'59 His anxiety sometimes revealed itself in the outbursts of temper which his Household and family called 'gnashes' or sometimes 'Nashvilles'. In the privacy of the royal train, to help him relax, the Queen would contrive opportunities for one particular Mountie, who amused the King, to take him cups of tea.60 Another twenty-four hours' travel brought the King and Queen to a spectacular welcome in Vancouver on the morning of 29 May. As elsewhere, they were both praised for their spontaneity, making extra stops and talking impromptu to people. This was a skill which had come easily to the Queen since the earliest days of her marriage, and which the King had acquired under her influence. It was often remarked upon in Canada. 'She dazzled me,' wrote one guest at the civic luncheon in Vancouver. 'As she greets you she seems as though she actually would like to know you.'61 That evening they left for the British Columbian capital, Victoria, on board the SS Princess Marguerite, pa.s.sing through a formation of Indian war canoes at the Lion's Gate. 'She's the most charming woman in the world' was the verdict of the ship's captain.62 The next day, 30 May, there were formal munic.i.p.al and provincial welcome ceremonies; the press photographs show the Queen looking elegant in a slender, full-length pale-lilac dress, a spray of orchids pinned to the shoulder with a diamond bar, and, according to one reporter, the largest hat she had worn so far, of lilac straw. At the state luncheon which followed, the King made an eloquent speech referring to Victoria as 'Canada's Western gateway', and to Canada's role, looking as she did both east and west, in furthering friendly relations between the two hemispheres. A reporter watching the Queen noticed that she became tense and serious as he spoke; her eyes never left his face, while he exchanged glances with her at the beginning and end of the speech. Then she relaxed.63 After a 'brilliant spectacle, the most heart-lifting scene that the King and Queen have partic.i.p.ated in during their stay in Canada', when the King presented colours to the Canadian navy in bright sunshine against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains and the deep blue of the Juan de Fuca Strait, their official engagements were over for the day. But another unofficial, Scottish gathering awaited the Queen. In the grounds of Government House, she met and was photographed with some fifty emigrant 'men of Angus', several of whom had worked on the Glamis estate.64 On 31 May they finally turned around and began the long train journey eastwards and homewards. Lady Tweedsmuir had stocked the train with books: the Queen enjoyed reading 'all M. R. James's Ghost Stories all over again!'65 From Jasper, where they stopped to spend a day in the National Park and a night in a log cabin at the Jasper Park Lodge, the Queen wrote to Queen Mary: 'We arrived here this morning, and have just come in after a very beautiful drive & walk up to the Edith Cavell Glacier where it was snowing!' She wished that they could have had two days of rest there, 'for we are working hard, and one day is really not much use for relaxation. However it's better than nothing, and a great relief to get out of the train.' For all the enthusiasm of the welcome given them everywhere, she was not unaware of one sub-text of their tour, commenting: 'We have had a most touching reception everywhere it has really been wonderful and most moving. All Canada is very pleased at the way the French Canadians received us, and [they] are hopeful that the visit will bring lasting results in uniting the country. They are terribly divided in many ways and the provincial Gov:ments especially are jealous and suspicious of the Federal Government. But they are so young that I expect they will achieve unity in the end.'66 Edmonton was the last provincial capital on the tour: once again the streets were thronged. 'The volume of cheering equalled anything Edmonton has seen on sound newsreels of European crowds listening to some jaw-thrusting dictator talk about forests of bayonets and rivers of blood,' reported one Canadian journalist. Twice the King and Queen made unscheduled stops, once to receive presents of beaded white buckskin from a group of Cree Indians, and then at the University Hospital, to talk to disabled ex-servicemen and child patients whose beds had been brought outside. 'She's a swell-looking girl,' one veteran told a reporter, delighted that both King and Queen had shaken hands with him as they walked among the beds. Another paid her a compliment and was rewarded with a smiling word of thanks. 'And did she smile! Oh boy a million dollars' worth, that's all! I'll never forget it.'67 At Saskatoon, where they made a two-hour stop on 3 June for the usual mayoral reception and drive through the city, the Queen met yet another former Strathmore employee, John Batterson, who had worked at Glamis in 19089, and whom she remembered. They made another impromptu break in their programme, mingling with the crowds at the station when the Queen asked to meet a group of First World War nurses there. At Melville later that evening, when the Queen, ever on the lookout for fellow Scots, stopped to talk to a police officer who had served in the Black Watch, the King laughed that it was a wonder that there were any Scots left at home.68 The next day the inhabitants of Sudbury, who twelve days earlier had stood silently by the track at 1 a.m. so as not to wake the King and Queen during their journey westwards, were rewarded with an hour's visit. One banner proclaimed that its bearers had 'Come 400 miles'.69 That evening there was an unscheduled addition to their programme: they were taken down a nickel mine clad in white oilskin coats and miners' helmets and carrying torches. Over the next two days, in a letter to Princess Elizabeth, the Queen summed up their increasingly hectic progress, from the empty expanses of the west into the populous reaches of Ontario close to the American border.
Here we are flying along round terrific corners through quite wild and untouched country along the side of beautiful lakes & thousands of miles of woods & bush. We left the cultivated land the day before yesterday, & have been travelling hard & without stopping except for little places where we water & coal. There are usually a large bunch of children who have probably come over a hundred miles by canoe down the lakes, as there are no roads up here ...
June 6th We have been almost continually 'on show' all today, pa.s.sing through a very thickly populated part of Canada after Toronto, and at every hour there are thousands & thousands of people waiting at the various stops. They are so happy to have 'the King' with them, & sometimes I have tears in my eyes when one sees the emotion in their faces.70 At Windsor, Ontario, they made only a brief stop at the station on the evening of 6 June. Nonetheless, a crowd of almost half a million, swelled by a large influx of Americans reported to have been crossing the border at the rate of 30,000 an hour, had come to greet them. The throngs around the train were so dense that its departure was delayed while the track was cleared.71 The next day the temperature soared and the King suffered in the heavy uniform of a field marshal while the Queen raised one of her parasols. They smiled their way through six more receptions at stations along the route and a gymnastic display by 1,200 children at Hamilton. Finally, they drove from St Catharine's to Niagara. 'The roar of the Cataracts was hushed to a whisper' by the cheering crowds, according to the local press. They had now been joined by Sir Ronald Lindsay, the British Amba.s.sador to the United States, because the American part of their journey was about to begin.
At 9.30 p.m. the royal train left Niagara Falls; five minutes later, at the end of the suspension bridge, the Canadian officials (except the Prime Minister and his staff) stepped off and, as the official programme put it, 'At this point the responsibility for the Royal Train will be accepted by the United States.'72 But the Queen, with the King's support, insisted on keeping the Mounties with them.73 In a 'dingy brick border station in a decrepit neighbourhood of Niagara Falls' the US Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, and a welcoming committee greeted the King and Queen.74 It was a historic moment: the first visit by a reigning British monarch to the United States. But it was fraught with potential hazards.
As Eleanor Roosevelt noted, President Roosevelt had invited the King and Queen to Washington in the hope of creating a bond of friendship between America and Britain.75 But throughout the United States memories of the First World War were still fresh. In 1935 Congress had pa.s.sed the Neutrality Act, aimed at keeping the United States out of any European war. President Roosevelt had attempted to modify the act so as to allow the supply of munitions to Britain and France, but met fierce opposition in the Senate.
In these circ.u.mstances the royal visit might well have been regarded with suspicion. In order not to give the impression of embroiling the United States in an unwelcome alliance, Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, did not accompany the King and Queen, as he would normally have done. Indeed, the King had thought it best to take no minister in attendance at all. But he had reckoned without Mackenzie King, who was determined not to be cast aside at the frontier 'like an old boot', and won his fight to remain with the King throughout the tour.76 President Roosevelt saw no political disadvantage in the Canadian Prime Minister's presence: he could be pa.s.sed off as a frequent visitor to Washington and a personal friend.
For their part, the King and Queen could not expect an exuberant welcome from an American public still dazzled by memories of a popular and glamorous ex-king who had given up his throne for a bride from Baltimore. The President had received a disobliging a.s.sessment of the royal couple from the American Amba.s.sador in Paris, William Bullitt, who had met them during their state visit to France a year before. The 'little Queen', he wrote to Roosevelt, was 'a nice girl', whom he found 'pleasant' because she reminded him of the female caddies who carried his clubs at Pitlochry; he thought the President would like her, 'in spite of the fact that her sister-in-law, the Princess Royal, goes about England talking about her "cheap public smile" ' not a remark the Princess Royal is likely to have made. Of the King he said, 'The little King is beginning to feel his oats, but still remains a rather frightened boy.'77 American newspapers were not immediately enthusiastic; in Scribner's Magazine, an article by Josef Israels II insisted that a large part of the USA believed that Edward VIII should still be king and that George VI, 'a colorless, weak personality' who allegedly suffered from epilepsy, was very much on probation. As for the Queen, she was 'far too plump of figure, too dowdy in dress, to meet American specifications of a reigning Queen'.78 The Washington Evening Star commented that, despite official denials of a political agenda, the visit was a sensational piece of diplomacy for European consumption, planned by the British government to dramatize the natural ties between the British and American peoples. The New York Times called the visit 'a pageant with a meaning': whatever policy differences might exist, the two peoples stood together on fundamentals, and the least Americans could do was to give spiritual aid and comfort to sister democracies. The fact that the representatives of one of these democracies were called King and Queen was 'a historical pleasantry. The British throne continues to exist because the British people regard it as a safeguard against tyranny ... The liberties of England could not be destroyed without danger to our own.'79 In London, The Times carefully and a little disingenuously underlined the non-political nature of the visit, describing it as 'a brief and delightful diversion from the strenuous programme of the Canadian tour ... No political motive has prompted the visit. The two Governments understand one another well enough, and have no need to ask King and President to interrupt the pleasures of social intercourse with business of State.'80 There were down-to-earth concerns. Lascelles wrote to his wife that the plans made by the American government were chaotic, 'and how we shall get through the elaborate programme of the next few days without a series of the most hopeless "box-ups", I don't know'. He blamed the President's 'happy-go-lucky temperament', adding that the British Emba.s.sy had been scarcely more efficient. The atmosphere on board the royal train was light-hearted, nonetheless. As the train rolled towards Washington it became the scene of a mobile invest.i.ture ceremony on foreign territory: the King, 'giggling in a most disarming fashion', knighted Lascelles, who had been appointed KCVO in the Birthday Honours, while Sir Ronald Lindsay and George Steward, the press liaison officer, were given the insignia of GCB and CVO respectively.81 At midnight the King and Queen went out on to the rear platform when the train stopped for a while at Buffalo, and talked to groups of spectators.
The train halted at Baltimore before arriving at Washington, and the King and Queen got off briefly. According to Joseph Kennedy's diary of 21 July 1939, the Queen told him later that a woman looking exactly like the d.u.c.h.ess of Windsor came up to her with a bouquet. 'I didn't know what to think. I knew she came from Baltimore and after I realized it couldn't be she, I thought it must be her sister. Anyhow, I had a few uncomfortable minutes.'82 At 11 a.m. on Thursday 8 June, the King and Queen arrived at Washington's Union station, 'in the most stupendous heat!' as the Queen recorded. The temperature and humidity were made worse by their formal clothes, the King wearing the full-dress uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet. The Queen was 'looking cool' according to the press, but evidently not feeling it, in a full-length pearl-grey dress and jacket with deep cuffs of fur, gloves and a hat. 'I really don't know how we got through those 2 days of continuous functions mostly out of doors, as it really was ghastly. It is very damp heat, & one could hardly breathe,' she wrote to Queen Mary.83 President and Mrs Roosevelt greeted them at the station. The King and the President exchanged formal greetings and 'a historic handshake', setting off what one Washington newspaper described as 'a tumultuous reception in which the Capital outdid itself to make welcome the first reigning British King and Queen ever to set foot on American soil'.84 Eleanor Roosevelt, who wrote a regular newspaper column called 'My Day', was quick to observe the Queen's characteristic way of reacting to crowds, as they drove together to the White House: 'She had the most gracious manner and bowed right and left with interest, actually looking at the people in the crowd so that I am sure many of them felt that her bow was for them personally.'85 At the White House, the King and Queen met the chiefs of mission of Washington's diplomatic corps before, at last, they could change into lighter clothes and sit down to an informal lunch with the Roosevelts, their three sons and their wives and, of course, Mackenzie King. The lunch was followed by a sightseeing drive around Washington. During this drive the Queen seems to have given a revealing glimpse of her att.i.tude to her own role. According to Eleanor Roosevelt's memoirs, the Queen expressed surprise that Mrs Roosevelt had been criticized in the press for attending a meeting of WPA workers,* for she thought that people with grievances should be allowed to air them, 'and it is particularly valuable if they can do so to someone in whom they feel a sense of sympathy and who may be able to reach the head of the government with their grievances.'86 'Both women were committed to serving as their husband's eyes and ears, and actively advised their mates,' the historian Will Swift concluded from these remarks, in his account of the Washington visit.87 It is a tempting conclusion, and it is undoubtedly true that Queen Elizabeth kept her husband informed of what she saw and heard. But, as Swift pointed out, Eleanor Roosevelt sent barrages of memoranda to her husband, and that was definitely not the Queen's style.
The humidity continued to be debilitating. According to Joseph Kennedy, the Queen told him that afterwards she lay on the floor in her room at the White House, the hottest place she had ever been to (despite the newly installed air conditioners), to recover.88 That evening they still had a state dinner and a reception to face. For this the Queen wore a crinoline of white tulle sprinkled with gold paillettes; she sat between the President and Vice-President Garner for the dinner. Harold Ickes, the American Secretary of the Interior, whose diaries provide a jaundiced view of the royal visit, remarked scathingly on the over-familiar behaviour of the Vice-President, who had no breeding and put his arm round the King as if he were a 'poker crony'. He also commented that the King and Queen 'looked like pigmies' beside the Roosevelts.89 The heat was still relentless: according to Harold Ickes's wife, 'men's shirts buckled in the middle and collars wilted. Women, including the unfortunate Queen, turned beetlike.'90 At the end of the dinner the President made a short speech emphasizing the harmonious relations between the USA and Britain, and the King replied in kind; in the interlude after the ladies had left the table, the men conversed in what appeared to be prearranged groups. The King's group included a noted isolationist, Senator William E. Borah.91 Even now, the day was not yet ended. Two hundred more guests arrived to hear a concert which included negro spirituals, cowboy ballads, folk songs sung by the c.o.o.n Creek Girls of Pinchem-Tight Hollow in Kentucky, folk dances by the Soco Gap Square-Dance Team and a finale of 'art music' songs by American and European composers sung by the radio star Kate Smith, the Metropolitan Opera's baritone Lawrence Tibbett and Marian Anderson, the black contralto, whose fine voice Mrs Roosevelt admired.92 To the astonishment of the King and Queen, the next day was even hotter 97 degrees in the shade and it proved even more strenuous. At the White House in the morning Eleanor Roosevelt gave one of her frequent press conferences to women journalists; she praised the Queen's interest in social problems, and then after issuing stern warnings that they must not write that the Queen had attended the press conference ushered in her guest. The King surprised the eighty-four women by coming too.93 It was then back to the British Emba.s.sy, where they received members of the British community, including ex-servicemen, in the garden, before driving to the Capitol to be received by members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The King was congratulated by one senator on being 'a very good Queen-picker'. A Democratic congressman who the previous day had sent the King a telegram demanding the repayment of Britain's war debt to the United States, stayed away; one of his Texan colleagues, seeing the Queen, remarked, 'If America can keep Queen Elizabeth, Congress will regard Britain's war debt as cancelled.'94 They lunched with the Roosevelts in the presidential yacht, USS Potomac, sailing to Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington.* The King placed a wreath on George Washington's tomb; the Queen was presented with a bouquet by the Mount Vernon gardener. Afterwards they drove with the Roosevelts to Fort Hunt, Virginia, to visit the Civilian Conservation Corps camp, a New Deal project for unemployed youths. They had particularly asked to see this; it was a project which related to their own concern about unemployment in Britain, and the King's boys' camps had given him some expertise in the field. They impressed Eleanor Roosevelt by talking to each boy. From there they drove to Arlington Cemetery, where the King laid wreaths; an 'informal' tea at the White House followed informal, but hardly relaxing, for some sixteen heads of government agencies concerned with social and economic programmes were a.s.sembled to meet them. Eleanor Roosevelt commented that evening: 'The young royalties are most intelligent. At the tea they asked everyone questions & left them with the feeling that their subject was of interest & well understood. At dinner the King told me he felt that he had learned a great deal. She seems equally interested.'95 The long hot day ended with a dinner, given by the King and Queen for the Roosevelts at the British Emba.s.sy, and then they left to rejoin their train at Union station. They waved goodbye on the rear platform of their train, the Queen resplendent in her rose-tulle Hartnell crinoline and diamond tiara.
In a letter to Princess Elizabeth, the Queen described their two 'burning, boiling, sweltering, humid furnace like days' in Washington. There was no doubt that they had been a personal success for her. D'Arcy Osborne wrote to her later: 'A friend of mine in Washington sent me a cable while you were there which simply said, "You have always known what you were talking about. She stole the show." '96 This was certainly the tone of the Washington press. 'Three cheers for the King and four for the Queen' was one verdict; 'Give the Queen a Crowd and She Mows 'em Down' was another.97 Some, however, noted that she had 'a pleasant way of remaining in the background until such times that her presence is required', and that she smiled affectionately at her husband when he spoke, while 'he returns the attention with a swifter, shyer glance.'98 The train took them overnight to Sandy Hook, New Jersey where they embarked in the American destroyer USS Warrington, to sail to the Battery in New York City. It was a trying day: there were miscalculated timings and unscheduled presentations, and the programme slid inexorably out of control in the hands of two 'vociferous showmen', the Mayor of New York, Fiorello La Guardia, and the President of the World's Fair, Grover Whalen.99 The King and Queen were greeted by the Governor of New York, Herbert Lehman, and by Mayor La Guardia, and driven through Manhattan to the World's Fair in Queens,* their open car showered with ticker tape, cheered by enormous crowds of between three and four million. One New York newspaper noted approvingly that the King had hit the right democratic note by appearing in the morning dress of 'an ordinary English gentleman' rather than in a showy uniform, but also commented that he looked very tired and waved mechanically. The Queen, who wore a plain blue crepe dress and cape and a spectacular hat with an ostrich-feather plume, giving her extra height, was less visibly tired, and was able to 'do the honors for both in waving to the crowd'. The drive with the wisecracking Mayor took forty minutes longer than scheduled. Then Whalen insisted on presenting some 500 extra people to them. After shaking some 200 hands and receiving a fascist salute from the Italian Commissioner to the Fair the King had had enough.100 They were well behind schedule for their next engagement, a brief visit to Columbia University (chosen because it had been founded by royal charter in the reign of King George II), and by the time they reached their final destination, President Roosevelt's country home at Hyde Park in Dutchess County, after an eighty-mile drive, they were an hour and a half late. They were greeted by the President, his wife and his mother, Sara Roosevelt, a formidable matriarch who had little in common with her daughter-in-law Eleanor beyond a disapproval of alcohol. Offering the King a martini, doubtless very welcome, the President said, 'My mother thinks you should have a cup of tea; she doesn't approve of c.o.c.ktails.' 'Neither does my mother,' answered the King, as he took the drink.101 The King and Queen spent only a night and a day at home with the Roosevelts, but it was enjoyable for both of them. Springwood, the Roosevelt family home for over seventy years and Franklin Roosevelt's birthplace, was an unpretentious but comfortable house on the banks of the Hudson. The King and Queen loved it; 'at moments one really feels that one is at home in England!' she wrote to Queen Mary. 'Especially here, where we arrived about 8 last night one might be in an average English country house, with a wide hall, & big sitting rooms & rather small hot bedrooms.' She added that at dinner that night the President had proposed Queen Mary's health 'in the most touching terms & quite impromptu, addressing himself to his own Mother who was sitting opposite him. It was so nice & friendly, & of course I found tears coming into my eyes!'102 It was Eleanor Roosevelt herself who to the fury of her mother-in-law revealed in her 'My Day' column that a side-table had collapsed, sending part of the dinner service crashing to the floor, and that a butler had tripped on the library steps, dropping a tray loaded with drinks.103 After dinner the King, the President and Mackenzie King remained in the library, discussing the danger of war. The King and Roosevelt had already established a rapport. 'He is so easy to get to know & never makes one feel shy,' the King himself wrote; he wished his ministers talked to him as the President did.104 He came to regard the visit to Hyde Park as the high point of the whole tour; out of it arose a strong friendship and a continuing correspondence with the President.105 Their talks that night and next day, of which the King made detailed notes, showed that Roosevelt was anxious to co-operate with Britain and Canada in naval defence in the Atlantic. He was also working to convert American public opinion 'on to the right tack' in case of war in Europe, and to get the Neutrality Act amended to make it less difficult for the USA to help Britain. Mackenzie King's record of the conversation adds that Roosevelt proposed helping Canada set up aircraft-manufacturing plants. Although the President was over-optimistic about what he could achieve against the isolationists in Congress, these conversations laid the foundations for the very real boost which the USA was later able to give to Britain's naval resources through the Bases-for-Destroyers deal and the Lend-Lease Agreement.
The next day was Sunday, and the King and Queen went with the Roosevelts to the Episcopal Church of St James in Hyde Park village. Again, the Queen felt very much at home. 'The service is exactly the same as ours down to every word,' she reported to Queen Mary, '& they even had the prayers for the King & the Royal family. I could not help thinking how curious [it] sounded, & yet how natural.'106 Up to a point: President Roosevelt had specifically asked the rector to make the service just like matins in an English country church.107 Afterwards the Queen had the fun of talking to her daughters on the transatlantic telephone before she and the King were driven by President Roosevelt up to the cottage he had recently built on the Hyde Park estate. She later said that she had been more frightened by this than by any wartime experience, because, to cope with the fact that the President's legs were paralysed by polio, the car was specially adapted to be driven with hands alone. Roosevelt drove at high speed, talking, pointing out sights and waving his cigarette holder about, as well as operating the controls. 'There were several times when I thought we could go right off the road and tumble down the hills.'108 The picnic lunch which followed has become the best-known feature of the entire visit again thanks to Eleanor Roosevelt's column, as she sighed over the letters of protest she had received from compatriots objecting to the food she proposed to serve. 'There were a lot of people there,' wrote the Queen to her daughters, 'and we all sat at little tables under the trees round the house, and had all our food on one plate a little salmon, some turkey, some ham, lettuce, beans & HOT DOGS too!'109 The BBC's Richard Dimbleby spent so long reading to his listeners from the National Sausage Casing Manufacturers' pamphlet about the construction and history of the hot dog that he hardly seemed to mention the King and Queen at all.110 Then they moved on to Eleanor Roosevelt's own little cottage, where the King and the President and his sons bathed in the swimming pool, while the Queen sat in the shade and watched. 'It was deliciously peaceful, and the first really quiet moment we have had for WEEKS,' she told Princess Elizabeth. 'This evening, after dinner we are leaving, & tomorrow morning we start the last week of our trip. I must say that I don't think that I could bear very much more, as there comes a moment when one's resistance nearly goes.'111 'My complexion is ruined!' she wrote to Queen Mary.112 The royal train had been driven from New Jersey to Hyde Park station, and here the King and Queen said their last farewells to the Roosevelts. The train pulled out to the strains of 'Auld Lang Syne' sung by the a.s.sembled spectators. It was an emotional moment for all of them. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote that the threat of tragedy in Europe weighed on every single person there, and the song evoked friendship, sadness and uncertainty for the future. 'I think the King and Queen, standing on the rear platform on the train as it pulled slowly away, were deeply moved. I know I was.'113 Their departure from the United States prompted a flood of press comment on the political implications of the visit. A special dispatch in the Washington Post noted that the King and the President had had several 'man-to-man chats', and a.s.sumed that they had touched upon 'parallel actions' between Britain and the USA; the King and Queen had succeeded in focusing world attention on the ties of blood and sentiment between the two countries, just as Chamberlain had intended.114 The Washington Evening Star concentrated on the reaction in Europe: the vituperation in the n.a.z.i press showed the resentment caused by the 'tightening of the democratic bond' which was the unofficial but no less tangible result of the visit; but it also quoted the Manchester Guardian's warning that the strikingly friendly reception given to the King and Queen by the American public did not mean that Congress would rescind the Neutrality Act.115 In London, The Times again insisted that there was 'nothing political in the visit', and used the occasion to stress how well the King and Queen were playing their representational role, carrying on and broadening the precedents set by King George V and Queen Mary.116 The Queen's contribution was