The Queen Mother Part 16
The Castle was never warm in winter the high rooms were hard to heat, the wind whistled through the tall windows. The King would sometimes sit in his room with a travelling rug wrapped around his feet, having failed in every other way to cope with the draught along the floor. In an attempt to ease the cold, electric radiators were installed in the window bays.147 Now the western end of St George's Hall boasted a temporary stage on which the two Princesses and their friends from time to time gave entertainments. They played the piano and tap-danced, and put on a performance of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party from Alice in Wonderland Princess Margaret distinguished herself as the Dormouse. Among their constant audience was a company of Grenadier Guards, stationed in the Castle mews to protect the Royal Family. They were welcomed otherwise the Princesses were often alone with their governesses, a Castle official and perhaps Gerald Kelly the portraitist.
In October 1940 Neville Chamberlain, who had suddenly fallen gravely ill and had had to resign from the War Cabinet, was near death. The King and Queen drove to visit him. Chamberlain was very touched, and his wife Anne wrote to the Queen to thank them for their characteristic kindness.148 Chamberlain died on 10 November; Churchill was a pallbearer at his funeral and was generous in his tribute in the House of Commons, saying that all Chamberlain's n.o.ble hopes for peace had been disappointed and cheated by a wicked man.149 Although by the autumn the threat of imminent invasion had receded, London was still under constant attack. The King and Queen's first married home in London, 145 Piccadilly, was destroyed. Kensington Palace was bombed and then a land mine exploded just opposite Buckingham Palace in St James's Park, blowing out all the windows and frames in the front of the Palace. By now there was scarcely a pane of gla.s.s left intact the windows had to be boarded up with cardboard.150 The Queen was dismayed that the beauty of Georgian and Regency London was being smashed and concerned that the eventual rebuilding would be without taste. (She was right.) 'It really makes one wild with rage to see all the insane destruction of beautiful & often dearly loved buildings.'151 She wished the German Emba.s.sy had been bombed instead. 'I believe the interior had been made very vulgar by that horrible Ribbentrop, & it would have been no loss.'152 In Stoke Newington in mid-October 1940 the King and Queen watched as people were being dug out of flats which had collapsed upon them. The horror was compounded by the fact that a bomb had burst a water main and many who survived the bombs were then drowned. She and the King knew that such expeditions were essential, but 'I do hate these visits so desperately Mama,' she wrote to Queen Mary. 'I feel quite exhausted after seeing and hearing so much sadness, sorrow, heroism and magnificent spirit. The destruction is so awful, & the people too wonderful they deserve a better world.'153 She was determined, however moved or upset she was, not to show her emotions. 'Sometimes even Chief Constables wept, but she never broke down,' one lady in waiting said.154 But the Queen felt it all intensely. 'It makes one furious seeing the wanton destruction of so much,' she wrote to her sister May. 'Sometimes it really makes me feel almost ill. I can't tell you how I loathe going round these bombed places, I am a beastly coward, & it breaks one's heart to see so much misery & sadness.'155 In their visits around the city, there were often air-raid warnings 'and I think we must have taken refuge in every single police station in London. We were always given a cup of very, very strong tea.' On the trips around the country, they lived a lot on the train and when it stopped at night she would walk up to the cab to chat with the engine drivers 'they were nearly always the most delightful people, great characters, with proper engines. Such nice men.'156 She tended to wake early in those days and to lie in bed worrying. She thought of all the blows that had already befallen Britain and all those which could still come. But she had hope. 'We have had to take such great reverses, as only a truly great people can take disasters, and possibly so much disappointment & horror will steel our people, & take them to great heights of sacrifice and courage.'157 She also felt, as many did, that the war was bringing out the best in people. Before the war materialism held sway, but now, as she wrote to Queen Mary in October 1940, 'the people are living a truly Christian life being good neighbours & living for each other as never before; which, with the things of the spirit, seem to me to be real Christianity.'158 The national ordeal continued. In November 1940 British aircraft sank most of the Italian fleet at Taranto, and then the Eighth Army drove the Italians out of Egypt and most of Libya. But it was a false dawn. Hitler sent Lieutenant General Rommel and the Afrika Korps to North Africa and Rommel reversed the British victories, threatening the Allied oil supplies in the Middle East. The second six months of the real war were, if anything, worse than the first.
In December 1940 Lord Lothian, the British Amba.s.sador to Washington, died en poste of food poisoning. A Christian Scientist, he had refused to call in a doctor. He had been a superb amba.s.sador, a friend of Roosevelt for twenty-five years, and was admired throughout America. It was imperative to replace him quickly and within a week Churchill chose Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary. The King and Queen were both sorry to see Halifax and his wife go the Queen found Dorothy Halifax, still one of her ladies in waiting, 'a real pillar of strength', but she felt sure the Americans would like and admire them as much as she and the King did.159 She was right.
The second Christmas of the war came. The royal Christmas card that year was a photograph of the King and Queen standing in the bomb-damaged Palace. The two Princesses took part in a nativity play at Windsor Castle organized by Hubert Tannar, the headmaster of the primary school in Windsor Great Park. Princess Elizabeth was one of the three kings. According to Marion Crawford, she 'looked like Edward V in her Coronation Crown and tunic of pink and gold' as she walked the length of St George's Hall with her gift to the infant Jesus; Princess Margaret took the part of a child whose gift was herself, and sang 'Gentle Jesus' at the crib.160 Her proud father recorded that she 'played her part remarkably well & was not shy'. He was overcome by the emotions the play evoked. 'I wept through most of it. It is such a wonderful story.'161 On 27 December they motored up to Norfolk to have a few days' rest on the Sandringham estate. The big house had been closed for the duration of the war; surrounded as it was by barbed wire, and with many shrubs and trees cut down on the orders of the King, the Queen thought it looked forlorn and uncherished.162 They now lived in Appleton, a small house near by which had been the home of Queen Maud of Norway, who had died in 1938. It was a less obvious target for German bombers than Sandringham itself. They were protected by an armoured-car unit and four Bofors guns, and there was a reinforced concrete air-raid shelter in the trees close by. The staff had filled Appleton with carpets and furniture from Sandringham House. It was warm and comfortable and the Queen and her daughters were happy to be there intimately en famille. 'The children are looking quite different already,' she wrote to Queen Mary in early January 1941. 'I am afraid that Windsor is not really a very good place for them, the noise of guns is heavy, and then of course there have been so many bombs dropped all round, & some so close.'163 The snow was thick on the ground but the King went out shooting every day and, his wife said, looked much the better for it. The Queen tried to relax.164 In the fresh chill of Norfolk, they could all reflect on the terrible year that Britain had endured. Thanks largely to the encouragement of Churchill and the mistakes of Hitler, Britain had survived just. The King summed up 1940 in his diary as 'a series of disasters for us'. But 'Winston coming in as PM & Labour serving with him in his government stopped the political rot ... Then the Blitzkrieg by the German Air Force by day & night against aerodromes & London which we countered magnificently. Civilian defence services & morale of people splendid ... The 2nd six months have certainly shown the world what we can stand ... Hitler has not had everything his own way.'165 Through Christmas and New Year the air raids over London were particularly destructive. The Queen was 'enraged beyond words' by the bombing of the Guildhall and many of the other landmarks of the City of London on the night of 29 December 1940.166 That one night of attack caused about 700 fires; fire crews rushed into the City from all over the Home Counties. As well as the Guildhall, eight Wren churches, five railway stations and sixteen Underground stations were damaged or destroyed.167 'I am beginning to really hate the German mentality the cruelty and arrogance of it.'168 Before returning to London the King and Queen visited many of the airfields in the Sandringham area. Blizzards and ice on the roads made their journeys slow and perilous, 'and everywhere we arrived there was a "Jerry" overhead! It became quite a joke in the end,' she wrote to her niece Elizabeth Elphinstone. But it was worth while; she was, as always, moved and encouraged by the modesty and the calmness of the men she met. She contrasted their calmness with her own fear. 'I am still just as frightened of bombs, & guns going off, as I was at the beginning. I turn bright red, and my heart hammers in fact I'm a beastly coward, but I do believe that a lot of people are, so I don't mind! Well darling, I must stop ... Tinkety tonk old fruit, & down with the n.a.z.is.'169 She enjoyed the Sandringham Women's Inst.i.tute party where the ladies put on patriotic tableaux. 'If only you could see them,' she wrote to the Duke of Kent. 'Dear Mrs Way, as Neptune, glaring furiously through a tangle of grey hair and seaweed, & Miss Burroughs (the Verger's daughter) as Britannia were HEAVEN. The words were spoken by Mrs Fuller's cook, who was draped in the Union Jack, and it was all perfect.'170 The prospects in early 1941 the second year of Britain's standing alone were terrible. While the bombing continued, the Battle of the Atlantic became ever fiercer as German U-boats stepped up their campaign to sink the convoys bringing supplies from North America. America was, as always, the key. The King and Churchill had a shared concern to draw the United States more firmly to Britain's side. Indeed that was one of Churchill's princ.i.p.al ambitions. It took a long time to achieve.
Churchill had warned Roosevelt as early as summer 1940 that 'the voice and force of the United States may count for nothing if they are withheld too long.'171 But, despite Roosevelt's sympathy for the embattled democracy of Britain, it was not easy. Americans were indeed impressed by the courage of the British in resisting Hitler the radio broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow during the Blitz gained Britain enormous admiration. But the great bulk of the American people, to say nothing of the political cla.s.s, showed no enthusiasm for being dragged into another European war. When Roosevelt was re-elected in November 1940, the King wrote to say how thankful he and the Queen and all Britons were. The President replied, 'I am, as you know, doing everything possible in the way of acceleration and in the way of additional release of literally everything that we can spare.'172 But this was provided only on the strictest commercial terms. By the end of 1940 Britain's orders were already in excess of her gold and dollar reserves, and the country had to promise to liquidate her remaining a.s.sets in the United States to guarantee future deliveries.
In January 1941 Harry Hopkins arrived in London as the personal representative of President Roosevelt. The King and Queen met him and the Queen commented that he was 'very helpful, and all out for our cause. A very nice American.'173 Hopkins thought well of her too; they took cover together during an air raid and he wrote afterwards, 'The Queen told me that she found it extremely difficult to find words to express her feeling towards the people of Britain in these days. She thought their actions were magnificent and that victory in the long run was sure, but that the one thing that counted was the morale and determination of the great ma.s.s of the British people.'174 Hopkins arranged with Churchill a new basis for the purchase of American material, which was intended to make arms and supplies available to governments whose defence was considered vital to the defence of the United States. The Lend-Lease Act, pa.s.sed by Congress on 11 March, gave Britain extended credit, allowing the country to buy equipment, oil and other supplies, which would not have to be paid for until the end of the war. This was as generous as the United States could be, but it meant that Britain was now, in effect, mortgaged to the United States. (The war debt was finally paid off in 2007.) There was a renewed fear of invasion. The King talked to Churchill about the risks to his family, and to the government. The Prime Minister told him that he planned to stay in London as long as possible. The King knew that he would have to remain with the government he could not delegate his powers. But the Queen and the Princesses would be rushed to the country.
The Queen had a frightening experience in February 1941. One evening she went into her room at the Castle and a man sprang out at her from behind the curtains and grabbed her ankles. According to her biographer, Dorothy Laird, she said afterwards, 'For a moment my heart stood absolutely still.' She understood that the man was mentally disturbed and worried that if she screamed he might attack her. So she said quietly, 'Tell me about it.' The man began to recite his troubles he was a deserter and his family had been killed in the Blitz and as he spoke, she moved calmly and quietly across the room to ring the bell. 'Poor man, I felt so sorry for him,' she said later. 'I realised quickly that he did not mean any harm.'175 Harmless or not, it was an alarming breach of security. The intruder had been taken on as an electrician from the Ministry of Labour and his references had not been checked. The Office of Works gave him a pa.s.s and he was able to walk straight into the Castle, into the private rooms and out again. Lord Wigram, who as Governor of the Castle was responsible for security, was horrified and ordered that regulations be tightened.176 That month the King and Queen visited Manchester after a particularly heavy air raid. She saw that the little homes which had cl.u.s.tered around factories had collapsed 'like packs of cards'. As always, she was impressed by the people's spirit, despite all that had happened to them.177 The British reaction to suffering moved Robert Menzies, the Australian Prime Minister, who paid a visit to London at this time. He stayed the night at Windsor and dined alone with the King and Queen. They impressed him. 'He shows no trace of stammer and speaks often loudly with a kind of excitement. She looks older but as fascinating as ever,' he wrote in his diary. 'She is as wise as possible and has the shrewdest estimate of all the Cabinet.'178 There were lighter moments. At the beginning of March 1941 the King and Queen journeyed north to visit the Scottish cities. At Glamis's tiny railway station they were pleasantly astonished to be met by a Polish guard of honour. As the King said, 'No one in their sanest moments would have thought such a thing possible a very few years ago.'179 They lunched with General Sikorski at Forfar and inspected his troops. 'They were very nice,' the Queen told Princess Elizabeth, '& we walked along miles of coast which they are guarding. We were asked occasionally to go down what looked like a large rabbit hole, & how we did it, I don't know! But we did, & came out again very nearly doubled up!'180 She was impressed by the Poles' exquisite manners: 'what with extremely good-looking young Counts and Princes loose in the countryside, I tremble for the love-stricken young ladies of North East Scotland!'181 While she was at Glamis, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret wrote to give her the news from Windsor. There, their education continued under the care of their governess. Princess Elizabeth, now rising fifteen, was still being taught history by Henry Marten. In February 1941 Marion Crawford wrote a long letter to Queen Mary reporting on the Princesses' progress. Mr Marten, she said, tended to forget who his audience was, and would occasionally bark, 'Is that quite clear to you, gentlemen?' But he saw 'great stuff' in his pupil, and thought she could compare very well with Etonians a year older than her. She had given a very competent hour's lecture on explorers from Columbus to the present day, and had just finished a course on American history on which she had an essay to write.
Both Princesses loved playing the piano and often entertained the Household with duets, Miss Crawford wrote. She thought that Princess Margaret had developed 'wonderfully'; she was more of a companion for Princess Elizabeth, and she was 'a joy to teach always asking questions'. The two Princesses were making excellent progress in French, and at family lunches they spoke only French to their governess. All in all, Marion Crawford a.s.sured their grandmother, 'The children are happy and well; and are having knowledge poured in as fast as I can pour it in.'182 At one stage the Queen became concerned lest the visits she and the King made to bombed towns were actually attracting more German attacks. On 20 March 1941 they took the train to Plymouth, which had been heavily bombed. That night as they were on the train back to London, 'the foul Germans made a very heavy attack on the town & dockyard. What brutes they are I am certain that they first go for the working cla.s.s houses, hoping to break the spirit of our people.'183 Once back at Windsor she wrote to Lady Astor, MP for Plymouth, to say that since hearing of the bombing she had been 'thinking of you all without ceasing ... That is one of the hard things about being King and Queen of a country that one loves so much. Every time this sort of murderous attack is made, we feel it, as if our own children were being hurt. All we can all do, is to do our very best, and leave the rest in G.o.d's hand.'184 The war continued badly. The German U-boats in the Atlantic sank half a million tons of British shipping in March 1941 alone. Louis Mount-batten lost his destroyer, HMS Kelly, in the Mediterranean during the evacuation of Crete. The cruisers Gloucester and Fiji were sunk. The Blitz continued particularly against the ports where convoys berthed and against London. Shortages grew worse and worse. One egg and a few ounces of meat a week were now the standard ration. Cigarettes could still be bought but alcohol was hard to find. Heating fuel and petrol for cars were short, clothing was rationed, people shivered. Even Churchill sometimes succ.u.mbed, privately, to the black dog of despair.185 The Balkans became a new area of great concern in the spring of 1941. Hitler demanded that Prince Paul, the Regent of Yugoslavia, allow German troops to march through Yugoslavia to subjugate Greece. Despite appeals from King George VI, the Prince felt he had no alternative and at the end of March 1941 he signed a pact with the Axis powers Germany, Italy and j.a.pan. The Germans advanced inexorably through the Balkans and by the end of May the entire peninsula was in fascist hands. Prince Paul and Princess Olga went into exile first in Greece, then in Kenya, and spent the rest of the war in South Africa; King George II of Greece escaped and, via Cairo, came to London.
Prince Paul's conduct saddened the King and Queen, whose friend he had been for so long. Queen Mary was shocked that he had behaved as he did.186 But the Queen responded that she felt sorry for him 'he has made such a mess of his job in the eyes of the world, and that after struggling with immense difficulties for some very unhappy years for himself. Of course, one knows that he is very timorous & sensitive & subtle minded, but things have got too serious in the world, for any country to be able to sign a pact with Germany, & yet be pro-English or neutral. It just doesn't work & he must have known it.'187 To Lord Halifax in Washington she wrote, 'I am sure that he was afraid & perhaps weak, but with all his faults I would trust him before any of these politicians. He was always terrified of a coup d'etat, as of course it would mean the disintegration of such an uncomfortably sham country.'188 It was an acute observation.
Throughout this dark period, the Queen's life continued with many visits intended to raise morale around the country. In early 1941 these included the 2nd Canadian Division, the WVS Salvage Centres in Paddington, the American Eagle Club in Charing Cross Road, London police stations, bombed areas of East and West Ham, New Scotland Yard, the Red Cross, the British Legion Conference, the Staff College at Camberley and the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, the London Auxiliary Ambulance Service at County Hall, the RAF aerodromes of Bomber Command, a battalion of the London Scottish in Suss.e.x, war factories in the north-east of England, the Glider Training Squadron, the Maurice Hostel Community Club in Hoxton.
Lord Harlech, the North-Eastern Regional Commissioner for Civil Defence, accompanied her on a visit to Sheffield, and afterwards described it to Harold Nicolson, who reported to his wife: 'He says that when the car stops, the Queen nips out into the snow and goes straight into the middle of the crowd and starts talking to them. For a moment or two they just gaze and gape in astonishment. But then they all start talking at once. "Hi! Your Majesty! Look here!" She has that quality of making everybody feel that they and they alone are being spoken to.'189 *
THROUGH ALL OF this, the relationship between Churchill and the King and Queen became ever closer. Churchill wrote to the King, 'I have greatly been cheered by our weekly luncheons in poor old bomb-battered Buckingham Palace, & to feel that in Yr. Majesty and the Queen there flames the spirit that will never be daunted by peril, nor wearied by unrelenting toil.'190 At the lunches they digressed into subjects other than the war. The Queen had impressed Churchill by sending him the lines from Wordsworth in early 1940 and he realized the pleasure she took in the spoken and written word. He gave her a copy of H. W. Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage, saying, 'He liberated me from many errors & doubts.'191 She in turn found Fowler 'entrancing ... very amusing and extremely instructive'.192 On 6 May 1941 Churchill came to the Palace to tell the King and Queen of an imminent operation to get more tanks and aircraft to General Wavell in Egypt. Because they were required at once, he was planning to send them by the risky route through the Mediterranean to Alexandria. On the evening of Friday 9 May, he wrote to the Queen she had probably left for Windsor to let her know how the operation was going. 'Madam, Tiger started with 306 [tanks]. One claw was torn away & another damaged last night. The anxiety will last for another day at least. More than half is over.'193 She thanked him for sending news of Operation Tiger. 'Even though he lacks a claw or two, it is to be hoped that he will still be able to chew up a few enemies. Any risk was well worth taking.'194 The King was able to record that the operation had been safely completed and that 250 tanks and fifty aircraft had arrived at Alexandria. One ship with fifty tanks on board had struck a mine and sunk in the Narrows this was presumably the 'one claw' to which Churchill referred.195 On 10 May London suffered another gigantic raid by 400 bombers on that one night almost 1,500 people were killed, 1,800 were injured, 2,000 fires were started and 11,000 houses were reduced to rubble. Both Houses of Parliament were hit, part of Waterloo station was destroyed, Bow Street Church was flattened, Westminster Abbey was damaged.196 The Queen was outraged, and wrote to her mother-in-law, 'Alas, poor London, an even more violent & cruel raid on Sat.u.r.day night. Our beautiful national shrines and monuments It seems such sacrilege that they should be destroyed by such wicked lying people as the Germans.'197 By June over two million British homes had been destroyed more than half of them in London.198 Air-raid shelters for the homeless were getting better. The Queen noticed that the bigger ones in the East End now had bunks and running water and that the social services had improved as well. But she and the King had begun to wonder 'what will happen after the war, when the people will want to go back' to areas such as Stepney which had been completely destroyed. 'Of course they were terribly overcrowded anyway, but it will be a great problem, for new houses will take time to build. There will be many very difficult moments, I feel.'199 What was truly astonishing was how well almost everyone coped with this continual grinding a.s.sault in many ways everyday life continued, as normally as possible. Mail was delivered, trains ran (if not always on time), streets were swept (even more than usual), taxis plied for hire, telephones worked, restaurants stayed open and so did nightclubs, weddings were often celebrated in churches which had no roofs. Shattered shop windows were restored or boarded as the historian Andrew Roberts has recorded, their owners even competed with cheeky slogans: 'If you think this is bad, you should see my branch in Berlin.'200 Hitler's attack on Russia in June 1941 was not immediately seen as the fatal error that it later proved. Indeed, as the Wehrmacht cut deep into the Soviet Union there were many who feared that another Blitzkrieg might well bring the n.a.z.is another huge success. In summer 1941, with the vast losses in the Atlantic and the German capture of Crete, the war was going very badly for Britain.
The Queen was now able to exploit a personal link in the United States. Her youngest brother, David, was posted to the British Emba.s.sy in Washington. His mission was to create a Political Warfare Executive (PWE) in both Washington and New York. Bowes Lyon developed a good relationship with President Roosevelt as well as with the Amba.s.sador, Lord Halifax, and was a useful, personal and independent channel of information to the King and Queen. Like every other Briton in the States he saw his task as trying to persuade the President and the American people that much more should be done to support the British war effort. He understood the scale of the Queen's personal success during her 1939 visit to the USA with the King, and he felt that she could do more to capitalize on that. He wrote to pa.s.s on a request that she write an article for an American magazine.201 Instead, she agreed to make a radio broadcast to the women of America; such a broadcast was diplomatically more acceptable now than it had been when first proposed in 1939 because she was able to thank the many Americans who were actively helping the war effort, not least in giving medical supplies.202 A text was drafted, which she amended and then sent to Churchill for his advice, adding, 'I fear it is not very polished a good deal of my own.'203 Churchill made suggestions, and the broadcast went out on 10 August 1941. It was effective. The Queen talked of the heavy burden being borne by the British people and of their unshakeable constancy under attack: 'hardship has only steeled our hearts and strengthened our resolution. Wherever I go, I see bright eyes and smiling faces, for though our road is stony and hard, it is straight, and we know that we fight in a great Cause.' She thanked Americans for all the help that they had already given canteens, ambulances, medical supplies and spoke in detail of all the tasks that women were now undertaking in the armed services, in factories, in the fields, in hospitals.
It gives us great strength to know that you have not been content to pa.s.s us by on the other side; to us, in the time of our tribulation, you have surely shown that compa.s.sion which has been for two thousand years the mark of the Good Neighbour ...
The sympathy which inspires it springs not only from our common speech and the traditions which we share with you, but even more from our common ideals. To you, tyranny is as hateful as it is to us; to you, the things for which we will fight to the death are no less sacred; and to my mind, at any rate your generosity is born of your conviction that we fight to save a Cause that is yours no less than ours: of your high resolve that, however great the cost and however long the struggle, justice and freedom, human dignity and kindness, shall not perish from the earth.
I look forward to the day when we shall go forward hand in hand to build a better, a kinder, and a happier world for our children. May G.o.d bless you all.204 President Roosevelt wrote at once to the King asking him to tell her that the broadcast was 'really perfect in every way and that it will do a great amount of good'.205 *
THE QUEEN'S forty-first birthday was spent at Windsor. Queen Mary sent her good wishes and her prayers for peace and victory '& that you may be given health & strength to carry on the help & comfort you have given to many since the war started. You have given so much help too, to my & your dear Bertie, help for which I shall ever be grateful as your joint loving Mama.'206 Among her many other letters of congratulation was one from the Bishop of St Albans, who praised her and the King for the 'quiet steady lead' that they were giving the country 'in these grim but glorious days'.207 The Queen and her daughters were able to get to Scotland for a welcome holiday in the second half of August 1941. The King joined them a few days later; he had remained in London to see Churchill on his return from his first, secret wartime meeting with Roosevelt in Newfoundland. Churchill sailed in the new battleship Prince of Wales, and Roosevelt in the USS Augusta. They met at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland and, although they got on together splendidly, Churchill was disappointed that the President's ability to a.s.sist Britain was still restricted by the continued isolationism of Congress.
The Queen loved being in the sharp fresh air, seeing her husband and daughters relax, and walking in the hills. Within a few days she thought the Princesses were looking 'ten times better, with pink cheeks and good appet.i.tes!'208 It felt healing to both mind and body 'Also one stores up energy for whatever may lie ahead.'209 Years later she recalled to her elder daughter, 'Balmoral is such a very happy house, and I remember thinking when we came up in those awful days of 1941 & 42 how clean it felt, in a way pure, & I still feel that now.'210 Mackenzie King, the Canadian Prime Minister, came to stay for two nights and described in his meticulous diary a lunch in a little cottage across the moors. There were no staff the Princesses laid the table and decorated it with lettuce leaves. He found Princess Elizabeth 'very sweet' and natural in her conversation, and Margaret entertaining. 'She would cross her eyes to amuse the company. The Queen told her to stop doing that for fear they might become fixed in that position and the King had also to tell her the same.'211 From Balmoral they returned south to the stress and destruction. By the end of the year they were living more at Buckingham Palace the Queen thought it was 'not too bad considering the lack of windows and general atmosphere of dust and distraction'.212 The losses touched her, as everyone else. One of her footmen, Mervyn Weavers, who had joined the RAF, was missing. 'He went off in a Wellington, & never came back. I fear that there is little hope. Oh this cruel war, & the sorrows the German spirit has brought to so many young wives, for he was happily married.'213 Tragedy struck the Queen's own family too. Her nephew John, Master of Glamis, son of her eldest brother Patrick, was killed in action on 19 September 1941 in Egypt, while serving with the Scots Guards.
THE QUEEN WAS listening to the wireless in her room when she heard the news of Pearl Harbor on Sunday 7 December 1941. 'I remember going through to the King and saying "Do you know, I've just heard the most extraordinary thing on the wireless. The j.a.panese have bombed the Americans. It can't be true." ' It was indeed true and she said later that she realized at once what it meant.214 America would now at last enter the war.
Next day both Houses of Congress declared war on j.a.pan, and Britain immediately did the same. Obligingly (and unnecessarily) Hitler then declared war on the United States this was arguably his biggest single mistake of the war. The King sent a telegram of sympathy to President Roosevelt, now the leader of Britain's most important ally. 'We are proud indeed to be fighting at your side against the common enemy. We share your inflexible determination and your confidence that with G.o.d's help the powers of darkness will be overcome.'215 American troops began to be shipped to Britain.
The King and Queen set off on the royal train for a prearranged visit to the mining villages of South Wales. En route the Queen wrote Queen Mary a long letter in which she lamented that Hitler had so far had so much more 'luck' than Britain. 'But we seem to be gradually pulling up, and if only the poor Americans keep calm & start working in earnest, we may get sufficient weapons to cope with the Germans.' She thought it would take time for the US 'to learn total war methods, which those horrid j.a.panese have much used. I do feel rather sorry for them (the US), tho' they have persistently closed their eyes to such evident danger, for they are a very young and untried nation.'216 But there was shocking news to come. While they were in South Wales, the Queen noticed that Tommy Lascelles had been called to the telephone. She then saw him returning towards them 'with a face of doom. We thought, oh, what's happened now?'217 Lascelles had just been told that two of Britain's princ.i.p.al ships, the battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse, had been sunk by j.a.panese planes off the coast of Thailand. 'And that was a dreadful blow. I've never forgotten that,' the Queen said half a century later.218 The loss of these two great ships cast the country into despair. The King and Queen felt a similar sense of horror. As soon as they were back on the royal train, the King wrote to Churchill to say how shocked he and the Queen were to hear of this 'national disaster'. He went on: 'I thought I was getting immune to hearing bad news, but this has affected me deeply as I am sure it has you. There is something particularly "alive" about a big ship which gives one a sense of personal loss apart from consideration of loss of power.'219 Many crewmen were saved but more than 800 were lost, including Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, Commander-in-Chief Eastern Fleet, Churchill's host on the voyage to Newfoundland only weeks before.
The horror of these losses killed any sense of jubilation over the entry of the United States into the war. As 1941 ended the Queen was weary. But she retained her faith in the spirit and the wisdom 'of this wonderful people of ours'. Writing a New Year's note to Queen Mary in Badminton, she said, 'I expect, that we shall have a very difficult time in this New Year, for the Americans have been caught out, and things must work up to a climax, but I do feel confident, don't you Mama? Confident in the values and good sense of the British people, & confident that good will prevail in the end. We send you every loving wish for a happier New Year, and may it help to bring victory to our cause.'220 * In the next six years the Irish Prime Minister, Eamon de Valera, never once criticized Hitler or the n.a.z.is. When Hitler committed suicide in April 1945, de Valera immediately visited the German envoy in Dublin to express his condolences and later stated that he had been not only correct but wise to do so.
* Margaret Elphinstone (b. 1925), youngest daughter of the Queen's sister May Elphinstone; Diana Bowes Lyon (1923 -86), fourth daughter of the Queen's brother John ('Jock') and his wife Fenella.
* Princess Elizabeth continued with the historical essays set her by Henry Marten, the Vice-Provost of Eton, and the Princesses' German teacher, Hanni Davey, sent them exercises.
* An early draft of this part of the speech in her own hand reads: 'We too are parted from our children. When I told our little daughters that I was going to broadcast they said "oh Mummy please give our love to all the children", so I do that now G.o.d bless you all.' (RA QEQMH/PS/SPE) * Cecil Beaton (190480), photographer and designer, worked for Vogue and was renowned for his society portraits and fashion photography. On the recommendation of Prince Paul's wife Princess Olga, he had been summoned to Buckingham Palace in July 1939 to take a series of photographs of the Queen.
* Augustus John, OM, RA (18781961), post-impressionist painter and draughtsman, was known for his Bohemian lifestyle and acclaimed for his portraits.
Maud (Mollie) Cazalet, who had been a friend of Cecilia Strathmore, was the wife of William Cazalet, and mother of Thelma Cazalet-Keir, a girlhood friend of Queen Elizabeth, of Victor Cazalet MP and of Peter Cazalet, later to become Queen Elizabeth's racehorse trainer.
Myra Hess (18901965) was a celebrated British pianist. During the Second World War, when concert halls were closed, she organized popular lunchtime concerts at the National Gallery, and played in many herself. For this contribution to maintaining the morale of the populace of London, she was created a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) in 1941.
* These lines, from the poem 'G.o.d Knows', had been sent to the King as he was composing his speech. The poem had been written by Minnie Louise Haskins (18751957), a lecturer at the London School of Economics, and had been published privately in 1908.
* John Elphinstone (191475) was particularly close to his aunt, the Queen, and when he was released from Colditz in 1945 she was the first person he called. After the war he settled in Scotland and in 1951 bought Drumkilbo, an estate on the borders of Angus and Perthshire.
* On one occasion when she was unable to attend she wrote to Churchill, 'I am so sorry not to be at "the picnic" today, and hope that conversation will flow unchecked by that incessant prowl round the table by attentive varlets!' (13 April 1943, CAC CHAR 20/98A/56) * Soon after Victory in Europe Day in May 1945, Churchill praised the King for his weapons training and recalled that 'if it had come to a last stand in London, a matter which had to be considered at one time, there is no doubt that His Majesty would have come very near departing from his usual const.i.tutional rect.i.tude by disregarding the advice of his Ministers'. In other words, the King would have wanted to fight the Germans himself rather than be taken to safety. (Hansard, 15 May 1945) * The Coats Mission was commanded by Major James Coats (18941966), later third baronet. He married in 1917 Lady Amy Gordon-Lennox, a great friend of Queen Elizabeth all her life, and sister of Lady Doris Vyner. Another old friend of the Queen, Audrey Pleydell-Bouverie, nee James, had been married to James's brother Dudley.
* Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, newly arrived in Canada, where her husband had been appointed governor general, wrote to the Queen that it was 'a bitter blow to the Monarchy ... I am terribly grieved & it puts all of us Governors' wives in a horrid position; we are supposed to stand for all that's best in British home & social life, & now what's the use & how can we make any difference between people who place themselves outside the pale when one of the King's representatives has a wife completely outside the pale.' (11 July 1940, RA QEQM/PRIV/RF) * One, Alfred Davies, died of his injuries later.
Queen Elizabeth's friend D'Arcy Osborne, then virtually imprisoned in Vatican City, was appalled when he heard on the BBC of the Palace bombing. Owen Chadwick, who recorded Osborne's extraordinary wartime service in Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War, recounted, 'When Buckingham Palace was bombed, Osborne went wild with rage (the only time in all these events, though not the only time he was angry) and persuaded the Pope to send the King and Queen a telegram of congratulation on their escape.' (p. 137) * In February 1941 Lord Woolton suggested to the Queen that a mobile canteen service to be dispatched to bombed areas of London should be named 'The Queen's Messengers'. She agreed, and in March formally accepted the first convoy of eighteen canteens sent to Buckingham Palace for her inspection. She later visited the Queen's Messengers in operation at bomb sites. (Bodleian Library, MS Woolton 2)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
YEARS LIKE GREAT BLACK OXEN.
19421945.
'My heart aches for our wonderful brave people'
THE SOMBRE, defensive and defiant mood of the war is caught in images of Windsor Castle. The Round Tower, Castle Hill and St George's Gate stand darkly, dramatically brooding against an ever blacker sky. These were the wartime visions of the Castle painted by the artist John Piper at the request of the Queen. His watercolours were controversial at the time but they were immediately recognized as, and remain today, an extraordinary invocation of Britain at war the age-old fortress of the monarch standing strong against the forces of darkness.1 It was the bombardment of London in 1940 and 1941 that inspired the Queen's decision to have the Castle painted; she feared lest all or part of it be destroyed by the Germans. Her original idea, which she discussed with her friend Jasper Ridley, was to commission a series of watercolours 'in the manner of Sandby',2 who had painted 200 or so watercolours of the Castle during the reign of George III. Ridley consulted Kenneth Clark and together they introduced her to the work of John Piper at an exhibition at the National Gallery.* She liked what she saw and gave him the commission. Piper was honoured and excited. In all he produced twenty-six watercolours. They were not quite what the Queen had expected indeed they were far removed from the meticulous topographical records of Paul Sandby. But they were a remarkable body of topographical draughtsmanship, which captured well the dark menace of the war. In the words of one art historian, 'the towers of the Castle a.s.sume an eerie quality of animation, like sentinels beneath impending apocalyptic clouds'.3 The Queen herself seems to have been surprised. Nonetheless, she was pleased enough to ask Piper to do a second set of drawings and Clark wrote to her to say, 'I have told Piper he must try a spring day & conquer his pa.s.sion for putting grey architecture against black skies.'4 Such advice had little effect. When the second series was finally completed, Clark had to tell the Queen that 'Black skies prevail, but the poor fellow has done his best to put in a little blue, & the general tone is less stormy.'5 Later, the King made a joke to the artist that became famous. As they looked at the pictures together, he said, 'You seem to have had very bad luck with your weather, Mr Piper.'6 This inspired the cartoonist Osbert Lancaster to paint a caricature of Piper sitting in the pouring rain as he drew, with the caption, 'Mr Piper enjoying his usual luck with the weather.'7 Whatever the Queen's original reservations may have been, she seems to have understood that she had commissioned a work of considerable importance in the second half of her life she hung Piper's paintings prominently in her London home and showed them to visitors with evident pleasure. Moreover she remained in friendly touch with Piper and in 1968 suggested that he should be invited to design the coloured-gla.s.s windows for the King George VI Memorial Chantry at St George's Chapel.8 Piper's work was only one of her artistic interests. The arts flourished during the war and the Queen was as involved as she could be. Her interest was not new. It had begun with her maternal grandmother, Mrs Scott, in whose Florentine home she had stayed as a child, and who took her to the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace. By the time the war began, the Queen had been a keen collector and patron of the arts for several years. Her tastes were not avant garde but they were progressive. In 1938 she had purchased Augustus John's portrait of George Bernard Shaw; Kenneth Clark wrote to express his pleasure that she was buying the work of a living painter. 'Under Your Majesty's patronage British painters will have a new confidence, because you will make them feel that they are not working for a small clique but for the centre of the national life.'9 In an editorial The Times echoed Clark's approval: 'The Queen has decided that contemporary British painting matters ... and it will be against all experience if, according to their means, the decision is not followed by many of her subjects to the raising of the general level of taste, and to the practical advantage of good artists.'10 She relied heavily, as other royal patrons have done, on the advice of a few friends and experts, in particular Jasper Ridley and Clark, who was himself considered very modern at the time. During the war he gave great help to young British painters as chairman of the War Artists Advisory Committee. He devised a project called 'Recording Britain', financed by the Pilgrim Trust, to help landscape artists who might not otherwise find work. The Queen commended his efforts and he thanked her, saying that he thought that appreciation of art had actually increased during the war, partly as a result of the Queen's own interest.11 In the middle of the war, she made one of her most important purchases Landscape of the Vernal Equinox by Paul Nash. Ridley, who arranged the purchase, described Nash to her as the best 'intellectual' painter in England. It was a visionary painting of Wittenham Clumps, an ancient British camp in the Thames Valley, portrayed as in a dream, with the sun and moon together in the sky. Ridley commented that Nash put 'brains and ideas' into his paintings, and 'when there is a gradually discovered meaning in a picture, it has the effect of MAGIC, as you say; and magic is an agreeable and domestic relic of the old old world, which is not the same thing as the grand new world'.12 Ridley's remarks give an insight into the Queen's own response to art magic and a certain fey wistfulness had always been important to her. The picture kept its allure for her. 'It's a wonderful picture, imaginative and fascinating,' she said to Eric Anderson many years later. Not all of her family were so sure Princess Margaret recalled that 'We said, poor Mummy's gone mad. Look what she's brought back. At the age of twelve we weren't, I suppose, into that sort of thing.'13 *
THE ROYAL FAMILY spent the first three weeks of 1942 at Appleton House near Sandringham. While they were there the Queen received her first ever food parcel. It was from J. P. Morgan, the American banker who had shot with them before the war. She wrote and thanked him, explaining that the cheese had caused the greatest stir and would always be most welcome as they never had any themselves, feeling it should be kept for the industrial workers. She feared that it would be a long time before they would meet again in the hills of Scotland. But 'somehow the world seems to have balanced itself better with the United States in the fight against evil thinking and evil doing.'14 Similar confidence was expressed by Churchill when he saw the King on his return from his first visit to Roosevelt since America had entered the war. The King noted in his diary that Churchill told him 'he was confident now of ultimate victory, as USA were longing to get to grips with the enemy & were starting on a full output of men & material. UK & USA were now "married" after many months of "walking out".'15 But it would be a long time before the marriage bore obvious fruit. The first half of 1942 was terrible for the Allies. German U-boats sank more and more American and British ships in the North Atlantic, and in February 1942 the German naval command was able to run three heavy warships, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen, out of Brest and right up the Channel home into German waters, despite sustained British air a.s.sault upon them. As Churchill had predicted, worse was to come. With Malaya overrun by the j.a.panese, Singapore, the Far Eastern jewel in the imperial crown, surrendered to the enemy on 15 February. Eighty thousand British soldiers there were taken prisoner. The King and Queen were already feeling the effects of so much bad news. 'Bertie & I have been very tired & troubled of late,' the Queen acknowledged to her mother-in-law. But she still insisted on keeping faith: 'one must have confidence in the good sense & wonderful fighting spirit of this wonderful people of ours.'16 Even at the darkest moments of the war, humour remained important to her, as it did to most of the British people. Writing to Elizabeth Elphinstone, now working as a nurse in Edinburgh, about her making a trip south, she said, I rang up old Hitler, & quite politely asked him to make up his mind for once and all about his beastly old invasion. If he wasn't going to risk it, well & good, but if he was going to come, well, for goodness sake he must decide now. I told him, that apart from the trouble of having to mine the beaches, and the perpetual sharpening of the Home Guards' pikes, that my niece Miss E was having her plans held up, and she really must be considered a little.
After a good deal of havering and evasions, I pinned him down to saying that the end of March was O.K., so that you will be able to come South with a clear conscience and no risk of being cut off from your hospital & kin and kith ... I shall look forward to seeing you so VERY much. I am afraid that London is rather gloomy, with n.o.body to ring up or to go & see. Sometimes one feels quite lonely, it is so rare to see a friend, but how very exciting when one dear old face turns up!17 There was one happy family moment that spring. Princess Elizabeth, who was nearly sixteen, was to be confirmed. Her parents asked Cosmo Lang, about to retire as Archbishop of Canterbury, to carry out the service. Lang had been publicly much criticized for his alleged 'cant' at the time of the abdication, but the Royal Family relied upon him. Queen Mary described him as 'our friend in weal & woe'.18 The service, on 28 March in the Private Chapel at Windsor Castle, was simple and touching. The family were all moved by the young Princess taking her solemn vows before the old Archbishop. The Queen thought Lang was 'wonderful, so straightforward and so inspiring', and was sad that this would be his last appearance at a family festival.19 On Easter Sunday the Princess took her First Communion. She walked with her parents, on 'a deliciously clear early morning', from Royal Lodge to the Royal Chapel, the little church just beyond the garden. Then they came home to breakfast. 'It was so nice to be together & quiet after these years of war & turmoil & perpetual anxiety, for even a few moments of true peace,' the Queen wrote to Queen Mary. She said that she had learned that 'peace is only of the mind really. If only we can bring a true peace to this poor suffering world after this War is over, well, all the anguish & sorrow will have been worth while.'20 Much as the Queen regretted the departure of Cosmo Lang, so long both friend and spiritual adviser, it was at this time that she began to find a kindred spirit in Edward Woods, the Bishop of Lichfield. He was to become, in the words of a member of her family, 'her personal Bishop' for many years, and he helped both her and the King with speeches. In early May 1942 he came to preach at Windsor and stayed with the King and Queen for the weekend. 'We talked on many subjects & he has got the right ideas,' the King recorded in his diary;21 afterwards Bishop Woods wrote to the Queen saying he had been impressed by her interest in prayer and healing, and would send her some of his writings on the subject. He agreed with her about 'the need of an occasional "retreat" or quiet day, in which to recover one's soul & spiritual balance'.22 The place of G.o.d in this war was, of course, a matter of anxious debate, at least among committed Christians like the Queen. Later in the year Woods recommended that she read Romans 8,* 'that never failing fount of comfort & strength'. He thought that all the suffering of the war would be utterly unbearable 'unless one cd be sure and every Christian can be sure that G.o.d is down in the midst of it all, & that out of all this raw material of evil He is creating something good'.23 The Queen agreed with this. She believed, like many, that the war between Britain and Germany was between a nation that was still fundamentally Christian and one which had abandoned faith for G.o.dless 'materialism'. The horrors of fascism showed what could happen when a great nation forsook the teachings of Christ. She had always found both strength and comfort in prayer; the suffering and the fears of war made her, and the King, more devout. It was not unusual. Churches were much fuller during the war than they had been in the late 1930s.
The Queen worried about the divine purpose constantly and she prayed every day. She continued to correspond with the Bishop of Lichfield on private spiritual matters as well as on the broader subject that preoccupied them both how to renew the influence of Christianity in the life of the nation, and particularly through education. He sent her many books. In one of his letters to her Woods wrote, 'I think many people are needlessly fearful about the Church "interfering in politics", hardly perhaps realising that, if Christianity is true, then it must affect and redeem a man's environment, the whole framework of his life, as well as his "soul".'24 It was a view which she shared.
Disasters continued. The j.a.panese swept the Allies out of the Philippines and the South Pacific, they captured Burma and they positioned themselves at the gates of India. At the end of April 1942 the Luftwaffe began a series of attacks on England's heritage which became known as the Baedeker Raids. These bombing a.s.saults were directed at such historic towns as Exeter, Bath, Norwich, York and Canterbury ancient towns which had no war industries and which were targets only for cultural a.s.sault.
Over 1,500 people were killed in these raids; the King and Queen were outraged by the destruction.25 Visiting Exeter after two nights of bombing, they walked through the ruins of one of the oldest cities in England; it had been hit on two separate nights, the main street was smashed to pieces, three historic buildings, five churches, St Luke's College and the old City Hospital (built in 1700) were demolished, and so were at least 2,000 houses.26 Their visit to Bath made a considerable impression upon a young schoolboy, Raymond Leppard, who later became an international conductor and a friend of Queen Elizabeth. They went all around Bath, he wrote, 'climbing over rubble, talking to everyone, unguarded and caringly sympathetic'. Leppard was serving meals at an improvised soup kitchen for the homeless and saw the 'magical and powerful' effect they had. 'At that moment they were the symbol of the spirit of England and people's contact with it uplifted hearts and the triumph of good was a.s.sured.'27 With Queen Mary they watched a demonstration of a tank battle by the Guards Armoured Division; the Queen was impressed, but was reminded of the realities of warfare. 'I cannot bear to think what they must be going through in Libya, fighting this terrible battle in the burning heat,' she wrote.28 One of the Queen's regiments, the Queen's Bays, was deployed in North Africa. It had arrived in the desert in December 1941 and suffered considerable losses of men and tanks when trying to stem Rommel's advance north of Jedabya at the end of January 1942. From there, Lieutenant Colonel Tom Draffen wrote to Arthur Penn with news for the Queen of their actions and casualties. Penn wrote back saying that the Queen shared their sorrow over the dead, and anxiety for the missing. She regularly wore the regimental brooch which the officers had given her and 'She charges me to send you all every possible good wish and to a.s.sure you of her constant thoughts.'29 At the beginning of June 1942 they were in Scotland; the King inspected the fleet and the Queen went to the Palace of Holyrood-house which had had its windows broken, but no worse, by nearby bombing. They then spent two days on the royal train in Cambridgeshire visiting RAF stations.
They were able to relax at the Oaks and the Derby, being run at Newmarket, and the King was delighted that his filly Sun Chariot won the Oaks. But the Derby was a disappointment. His runner, Big Game, was described by the Queen as 'such a beautiful & kindly disposed animal, as well as a good race horse!' but he faded.30 That month there was another disaster in North Africa the strategic Libyan port of Tobruk, which had been captured by British forces in January 1941, fell after a week's siege. Rommel was then able to push eastwards to Egypt. The news reached Britain on a perfect summer's day; the King was depressed and worried about what it would mean for all the British troops deployed there.31 At the end of June the King and Queen made an official visit to Ulster where they stayed with their friends, the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Abercorn. At Harland and Wolff's shipyard they were mobbed by a boisterous, happy crowd.32 The next day came a visit to a new and vital installation the United States army camp near Ballykinler. There they saw some of the troops who had been shipped across the ocean since the attack on Pearl Harbor. They were impressed by the charm and intelligence of the officers and by their excellent equipment, especially 'a remarkable little portable wireless sending and receiving set, which they call a "walkie talkie" '.33 Back in England the Queen made more visits to war-related organizations, including the Red Cross, the ATS units in South-East Command (where she was pleased by the improvement in morale since the year before),34 the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, the Clothing Branch of the Officers' Families Fund at the Royal School of Needlework (an organization in which she had a lifelong interest). In North Wales she and the King visited aircraft factories and steelworks and saw the oak tree in which King Charles had hidden at Boscobel. In Lichfield they visited the Cathedral and had tea with the Queen's new mentor, the Bishop Edward Woods. She was pleased to discover that he had three sons in the Church.35 That summer, her G.o.ddaughter Elizabeth, Doris and Clare Vyner's daughter, who had just joined the Wrens, died after a harrowing two-week struggle with meningitis. Both the King and Queen wrote the Vyners heartfelt letters of condolence.36 Then on 25 August 1942 came a family tragedy.
The King and Queen were at Balmoral. That day the weather was appalling and in the evening while they were dining with their guests the King was called to the telephone. He came back to the table in clear distress and pa.s.sed a card to the Queen on which he had written in pencil, 'Darling, what shall we do about ending dinner? I am afraid George has been killed flying to Iceland. He left Invergordon at 1.30 pm & hit a mountain near Wick.'37 The Queen caught the eye of the d.u.c.h.ess of Gloucester, who was sitting next to the King, and signalled her to rise with the other ladies and leave the room. 'In the drawing room,' the d.u.c.h.ess said later, 'we all a.s.sumed the news must be of Queen Mary's death ... Then the Queen left us and came back with the King who told us that it was the Duke of Kent who had been killed.'38 The war had brought out the best in the Duke. He had asked to be given military duties, and was created an air commodore in the Royal Air Force. His task was to oversee and inspect RAF facilities both at home and abroad. In 1941 he had visited the Canadian flying schools which were training pilots for the defence of Britain, and had journeyed also to the United States where President and Mrs Roosevelt were charmed by him. On the day he died he was aboard a Sunderland flying boat bound from Invergordon to an RAF base in Iceland. The plane should not have taken off in such poor conditions. Flying too low in thick fog it hit the top of a hill on the Duke of Portland's Langwell estate. All sorts of conspiracy theories have since been attached to the Duke's death but it seems to have been a simple case of pilot error.
The King and Queen were both distraught. The King confided to his diary that, at the funeral four days later in St George's Chapel, he had great difficulty in preventing himself from breaking down. No other family funeral had affected him so much.39 The Queen knew that she too would miss the Duke greatly. She thought of him more as a brother than a brother-in-law 'I could talk to him about many family affairs for he had a quick & sensitive mind & a very good & useful social sense, & we had a great many jokes too.'40 To her brother David in Washington, she wrote that the Duke's death was 'such a dreadful waste, and he was doing such very good work, and becoming so helpful to Bertie. We shall miss him very much.'41 A real question now was how best to help the Duke's widow, Princess Marina. The King, trying to a.s.suage her grief, arranged for her sister, Princess Olga of Yugoslavia, then in exile in South Africa with her husband Prince Paul, to come and stay with Princess Marina at her home, Coppins, in Buckinghamshire. This was far from simple because Prince Paul was now regarded as a man who had collaborated with the Germans. Both women were grateful.42 Queen Mary was especially affected George was her favourite son. She was moved to receive a 'most dear telegram' from her eldest son, the Duke of Windsor, asking for details of what had happened.43 She replied in an eight-page letter, the first lines of which ill.u.s.trated her deep sorrow: 'Most darling David, In this terrible hour of grief at the pa.s.sing of our darling precious Georgie, my thoughts go out to you, who are so far away from us all, knowing how devoted you were to him.' At the end of this letter she wrote, 'I send a kind message to your wife who will help you to bear your sorrow.'44 The Duke replied by hand, and when his mother saw his writing after so many years, she 'gave a gasp of pleasure', she told him.45 He thanked her for her sweet letter and said that but for Wallis's love and comfort he would have felt very lost. Apparently still unable to comprehend the evil against which Britain was fighting, he said he thought George's death had brought home 'the utter useless cruelty of this ghastly war'. He still had the 'deep-rooted conviction' that it could have been avoided, but he realized that it could not now end until German plans for world domination had been frustrated. He was greatly pained by the six-year split with his mother and he still hoped that it could be mended and that he could bring Wallis to see her. 'I can never begin to tell you how intensified has become our great love for each other in the five years we have been married.'46 To his brother the King, the Duke wrote more harshly about the King's 'att.i.tude' towards him. He added of their mother, 'She is certainly a most courageous and n.o.ble person and it is hard that in her later years, she should have yet another great and bitter blow to bear. Her fort.i.tude is indeed an example to us all.'47 The King sent this letter to their mother; Queen Mary copied out these words and added, 'I think this was very touching & nice of David.'48 Queen Mary, happy that 'the ice has at last been broken', was optimistic that the family crisis was finally past and that relations with the Duke could be more amiable in future.49 However, within a few weeks, the Duke had written to the Prime Minister to ask once more that the t.i.tle of HRH be 'restored' to his wife.50 Churchill consulted the King, who wrote to his mother that he thought it was impossible 'to reverse a decision taken with much thought only 6 years ago. Elizabeth agrees with this too. Time is a great healer we know but this is not the moment I feel to rake up the past. This worry coming on t