The Queen Mother Part 17
With a full crew on board and our trust in the Lord
We're coming in on a wing and a prayer.
By the third quarter of 1943, Allied victories were more frequent. The Red Army was forcing the Germans back on the Eastern Front. Mussolini was overthrown and Italy changed sides. But there were growing tensions among the Allies. Churchill was increasingly concerned about Stalin's post-war ambitions in Europe, a concern which Roosevelt did not always share. Indeed, having been Churchill's great friend, Roosevelt now fondly imagined he could create an equally trusting relationship with Stalin. To Churchill's dismay he now often found himself the odd man out among the Big Three, Roosevelt, Stalin and himself. He shared such fears of Britain's diminishing status with the King and Queen.
The travels of the King and Queen around the country and their visits to factories, barracks and schools continued. Tommy Lascelles constantly advised where their presence would be most beneficial to the war effort. In October 1943 he wrote to the Queen, 'At the moment, the two obvious activities of vital importance are Bombing and Coal. Perhaps the troops that are being kept waiting, not too patiently, for some future continental adventure, come next.' He also suggested visits at Christmas to clubs and hospitals used by troops from overseas.159 After a visit to Queen Mary in November 1943, the King and Queen returned to London and gave lunch to two Saudi Arabian princes; the Queen reported to her mother-in-law that 'the two brothers were most beautiful; true Arabs with marvellous dignity & lovely manners. It was rather a strain having to talk through an interpreter, but it all seemed to go smoothly. They brought Bertie a diamond studded sword from King Ibn Saud, & they were very pleased when Bertie drew out its curved blade, & said that it would do to cut Hitler's head off!'160 *
IT WAS NOT easy for the Queen to combine her wartime duties with her responsibilities to, and love for, her daughters. She was unable to spend much time with them except at weekends. There was, perhaps, another factor. She had always dedicated herself to supporting her husband; since the abdication this had become an even stronger priority for her, and both as wife and as queen she felt that her place was at his side. She was nevertheless aware of how difficult it was to grow up in a nation at war and she did all she could to preserve the normal pleasures of childhood for them. She ended one letter to Arthur Penn, 'I must scram as the children have already eased off their ponies.'161 The Queen realized that there were similarities between her own life among the soldiers at Glamis in the First World War and that of her daughters, particularly Princess Elizabeth, at Windsor now: 'what a beastly time it is for people growing up. Lilibet meets young Grenadiers at Windsor and then they get killed, & it is horrid for someone so young.'162 Among such young men was Francis Wigram, son of Lord Wigram, King George V's Private Secretary and now Governor of Windsor Castle. The Queen had liked him very much and was nervous about what to say when Lord Wigram came to meet them at the station soon after his son's death. She thought this was 'a very brave thing to do. Of course I could hardly say anything for the lump in my throat, but so like the wonderful old thing, he started off at once saying, "Isn't it sad about Francis", and helping us out as he always does.'163 The success of the nativity play in 1940 had led to a series of pantomimes written, as usual, by Hubert Tannar, in which the Princesses acted with children from his school. At Christmas 1943 the Princesses were heavily involved in Aladdin. Costumes were conjured up from old curtains and blackout material. 'The oldest jokes are being resurrected & used boldly once more,' said the Queen, but 'some dreadfully j.a.panese touches are creeping in, such atrocities as "Nip off to Nippon" & such things!'164 The characters of the two Princesses were by now well developed. Princess Margaret, now thirteen, was still constantly mischievous and provocative. Tommy Lascelles told the Queen that one of her dancing partners had enjoyed her company greatly but had been embarra.s.sed by her freewheeling gossip. The Queen thanked him, saying he should not hesitate to tell her such things, 'and even if it is something I don't like, if it is said kindly & tactfully I shall never mind'.165 Princess Elizabeth was growing into a poised, serious but open young woman. In early 1942 the King had appointed her colonel of the Grenadier Guards,* who were protecting the family at Windsor; she immediately took a great interest in the regiment, her father recorded, and on her sixteenth birthday she had inspected a regimental parade in the Quadrangle at the Castle.166 General s.m.u.ts met her at the end of 1943 'He seems pleased with Lilibet, which is nice, as I think he is a good judge,' said the Queen.167 The Princess made a great impression on a young Grenadier and friend of the family, Mark Bonham Carter, who went to see her as colonel of his regiment. According to Arthur Penn, he arrived nervous but 'when he came out he was in a state which I can best describe as exaltation ... I have seen this effect, in another generation, so often that it is almost what the lawyers call "common form", but it gave me such pleasure to see it reproduced that I felt I must tell Your Majesty.'168 The Princess was also showing signs of an interest in Prince Philip of Greece; this was a friendship about which her parents had some concerns, if only on account of her age. Prince Philip was the nephew of King Constantine of Greece, but he was closely related to the British Royal Family his maternal grandmother, Victoria Marchioness of Milford Haven, was Queen Victoria's granddaughter and lived in Kensington Palace. Both she and his mother, Princess Alice, were born in Windsor Castle. His father, Prince Andrew of Greece, was King George V's first cousin. Prince Philip himself was born in the family home on Corfu but when he was eighteen months old his parents had to flee with him and his four elder sisters on a British warship after a Greek revolutionary court sentenced his father to death.
The family then lived in somewhat reduced circ.u.mstances outside Paris. By the early 1930s the Prince's parents had drifted apart; his mother developed psychiatric problems and then sought solace in religion, while his father based himself in Monte Carlo. The young Prince Philip continued to see each of his parents and spent a good deal of time in Germany with his sisters, who had all married German princes. He went first to preparatory school at Cheam in Surrey, then to Salem in Germany, which was run by the progressive educationalist Kurt Hahn.
When Hahn was driven out of Germany by the n.a.z.is in 1933, he founded a new school, Gordonstoun, in north-eastern Scotland, and Prince Philip became a pupil. An adventurous, good-looking and athletic boy with precocious curiosity, the Prince flourished there. 'Often naughty, never nasty,' Hahn wrote of him. Even as a boy the Prince set high standards for himself and for others. In his final report, Hahn summarized his character: 'Prince Philip is a born leader, but will need the exacting demands of a great service to do justice to himself. His best is outstanding his second best is not good enough.'
In January 1940, after pa.s.sing out of the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, having been awarded the King's Dirk as the best all-round cadet of his term, Prince Philip began a distinguished career in the Royal Navy. He had a good war and was mentioned in dispatches after the Battle of Matapan in 1941; in charge of searchlights on HMS Valiant, he had enabled the sinking of two Italian cruisers.
In December 1943 the King and Queen held a small dance for their daughters at Windsor Castle. The Queen was much impressed by the good behaviour of the young men; they seemed to appreciate the beauties of Windsor 'I fear that they are all starved of colour and beautiful things to look at, in these days.'169 To Princess Elizabeth's disappointment Prince Philip was struck by flu and confined to bed in Claridge's ('of all gloomy places', said the Queen).170 But in the end he was well enough to come to the pantomime; he stayed the weekend after it and they all laughed a great deal. He then spent Christmas with them and, according to Princess Elizabeth, 'we had a very gay time, with a film, dinner parties and dancing to the gramophone'.171 According to Tommy Lascelles, they 'frisked and capered away till near 1 a.m.'.172 As well as being good looking, Prince Philip was a strong character, full of opinions. He seems to have been aware early on that the Queen, another such character, might not always appreciate his exuberance. In his thank-you letter to her after Christmas 1943, he wrote that he hoped that 'my behaviour did not get out of hand'. He said that he also hoped it would not be too presumptuous if he now added Windsor to Broadlands (the Mountbattens' home) and Coppins (the Kents' home) as his favourite places; 'that may give you some small idea of how much I appreciated the few days you were kind enough to let me spend with you.' The young Prince and the Queen had evidently been talking about what he should do next. 'In thinking it over I have come to the conclusion that you were right and that if I had the freedom to choose I would stay in this country and not go to America.'173 After a subsequent visit to Windsor, Prince Philip told the Queen how much he loved being with them 'It is the simple enjoyment of family pleasures and amus.e.m.e.nts and the feeling that I am welcome to share them. I am afraid I am not capable of putting all this into the right words and I am certainly incapable of showing you the grat.i.tude I feel.'174 Early in 1944 Queen Mary heard a rumour that the King of Greece was planning to suggest his cousin Prince Philip as a possible suitor for Princess Elizabeth. Queen Mary thought Prince Philip was in some ways very suitable. The King liked him too but, according to Queen Mary, wondered if an Englishman, through and through, might not be more popular with the people of Britain.175 (Hugh Euston, son and heir to the Duke of Grafton, and now a young Grenadier who had been stationed at the Castle, was high on the King's list of suitable young men.) Queen Mary wrote to the King hoping that he would not think her interfering, 'But as you know well I adore Lilibet, & her future means much to me, tho' I am too old to be able to expect to see much of it!'176 The King confirmed the rumour about Prince Philip and said that he liked him 'he is intelligent, has a good sense of humour and thinks about things in the right way.' But he and the Queen both thought that their daughter was 'too young for that now, as she has never met any young men of her own age'.177 Queen Mary was relieved, 'as L is much too young, & after all the country will have to have a say in the matter. P. sounds extremely nice.'178 Despite their concerns about age, neither the King nor the Queen did anything to discourage the growing friendship between their daughter and the Prince. Meanwhile, Princess Elizabeth took on more public duties, particularly after her eighteenth birthday in April 1944. To her mother's and grandmother's delight, she now became a Counsellor of State.* She often accompanied her parents on official appointments and began to carry out engagements on her own.
BY THE SPRING of 1944 the Queen believed that, although the Allies were finally marching towards victory, an immense struggle still lay ahead. Longing for peace vied with anger. Writing to her mother-in-law she said, 'One feels quite exhausted by the immensity of the huge battlefields, stretching right across the world, and by the great amount of misery caused by the Germans. What people words fail one ... if only we could crush the Germans, and bring a true peace to this poor suffering world.'179 Weariness reigned. For the King's birthday, Queen Mary had sent him greetings and sympathy over 'this terrible war which never seems to come to an end & which gives you such endless work in so many different ways'. She thought it was 'far, far worse' than the previous war.180 The King replied that he hoped very much that the war would end in 1944 'as really everybody is getting worn out with work & anxiety'.181 The Queen's public life in 1944, the last full year of the war, did not much change. While she was still at Sandringham in January she chaired the AGM of the local Women's Inst.i.tute, and gave out prizes at the Sunday School Treat. After returning to London, she visited the headquarters of Bomber Command (whose aircrews won her lifelong admiration for their exemplary courage), the Yorkshire coalfields and air force stations, the New Zealand Forces Club and the American Red Cross Club. On a very cold day she, the King and Princess Elizabeth attended the England vs Scotland football match at Wembley (England won 62), and she inspected the 5th, 1st and 7th Battalions of the Black Watch. She toured bombed-out areas in south and west London and watched the beating of the retreat by pipes and drums of the 51st Highland Division. On 7 March she attended the 'Back to Work' Exhibition for Disabled Men at Burlington House, and later in the month reviewed troops in Yorkshire and then, together with Princess Elizabeth, toured South Wales.
In April the family had a happy spring break at Sandringham. 'The beauty of the countryside was amazing,' the Queen wrote to Osbert Sitwell. 'It was so lovely that one could hardly bear it ... One could watch the leaves unfolding and the lilac coming out, & the double cherry trees blazing. How lovely it was. I noticed that some of the young soldiers minded the beauty very much it is true that the war does make anything as glorious as England in April very agonising.' And then, in elegiac vein, she quoted Turgenev: Years of gladness,
Days of joy,
Like the torrents of spring,
They hurried away.
'It's all very sad,' she added.182 Spirits had to be sustained nonetheless. There were enjoyable interludes during family weekends at Windsor. In early May the King and Queen gave a small dance with Ambrose's band. It was a cheerful affair, Owen Morshead reported to Queen Mary, in large part because the King was in wonderful form, dancing every dance until four in the morning; 'and so did the Queen, who characteristically chose the shyest boys from the Sandhurst contingent and put them completely at their ease'. It was not just the Queen who enjoyed herself. 'Both Princesses too danced till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their shoes.'183 The Allies were in the last weeks of preparing for the invasion of Europe. The Queen found the preparations for D-Day a time of enormous tension. The thought of all the deaths to come lay, she said, 'heavy on the heart & mind'.184 Churchill felt the same. On the night of 5 June 1944, the day before D-Day, he said to his wife Clementine, 'Do you realise that by the time you wake up in the morning twenty thousand men may have been killed?'185 The immediate casualties were in the event less terrible than expected, but still, as the Queen put it, 'so many precious people' lost their lives.186 By the end of the month almost 8,000 Allied soldiers had been killed since D-Day, more than half of them American.187 Both the King and Churchill had wished to accompany the invading troops, and the Queen had encouraged the King to go. But Lascelles was appalled, and had dissuaded the King, who then had a fierce argument with Churchill, one of the worst he had ever had, when he insisted that the Prime Minister must not go either. Churchill gave way but with bad grace.188 On the night of D-Day the King made a broadcast to the country. The Queen had insisted that it should be he, not the Prime Minister, who did this. She had discussed the matter with Queen Mary during a stay at Badminton with her daughters. 'One suggestion of yours which I think is admirable', Queen Mary wrote to her afterwards, 'is that Bertie shd talk to the Country when invasion starts, & not leave it to the P.M. or the Archbishop to do so, Bertie's message will be far more popular. Do persuade him to do so.'189 The King took a great deal of trouble the Bishop of Lichfield helped craft the words and Lionel Logue once again helped him deliver them. He reminded the British people of what they had suffered and achieved so far: 'Four years ago, our Nation and Empire stood alone against an overwhelming enemy with our backs to the wall. Tested as never before in history, in G.o.d's providence we survived the test ... Now once more a supreme test has to be faced.' He asked everyone throughout the land to take part in a worldwide vigil of prayer 'as the great crusade sets forth'.190 Ten days later, on 16 June, the invasion had proceeded well; the fighting was now far enough inland for the King to be able to cross the Channel to the Normandy beaches where he spent the day with General Montgomery. The Queen was overwhelmed by emotion. In church on Sunday 18 June, as the Allies were pushing further into France, she told Osbert Sitwell, 'I weakly let a tear leave my eye, thinking of the sorrows of so many good, brave people & feeling unhappy for them.' As she did so, 'I felt a small hand in mine, & the anxious blue eyes of Margaret Rose wondering what was the matter.' Holding her daughter's hand, the Queen remembered 'with a pang' that she had been in exactly the same situation with her own mother, Lady Strathmore, during the First World War. 'I remembered so vividly looking up at my mother in church, & seeing tears on her cheeks, & wondering how to comfort her. She then had 4 sons in the army, & was so brave. I could not bear to think that my daughter should have to go through all this in another 25 years. It must not be.'191 That same morning, as the Queen and Princess Margaret were praying together, death came to another church in which they worshipped, the Guards Chapel in Birdcage Walk. Hitler had just launched his latest weapon against Britain the pilotless V1 bomber. These robotic machines were described as flying bombs and came to be known as doodlebugs. They were in some ways more horrifying than almost anything that had come before. They made a sinister growling noise, rather like an ill-tuned motorcycle, and they flew at 400 mph in a straight line from launch sites across the Channel until their engines cut out. Then they fell to earth causing ma.s.sive explosions and, in built-up areas, terrible damage. When people heard the engine of a doodlebug stop, they knew that it was falling and was about to explode somewhere near by and so would throw themselves under tables, into doorways, down cellar steps.
These random killers came in swarms of thousands. 'It was as impersonal as the plague,' wrote Evelyn Waugh, 'as though the city were infested with enormous, venomous insects.'192 On one occasion, while dictating a telegram to Roosevelt, Churchill broke off his argument to inform the President, 'At the moment a flying bomb is approaching this dwelling.' He continued his dictation regardless and then added, 'Bomb has fallen some way off but others are reported.'193 One of the lines along which the doodlebugs were directed seemed to pa.s.s directly over the Houses of Parliament and then Buckingham Palace. On the morning of 18 June, a V1 engine cut out just after it had crossed the Thames and it fell, between Parliament and Palace, straight on to the Guards Chapel while the Sunday-morning service was being conducted. The nave of the chapel was smashed to pieces. The chancel and the altar were unscathed and, astonishingly, the candles remained alight. But the carnage was terrible. Sixty-three servicemen and women and fifty-eight civilian worshippers were killed; over a hundred more were wounded. Many of those who died that morning were known to the King and Queen. Among them was Olive, the sister of Arthur Penn. The Queen immediately wrote to her friend, 'I simply cannot tell you how much I feel for you over this ghastly tragedy this morning ... I feel quite stunned by it all and what you must feel I do pray that you may be helped and sustained. Oh Arthur, it all seems so terrible we must be brave I know you are and I shall try all I know in case I can help.'194 In the first sixteen days of the V1 bombardment 1,935 civilians were killed, and by 6 July the toll had risen to 2,752.195 In the first month the doodlebugs destroyed 10,000 houses and damaged almost 200,000 more (compared with 63,000 homes destroyed during the whole 19401 Blitz).196 Hundreds of thousands of people fled the city. Buckingham Palace was under real threat after the Guards Chapel was. .h.i.t, another doodlebug fell on Const.i.tution Hill, blowing out seventy-five yards of the garden wall.197 The King, the Prime Minister and the Queen took to holding their Tuesday meetings in the Palace air-raid shelter.
After four exhausting years of war the Queen, like many others, thought the doodlebugs were an infernal new punishment 'there is something very inhuman & beastly about death dealing missiles being launched in such an indiscriminate manner.'198 Evidently fearing the worst, she wrote a letter to Princess Elizabeth 'in case I get "done in" by the Germans!', explaining that she had left her own things to be divided between her and Princess Margaret and offering advice on how her jewellery might be shared. 'Let's hope this won't be needed, but I know that you will always do the right thing, & remember to keep your temper & your word & be loving sweet Mummy.'199 The King, presumably with the same dangers in mind, wrote a longer letter to Princess Elizabeth explaining the provisions of his will.200 As well as worrying about her human charges, the Queen worried for those works of art still in the various palaces. Kenneth Clark told her he thought the thick walls of Windsor would protect the pictures there he was more worried about the paintings at Hampton Court where flying gla.s.s was a greater danger. The National Gallery store was full and he suggested that, if the doodlebug campaign were likely to continue, perhaps some pictures should be taken to Balmoral.201 Churchill was so appalled by the destruction and death wrought by the flying bombs that he considered using non-lethal poison gas on the launch sites and even on the cities of the Ruhr.202 When that option was rejected, the only other defence was to shoot the flying bombs down over Kent and Suss.e.x before they reached London. The RAF rushed all the available anti-aircraft guns close to the coast. In mid-July 1944 the King and Queen visited gun sites in Suss.e.x and Surrey. The Queen described the way in which both the battery and fighter planes tried to shoot down the doodlebugs. 'An occasional fighter came hurtling past on the tail of one of the robots, and one flew straight into the bursting sh.e.l.ls, & my heart nearly stopped, as he started to wobble about, and we thought he'd been hit. However, the bomb crashed a little further on, & the fighter seemed to recover. But really war is very exhausting!'203 As usual, the poor areas of south and east London suffered most from the new bombardment. The King and Queen visited victims in Lambeth on 29 June. Later, however, the Queen was infuriated when she was refused permission to visit other areas. .h.i.t by flying bombs. She complained to Tommy Lascelles that 'the government does not want us to visit our own bombed out people.'204 This, he replied, was 'not quite fair' and he told her that the government was trying to conceal from the Germans where exactly their bombs were falling. If she or the King visited bomb sites, the Germans would hear of it and would be able to adjust the trajectories in order to hit more built-up areas. Reluctantly the Queen had to accept this argument.205 She knew there were many other places where their presence was solicited. They visited airfields from which planes were scrambled at no notice to try and shoot down the flying bombs. Both of them were inspired by the bravery and the modesty of the young pilots.206 The King was the next source of anxiety for the Queen. On 23 July he departed on a ten-day visit to his troops in Italy under the command of General Alexander. From 23 July until 3 August, he visited battlefields old and current, watching fighting and artillery bombardments. The night before his departure, the King wrote to his wife, 'My darling Angel, As I am going away tonight on a journey by air I feel it is always wise to put one's affairs in order. I am not thinking that something might happen to me while I am away from you, but there are some matters which might want clearing up.' He stressed that she would 'naturally go on living at Buck. Pal, in this Castle, Sandringham & Balmoral for the present until such time as Lilibet is on her own. I hope Royal Lodge, Appleton & Birkhall will always be your house on the private estates. The former is our home; the house we built & made for ourselves in Windsor Park.'207 On the evening he left, the Queen and Princess Elizabeth drove with the King to Northolt aerodrome to see him off. The Queen looked around the converted Lancaster bomber and thought it was quite comfortable. But when she went up to the c.o.c.kpit, an extraordinary thing happened: 'the first thing I saw through the gla.s.s was a flying bomb caught in the searchlights, & coming straight for the plane! I really felt, well this is too much, & averted my eye in anger! Luckily it buzzed over & was going strong when I looked again! What emotions one goes through these days.'208 She was always nervous when the King was off on such trips, but she tried to hide it 'he feels so much not being more in the fighting line, and I know that it heartens the troops, & one swallows one's anxieties!'209 While the King was away, the Queen and, for the first time, Princess Elizabeth acted as Counsellors of State. The Queen kept herself busy, visiting the Girl Guide and Rangers camp at Frogmore, and ATS units at Bagshot, Aldershot and Windsor as well as the 2nd Battalion of the Home Guard under the command of her brother Mike. He had been left physically unfit by his experiences in the First World War and in 1939 he had been rejected by the army on medical grounds. The Queen had always been moved by these volunteers, and she said that as she looked at 'these very English & some not-so-young men it was something very difficult to put into words, such an unyielding spirit & yet so modest I felt a lump in my throat and a great thankfulness & also a great humbleness too.'210 The effect was mutual, to judge by the letter of thanks her sister-in-law Betty Bowes Lyon wrote to her after the visit. The Queen, she said, had inspired a sense that 'you were theirs part of them & that they loved you so much they would happily die for you'.211 From General Alexander's headquarters in Italy the King wrote to tell her he was having 'a very interesting time seeing a lot in lovely hot weather, a bit too hot for me but I'm dressed in shorts & a shirt ... I have seen the Air Force, the US 5th Army & the Poles ... Early starts in the morning, but I wake at 6.30 & bathe in the lake with Alex. He is a charming host & has told me a lot of his own thoughts ... I have only been away a week & I feel it is 10 years. I hope you are not too lonely angel.'212 She had written to him hoping that 'the tum tum tummy is behaving nicely, & not revolting at the climate, or the chianti, or the macaroni or spaghetti!'213 She was cheered by his letter 'I can tell everything is going alright,' she told Tommy Lascelles.214 In Naples the King saw the Queen's friend D'Arcy Osborne, who was still His Majesty's envoy to the Holy See. He had not enjoyed the nine months of German occupation, he told the Queen. It was 'terribly oppressive, never knowing if the Gestapo would not come at any moment'. He said that Yeats summed up his feelings about the war: The years like great black oxen tread the world
And G.o.d the herdsman goads them on behind
And I am broken by their pa.s.sing feet.215
The King returned the day before the Queen's birthday on 4 August; Queen Mary and other members of the family contributed to a Faberge cornflower for her she loved it and thought it 'so beautifully unwarlike!'216 Queen Mary decided not to come over from Badminton to celebrate she was concerned that if she met a robot plane the shock would give her an allergic reaction.217 The Queen thought she was probably wise there were constant warnings and explosions on the afternoon of her birthday; she was longing to get the children away from Windsor 'because life is rather un-normal, & though they are so good & composed, there is always the listening, & occasionally a leap behind the door, and it does become a strain'.218 Once more Balmoral beckoned. There they could relax after two such violent months and she could watch her daughters with 'very bright eyes & pink cheeks again'. The liberation of Paris had begun but it was an end to the bombardment of London that she wanted. 'I don't think that anybody has any conception of the strain & horrible-ness of the whole thing, and people are so wonderful about it all. Up here, away from it, I find that I think all the time of those little rows of houses, & everyone carrying on so splendidly amongst all the ruin & death one feels almost conscience stricken to be so peaceful & quiet. It is marvellous too!'219 After Paris was freed in August 1944 and Churchill had had a joyous reception there, the Queen asked the Prime Minister, 'Do you think that there is any chance of London being "Liberated" in the coming months? My heart aches for our wonderful brave people, they have been tried so high, & of course can go on, but it really is rather a bore to feel that one might be blown to pieces at any moment. There is no limit to their courage & cheerfulness and I long for them to have a lightening of their burden.'220 At the beginning of November 1944 the Queen learned that her father, who had been suffering from an attack of flu, was gravely ill. She immediately made plans to take the night train to Glamis, and telegraphed her younger brother David at the British Emba.s.sy in Washington: 'FEAR NOT MUCH HOPE BUT HE IS VERY PEACEFUL BEST LOVE DARLING ELIZABETH'.221 David arranged to come at once, but Lord Strathmore died peacefully in his sleep on 7 November. His youngest son felt that in wartime circ.u.mstances he could not justify flying home 'when all is over'.222 The Queen understood, but missed David greatly during the three sad days she spent at Glamis for the simple funeral.223 Lord Strathmore's coffin, covered with a Union flag, was drawn to the burial ground on a farm cart by two horses while pipers from the Black Watch played 'Flowers of the Forest'.224 The King walked behind the coffin with other men of the family; the Queen followed in a car with her sisters.
She had many letters, she told David, which stressed their father's 'kindness to one and all'.225 She thanked Churchill for his sympathetic letter, saying, 'It is a very sad moment for us all, my father loved us, and we loved him, and it was so comforting for me to go home, and feel even now, with old age coming on, that I was a loved child that has gone, but I am very grateful to have had it so long.'226 With the end of the war for the first time really in sight, the Queen was distressed by the decision to disband one of her favourite wartime inst.i.tutions, the Home Guard. She saw it as emblematic of the 'good brave self sacrificing British people',227 working together in their amateur but committed manner to defeat the evils of fascism. After a visit to one battalion in July 1944, she wrote to the commanding officer, 'As I went down the ranks I thought with pride & grat.i.tude of the splendid spirit of loyalty and determination which brought the Home Guard into being during those critical days of 1940.'228 The King broadcast thanks to the Home Guard for their 'steadfast devotion' which had 'helped much to ward off the danger of invasion'.229 *
AT THE END of 1944 the Queen began an a.s.sociation which gave her and others pleasure for the rest of her life she became a bencher of the Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court, the professional a.s.sociations to which every English barrister must belong. Since the foundation of the Inns in the Middle Ages, no monarch or consort had ever joined any of them, and no woman had ever before been a member of the parliament of an Inn.
Like many of the historic buildings in London, the Middle Temple had been badly damaged by bombing. The Queen's installation took place on 12 December 1944, in the New Parliament Chamber, whose windows had been blown out. One light was suspended from the ceiling by its flex. But good cheer was had nonetheless. The tables were set in the form of an E and were laid with the Middle Temple silver which, like the contents of the wine cellar, had survived.230 The simple menu Clear Soup, Roast Turkey, Apple Tart and Cheese and Biscuits was made more memorable by Pol Roger 1928, Chateau Margaux 1924, Taylor's Port 1912 and 1878 brandy. In her speech the Queen displayed a sense of history: Though I am, I understand, the first of my s.e.x to become a Bencher of this Inn, I like to feel that I am continuing a tradition rather than creating a precedent, for it is, after all, but a few paces from here that another Queen Elizabeth visited this Society in the Hall which was built with her permission, and indeed was so intimately a.s.sociated with her that it was referred to by the Treasurer as 'The Queen's House' ... I feel this sense of the past to be very heartening at present when we see all about us so much overlaid by those hazards through which, please G.o.d, we can today see a light beginning to shine.
Our walls may crumble, she continued, but more precious were the unshaken and unshakeable virtues and graces of the Inn. In particular 'the honourable administration of the Law and the unswerving impartiality between rich and poor'.231 In response, the Master Treasurer rose and toasted 'Our new Bencher the Queen'. For the rest of her life she rarely missed the annual dinner of the Inn.
THE PANTOMIME season at Windsor was upon them again and, the Queen wrote, 'Windsor is ringing with words like lights, cut it, grease paint, Mother Hubbard, finale, opening chorus etc.'232 They called this pantomime Old Mother Red Riding Boots and performed it in the Waterloo Chamber just before Christmas. The King thought the 1944 pantomime was 'better than ever & [the Princesses] both did their parts very well & enjoyed them'. This year, as he prepared his Christmas broadcast, he noted, 'I did not have Logue with me. I knew I did not need his help.'233 As the German armies retreated there were increasing anxieties about the wreckage that would be left behind, and about the march of Soviet communism westwards. Churchill was especially worried about Poland, on whose behalf Britain had originally gone to war, and Greece. In Athens, after the flight of the n.a.z.i occupiers, growing violence between communists and royalists filled the streets. The Queen believed that such violence was perhaps inevitable given what had happened 'one feels that occupation of a country by the Germans leaves a terrible legacy of anarchy & cruelty & a weakening of moral forces Indeed the n.a.z.is are the forces of Evil. May the coming year see the end of this ghastly struggle & a return to law & order in Europe is my fervent prayer.'234 She was dismayed by the way in which the press and the BBC appeared to support the communist side in Greece. 'One could hardly believe', she wrote to Queen Mary, 'that the Press and intellectuals of the socialist party could be so blind as to back up a gang of bandits who wanted to seize power by force. We have suffered so much in the fight for what is called Freedom, it was very sad that at this moment people could be so misled as to what freedom means. It certainly doesn't mean government by tommy gun.'235 The Queen was able, by early 1945, to spend more time writing to and seeing her friends, though she found letters difficult. 'There is so little to write about except war,' she said.236 Among the friends of whom she had not seen enough was d.i.c.k Molyneux, co-founder of the Windsor Wets. He wrote to her in the middle of March and she replied immediately: It is curious that your letter arrived today, because last night the King & I were saying that we had not seen you for AGES, and I said that I would write & ask you to come and spend a weekend at our little weekend cottage. And, lo and behold! on my table this morning what do I see? That well-known writing is it? Can it be? Yes! No Yes; it is! I suppose that my thoughts whizzed out of the window here, turned sharp right, cut across the Green Park, past the Ritz, down Berkeley Street, and entering your flat, elbowed their way through the guests thronging your hall, & crashed into your mind ...
Down with Hitler! Your friend E.R.237 On 12 April 1945 the King and Queen were appalled to hear of the death of President Roosevelt from a cerebral haemorrhage. Queen Mary called it 'a positive catastrophe',238 and the King replied that the news had been 'a great shock to me & we shall feel his loss very much.'239 Roosevelt was succeeded by the then little-known Vice-President, Harry Truman.
By now, the war was nearly won. London was 'liberated' as the Queen had asked: all the doodlebug launch sites across the Channel had been captured or destroyed from the air; the mobile launchers of the V2 rocket bombs, whose trajectory could not be intercepted and whose death toll had been even higher, were also rendered ineffective. Mussolini was seized by Italian partisans on 27 April and executed the next day; two days later Hitler committed suicide in the squalor of his Berlin bunker. Victory was finally announced on 8 May 1945. In his diary the King wrote, 'The day we have been longing for has arrived at last, & we can look back with thankfulness to G.o.d that our tribulation is over.'240 The 8th was a Tuesday and after Churchill's weekly lunch with the King the Prime Minister returned to 10 Downing Street to put the finishing touches to his victory speech, to be broadcast by the BBC and relayed by loudspeakers around Whitehall that evening. It was short and resolute, and he ended with the words: 'the evil doers lie prostrate before us.' The crowds in the streets gasped at this phrase. 'Advance Britannia!' the Prime Minister shouted.
The streets of every town in the country were filled with singing, dancing, frolicking people. Tens of thousands of them gathered in the Mall in front of Buckingham Palace. The Palace balcony had been surveyed to ensure that it was still structurally sound after all the bombs that had exploded near by. That evening the King, the Queen and the Princesses appeared on the balcony for the first time together. Huge happy crowds roared for the family to come back out again and again. Among the throng was Noel Coward: 'The King and Queen came out on the balcony, looking enchanting. We all roared ourselves hoa.r.s.e ... I suppose this is the greatest day in our history.'241 The Princesses begged their parents to allow them into the throng to celebrate. The King agreed. 'Poor darlings, they have never had any fun yet,' he wrote in his diary.242 With a party of young officers, the Princesses danced through the city unrecognized as hundreds of thousands of people cheered and cheered their parents.
The King was exhausted and in his victory broadcast he stumbled over his words more than usual. In common with millions of his subjects, he felt the strain of the war terribly. He looked shattered. He and the Queen found all the expressions of grat.i.tude and praise for them overwhelming. They were especially moved by the tribute Churchill paid them.243 In a speech to the Commons, the Prime Minister was lyrical in his description of all that the King had done to help sustain the war effort. He then told the House that it would be 'altogether unfitting' if he did not also speak of the King's 'gracious consort, the Queen'. She, he said, 'has been everywhere with him to scenes of suffering and disaster, to hospitals, to places shattered the day before by some devastating explosion, to see the bereaved, the sufferers and the wounded, and I am sure that many an aching heart has found some solace in her gracious smile.'244 The Queen summed up her own feelings in a letter to Osbert Sitwell: I feel rather numbed by the emotions of the last weeks, and on top of all the great anxieties of the last years, this has made me feel stunned as well, so you will understand a rather stupid letter, I hope! ... It is almost impossible to believe that the dreadful war is over, and Germany truly beaten the sense of relief from bombs and rockets is very agreeable at the moment, and I hope that people won't forget too soon. They have shown such a n.o.ble and unselfish spirit all through the country during these long years of war, and I long for them to keep at the same high level in the days to come.
Our people respond so magnificently when they are asked to do hard things, to die, to smile amongst the wreckage of their homes, to work until they crack, to think of their neighbours before themselves; and the more difficult things you ask of them, the more response you get. It's been so wonderful; and all that spirit will be needed now, more than ever, for the whole world looks (even if some unwillingly) to these Islands for leadership in decent living and thinking. We must do it somehow.245 * John Piper (190392), British artist renowned for his landscape and architectural paintings, as well as for his abstract work. During the Second World War he was commissioned to record bomb damage in London and elsewhere, and he became an official war artist in 1944. He designed the stained-gla.s.s windows for Coventry Cathedral, built in the 1960s to replace the cathedral destroyed by bombing in the Second World War.
* This is the chapter which includes the well-known verses: 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ... For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor princ.i.p.alities, nor powers ... shall be able to separate us from the love of G.o.d which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.' (Romans 8:35, 389) Most of her letters to Edward Woods were unfortunately lost in the 1980s in a fire.
* The Second World War saw an acceleration in medical science. M&B was first produced by the firm May & Baker in 1936 it was the first effective antibiotic that could be used for a variety of infections, including sore throat and pneumonia. It was ma.s.s produced during the war. Churchill was prescribed it in 1943 and announced, 'This admirable M&B, from which I did not suffer any inconvenience, was used at the earliest moment and after a few weeks' fever the intruders were repulsed.'
* Mrs Greville also left Osbert Sitwell 10,000, which made him feel 'very rich'. A few months after her death he returned to Polesden Lacey to visit Aline, her old French maid who still lived there. He reported to the Queen that the rest of Mrs Greville's staff, known to him and her at least as 'the Crazy Gang', had been disbanded, but that they had 'brought off a big coup with the sale of Mrs Ronnie's cellar an appropriate finale'. (Osbert Sitwell to Queen Elizabeth, [18] April 1943, RA QEQM/PRIV/PAL/Sitwell) * An Allied raid on the German-occupied port of Dieppe in northern France in August 1942, carried out by a largely Canadian force, was a disastrous failure, with more than half of the 6,000 raiders either killed, wounded or captured. An Allied battle plan, discovered by the Germans, proposed that German prisoners should be shackled. Hitler gave orders that the same be done to Canadian prisoners. In retaliation, Churchill ordered that German POWs in Canada be shackled. Both orders were soon rescinded.
* 'Boniface' was the word used by Churchill and his circle for intelligence derived from the top-secret decryption of German communications. Much of the German cipher traffic was encrypted on Enigma machines, one of which had been handed to the British by Polish intelligence shortly after the outbreak of war; it was used by the decoders at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire. Enigma decrypts, one of the most important secret achievements of the war, were later called Ultra. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the western Supreme Allied Commander, later described Ultra as being 'decisive' to Allied victory. The secret was kept until 1974 when F. W. Winterbotham published the first history of the codebreaking, The Ultra Secret.
* The Matron at Lewisham Hospital wrote to thank the Queen for her visit and added that she 'would also like to thank the Princesses for their very generous gift of bananas, and to say how much the children enjoyed them, even little "Betty" who had never seen a banana before.' (RA QEQMH/PS/ENGT/1943: 4 February) In January 1942 the n.a.z.i leadership had secretly devised plans for the more systematic destruction of the Jews. The minutes of this conference held at Lake Wannsee near Berlin survive replete with such euphemisms as 'evacuating the Jews to the East' and 'dealt with appropriately'.
* It was often difficult to write speeches for the Queen. In 1939 A. A. Milne, the author of Winnie the Pooh, had written a broadcast for the Queen at the request of the Ministry of Information. It was, in the words of the historian Frank Prochaska, 'patronising'. 'Men say we gossip,' the Queen was to tell her listeners, 'perhaps we do. It is nice sitting cosily with a friend and saying, "Did you hear this?" and "did you hear that?" But please, please don't let us gossip now.' The Director General of the BBC had thought the draft broadcast 'generally admirable' and it was sent to the Palace for approval. It was not delivered. (Frank Prochaska, Royal Bounty, p. 223, quoting PRO INF 1/670. 37) * 'Coming In on a Wing and a Prayer' was sung by Anne Shelton with Ambrose and his Orchestra. The music was by Jimmie McHugh and the lyrics by Harold Adamson.
* The previous Colonel, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, third son of Queen Victoria, had died on 16 January 1942.
* In 1943 the King had asked Parliament to amend the Regency Act of 1937 to enable Princess Elizabeth to become a Counsellor of State at eighteen, instead of at twenty-one as under the existing law.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
WAR TO PEACE.
19451947 'Oh how I hate utility and austerity'
WITH THE END of the war in Europe, as the full horrors of Belsen, Buchenwald and Auschwitz were uncovered, it had become ever more clear that this war really had been, as Churchill had often declared, a war against evil and a new Dark Age. But, now that it was finally won, the vast costs of the effort, both personal and national, became starkly evident. In Europe alone more than fourteen million people had died; the economic structure of the continent had been ruined. Now millions of the survivors became refugees, wandering all over Europe, which was quickly divided, first by influence and then by physical barriers, between east and west. The Queen found it hard to believe that the Germans could have been responsible for so much misery.
She wrote to her mother-in-law to say that she and the King 'have aged a lot, and look rather haggard & ravaged! & one's clothes are so awful!'1 The Queen was now in her mid-forties, a more mature, indeed more matronly figure than when the war began. Both she and the King had expended enormous physical, mental and emotional resources in the previous five years. The King, whose health had always been poor, was exhausted by the physical and moral strain. And he knew that it was not over yet. 'I have found it difficult to rejoice or to relax as there is still so much hard work ahead to deal with,' he wrote in his diary ten days after VE Day. 'Russia & America & U.K. have got to work together to put Europe straight again after this upheaval.'2 And there was still the war in the east to be won. A tragic reminder of this was the news that Clare and Doris Vyner's son Charles had just been killed in his plane in action over Rangoon. The Queen was horrified. 'Oh Doris I cannot bear to think of your sorrow ... All my most loving thoughts are with you all the time; if you ever want me I shall come at once, even just to be with you a moment.'3 The King needed to rest. But he could not. From the Queen's point of view, the story of the next six years was of tumultuous change in British society and of catastrophic decline in the King's health.
At the end of the war, London was a drab and filthy city, with thousands of homes, churches and other public buildings bombed beyond repair, the dust from myriad bomb sites blowing everywhere. Buckingham Palace was not destroyed, but it would take years to repair the damage and restore both the Palace and Windsor Castle to their pre-war state.
Through the summer of 1945, the King and Queen tried to construct a normal family life around their daughters. But they both knew that the war had made them into such public figures that they had no chance of returning to a relatively secluded private life. They undertook victory tours in many different parts of the United Kingdom; they attended countless march-pasts and rallies or services to celebrate the achievements of many different groups, regiments, a.s.sociations. They visited the Channel Islands the only part of British Crown territory occupied by the Germans. The Queen was impressed by the spirit of the islanders and, as a result of this visit, she decided to make a special gift to the Islands to commemorate their loyalty and Christian spirit it took the form of specially made church plate, crucifix and candlesticks for the two main churches in Jersey and Guernsey.
Letters of praise and relief flooded into Buckingham Palace. The King replied to a letter from Cosmo Lang to say that he and the Queen had been overwhelmed by everyone's great kindness. 'We have tried to do our duty in these 5 long exacting years.' Now there could be only a moment for rejoicing, as there was so much more work to do to recover from 'all the suffering & destruction which Hitler has caused. But we also have much to be thankful for & the people of this Country won't let us down.'4 However, the people, wearied by the war, wanted political change. Politics had been, in effect, suspended since 1940, and the Labour leader Clement Attlee had served loyally as Churchill's deputy in the Coalition government. Churchill now wished to prolong the Coalition until the war with j.a.pan was won. But the Labour Party decided at its annual conference in May 1945 to end the Coalition at once. Queen Mary thought this was 'disgusting & ungrateful' after all Churchill had done. She also thought that, since a peace conference involving all the big powers was about to convene in Potsdam, it should be Churchill who led Britain.5 Churchill himself felt the same. Ever since VE Day, his main preoccupation had been with the Soviet Union he feared that a new 'period of appeas.e.m.e.nt' would lead to a 'third World War'.6 The King and Queen agreed. They believed, in common with millions of others, that because of her heroic stand in 19401 and her dogged fighting ever since, Great Britain should still be considered a great power in 1945. Britain's armed services were more powerful than ever and Britain's global Empire was being restored. London now shared with the Allies in the governance of Germany, Austria and Italy. The Mediterranean was a British lake. The North African littoral, southern Persia and Greece were all under British control. British armies were keeping the peace and defending British interests around the world. The Royal Navy boasted 3,500 ships and the Royal Air Force enjoyed widespread international bases and prestige. It was not surprising that many Britons, proud of their individual and national achievements, believed that Britain would soon be able to re-establish her pre-war dominance of the international system.
But the war had vastly strengthened others, in particular the United States and the Soviet Union. People were slow to understand, but Britain now faced, in the words of John Maynard Keynes, a 'financial Dunkirk'.7 To defeat the n.a.z.is, Britain had nearly exhausted her gold and dollar reserves, worn out her industrial base and become increasingly dependent on American munitions, shipping and foodstuffs each of these was essential to the war effort.8 Moreover, for all Churchill's intimate relationship with Roosevelt, by the time of his death the American President had been negotiating over his head with Stalin.
Parliament was dissolved on 15 June. Polling began on 5 July but instead of the usual one day was extended for much longer to enable the troops stationed overseas to vote. The result a stunning victory for the Labour Party with a majority of 146, and the rejection of Churchill and the Conservatives was announced on 26 July.
The King and Queen were, to say the least, disappointed. That evening, Churchill drove to the Palace to tender his resignation. It was, wrote the King in his diary, 'a very sad meeting'; he told Churchill he thought the people were very ungrateful.9 A few days later he wrote to Churchill to tell him: how very sad I am that you are no longer my Prime Minister. During the last 5 years of war we have met on dozens, I may say on hundreds of occasions ... Your breadth of vision & your grasp of the essential things were a great comfort to me in the darkest days of the War, & I like to think that we have never disagreed on any really important matter. For all those things I thank you most sincerely ... I shall miss your counsel to me more than I can say. But please remember that as a friend I hope we shall be able to meet at intervals.10 Churchill replied with similar emotion.
The Queen set out her views to Queen Mary: The election has been rather a shock, and I think that Bertie felt it very much, as Winston has been such a great support and comfort all through these terrible years of war. He is a great man, of great vision, and his leadership has meant so much to so many. People's memories are short, alas!, and one must try now to build up another good sound government. But the material is not too inspiring.
With a great war raging, & a Potsdam Conference sitting, really [it] is not the time to have a change of Government! We both feel tired, & today has been very depressing, but Bertie is wonderful, and tho' he looks rather pinched in the face, he is so calm & good, tho' I know he is worried to death. You have been through all these things Mama, & understand it all so well it is h.e.l.l, isn't it.11 Churchill himself was both devastated and philosophical. The waste of his talents upset him. 'The knowledge and experience I had gathered, the authority and goodwill I had gained in so many countries, would vanish,' he recalled later. But when his doctor, Charles Moran, spoke of the 'ingrat.i.tude' of the British people, Churchill replied, 'I wouldn't call it that. They have had a very hard time.' To another aide he said, 'They are perfectly ent.i.tled to vote as they please. This is democracy. This is what we've been fighting for.'12 Two men who later became friends and admirers of the Queen were pleased by the news. The Oxford philosopher and diplomat Isaiah Berlin danced a jig in celebration. Noel Coward, the actorentertainer who had played an important wartime propaganda role and was certainly no left-winger, was sanguine. 'It may not be a bad idea for the Labour boys to hold the baby,' he recorded in his diary. 'I always felt that England would be b.l.o.o.d.y uncomfortable during the immediate postwar period.'13 In August 1945, President Truman unexpectedly and, he later acknowledged, unwisely, cut the economic lifeline of Lend-Lease, whose creation Churchill had called 'the most unsordid act in the history of any nation'. The sudden end of this vital support meant that Britain had to negotiate new loans from the United States; the terms seemed onerous. There was even less money to pay for both imperial and post-imperial commitments and for the socialist revolution which the Labour Party had been elected to carry out. The government immediately had to cut imports of food, tobacco, textiles, fuel. But that did not mean that Labour would, or could, change its policies. The historian Robert Rhodes James put it succinctly in his biography of the King: 'The series of economic miseries that were to demoralise and eventually to destroy the post-war Labour government had begun.'14 *
THE FAMILY WAS at Windsor for the first weekend in August 1945; Sat.u.r.day the 4th was a special day, the Queen's forty-fifth birthday and a good outing for the King at the races Rising Light won him the first victory by one of his own horses that he had ever seen. That evening they gave a small dance at the Castle to celebrate both the Queen's birthday and the end of the war in Europe.
On 6 August the first atom bomb was dropped on j.a.pan with the second following three days later. Unconditional surrender followed swiftly and on 15 August the Pacific war was finally also over.
That same day the King and Queen proceeded, in an open landau drawn by four greys, to open the first peacetime Parliament since 1938. The crowds gave them a tumultuous welcome. Inside Parliament, Chips Channon noted that 'the many new socialists looked dazed and dazzled.' When the royal procession entered he thought the Queen, in aquamarine blue, was 'dignified and gracious'. The King announced the end of the war, and then mentioned the first radical measures of his new socialist government the nationalization of the mines and of the Bank of England.15 The King made a radio broadcast that night in which he said, 'The war is over. You know, I think, that those four words have for the Queen and myself the same significance, simple yet immense, that they have for you. Our hearts are full to overflowing, as are your own. Yet there is not one of us who has experienced this terrible war who does not realise that we shall feel its inevitable consequences long after we have all forgotten our rejoicings of today.'16 But rejoice they did; that night the crowds gathered again outside Buckingham Palace and shouted for the King and Queen to come on to the balcony. James Lees-Milne, the diarist, was in the crowd and recorded, 'They were tiny. I could barely distinguish her little figure swathed in a fur, and something sparkling in her hair. The gold b.u.t.tons of his Admiral's uniform glistened. Both waved in a slightly self-conscious fashion and stood for three minutes. Then they retreated. The crowd waved with great applause, and all walked quietly home.'17 At the end of August they went to Balmoral, exhausted. It was a happy family time. The Queen's friend and lady in waiting Cynthia Spencer described days in the hills and on the rivers, with them all singing 'descants and ditties' as they were driven from one place to another 'in a super-shining motor bus'.18 A month at Balmoral was followed by a busy week in Edinburgh; with the Princesses they stayed at Holyroodhouse and attended Scotland's Victory Parade. After dinner on 27 September they listened to the ma.s.sed bands and pipes and community singing. As the Queen put it, 'All the good staid citizens of Edinburgh let themselves go in an orgy of yelling & dancing, feeling decently disguised by the covering of the dark. It was the first time they had ever done such a thing, & it did them a lot of good.'19 The family remained in Scotland for the autumn, a vital break for the King, but he still felt drained. He even rather envied Churchill in defeat. The hero of victory had gone on holiday after the electorate rejected him in July 1945. Later he visited the King, who observed to Tommy Lascelles, 'When Winston was last here he was a tired man. Now he's back from two months' complete holiday in the Italian Lakes; brisk, chubby, pink as a baby, at the top of his form once more. That's where these people score. I can't ever get a holiday like that. I never get a chance to recuperate like they do.'20 Lascelles thought there was a good deal of truth in this. So did the Queen, who worried constantly about her husband's health. Duty pursued the King to Royal Lodge, Sandringham or Balmoral. Every day he had to read state papers, Cabinet minutes, and other doc.u.ments that required his signature. He would stay up too late and smoke too much.21 At Balmoral he had to spend as much time every day with his secretaries as in London the only relief that Scotland afforded him was from the endless audiences that he had to hold every day in the capital. These were exhausting for him because he took considerable trouble with each person. By the end of the afternoon he would be 'dead beat'.22 The King told the Duke of Gloucester, 'I feel burned out ... I have been suffering from an awful reaction from the strain of the war I suppose.'23 He found that no medicine, not even Dr Weir's homeopathic powders, did him much good. The only cure was being out in the open air. The Queen told Queen Mary, 'to my joy Bertie has taken to stalking again, which means he has more energy, & it is doing him good. He was very tired when we got up here at the end of August, for the summer had been very exhausting.'24 *
THE DUKE OF Windsor was a continuing concern. He had announced his resignation as governor of the Bahamas at the end of 1944 and had left for the United States in May 1945. The question was where he and the d.u.c.h.ess would now live. His family hoped they would not wish to settle in England. Churchill informed him in no uncertain terms that, although the King would always see him, Queen Mary was 'inflexibly opposed' to meeting the d.u.c.h.ess. 'I imagine that this view is shared by the Queen,' he added.25 That autumn the Duke wrote an affectionate letter to his mother and said that he would like to come and stay with her in October.26 Queen Mary was delighted she had not seen her eldest son since his abdication. The Queen was glad for Queen Mary's sake, knowing that 'it is very hard for a mother to be parted from her son.' But the Duke then immediately upset members of the family by giving press conferences en route to London. The Queen's view was that he should have said that his visit was private and have refused to see the press.27 When the new Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, came to Balmoral for the Prime Minister's traditional autumn weekend, the Duke was a central topic of discussion. The King was pleased with Attlee's att.i.tude; he told Queen Mary that the Prime Minister 'agrees with me that he cannot live here permanently owing to his wife & he is not prepared to offer D. any job here or anywhere.' The King thought the family should remain firm, particularly about 'her' 'She does not like either us or this country, & the life she has been accustomed to live no longer exists here.' He thought his brother still did not realize 'the irrevocable step he took nine years ago & the ghastly shock he gave this country'.28 The Duke came, alone, and Queen Mary was happy to have her 'dear eldest son' with her for a week. 'Very nice he was,' she told Owen Morshead later, 'quite like old times; very well informed, knew everything that was going on. But still persisting about my receiving his wife, when he promised he'd never mention the subject to me again. His last words when he was going away "Well goodbye and don't forget: I'm a married man now." Don't forget, indeed: as if one ever could!'29 When the King came down from Balmoral to see the Duke, the Queen stayed in Scotland. The brothers spent two hours together at Buckingham Palace on 6 October 1945. It was, said the King in a letter written immediately afterwards to his mother, an 'amicable & quiet' conversation. Indeed it went better than the King and Queen had feared. The Duke said he was anxious to help improve Anglo-American relations when he returned to the United States. The King explained that as an ex-king the Duke could neither live in Britain nor work abroad for the Crown. His post in the Bahamas had been a wartime expedient. On the subject of the d.u.c.h.ess, the Duke said that he should take all the blame for what had happened in 1936, and if only the d.u.c.h.ess were recognized by the family all would be well. The King seems to have been touched by his brother and did not repeat how badly the family felt he had behaved. 'I could tell that he is very happily married & that he wants to do his best for her in their future life together. But we cannot help him in this & I don't see how we ever can.'30 Queen Mary agreed entirely with the King.31 Tommy Lascelles noted in his diary that when the Duke left on 11 October he felt 'rather as one did on