The Queen Mother Part 19
Churchill, in his own car, was in tears as he drove back to London, dictating a radio broadcast he was to make that night. He spoke of the King as 'a devoted and tireless servant of his country' and said that the announcement of his death 'struck a deep and solemn note in our lives which, as it resounded far and wide, stilled the clatter and traffic of twentieth century life in many lands and made countless millions of human beings pause and look around them'.
Churchill's sentiments, on this as on many occasions, epitomized the monarchist feelings that prevailed in a country where at least a third of the people thought the Queen had been chosen by G.o.d. 'The King', declared Churchill, had 'walked with death, as if death were a companion he did not fear ... In the end death came as a friend; and after a happy day of sunshine and sport, and after "good night" to those who loved him best, he fell asleep as every man or woman who strives to fear G.o.d and nothing else in the world may hope to do.' Now the 'Second Queen Elizabeth' was ascending the throne at the same age as the first, nearly 400 years earlier. Despite his grief, the Prime Minister said, 'I, whose youth was pa.s.sed in the august, unchallenged and tranquil glories of the Victorian era, may well feel a thrill in invoking, once more, the prayer and the anthem, "G.o.d Save the Queen".'
After the new Queen had arrived at Clarence House, one of her first visitors was Queen Mary. 'Her old Grannie and subject must be the first to kiss Her hand,' she said.131 Thus the eighty-four-year-old woman, who had lived through five reigns, curtsied to her new queen. Queen Mary felt keenly the enormous responsibility that her granddaughter now had to take on at the age of only twenty-five. 'But she has a fine steadfast character,' she wrote to Queen Elizabeth, '& will I know always do her best for our beloved country and her people all over the world and dear Philip will be a great help.'132 Elizabeth II and Prince Philip drove to Sandringham. The new Queen understood that the loss of the King was especially terrible for her mother and sister to bear. She had a job as well as her young family for Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret 'the bottom has really dropped out of their world'.133 Queen Elizabeth was utterly calm too calm, felt some of those around her. She began to reply to many of the thousands of letters which were sent to her. She wrote almost at once to thank Edward Seago and Delia Peel for helping to make the day before the King died such a happy one. To Tommy Lascelles, she wrote: I do want to try & tell you something of the deep grat.i.tude I feel for all your loving and wonderful service to the King through perhaps the most difficult years any sovereign has pa.s.sed through. Your advice & support were greatly cherished by the King he respected your judgement completely, & how often I have heard him say, 'I must discuss this with Tommy' ... I, who loved him most dearly, want to thank you with all my heart for all you have done to help him. I am glad beyond words that you will be at the side of our daughter.
I am, Yours sincerely, Elizabeth R.
PS The King was very fond of you.134 Lascelles was much moved, and thanked her, saying, 'It is an inexpressible comfort to me to know that The King felt I was not letting him down.' Her 'beautiful' letter had 'brought me a peace of mind that I haven't known for a long time; and I am deeply grateful.'135 Until 11 February the King's coffin lay in the church at Sandringham, draped in the Royal Standard and watched over all the time by estate workers. On the morning of the 11th it was conveyed, on the same gun carriage that had borne his father's coffin, to Wolferton station whence it was taken to London. At King's Cross station the young Queen, her grandmother, her mother and her sister were photographed standing in deepest black, heads bowed and darkly veiled as they watched the coffin of the man they had loved so long being taken from the train.
The King's body lay in state for the next four days in Westminster Hall while more than 300,000 people, dressed in their best, sombre and often well-worn clothes, waited quietly in the winter cold, in lines four miles long, to pa.s.s by and pay their respects to the unexpected King whom they had come to love and depend upon. For at least a month millions of people wore black mourning armbands.
On Friday 15 February the King's coffin was taken to Windsor and brought on a gun carriage drawn by officers and ratings of HMS Excellent to St George's Chapel in the Castle, where the funeral was held. Winston Churchill's wreath read simply 'For Valour'.
That evening Queen Elizabeth wrote to Lascelles: 'Today has been the most wonderful & the most agonising day of my life Wonderful because one felt the sincerity of the people's feelings, & agonising because gradually one becomes less numb, & the awfulness of everything becomes real.'136 * The former Lord Cranborne had become the fifth marquess of Salisbury on the death of his father in 1947.
Berlin was not uncritical of Queen Elizabeth. In 1959 he described to a friend a dinner at which he, Queen Elizabeth and Maria Callas were among the guests. 'They were like two prima donnas, one emitting white and [the] other black magic. Each tried to engage the attention of the table, Miss Callas crudely and violently, the Queen Mother with infinite gracefulness and charm of a slightly watery and impersonal kind ... I sat between the Q.M. and Lady Rosebery and enjoyed myself ... The Q.M., on the other hand, discussed the subject of courage and ventured the proposition that wholly fearless men are often boring. I pounced on that and produced a list of men distinguished in public life such as General Freyberg and other V.C.s whom we then duly found boring. It was such a conversation as might have occurred in about 1903 with the then still young Princess May [the future Queen Mary]. I enjoyed it in an artificial sort of way and thought the Q.M. not indeed particularly intelligent nor even terribly nice, but a very strong personality much stronger than I thought her and filled with the possibility of unexpected answers ... In short I enjoyed my evening a good deal.' (Isaiah Berlin to Rowland Burdon-Muller, 7 July 1959, Isaiah Berlin, Enlightening: Letters 19461960, ed. Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes, Chatto & Windus, 2009, pp. 6913) * See Vickers's illuminating account of this affair, based largely on the papers of Bruce and Beatrice Blackmar Gould at Princeton University, in Elizabeth The Queen Mother, pp. 27991.
* Edward Seago (191074), self-taught landscape painter and portraitist who spent most of his life in Norfolk.
* In accordance with practice at the British Court, as queen consort Queen Elizabeth was always referred to as 'The Queen', and not as 'Queen Elizabeth'. As the King's widow, however, she was referred to by her name, as Queen Elizabeth, like Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary before her. 'The Queen' now meant only her daughter, the reigning Queen. The same practice has been followed in this book. The widowed Queen Elizabeth was now queen dowager, and because her daughter was on the throne she was also queen mother, a t.i.tle used for centuries among royal families throughout Europe and beyond.
77. The Royal Family on the balcony at Buckingham Palace following the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, 2 June 1953.
78. Manning a stall at the Abergeldie Bazaar, August 1955.
79. Queen Elizabeth with her corgi Honey at the Castle of Mey, October 1955.
80. On tour in Rhodesia with Princess Margaret, June 1953.
81. Arriving at the Vatican with Princess Margaret for a papal audience, 22 April 1959.
82. With Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones, after the announcement of their engagement in February 1960.
83. Queen Elizabeth patting her horse, Devon Loch, for good luck before the Mildmay Memorial Cup at Sandown Races in January 1956.
84. With the jockey d.i.c.k Francis at Windsor Races in January 1969.
85. Backstage at the Royal Ballet with Margot Fonteyn, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon.
86. Progressing through the Melbourne suburbs, Australia 1958.
87. The Queen Mother in Rotorua, New Zealand, talking to Maori women after a performance of their Poi dance, May 1966.
88. On tour in Canada in 1967.
89. With the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent at the needlecraft stall at Sandringham Women's Inst.i.tute Flower Show, 1978.
90. Celebrating St Patrick's Day with the Irish Guards at Windsor Barracks, 17 March 1980.
91. A birthday lunch in the gardens of Clarence House, 1984. Left to right: Lt. Col. Sir John Miller (Crown Equerry), Ruth, Lady Fermoy (lady in waiting), the Prince of Wales, Queen Elizabeth, Lord Maclean (Lord Chamberlain).
92. With the chefs of the Hotel de la Reserve in Albi, May 1989.
93. A farewell lunch at the Chateau de Saran with the Comte de Chandon, after touring the cellars at Moet & Chandon while on holiday in France in 1983.
94. Queen Elizabeth at the pageant to celebrate her hundredth birthday.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
QUEEN MOTHER.
19521955 'Perhaps they would like me to retire decently to Kew'
QUEEN ELIZABETH'S sense of loss was beyond description. She and the King had lived so much as one, their love had been so deep, that the sudden separation was a physical as well as a spiritual shock. Grief engulfed her.
She had given the Duke of York what he had always longed for, a happy family life. As his wife, she had dedicated herself to him. She had enabled him to transform himself from an unconfident young man into an active and effective working member of the Royal Family. She had given him confidence and social grace. She had helped him control his temper and his debilitating stammer. After the horror of the abdication she above all had given him the courage to carry the unwanted burden of kingship. In the war she had been his equal partner in sustaining the people of Britain throughout the six long years of suffering. Afterwards she had supported and calmed him through the difficult, austere years of social change. And then she had devoted herself to his care in his extended series of illnesses. The King always talked of his family as 'We Four'. But, within 'We Four', 'We Two' were the closest of all.
Those nearest to Queen Elizabeth saw more clearly than the world at large that it was a relationship of mutual dependence. It has become a commonplace to say that, without her, the King could never have become 'the great and gallant King he proved to be', as a friend in later life observed. 'But perhaps what is not so widely known is the fact of her great reliance on him, on his wisdom, his integrity, his courage ... How deeply she must have missed him and what courage it took for her to continue, alone, the work they had done so magnificently together.'1 From a charming, vivacious, aristocratic but unsophisticated girl, she became a much loved queen. It was as 'the King and the Queen' that they had become the symbols of British defiance and victory during the war. Now she was alone.
The shock was perhaps the greater because the past two generations of her own family had enjoyed and celebrated long marriages. When she was three years old her grandparents had celebrated their Golden Wedding, and in 1931 she had helped her own parents do the same. Instead of being able to repeat this pattern, after only twenty-eight years of marriage, the husband who adored her had died at the age of fifty-six.
Throughout the early weeks of her bereavement she was comforted by the letters of love and sympathy that poured in from friends, relations and strangers. Churchill was eloquent as always: 'All feel how Yr Majesty's devotion & love made it possible for him to reach the pinnacle on wh. he stood at his death. There must be some comfort in this. But then there is the future. Boundless hopes are centred in yr daughter's gleaming personality & reign; and these will find enduring expression in the place Yr Majesty will hold in all our thoughts as long as we live.'2 His wife Clementine was scarcely less moved, saying that she wrote 'to express our love and grat.i.tude to you Madam for all you both have given us all the years of your Marriage. You have shewn us what family life can be, not merely a domestic state, but a warm glowing existence full of interest and variety.'3 She was right; their obvious celebration of family life was one of the qualities which had most endeared the King and Queen to the people of Britain.
Tributes came from America, too. General Eisenhower sent a three-page letter, expressing admiration for the King and devotion to Queen Elizabeth.4 Eleanor Roosevelt wrote with understanding: 'There is nothing one can say to lighten the burden of your sorrow. Later you may be able to think with happiness of the life of service you & the King lived together & then you may be glad to feel how many, many of us appreciated the King's great qualities & were grateful for what you both meant to the world, as well as to your own people. May G.o.d give you faith & strength & consolation.'5 When the Duke of Windsor heard the news of his brother's death he immediately sailed from New York, where he was staying, to attend the funeral. His d.u.c.h.ess remained behind and advised him less than delicately, 'Now that the door has opened a crack try and get your foot in, in the hope of making it open even wider in the future because that is the best hope for WE [Wallis and Edward] ... Do not mention or ask for anything regarding recognition of me.'6 She urged him to see Queen Elizabeth and try to explain what he had felt at the time of the abdication. 'After all there are two sides to every story.'7 Queen Mary added her own grieving voice on the Duke's behalf. She wrote to Queen Elizabeth to 'beg & beseech of you & the girls to see him & to bury the hatchet after 15 whole years ... I gather D. is awfully upset as in old days the 2 brothers were devoted to each other before that dreadful rift came. I feel grieved to have to add this extra burden on you 3 just at this moment but what can I do & I feel that you are so kind hearted that you will help me over what is to me a most worrying moment in the midst of the misery & suffering we are going through just now.'8 Queen Elizabeth was not enthusiastic but, together with her daughters and Prince Philip, she did see the Duke, who came to tea at Buckingham Palace on 13 February, the day of his arrival. 'So that feud is over I hope, a great relief to me,' Queen Mary wrote to the Athlones.9 That was perhaps over-optimistic. But, before he left, the Duke wrote to Queen Elizabeth asking to see her again, this time alone. 'I can well understand your not wanting to be bothered by people at this terribly sad moment in your life. But I would very much like to have a talk with you alone before I return to America ... I feel for you so very deeply and would like to say so in person.'10 She reluctantly agreed, and he called on her at Buckingham Palace on 27 February.11 The Duke himself made notes of his meetings with his estranged family. 'Mama as hard as nails but failing,' he wrote. 'When Queens fail they make less sense than others in the same state. Cookie [the Windsors' unflattering nickname for Queen Elizabeth] listened without comment and closed on the note that it was nice to be able to talk about Bertie with somebody who had known him so well.' Writing to his wife, he said, 'Cookie was as sugar as I've told you,' and went on to write in bitter and insulting terms of his family's coldness to him, describing his mother and sister-in-law bitterly as 'ice-veined b.i.t.c.hes'.12 Notwithstanding such private thoughts, a few weeks later, in May, he sent Queen Elizabeth another apparently affectionate letter asking to see her on his next visit to London.13 She agreed and invited him to tea on 27 May, as she did once again in November that year.
Despite the depth of her grief, in outward matters Queen Elizabeth showed fort.i.tude. Less than a fortnight after the death of the King, she announced that in future she wished to be known as 'Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother', although privately she disliked the t.i.tle 'horrible name', as she described it.14 With the help of Tommy Lascelles, she drafted an eloquent, personal message to the nation. The left-leaning News Chronicle called it 'a statement without parallel in the history of kingship'.
I want to send this message of thanks to a great mult.i.tude of people to you who, from all parts of the world, have been giving me your sympathy and affection throughout these dark days. I want you to know how your concern for me has upheld me in my sorrow, and how proud you have made me by your wonderful tributes to my dear husband, a great and n.o.ble King.
No man had a deeper sense than he of duty and of service, and no man was more full of compa.s.sion for his fellow men. He loved you all, every one of you, most truly. That, you know, was what he always tried to tell you in his yearly message at Christmas; that was the pledge that he took at the sacred moment of his Coronation fifteen years ago.
Now I am left alone, to do what I can to honour that pledge without him. Throughout our married life we have tried, the King and I, to fulfil with all our hearts and all our strength the great task of service that was laid upon us. My only wish now is that I may be allowed to continue the work we sought to do together.
I commend to you our dear Daughter: give her your loyalty and devotion: though blessed in her husband and children she will need your protection and your love in the great and lonely station to which she has been called. G.o.d bless you all: and may He in His wisdom guide us safely to our true destiny of Peace and Good Will.15 *
HEREDITARY MONARCHY can be both efficient and unkind, as the old phrase 'The King is dead, long live the King', suggests. The real national sorrow at the death of King George VI was immediately followed by happiness at the prospect of the young Queen coming to the throne. The torch had been pa.s.sed to a new generation.
But this meant that the Queen Mother was now, in effect, the ancien regime. She suddenly found that she was no longer the mistress of any home. Buckingham Palace was a tied cottage as well as a tied office for the monarch, and the Queen and Prince Philip would need to move from Clarence House into the Palace where the King and Queen had lived since 1937. The Queen Mother would have to find another house in London and she could no longer consider Windsor Castle, Balmoral or Sandringham home.
The prospect of leaving the Palace distressed her. On at least one occasion she collapsed in tears on discussing her inevitable move with the Queen and immediately wrote to apologize. She suggested to the Queen that she and Prince Philip should move into the Belgian Suite on the ground floor of the Palace these were the rooms which the King and Queen had occupied during the war. That would give her time to move out of her own rooms on the first floor 'without any ghastly hurry, and I could be quite self contained upstairs, meals etc, and you would hardly know I was there ... It is so angelic of you both to tell me I can stay on for a bit at B.P., and I am most grateful for your thoughtfulness. I know that it took Granny some months to pack up everything, & I fear that I shall need some time too. But what is a few months in a lifetime anyway! Thank you darling for being such an angelic daughter.'16 Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary continued to sustain each other and, in Queen Mary's eloquent words, they talked together 'of much that was in our poor tattered hearts'.17 Queen Elizabeth's doctor, Sir John Weir, sent her some homeopathic powders that he thought might relieve her suffering.18 Edward Woods, the Bishop of Lichfield, wrote to say, 'I always knew that Your Majesty's faith & encouragement would never fail in this supreme test; I have no doubt, Ma'am, that you yourself are the main human source of strength & comfort to the dear Princess Margaret & the others of the Family circle.' He sent her a book, Why Do Men Suffer? by Leslie D. Weatherhead, and tried to console her with the thought that 'suffering ("accepted" at G.o.d's hands) is really a form of action.'19 She was concerned that she would now have nothing to do. At the age of only fifty-one, much younger than Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary when their husbands died, she did not feel ready for the relatively retired life they had led in widowhood. Although both had continued to carry out public engagements and to support their favourite charities, neither had sought any const.i.tutional role.
Queen Elizabeth, however, was anxious at least to be able to act as a Counsellor of State when the Queen was away, as she had during the King's reign. She told Lascelles, 'Naturally I would like this, as it would give me an interest, & having been one, it seems so dull to be relegated to the "no earthly use" cla.s.s.'20 But, under the existing legislation, after the death of her husband she was no longer eligible to serve in this capacity.* Lascelles thought that it would be both right and popular to change the law in the Queen Mother's favour and, with the agreement of the Queen, he immediately wrote to the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor to ask if it could be done.21 It could, and in April the Queen approved a submission from the Prime Minister proposing to amend the Regency Act to include the Queen Mother's name following that of the Duke of Edinburgh and before the other Counsellors.22 It was a slow process, and the new Regency Act did not pa.s.s into law until November 1953. It contained another new departure: the Duke of Edinburgh was designated regent in case Prince Charles should succeed before the age of eighteen, instead of Princess Margaret, who under the 1937 Act would have become regent.
The position of the Duke of Edinburgh was a matter about which the Queen Mother showed concern she asked that he be able to play a part in the Coronation. Lascelles suggested that the Prince should be made chairman of the Coronation Commission, and this was done.23 But she found herself in conflict with her son-in-law over the name and style of the dynasty. The Prince's destiny and his day-to-day existence had been changed ma.s.sively by the accession of his wife. Her premature transformation from heir to reigning monarch made his life in every way more difficult. He had been head of his young family. Now his wife was taken over by the venerable Court of her father. The Private Secretary, the Lord Chamberlain, the Keeper of the Privy Purse and Treasurer, the Master of the Horse, the Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures all of these and many more wanted to serve their new monarch and wanted her to see them do so. They wanted access to the Queen, not to her husband.
Prince Philip saw himself as a man first and a prince second, and as such he wanted recognition as head of his family. He thought that, in accordance with the normal practice, his children should take their father's name. He had taken the family name, Mountbatten, when he became a naturalized British subject but he now proposed Edinburgh as an alternative. However, behind suggestions of any name change, some members of the Cabinet suspected the hand of Earl Mountbatten, who was reported to have said that since 7 February a Mountbatten had sat upon the throne. Queen Mary was dismayed she believed that her husband had founded the house of Windsor for all time, and she was not prepared to see the name changed to Battenberg or Mountbatten.24 The Queen Mother seems to have agreed Harold Macmillan, then the Conservative Minister for Housing, commented in his diary that she 'of course favours the name of Windsor and all the emphasis on the truly British and native character of the Royal Family. It is also clear that the Duke has the normal att.i.tude of many men towards a mother-in-law of strong character, accentuated by the peculiar circ.u.mstances of his position.'25 The Cabinet took the same view as the two dowager Queens and insisted to the new young Queen that her family must still be known as Windsor. It was not easy for Prince Philip. In the end, largely due to d.i.c.kie Mountbatten's insistence, a compromise was agreed the name Mountbatten-Windsor was adopted, to be used in future for those of the Queen's descendants who were not ent.i.tled to be called Royal Highness. The name of the royal house remained Windsor.
The Queen Mother had to contemplate changing not only her residence but also her Household; as was customary, everyone formally resigned at the end of the reign. But she was anxious to keep many of the same people around her. She invited Lord Airlie to remain as her Lord Chamberlain he accepted, ready to serve at her pleasure, but reminded her, 'Your Majesty will not forget the telegram "Be Off" when Your Majesty has had enough of me.'26 Similarly, she wrote to her Treasurer Arthur Penn, 'Please do continue, & I expect that there will be less to do in the future, or do you think that there will be much more, with less money & more to spend it on! I fully expect to be bankrupt, & would very much like to have you at my side when that happens!'27 There would indeed be much more for her to do, and money would always be a problem. On her widowhood, her Civil List allowance, for her official duties, was fixed at 70,000 a year; it remained at this level for the next twenty years.
Shock can dull grief and when the shock of the King's death began to wear off, the Queen Mother felt increasingly wretched. To her brother David she wrote that she could not envisage life without the King 'he was so much, & such a big part of one's own life, & things can never be the same again without his energy, & fun & goodness & kindness. He really was the kindest and most selfless person I have ever known ... At the moment one simply cannot take any interest in anything.'28 Everything was painful; some of her letters echoed the sensibility which had led her to observe in 1944 that young soldiers contemplating the horrors of war found the beauty of the countryside hard to bear. To Lascelles she wrote that a beautiful day 'is almost unbearable, & seems to make everything a thousand times worse. I suppose it will get better some day.'29 She appreciated the rallying of friends. Thanking Bobbety Salisbury for his comforting letter, she wrote, tho' sorrow is such an immensely personal thing that it is with one all the time, yet the feeling that other people understand what one is going through does give one courage.
The King was so wonderfully better, and for that I am very grateful, because he was so gay & so full of plans for the future, and I am quite sure did not contemplate death coming so soon.
I had so hoped that he might have had a few years when he could have eased up a little, & done some of the things he loved doing, such as planning gardens & vistas, & changing all the pictures round, and had perhaps some less violent & uneasy years in contrast to the last rather terrible twelve. But it was not to be.
At the moment everything seems very pointless, but I am sure that one must not be too sorry for oneself it's like looking in the gla.s.s when one is weeping, it makes everything much worse!30 Her friends did all they could. Doris Vyner was as important as any and the Queen continued to slip around to her flat secretly, as she had in the last months of the King's illness, just to be alone with kindness and companionship she had known almost all her life. Doris understood how desperately she had needed the King and she commented that without him her 'mainspring' had gone. Indeed Doris pointed out to mutual friends whom she trusted that although everyone thought that the Queen had energized the King and kept him up to his work, in fact the opposite was true. The initiatives almost all came from the King he had had to make the decisions. Now she was quite lost without him.31 D'Arcy Osborne understood some of this. He wrote to her from Rome late one night and said he would not read his letter through in case he then threw it away as he had already done other such letters to her. He wished he could help her in all the painful adjustments she was facing.32 Betty Bowes Lyon, the wife of her brother Mike, told her that she had a very rare gift with people, like the gift of healing, 'and You MUST GO ON using it.'33 Understandably, she became more dependent upon her own family, in particular her brother David, who helped to put her life and finances into order and perspective. She told him, 'now that Bertie has gone, you are the only person to whom I can turn ... Thank you again darling for all your angelicness, Your very loving, Elizabeth.'34 She rarely let her grief show, and her ladies in waiting saw little of her anguish. Katie Seymour, who had known her since they were both in their teens, wrote: 'She varies from day to day, never shows anything but supreme self control.'35 If she did break down, she was embarra.s.sed. In April she wrote to Delia Peel to apologize for being 'so silly' and for being unable to tell her to her face how much she valued her help.36 She did express herself quite openly to Osbert Sitwell, saying that she felt it so hard to realize that the King had gone. 'He was so young to die, and was becoming so wise in his Kingship. He was so kind too and had a sort of natural n.o.bility of thought and life, which sometimes made me ashamed of my narrower & more feminine point of view.'37 One letter in particular nourished her. It was from Lord Davidson, who sent her his account of how he had encouraged the nervous Duke of York to pursue his quest for her in 1922. Davidson wrote, with great charm, that he had kept the story in the secret recesses of his memory and was only now releasing it 'because in Your Majesty's terrible loneliness I believe that it may bring one tiny grain of comfort'.38 She thanked him warmly: 'As you told me your story so well, & so delicately, I must tell you that we were ideally happy, due to the King's wonderful kindness & goodness and thought for others. I never wanted to be with anyone but him.'39 Her mood changed all the time, as might well have been expected. To Arthur Penn she wrote, 'It is difficult to make any real plans as yet.'40 She confided to Lady Salisbury that sorrow was devastating. 'I find everything a perpetual battle & struggle. But, as you know, the King never gave in, and I am determined to try & do what he would have wished.'41 She wrote in similar vein to Cecil Boyd-Rochfort, the royal racehorse trainer.42 At the end of April she went to a dinner with friends. According to Osbert Sitwell, 'a sudden roar' went up at the dining table which he took to be an indication of delight from everyone that the Queen Mother was among them once more.43 She thought that 'the noise was so terrific and the plunge for me so sudden that I felt slightly bewildered'.44 Meanwhile she observed formalities. She received deputations from the Houses of Lords and Commons who presented addresses of condolence; she replied to each address. During the spring she fulfilled other commitments. Her first major official engagement after the death of the King took place on 13 May 1952. It was in fact an initiative of her own. She had always made a point of trying to see her regiments before they were sent off overseas, and when she heard that the 1st Battalion of her beloved Black Watch had been ordered to the war in Korea,* she asked if a visit to the battalion could be arranged for her.45 Despite a bad cold she flew to Scotland to inspect them at Crail Camp in Fife. Dressed in black, she wore the diamond regimental brooch that General Sir Archibald Cameron had presented to her when she became colonel-in-chief in 1937. Five hundred men paraded before her, each wearing a black armband. She praised the regiment 'so dear to my heart and to many of my family'; then she met relatives and Old Comrades, visited the sergeants' mess and lunched with the officers before flying back to London.46 On 23 May she and Princess Margaret had an adventure. Together with Lord and Lady Salisbury, they visited the de Havilland factory near Hatfield and were taken for a four-hour flight in the Comet, the revolutionary jet airliner, over Geneva and Mont Blanc. On board was Sir Miles Thomas, the Chairman of the national airline, the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), who later wrote an account of the flight in his autobiography, Out on a Wing. The Comet flew over Italy and the north of Corsica as well; they reached 500 mph and Queen Elizabeth asked how fast they could go. The pilot suggested she push the control column forward they reached 525 mph, touching the red danger section on the airspeed indicator. The aeroplane began to 'porpoise', showing that it was at the limit of its aerodynamic stability. Comets later proved to have a structural weakness which led to fatal crashes until the fault was put right, and Thomas wrote that he shuddered whenever he remembered this flight.47 Queen Elizabeth, however, was quite unperturbed by the aircraft's erratic movement. 'The Viking will seem a little slow after this,' she said, and sent a radio message to No. 600 Squadron of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force at Biggin Hill, of which she was Honorary Air Commodore. 'I am delighted to tell you that today I took over as first pilot of the Comet aircraft. We exceeded a reading of Mach 0.8 at 40,000 feet. What the pa.s.sengers thought I really would not like to say!'48 In early June 1952 she went north to Scotland, first and rather sadly to Balmoral. Every part of it evoked memories of the King, she told Queen Mary. 'He was always so full of plans & ideas for improving house & garden, & we spent so many happy hours here. Life seems incredibly meaningless without him I miss him every moment of the day.'49 After a week, she flew on up to Wick to stay with Clare and Doris Vyner in Caithness, on the very northern tip of mainland Britain, close to John o'Groats.
Caithness is a barren, surprisingly flat county, sometimes called 'the Lowlands beyond the Highlands'. Windswept and austere, it forms the north-eastern corner of Britain. For much of the Victorian era, fishing for herring 'the silver darlings' provided most of the work and the income of Caithness, and when that fishing declined, so did the population. By the early 1950s Caithness was really the end of Britain, one of the poorest regions of the country, with many unmade roads and very few people.
The Vyners had a home almost as far north as the land stretched, on Dunnet Head, a fist of rock which jabs out into the Pentland Firth just south of the Orkney Islands. Their large white house was romantically named The House of the Northern Gate. It was utterly alone and remote, and the wind used to lift the carpets. It was the first place Queen Elizabeth had been to since February that had no a.s.sociations with the King and she gained relaxation and peace from it.50 To her great surprise, this visit to Caithness offered her a new interest, one which was to provide her enormous pleasure for the rest of her life.
One day she drove with the Vyners east along the little coast road towards John o'Groats. Between the road and the waves, she said much later, they suddenly saw 'this romantic looking castle down by the sea'. They drove down the track towards it and found it was quite empty. 'And then the next day we discovered it was going to be pulled down and I thought this would be a terrible pity. One had seen so much destruction in one's life.'51 The Castle, named Barrogill, had a superb position, right on the sea, overlooking Orkney, but it was in terrible condition. It had been commandeered during the war and used for troop accommodation. No maintenance had been carried out. The roof was in a disastrous state, and a violent storm in spring 1952 had caused serious damage. Now no one wanted it. The Queen Mother was immediately attracted to the Castle, and was determined to preserve it.
The owner, Captain Imbert-Terry, was delighted by her interest. He offered to give the Castle to her for nothing. This she declined, but she accepted his suggestion of a nominal price of 100. She decided to change the name from Barrogill to its more romantic original name, the Castle of Mey. It was the only house that ever belonged to her.
The Vyners were overjoyed that she was to become their neighbour in the wild. Doris Vyner wrote to her: 'You've no idea what a wonderful thing it is for us all this to be able to be of use and to have such an enthralling thing to think about instead of the usual gloomy thoughts.'52 Clare Vyner arranged for the Queen Mother to buy some more land along the coast at a cost of some 300; the grazing would provide an income of about 30 a year and, when a small shoot was developed, it could bring in a rent of about 200 a year. 'It would thus all work in quite economically for you & although not a good shoot would amuse Your Majesty's guests & give food for the table.'53 Doris Vyner went around local antique shops and found old and inexpensive furniture for her to buy one extensive list cost 124. She also arranged for electricity to be brought to the Castle.54 She wrote to Queen Elizabeth, 'I do long for Castle Mey, because I know you'll feel happy in a way there. I'm sure the King would love you to be by the sea looking at that such important part of his life Scapa Flow etc etc, Oh dear you are so brave.'55 For the time being the Queen Mother kept her plan secret. It was not until early August that she told Arthur Penn, her Treasurer, of what she had in mind. She planned to 'escape there occasionally when life became hideous', she told him. 'Do you think me mad?'56 The news of her purchase came out in the newspapers towards the end of August 1952, and she wrote to her friends and family explaining what she had done. Perhaps nervous of the likely reaction of her cautious mother-in-law, in her letter to Queen Mary she played down the task she had taken on. She had been told that the Castle was going to 'crumble away', she wrote, 'and I felt that it was such a wrong thing to happen to an interesting old place'.57 Queen Mary owned that she had been surprised to learn from the press the 'exciting' news that Queen Elizabeth had bought herself an isolated castle. She feared she would not see it 'as my travelling days are over'.58 May Elphinstone wished that Mey were not so far away.59 To the Queen Mother that was part of the attraction she loved being in Caithness because it was Scotland, to which she was devoted, and yet a part of Scotland which had no memories of happier days. She saw the Castle as emblematic of her own life. It gave her and many of her friends and courtiers great joy in the decades to come.
AS THE SUMMER of 1952 progressed, she started to undertake more official engagements. In the first ten days of July she received representatives of the Royal Society of Arts, attended a concert given by the Bar Musical Society at the Middle Temple, paid visits to the Home for Retired Congregational Ministers and their wives in Suss.e.x and to the Royal College of Art, received several amba.s.sadors and their wives, attended a garden party at Lambeth Palace, and made her annual visit to the London Garden Society.
She had been dreading going alone to Sandringham that summer as Queen Mary wrote in a sympathetic letter, being there for the first time alone 'must have been a severe test to your shattered nerves'. She understood what her daughter-in-law was going through: 'all the intimate things one was accustomed to discuss with one's husband & how one misses the talks', and felt deeply sorry for her.60 Doris Vyner was more optimistic she hoped that Queen Elizabeth would feel the King's presence close to her at Sandringham.61 To her surprise and grat.i.tude, that was indeed how Queen Elizabeth felt at Sandringham that summer. She attended the King's Lynn Festival to hear a recital by her friend and future lady in waiting Ruth Fermoy, and visited the Sandringham Flower Show, another hardy perennial of hers through the decades to come. She went to a concert by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, in St Nicholas's Church at Dersingham; Vaughan Williams was in the audience and his Fifth Symphony was performed.
These were friendly, unpretentious local events and she loved them. Edward Seago, who came to stay, and Cynthia Spencer, who was in waiting on her, commented on the peacefulness that surrounded her at Sandringham.62 She was aware of it herself and wrote to Queen Mary, 'I have felt more at peace than any time since February. Being surrounded by people who loved Bertie, has made me feel very close to him.'63 To her daughter, the Queen, she wrote that 'I felt an amazing feeling of relief & peace, which I have not felt since Papa died. It was just as if Sandringham opened its arms to me, & I sank into them thankfully.' Although the house was utterly bound up with the King, 'I love the people & all that happens here, & to be amongst them is a relief & a healing.' She reminded her daughter that, when Queen Mary was widowed, the King had told her that she must still treat Sandringham as her home. 'I would so love it if you would say that to me too.' She would not come often but she would love to know she could come once in a while.64 The Queen replied at once to her mother that she was 'very, very thankful' that the visit had been so happy. 'I had been in a fever in case it would prove too much agony for you.' She said that 'of course' her mother must continue to treat Sandringham as her home and go there whenever she wanted.65 After her birthday, the Queen Mother, as always in August, removed to Scotland. First she stayed with the Vyners, making more plans for Mey, and then she went back to the Highlands and Balmoral. She had to prepare for another daunting change: she was to move out of Balmoral and into Birkhall, where she would live without her family. She was concerned; the house had many memories of happy days at the beginning of her marriage but since then she had come to see Balmoral as her Scottish home and after so many years in the Castle, Birkhall seemed very cramped.66 To her sister May she wrote that it was 'rather awful' being there instead of at Balmoral and that she felt completely lost without her husband.67 Even so, she had some friends to stay, among them D'Arcy Osborne, whom she taught to play canasta.68 She told him afterwards how glad she had been of his presence 'You were one of the very few friends I wanted to see you were so kind & understanding, and I was so very grateful to you. Next year I hope to be more brave.' For the moment she took comfort in her grandchildren, Charles and Anne. 'Charles is a great love of mine,' she said to Osborne. 'He is such a darling & so like his mother when she was a small child.'69 The peace and optimism she had felt at Sandringham did not last through that autumn. 'I suppose that one will never feel the same again. I talk & laugh & listen, but one lives in a dream, & I expect that one's real self dies when one's husband dies, and only a ghost remains.' What upset her, she said, were people who looked at her with a penetrating expression and asked, 'are you feeling BETTER', and those who said ' "but what a wonderful death for the King how that must comfort you". If only they knew!'70 Gradually she came out of herself. Edith Sitwell sent her a copy of her new literary anthology, A Book of Flowers. This turned out to be an inspired gift. Queen Elizabeth wrote to her: I started to read it, sitting by the river, and it was a day when one felt engulfed by great black clouds of unhappiness and misery, and I found a sort of peace stealing round my heart as I read such lovely poems and heavenly words.
I found a hope in George Herbert's poem, 'Who could have thought my shrivel'd heart, could have recovered greennesse. It was gone quite underground.' And I thought how small and selfish is sorrow. But it bangs one about until one is senseless, and I can never thank you enough for giving me such a delicious book wherein I found so much beauty and hope.71 She was still considering how exactly she should continue her official life. The uncertainty was difficult for her ladies in waiting too, as she postponed making any decision about which of them she wished to keep in her new Household. Arthur Penn wrote to Lady Spencer about their anxieties; as a lifelong friend, he understood Queen Elizabeth well. He was both sympathetic to the ladies and frank, if not tart, about a particular failing of their mistress: 'The Queen, bless her heart, has cultivated procrastination to a degree which is really an art when one is vexed, as I fear I often am, one should recall that the Bowes Lyons are the laziest family in the world. Against this reflection it becomes remarkable that she accomplishes so much.'72 Penn believed he understood why Queen Elizabeth had not yet informed her ladies of her intentions. 'I think it possible that this omission may be the reflection of what has been apparent from the first, a st.u.r.dy repudiation of any idea that HM has any intention, because she is widowed, of relinquishing all to which she has become accustomed.'73 She did not give up any of her ladies.
During the autumn of 1952, Queen Elizabeth had a long conversation with Winston Churchill. According to his daughter Mary Soames, Churchill took it upon himself to tell Queen Elizabeth that, despite the death of the King and the accession of the Queen, she still had an enormously important part to play in British public life.
She had met Churchill at dinner with the Salisburys on 1 August, and she wrote afterwards to Betty Salisbury, 'Winston was so angelic about the King he has such tender understanding, & I was so touched & helped.'74 Then she saw him again in Scotland; he was staying at Balmoral for the Prime Minister's annual autumn visit and asked if he could come to see her at Birkhall. Her lady in waiting, Jean Rankin, told him to arrive unannounced, and on 2 October he drove over. 'He was absolutely charming & very interesting,' Queen Elizabeth wrote to Lord Salisbury, 'and I realised suddenly how very much I am now cut off from "inside" information. He is truly a remarkable man, & with great delicacy of feeling too.'75 This may have been the crucial conversation during which he persuaded her that she still had a vital national role. Jean Rankin saw that his visit made a difference to Queen Elizabeth. 'I think he must have said things which made her realise how important it was for her to carry on, how much people wanted her to do things as she had before.'76 Throughout that autumn she began to pick up the pace of her private interests and her official work. The journal of her activities maintained by her ladies in waiting from the 1950s until the end of her life shows how her interests were concentrated: church, army and charities dominated her public life; in private, music, ballet, art and a relatively new interest horses drew her attention, and spilled over into her choice of patronages and engagements. Many of her public duties she now carried out with Princess Margaret at her side. Among the official engagements she undertook in Scotland were a visit to the oil refinery at Grangemouth, and the unveiling of the War Memorial to the Commandos at Spean Bridge. As always, she visited the Lord Roberts' Workshops in Dundee and the Black Watch Memorial Home at Dunalistair. (This became an annual visit until the 1990s.) In mid-October she went back to London but there was little let-up. In the weeks leading up to Christmas her diary was full. There were visits to her regiments, to almshouses, to prize givings, concerts and recitals, the theatre and the ballet, the unveiling of monuments and many official dinners.
She had another important preoccupation: the search for a biographer for the King. It would not be an easy book to write, she thought. 'There can be very few Kings of England whose reigns were so harried and hara.s.sed by troubles & worries & anxieties on such an immense scale,' she wrote to Lascelles.
First the abdication, & all the agony of mind. I doubt if people realise how horrible it all was to the King & me to feel unwanted, & to undertake such a job for such a dreadful reason & it was a terrible experience. Then the War with all its agony, & then 'after the War', which was a dreadful strain upon the King. I suppose that we have been through a revolution and, as usual, people hardly realised what was happening to them. All this crammed into 15 short years it is a dizzy thought.77 Lascelles proposed John Wheeler-Bennett, a distinguished military historian, as official biographer. He wrote vividly and accurately, Lascelles considered, and had a reputation as a trustworthy historian; coincidentally he had also been a pupil of Lionel Logue.78 (He had a stammer induced when a German bomb was dropped on his school during the First World War.) Moreover he had spent much time as a traveller and writer in Germany between the wars and was one of the first British commentators to recognize the evil of n.a.z.ism.79 He was, in fact, well qualified to inspire Queen Elizabeth's confidence, and to give her reason to believe that he would be sympathetic to the challenges faced by the King.
She saw Wheeler-Bennett just before Christmas 1952, liked him, and agreed that he should be given the task. Early in 1953 she promised to send him, through Lascelles, the diaries the King had kept during the war a decision which took much thought, for the King had intended them to be kept closed in the Royal Archives. 'And yet I feel that it is very important for someone like Wheeler B to read this day to day account of these terrible days.'80 Later in the year she invited the author to stay at Birkhall to gather atmosphere and information.81 He gained insights, but at a certain cost. Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart later recorded that Wheeler-Bennett: gave us an amusing account of his visit to Balmoral to see the Queen and to Birkhall to see the Queen Mother. At Balmoral the Queen kept off the book till the last morning when she took Jack for a long eight (?) mile walk. Jack, who was not dressed nor shod for such a walk and was more or less 'beat' when he got back to Balmoral, collected his suitcase and drove over to Birkhall. The Queen Mother promptly took him for an afternoon walk as long as his morning walk with the Queen. When they returned to the house, Jack wilted visibly. The Queen Mother said to him: 'Did my daughter, by any chance, take you for one of her walks this morning?' Jack admitted that she had. 'Then', said the Queen Mother, 'champagne is the only remedy.'82 She continued to talk to him regularly as he worked on the book, and invited him to Sandringham as well as Birkhall. Obviously the abdication was one of the most important and most difficult episodes to cover, and perhaps the one about which the Queen Mother felt most strongly. Indeed, when Helen Hardinge, wife of Alec Hardinge, the King's former Private Secretary, had sent the Queen the ma.n.u.script of her book The Path of Kings in 1951, the only pa.s.sage to which the Queen had objected dealt with the abdication, and was critical of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Windsor. 'I don't like the idea of you writing about this agonising interlude in our history. I am quite certain that you would be wise to say very little on this subject It only does harm, and the effect on people is sometimes so different to what you think it may be ... Please take it out. Your loving friend, ER.'83 Wheeler-Bennett naturally conducted many interviews on the subject of the abdication he spoke to the Duke of Windsor himself, but not to the d.u.c.h.ess and wrote about the crisis at some length. His account was judicious; like almost everyone who studied the subject he came to feel a great deal more sympathy for King George VI than for Edward VIII. His painstaking, lucid biography, published in 1958, demonstrated well the author's regard for his subject; Queen Elizabeth was pleased.
For Christmas 1952 the whole family gathered as usual at Sandringham. Queen Mary was increasingly frail the death of her son the King was a blow from which she could not recover. She spent much of the holiday in her own rooms, only coming down to join the family for tea. The Queen Mother stayed at Sandringham until late January, and she visited areas of the east coast hit by the worst flooding in decades. She was filled with admiration for the courage of homeless people and wrote to the Queen, 'it was terribly like the war all over again, the same defiance, the same "I don't care" & I felt quite shattered & exhausted by memories, & the sad reality of the present tragedy'.84 She returned to Royal Lodge and on the first anniversary of the King's death she took communion, with Princess Margaret, at the Royal Chapel. This service became an annual fixture for the rest of her life.
By this time, Queen Mary was nearing death. To one old friend, Lady Shaftesbury, she said, 'I suppose one must force oneself to go on until the end?' 'I am sure', replied Lady Shaftesbury, 'that Your Majesty will.'85 She did; her duty all ended, Queen Mary died peacefully at Marlborough House on the evening of 24 March 1953. A week later tens of thousands of people stood silent and bareheaded as the coffin of a dignified and admired queen, who seemed to have been always with them, was carried 'slowly and majestically' away. Her biographer commented that 'by undeviating service to her own highest ideals, she had ended by becoming, for millions, an ideal in herself'.86 Her death brought another huge change for her daughter-in-law. She and Queen Mary had enjoyed and suffered much together ever since Queen Mary had warmly welcomed Elizabeth Bowes Lyon into the family in 1923. Not only was an important bond with the past severed but Queen Elizabeth was now the senior member of the Royal Family.
In early April 1953 she travelled north to Fountains Abbey where she dedicated the monument Clare and Doris Vyner had erected to their children Elizabeth and Charles. Writing to Doris afterwards, she praised her friends' composure at what must have been a moment of anguish, and spoke of the solace she had found in being with them. 'Once again I subsided into the delicious feeling of "being with friends". There is nothing like it to heal wounds.'87 The question of a London residence for the Queen Mother had been resolved with the decision that she should move to Clarence House, which was now being prepared for her. Arthur Penn kept her informed of progress and offered advice on the colours of the walls to go with her old curtains, which were to be reused there.88 It was not a house that she liked, however, and, after the death of Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth expressed a wish to move to Marlborough House instead it was much more suitable, and it had a garage and good staff accommodation. Moreover, it probably did not need much spending on it. She was annoyed that Members of Parliament had been commenting on the costs of altering Clarence House for her. She said to Arthur Penn, 'Perhaps they would like me to retire decently to Kew and run a needlework guild?' If there were any more such complaints, she said, 'you must tell them angrily how little has been done and how loathsome it [Clarence House] is.'89 Nonetheless, Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret finally moved into Clarence House in May 1953, a few weeks before the Coronation. The Queen eventually gave Marlborough House to the Commonwealth Secretariat.
Queen Elizabeth had to face another loss at this time. Her brother Mike suddenly and unexpectedly died at the age of fifty-nine. Among her siblings, Mike had been one of the closest to the King. They had shot together and laughed together. He was seen in the family and by his friends as a genial and generous man, possessed of great charm and 'devoid of jealousy'.90 His death on 1 May 1953 meant that Queen Elizabeth had now lost five of her brothers, all in youth or middle age.*
THE DATE OF the Coronation was fixed for Tuesday 2 June 1953. Churchill had been against having it in 1952 because he felt that the country's economic crisis was so serious that not a single working day should be lost. 'Can't have coronations with bailiffs in the house,' he said.91 The Queen overcame her reluctance to have the whole event televised. Thus, for the first time a coronation would be taken to the entire nation, not just confined within the sight of its leaders. People scrambled to buy the new-fangled sets and gave the nascent television industry a huge boost. Excitement gathered as winter gave way to spring 1953. Houses were painted red, white and blue. Street parties and many other forms of celebration were planned. Some called it hysteria but, rather, it was a sense of vindication; the people's reward to themselves for the immense sacrifice and effort of the war.
The Queen Mother was understandably concerned about what she would wear. Before her death, Queen Mary had offered to lend her her own Coronation robe, an offer which Queen Elizabeth had accepted with grat.i.tude; it would save the difficult task of altering the robe made for her own Coronation in 1937.92 Norman Hartnell made her dress and, in his memoirs, wrote about the difficulty of perfecting the hang of the heavily embroidered skirt 'bordered with golden tissue and with jewelled feather embroideries'. It had to be mounted 'on an underskirt of ivory taffeta laced with bands of horsehair and further strengthened with countless strands of whalebone'.93 With it the Queen Mother wore a triple diamond necklace, large drop-diamond earrings and a diamond waterfall stomacher, together with the Riband of the Garter and the Family Orders of her husband and daughter.
On the morning of 2 June, she was wildly cheered by the crowds standing in the rain as she drove in a gla.s.s coach to Westminster Abbey. One journalist, Anne Edwards, described her progress through the Abbey as William Walton's...o...b..and Sceptre thundered from the organ: 'On she came up the aisle with a bow here to Prince Bernhard, a bow there to the row of amba.s.sadors, and up those tricky steps with no looking down like the Duke of Gloucester, no half turn to check her train like the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent, no hesitation at the top like Princess Margaret, no nervous nods of her head like Princess Mary. She is the only woman I know who can slow up naturally when she sees a camera.'94 The Coronation brought her a mix of emotions. There was sadness but also pride that she and the King had managed to take an inst.i.tution in crisis and restore it to its place at the centre of popular imagination and esteem. The emotional power of the monarchy that Queen Elizabeth II now inherited had been revived by the extraordinary diligence and dedication of her father and mother. For the service, Queen Elizabeth sat in the front row of the Royal Gallery with the four-and-a-half-year-old Prince Charles. A photograph shows her standing behind the Prince, looking thoughtful as her daughter made the same vows as she and the King had made only sixteen years before.
At Buckingham Palace after the Coronation there was merriment bordering on chaos. Cecil Beaton found it hard to corral all his subjects together for the group photographs. He described the Queen Mother as 'dimpled and chuckling, with eyes as bright as any of her jewels' and 'in rollicking spirits'. She asked him if he needed more time. 'Suddenly I felt as if all my anxieties and fears were dispelled ... The great mother figure and nannie to us all, through the warmth of her sympathy bathes us and wraps us up in a counterpane by the fireside.' She gathered her over-excited grandchildren in her arms and Beaton saw 'a terrific picture' as she bent to kiss Prince Charles's hair. 'Suddenly I had this wonderful accomplice someone who would help me through everything.'95 *
IMMEDIATELY AFTER the Coronation the first family crisis of the new reign broke into the open. It was a drama played out painfully in public, an augury of what was to come over the decades ahead as the Royal Family had to adjust to a more populist and intrusive age. Princess Margaret had fallen in love with Peter Townsend, a married member of the Royal Household sixteen years her senior.
Wing Commander Townsend had a heroic record as a Royal Air Force pilot; he was good looking and charming, if a trifle self-regarding. He had married during the war and had two young sons, but the marriage was not happy.96 He had joined the Royal Household in 1944 and, as we have seen, quickly became a family favourite. Queen Elizabeth had described him to D'Arcy Osborne as 'a very nice, ultra sensitive ex-flying man, who was in the Battle of Britain, & nearly flew himself into a nervous decline'.97 He had travelled with the family on the South African trip in 1947, when he had helped soothe the tired and troubled King,98 and in 1948 when Princess Margaret was just eighteen he accompanied her to Amsterdam to attend the installation of Princess Juliana as queen of the Netherlands. At a dance afterwards the Princess danced with him and one report had it that she was utterly radiant.99 Townsend himself commented, in an internal Palace report, that the dance was stuffy, overcrowded and far from enjoyable.100 Princess Margaret was bright, beautiful, mercurial and wilful. On her fifth birthday, Kenneth Rose has recorded, she captivated the playwright J. M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, a guest at Glamis. 'Is that really your very own?' he asked of a present by her plate. She replied, 'It is yours and mine,' a delightful response which Barrie put into his next play, The Boy David.101 As the younger child, she was spoiled by her parents indeed it seems that within the family only Queen Mary was not captivated by her naughty winsomeness.102 It would not be surprising if she had felt compet.i.tive with her elder sister, recognizing that so much more was both given to and required of her. Sharp witted, she always regretted that she had not had a fuller education she blamed her mother for the fact that she had not even had the tutorials in history that Princess Elizabeth was given.
Nonetheless, after the war she became an attractive a.s.set to the causes she chose to represent, and at home she savoured the role of joker and entertainer. She was, as her mother told D'Arcy Osborne, 'a great delight to us both. She is funny, & makes us laugh (en famille!), and also loves people & seeing & doing things I do hope that she will be useful.'103 After her elder sister's marriage to Prince Philip, she became an object of press obsession in respect of her alleged romantic life. The press in those days was mild by comparison with what it became, but its attentions seemed constant and were often unwelcome.
Princess Margaret visited Paris in November 1951 and afterwards Duff Cooper, the British Amba.s.sador, wrote to the Queen to say how much he and his wife Diana had enjoyed entertaining her; 'by her charm, her wit and her beauty she made it a wonderful evening for everybody.' He also congratulated the Queen on the work of Princess Elizabeth. 'There are moments when I feel a little pessimistic about the future. It is a symptom, I suppose, of old age. But when I reflect upon the good fortune of our Empire in the possession of two such wonderful Princesses my heart is filled with pride, confidence and grat.i.tude.'104 The Queen was thrilled by such praise of her daughters. 'One's love for one's children is one of the real & enduring things of life, and your letter gave me a moment of great pleasure & I thank you with all my heart.'105 Peter Townsend himself wrote later of the Princess: She was a girl of unusual, intense beauty, confined as it was in her short, slender figure and centred about large purple-blue eyes, generous, sensitive lips and a complexion as smooth as a peach. She was capable, in her face and in her whole being, of an astonishing power of expression. It could change in an instant from saintly, almost melancholic, composure, to hilarious, uncontrollable joy. She was by nature generous, volatile. She was a comedienne at heart, playing the piano with ease and verve, singing in her rich, supple voice the latest hits, imitating the famous stars. She was coquettish, sophisticated. But what ultimately made Princess Margaret so attractive and lovable was that behind the dazzling facade, the apparent self-a.s.surance, you could find, if you looked for it, a rare softness and sincerity.106 She had many admirers, but it was with Townsend that she fell in love. Her family may not have known, but she became closer and closer to him, all the more so after the death of the King. Indeed, the loss of her father created a chasm in Princess Margaret's