The Queen Mother Part 2
Awake! oh you young men of England,
For if, when your Country's in need,
You do not enlist by the thousand,
You truly are cowards indeed.
Chauvinism was not peculiar to Britain. One of the new forces in the first two decades of Elizabeth's life was the growth in the power of nationalism throughout Europe. Since the Crimean War separatist battles against Ottoman rule had created Serbia, Greece and Romania. By the end of the nineteenth century the new countries of Montenegro and Bulgaria had emerged, and the Balkans remained a place of violent change. There had been wars in 1912 and 1913 as the new states fought over the spoils of the decaying Ottoman Empire. Britain's nationalist problem was lesser, but still real in Ireland. Indeed, in the view of some historians, the danger of civil war in Ireland was avoided only by the outbreak of war on a larger scale.
At the turn of the century European states might have congratulated themselves that they had avoided war between the major powers since 1870, when Germany had defeated France and seized Alsace and Lorraine. But Germany and Italy were both newly united powers, and their leaders encouraged nationalist enthusiasms. Meanwhile the two great European empires of Russia and Austria-Hungary faced ma.s.sive internal problems of their own. Austria-Hungary seemed stretched almost beyond endurance and here too the demands of industrialization were creating new tensions. In Russia, economic progress coincided with a political revolution after the introduction in 1905 of a parliament, the Duma, albeit with very limited powers. Russia remained dependent on her foreign suppliers, in particular her closest ally, France. The French, after the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, knew that they must have allies against any further threat from the German army.
Since 1870 the balance of power had preserved peace in Europe but through the early years of the twentieth century the likelihood of war increased. Austria-Hungary was prepared to resort to local wars to eliminate threats to her position from nationalism in the Balkans, while Germany was willing to risk war even a European war to extend her own imperial reach. Europe began to divide into two camps, and Germany used commercial and colonial issues to exacerbate tensions with France. The German General Staff made plans to fight a two-front war first to inflict a quick defeat on France and then to deal with her slower-moving ally, Russia.
In Britain, patriotism was allied to a sense of pride both in the achievements of empire and in the supremacy of the British navy. The continued expansion of German ambitions convinced the British that they would have to involve themselves more directly in the continental balance of power unless they wished to see Germany dominate all of Europe. When Germany began to develop her navy, this could only be seen as a threat to British domination of the seas. By 1911 the race for naval superiority had led to a marked increase in tensions between the two powers. Britain's Liberal government reluctantly allied the country to France.
In the event the catalyst came not in the North Sea but in the southern Slav lands. On 28 June 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and his wife were a.s.sa.s.sinated by a Bosnian Serb at Sarajevo, in Bosnia Herzegovina, which was under Austrian rule. The Austrians, with German support, blamed Serbia and declared war on her; a week later the mesh of alliances across Europe had begun to drag the rest of the continent into war.
Few people immediately understood the implications of the Archduke's a.s.sa.s.sination. It was three weeks before The Times considered its consequences on its main page.2 Until then, summer sunshine, holidays, pageantry were greater preoccupations. But power was also on display. On 17 and 18 July King George V made an 'informal' visit to the Royal Navy and reviewed the fleet at Spithead. He saw before him forty miles of ships 260 vessels in all, including twenty-four of the new Dreadnought battleships which resembled, in Winston Churchill's words, 'scores of gigantic castles of steel, wending their way across the sea like giants bowed in anxious thought'.3 Even while the King was inspecting his kingdom's apparently impregnable defences, the war machinery of Europe was engaging gear. Austria's declaration of war on Serbia aroused Serbia's ally Russia; Austria in turn called upon Germany. Russia appealed for French support and Germany was thus given the rationale for the first phase of her battle plan a quick a.s.sault upon France through Belgium to destroy the threat from the west before she dealt with the ma.s.sive Slav menace from the east. The princ.i.p.al uncertainty was whether the British would actually fulfil their recent a.s.surances to come to the a.s.sistance of their new friend and traditional enemy across the Channel.
London hesitated. It seemed to some that if Britain refused to be drawn in, a war would have disastrous consequences but it just might remain limited. On the other hand, if Britain entered, the chances of a widespread conflagration were much greater. Moreover the British government had serious domestic concerns. That spring, Britain had been closer to civil war than at any time in the previous hundred years because of the demand for Home Rule in Catholic Ireland and the absolute refusal of the Protestant north to be governed by the Catholic south. The crisis had split the British army and had divided the parties in Parliament more bitterly than any issue in living memory.
On 28 July the British fleet moved to face Germany in the North Sea. The next day the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, rejected a German request for a guarantee of British neutrality, Russia ordered partial mobilization, Belgrade was sh.e.l.led. On 1 August France, Germany and Belgium mobilized; Germany declared war on Russia, demanded unlimited pa.s.sage through Belgium and sent her troops into Russia and Luxembourg. Next day her troops were in France as well. And on 3 August France and Germany declared war on one another.
Huge patriotic crowds appeared outside Buckingham Palace. That evening King George V and Queen Mary had to show themselves on the balcony three times, to tremendous cheering. In his diary the King recorded that public opinion agreed that the German fleet should not be allowed into the English Channel to attack France, nor German troops permitted to march through Belgium. 'Everyone is for war & our helping our friends,' he wrote.4 The German war plan demanded the overthrow of France within forty days. Berlin launched thirty-four infantry and five cavalry divisions westwards. The Belgians resisted bravely and managed to check the overwhelming German advance, but only for a time. Within a fortnight the fighting had displayed the terrible destructive force of modern industrial weapons, ma.s.sed machine guns and gigantic artillery pieces.
In London Field Marshal Lord Kitchener of Khartoum was appointed secretary of state for war on 5 August; he alarmed some of his colleagues in the War Cabinet when, contrary to the conventional wisdom, he warned that the war could be a long one. He insisted on keeping two divisions in Britain, against the threat of invasion.5 On 7 August Kitchener called for 100,000 volunteers. The response was instant. The Times reported, 'The crowd of applicants was so large and so persistent that mounted police were necessary to hold them in check, and the gates were only opened to admit six at a time.' Some 2,500 men a day were volunteering and in London a hundred men were sworn in every hour.6 When reports came back of Austrian atrocities in Serbia and of German atrocities in Belgium and France, opinion hardened.
The enthusiasm and eagerness to get to the Front were widely shared. One young aristocrat was 'afraid of missing anything before the war was over'. Lord Tennyson, grandson of the poet, dressed and packed in feverish haste to get there on time.7 Many of those who were stationed around the Empire with their regiments felt they were missing the most important moment in their country's and their own life. Families with landed estates sent their sons off to war and did everything they could to help their staff and their tenants do the same. Many landowners kept jobs open for men who volunteered, and allowed families to live rent free until their menfolk returned.
FOR ELIZABETH'S four surviving elder brothers Patrick, Jock, Fergus and Michael there was simply no alternative. Patrick was already in the Scots Guards, Jock and Fergus were in the Black Watch and Michael, who had just completed his first year reading agriculture at Magdalen College, Oxford, volunteered for the Royal Scots at once. He wrote to his mother, 'It's rather funny thinking of me as a soldier, I don't quite feel one yet and I'm afraid I'll never look the soldier Fergie looks.'8 Wars even those expected to be short add a sense of urgency. Marriages took place quickly all over the country. On 9 September Fergus wrote to his mother that he and his fiancee Lady Christian Dawson-Damer* had decided to get married the following week.9 Almost immediately afterwards there was a second family wedding Jock married Fenella Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis. Both bridegrooms then went off to join their regiments.
Elizabeth later recalled the thrill of those first days of antic.i.p.ation and upheaval. Schoolroom routine collapsed and she remembered 'the bustle of hurried visits to chemists for outfits of every sort of medicine and to gunsmiths to buy all the things that people thought they wanted for a war and then found they didn't'.10 A week after her birthday and the declaration of war, she travelled up to Scotland as the family did every year in early August, to prepare for the Glorious Twelfth and the opening of the grouse season. This year was different. Gone were the convivial gatherings of the house party, the candlelit dinners, the songs around the piano, the hearty breakfasts, the a.s.sembly for shooting every day, the fierce but friendly cricket matches.
Like many great country homes, Glamis was at once converted for hospital use, receiving wounded or sick soldiers sent to convalesce after treatment at Dundee Infirmary. The great table was taken out of the dining room and beds were moved in. A nurse, Helen Anderson, was appointed to supervise medical care. Casualties were dispatched from Southampton to Dundee by train a thirteen-hour journey often wrapped only in blankets, their uniform cut away around their wounds.11 Many of the men had never seen such a place as Glamis, and they gazed at the great castle and grounds in astonishment. They were shown around and each given a white bed along the panelled walls of the dining room, as well as a nightshirt and a set of warm clothes.12 The billiard room became a collecting depot for winter clothing for soldiers and the billiard table was stacked with thick shirts and socks, m.u.f.flers, belts and sheepskins to be made into coats and painted with a waterproofing varnish. Official supplies, not least of greatcoats, lagged behind demand, and the Strathmores aimed to provide every man in the thousand-strong local Black Watch battalion with a sheepskin. Socks were packed with presents of cigarettes, tobacco, pipes or peppermints in the toe.13 As Elizabeth recalled, 'during these first few months we were so busy knitting, knitting, knitting and making shirts for the local battalion the 5th Black Watch. My chief occupation was crumpling up tissue paper until it was so soft that it no longer crackled, to put into the lining of sleeping bags.'14 Lord Strathmore too was involved in war preparations: as lord lieutenant of Forfarshire he chaired the local territorial defence a.s.sociations, and was also charged with instructing farmers and landowners in the county what to do with their crops and livestock in case of invasion. This required caution, so as not to alarm people; there was already an atmosphere approaching paranoia, as reported by his daughter's governess: 'Mysterious lights have been seen all along this coast at night & cannot be traced. Forfar is supposed to be a hotbed of spies. Lady S is very funny. She heard that 2 Dundee butchers (I think it was) were willing to supply sheepskins for the famous coats at a reduced rate one of them named Miller she said she would not employ as she suspected him of being a spy & wishing to ingratiate himself & also that his name was in reality Muller!'15 *
WHILE ELIZABETH Bowes Lyon's relations were each doing what they could for the war effort, one of the most significant events for her personally at this time was the arrival in the family of a new governess. Beryl Poignand was to be a friend, almost a co-conspirator, throughout Elizabeth's teenage years and an important confidante thereafter.* Elizabeth's letters to Beryl give not only a glimpse of the world in which she grew up, but also a unique insight into her character. She was a fine letter writer all her life and her personality lively, kind, mischievous sparkles across the folded pages in their small blue envelopes. Beryl's own letters home provide further valuable information and a vivid picture of the family in wartime.
Miss Poignand's appointment seems to have come about through a French 'holiday governess', Madeleine Girardot de Villers, whom Lady Strathmore had engaged to take over temporarily, as they all thought from Kathe Kubler in July 1914. Elizabeth evidently got on well with Mademoiselle Girardot. A sheaf of dictees in the Glamis Archives dating from August and September 1914 shows a diminishing number of mistakes, with increasingly pleased comments by the governess. To one of these Elizabeth added cheekily, 'elle est la meilleure pupille que j'ai eue'.16 Madeleine Girardot had been a trainee teacher at the Maison d'Education de la Legion d'Honneur, the school founded by Napoleon for the daughters of members of the order, at Saint-Denis on the outskirts of Paris. There she had made friends with Beryl Poignand, a young Englishwoman who also taught at the school. Beryl, who was born in India in 1887, was the daughter of an Indian Army officer; the Poignand family claimed descent from a physician at the Court of Louis XVI who had fled to England. She had had a good education and, having returned from France in the summer of 1914, was now living with her recently widowed mother in Farnham in Surrey. It was probably at Madeleine Girardot's suggestion that she wrote to Lady Strathmore offering her services as governess.
Lady Strathmore, struggling to balance the demands of two convalescent hospitals (she had set up another at St Paul's Walden), four sons at the Front or about to set off, and a husband and two daughters for whom she had to maintain a home, was relieved. She replied to Beryl Poignand that she sounded very much like what she was looking for, 'a lady who can teach and speak French and also able to teach English', and asked if she would be prepared to come for a few months.17 The offer was accepted; Lady Strathmore wrote again promising to order the necessary books from the Army & Navy Stores and added: 'I do hope you will be happy here. Elizabeth is really a delightful companion very old for her age and very sensible. So that you will not have a child with you always.'18 Miss Poignand arrived at Glamis station from London one evening in late November 1914, and was shown to a s.p.a.cious tower bedroom, with a fire burning brightly and supper awaiting her in the comfortably furnished schoolroom. 'No electric light here chiefly lamps everywhere & gas in the corridors,' she reported to her mother. 'It is an old place, you would love it, all nooks & corners & stairs up & down & long pa.s.sages many floors of stone of course.'19 Bathing arrangements were a matter of wonder after the more modest comforts of a villa in Farnham.
The maid brings in tea lights my candles & goes off with my sponge & towels to a Bathroom some little way away of which I think I have the sole use to get to it I pa.s.s through a large bedroom & along a corridor & down a few stairs. Arrived there I find a huge hot bath set the Bath is enormously deep a large blanket spread on the ground & beside the Bath a carpeted step ladder by which one mounts in order to descend into the Bath. There is also a spray & douche apparatus.20 With her pupil there was an instant rapport. 'I like Elizabeth very much & I think we shall be great friends,' Beryl wrote. Their daily routine was quickly established: chapel wearing the prescribed lace cap and piano practice for Elizabeth, breakfast at 8.45, two hours of lessons followed by three-quarters of an hour out of doors and a further hour's lesson before lunch. Then they were free to go out again until the last lesson from 4 to 5. There was family tea around a large table at 5, Elizabeth's last meal except for the occasional apple until her bedtime at 8 p.m., after which Beryl was served her supper in the schoolroom. This was a mere four hours of lessons a day, and three on Sat.u.r.day: it was probably at least an hour a day shorter than Fraulein Kubler's timetable. Even so, it was a challenge for the new governess. Despite her immediate affection for Elizabeth, she worried that 'it is not too easy teaching her. I have to make things as interesting as possible or she would easily get bored I think. She is intelligent it is a wonder to me that she knows all she does her education has been rather quaint.'21 Moreover, Lady Strathmore's enthusiasm for a more rigorous academic education for her daughter was lukewarm. 'I don't know if very advanced mathematics are required for Elizabeth's exam,' she said to Beryl; 'but I do not wish her to take anything very advanced. I am not a believer in very high mathematics for girls.' Beryl was amused and relieved, since maths was not her own strong point. She rea.s.sured her employer that 'ordinary Arithmetic' was all that was required.22 Elizabeth enjoyed the new regime: three years later, looking back on 'those happy days', she described a typical day. The timetable has evolved a little, starting at 8 a.m. with a history lesson which is interrupted by the breakfast gong. Afterwards she and Beryl do some arithmetic, also interrupted, this time by Nurse Anderson, who comes rustling and panting up the stairs for a chat. This is followed by a trip down to the Oak Room for hot chocolate, biscuits and jokes, 'the first & last manufactured by the Lady Rose Lyon', and a walk through the pinetum. At lunch they 'eat an 'orrid amount', and go for another walk afterwards. Then 'back to the schoolroom for a bit. Eat enormous quant.i.ties of Vida bread, at tea, & a few "plaisanteries" with Mike.' After tea, she added innocently, 'I sleep before the fire while Medusa [her nickname for Beryl] reads about Queens of England.' Then they would visit the soldiers' ward for a lively game of whist before supper, and eventually 'wander bedwards, tired, but let us hope happy!!!'23 Beryl Poignand noted her pupil's liveliness and quick interest in the world about her. When the newspapers arrived in the morning, Elizabeth 'simply pounced' on the Daily Mail, provided for her personally. Her loving relationship with her parents was plain to see: they were devoted to her, and she was very attentive to both of them. The governess's letters home paint an appealing portrait of Lord Strathmore as a gentle, humorous man who was immensely fond of his children and grandchildren, 'especially of E. who is very sweet with him, always looking round to see if he wants anything & lighting his cigarettes etc'. He was occasionally querulous, a characteristic which Beryl observed that his family ignored; but like many fathers of the less domineering sort, he was used to that. 'No one ever communicates with me unless they want to be paid something,' he was once heard to say. There was nothing stiff or pompous about him or his wife. 'He always arrives late for meals, & consequently is miles behind everyone else if the footmen have left the room he sometimes asks Lady S. to throw him some pudding & if the sweet is a "dry" one she throws it across the table & he catches it in his hands or on his plate or sometimes doesn't catch it at all.'24 Lady Strathmore emerges from Beryl's letters as the hub of the family, energetic and admirably generous in her provision for the convalescent soldiers. She and her daughters dressed very simply, Lady Strathmore mostly in black 'with lace ruffles', while Rose wore a white silk blouse and a tweed walking skirt with a golf jacket. Elizabeth's usual garb was a navy-blue dress with a white yoke and cuffs, often with a jacket like her sister's. There was no need, Beryl a.s.sured her mother, for smart clothes at Glamis.25 Letters arrived sporadically from the two Bowes Lyon sons at the Front. One beautiful November morning when the sun sparkled on a thick frost at Glamis, Beryl recorded that Lady Strathmore had heard from Patrick and Jock in northern France, where the 5th Battalion The Black Watch had just come under fire. They had taken German trenches but had not advanced. A fortnight later Jock wrote again: they usually spent three days and nights in the trenches, or longer if the firing was lively, before being relieved, which meant walking nine miles back out of enemy artillery range before they could have any rest. He had not seen a mattress since leaving Dundee, he said. Sleep was impossible at the Front: as an officer he had to remain alert, for they were barely 200 yards from the German lines. Another letter spoke of the intense cold, of the slimy mud in the trenches, and of Jock's bitter disappointment to find that some of the cooked pheasants his mother had sent him had been badly packed and had rotted before arrival. The Glamis cook at once set to work preparing more.26 Fergus, by now a captain, was still at Aldershot, where he had been sent at the beginning of the war to train new recruits in the 8th Battalion The Black Watch; it was not until the spring of 1915 that he went with the battalion to France. Michael's reserve battalion of the Royal Scots had at first been sent to Weymouth; in November they were suddenly moved to Sunderland and ordered to dig trenches. At Glamis the family could only suppose there was an invasion scare. In December he was sent to France, not to the Front but to Rouen, whence he dispatched cheerful letters home. It was a beautiful city full of fine churches, he wrote; but he had no intention of entering any of them, having had far too much sightseeing forced on him by his mother and sister Rosie in the past. He had been given the task of censoring soldiers' letters home, and quoted some of them: 'P.S. please excuse writing but I am rather drunk'; 'What is Tom a'doin' 'as 'e 'listed or is 'e a coward or is 'e after Nell 'cos if so tell 'im I'll break 'is d- neck when I come back.'27 Elizabeth was still in touch with Fraulein Kubler. Her former governess sent her a long letter from Belgium, where she was nursing German soldiers. She was convinced that her country's cause was a righteous one and that the Kaiser had done all he could to stop the war.28 Elizabeth seems not to have been impressed; her new governess recorded that she wanted to give up her German lessons and learn Russian instead, a wish frustrated by Beryl's ignorance of that language.29*
It was now clear that the war would not be over by Christmas. Young British women also wanted to play their part, and Elizabeth's sister Rose decided to train as a nurse. She enrolled at the London Hospital, which was offering three-month courses, and left Glamis in early January 1915 to join several of her friends training in the capital.
At the end of its first year, the convalescent hospital at Glamis was commended for its good work, especially with men suffering from shattered nerves. It was run with the minimum of regulations 'this hospital treated its inmates neither as prisoners nor as children, but as privileged guests.'30 Several were Highlanders, young and shy; one who had barely spoken a word had a visit from his sister: 'the nurse said he was so pleased & his eyes filled with tears when he knew she was coming,' Beryl wrote to her mother.31 Those members of the family who were there 'contended with one another to make the wounded soldiers feel at home'. One of their patients told a visitor, 'my three weeks at Glamis have been the happiest I ever struck. I love Lady Strathmore so very much on account of her being so very like my dear mother, as was; and as for Lady Elizabeth, why, she and my fiancay are as like as two peas!'32 Lord Strathmore found it harder to make contact with the soldiers: 'he is terribly shy,' Beryl Poignand commented; but after a few days he was talking animatedly to those with whom he had a cavalry background in common. 'Today he very politely (Elizabeth says) introduced himself to the 5th Dragoon ... Elizabeth is very funny about him & takes him off sometimes quite nicely of course she is devoted to her parents.'33 In this environment most of the soldiers quickly relaxed; they explored the Castle and its grounds, they were taken for outings in the motors, attended the chapel, played billiards and gathered around the piano singing heartily. Until she departed, Rose played such favourites as 'We Don't Want to Lose You' or 'The Sunshine of Your Smile'.34 One evening Rose dressed David up in her own clothes, with a hat and a thick veil, and introduced him to the soldiers as her cousin. He played the gracious lady so successfully that the deception was complete. When the soldiers discovered their mistake there was much mirth, and serious danger that future lady visitors would be greeted with guffaws of 'I know you!' After Rose left for London a gramophone was acquired for the men, but it was considered a poor subst.i.tute for her piano playing.35 Elizabeth was too young to train as a nurse; her task was generally to make the soldiers feel at home. She did rounds of the ward, talked to them all, made friends with many and went to the village shop to arrange large quant.i.ties of vital purchases Woodbines, Gold Flake and Navy Cut tobacco.36 She was intrigued by the soldiers and tried to draw them out: one, a Canadian named Baker who had been as far afield as Nepal, Egypt and South Africa, she discovered had been educated at Malvern; Beryl suspected him of being a wandering black sheep. They gave nicknames to their favourites: one sprightly c.o.c.kney named Bill became 'Twinkly Eyes'.37 The irony was that the better the care the soldiers received at Glamis, the sooner they were sent back to the Front. There were noisy farewells in the Castle crypt, with crackers and group photographs; next morning the soldiers signed the Visitors' Book* and were driven to Dundee. The motors that took them brought back ten more invalids, who came with harrowing tales and dreadful wounds from the Front; one was an eighteen-year-old shot in the stomach at Ypres, another had been shot through the lungs, and a third had a damaged spine and was likely to remain disabled for life. There was a 'London Scottie' (the London Scottish Regiment), of whom Nurse Anderson reported in awestruck tones that he had beautiful shaving things and pyjamas with a silk stripe.38 He was the author of some suitably polished lines in Elizabeth's autograph book: Farewell! lovely Glamis, for soon I go
From thy dear old walls to which I owe
Deep grat.i.tude for the days here spent
Since welcomed here a convalescent.39
This year, 1914, was the first time for twenty years that the Strathmores had spent December at Glamis. Beryl reported to her mother that Lady Strathmore had come into the schoolroom and said, 'At last I have got out of Father that we are staying here for Xmas.' At this, Elizabeth 'jumped up in delight & kissed her Mother exuberantly, as for some reason or other she wanted much to spend Xmas here'.40 It was a depleted family party: of Elizabeth's siblings only Rose and David were there. Rose wrote to her friend Delia Peel that she hoped that 'this horrible time' would be over soon. 'Pat, Jock & Mike are all out now, & I suppose Fergus will be going out soon.'41 Despite all the anxieties, family and staff at Glamis did their best to bring good cheer to the soldiers, setting up an immense tree in the crypt and distributing presents. 'The fun was fast and furious,' according to Elizabeth. Everyone ate too much, and she and David danced wildly with the soldiers in the ward. All in all, she said, it was 'a dandy Xmas, you bet your bottom dollar'.42 Freddy Dalrymple Hamilton, on leave from his ship, came for the New Year and recorded that there were twenty wounded soldiers at Glamis. 'We played various doubtful card games etc. with them in the evening which was very amusing and after a bit, quite heating! It was a most cheerful evening. Heard several new & wonderful trench stories & I can't say I envy the soldiers much!' He could not help recalling his previous visit, playing cricket with the Bowes Lyon brothers, who were now away on active service. 'I never dreamt then the conditions under which I should be there next! We none of us sat up for the New Year.'43 Next day he left by train with Rose.
Behind the face of gaiety and good cheer that she wore for her guests, Lady Strathmore was always worrying about her sons. On 3 January 1915 she wrote to her married daughter May with news of acquaintances and friends who had been killed or wounded. She had heard that 'one of our spys' who had been sent to Germany claimed that the Germans would run out of ammunition by May '& that all the educated people in Berlin knew they could not possibly win & were talking of what terms we were likely to accept. That is good news but thousands more will be killed & maimed before then. We have several new wounded here one or two old ones have been x-rayed & will have to have operations which I am very sorry for.'44 Later she was visited by a brother officer of Mike, who told her of a day of carnage on the Kaiser's birthday, 27 January: 'hundreds & hundreds of dead Germans everywhere & not 10 yards of ground unsh.e.l.led'.45 A terrible new form of warfare had developed. On the battlefields, machine-gun fire mowed men down like gra.s.s; only truly ma.s.sive bombardment by artillery, which became heavier and heavier in the course of the war, could help suppress this murderous fire. Once the enemies had mobilized their industrial resources to produce such weapons, they turned the battle zones into wastelands, annihilated by iron, through which men edged fitfully, agonizingly forward and back.
The Germans' sweep westwards in August 1914 had not awarded them the instant victory that their war plan required, but they had captured almost all of Belgium and much of northern France. In the east the Germans and Austrians had stopped Russian offensives. Brutal and unexpected stalemate everywhere was the norm as 1915 began.
In mid-January 1915 Lady Strathmore took her two youngest children back to London, where Jock was home on leave and staying at St James's Square with his wife Fenella. He was confident that the war would be over in the summer; others were more pessimistic. Rose was busy, studying for her first nursing examination. 'Rosie told us some 1st hand experiences of the London Hospital,' Freddy recorded after lunching with them all at St James's Square in mid-January. 'It didn't sound very nice & I hope she won't kill herself over it!' Barely a month later she had pa.s.sed her exam and was on a surgical ward.46 With David back at school, Elizabeth now had one of her greatest friends for company: Lady Lavinia Spencer,* who lived near by at Spencer House on the edge of Green Park. Lavinia was equally high-spirited, and she and Elizabeth shared a pa.s.sion for the theatre and the cinema. They exchanged teasing girlish letters about their respective idols. 'She is most awfully nice, very pretty & too charming,' Lavinia wrote to her brother about Elizabeth.47 Their respective governesses also got on well, and the quartet visited the Wallace Collection and went to concerts at the Albert Hall and to a performance of The Mikado. There were to be frequent visits to the theatre in the next few years.
Life resumed something of its pre-war pattern. Elizabeth spent the weekdays in London, with lessons in the morning and outings for tea with friends in the afternoon, matinees at the theatre, and occasional visits to the cinema in Regent Street or a bus-ride away at Marble Arch she and Beryl were impressed by newsreels of the sinking of the Blucher and of an air raid on the east coast, but thrilling adventures featuring their favourite actors were the main attraction. Occasionally Elizabeth might be invited out in the evening by family friends like the Countess of Crawford, who asked her to dinner followed by a performance of the musical Florodora, as company for her fourteen-year-old son David. Once she narrowly missed a royal encounter: Lavinia Spencer invited her to a tea party for Princess Mary, King George V's seventeen-year-old only daughter, which had to be cancelled at the last minute because the Spencers' chauffeur had the measles and the whole house was quarantined.48 As before, weekends were spent at St Paul's Walden if possible, and Beryl's first visit there in February 1915 produced a descriptive letter home. The house seemed small and homely compared to Glamis, quaint, but 'so beautifully furnished & bright & clean looking ... Eliz: simply loves the place she has all her precious belongings books, childish toys & clothes & dresses here. Books! I have never seen so many books anywhere. Shelves in every room hundreds of them.' Her pupil took her on a long ramble in the grounds, to the lake inhabited by sleepy old carp, where once monks fished for their Friday dinner and now an ancient punt and a waterlogged boat lolled; the walled garden of fruit trees and bushes full of promise for summer raids; the apple-house where they pocketed apples to eat on the way home; the dairy, fowl houses and stables, where Elizabeth's pony Bobs lived along with Rose's hunter, still too tall for her diminutive younger sister, who longed to ride her. They picked snowdrops in the woods; crocuses, daffodils and jonquils were beginning to appear everywhere. Beryl was shown the long gra.s.sy alleys leading away between the tall trees and copses, and was introduced to 'Arkles' the Hercules statue at the end of one and 'the Bounding Butler', the discus-thrower figure on the lawn.
Lady Strathmore had returned to Glamis, where Lord Strathmore was ill with flu and needing company, so Elizabeth and her governess were alone at St Paul's Walden. On Sunday they walked to church, where they sat at the front and felt eyes boring holes into their backs: behind them sat some of the wounded soldiers who were convalescing in the nursery wing of the house, cared for by Red Cross nurses; there were eight men there at this time, and Elizabeth and Beryl spent that evening talking to them. They spoke of friends and companions they had seen wounded or killed; 'they none of them when once they have been out there want to go again,' Beryl recorded. 'Poor things they say the sufferings & privations especially in the early part of the war were too awful.' The nurses reported that the nerves of one man were quite shattered; he constantly called out in his sleep, and woke up in terror. Elizabeth was pleased to find that another of them had been in the Highland Light Infantry unit to which Mike was attached, and knew him.49 Back in London after the weekend they found that Jock had returned to Flanders. News came from Mike, who was well but finding life 'dull'. Remarkably, Lady Strathmore considered going to visit him, but decided against this because the sea crossing at the mercy of German submarines was too dangerous; furthermore, her husband, eldest son and youngest daughter were all unwell, so she was 'rather required'.50 Lord Strathmore's influenza and the feverish chill from which Elizabeth had been suffering were not serious; more so was Patrick's condition. He had been sent home in late February 1915 with a wounded foot. His battalion, the 5th Black Watch, had suffered terrible losses: of the thousand men who had gone out, only 350 were still standing. There was a dearth of recruits; the regiment was counting on Patrick, a major, to raise a third reserve battalion, as 'he only could do it,' Lady Strathmore reported to May Elphinstone. As she said, he would have to make his appeal on crutches, 'which might not inspire, but all the men adore him'.51 Patrick was a strikingly handsome, popular and charming man ('He looked really as if he'd stepped down from Olympia,' his eldest niece later said of him).52 But he was now suffering badly from sh.e.l.l shock, and although at first he was reported to be in high spirits, 'hopping all over the house with his wounded foot in the air',53 his nervous condition deteriorated, and with it his physical health: he could not eat, and spent three weeks recuperating in a nursing home. A spell at Glamis with his brother Jock, to whom he was close, helped; but he did not fully recover and was invalided out of active service.
Towards the end of March 1915 Mike had been able to s.n.a.t.c.h a few days' home leave before returning to France. It may have been on this occasion that Elizabeth accompanied her mother to Victoria station to see him off. Many years later she recalled, 'There was a very young little officer going off, and his mother I can see her now was weeping. And I remember my brother leaning out of the train and saying, "Don't worry I'll look after him." And do you know, he was killed the next day. It was so awful when one thinks about it.'54 Two months later a telegram arrived announcing that Mike was in hospital in Rouen suffering from sh.e.l.l shock. He proved to have a head wound as well, and was sent by river steamer to Le Havre and shipped home. Lady Strathmore's concerns about this son were different: 'now Lady S. is worrying about how in the world she will manage to keep him at all quiet he is so headstrong & will want to be going to theatres etc all the time,' Beryl Poignand recorded.55 Jock too had been wounded. In early May the first finger of his left hand was shattered by a bullet. He sailed to Southampton among 850 casualties on a ship intended to carry half the number. His damaged finger had to be amputated. Lady Strathmore was relieved that his injury was not worse, while his youngest sister, to her delight, found herself quoted in the Daily Mail, to whose reporter she had spoken when he rang up St James's Square asking for information about her brother's wound.56 For all Lady Strathmore's preoccupations with her soldier sons and her hospitals, she did not neglect the upbringing of the two Benjamins and stuck to her principles on the profitable use of holiday time. Elizabeth and David had French conversation lessons with yet another Made, Lydie Lachaise,* while Beryl went home for a fortnight, and David had drawing lessons, which his sister was annoyed to have to take in his place when he fell ill.57 In July 1915 Elizabeth was overjoyed to be taken to the Haymarket Theatre to see a new romantic comedy, H. A. Vach.e.l.l's Quinneys, starring her particular idol Henry Ainley, whom she had been thrilled to glimpse from the window of a taxi a few days earlier.58 Her letters at this time overflow with swooning references to this actor; and she was mercilessly teased about him by her family particularly her brothers who told her he was fat and old. They sent her 'vulgar and insulting telegrams' on her birthday, 'about darling Henry's stomach, was it real or a cushion, he was just having his 25th anniversary on the stage & such insults'.59 To her delight, later that summer she was able to send Beryl 'perfectly wonderful, marvellous, absolutely indescribable news'. Her friend Lavinia had a first cousin 'who KNOWS Darling HENRY VERY WELL!!!! He is 35 (Hahahoo, Rosie and Mike will be squashed!) and she is going to write and find out the colour of his eyes, & everything, also get his signature. Isn't it absolutely unbelievable ... Darling Henry. I am so pleased. I feel that it was quite worth sticking up for him all this time. Oh my sacred Aunt in pink tights, perhaps we shall even meet him, help I shall die in a minute. Yours, Elizabeth.'60 She afterwards acquired a signed photograph of Ainley in his role as Joe Quinney, and continued to follow him in all his stage and film roles. 'I bet all the housemaids think that he's my young man!' she wrote to Beryl after hanging the latest picture of her hero over her mantelpiece at Glamis.61 She and Lavinia, who had a crush on another actor, Basil Hallam,* signed themselves 'Henriette' and 'Basilette' in the facetious letters they exchanged about their adoration of these idols.
The two also shared a penchant for handsome sailors, and corresponded irreverently as King George V (Lavinia, who signed one letter in a pa.s.sable imitation of the King's writing, 'Your Lord and Sovereign George R') and Queen Mary (Elizabeth, rebuked by her friend in the same letter for flirting with sailors: 'For shame! Tut! Remember your queenly dignity, & don't make eyes at men in The service, Mary although, of course, I own it's a temptation').62 Another admirer of sailors came into Lady Elizabeth's life at around this time: she was Katie Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Abercorn, who was to become a lifelong friend. Lavinia wrote that they were both dying to hear about the captivating specimens of nautical manhood Elizabeth had met while staying with her sister May in Edinburgh.63 Katie was determined to marry a sailor, and indeed fell for one Lavinia's brother Cecil, a sub-lieutenant in the navy. 'Wouldn't it be splendid if you & Lavinia & I all married sailors,' she wrote to Elizabeth; 'there would be a lifelong feud between us if by any chance one of the 3 got promoted first!'64 Handsome men in uniform did not have to be sailors to attract Elizabeth's attention. In London she and Beryl had taken to watching the Red Cross chauffeurs outside their headquarters in St James's Square. Elizabeth dubbed one of these drivers 'The Beautiful One', and he appears frequently in her letters of these years. 'I received the most seraphic, glorious, delightful, beautiful, wonderful smile from the Beautiful One yesterday,' she wrote to Beryl in July 1915. 'He was perfectly charmed to see me, (whato).'65 On Elizabeth's fifteenth birthday, also the first anniversary of the outbreak of war, they went to the Hippodrome. The cast threw hundreds of soft b.a.l.l.s into the auditorium which the audience could then fling at each other. Elizabeth, with her usual enthusiasm, embraced this challenge vigorously.66 Friday 6 August was 'a fairly decent' last day in London before she left for Scotland, after seven months in the south. She went shopping and bought a hat and a pink dressing gown and 'lots of chocs'. Perhaps best of all, she had 'a wonderful last smile from the Beautiful One, we waved to each other for the first and last time, a fitting goodbye'.67 That night she and David travelled 'alonio' on the night sleeper to Glamis. She found that 'two most beautiful sailors' were travelling in the same coach. 'We had long conversations in the corridor in the morning.'68 At Glamis she slipped happily back into her role of friend to the soldier patients. Her unaffected curiosity about them and enjoyment of their company are evident from her letters throughout the war. There seems to be no doubt that the experience of welcoming and cheering men from all walks of life and many parts of the world had a major impact upon her indeed, one can surmise that everything she learned from this stood her in extremely good stead in the life that lay before her. The soldiers were charming, she reported to Beryl, who was away for the summer holidays; and this time there was a sailor among them, to her delight. 'My dear Miss Poignand, you are missing something! One is a fisherman and a Naval Reserve, he has been shipwrecked five times. Blue eyes, black hair, so nice. Reminds me of Henry.'69 Another of the new patients was Corporal Ernest Pearce of the Durham Light Infantry, whose right shoulder had been shattered at Ypres in May 1915. Soon after he arrived, he saw a girl in a print dress swinging a sun bonnet in her hand. It was Elizabeth. He thought she had beautiful eyes and found her delightful; whenever he met her in the weeks ahead, he said later, 'she was always the same. "How is your shoulder?" "Do you sleep well?" "Does it pain you?" "Why are you not smoking your pipe?" "Have you no tobacco?" "You must tell me if you haven't and I'll get some for you" ... For her fifteen years she was very womanly, kind-hearted and sympathetic.'70 Corporal Pearce said that everyone in the Castle 'worshipped' Elizabeth. For her part, she described Pearce as 'A most delightful Corporal, nice boy indeed'. His name appears frequently in her letters thereafter, often as her partner in the boisterous games of whist they played in the evenings. He returned to service in 1916 and survived the war; Elizabeth kept in touch with him throughout, helped him in the post-war years and later gave him a job as a gardener which he kept for the rest of his life.*
There was joy at Glamis in late August 1915 Fergus came back from France for five days' leave. It was almost a year since he and Christian had married and their daughter Rosemary had been born on 18 July. But after this holiday he had to return to the Front. Lydie Lachaise, the French governess, never forgot the sadness in Lady Strathmore's face when he left.71 At the beginning of September Lady Strathmore and David travelled south David to begin his life at Eton while Elizabeth went to visit May at Carberry Tower, the Elphinstone family home near Edinburgh. From there she sent her mother a request: 'Darling Mother, don't forget, a little white fox neck thing, a really chic hat, the "dernier cri" in shirts & a warm winter coat, the newest mode!!!!!!'72 She replied to a letter from Beryl, who was still in London, with a mixture of low badinage and high politics: 'Yes, of course my dear a.s.s, you may call at St James's Square for your luggage. Please give my best love to the dear B.O. and old goggle eyes ...'. Quoting from a letter from Sidney Elphinstone, she continued: London is full of dreadful rumours ... But much the worst is that Kitchener is going to resign, Winston will take his place and Lloyd George will be Prime Minister. But Sidney, who wrote about it, says that he doesn't think that this long suffering country would stand that, for they have such faith in K of K. I hear the Russians are getting a much better supply of ammunition now, perhaps they will pick up a bit ...
How terribly you would have envied me. I spent the whole afternoon on the sh.o.r.es of the Forth. So near the ships that I could see people. And a conversation with a most beautiful sailor, with blue eyes and black lashes and so good looking. That was yesterday. He pointed out all the ships to me ... They looked too fine for words. I simply revelled in 'em. And simply hundreds of beautiful brown Lieutenants, Subs, Snotties [midshipmen], Admirals and sailors. Oh my! They were all most amorous! ... Beatty's fleet I suppose.73 Back at Glamis a few days later she found a 'fairly cheerful' letter from David at Eton, and new soldiers 'one is a ventriloquist; another has a huge cut across his head and is rather "queer", no wonder'.74 Then came the news that every family dreaded throughout the war. Only a month after his return from Glamis to the battlefields, Fergus had been killed at the Battle of Loos.
FERGUS WAS a delightful, cheerful and energetic young man, a countryman through and through. He took great pleasure in being on his own, and particularly loved Glamis. He was said to have made friends with two poachers and to have imbibed a great deal of their lore.75 In December 1910 Fergus had become a second lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion The Black Watch, and in 1911 he was sent to serve in the Punjab. He and his mother corresponded frequently and one teasing letter from him to the ten-year-old Elizabeth survives in the Glamis Archives. He wonders whether she has been to Gunter's tea shop lately, and describes his ideal dinner: '1. b.u.t.tered eggs 2. Fillets of salmon 3. Roast pigeon (fried potatoes, peas, collieflower) 4. Lamb cutlets 5. Macedoine of fruits 6. Lemon water ice 7. Fruit (peaches, grapes etc) 8. Coffee 9. Probably very very sick.'76 Fergus would have been content to remain in his regiment, but by his early twenties he knew that he had to earn more money. In February 1914 he decided, reluctantly, to go into the City.77 But on the outbreak of war he immediately rejoined the Black Watch. Sent to the Front in early 1915, he wrote home about the gas being used by the Germans. 'They are fiends,' he said. 'These are trying times and I'm sure we'll all be overjoyed when the war is over.'78 In the spring of 1915 the Germans and Austrians mounted a huge and successful a.s.sault on Russian positions to the east. In order to relieve the pressure on their Russian allies, the French decided to attack German lines in Champagne and Artois. The British government was a reluctant partner in this venture London agreed only for fear that the Russians might make a separate peace. Through the summer the Germans strengthened their positions. Fergus wrote home in June describing the German trenches his troops were facing as 'quite impregnable rows & rows of them ... & all lined with concrete & with murderous machine guns'.79 It would have been wise to delay an attack. But the British were not even allowed to choose their own terrain; General Joffre insisted that they fight side by side with the French through the ruined villages of Loos and Lens, not in the more open countryside that Kitchener preferred.80 After his brief visit home in August, Fergus rejoined his battalion as final preparations were under way. Despite the season, it was pouring with rain and the trenches were filled with mud. Around 800,000 British and French soldiers were poised to attack on 25 September. General Haig, in command of I Corps of the British Expeditionary Force, wrote in his diary, 'The greatest battle in the world's history begins today.' General Joffre told the French, 'Votre elan sera irresistible.'81 Not so. The French advanced in Champagne but then were stopped by the Germans. The British, using poison gas for the first time, pushed forward strongly at first, but reinforcements were called up too slowly. One soldier who was there said, 'Jerry did himself well at Loos and on us innocents. We went into it, knowing no more than our own dead what was coming. And Jerry fair lifted us out of it with machine guns.' The losses were appalling.82 Private Carson Stewart of the 7th (Service) Battalion The Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders recalled: 'When they took the Roll Call after Loos, those not answering, their chums would answer, "Over the Hill." '83 In the early morning of 27 September Fergus was ordered to drive out a party of Germans who had infiltrated a trench by the Hohenzollern Redoubt, a German stronghold which the Black Watch had captured the day before. He and his men, exhausted from the previous two days and nights of fighting, had only just been relieved at 4 a.m. and were preparing themselves some breakfast when the orders came. As Fergus led his party forward a German bomb exploded at his feet, blowing off his right leg and wounding him in the chest; at the same time he was. .h.i.t by bullets in the chest and shoulder. He died at about 11.30 a.m.
The news did not reach Glamis until four days later, on 1 October. Lieutenant G. B. Gilroy of the 8th Battalion The Black Watch wrote to Lady Strathmore telling her what had happened and a.s.suring her that her son could not have suffered any pain but must have died instantly.84 Perhaps mercifully, it was several weeks before Lady Strathmore learned that Fergus's death had been neither instant nor painless. His soldier servant, Lance Corporal Andrew Ross, and Sergeant Robert Lindsay, who had been with him when he died, came to Glamis to see her. Both men, and his fellow officers, spoke of Fergus with affection and admiration.85 Sergeant Lindsay gave her the name of the stretcher bearer who had carried Fergus away for burial; she later wrote to him to ask for details, saying that she planned 'to go out & try & find his grave when the war is over'.86 The entire community of Glamis was thrown into deep sorrow. Corporal Pearce recalled later that the soldiers all agreed not to go up to the billiard room, to stay off the lawns and not to play the gramophone. They wrote a letter of sympathy to the Countess. She thanked them and said she hoped that, as her guests, they would carry on using the Castle just as before.87 On 3 October 1915 Fergus was remembered in the parish church at Glamis with the words: 'How hard to realise that all that personal quickening, that lovableness and charm, that brightness and vivacity, that thoughtfulness have pa.s.sed and gone.'88 Few records of Elizabeth's reaction to Fergus's death have survived. She wrote Lavinia Spencer a letter described by her friend as 'brave' in her sympathetic reply, which is in the Glamis Archives. Beryl Poignand recorded that 'poor little Elizabeth' had managed to remain 'gay and bright' when she accompanied the Glamis convalescents to the local picture palace in Forfar soon after the sad news arrived.89 Her writing paper for most of 1916 was black-edged in mourning for Fergus.
A few weeks after the battle Winston Churchill, then a battalion commander on the Western Front, heard a lecture on Loos and wrote to his wife, Clementine, that it was a tale 'of hopeless failure, of sublime heroism utterly wasted and of splendid Scottish soldiers thrown away in vain ... Alas, alas.'90 Among the many thousands killed at Loos was John, the only son of Rudyard Kipling; his body was never found. The poet wrote of the death of all the young men: That flesh we had nursed from the first in all cleanness as given ...
To be blanched or gay painted by fumes to be cindered by fires
To be senselessly tossed and retossed in stale mutilation
From crater to crater. For this we shall take expiation.
But who shall return us our children?91 *
LIFE ON THE Home Front continued. Elizabeth had resumed her lessons with Beryl; she claimed in a letter to Beryl's mother that she was not doing very well. 'I am hopelessly rotton at Arithmetic, Literature, Drawing, History and Geography,' she wrote. Beryl, she added, was 'really in despair about my exam, you see I'm so frightfully stupid & don't know anything except what I've learnt with her about Julius Caesar, Napoleon, French History, & a lot of little things about the G.o.ds & G.o.ddesses, Hades etc.'92 At the end of October she and her mother travelled down to London to see David, on his first long leave (half-term) from Eton. It was not the best of journeys the train was three hours late and filled with troops 'my word how drunk the sailors were!' They arrived in thick fog in London, and Elizabeth discussed a new threat the Zeppelin airships 'don't be surprised if the Zepps come, for they love fogs,' she wrote to Beryl.93 It was a warning with resonance; the Zeppelins inspired real terror and recently five of them had dropped 189 bombs on London and the Home Counties, killing seventy-one people.94* Elizabeth's att.i.tude remained insouciant. She and David went to see The Scarlet Pimpernel at the Strand Theatre. 'When the Zepps were last here, they dropped a bomb into the pit at the Strand and killed 6 people so of course we went there.'95 A crisis for Glamis arose just before Christmas 1915 when the medical authorities in Dundee considered closing the hospital at the Castle. Elizabeth and her mother were horrified and went to Dundee to argue their case. 'I waited outside, trembling, the fate of the hospital was in the balance, but, hooray, its all right,' Elizabeth wrote. Lady Strathmore had been effective and Dr Fraser at the Infirmary told them that Glamis had done 'wonderful good work, especially with "nervy" men' and he would continue to send patients there.
When they got back to the Castle, Nurse Anderson was 'simply dancing with impatience at the top of the stairs'. The rejoicing was compounded by Jock, who had telephoned to say he was coming home that night. So he did, with a whole group of friends. 'You can (or rather cannot) imagine the row they made in the motor, "Auld Lang Syne" etc. I have just seen Jock (it is about 11.15) he is so happy.'96 The Strathmores again spent Christmas at Glamis, and Elizabeth prepared a tree for the soldiers. They each got presents from the family an electric torch, a shirt, chocolates and crackers. 'I believe the noise last night at "lights out" was something appalling, trumpets & squeaky things going like mad,' she wrote to Beryl. 'Of course we drank "To h.e.l.l with the b- Kaiser" last night.'97 The year ended forlornly. Ma.s.sive loss of life had gained little ground for either side. Neither had broken through the other's lines of trenches. The British Expeditionary Force in France had now grown to over a million men. Many of these were poorly trained divisions upon which General Haig knew he could not really depend. More and more of the young volunteers in Kitchener's New Armies presented themselves to army medics with what the official medical history of the war described as 'definite hysterical manifestations (mutism and tremors)'.98 The Germans held stronger positions at the end of the year than they had at its start. Resignation, if not cynicism, had replaced enthusiasm and euphoria. On New Year's Eve Elizabeth wrote again to Beryl: 'Today is the last day of 1915. Isn't it dreadful? If this war doesn't come to an end next year, it never will, I don't think so.'99 *
IN THE FIRST few weeks of 1916 Elizabeth had to cram for the Junior Examination of the Oxford Local Examinations Board. She and Beryl still had some fun. They went to the theatre in Dundee together and Elizabeth teased Beryl's mother that Beryl had behaved 'in a disgraceful manner', singing so loudly that the manager asked her to stop, 'whereupon she sang most aggressively to him (the poor man had a red nose) "Put a bit of powder on it", which is a vulgar song. To crown all that, she drank three c.o.c.ktails on reaching home, and had to be carried up to bed by Barson, who seemed to enjoy the job!!!'100 The examination took place in east London. At eight o'clock on the morning of 17 March Elizabeth took the bus and tram from St James's Square to the Hackney Examination Centre, which she described to her mother as 'about the last house on that side of London, green fields beyond'. First she had to do a 'memory drawing paper' which ended at 10.45, so she travelled home again for lunch and then back to Hackney in the afternoon for the 'model drawing' paper. After four hours of travel 'I'm what you might call "slightly fatigued",' she wrote to her mother.101 The next week she had a paper on Walter Scott which she found 'difficult'. All in all she was afraid that she had failed her exams. 'The geography and Arithmetic were quite hopeless, much too complicated for me!'102 At some stage she appears to have been fed tapioca pudding in Hackney, which added to her misery.
A trip to the theatre to see Henry Ainley restored her spirits. 'I've seen old Henry in "Who is He" and simply loved it. He's so good looking, (do tell Mike & Rosie, and make him as young and beautiful as you can) with BLUE eyes and BLACK hair, and quite THIN, not too thin, but just right. I am so triumphant, you'd love him, he's so funny,' she told Lady Strathmore.103 In the midst of her examinations she had actually received a letter from Ainley, who had heard she was coming to the play. 'I shall myself look forward with keen pleasure to Friday evening,' he wrote, adding: 'at the end of the first act I shall raise my eyes to that part of the house where you & your friend will be seated, & may I hope to meet a smile of appreciation & pleasure.' Better still, he had sent her a photograph of himself and said he had heard that she was 'at present engaged on a most difficult advanced examination' and was sure she would come through 'with flying colours'.104 Alas she did not. A few weeks later she received an impersonal form from the Examination Board. 'You do not appear to be ent.i.tled to a Certificate,' it announced. Furthermore, no questions 'respecting the cause or extent of your failure' could be answered.105 She was disappointed, if defiant. 'All that I say is, d.a.m.n THE EXAM!! I always was good at poetry wasn't I?!!' she wrote to Beryl. 'I'm not going to tell anyone about it anyhow, till they ask me!! Good heavens! What was the use of toiling down to that er place Hackney? None, I tell you none. It makes me boil with rage to think of that vile stuff, tapioca, eaten for nothing? Oh h.e.l.l ... Yes, I am very disappointed, but I daresay I shall get over it, if I go and see Henry.'106 Less enthralling than the theatre was the prospect of a tea party at Spencer House on 2 April 1916. 'Lavinia wants me to go to tea, to meet Princess Mary and Prince Albert next Sunday,' she wrote to her mother, adding, 'They don't frighten me quite as much as Queens.'107 Afterwards, however, she declared the tea party 'was rather frightening in fact, very'. She had had a table all to herself and 'nearly burst' trying to think of something to say to her neighbours, Mr Robinson and Mr Dill. She added: 'Prince Albert was next door, he's rather nice.'108 Beryl Poignand reported to her mother that the Prince and his sister had enjoyed themselves so much that 'long after their carriage was announced they kept on staying & staying they played games after tea "Up Jenkins" & "Clumps", a guessing game'.109 Prince Albert, the second son of King George V, was a twenty-year-old naval sub-lieutenant; he was at this time on sick leave from his ship. He and Elizabeth were later said to have met for the first time at a children's tea party many years earlier;* but their Spencer House meeting was the first of which either of them left a record. No comment by the Prince has survived, however, and Elizabeth made little of the encounter. The remainder of her letter to her mother was taken up with enthusing about Henry Ainley his wonderful voice and his dreadful shyness.110 In the second half of April 1916, she had a holiday in Glamis with her father. A new batch of convalescent soldiers was about to arrive; she spent a lot of time writing letters and listening to records of Henry Ainley singing patriotic songs. At the end of the month she took the train back to London, leaving her father and Barson, she said, 'sorrowfully drinking c.o.c.ktails'.111 Back in St James's Square, she was much taken up with the rush towards her sister Rose's wedding. Rose was the beauty of the family. A kind and intelligent girl, she was closest of all to her brother Michael, and she had nursed Alec when he was dying. She had many admirers her daughter Mary Clayton recalls her grandmother saying that, after Rosie's twentieth proposal, she gave up counting.112 To the chagrin of Freddy Dalrymple Hamilton always 'the unlucky third' in affairs of the heart, he felt Rose's choice fell on a fellow naval officer, William Spencer Leveson-Gower (who later became the fourth Earl Granville).113 He was known as Wisp, partly because of his Christian names and partly because as a child he had straw-coloured hair.
The preparations for the wedding held barely a month after the engagement was announced gave rise to much family hilarity at Rose's expense. 'We thought of getting the chorus from the Gaiety for bridesmaids, and the two waiters also from the same theatre, because they are so amusing for the reception affair afterwards!' wrote her younger sister. 'Also a band of the Royal Scots, and some sailors to pull the carriage to the church and back, and all sorts of such suggestions have been made!!! It would be rather amusing if it could be done!!'114 Elizabeth thought the trousseau needlessly extravagant. 'I should never be able to use 2 dozen of everything, lingerie I mean, good heavens, I'm thankful to say no.'115 She went to buy her shoes at Pinet, one of the best shops in Bond Street 'the first and last time for poverty stricken me I expect, as they were demned expensive' over thirty shillings.116 Wisp and Rose were married on 24 May 1916. 'The "best man" is very nice Commander Tom Goldie RN,' Elizabeth reported to Beryl. But evidently not that nice. 'Jock says the best man has got to kiss the bridesmaid but he's jolly well not going to kiss me!!'117 Not long after the wedding Elizabeth discovered that society magazines were describing Dorothy Cavendish,* Lavinia and herself as 'coming Beauties'. 'Did you ever hear such absolut