The Queen Mother Part 23
Racing and horses afforded her not just seasonal but daily pleasure. Like her daughter, she was a good judge of horseflesh and had an encyclopaedic knowledge of racing form. She and the Queen were both patrons of the Jockey Club, and when the National Hunt Committee, of which she was patron, merged with the Jockey Club, she became joint patron.
Sir Michael Oswald recalled that, unlike many owners, she took an interest in everyone from stable boys and girls upwards. 'Very few people looking at a horse pay any attention to the person holding the horse. She always spoke to them and shook hands before looking at the horse.' Oswald thought that the Queen Mother understood well what people wanted from her. If she found herself surrounded by people with cameras at an event, she would smile and wave to each side of the road. She invariably stopped to talk to people in wheelchairs. 'She always wanted to make sure that people who wanted to see her went away happy.' She would often repeat the maxim she had learned from her mother 'There is no one who is really boring if you find someone so, it must be because of you.' She had wonderful manners and to the end of her life she would try to get out of her chair to shake people's hands. She managed to remember people year after year.64 She was loyal to horses as well as trainers. She would never sell a horse; instead homes would be found for them with her regiments, or with local farmers who could use them for hacking, and she would send them off on permanent loan. None of this came cheap and, throughout, her racing had to be subsidized by the Queen. After one particularly disappointing year, the Queen offered to pay her mother's bill from Peter Cazalet. The Queen Mother accepted gratefully, signed the bill and wrote underneath the total, 'Oh dear'.65 After Devon Loch's disastrous collapse in the 1956 Grand National, probably the most thrilling race in which she was involved was the 1984 Whitbread Gold Cup in which she ran Special Cargo. That year's race was in a cla.s.s of its own, as the Sunday Times correspondent, Brough Scott, related. In the final uphill stretch, after twenty-four fences had been jumped, four horses Special Cargo, Lettoch, Diamond Edge and Plundering strained towards the post. In the Royal Box, the Queen Mother was visibly excited. Plundering then fell away and, with only a hundred yards to go, Diamond Edge was gaining on the leader, Lettoch. But Special Cargo was now within two lengths and flying fast. 'All three were together as the post flashed by. First thoughts were that none could be a loser.' There were long minutes of suspense as the judges considered the photographs. Queen Elizabeth was unable to move until she knew the result.66 Special Cargo had won by a fraction; overjoyed she rushed down to the winner's enclosure, where her pale-blue coat matched her jockey's silks.67 *
THE MOST REMOTE of her houses, the Castle of Mey, was the most personal in good part, no doubt, because it was the only one that actually belonged to her. She was able to invest Mey, and her stays there, with her own individual spirit and tastes. Her princ.i.p.al visit every year from 1956 onwards was made in August, immediately after her birthday, and she used to say that it was 'the beginning of the holidays' and the end of the 'term' in London. She loved the fresh air and the open s.p.a.ce that the Castle offered, with the ever changing view of clouds and sea and the shadows on Orkney beyond. Another great advantage was that 'at the furthest tip of these islands, one feels so beautifully far away and the newspapers come too late to be readable'.68 Her visits to Mey started privately and modestly, but developed into what her neighbour Lord Thurso called 'a mini season' in Caithness. Local landowners made sure they were in residence when she came, and many threw parties in the hope of attracting her; she gave a c.o.c.ktail party every summer which was a major event. There was no question but that her ownership of Mey put Caithness on the map.
The Castle itself required constant maintenance even after she had completed the basic structural repairs in the 1950s. Because it was built of porous sandstone, it was very hard to keep the damp out. In addition, as the years went by, water seeped through the roof, and lead work was found to be missing; the initial repairs had been inadequate.
The furnishings developed and moved over time. Many of the original pieces she and the Vyners had bought locally, in Miss Miller Calder's shop in Thurso. A huge clam-sh.e.l.l jardiniere stood in the front hall, packed with flowers while the Queen Mother was in residence. In the hall there was a chronometer from King George V's racing yacht Britannia, which struck the bells of the watch instead of the hours. The London firm of Lenygon and Morant, which worked for the Queen Mother in her other homes, was responsible for much of the internal design and decoration, and supplied curtains and other furnishings. She and those around her were pleased with the results. In 1959 Arthur Penn wrote to her to say, 'What a very rewarding & memorable visit your Castle gave us all this spring. It was bristling with triumphs.'69 Today the house is preserved as it was in her lifetime. The main room on the raised ground floor is the drawing room, whose windows face both inland and north towards the sea and the Orkney Islands. A large sixteenth-century Flemish wool tapestry hangs on the north wall. When she was in residence a peat fire burned continuously in the grate. Next door to the drawing room is the equerry's room. On the desk the red leatherbound hymnal and prayer book which the equerry carried for her to church every Sunday can still be seen. In this and other rooms are paintings and miniature model casts of some of her most successful cattle.
Beyond the equerry's room is the Library where, in later life, Queen Elizabeth dealt with her correspondence every day 'my Hunka-Munka room', she called it. On her desk are three of her favourite photographs, slightly faded by time the King in uniform in 1943, the King in South Africa, the King with her and Princess Elizabeth and various objects, including a little corgi from the Buckingham Palace gift shop. On a small Formica table by the wall sits an elderly television, on top of which are photographs of Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, dressed for a wartime pantomime. Against one wall stands a handsome upright piano in a walnut case, which the Queen Mother bought in Inverness and which she encouraged Ruth Fermoy and others to play after dinner.
The most striking room in the house is the dining room, at the western end. This was added in 1819 by the twelfth Earl of Caithness as an extension to the original Castle. On the east wall Queen Elizabeth hung a spectacularly vivid tapestry of her coat of arms, which she had commissioned from the Dovecote Studio in Edinburgh in 1950.70 It was designed by Stephen Gooden RA, a distinguished book ill.u.s.trator and line engraver, and was woven on an ancient loom using Cheviot wool specially spun and dyed in Scotland. In the fireplace at the opposite end of the room is a beautiful cast-iron fire-back created by Martin Charteris, the Queen's long-serving Private Secretary and a friend of the Queen Mother. The piece depicts the Queen Mother's ER cipher and the royal yacht Britannia among local flora and fauna. Above the fireplace is a naive painting of the Castle from the sea painted by R. I. Gray in 1884. It is an oddly prophetic picture. In the field in front of the Castle there is a herd of black cattle; offsh.o.r.e a yacht lies at anchor. Just over a century later Britannia could have been seen sailing past Queen Elizabeth's herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle. On either side of the fireplace is an oil painting by Prince Philip, an accomplished amateur painter.
Next door to the dining room is the butler's pantry, which by the end of the century had become almost a museum piece of 1950s domestic design, with white metal doors and drawers, a wheezing, ancient gas-fired refrigerator and an old electric oven in which plates were warmed. Connecting the pantry with the much more modern kitchen below is a steep and narrow staircase and a small dumb-waiter food lift. But the dumb-waiter was hand operated and made a great deal of noise the footmen and pages preferred to run up and down stairs balancing heavy trays rather than disturb the guests with its wailing mechanism.
At the opposite end of the house, Queen Elizabeth's bedroom is reached up the stone stairs in the turret, which she managed to navigate until the end of her life. (In the 1950s she restored the lift that the Imbert-Terrys had installed, but she rarely used it except for regular Sunday-morning descents to talk to the chef and his staff in the kitchen, after which she would insist on walking up the narrow stairs before leaving for church.) Her bedroom has north-, east- and south-facing windows which enabled her to keep an eye not only on her cattle and sheep but also on the comings and goings of guests in the driveway. Ceilings and walls are all painted light blue; her bed covers and the headboard are also blue and have faded gently with the years. The room is modestly furnished with a simple blue-painted wardrobe and mahogany chest of drawers.
Near her room is a bedroom with a small four-poster bed with pale-blue hangings. This is called Princess Margaret's Bedroom, although the Princess never spent a night there. She did not much like 'Mummy's draughty castle'. At the western end of the corridor is Lady Doris Vyner's Bedroom; this looks out on the Castle's walled garden, which Queen Elizabeth cherished. The garden is surrounded by the fifteen-foot high Great Wall of Mey, as it became known, to shield the flowers, shrubs and vegetables from the worst of the elements. Everything grown there had to be chosen for its resistance to wind and sea spray. Queen Elizabeth was pleased to be able to grow even her favourite old rose, Albertine, on the south-facing wall between the garden and the Castle; within the garden a complicated network of seven-foot-high hedges of privet, currant and elder protected flowerbeds of marigolds, pansies, dahlias, primulas, nasturtiums and sweet peas. A wide variety of fruits and vegetables was grown for the dining table.71 Near the Castle is Longoe Farm, where she insisted, despite the expense, on raising her livestock. Whenever she was at Mey she would walk down through the gardens and policies (fields) between the Castle and the sea to visit her animals and talk to those who cared for them, especially the McCarthy family who farmed the land. She took great pleasure in showing off the cattle and sheep to knowledgeable farmers and stockmen who occasionally came on organized visits, and in getting their views 'the more forthright and frank the better!' said Martin Leslie, her factor. At such visits tea, chocolate cake and drams of whisky were served in the dining room. 'Afterwards a Page reported on the whisky consumption and the hostess got much satisfaction, and amus.e.m.e.nt, judging how well her hospitality had been received while marvelling at her guests' capacity.' She would show her cattle and sheep at both local and national shows. When Leslie went up to Mey in her absence, she would ask him to telephone her every day to tell her 'how the people are, how the stock are looking, what Caithness is looking like and if the weather is fine and the skies are beautiful'.72 The Mey Visitors' Book is a large brown-leather volume. Its first page is inscribed 'Arrival at Wick Airport 1952' and a photograph shows Queen Elizabeth at the bottom of the steps of a plane, being greeted by the Vyners. She is all in black, wearing a string of pearls and a long fur stole. This is followed by photographs of her and the Vyners on a trawler and taking a picnic on the cliffs. The first signatures of guests appear in October 1959 they include Queen Elizabeth's niece Elizabeth Elphinstone, Martin Gilliat and E. H. 'Mouse' Fielden, an RAF veteran who had been appointed the first captain of the King's Flight by King Edward VIII in 1936 and was reappointed in the next two reigns.
Fielden was a courageous man; during the war he had won the Distinguished Flying Cross for flying British agents in and out of occupied France in tiny Lysander planes. In 1941 he brought back a bottle of that year's wine and presented it to the King. According to the historian Kenneth Rose, the King served the bottle to Winston Churchill, at one of their weekly lunches, 'teasing his guest by refusing to say how he had come by it'.73 Fielden worked hard within the postwar Whitehall bureaucracy to ensure the best and safest planes for his royal charges; he was an exuberant and delightful man and became a long-standing friend of Queen Elizabeth.
These and many other guests both friends and members of her Household Elizabeth Ba.s.set, David McMicking, Olivia Mulholland, Adam Gordon, Ruth Fermoy and her niece Margaret Elphinstone, with her husband Denys Rhodes, came frequently over the decades. In 1970 and in later years Archie Winskill,* the Captain of the Queen's Flight and a popular guest, was often invited it was of him that Queen Elizabeth was reported to have said, 'It's people like Archie who make it worth putting lipstick on.'
During the 1970s the guests at Mey were younger and occasionally more high-spirited. The Visitors' Book is filled with more colour snapshots of picnics and individuals. One shows a picnic basket close to piles of rusting steel tubing and is ent.i.tled 'Lunch in a rubbish dump'. In 1973 a young officer in the Blues and Royals of whom she was fond, Andrew Parker Bowles, was invited with his wife Camilla. Parker Bowles's father Derek was an old and close friend of Queen Elizabeth.
There was grouse shooting at Mey for the guests, but the birds became more and more scarce, as elsewhere in Scotland; the keeper, who was only six months younger than his employer, organized days of walked-up grouse shooting until he was well into his nineties. Lunches were almost always out, at various favourite picnic places which included Captain's House, a cottage with spectacular views of the Castle and the Pentland Firth, and Ralph Anstruther's nearby home at Watten.
In 1975 a young man named Ashe Windham arrived at Mey. Windham, who served in the Irish Guards from 1976 to 1987, was a friend of Lord ('Mikie') Glamis, the son of Queen Elizabeth's nephew Fergus, seventeenth Earl of Strathmore. He invited Windham to come with him to visit his great-aunt at Mey; she liked the young man and from that first encounter grew many years of service and friendship from Windham.
Every Sunday at Mey she worshipped in her own pew at Canisbay Church. From 1959 the minister was the Rev. George Bell. He and his wife were nervous when they first met the Queen Mother but she put them at their ease, inviting them to the Castle every year.74 On Bell's retirement the Queen Mother provided him with a cottage, and when he fell ill, she visited him. After his death, Mrs Bell said, 'she was a tremendous support to me ... I am sure she realised exactly how I felt, because she had experienced the same thing, at a much younger age too.'75 Mrs Bell, still regularly invited to the Castle, would entertain the Queen Mother and her guests with comic recitations of popular Scottish poetry, for which she had a talent. One in particular, 'Bella Macrae', was a great favourite and Queen Elizabeth named a horse after the heroine. Another was 'McAllister Dances before the King', the tale of a Scotsman who went to London and stunned the King and particularly the Queen with his prowess as a dancer. The last two verses raised especial smiles when Mrs Bell recited them at Mey: And then the gracious queen herself
Came shyly o'er to me
And pinned a medal on my breast
For everyone to see.
Her whisper I shall ne'er forget,
Nor how her eyes grew dim.
'Ach, where were you, McAllister,
The day I married him!'
When Mrs Bell succ.u.mbed to Alzheimer's, Queen Elizabeth continued to ask her to tea, with her daughter Christine Shearer.76 George Bell's successor at Canisbay Church, the Rev. Alex Muir, found the Queen Mother interested in church affairs and always keen to discuss the hymns and the sermons. He thought that she had 'a very strong and genuine faith, which I'm sure has been a great support to her. She loves to worship G.o.d.'77 Muir had a guitar which he not only played in the pulpit but brought to dinner at the Castle. The Queen Mother encouraged her guests to sing along with his hymns and songs, which included a Glasgow street favourite (here Martin Leslie's wife Catriona, who knew the song, was the only one to join in), 'Ye Cannae Shove Yer Grannie aff a Bus'.78 Britannia's visit was a high point every summer. The Queen would start her annual holiday aboard, sailing around the Western Isles and then around the north coast of Scotland before disembarking finally at Aberdeen. This was one of the most cherished breaks of the year for both the monarch and her family.
The yacht anch.o.r.ed off Scrabster, the nearest port to Mey, and the family came ash.o.r.e and motored over to the castle. There Queen Elizabeth laid on a splendid lunch, with Oeufs Drumkilbo usually on the menu. Then the Queen would often lead a party down to the beach to clean up rubbish and make a bonfire. Sometimes there was croquet on the lawn. After tea the yacht party returned to Scrabster. Then in the early evening the local coastguards would bring to the Castle all the time-expired maroons and flares from the north of Scotland which they would let off as the yacht steamed past on its way to Aberdeen. Britannia and her escorting frigate would reply with fireworks while the Mey party lined the Great Wall of Mey and waved dog towels, tea towels and handkerchiefs.
It became a habit for the Queen and her mother to exchange doggerel over ship-to-sh.o.r.e radio, via the Coast Guard. One year came these words from the yacht, to be sung to the tune of 'O Worship the King': We send our best thanks
For lunch and good cheer
Though skies may be grey
Warm welcome was there
Pavilioned in Splendour
The Castle of Mey
Gave all of the family
A wonderful day.79
AT THE END of her summer holiday at Mey, Queen Elizabeth would travel 180 miles south to her other Scottish home, Birkhall, hidden in the trees of the Balmoral estate and lulled by the waters of the River Muick rushing beside it. Here she spent several weeks every year in spring and in early autumn. It is an attractive house, a typical Scottish lodge built of stone, harled and painted white. The front door faces east, is approached by stone steps and has a canopy above it supported by tree trunks painted 'Balmoral grey'.
In the mid-1950s the Queen paid to have the house extended for her mother; a corrugated-iron-roofed extension was torn down and in its place was built a drawing room and a wing of bedrooms single rooms for bachelors on the ground floor and doubles above. A round tower containing a staircase connected the old and new wings. Arthur Penn played a large part in redesigning and redecorating the house at that time. After it had been completed, it was realized that no provision had been made for a downstairs gentlemen's lavatory. Penn helped devise such a closet s.p.a.ce under the tower staircase and Queen Elizabeth performed an opening ceremony in which the lavatory was filled with flowers from the garden and she declared it open by pulling the chain and saying 'I name this "Arthur's Seat".'80 The house is on raised ground, surrounded to the north by trees. The gra.s.s terrace on the south side sweeps down to a typical Scottish garden, with rows of vegetables between gravel paths and flower borders.
Birkhall had its own particular smell which, to those who visited often, had its own poignancy. It was the aroma of juniper twigs burned on the fire, mingled with the scents of roses and sweet peas which filled the house in the early autumn. There was the smell of smoking lavender too, from the incense burner which William Tallon would swing as he walked down the corridors to summon the guests for dinner. The house breathed warmth, life and laughter, according to one frequent guest.81 Features of Birkhall's earlier days remained: the tartan carpets, and the extraordinary collection of Spy and Ape cartoons of famous Victorians and Edwardians, left to the house by a former occupant and courtier, Sir Dighton Probyn VC.* They lined the main corridor and the stairs, providing guests with endless subjects of conversation. Queen Elizabeth added her own works of art many of her Seago paintings were hung in the drawing room and dining room, and Kathleen Scott's sensitive sculpture of King George VI stood near the entrance to the drawing room. In the dining room, bronze figures of Highlanders running, tossing the caber, putting the shot and throwing the hammer stood on the sideboard and sometimes on the dining table. The walls were lined with Queen Elizabeth's collection of eight grandfather clocks an echo of her youth, for the dining room at Glamis was also full of clocks. She enjoyed pointing out to guests their different characters. The cacophony when they chimed which was seldom precisely together interrupted conversation to comical effect.
Queen Elizabeth liked to go to Birkhall in May for the fishing and because it afforded her a complete re-run of spring. Long after the daffodils at Royal Lodge had withered, their northern cousins on the banks of the Dee were beginning to emerge from winter sleep. There was still snow on the slopes of Lochnagar, and the river teemed with life as the salmon forged upstream in search of sp.a.w.ning places. In a crevice on the rock face opposite the Polveir pool there was a dipper's nest, and every year Queen Elizabeth took great pleasure in observing the movements of the parents and wondering how they were raising their young.82 At her Scottish homes, Queen Elizabeth often wore aged blue tweed jackets and tartan skirts and a blue felt hat with a sprig of heather and a feather held in place by a badge containing a cairngorm stone. She called such clothes 'old friends you never get rid of old friends'. Everywhere she went she was accompanied by the latest in many generations of corgis.
She did not believe there was much purpose in having guests in the Highlands unless they took advantage of the great outdoors. After lavish traditional breakfasts, guests were supposed to be usefully employed either shooting on the hill, fishing or walking. She leased Corndavon moor from the Invercauld Estate next to Balmoral for many years, as the King had done.
A particular feature of her shoots was the tradition, followed from 1965 to 1974, of having student beaters from St Andrews and Aberdeen Universities. There was no shortage of applicants for a month on the moors. Michael Briggs, one of the students from St Andrews, recalled the sheer sense of fun she displayed. 'One of her favourite little things was to glance across at Lochnagar and say, "Isn't Lochnagar looking beautiful today?" And then she would bend down and say, "Isn't Lochnagar beautiful, even upside down!" She would have us in st.i.tches because you knew she was going to do it.' At the end of the month, Queen Elizabeth always gave a c.o.c.ktail party for the student beaters. 'The last time, we all presented her with a crystal rose bowl. I had to give a little speech and one of her wonderful friends, Mr d.i.c.k Wilkins, came up to me afterwards and said, "I saw a tear in Her Majesty's eye when you were speaking." '83 The Corndavon lease ran out in 1974 and she decided not to renew it. Instead she took individual days on the hill when she had a house party that was particularly dedicated to shooting. From now on the focus of many of her guests shifted to the river. Queen Elizabeth had fished most of her life, at first mainly for trout. Salmon fishing became a pa.s.sion in the second half of her life. Her ghillie at Balmoral, Charlie Wright, said of her, 'she was a good fisher, she had good casting and was excellent at playing a fish. She liked catching fish herself, but she was even happier if her guests did so.'84 Evening fishing was much favoured at Birkhall. Once Queen Elizabeth was out very late and came back in the dark carrying, in triumph, a twenty-pound salmon. 'This is what kept me,' she declared.85 She continued fishing in her favourite pools on the Dee until her early eighties.
Her other pa.s.sion, which she indulged particularly at Birkhall, was for eating outside. Picnics there, as at Mey, could take place in high winds and even snow. She had favourite picnic places, which included the old Schoolhouse by the Gairn and the lodge at Loch Callater which, though dank, had magnificent views. The fare was generous; good drinks, little sausages from Ballater, prawn croquettes, Oeufs Drumkilbo, asparagus for starters. Then game or chicken pie, cold lamb cutlets, ham or cold beef, with baked potatoes wrapped in foil. In especially bad weather, picnics' could be held in the porch or even in the drawing room. Queen Elizabeth liked the informality and the sense of adventure involved. Picnics, she also claimed, were easier on the staff. Perhaps some were.
Back at the house there was tea to be taken in the drawing room, which featured an old gramophone with long-playing records of such old favourites as the Crazy Gang, and an equally aged television set for watching videos (rarely if ever the news). Ruth Fermoy would play the piano and Queen Elizabeth sang the old favourites 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes' or 'The Lambeth Walk'.
Often she played Racing Demon, with no holds barred. Frances Campbell-Preston wrote, 'She enjoyed winning.' She considered herself devilishly good at the game and she did usually win not only because of her skill but also because other guests worried that they might be asked to catch the midnight train south if they won too often. Almost everyone understood that. The Duke of Atholl, another compet.i.tive card player, did not. When, at the end of one evening, it appeared he had not won, he asked that the scores be counted once more. The discomfited equerry did so; it then seemed that the Duke had indeed scored the most points. It was a pyrrhic victory. He was not asked again.86 As time went by, the evenings became quieter fewer singsongs and games of cards, more videos, usually Dad's Army or Keeping Up Appearances; Fawlty Towers was another favourite. But the hostess insisted on dancing Scottish reels with her guests until the very end of her life.
Guests at Birkhall felt they had been happily transported into a world without time or travail. One of them, Sir Pierson Dixon, wrote of 'the charm and rhythm of life' there, and thanked Queen Elizabeth for thrilling hours on the moors', for lunches by the river, and for Lucullan dinners', quizzes and games. He had been refreshed and enlightened by his experience, and although he was now far away, 'in the mind's eye Birkhall is close and brilliant.'87 * These figures can be compared with those of other younger members of the Royal Family. In a sample year, 1984, Queen Elizabeth carried out 115 engagements at home and 16 abroad; Princess Margaret 161 at home and 25 abroad; the Queen 391 at home and 121 abroad; the Prince of Wales 204 at home and 112 abroad. (Information kindly supplied by Tim O'Donovan) * This was The Last Baron, by David Munir. According to Jonathan Dimbleby's biography of the Prince of Wales, Prince Charles had been understudy for the Duke of Gloucester (that is, the future Richard III), but had to take over when the boy playing the Duke suddenly left the school. Dimbleby records that 'there were sn.i.g.g.e.rs when he intoned a prayer which included the line "And soon may I ascend the throne", but he got a good write-up in the Cheam School Chronicle.' (Jonathan Dimbleby, The Prince of Wales, p. 43) * R. A. Butler (190282), leading Conservative Party politician, known as Rab. Architect of the 1944 Education Act, Butler had a high reputation and became one of the few politicians to serve as chancellor, home secretary and foreign secretary. He was twice pa.s.sed over for the premiership.
* The first Duke of Leeds had been Sir Thomas...o...b..rne. Better known as the Earl of Danby, he was a minister of Charles II and was impeached by the Whigs and imprisoned in the Tower. Danby was one of those who invited William of Orange to England in 1688 and his adherence to the plot was important to the Whigs because he was a leading Tory; the dukedom was his reward from the new king, William III. D'Arcy Osborne was the twelfth and last duke.
* Another effigy was to be made of Queen Elizabeth at the same time, so that she would be represented at the age she was when the King died, when the time came for her own burial. This was in accordance with royal tradition; effigies of the widowed Queen Victoria, Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary were made not long after their husbands' deaths for the same reason.
At the time when the project was put to Epstein, he was engaged in making a bas-relief of Queen Elizabeth's friend Bishop Woods, who had died in 1953, for Lichfield Cathedral. Epstein expressed interest, and was sure he could make effigies that would not be out of place in St George's Chapel. But Queen Elizabeth's advisers decided otherwise. (RA QEQM/PRIV/MEM) * Graham Sutherland OM (190380), multi-talented English artist who was an official war artist in the Second World War. His most famous portrait was probably that of Somerset Maugham (1949). But the most notorious was that which he painted of Winston Churchill in 1954. Lady Churchill disliked it so much that she had it destroyed. In 1962 Sutherland created a huge tapestry, Christ in Glory, for the new Coventry Cathedral which replaced the original building bombed in the war.
Pietro Annigoni (191088), acclaimed Italian fresco painter and portraitist whose work was influenced by Renaissance rather than modernist traditions. Among his most celebrated subjects were Queen Elizabeth II (1954), Princess Margaret (1957) and Pope John XXIII (1962).
* Sir Gladwyn Jebb had been created Baron Gladwyn in 1960.
* The Rt Rev. Horace Donegan (190091), Bishop of New York 195072. Born in England, he moved with his family to the United States when he was ten. He was a strong advocate of the rights of women, black people and the poor, and according to his obituary in the New York Times he transformed the social consciousness of his New York diocese. He was made an honorary Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1957. (New York Times, 30 November 1991) * Air Commodore Sir Archibald Winskill (19172005), a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain, was appointed captain of the Queen's Flight in 1968.
* See note.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.
QUEEN VOYAGER.
19611967 'It would be so delicious to go to France'
QUEEN ELIZABETH became, in her sixties and beyond, an even more avid traveller, for both duty and pleasure. Her North American, African and Australasian tours in the 1950s had shown that she could still contribute to the role of the monarchy in maintaining and strengthening Britain's links with the Commonwealth, and in fostering good relations with foreign countries. As she grew older she lost none of her enthusiasm for such visits. Their number did not diminish until she reached her seventies, although like royal tours in general they tended to become shorter, partly because of easier and faster air travel. The pattern changed there were no more trips to sub-tropical Africa. She made one more tour to New Zealand and Australia, but otherwise within the Commonwealth she travelled mostly to Canada. Her contribution to diplomatic relations at home and abroad was still valued: visiting heads of state called at Clarence House, she attended state banquets in their honour, and she made two unusual and diplomatically significant foreign visits, to Tunisia and Iran, as well as briefer trips within Europe.
Spring 1961 saw her embarking in Britannia to Tunisia on a visit instigated by the Foreign Office as a demonstration of British goodwill. No member of the Royal Family had previously visited the country, which had gained its independence from France in 1956. The President, Habib Bourguiba, was seen as an important voice of moderation in Africa; moreover he had frequently made gratifying public comments on Britain's handling of decolonization. To return the compliment, the Foreign Office suggested that a visit by the Queen Mother would 'do much to confirm our regard for Bourguiba and our interest in Tunisia'. She would be a particularly appropriate envoy because it appeared that Tunisians, especially women, already regarded her with interest and affection.1 The royal yacht set off in fine weather down the English Channel. Among those on board was Brigadier Bernard Fergusson,* whom Queen Elizabeth had invited to join the royal party because he knew Tunisia well and was a fluent French-speaker. His hostess, Fergusson wrote to his wife, was in excellent form, cracking endless jokes, including her own line in funny voices, from c.o.c.kney to French. In the Bay of Biscay they were able to spend a lot of time on deck. They were all eating too much, Queen Elizabeth said, 'and I forgot to bring my skipping-rope. I shall have to do this instead.' Whereupon 'she went gliding off across the sun deck doing mock eurythmics throwing her hands up in the air at every hop ... She is so obviously enjoying herself madly.'2 They stopped in the British dependent territory of Gibraltar where the crowds were 'almost delirious'. Even Spaniards joined in with enthusiasm, which they had not been allowed to do during an earlier visit by the Queen and Prince Philip.3 When Britannia set sail again, the weather in the Mediterranean deteriorated. And, as they approached Tunis, so did the situation in Algeria, where rebellion broke out among the French troops stationed there. There were fears that Tunisia might be drawn into the conflict and Queen Elizabeth sent word to President Bourguiba offering to postpone her visit. The answer was non.4 Before landing, she prepared meticulously for her speech in French in honour of Monsieur le President although she said that it didn't matter a hoot what she said as no one ever listened. They arrived at Tunis on 24 April, with a gale blowing, but in bright sunshine. The banquet at which she spoke that night was not easy. The President was tired and worried about Algeria, Tunisian officials altered the seating plan at the last moment and even Queen Elizabeth could not make the conversation flow.5 Nonetheless, according to Fergusson, she gave her speech 'quite charmingly, smiling at the President with every sentence.' Dinner, served with fruit juices, included 'brik a l'oeuf,' a deep-fried pancake containing an egg. Back on board, Queen Elizabeth called for champagne and they all dissected the evening. She described how her brik had exploded and covered her chin with egg.6 The next day after various formal engagements Queen Elizabeth gave the President a return banquet aboard Britannia. This was a much more enjoyable occasion than the night before; the British Amba.s.sador, Anthony Lambert, called it 'a masterpiece' because of Queen Elizabeth's 'warm and gracious personality'. The Belgian Amba.s.sador, the doyen of the diplomatic corps, whispered to Lambert, 'I feel I am in a dream; so does everyone else.' The effect on the President was the most marked he seemed to relax and tell Queen Elizabeth his entire life story.
Over the next two days arrangements were constantly altered by the Tunisian hosts, a practice which Lambert hoped their guest found diverting rather than fatiguing. She visited a women's organization, a foundling hospital and the Islamic Museum in Tunis; at Medjez el Bab she saw the Commonwealth War Cemetery (where there were the graves of many officers and men of her own regiments). To the Amba.s.sador's alarm she was driven through the narrow streets of Kairouan, where religious feeling ran very high, and was shown the Great Mosque. She visited Sousse and Monastir, the President's birthplace. At a reception for 250 people which she gave on board Britannia, British Emba.s.sy staff 'worked like a team of well-trained collies', cutting out and bringing forward individuals for presentation, so that she spoke to at least a hundred of them. All in all, the Amba.s.sador declared the visit 'a brilliant success' for Anglo-Tunisian relations and 'one more personal triumph for Her Majesty'. The universal verdict was 'La Reine Mere a conquis tous les coeurs.'7 In June that year Queen Elizabeth was obliged to cancel several engagements after breaking a bone in her foot. 'It is a great bore', she wrote to D'Arcy Osborne, 'because one cannot get a shoe on, & therefore I cannot hop round Hospital wards, shipyards, Universities, garden parties, picture galleries, boys schools, girls schools, race meetings, Agricultural Shows, Civic Centres, slum clearances, Horse Shows, regimental reviews, and all my usual treats!'8 Nevertheless she managed to get to Newcastle on Tyne on 27 June to launch the Northern Star, a Shaw Savill liner. It was on this occasion that she was presented with the unfinished portrait by Augustus John for which she had sat in the early months of the war, and which the directors of Shaw Savill and of the Vickers Armstrong shipyard had acquired. She was delighted.
Business could always be combined with pleasure, if only because of Queen Elizabeth's natural inclination to enjoy herself; but on her visit to Northern Ireland in April 1962, when among other engagements she attended the 350th anniversary celebrations of the town of Enniskillen, visited her regiment the 9th/12th Royal Lancers at Lisanelly camp and opened the new Department of Physics at Queen's University, there was the special bonus of a racing victory. At Down-patrick racecourse she watched her horse Laffy win the major race 'in front of an enthusiastic and record crowd'.9 This trip was followed at the end of the month by a pleasurable cruise in Britannia to Cornwall, where she visited a spring flower show and had tea with a young farmers' club in Truro. In Devon she opened the Tamar Bridge and then spent a day island-hopping by helicopter in the Scillies before sailing back to Portsmouth.
IN JUNE 1962 Queen Elizabeth made her first visit to Canada since 1954. The main purpose was to celebrate the centenary of the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada, of which she was colonel-in-chief. The regiment was based at Montreal, but at the request of the Canadian government she agreed to 'balance' her stay there with a visit to Toronto, the home of her other regiment, the Toronto Scottish, and of the famous Woodbine racecourse.10 That set the pattern for several more Canadian visits care was taken to include both regiments, and both English- and French-speaking areas.
There was a second purpose to the visit: the Canadian government was, perhaps optimistically, keen to establish that members of the Royal Family could come to Canada for limited trips in the same way as they visited different parts of Britain. This visit was therefore kept as low key and easy for her as possible.11 She had a full programme nonetheless; in Montreal this included six Black Watch engagements, a garden party and several civic events. One day's engagements filled fifteen hours.
The next four days were spent in Ottawa, where Queen Elizabeth was the guest of the Governor General, Major General Georges Vanier, and carried out another dozen engagements, including the presentation, as colonel-in-chief of the Royal Army Medical Corps, of an RAMC sword to her other Canadian regiment, the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps. She attended a civic luncheon at which, as her lady in waiting Jean Rankin commented, 'iced water was drunk', and dined with the Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker.12 For her Toronto visit Queen Elizabeth stayed at Batterwood House in Port Hope with Vincent Ma.s.sey, who had been governor general at the time of her 1954 visit, Her last day, Sat.u.r.day 16 June, began with a long hot drive into Toronto for a civic reception where the guard of honour provided by the Toronto Scottish Regiment fired a royal salute which was so loud that it smashed windows. After an official lunch she was able to escape to one of her favourite places a racecourse. At the Woodbine track she watched one of Canada's premier races, the Queen's Plate Stakes. That night she flew home with the eloquent thanks of the Governor General, who wrote that Canadians 'will never forget the grim war years when a gracious Queen stood strong and steadfast beside a n.o.ble and gallant King'.13 She had endeared herself to them again and 'Your Majesty has a great part to play for the Crown throughout the Commonwealth.' That was certainly her hope.14 *
AS EVENTS turned out, her next official Commonwealth tour was not for another three years. Meanwhile there were more short trips in Britannia in the British Isles. She sailed to the Channel Islands for four days in May 1963, her first visit since she had been there with the King in 1945. The trip was nearly disrupted by gale-force winds. A local press photograph shows Queen Elizabeth, her petal hat firmly anch.o.r.ed with a large scarf tied under her chin, seated next to the indomitable Dame of Sark, Sybil Hathaway, who had stoutly resisted the German occupation. Despite the wind, the two women drove around the island in the Dame's open carriage no cars were allowed on Sark. She flew on to Jersey in weather so bad, her lady in waiting Jean Rankin recorded, that the spectators were appalled. Britannia was forced to take refuge in a sheltered bay; even so, the heavy swell made it difficult for Queen Elizabeth to get aboard from the royal barge, and dinner at Government House had to be cancelled. On the last day she toured Alderney, strong winds and choppy seas notwithstanding.15 In July she paid a visit to the Isle of Man, presiding at the island's parliament, the Tynwald, and attending its Banquet. She drove to Douglas in a horse-drawn tram and met crowds of children and, along with other engagements in the island, again gave a dinner party on board Britannia before setting sail for Portsmouth. On her way home she stopped at St Mawes in Cornwall for a convivial lunch with d.i.c.k Wilkins.
In October she flew to Northern Ireland, where she opened the War Memorial Building in Belfast and was given a standing ovation at a civic luncheon. In cold and windy weather at the Abercorn Barracks at Ballykinlar next day the 1st Battalion 3rd Royal Anglian Regiment, of which she was colonel-in-chief, paraded for her and she presented medals. A trip to the Maze racecourse had been included in her programme that afternoon, but visibility was so poor that it was almost impossible to see the horses, and the day ended unhappily, with a charity film premiere of what turned out to be 'a very bad film', according to the lady in waiting, Rampage starring Robert Mitchum and Jack Hawkins.16 A few weeks earlier Queen Elizabeth had agreed to make a tour of several weeks to Australia and New Zealand in 1964. She had been invited to open the third Adelaide Festival of Arts, of which she was patron; visits to other states and to New Zealand were built around that. All was arranged. Then on Sunday 2 February, she felt unwell and was admitted to the King Edward VII Hospital. It was entirely unexpected the frequent attacks of flu or tonsillitis she had suffered when she was younger were now behind her and she rarely admitted to being ill. She hated even taking her temperature; she thought that a tiny homeopathic tablet or powder would cure her of any complaint and she tended to think that most complaints were imagined, anyway. Her Scottish childhood had taught her that nothing was better than open windows in the bedroom or a stiff walk in the wind to 'blow the germs away'.17 Not this time. Clarence House announced that she was to have an emergency appendectomy, and she underwent surgery on 4 February.* Martin Gilliat immediately sent telegrams around the world to cancel the tour. Sackfuls of letters and vast quant.i.ties of flowers arrived for her at the hospital. Within a few days she was receiving members of her family and then her friends. Prince Philip wrote to say 'how happy and relieved I am that everything has gone off (come out!) so well'.18 Prince Charles, writing from Gordonstoun, told her that after he had had his appendix removed in 1962 he made the mistake of watching Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques on television. 'I literally nearly split my sides laughing. My goodness it was agony! ... I wish I could come and visit you like you visited me, but as I'm at this horrible place, it's impossible.'19 She returned home to Clarence House on 16 February. Her surgeons advised that she undertake no public engagements for two months. But a two-week convalescent cruise in the Caribbean on board Britannia proved therapeutic. She visited more than a dozen islands and the Queen commented that her programme looked 'madly busy and not at all what I had envisaged as a rest cruise for you'.20 But she thoroughly enjoyed it all. Sometimes they anch.o.r.ed off secluded beaches, and while the rest of her party swam, Queen Elizabeth collected sh.e.l.ls. They had an evening picnic on a beach in Montserrat. 'One of the sailors played an accordion and we danced a reel by the light of the moon. As the beach sloped, we found ourselves dancing gradually down to the water, & the last grand chain was well into the sea.'21 In the Antipodes, however, disappointment over the cancelled tour was real and widespread. Allen Brown, the bard of her last tour and now Australian High Commissioner in London, sent a poem to Martin Gilliat: Trusting Fate would be propitious