The Queen Mother Part 4
Behind the fun, the war. By now Germany and Britain were each determined to starve the other out by means of naval blockades. The French had suffered more than 3,350,000 casualties and the British over a million. The Germans had lost nearly two and a half million and were still fighting their enemies on both Eastern and Western Fronts. Food riots in Germany were increasing, infant mortality was growing fast. The German General Staff decided to resort to unrestricted submarine warfare ships of neutral nations, including the United States, were now targeted. The US Congress responded by voting for war. A million American men were under training, but the Germans gambled that they could destroy Britain and France before the US army could be deployed in Europe.149 Att.i.tudes became more intransigent. In April 1917 Albert Einstein wrote from Berlin to a friend in Holland of the way in which nationalism had altered the young scientists and academics he knew. 'I am convinced that we are dealing with a kind of epidemic of the mind. I cannot otherwise comprehend how men who are thoroughly decent in their personal conduct can adopt such utterly ant.i.thetical views on general affairs. It can be compared with developments at the time of the martyrs, the Crusades and the witch burnings.'150 Soon after Easter, George Dawson-Damer, brother of Fergus's widow Christian, was killed. Elizabeth was shocked. 'He was very nice, gay, good looking & very amusing. Its dreadful.'151 Bad news came even closer. On Thursday 3 May Lord Strathmore received a telegram at Glamis from the War Office to say that his son Michael was missing in northern France. He immediately telegraphed to Rose in London: 'BAD NEWS. MICHAEL MISSING APRIL 28. WAR OFFICE WILL WIRE FURTHER NEWS. TELL MOTHER THEY SAY NOT MEAN NECESSARILY KILLED OR WOUNDED.'152 Michael was adored in the family, and for Elizabeth he had always been an admired and amusing elder brother.153 From Glamis she immediately wrote to Beryl, 'I don't know what to say, you know how we love Mike, and it would be so terrible if he's killed. It's horrid & selfish of me to write you a miserable letter, but I'm so unhappy, & added to that I cant help worrying about Mother in London. I thank the Lord that Rosie is there. It's dreadful, and somehow I never thought Mike could get killed. If he's all right, he must be, I'll tell you. Your loving Elizabeth.'154 One can only imagine how Lady Strathmore must have suffered from this latest blow. But she knew how Elizabeth must also be feeling and wrote to her that very afternoon: 'Isn't this terrible news of darling Mikie however Sidney has just been to the W. Office with great difficulty was allowed to see the casualty lists & in the R. Scots 16th Bat 2 officers were wounded, & nine missing, so that is all we can hear for the present he may be a prisoner with the other 8, or they may all be killed. Goodbye sweet darling. I wish you were here.'155 Michael's commanding officer, Colonel Stephenson, wrote to Lord Strathmore with more details: on 28 April Michael had been leading his company in an attack at the village of Roeulx, near Arras, when they were heavily counter-attacked. Some of the brigade's troops were captured, but Stephenson did not know to which battalion they belonged.156 On 8 May he wrote again saying that there were reports from German prisoners that a considerable number of British troops had been surrounded and captured at Roeulx village. But there was still no news of who they were, and this would not be known until the lists arrived from Germany.157 Elizabeth found the waiting almost unbearable. 'Somehow I never thought anything could happen to Mike,' she wrote to Beryl; 'everybody is so fond of him, but one forgets that doesn't count in a War.' Her mother was in a terrible state, she reported. Patrick was also at St James's Square waiting for a medical board, and he too was in a bad way. She apologized for writing 'such a depressed letter, and how I hope the next one will be mad & full of the usual rubbish. He [Mike] said in his last letter you know, "If I'm pipped, I think little John had better have my guns," and so he knew they were going to have a bad time I suppose.'158 (John was Patrick's son.) Feeling utterly wretched, Elizabeth took the train down to London on 7 May to be with her mother. By 12 May she was in bed with a temperature and a swollen face and neck, either one of her bad colds or perhaps, she thought, even measles.159 According to family legend, David was the only one who remained optimistic. He was thought to have some powers of second sight; he maintained, apparently, that he knew Mike was not dead because he had 'seen' him, in a house surrounded with fir trees, with his head bandaged.160 His sister's anxious letters at this time make no mention of this, but if the story is true, David was proved right. On the morning of 22 May, the telephone rang at St James's Square. It was c.o.x's bank saying that they had just received a cheque drawn by Mike since he went missing. He was a prisoner of war. Elizabeth wrote at once to Beryl: Ma Chere Medusa, I'm quite and absolutely stark, staring, raving mad. Do you know why? Canst thou even guess? I don't believe you can!
AM I MAD WITH MISERY OR WITH JOY?.
WITH.
!! JOY !!.
Mike is quite safe! Oh dear, I nearly, nearly burst this morning, we had a telephone message from c.o.x's to say they'de received a cheque from Mike this morning, so we rushed round, and it was in his own handwriting, & they think he's at Carlsruhe. Isnt it too, too heavenly. I cant believe it, yes I can but you know what I mean, & how awful the last 3 weeks have been. Yours madly, Elizabeth161 A stream of friends and relations called at the house to give their congratulations on Mike's survival. Barson, the devoted butler, naturally 'had a good old bust-up in honour of Mike! Mosh (hic) aushpishush auccashun (hic). What o,' Elizabeth wrote to Beryl as she lay in front of the fire drying her hair. She suggested they go to the theatre together to celebrate.162 Soon there came a postcard from Mike himself. Dated 4 May, it had taken over a month to be delivered. He wrote: A postcard to let you know my address which is under my name. [It was the officers' prisoner-of-war camp at Karlsruhe.] You can send me various things chiefly food, but I want an Auto-strop razor & lots of blades most of all. Did you get a letter from me? Got here last night after a long journey. I've arrived here with absolutely nothing except what I stand up in, but am getting a cheque cashed today. Nothing much to tell you of here I'm afraid but I hope I shall be able to write a letter shortly. Just going to have a bath, I'm perfectly filthy & a long beard. Love to all. Ideal Milk, b.u.t.ter & bread & tea would be good, also shirts, vests, drawers, socks, flannel trousers (grey). Mike163 Eventually Elizabeth received a long letter in Mike's familiar bantering style, addressed to 'My darling Buffy' and written from a prisoner-of-war camp at Strohen, Hanover. Two or three lines of it apparently about the camp food were heavily inked out by the censor. Mike hoped his sister was having a good time dancing with Captain Phillips and could remember all the steps of the foxtrot. Not surprisingly, food and drink were his main interest. He asked for a weekly supply of flour, dripping and baking powder to make scones, and also macaroni, Cadbury's peppermint creams, plain chocolate and some cheap tobacco to roll his own cigarettes. He thought longingly of home: 'PW must be heavenly now & I suppose the strawberries are ripe now. How I should love to be crawling flat on my stomach under a net! We don't git no champagne, clarit, mosal or beeeer here wust look. I expect someone will censor that, at least I don't suppose they will realise that it is Hertfordshire, and concerns wet things.'164 Mike received his first letters, from May and Elizabeth, at the end of June. 'Great joy!' To his consternation, however, the letters did not mention sending food.165 By August the message had got through: he wrote to say that he had received sixty-nine parcels.166 In September he was moved to comparative luxury at Neu Brandenburg, where he reported that he was able to bathe daily in a lake, and had a soft bed and a balcony;167 later he was transferred to Schweidnitz in Silesia. His letters to his mother show that Elizabeth continued to write to him with lively accounts of her social life, but her letters have not survived.168 On her return to Glamis in glorious weather in the middle of June 1917, Elizabeth found new patients 'sixteen strange shy enormous men' lying on the lawn, she reported to Beryl. They politely saluted her and she talked to some of them at once, but she was more self-conscious than she had been when younger. 'We are so mutually afraid of each other!' The Clerk of the Forfar School Board had written to ask her to present medals and prizes at the school. She was terrified but her mother made it clear that it was her duty to agree. 'I had to accept, and I know I shall die. It's too dreadful, and the worst of it is, I KNOW Sister & the boys will want to come, oh it's terrible. I dream, or rather have nightmares about it!'169 Beryl was evidently not much impressed with her nervousness and Elizabeth complained that she was 'horribly unsympathetic ... It's too awful! Swine!'170 Afterwards she protested that she had been 'petrified'. There were many speeches; 'I, of course, made a long one, touching on many points including The Food Question, Education, Star Worship etc etc. It was greatly appreciated I a.s.sure you.'171 When she got to know the new soldiers, she liked them as she usually did. Just one of them was 'very good looking'. She was curious about people and was becoming more discriminating; she was meeting not only convalescent soldiers, but officers from the Dominions needing hospitality while on leave from the Front. As well as giving parties for Australian officers at St James's Square, the Strathmores opened Glamis to them and their Canadian and New Zealand counterparts. 'One very "interesting" one yesterday,' Elizabeth wrote. 'That's the only way I can describe him. Tall, blue eyes, very keen kind of face, clever & a terrific accent.'172 She was somewhat embarra.s.sed by a New Zealander, Lieutenant J. B. Parker. 'He is rather an old fashioned young man, & he paid me wonderful & weird compliments at all times.' She asked him how he thought of so many polite things to say, and he replied that 'he did'nt think of them, they came from his heart! I laughed. I could'nt help it! Poor young man he'll recover all right.'173 She was beginning to distinguish between men. 'Its funny how dull some men are, whilst others are so interesting. On one hand a little pipsqueak, with pink cheeks & a toothbrush moustache, whose only conversation is about theatres, the War & himself. And on the other hand a man who could'nt look a pipsqueak if he tried, who has lived by himself & observed nature there are such a lot of pipsqueaks!!! I shall be seventeen soon. d.a.m.n. I don't want to get any older.'174 The rain that July was terrible; the crops at Glamis were flattened. Soon after her birthday Elizabeth took to her bed for two weeks with what seemed like severe influenza. It was her fourth bout of feverish illness that year and Dr Morris, the Glamis doctor, was concerned lest she had caught from the soldiers some kind of trench fever, which could affect the heart. He ordered her to bed 'as my heart didn't beat enough or something'.175 By the beginning of September she was still unsteady on her feet and 'dash it all' she was not even allowed to walk, let alone play tennis 'as me 'eart is still weak'.176 At the end of the month she was still being dosed with raw eggs and brandy, and felt limp and tired.177 By 4 October, however, she had regained her spirits enough to enjoy a concert thrown by the soldiers at Glamis for the benefit of their colleagues at Forfar Hospital, who descended on the Castle for tea. It was a hilarious occasion.178 There was now something of a routine at Glamis. Elizabeth and her mother played and sang with the soldiers almost every evening. They would get through dozens of songs a night. One which they liked to hear her sing was 'Wonderful Girl, Wonderful Boy, Wonderful Time'.179 Always the war continued to strike the heart Patrick Ogilvy, third son of the Strathmores' close neighbour, Mabell, Countess of Airlie, was killed on 9 October; his eldest brother, Lord Airlie, was home from the war 'with very bad nerves'; and they heard that Zeppelins had dropped bombs all around St Paul's Walden, breaking windows.180 Hopes for peace seemed to have disappeared; when General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, who had commanded the Second Army on the Western Front in 1915, came to lunch at Glamis in September, Elizabeth was depressed to hear that 'he didn't think that there was any likelihood of the War ending for some time'.181 She was ever more aware of the human costs of the war. The motors that took the rested soldiers back to Dundee still brought an inexhaustible stream of more wounded men to fill their places. One day she went to Dundee Infirmary herself to visit one of her favourite patients at this time, Private C. Morris. His chest had been crushed on the battlefield, and he had been sent back from Glamis for more treatment. He was in no doubt of what he owed Elizabeth and her mother. 'I must say that I was never treated better in any part of the British Empire than I was treated at Glamis Castle,' he wrote to her, 'and I don't quite know how to thank the Strathmore family for all the kindness they have shown towards me.'182 He finally recovered and Elizabeth was delighted when her parents offered him a job as a gardener at St Paul's Walden.183 She found nothing so difficult as saying goodbye to men returning to the Front. At the end of November she had 'a nerve racking and terrible experience bidding goodbye to FOURTEEN men!' Among them was a sergeant to whom she had taken 'a violent affection' at the last minute he was dreadfully ugly but so nice that she 'begged Sister to push him downstairs or give him a blister or something' so that he could remain at Glamis. 'It's so dreadful saying goodbye, because one knows that one will never see them again, and I hate doing it.'
She always went to make her farewells after dinner, because the men would be driven away in the early morning and also because 'Sister likes to show me off in evening dress, because they never have seen evening dresses which embarra.s.ses me too dreadfully. They invariably look at my shoes, except the ones that gaze rapturously into my eyes sighing deeply all the while ...' She was aware how much she had changed since she was a child at the start of the war: 'oh! the difference from Dec. 1914! I was just remembering this evening, that night when Mr Brookes, Harold Ward, Teddy Daird (in pyjamas) & I had a bun fight in the crypt, and David chased Nurse A round the Ward with cocoa & water to pour, & how it all got spilt on the floor, & her black fury!! It was fun weren't they darlings?'184 Meanwhile groups of Australian and New Zealand officers came and went, to mixed reactions from their young hostess. There was a Mr Stubbins, who insisted on trying to teach her all about motors '& I don't understand & go to sleep'. To avoid him and other boring men, 'Mother & I have to pretend that we are going away on Sat.u.r.day! ... It's always worse when there is no male member of the family, I don't count Father because he so rarely appears.' Elizabeth was exasperated by Stubbins 'the first time I've ever scolded a man, & very successful it was. He was most penitent & I forgave him!! Just like a dog, the more you beat him (for a reason) the more he likes you alas!'185 Few people elicited such negative reactions.
At around this time Elizabeth had what appears to have been her first proposal of marriage; it was from the New Zealander, Lieutenant Parker. He asked her if her birthday were between 1 and 10 August, claiming that he had read an astrological book from which he had calculated that 'the' person for him would be born between those dates.186 To Beryl she wrote Mr Parker had sent her 'a no, I don't think I'll tell you. I can't.'187 She thought they would 'be migrating south soon to the land of bombs & war alarms & "excursions" '.188 In the event they had to stay at Glamis while a new ward of twelve more beds was created and an additional nurse recruited.189 But on 12 December, after tearful farewells, Elizabeth and her mother boarded the night train to London. When they arrived they heard that her sister Rose and Wisp Leveson-Gower had had a daughter. 'Isn't it exciting!' Elizabeth wrote. 'They'll have to call her Wisperina or Wisperia or something!'190 At around the same time Jock and Neva also had a daughter, Anne, and Elizabeth hoped that she would help take the place of Patricia, their firstborn who had died aged only eleven months in June 1917. Jock had been invalided out of the army, joined the Foreign Office and been sent to Washington. To Elizabeth's delight, Neva had written to say that her maid in Washington had met an English soldier who had been at Glamis: 'He apparently raved about it, & its heavenliness, & about me, & said he'd never forget me (!!), and who do you think it was? Dear Sergeant Broadhead!! Isn't that a curious coincidence? In all that huge continent, that the maid should have met a man who knew our family! He is training American recruits. Such a darling he was.'191 Christmas 1917 was spent quietly at St Paul's Walden. Two weeks later, on 8 January 1918, Elizabeth went to her first ball.* She chose a dress, had her hair done and rushed around looking for shoes. 'I'm going to my first real dance on Wednesday & feel rather terrified!' she wrote to Beryl. 'I'm sure I shall know n.o.body!' She was astonished to be lectured by her mother and David who told her 'that I ought to be more flirtatious. I nearly died of surprise. You know I daresay I've got rather quiet from having all those Australians and NZ (!!!) at Glamis, as one simply must sit on them!'192 She 'trembled all afternoon' before the dance, as she reported to Beryl; but there is no doubting the excitement and pleasure it gave her. 'I danced every single dance,* & Mother came to fetch me, & we departed at about 1.30. They had part of Ciro's black Band ... I enjoyed it very much. One could only dance with such few people tho' because the dances were so long, but I loved it, and enjoyed it fearfully. Do you know I think my dress really looked quite pretty.'193 From his prisoner-of-war camp in Germany Mike wrote to Lady Strathmore saying he was longing to hear about the ball. Elizabeth had sent him her photograph with her hair up, and he commented, 'what a pretty little thing Buffy has become'.194 On 7 February 1918 the Strathmores had a dance at St James's Square. It began as a 'tiny' party to pay back people who had invited Elizabeth out. But it grew as 'millions of people' asked themselves and by the day itself 'nearly everybody is coming. I really had no idea that the Strathmore family was so popular, it's awful,' she claimed to Beryl. A young naval lieutenant on whom she had taken pity at an earlier dance had rung her up '& we had a I-don't-know-how-to-describe-it talk.' She felt sorry for him. You know I've got a soft spot in my 'eart for a bhoy in blue, so 'ave you, and he was so pathetic!' She had written a four-page letter to Lieutenant Parker, 'but I simply can't get the last bit in! I wish I could talk to him, it's so difficult writing ... These young men do worry me so, I wish they wouldn't. Do come round, & give me some more of your sage (?) advice!'195 Ten years later she was to meet Parker again in New Zealand.
Men were fascinated by her. At dinner a few weeks later she met a young man from the American Emba.s.sy named Morgan. She thought he was 'the cutest thing out. He fair gives me the goat gee he's some kid cut it out Rube sling us no more of the canned goods, I'm fair up against this stunt, etc.'196 At Lady Hastings's dance in March she danced with Lord Settrington and many others. Charles Settrington was the eldest son of the eighth Duke of Richmond, and the brother of Doris Gordon-Lennox, with whom Elizabeth began a long and close friendship at this time.197 It was during this period that she met the Prince of Wales, widely spoken of as the most glamorous man in London. She danced with him twice at the c.o.kes' dance,* where she also danced with Lord Cranborne, who was to become another lifelong friend. At the Harcourts' a few nights later she sat between the Prince of Wales and Count Michael Torby. She found it both terrifying and enjoyable. 'As usual I danced the first dance with P.W., I don't know why, but I usually do!' In fact she danced three times with the Prince that night and several times with Victor Cochrane Baillie, a round young man with a large moustache whom she described as a faithful friend, 'very nice, but extremely ugly, poor thing'.198 Cochrane Baillie was smitten with her and wrote to ask her if she would 'deign' to write to him sometimes.199 The gaiety of her social life could not shut out the painful realities of the war, as her letters to Beryl Poignand in the spring of 1918 show. 'It was the last dance for some time, so tho' I enjoyed it very much, I felt slightly depressed at moments. Such a lot of these boys are going out quite soon in fact nearly everybody I know. I suppose they expect fearful casualties. They are so young, a great many only nineteen.'200 She worried about Ernest Pearce, now in the field near Arras. She heard that Lord Settrington was missing. (He had been taken prisoner.) 'I wonder if Peace will ever come. I feel as if I never want to go to a dance again, one only makes friends and then they are killed.'201 A few days later she wrote, 'Doesn't it make you curse & swear inside you when one thinks that if we'd had a decent Government the War might be over?'202 George Thirkell,* an Australian officer who had stayed at Glamis, wrote to her from 'In the Field, France': 'Just a note to let you know that I am still all OK though we have had a fairly strenuous time the last 6 weeks.' He had just escaped a German gas barrage and he now enclosed some 'souvenirs' for her, namely pieces of fabric from three 'Bosche' planes. The red piece came from the wing of Baron von Richthofen's plane, which had been shot down 'almost on top of my dug-out'. The Baron had brought down eighty Allied planes, Thirkell wrote. 'He was chasing a British plane when he was brought down by an Australian Lewis Gunner on the ground.'203 At the end of May Elizabeth went to Harwich to visit her brother-in-law Wisp on his destroyer, HMS Scott. She described the trip to the ship on board a launch, climbing the 'wavy ladder' up the side, saluting the sailors at the top; 'then one falls heavily down the hatch (is it?) into the waiting arms of a Sub or (preferably) a Lieut!'
The commanding officer, Admiral Tyrwhitt, came to dinner: everyone was frightened of him everyone except Elizabeth, and he invited her to lunch on his flagship. She went and was shown around by a very nice flag lieutenant 'it was unfortunate that when the time came to go, I was found eating chocolates in his cabin!! ... I do like sailors, they are such darlings. Soldiers, or the most beautiful officers, never awaken such thrills as a darling Lieut don't you agree? Pip pip.'204 In June 1918 she had 'a very riotous' lunch with Freddy Dalrymple Hamilton, who always made her laugh. At a dinner dance with Lord and Lady Powis she danced with both 'a funny little American with nice eyes, from the Emba.s.sy' and Lord Erskine, who walked her home. Each was furious when she danced with the other. 'I have suddenly taken to blushing again, I do hope it will go soon, it's such a bore.'205 The eager young American was called Sam d.i.c.kson, Third Secretary at the US Emba.s.sy; he began to telephone her and invited her to dinner. She had to explain to him 'that young ladies did NOT dine alone with young men at well known restaurants!!!' So her mother chaperoned them to dinner at the Berkeley and they then invited him back to the house where he and Elizabeth ate strawberries and talked till 11 p.m. He seemed lonely and told her all about his family life in the States. 'It sounds exactly what we imagine cowboys to be!'206 On 22 June her maternal grandmother, Mrs Scott, died at her home in Dawlish. Cecilia Strathmore went straight to Devon to organize the funeral, leaving Elizabeth to run the household in London. 'Oh dear! I do miss her so dreadfully,' Elizabeth wrote to Beryl. 'I never knew before how much I depended on her and more things seem to crop up for me to decide than I've ever known. It's always the way.'207 When she returned to Glamis in early August 1918 she found sixteen new soldiers; she did her best to get to know them all. She was also kept busy with duties in the local community: a bazaar at Glamis in aid of prisoners of war, at which they raised 300 despite a violent storm which blew down the marquee and ruined the lavender bags and trimmed hats which Elizabeth had made for her stall; a Baby Show at Arbroath; a charity sale at Forfar which, to her terror, she had to open with a speech. Meanwhile she made friends with an amusing Canadian, Lieutenant J. S. Reynolds, who had 'grasped me by the arrrm, & hurrrled me into safety!' in the storm at Glamis.208 By now the might of America was at last turning the war. The Allies had managed, at enormous cost, to halt the last great German offensive. In August 1918 many of the positions lost during the Battle of the Somme two years before were regained. The Allies attacked the length of the Western Front in a final mood of exhilaration. But the casualties mounted.
Elizabeth was worried for Lieutenant Reynolds, but in September he wrote to tell her that he and his unit were now advancing through northern France. They had collected 'tons of souvenirs from the Huns' and 'if I get out of this mess alive will send you an Iron Cross if you think it will be OK.'209 She copied a part of this letter to Beryl saying, 'Rather a nice letter don't you think? I think he thought he might get killed don't you?'210 A little later, he did indeed send her an Iron Cross, and she was delighted.211 At Holy Communion on Sunday 29 September four soldiers came to worship with Sister. Elizabeth was touched to see them all kneeling in their hospital blues before the altar. 'It really was a beautiful sight, tho' it gave me a lump in my throat. I keep on thinking of it. Poor dear boys.'
That month Austria began to sue for peace and German forces started to withdraw from the Western Front. As the warriors wound wearily towards peace, a new killer, influenza, began to rage. Twenty thousand American soldiers died of the disease in two months. Anarchy spread through Germany. On 9 November 1918 the Kaiser fled Berlin and, having finally agreed to abdicate, drove into exile in Holland. By now three of the dynastic empires of Europe had fallen, the Habsburgs, the Hohenzollerns and the Romanovs. Tsar Nicholas II and his family, King George V's cousins, had been brutally murdered in July 1918 by the Bolsheviks, who had seized power in Russia following the October Revolution in 1917.
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the Armistice effectively ended the war. Elizabeth was at Glamis and ever after she remembered the patients from the Castle, all dressed in their hospital blues, marching happily together up the long avenue to the pub. 'They went straight to the village to celebrate and I think they drank too much. Seats got broken up to make a bonfire and all that sort of thing. I can see them now, all going to enjoy this wonderful moment.'212 In London thousands of people rushed into the street and danced around bonfires all over town, even at the foot of Nelson's Column. King George V and Queen Mary appeared on the balcony of Buckingham Palace before the exultant crowds. In the next week they drove five times through London in an open carriage and everywhere they were cheered by ecstatic people. In a speech to the a.s.sembled Lords and Commons in the Palace of Westminster, the King said, 'May goodwill and concord at home strengthen our influence for concord abroad. May the morning star of peace, which is now rising over a war-worn world, be here and everywhere the herald of a better day, in which the storms of strife shall have died down and the rays of an enduring peace be shed upon all nations.'
Three-quarters of a million people from the United Kingdom had been killed. Another 200,000 from the Empire also died. France lost many more, both actually and proportionately. No one knows just how many people died around the world. Some say about ten million; others more. Russia alone is thought to have lost between 1,700,000 and 3,000,000 dead and another five million wounded. Typhus killed another million in the Balkans. Millions more were wounded, families were carved into pieces. Europeans were shocked by what they had done to themselves. Perhaps it is not quite true to say that an entire generation was lost, but it was scarred for ever.
Winston Churchill described well the nature of the war that had just ended.
No truce or parley mitigated the strife between the armies. The wounded died between the lines: the dead mouldered into the soil. Merchant ships and neutral ships and hospital ships were sunk on the seas and all on board left to their fate, or killed as they swam. Every effort was made to starve whole nations into submission without regard to age or s.e.x. Cities and monuments were smashed by artillery. Bombs from the air were cast down indiscriminately. Poison gas in many forms stifled or seared the soldiers. Liquid fire was projected upon their bodies. Men fell from the air in flames, or were smothered, often slowly, in the dark recesses of the sea. The fighting strength of armies was limited only by the manhood of their countries. Europe and large parts of Asia and Africa became one vast battle field on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran.213 The economic heart of the continent had been ravaged too. Millions were starving. Economic output in 1919 was a quarter below what it had been in 1914. And at the centre of the destruction lay shattered the country which had been the power of Europe before the war, Germany herself. 'We are at the dead season of our fortunes,' wrote John Maynard Keynes, a young economist. 'Never in the lifetime of men now living has the universal element in the soul of man burnt so dimly.'214 A letter that Elizabeth wrote to Beryl at the end of the month reflected the uncertain mood in the country after the initial euphoria of victory. Two Australian officers who had convalesced at Glamis had been to see her. They had had a nice and silly time, '& we yelled songs round the piano after tea'. Perhaps because of the long-drawn-out suspense of the war, she was now feeling depressed. 'Can't think why. No reason on earth. Everything is wonderful. So long waiting for Mike perhaps.'215 Mike finally came home. In the first week of 1919, Elizabeth and her mother were at St Paul's Walden when they received a telephone call to say that he was on a train. They rushed up to London. At the station they had to wait as five trains unloaded wounded, sick and disoriented soldiers whose appearance shocked Elizabeth. Finally Mike's train came in and they were able at last to embrace him. He seemed fairly well and cheerful, but he brought with him a friend called Lathom who looked very ill and was completely dazed. 'He merely sat & looked at the fire,' she told Beryl. 'Poor boys, they must have had a beastly time, they hate talking about it.'216 *
IN EARLY APRIL 1919 Elizabeth gave a play party. She and her sister-in-law, Jock's wife Neva, Emma Thynne, Mike, Captain Keenan and Charlie Settrington dined at the Ritz and then went to see George Robey perform in Joybells she thought he was 'too priceless'.217 Then she did something rather daring. Decades later she recalled 'creeping out of the house in St James's Square, round the corner into Duke Street and going off to lunch with a very nice young gentleman in one of those horrible little low cars'. They 'whizzed off' down the Portsmouth Road to a pub.218 The young gentleman was Charlie Settrington. It appears that they motored to Walton for lunch and then took a long walk on Box Hill. They had tea 'at an extraordinary place, where the waiter winked, & said he also came from London!' Writing to Beryl about it, Elizabeth maintained firmly that Charles was a dear, but just a friend. 'One's family always thinks that a man must be violently in love with one, which is so annoying if one is friends.'219 Although there was now a spate of engagements and weddings among her circle of friends, she seems to have had no desire to follow suit, and was sorry when Lavinia married Luke White in April.* 'It's rather a sad thing a wedding, don't you think?' she wrote to Beryl before setting off for Althorp with Katie Hamilton for the ceremony. 'Poor old Lavinia! Her last two days of spinsterhood.' 'I do hate weddings!' she commented afterwards.220 Later in the month she and David took her Canadian friend Lieutenant Reynolds to see a revue, Buzz-Buzz. She was amused by the officer's wildness and his fondness for alcohol; he was perhaps an early example of the appeal that raffish but entertaining characters had for her throughout her life. Towards the end of May the Lieutenant left England; he came to say goodbye one morning, bearing roses; she was still in bed. 'I was so sad at not seeing him ... he is so nice and wild!!!'221 On 28 June 1919 the Versailles Peace Treaty was signed. The King appeared again and again before ecstatic crowds on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. 'Please G.o.d,' he wrote in his diary, 'please G.o.d the dear old Country will now settle down and work in unity.'222 It later became conventional to decry the peace that was reached at Versailles. In truth it deserves a certain respect. The task facing its authors was almost impossible it was to reconcile ideals and expectations with recalcitrant realities. This was the first great European peace treaty which had to be drawn up with the views of democratic electorates in mind. France needed to believe herself protected from a third dose of German aggression, the British and the Americans had to deal with the overriding problem of central European security. Poland was resurrected. Serbia was enlarged into Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia was created out of the ruins of Austria-Hungary.* All these countries survived for most of the rest of the century and Poland thrives still today.
The peace agreement had to be a world settlement of the twenty-seven countries which signed the princ.i.p.al treaty, seventeen were outside Europe. The harshest parts of the treaty were the economic reparations which were imposed on Germany. The main intent was to recompense France and Belgium for the devastation they had suffered and to give both as much guarantee as possible that Germany could never rise to threaten them again.
When the treaty was signed at Versailles, smaller wars were still being fought. British troops were fighting alongside Generals Koltchak and Denikin and the White Russian forces still holding out against the new Soviet Union. They were there partly to secure British investments in Russia and partly to identify the British army with an antirevolutionary cause. Their presence gave Elizabeth one of her greatest heartbreaks of those years.
August 1919 found her, as always, at Glamis. It was a parched summer they had had no rain for three months. Plans to make a new tennis court had had to be postponed because the ground was so hard. There were still Canadian and Australian officers around for tea and she and her mother went to a sale of Friesian cattle, where her mother bought two bulls. Elizabeth had taken driving lessons and was now driving the family Wolseley all over the Glamis estate which she found 'great fun'.223 But then came awful news Charlie Settrington, fighting in the White Russian cause, had been badly wounded.224 He died on 24 August. Elizabeth was inconsolable. 'He is my only real friend, & one feels one can never have another like him. He was a real friend, I wasn't shy of him, and he was so delightful. It's a dreadful thing, and his family simply adored him ... I think I must have been fonder of him than I realised, because now there seems a kind of blank if you understand what I mean?' He had been the only male friend she had to whom she could talk naturally. 'I liked him specially because he never tried to flirt, or make love or anything like that which always spoils friendships. Even that day spent down at Box Hill.'225 Elizabeth had entered the war in 1914 as a carefree girl; she emerged from it as a young woman mature for her years. She was joyous, vivacious, and delightful company. But as a result of the war she had moved among, and learned about, a wider circle of people than she would otherwise ever have met. She had also acquired, through her experience of the suffering of family, friends and soldiers from all over the world, an understanding of pain, and of the difficulties of others, which served her and her country well in the years to come.
* Lady Christian Dawson-Damer (18901959), daughter of fifth Earl of Portarlington. A daughter, Rosemary (191589; m. 1945 Edward Joicey-Cecil), was born of this marriage. Lady Christian married again in 1919 (Captain William Martin, d. 1947).
The Hon. Fenella Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis (18891966), known in the Strathmore family as Neva, younger daughter of twenty-first Baron Clinton. She and Jock had five daughters.
* Dorothy Irene Beryl Poignand (18871965), daughter of Colonel George Poignand and his wife Catherine Maud. Governess to Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon 191417. Under the pseudonym Anne Ring, she wrote two books about Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret in the 1930s and several magazine articles about the Royal Family in the 1940s. During the Second World War she was temporarily employed by the Royal Household in the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood, and stayed on until 1949. In 1947 she helped organize the exhibition of Princess Elizabeth's wedding presents and compiled the catalogue. Until her death in 1965 she remained in touch with Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, whose letters to Beryl were subsequently returned by her cousin, Mrs Leone Poignand Hall. These letters, together with Beryl's letters to her mother, to which access has been generously given by Mrs Hall's son Mr Richard Hall, have not been available to previous biographers.
* Elizabeth did, however, have some lessons in Italian in 1917, as appears from a letter to her in the Glamis Archives, from Laura Baldi, her teacher, who regrets that the lessons have come to an end and hopes her pupil will not forget what she has learned. (Glamis Archives, Letters from friends) * The Visitors' Books with the soldiers' signatures are in the Glamis Archives.
* Lavinia Emily (18991955), second daughter of sixth Earl Spencer; married, 1919, Hon. Luke White, later fourth Baron Annaly. Lady in waiting to the d.u.c.h.ess of York on East African tour 19245; extra lady in waiting thereafter. She was a great-aunt of Lady Diana Spencer.
Florodora was one of the most successful musicals of the early twentieth century, both on Broadway and in London. Its famous song, 'Tell Me Pretty Maiden', was hugely popular and another attraction of the show was its s.e.xtet of beautiful singers, called 'the English Girls' in the score, but soon popularly dubbed 'the Florodora girls'. These six roles were filled by identically sized women, all five foot four inches; they became popular fantasy figures and the turnover on stage was high as young male admirers persuaded many to leave the show to marry them.
* Lydie Lachaise (1888/91982) was French governess to the children of Sir James Reid, Bt, Queen Victoria's physician for many years. Sir James's wife was Lavinia Spencer's Aunt Susan (nee Baring; her sister Margaret had married the Hon. Robert Spencer, Lavinia's father. Margaret had died in 1904 soon after the birth of her third daughter, also Margaret, and the motherless Spencer children grew up close to their Reid cousins). Mlle Lachaise was holiday governess to Lady Elizabeth and her brother again in August 1915. She stayed in England and married Raphael Aboav in 1920.
Horace Annesley Vach.e.l.l (18611955), novelist and playwright. Quinneys, his most successful play, was adapted from his novel of the same name. It was made into a film in 1927.
Henry Ainley (18791945) was a major cla.s.sical actor who appeared in hundreds of productions over a forty-five-year career. He starred in many films, the last of which was As You Like It (1936) in which he played the exiled Duke while the young Laurence Olivier played Orlando. Ainley was known for his superb elocution and much loved for his rendering of great soliloquies.
* Basil Hallam (18891916), actor and singer. His most famous role was as Gilbert the Filbert in the revue The Pa.s.sing Show at the Palace Theatre in London in 191415. He joined up in 1915 but was killed in a parachute jump on the Western Front in 1916.
Lady Katharine Hamilton (1900 -85), daughter of third Duke of Abercorn. She married, in 1930, Lieutenant Colonel (later Sir) Reginald Seymour, equerry to King George V, and became a lady in waiting to Queen Mary for some time before transferring to Queen Elizabeth's Household in 1937.
* Ernest Pearce (18931969), served in 1/7th Durham Light Infantry, wounded at Ypres in May 1915; promoted lance sergeant December 1916. He worked in a shipyard in Sunderland after the war. His niece Mary Ann Whitfield Pearce also worked for Queen Elizabeth at Royal Lodge from 1946 to 1981, latterly as head cook.
* Before the war the enormous, lighter-than-air machines had caused amazement as they flew over Europe. When war came, millions of people feared them as no other weapon. One of the Zeppelin's historians wrote that it was 'the H-bomb of its day, an awesome sword of Damocles to be held over the cowering heads of Germany's enemies'. (Quoted in Martin Gilbert, First World War, p. 42) * In January 1923 Lord Strathmore was reported in the press as saying that it had been at a party given by Lady Leicester when the two were children (Evening News, 16 January 1923); King George VI's official biographer John Wheeler-Bennett stated that it had happened at Montagu House (where their hostess would have been the d.u.c.h.ess of Buccleuch) in 1905.
* Lady Dorothy Cavendish (190066), daughter of ninth Duke of Devonshire, married in 1920 Harold Macmillan MP.
* Harold Macmillan (18941986) was prime minister 195763.
* She wrote this poem in Sergeant Little's autograph book; he responded with one in hers: There is a young lady so charming and witty
(I'm really not forced to tell you she's pretty)
But she is
She wrote some nice verses about where the sense ended
Of a Patient whom she thought would be rather offended
But he isn't
(Sergeant J. Little, 8th East Yorkshire Regiment, poem in Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon's autograph book, October 1916. RA QEQM/PRIV/PERS) * Rt Rev. Charles Edward Plumb, Bishop of St Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane.
* The dance was for Margaret Sutton, the niece of the Hon. Edward Wood (18811959), later third Viscount Halifax, whom Elizabeth came to know very well as foreign secretary, and his wife Lady Dorothy, nee Onslow, who became her lady in waiting. The young Elizabeth dined with the Woods before the dance.
* Among Elizabeth's dancing partners were the Hon. Michael Biddulph (18981972), later third Baron Biddulph, whose sister Adele was a friend of Elizabeth; Archie Balfour (18961966), son of Captain Charles Balfour and Lady Nina Balfour, a friend of Lady Strathmore; the Hon. Bruce Ogilvy (18951976), son of the eighth Earl of Airlie and Mabell, Countess of Airlie, Queen Mary's lady in waiting; and Captain Henry Courtney Brocklehurst (18881942), who was married to Lady Airlie's daughter Helen and whom Elizabeth was to meet in very different circ.u.mstances in 1925.
Probably Stokeley Williams Morgan, Second Secretary at the American Emba.s.sy.
* Thomas William, Viscount c.o.ke, later fourth Earl of Leicester (18801949), and his wife Marion.
Robert ('Bobbety') Arthur James Gascoyne-Cecil, Viscount Cranborne (18931972). In 1947 he succeeded his father as fifth Marquess of Salisbury, and in the 1950s he served in the Churchill, Eden and Macmillan governments.
Count Michael Torby (18981959), son of Grand Duke Michael Michailovich of Russia, and descendant of Tsar Nicholas I. Brother of Lady Zia Wernher and of Nadejda, Marchioness of Milford Haven.
Hon. Victor Cochrane Baillie (18961951), son of second Baron Lamington; succeeded 1940 as third baron; married 1922 Riette Neilson. He served in the Scots Guards 191417, and was mentioned in dispatches and awarded the MC.
* He later married Angela Mackail, the writer Angela Thirkell.
The pieces of fabric are in the Royal Archives, still in the envelope in which they were sent, inscribed in King George VI's hand with the statement that it contained a piece of von Richthofen's plane.
HMS Scott was torpedoed a few months later with the loss of twenty-six men. Wisp Leveson-Gower survived.
* Luke Henry White (18851970) succeeded as fourth Baron Annaly in 1922.
Buzz-Buzz, with music and lyrics by Herman Darewski, was on at the Vaudeville Theatre, starring Margaret Bannerman, Nelson Keys and Gertrude Lawrence, and included such numbers as 'There Are So Many Girls', 'If I Went into Parliament', 'Winnie the Window Cleaner' and 'Everything is Buzz-Buzz Now'.
* Versailles was followed by five separate treaties with the nations on the losing side, the last of which, the Treaty of Sevres, was signed by Turkey and the Allies on 20 August 1920.
CHAPTER THREE.
PRINCE ALBERT.
19181923.
'It takes so long to ponder these things'
'LUCKILY ONE DOESN'T "come out" much in War time,' Elizabeth had written at the end of 1916, referring to the 'awful thought' that Lavinia Spencer, a year older than her, was about to be launched into society as a debutante.1 For although the war had by no means put a stop to dances, dinners and parties and Elizabeth had found them far from awful when her turn came in early 1918 the formalities of the 'season', in particular the glittering royal occasions, had been suspended since 1914. Presentation at Court, the sine qua non of social recognition, which for debutantes meant parading in evening dress with ostrich-feather headdresses and long trains before the King and Queen at Buckingham Palace, had ceased. There were no levees (at which men were presented), no Court b.a.l.l.s, no garden parties and no Royal Ascot. Similarly, country-house entertaining on the grand prewar scale had come to a halt; shooting was much reduced, with parkland ploughed up, coverts felled for timber, and keepers, beaters, loaders and the sportsmen themselves away in the forces.
With the end of hostilities, however, social life at Court and in the great houses of the land gradually resumed its old pattern. Presentation ceremonies were resumed,* with one startling innovation: the King abolished the ban on presenting actors and actresses, provided of course that they were ladies and gentlemen of irreproachable character.2 It was a small signal of the increasing social mobility which the war had accelerated.*
Royal Ascot reappeared on the social calendar in glorious weather in June 1919. Queen Mary was pleased by the good turnout after five years of war, and the King recorded that everyone wore 'a high hat' as in the old days.3 Elizabeth was there for the first time and enjoyed it very much. That summer she was constantly busy 'in a dissipated way', as she put it, with dinners and dances.4 In September 1919 Glamis was once more filled with young people dancing and dining by candlelight, laughing and singing around the fireplaces. Elizabeth's grief at Charles Settrington's death overshadowed the gaiety for her, but her friends p.r.o.nounced the party a great success.5 Christmas at St Paul's Walden, going out shooting with Mike and David, and playing with Jock and Fenella's children, revived her spirits. 'I can hardly write sense, as the grammy is blazing forth "Indianola", the best dancing tune in the world!' she told Beryl; and then there was the Hertford Ball to look forward to and dread a little.6 For that ball, in early January 1920, she was invited to join a house party with the Salisbury family at Hatfield, quite close to St Paul's Walden. She found them delightful, particularly Lord David Cecil, whose heart she had captured when they were both children and who remained a lifelong friend. 'He is very clever, & most entertaining. Quite vague like they all are.'
She had been afraid that she would know no one, but the party included two of her dancing partners from her first ball in 1918, Count w.i.l.l.y de Grunne, a Belgian diplomat who danced 'too divinely', and Bruce Ogilvy, son of the Strathmores' neighbour in Scotland, Lady Airlie. Several other friends, including Helen Cecil, a Salisbury cousin, and Lord Dalkeith, the eldest son of the Duke of Buccleuch, were also there. They played tennis in the real tennis court and violent games of hockey, and one night of dancing ended with 'a terrific game of follow-my-leader right round the house, which is immense, under the dining room table & even across the roof!!' The Hertford Ball was 'heavenly' and she had worn her new white frock. 'Several people admired it, which pleased me immensely!!' Walter Dalkeith drove her back to St Paul's it was a hair-raising drive as he had hardly ever driven before. They swerved into ditches and crashed into the Strathmores' gate. 'I wonder that I am alive.'7 In March more decorum was required when Elizabeth went to Buckingham Palace for the first time, with a group of Scottish ladies led by her elder sister May. They had embroidered new covers for a set of chairs in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, and were presenting Queen Mary with their handiwork. Elizabeth stood in for Rosie. 'Only of her chair is finished, so I shall be chucked out for certain!'8 she told Beryl. Fortunately the Queen noticed neither the missing work nor the subst.i.tute delegate and was delighted with the offering.9 Coincidences are not necessarily the work of fate; nevertheless it is tempting to describe as fateful the week in July 1920 when Elizabeth was at last formally presented at Court. For in that same week she also dined with the King and Queen and, by sheer chance, had her first significant meeting with Prince Albert. That it happened at a propitious moment in his life was yet another operation of chance.
Social life in Edinburgh reached its peak every year in early July when King, Queen and Court took up residence at Holyroodhouse. As today, there were garden parties, receptions, presentations and invest.i.tures at the Palace and a variety of external royal visits and functions. In 1920 the King and Queen arrived on Sat.u.r.day 3 July and on the following Monday they gave a dinner for forty. Their guests were Edinburgh dignitaries with a sprinkling of Scottish peers, including the Elphinstones and Lord and Lady Strathmore, who were accompanied by Elizabeth. Apart from the twenty-three-year-old Princess Mary, she was the youngest by far and the only woman unmarried. She had perhaps been invited as company for the Princess, although the two did not know each other well. Elizabeth enjoyed herself, seated between the Lord Justice General and the Admiral Commanding at Rosyth, both of whom she p.r.o.nounced 'very nice'.10 Next day, 6 July, the King and Queen held an afternoon reception in the Throne Room at which Elizabeth was presented, along with 150 other young ladies and hundreds of other 'presentees', both male and female: the King and Queen shook hands with 1,100 people in the s.p.a.ce of an hour and a half. There was one more royal occasion a large garden party on the following day after which Elizabeth and her mother took the night train back to the south.
Thursday 8 July, the day on which she arrived back in London, was the most momentous of the week. That night Elizabeth went to the Royal Air Force ball at the Ritz. 'It was really most amusing, & there were some priceless people there,' she reported to Beryl. 'All the heroes of the Air too.' Prince Albert had also come to the ball. With him was his new equerry, James Stuart, youngest son of the Earl of Moray.* Stuart and his elder brother Lord Doune belonged to Elizabeth's circle of friends and neighbours in Scotland. Many years later, in his memoirs, he wrote that Prince Albert had asked him that evening 'who was the girl with whom I had just been dancing. I told him that her name was Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon and he asked me if I would introduce him, which I did.'11 The Prince invited the young woman on to the floor. Elizabeth continued in her letter to Beryl: 'I danced with Prince Albert who I hadn't known before, he is quite a nice youth.'12 She seems to have forgotten their tea-party meeting in 1916 and this new encounter apparently made little impression on her. For the Prince it was different he is reported to have said subsequently that 'he had fallen in love that evening, although he did not realize it until later.'13 He became determined to win Elizabeth's favour and eventually her hand. That was not to be easy. She was widely admired and was much in demand, and she enjoyed the carefree, open, happy lifestyle in which her parents had brought her up. It was almost the opposite of the Court routine with which Prince Albert had been surrounded since childhood.
PRINCE ALBERT was a sensitive young man, whose upbringing had been fraught rather than idyllic. He was born in 1895, in the early hours of the morning of 14 December, the anniversary of the death of his great-grandfather, Prince Albert, and therefore a day which Queen Victoria held sacred. His parents, the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of York, were concerned lest the old Queen should be upset.14 They need not have been.
Queen Victoria's journal for the day begins: 'This terrible anniversary returned for the 34th time.' But she went on to record that she received 'telegrams from Georgie and Sir J Williams, saying that dear May had been safely delivered of a son at 3 this morning, Georgie's first feeling was regret that this dear child should be born on such a sad day. I have a feeling it may be a blessing for the dear little Boy, and may be looked upon as a gift from G.o.d!'15 The baby's grandfather the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) suggested that he be called Albert, his parents agreed readily, and the Queen was touched. She wrote, 'I am all impatience to see the new one, born on such a sad day, but rather the more dear to me, especially as he will be called by that dear name which is the byeword for all that is great and good.'16 He was christened Albert Frederick Arthur George.
Albert's childhood was not easy. His elder brother Edward (known in the family by the last of his seven Christian names, David), whom he adored, had enormous, easy charm, which he deployed at will. Albert, by contrast, was born with knock knees and was left handed, a condition considered in need of correction in those days. He was obliged as a child to write with his right hand and for several years he wore splints on his legs which day and night caused him great pain.
His parents were devoted to their children but each found it hard to establish intimate relationships with them. King George V's official biographer, Harold Nicolson, asked delicately but properly how it was that 'a man who was by temperament so intensely domestic, who was so considerate to his dependents and the members of his household, who was so unalarming to small children and humble people, should have inspired his sons with feelings of awe, amounting at times to nervous trepidation?'17 From both his parents Prince Albert learned at an early age that he must always be obedient. His infancy was made all the more difficult by the fact that he had for many years a cruel nurse who appears to have fed him so badly that he was afflicted for the rest of his life by digestive problems.18 He also suffered from both a crippling stammer and a fearsome temper which he always found hard to control.
Like his father and elder brother before him, Prince Albert was destined for the navy and was enrolled in the Royal Naval College at Osborne in January 1909. He was small and at first found the rough-and-tumble of school life hard. His stammer made lessons difficult for him. In his final examinations at Dartmouth, the senior naval college to which he went after Osborne, he was shown no favouritism and was placed sixty-first of sixty-seven students. At the same time, however, he enjoyed both colleges for the friendships he was able to form with boys of his own age. People liked him, despite his volatility. He was well mannered, kind and generous and impressed everyone with his determination and character. He rose a little from the bottom of his cla.s.s and in due course progressed to join the Royal Navy.
When his grandfather King Edward VII died in May 1910 the fourteen-year-old Prince Albert walked behind the gun carriage bearing the King's coffin past mourning crowds to Westminster Abbey. One biographer has speculated that 'he must have been aware, perhaps for the first time now that he was old enough to realise it, of the importance of the public face of kingship and the deep emotions which centred on the person of the King'.19 His father, now King George V, proved to be a conciliatory monarch, bluff and straightforward, no intellectual but with a wisdom conferred upon him by simplicity and honour. During his reign of almost twenty-six years five emperors and eight kings would disappear, and many other dynasties with them. But the British monarchy emerged stronger than ever.20 The King and Queen and their six children now had to move from their London home, Marlborough House, into Buckingham Palace a soulless office with residential rooms attached, which has inspired little affection among members of the Royal Family since it was transformed in the nineteenth century from an una.s.suming house into a grandiose official residence. They were able to enjoy both Windsor Castle and Balmoral, where Queen Mary attempted to lighten the decor without interfering with her husband's affection for his childhood memories. At Sandringham little changed, because King Edward VII had bequeathed the house to his widow Queen Alexandra for her lifetime. The new King and his family continued to live near by at York Cottage, a small house which he and Queen Mary had been given on their marriage.