The Queen Mother (103 page)
Authors: William Shawcross
As the Allies made progress in different theatres on the ground, so the Luftwaffe attacks on Britain were stepped up again. The Queen was appalled – ‘They are dropping bombs just
anywhere.
’ On 4 February 1943 she visited Lewisham Hospital to see the children who had survived an attack on a school; she took them some bananas that Lord Louis Mountbatten had brought from Casablanca for her daughters.
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The sight of these children touched and horrified her. ‘It made me all the more determined to beat those unspeakable Huns, to see those little faces, so good and so hurt for the sake of Nazi propaganda. I grind my teeth with rage. But it happens every day – pure murder.’
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On another occasion, she recalled later, she met a woman in the East End ‘leaning on what was left of her little gate. The house in fact had gone behind her. And she said to me, “We’re not going to be done in by that there ’itler.” I remember it quite vividly.’
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In recent months the Queen, like many others, had become more and more aware of the scale of Nazi evil. The German regime had, since January 1942, institutionalized and quickened their attempt to liquidate all the Jews in Europe. The precise plans were secret, but Hitler publicly made his intentions clear.
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He had told a huge crowd of cheering supporters in Berlin that the result of the war would be ‘the complete annihilation of the Jews’.
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News of these diabolical efforts had begun to emerge in the course of 1942. In early December the Queen received a telegram from several women’s organizations in Jerusalem, imploring her to use her influence to awaken the conscience of the world and help save the Jewish people from extinction by the ‘Nazi Moloch’. At the same time
Harriet Cohen, CBE, a well-known concert pianist, wrote requesting the Queen’s intercession on behalf of ‘the (entire) European Jews – children old people & men & women; 5,000,000 of whom, by Xmas – i.e. in three weeks time will be exterminated in the Abattoirs, the slaughter-houses (literally) in Poland’. She pointed out that ‘If a whole race can be exterminated it means there can be no truth in what we are fighting for. Will Your Majesty use Your Loving Interest, that
Maternal
Kindness for which your Subjects literally adore Your Majesty, to intercede with the King’s Ministers – and the world’s Rulers (Allied & Neutral) for the Jews.’
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There is no record of what action the Queen took in response to this particular request. But she had become increasingly appalled by German conduct. In October 1942 she had written to Queen Mary, ‘Is it not terrible the way the Germans are behaving all over Europe. The mask is off at last, & the true savagery is emerging.’
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In December 1942 the government published, with its American and Soviet counterparts, a Joint Declaration condemning ‘in the strongest possible terms’ what it described as ‘this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination’. In Parliament on 17 December the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden read out the Declaration himself, stating that he regretted having to inform the House that Jews in occupied Europe were being subjected to ‘barbarous and inhuman treatment’. The House then stood in a two-minute silent tribute.
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R
ADIO WAS AN
immensely important weapon of war. The BBC was used most effectively by Churchill, whose ringing invocations of the spirit of victory were vital to national morale. Broadcasts by the King and Queen were more rare but they too played a crucial role in sustaining the conviction that the nation was united around a just and essential cause. Neither of them did it lightly, the King because of his stammer, the Queen because she found the writing of any broadcast something of an ordeal. Tommy Lascelles commented that she had ‘a great dislike of being what she calls “turned on like a tap”; moreover, she demands a considerable time for preparation & reflection before making any sort of public utterance’.
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But in early 1943 she agreed to broadcast again to the women of the Empire and agonized over what to say.
The Queen was socially conservative and did not want the war to
revolutionize women or indeed to revolutionize anything. Thus she wrote to Alec Hardinge, ‘one would like to congratulate women on the way they are tackling men’s jobs, & yet they must be ready to stand down (& by) after the war’.
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To Cosmo Lang, the retired Archbishop of Canterbury, she said that she wanted both ‘to praise & urge on to war work, & yet remind that the home & preferably a Christian one is more important than anything else’.
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She sought the help of her spiritual adviser the Bishop of Lichfield, but a week before the broadcast was due she was still not happy and showed it to Tommy Lascelles, asking that he do anything, ‘however drastic, to give it a little punch’.
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He agreed that the draft was poor and sat up till 2 a.m. writing another three pages which he then returned to the Queen.
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She adapted and adopted some of his ideas and then sent the new version to Churchill who made his own suggestions, which she liked.
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In the final version, which was broadcast on 11 April 1943, she started by saying that she wanted this talk to be a meeting between herself and ‘my fellow-countrywomen all over the world’. She did not have a special message but there was something deep in her heart that she knew that they should be told – ‘and probably I am the best person to do it.’ Sometimes, after reading a book that inspired hope and courage, she continued, ‘we have wished that, though we are strangers to him, we could meet the author and tell him how much we admire his work, and how grateful we are for it.’ In the same way,
I would like to meet
you
, this Sunday night. For you, though you may not realise it, have done work as great as any book that ever was written; you too, in these years of tragedy and glory, of crushing sorrow and splendid achievement, have earned the gratitude and admiration of all mankind; and I am sure that every man who is doing his man’s share in the grim task of winning
this war, would agree that it is high time that someone told you so.
Women might feel that she was exaggerating, and ask what they had done compared with what their men had endured ‘dodging submarines in the Atlantic or chasing Rommel across Africa’. But they had given all that was good in themselves to the same cause, ‘
our
cause, the cause of Right against Wrong’. Women’s work, she said, was:
just as valuable, just as much ‘war-work’ as that which is done by the bravest soldier, sailor or airman who actually meets the enemy in battle.
And have you not met that enemy too? You have endured his bombs; you have helped put out the fires he has kindled in our homes; you have tended those he has maimed; brought strength to those he has bereaved … in a hundred ways you have filled the places of the men who have gone away to fight; and, coping uncomplainingly with all the tedious difficulties of war-time – you … have kept their homes for them against the blessed day when they come back.
In a paragraph added by Churchill, she said, ‘Many there are whose homes have been shattered by the fire of the enemy. The dwellings can be rebuilt, but nothing can restore the family circle if a dear one has gone for-ever from it. A firm faith in reunion beyond this world of space and time, and a fortitude born of the resolve to do one’s duty and carry on to the end, are true consolations. I pray they may not be denied to all who have suffered & mourn.’
The Queen went on to say that all women loved their family life, homes and children and so did their men. ‘These men – both at home and abroad – are counting on us at all times to be steadfast and faithful.’ Women as home-makers had a great part to play in rebuilding family life as soon as the war ended, but it should be done on the strength of spiritual life. If ‘the years to come are to see some real spiritual recovery, the women of our Nation must be deeply concerned with Religion, and our homes the very place where it should start; it is the creative and dynamic power of Christianity which can help us to carry the moral responsibilities which history is placing upon our shoulders. If our homes can be truly Christian, then the influence of
that spirit will assuredly spread like leaven through all the aspects of our common life, industrial, social and political.’ She thanked people for their prayers for her and the King and their family. ‘We need them and try to live up to them. And we also pray that God will bless and guide our people in this Country and in our great family throughout the Empire, and will lead us forward, united and strong, into the paths of victory and peace.’
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It was all in all a formidable statement of her beliefs in the Christian Church and in the role of women in both wartime and the family. After the broadcast she wrote to thank Lascelles for his help and commented, ‘What agony these things are! It’s funny, but when I talk into those dumb-looking little microphones, I think of the grey & narrow streets of places like South Shields or Sunderland. If one can help those gallant people, everything is worthwhile.’
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Lascelles noted in his diary, ‘The Q delivered her broadcast, & did so very well. In its final form, it was the joint work of Winston Churchill, the Bp. of Lichfield, & myself – a curious trio of collaborationists, who are unlikely ever to be in literary partnership again.’
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Nevertheless its sentiments were the Queen’s own. Thanking Churchill for his assistance, she said, ‘I put it just as you wrote it, and I am certain that those words will comfort many an aching heart.’
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Churchill replied with his usual graciousness, ‘I am glad the few words I suggested were acceptable. The Broadcast was an outstanding success. Yr Majesty’s voice was clear & captivating & I heard from every side nothing but praise & expressions of pleasure & high sentiment.’
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That was true – the speech drew a flood of congratulatory letters from people who took comfort from her words.
She tried to wear the praise lightly. Later in the year, when her brother David asked her to speak to a women’s Christian group, she replied, ‘honestly darling I don’t feel very holy at the moment, & couldn’t think of a word to say to them. Just because I said last spring that I believed in Christianity and home life, I am considered practically a mother superior and clergymen raise their hats to me with a sort of special gusto!’
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A
FEW DAYS
after the broadcast the Queen and the Princesses attended a poetry reading at the Aeolian Hall in New Bond Street, which Osbert
Sitwell had organized to help ‘keep the arts alive’.
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He had persuaded her to attend and had been consulting her on the details for weeks.
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The reading was given in aid of the Free French Fund and it was, as can be imagined, quite an occasion – a gathering of some of the greatest talents, and greatest egos, in the world of letters at the time. Among the ladies and gentlemen of letters were Edmund Blunden, Vita Sackville-West, Walter de la Mare, who was dwarfed by the lectern, Osbert’s sister Edith, looking flamboyant as ever, and Lady Gerald ‘Dottie’ Wellesley, who was thought by many to be inebriated, although she denied it. The Queen and her daughters sat in the front row looking very serious. According to Sitwell’s biographer, Philip Ziegler, ‘the Princesses kept their eyes on the performers with decorous and disconcerting fervour, except when T. S. Eliot incanted from “The Waste Land”, at which point they had to try hard not to giggle. They enjoyed it even more when W. J. Turner exceeded by far his allotted span of six minutes and was loudly heckled by his fellow poets.’
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Decades later Queen Elizabeth recalled that ‘they all got so angry with each other because they all went on too long.’ She singled out Edith Sitwell for praise, remarking that she ‘read beautifully’. All in all, she thought it very kind of Osbert Sitwell to try and educate her daughters but the great company of poets was more humorous than anything else.
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The Queen was certainly determined to do everything she could to shore up civilization and the arts. She took pleasure in attending the popular lunchtime concerts at the National Gallery, where Dame Myra Hess performed. There is a photograph of the Queen sitting next to Kenneth Clark at one of the concerts, wearing a trilby-shaped hat with a veil and looking eager and alert.
Clark’s support continued to be essential to the Queen. Throughout the war they kept up a correspondence on the arts and, in particular, how best to safeguard the Royal Collection. The Queen was always concerned that it be protected from German attacks, and in 1940 she had even suggested that some of the most valuable paintings be sent to Canada, disguised as luggage for Lord Athlone, the Governor General. The idea was dropped on government advice, and the pictures remained stored in the basement of Windsor Castle. But when in 1942 Owen Morshead arranged for the priceless collections of drawings, miniatures and manuscripts from the Royal Library to be
moved to the National Gallery’s stores in a disused mine in North Wales, at the King and Queen’s request the most precious paintings were dispatched there too.
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The Queen’s anxiety for such works seems to have extended beyond the Royal Collection. The diarist James Lees-Milne recorded in 1942 that the Queen telephoned the Duchess of Wellington to see if it could really be true, as she had been told, that nothing had yet been removed from Apsley House (the Hyde Park Corner residence of the Dukes of Wellington). When the Duchess confirmed that this was so, the Queen announced, ‘Well, then, I am coming round at 11 with a van to take them to Frogmore.’ She and the King came over at once and started making lists of what was to stay and what was to go. She said, ‘You mustn’t be sentimental, Duchess. Only the valuable pictures can go.’
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