The Queen Mother (110 page)

But both the King and Queen came to fear that at home the government was being too radical too soon. In November 1945 the King noted in his diary that he had told Herbert Morrison, Attlee’s deputy, that the legislative programme was too crowded. Morrison
responded that the government had to carry out its proposals as soon as possible.
³⁸
To the Duke of Gloucester, the King wrote, ‘My new Government is not too easy & the people are rather difficult to talk to.’
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But he always gave his government his support.

The Queen was well aware of the additional strain that her husband’s anxieties about the governance of Britain placed upon him. She had a romantic view of the country, one in which perhaps Britain’s glorious history was more important than her present straitened circumstances. It was a challenge for the Queen to come to terms with the austerity imposed by the Labour government. Her contradictory feelings were later carefully described by her biographer, Dorothy Laird. ‘Her physical courage in the face of danger had been flawless; now another, and possibly more difficult kind of courage was required.’
⁴⁰
The King had to give his constitutional support to a socialist government which was determined to create a social revolution in a badly battered country, and the Queen had to support him in this. Both had misgivings.

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T
HEIR FIRST
Christmas of peace was spent at Sandringham House, which had been closed since 1940. She wrote to her old friend Dick Molyneux, in jocular mood: ‘Bowling through Berkeley Square today, it suddenly struck me to ask whether you were planning to spend Xmas anywhere particular, or whether you would care to come & spend it with us at hideous ugly germ ridden old Sandringham?’ She hoped he could come for at least a few days. ‘If you are already too engaged, a merry Xmas! if not you just
wait.
E R.’
⁴¹

Molyneux accepted happily. There was a small party staying in Norfolk. It included Arthur Penn, Michael Adeane, the King’s Deputy Private Secretary, Delia Peel, the Queen’s friend and lady in waiting, Owen Morshead and Anthony Blunt, the new Surveyor of the King’s Pictures.
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No one was in better form than Queen Mary – she seemed to be the life of the party, ‘youthful, skittish and generally rejuvenated … really full of fun and giggles. She dances given any chance at all,
coming out shooting (with stick
and
umbrella) & generally contributes to any jolly fun.’
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Queen Mary herself said she loved resuming ‘the old life’ and trying to forget the ‘six horrible war years’.
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The new year was made sad for the Queen and the Princesses by the death at Sandringham of Alah Knight, who had looked after them all as children and was integral to the family. The Queen’s sorrow was eased by the presence of her brother David. ‘It really was a great shock, & a great sadness, & you were such a wonderful help. One still feels that she is quietly upstairs. It’s curious,’ she wrote to him shortly afterwards.
⁴⁴

Another recent death had been that of the Queen’s longest-serving lady in waiting, Lady Helen Graham. She had been with the Queen since 1926 and served her with diligence, humour and affection. ‘I loved & admired dear Nellie – she helped me through so much when I was young & silly,’ said the Queen. ‘She was such fun too.’ The Queen took comfort in the continuing friendship and service of Delia Peel.
⁴⁵

In early 1946 Arthur Penn resigned his temporary wartime post as her Private Secretary, to be replaced by Major Thomas Harvey. But she did not want to lose Penn and, in writing to thank him for his long service, asked him to become her Treasurer – ‘it
would
be nice to have a treasure as a Treasurer.’
⁴⁶
He was touched by her words and replied, ‘it is I who should be thanking you.’ He was eager to take on the new job – ‘If you had asked me to be your bootboy I should have leapt at it, & to be your Treasurer, that honourable post, would be a joy
indeed.
I shall certainly muddle, and probably embezzle, but it will be with the best possible intentions, I do promise, & perhaps I shan’t embezzle much.’
⁴⁷

The King and Queen had to decide how best to rebuild the formal life of the Court now that peace had come – and now that British society was altering so profoundly. There was much advice. Jasper Ridley argued in a letter to the Queen that Britain had a unique history of orderly change, largely because of the influence of the Crown. ‘We have, after all, had a 30-year beastly upheaval in the world, and I reckon that at the end of it the Crown is more universally acknowledged as right and necessary than ever before. Surely a grand feather in your caps.’
⁴⁸

In early 1946, they revived the pre-war practice of inviting people to ‘dine and sleep’ at Windsor Castle. Dick Molyneux reminded the
Queen that during George V’s reign the Castle had become ‘almost like a vast empty museum, with Their Majesties living in a corner; such a waste of that splendid place & establishment’. He thought this must never happen again. If they asked up to sixty people a week, and their friends at weekends, they could make their court ‘the envy of the world, the centre of what is left of good society, a wonderful example to the young and an inspiration to everybody to be worthy of it’.
⁴⁹

At the end of April 1946 they had the Churchills to stay at Windsor. Churchill had recently been in Fulton, Missouri where he had made a deeply considered speech about the communist ‘Iron Curtain’ descending across Europe from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic. This speech became one of the defining texts of the post-war world; the King recognized its importance at once and told him ‘how much good it had done in the world’.
⁵⁰
After the weekend Clementine Churchill wrote to thank the Queen, saying how honoured and ‘warmed’ they had been by the King and Queen’s ‘grace and kindness’.
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On 8 June 1946, ten months after Victory in Japan Day, the official victory parade was at last held. Twenty-one thousand troops and civilians took part. But the growing split with the Soviet Union, and the bloc of countries it now controlled, meant that no Russian, Polish or Yugoslav troops were present. The King took the salute in the Mall, with the Queen standing beside him. On the dais with them were the Princesses and, among others, Crown Prince Olav of Norway, Princess Juliana and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, and Prince Felix of Luxembourg. The King had commanded that the tattered Royal Standard flown on the cruiser
Arethusa
in which he had crossed the Channel to visit his troops after D-Day should fly from the dais.
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The next day there was a service at Westminster Abbey to give thanks for victory.

At the end of June the King and Queen, taking the Princesses with them, travelled to Scotland for a week of official engagements, based at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. They visited Falkirk, Stirling, Grange-mouth and Linlithgow; the Queen took the salute at a march-past of Red Cross units at Holyroodhouse; they attended a service in St Giles’ Cathedral and a drumhead service and parade for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the British Legion in Scotland; they gave a garden party, and returned to London overnight on 3 July. The rest of July and early August were filled with visits to Sandhurst, to Canterbury, to North
Wales, as well as constant engagements in and around London and two garden parties at Buckingham Palace. Thus it continued until the family departed for Balmoral on 8 August, where among the guests was Prince Philip of Greece. In September the King and Queen made a quick trip south to accompany Prime Minister Attlee, his wife Violet and Sir Stafford Cripps to the ‘Britain Can Make It’ exhibition. ‘But no one can get it’ was the Queen’s pithy private comment.
⁵³

Back in Scotland, she and the Princesses drove from Balmoral to the Clyde to spend the day on the Cunard liner
Queen Elizabeth
which the Queen had launched in 1938. The liner had served as a troopship throughout the war and now she had been refitted for her original purpose. The Queen thought the ship beautiful and comfortable – she was glad to see good British taste and workmanship – ‘oh how I hate utility and austerity, don’t you?’ she wrote in a note to the King. ‘It’s all wrong. Well, darling, I must fly, the children have just returned from the engine room, and tea is calling.’
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The state of the arts, in the broadest sense, remained a central interest for her. She had been concerned throughout the war about protecting artists and their work from the brutal assaults of the time. Osbert Sitwell had invited her, just before the war’s end, to attend the Authors’ Society Jubilee in June 1945. This included a John Gielgud recital of pieces by Tennyson, Thomas Hardy and John Masefield, the Poet Laureate. Sitwell told her how ‘delighted and enchanted’ 400 authors ‘good and bad’ were to see her.
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She enjoyed the occasion and agreed to attend a more ambitious gathering in 1946 at which Flora Robson, Edith Evans, John Gielgud and others read from Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton, Chaucer and many other classics, while T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas and Walter de la Mare read from their own works.

She had been anxious about the fate of the paintings and other works of art in the Royal Collection evacuated for safekeeping during the war. Now they were all being brought back, cleaned and restored where necessary. In autumn 1946 she involved herself in an exhibition, ‘The King’s Pictures’, at the Royal Academy, a selection made by Anthony Blunt and Ben Nicolson, the Deputy Surveyor of the King’s Pictures. It was the first large art show to be held in London since the end of the war and was a great success. More than 366,000 visitors came to the exhibition.

The Queen held a private view for family and friends on 20
November 1946. The evening ended with an unexpected supper in one of the rooms at the Academy. It was an enjoyable occasion – an example of what one courtier later described as the Queen’s ability to make Court life ‘fun’.
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Queen Mary thought the mix of ‘treasures & interesting people was a great success, very clever of Elizabeth to have thought of it, & the supper was a great surprise.’
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The Queen was pleased; she enjoyed seeing the pictures well lit and well shown and the occasion encouraged her dream to build a gallery at Buckingham Palace to show the Royal Collection on a more regular basis.
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(This was finally achieved in 1962.)

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T
HE END OF
the war did not diminish the Queen’s interest in her regiments. In October 1945 she sent the Toronto Scottish a warm message as they embarked on their voyage home. ‘I rejoice to think that you will soon see those who are most dear to you … You are returning home covered with glory most well deserved and I trust that some day I shall see you again in your own dear land. Goodbye and God speed.’
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Her connections with the Canadian armed forces were reinforced when she subsequently accepted the appointment of colonel-in-chief of the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada.

In early 1946 she was upset by the disbandment of the 5th Battalion (Angus). She drafted a telegram to the regiment in which she said, ‘I was grieved to hear this news as the 5th Battalion The Black Watch having such close ties with my family and my native County of Angus has a special place in my heart.’ She thanked them for ‘their devoted service’ and asked to be kept informed where the men were posted.
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There was happier news a few weeks later when one of the most accomplished staff officers of the war, Lord Wavell, became colonel of the regiment. She wrote to him saying that she wanted to associate herself with the pleasure that his appointment had given to all ranks, and telling him she hoped he would call upon her if he needed backing against the War Office. In a typical expression of purpose, she declared, ‘There are certain things that one
must
fight for, and it is [no] use giving in.’
⁶¹

The war had left the Queen with the conviction that Christianity was vital to the recovery of the country. She detested what she saw as the irreligious ‘materialism’ of the Nazi and communist creeds, and
she was increasingly concerned by the decline in traditional religious belief in Britain. Education seemed to her to be the key to reversing this trend, and she was therefore enthusiastic about a scheme first put to her in 1944, to set up a centre ‘for the study of the Christian philosophy of life’.
⁶²
It was the brainchild of Amy Buller, whose book
Darkness over Germany
had been sent to the Queen in 1943 by her friend the Bishop of Lichfield, a supporter of the scheme. Miss Buller was a remarkable Christian pedagogue and a scholar of German culture who had travelled widely in Germany during the 1930s. She had been appalled by the ease with which the Nazis had seduced ordinary decent Germans, and she feared that, if such a civilized country as Germany could be so warped, Britain bore a similar risk. She believed that Western civilization was in decline because of the weakening of Christianity. The Queen was struck by the book and asked to meet the author. In March 1944 she did so; Amy Buller called this meeting ‘my miracle’.
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Miss Buller’s faith and enthusiasm impressed the Queen; when she spoke of her ambition to create a college to inculcate Christian principles, the Queen said she would like to help. She was as good as her word. The most serious immediate problem was to find it a site. The Queen asked Queen Mary whether part of the Royal College of St Katharine’s in Regent’s Park, of which Queen Mary was patron, could be used. Amy Buller, she said, hoped to attract teachers of psychology, science and medicine and other disciplines from universities all around the country for ‘many of them seem to be almost pagans, and there seems to be absolutely
nowhere
where clever people can go to study & discuss the Christian way of life from an intellectual angle’.
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