The Queen Mother (113 page)
Authors: William Shawcross
They flew up to the British colonies of Northern and Southern Rhodesia, where there was much less tension than in South Africa. The Queen relaxed in Government House in Salisbury, happy that, unlike many of the South African houses in which they stayed, it was a real home. She liked the Governor, Major General Sir John Kennedy, and his wife. Sir John later recalled that on the day they arrived at Salisbury he took the King out for a walk in the grounds of Government House, where there was a tree planted by King Edward VIII as Prince of Wales. ‘The King stopped and looked at it reflectively, and then he said, “My brother never had the good fortune I had when I married my wife.” ’
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They made a visit to the grave of Cecil Rhodes in Matabeleland; on the stony hillside, the heel of one of the Queen’s high-heeled shoes broke. The press party made quite a show of the fact that Princess Elizabeth gave her shoes to her mother and completed the day in her stockinged feet. ‘So like Mummy’, said the Princess, ‘to set out in those shoes.’
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In Salisbury, the Queen could indulge in a little shopping; she bought nylon stockings, crystallized fruit and chocolates for friends and family back home starved of such delicacies. She had a few solo engagements: visits to the Queen Elizabeth’s Welfare Clinic in Salisbury, to a gathering of representatives of women’s organizations at Government House, for the presentation of Red Cross certificates. Wearing her Black Watch regimental badge, she spoke to a contingent of Rhodesian members of the Black Watch in Bulawayo. Altogether she found Rhodesia ‘most attractive, a very agreeable mixture of British & good colonial, and a nice feeling of freedom everywhere’.
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She maintained a close affection for the country for many years to come.
Back in Johannesburg, Smuts arranged a private meeting with the exiled Prince and Princess Paul of Yugoslavia. The Queen was now pleased to have a reunion with them. She wrote at once to Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, to tell her how her sister Olga was. The Duchess was deeply grateful. ‘It is sweet of you to write the way you do, so full of heart,’ she replied to the Queen.
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Towards the end of their trip an important moment arrived. Princess Elizabeth came of age on reaching her twenty-first birthday. On 21 April – a public holiday in South Africa – she took the salute at a march-past of the military garrison in Cape Town; she attended a large youth rally and then in the evening she made a remarkable broadcast pledging to devote her life to her people.
I should like to make that dedication now. It is very simple. I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great Imperial Commonwealth to which we all belong. But I shall not have strength to carry out this resolution unless you join in it with me, as I now invite you to do; I know that your support will be unfailingly given. God help me to make good my vow; and God bless all of you who are willing to share in it.
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Queen Mary listened in London, and wrote to the Queen afterwards that the broadcast was ‘perfect … and of course I wept.’
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The night was completed with fireworks by the ocean and a ball for the younger generation; it was attended by Field Marshal Smuts, who gave a speech in honour of the Princess and presented her with a diamond necklace. The next day, the Queen was pleased to receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of Cape Town. Smuts made a short speech, to which the Queen replied – the only formal speech she made throughout the journey.
The tour was finally over. When they embarked from Cape Town, Smuts and the King made warm formal speeches of farewell, and then the Queen paid her own tribute in a few impromptu words, thanking the women and children of South Africa for their welcome.
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‘Tot siens’ (so long, or
au revoir
) both King and Queen said in Afrikaans – a phrase the Queen liked and would use throughout her life.
*
From the ship, Queen Elizabeth wrote a long letter to May Elphinstone about the natural glories and the political difficulties of South Africa. She had enjoyed the tour, though she had been exhausted by it and was looking forward to being home – ‘a little bit of England & Scotland will be heaven!’
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Now, she and the King knew, they were sailing back to face many difficult, often emotional, issues – the continued deprivation of the British people, more radical social changes by the government, the independence of India, the jewel in the crown of Empire – and, perhaps most difficult of all, the independence of their beloved elder daughter. It had become clear to them both while they were in South Africa that her affection for Prince Philip would not pass – it was deep and real.
Tommy Lascelles thought that Princess Elizabeth was one of the great successes of the trip. ‘She has come on in the most surprising way, and all in the right direction. She has got all P’cess Mary’s solid and endearing qualities plus a perfectly natural power of enjoying herself without any trace of shyness.’ She had a good healthy sense of fun, he said. ‘Moreover, when necessary, she can take on the old bores with much of her mother’s skill, and never spares herself in that exhausting part of royal duty.’ She had ‘an astonishing solicitude for other people’s comfort’ and:
she has become extremely businesslike, and understands what a burden it is to the Staff if some regard is not paid to the clock. She has developed an admirable technique of going up behind her mother and prodding her in the Achilles tendon with the point of her umbrella when time is being wasted in unnecessary conversation. And when necessary – not infrequently – she tells her father off to rights. My impression, by the way, is that we shall be subscribing to a wedding present before the year is out.
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*
Anthony Blunt (1907–83) had been appointed surveyor in succession to Sir Kenneth Clark at the beginning of 1945. He remained in the post until the end of the reign, and was Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures from 1952 to 1972. He was knighted in 1956, but after he was exposed as a Soviet spy in 1979 he was stripped of his knighthood.
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Sir Henry Irving (1838–1905), the most celebrated English actor of his day.
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The visit did not give Smuts the boost he might have expected. He lost the 1948 election; although he won more votes than the Nationalists, they were concentrated in large urban majorities in safe seats.
JOY AND SORROW
1947–1952
‘He was such an angel to the children & me’
O
N
10 J
ULY
1947 this statement was released from Buckingham Palace: ‘It is with the greatest pleasure that the King and Queen announce the betrothal of their dearly beloved daughter the Princess Elizabeth to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, RN, son of the late Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Andrew (Princess Alice of Battenberg) to which union the King has gladly given his consent.’
The personal dimension of monarchy can give a sense of continuity to national life which republics lack. The life of a royal family is punctuated by events which are familiar to everyone. Births, weddings, illnesses, deaths, follow each other with the sort of predictability every family knows and understands. The wedding of Princess Elizabeth was followed over the next three years by a series of events which were to be emotionally charged for the Queen – her own silver wedding anniversary, the births of her first grandchildren, Prince Charles and Princess Anne, and then the long-drawn-out illness of her husband.
Unlike her younger sister, Princess Elizabeth was reserved and thus often seemed shy. Her biographer Elizabeth Longford thought ‘reticent’ was a better word. ‘Reticence has its own good reasons for silence; connected with the inner citadel.’
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The Queen had never encouraged the strictly academic instruction of her daughters and each of them (particularly Princess Margaret) regretted this. Both Princesses felt under-educated, although Marion Crawford had been a conscientious governess, and the addition of other teachers such as Henry Marten and Toni de Bellaigue had broadened their horizons. In one important respect, however, the Princesses’ training had been impeccable and this had come from their parents, as they accompanied them on more and more public engagements.
In March 1946 Princess Elizabeth had made a successful visit to
Northern Ireland. The Queen’s sister Rose, Lady Granville, whose husband Wisp was Governor, wrote to the Queen saying that her daughter looked lovely and had inherited her mother’s ‘wonderful gift of looking as if she was loving it all’. She watched people listening to the Princess make a speech and ‘I saw a sort of change come over them – & you could see them thinking that there was something else beside youth & charm, & what is so nice, looking as if they were patting their own backs about it, as if she belonged to them – which I suppose she does, in a sort of way!! … You must feel very proud of her darling – I would be!’
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Proud, yes, but the Queen was more and more worried about press intrusion into the lives of her daughters, particularly by the
Mail
and
Express
groups.
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The area of greatest allure to newspapers was any suggestion of young romance. Princess Elizabeth’s name was sometimes linked, privately at least, with well-born officers of the Grenadier Guards who had been stationed at Windsor Castle during the war and whose company she enjoyed. But the Princess’s real interest always lay with Prince Philip of Greece, who was still on active service with his ship in the Far East. Their friendship was promoted, sometimes too forcefully, by Philip’s uncle, Lord Mountbatten, whose social enthusiasms could interfere with his sense of decorum.
After Prince Philip returned to Britain in early 1946 he and the Princess saw more of each other. Lady Airlie recalled a conversation in which Queen Mary told her that the young couple had been in love for at least eighteen months: ‘but the King and Queen feel that she is too young to be engaged yet. They want her to see more of the world before committing herself and to meet more men. After all she’s only nineteen and one is very impressionable at that age.’
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Prince Philip, five years older than the Princess, was nothing if not determined. In June 1946, now serving as an instructor at HMS
Glendower
, a naval training establishment in North Wales, he wrote to the Queen to apologize for having committed the ‘monumental cheek’ of inviting himself to the Palace. But ‘However contrite I feel there is always a small voice that keeps saying “nothing ventured, nothing gained” – well, I did venture and I gained a wonderful time.’
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In early September 1946 the Queen invited him to Balmoral and it was during this holiday in the hills that he and the Princess decided to become engaged and to tell her parents.
After he left Balmoral, the Prince wrote an exuberant letter to the
Queen: ‘I am sure I do not deserve all the good things which have happened to me. To have been spared in the war and seen victory, to have been given the chance to rest and re-adjust myself, to have fallen in love completely and unreservedly, makes all one’s personal and even the world’s troubles seem small and petty.’ At last, he said, life had a purpose.
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I only realize now what a difference those few weeks, which seemed to flash past, have made to me. I arrived still not accustomed to the idea of peace, rather fed up with everything with the feeling that there was not much to look forward to and rather grudgingly accepting the idea of going on in the peacetime navy.
This holiday alone has helped to dispel those feelings. The generous hospitality and the warm friendliness did much to restore my faith in permanent values and brighten up a rather warped view of life. Naturally there is one circumstance which has done more for me than anything else in my life.
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But being in love did not make the Prince docile. Later that year he wrote to the Queen to apologize for getting carried away and starting ‘a rather heated dicussion’. Politics seem to have been the problem. The Prince’s views were a considerable way to the left of those of the Queen and he had by now come to the conclusion that trying to shift her from her instinctive conservatism was counter-productive. He hoped she did not think him ‘violently argumentative and an exponent of socialism’ and would forgive him ‘if I did say anything I ought not to have said’.
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The Prince’s strong views were not the issue. The King and Queen knew well by now that he and their daughter were in love and wished to marry. But they persuaded them to wait until their return from South Africa before the engagement was announced. Just before the family’s departure, Prince Philip came to say goodbye and then wrote to the Queen to thank her for a remark she had made to him that day. ‘I can only take it that you referred to Lilibet when you said that my fate “was in someone else’s hands”. It was the most heartening thing you could have said to keep my spirits up while you are away.’
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Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip wrote to each other constantly while she was in South Africa. The enforced separation did nothing to diminish their ardour – it may even have strengthened it. After the
family’s return, Prince Philip told the Queen he was sure that the delay had been right, but he and the Princess now wanted to start their new life together.
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Letters that the Queen wrote at the time show that she was supportive, if also anxious about her daughter’s decision. ‘You can imagine what emotion this engagement has given me,’ she wrote to Tommy Lascelles. ‘It is one of the things that has been in the forefront of all one’s hopes & plans for a daughter who has such a burden to carry, and one can only pray that she has made the right decision, I
think
she has – but he is untried as yet.’
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