The Queen Mother (119 page)
Authors: William Shawcross
Churchill’s sentiments, on this as on many occasions, epitomized the monarchist feelings that prevailed in a country where at least a third of the people thought the Queen had been chosen by God. ‘The King’, declared Churchill, had ‘walked with death, as if death were a companion he did not fear … In the end death came as a friend; and after a happy day of sunshine and sport, and after “good night” to those who loved him best, he fell asleep as every man or woman who strives to fear God and nothing else in the world may hope to do.’ Now the ‘Second Queen Elizabeth’ was ascending the throne at the same age as the first, nearly 400 years earlier. Despite his grief, the Prime Minister said, ‘I, whose youth was passed in the august, unchallenged and tranquil glories of the Victorian era, may well feel a thrill in invoking, once more, the prayer and the anthem, “God Save the Queen”.’
After the new Queen had arrived at Clarence House, one of her first visitors was Queen Mary. ‘Her old Grannie and subject must be the first to kiss Her hand,’ she said.
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Thus the eighty-four-year-old woman, who had lived through five reigns, curtsied to her new queen. Queen Mary felt keenly the enormous responsibility that her granddaughter now had to take on at the age of only twenty-five. ‘But she has a fine steadfast character,’ she wrote to Queen Elizabeth, ‘& will I know always do her best for our beloved country and her people all over the world – and dear Philip will be a great help.’
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Elizabeth II and Prince Philip drove to Sandringham. The new Queen understood that the loss of the King was especially terrible for her mother and sister to bear. She had a job as well as her young family – for Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret ‘the bottom has really dropped out of their world’.
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Queen Elizabeth was utterly calm – too calm, felt some of those around her. She began to reply to many of the thousands of letters which were sent to her. She wrote almost at once to thank Edward Seago and Delia Peel for helping to make the day before the King died such a happy one. To Tommy Lascelles, she wrote:
I do want to try & tell you something of the deep gratitude I feel for all your loving and wonderful service to the King through
perhaps the most difficult years any sovereign has passed through. Your advice & support were greatly cherished by the King – he respected your judgement completely, & how often I have heard him say, ‘I must discuss this with Tommy’ … I, who loved him most dearly, want to thank you with all my heart for all you have done to help him. I am glad beyond words that you will be at the side of our daughter.
I am, Yours sincerely, Elizabeth R.
PS The King was very
fond
of you.
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Lascelles was much moved, and thanked her, saying, ‘It is an inexpressible comfort to me to know that The King felt I was not letting him down.’ Her ‘beautiful’ letter had ‘brought me a peace of mind that I haven’t known for a long time; and I am deeply grateful.’
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Until 11 February the King’s coffin lay in the church at Sandringham, draped in the Royal Standard and watched over all the time by estate workers. On the morning of the 11th it was conveyed, on the same gun carriage that had borne his father’s coffin, to Wolferton station whence it was taken to London. At King’s Cross station the young Queen, her grandmother, her mother and her sister were photographed standing in deepest black, heads bowed and darkly veiled as they watched the coffin of the man they had loved so long being taken from the train.
The King’s body lay in state for the next four days in Westminster Hall while more than 300,000 people, dressed in their best, sombre and often well-worn clothes, waited quietly in the winter cold, in lines four miles long, to pass by and pay their respects to the unexpected King whom they had come to love and depend upon. For at least a month millions of people wore black mourning armbands.
On Friday 15 February the King’s coffin was taken to Windsor and brought on a gun carriage drawn by officers and ratings of HMS
Excellent
to St George’s Chapel in the Castle, where the funeral was held. Winston Churchill’s wreath read simply ‘For Valour’.
That evening Queen Elizabeth wrote to Lascelles: ‘Today has been the most wonderful & the most agonising day of my life – Wonderful because one felt the sincerity of the people’s feelings, & agonising because gradually one becomes less numb, & the awfulness of everything becomes real.’
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*
The former Lord Cranborne had become the fifth marquess of Salisbury on the death of his father in 1947.
†
Berlin was not uncritical of Queen Elizabeth. In 1959 he described to a friend a dinner at which he, Queen Elizabeth and Maria Callas were among the guests. ‘They were like two prima donnas, one emitting white and [the] other black magic. Each tried to engage the attention of the table, Miss Callas crudely and violently, the Queen Mother with infinite gracefulness and charm of a slightly watery and impersonal kind … I sat between the Q.M. and Lady Rosebery and enjoyed myself … The Q.M., on the other hand, discussed the subject of courage and ventured the proposition that wholly fearless men are often boring. I pounced on that and produced a list of men distinguished in public life – such as General Freyberg and other V.C.s – whom we then duly found boring. It was such a conversation as might have occurred in about 1903 with the then still young Princess May [the future Queen Mary]. I enjoyed it in an artificial sort of way and thought the Q.M. not indeed particularly intelligent nor even terribly nice, but a very strong personality – much stronger than I thought her – and filled with the possibility of unexpected answers … In short I enjoyed my evening a good deal.’ (Isaiah Berlin to Rowland Burdon-Muller, 7 July 1959, Isaiah Berlin,
Enlightening: Letters 1946–1960
, ed. Henry Hardy and Jennifer Holmes, Chatto & Windus, 2009, pp. 691–3)
*
See Vickers’s illuminating account of this affair, based largely on the papers of Bruce and Beatrice Blackmar Gould at Princeton University, in
Elizabeth The Queen Mother
, pp. 279–91.
*
Edward Seago (1910–74), self-taught landscape painter and portraitist who spent most of his life in Norfolk.
*
In accordance with practice at the British Court, as queen consort Queen Elizabeth was always referred to as ‘The Queen’, and not as ‘Queen Elizabeth’. As the King’s widow, however, she was referred to by her name, as Queen Elizabeth, like Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary before her. ‘The Queen’ now meant only her daughter, the reigning Queen. The same practice has been followed in this book. The widowed Queen Elizabeth was now queen dowager, and because her daughter was on the throne she was also queen mother, a title used for centuries among royal families throughout Europe and beyond.
77.
The Royal Family on the balcony at Buckingham Palace following the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, 2 June 1953.
78.
Manning a stall at the Abergeldie Bazaar, August 1955.
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Queen Elizabeth with her corgi Honey at the Castle of Mey, October 1955.
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On tour in Rhodesia with Princess Margaret, June 1953.
81.
Arriving at the Vatican with Princess Margaret for a papal audience, 22 April 1959.
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With Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones, after the announcement of their engagement in February 1960.
