The Queen Mother (24 page)
Authors: William Shawcross
It was the first time she had signed with her Christian name only.
He immediately tried to put her mind at rest; his letter does not survive, but she wrote again: ‘Dear Prince Bertie, Thank you so much for your letter, which much relieved my mind. I feel just the same as you do about it, and am
so
glad … Yes, I feel I know you so much better this last few weeks – I think it is so much easier to get to know people in the country – even if it’s only for an hour or two – don’t you? One is more natural I expect.’ The rest of the letter is certainly ‘natural’ – she asked him about his hunting, congratulated him on his recent speeches, which she had read in the paper, and told him she was going to Glamis for Easter. This time she signed herself Elizabeth Lyon.
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Both sets of parents, and their go-between Mabell Airlie, were sad that the relationship seemed to have foundered. Lady Strathmore wrote to Lady Airlie:
My dearest Mabel
I have written to the young man as you advised – & told him how truly grieved we are that this little romance has come to an end. I also suggested the alternative reason he might give to his Father, in case he had not already spoken about it. I will tell you,
if
he replies to this letter.
You have been so angelically kind to E. & me, all through this little episode in her life, that I shall always be grateful to you dear Mabel.
I do hope that the Queen is not very much annoyed with E. & me, altho’ it wd be quite natural that she shd be, but I shd be so unhappy to cause her (the Queen) any worry in her strenuous life. I hope ‘he’ will find a very nice wife, who will make him happy – as between you & me, I feel he will be ‘made or marred’ by his wife.
No one
except
you
knows what a keen disappointment it has all been to me, but I daresay it is all for the best, & my worldliness will be well squashed!!
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*
Queen Mary appears not to have been annoyed, for a few days later she invited Lady Strathmore to see her at Buckingham Palace.
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No record of the conversation has survived.
The Prince may have been downcast but he was determined to maintain his pursuit of Elizabeth and they continued to correspond. On Good Friday she wrote to him from Glamis to say she was happy that ‘depressing’ Lent was nearly over. She hoped to come to London soon but ‘It is so impossible to make plans with my mother ill like this – sometimes I get rather depressed, but I suppose that is silly of me!’
Elizabeth was busy getting up a sale for the troop of Girl Guides she had started at Glamis in 1920. ‘You ought to see me in my uniform of Lord High Admiral of the Guides,’ she told the Prince. ‘I am an awe-inspiring figure & look most commanding. Have you been doing anything amusing lately? Please forgive such a deadly letter, I think my brain is going, through not having seen anyone for such ages.’
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She signed herself ‘Elizabeth’.
*
P
RINCE
A
LBERT
, too, was busy – with his work for the Industrial Welfare Society. Such work was needed. Throughout 1920 industrial unrest had been growing. In the first three months of 1921 unemployment almost doubled to 1,300,000, the export price of coal collapsed, and the government announced its intention to denationalize the mining industry. At the beginning of April the miners declared a strike and the railwaymen and transport workers threatened to join them. The King immediately returned from Windsor to London. ‘There is no doubt that we are passing through as grave a crisis as this country has ever had,’ he wrote. ‘All the troops have been called out, Kensington Gardens are full of them … The Government have made all their preparations for distributing food &c and the public are entirely with the Govt, so perhaps these delightful people who want a revolution, will come to their senses before it is too late.’
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Prince Albert too had been at Windsor: cancelling out all else in his engagement diary are the words ‘Return to London on account of Coal Strike.’
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The general sense of nervousness that the prevailing social system would not survive affected the Bowes Lyon family. In the second week of April Lord Strathmore, taking his butler Arthur Barson with him, hurried from St Paul’s Walden to Glamis to raise volunteers to break the transport strike. Elizabeth wrote to Beryl, ‘Bad times my dear M[edusa], but I love the calm way the British people take it all! Nothing but talks of Revolution and Ruin, & yet everybody moons along in the same old way, except that the “Boys” join anything they can. Mike has joined something, and goes to Hertford tomorrow. Very bored, but I suppose he’s right.’
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The government made elaborate plans for feeding London and other cities but at the last minute, on ‘Black Friday’, 15 April, the railways and transport unions called off their strike. The King was relieved when, shortly afterwards, he attended a football match watched by 73,000 people: ‘at the end they sang the National Anthem and cheered tremendously. There were no Bolsheviks there! At least I never saw any. The country is all right: just a few extremists are doing all the harm.’
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It was in these troubled circumstances that Prince Albert took up a suggestion by Alexander Grant, an industrialist. Grant argued that increasing contacts between young people of different backgrounds would benefit society as a whole. The Prince, who had been impressed
by a football game between young Welsh steelworkers and pupils from Westminster School, hit upon the idea of a camp. Two hundred boys from public schools and 200 from firms which had joined the Industrial Welfare Society would be brought together with the aim of breaking down social divisions through a week of shared games and entertainment.
The first camp, paid for by Grant, took place in August 1921 on Romney Marsh in Kent. It was unprecedented: although camps had been held by organizations such as the Boys’ Brigade and the Scouts, this was the first to mix groups which had never met. There were of course teething troubles and problems of communication, but the camp went well.
*
‘Your Boys Camp was a great success wasn’t it?’ Elizabeth asked the Prince. ‘I hope so anyway, as it is such an excellent idea, and a wonderful thing for the boys.’ The camps became an annual summer event for the next eighteen years. Prince Albert always spent one full day, the Duke’s Day, at the camp, joining in meals and games, and in the singing of what became the camp song, ‘Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree’. Although inevitably limited and too easily dismissed as naive by a more cynical generation, these camps were a genuine attempt to mitigate the harsh realities of industrial life between the wars.
The Prince of Wales, too, was playing his part, in a welcome year off from his Empire tours. He visited industrial areas and was enthusiastically received even by convinced republicans in Glasgow and Lancashire.
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In May 1921 he went on a ten-day tour of Devon and Cornwall, during which he stayed for two days with Lord and Lady Clinton
†
at Bicton in Devon. The Clintons were the parents of Elizabeth’s sister-in-law Fenella, and they had invited her to join their house party for the Prince’s visit. Elizabeth was struck by his industry. ‘The Prince was away all day working hard, & only got back at tea time – he does have a hellish life – that’s the only word for it.’ For her it was a pleasant interlude: the party played tennis, ‘lazed about, &
occasionally did a few official Prince of Wales things and had great fun’.
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There was more amusement to come. Diamond Hardinge’s father, Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, had been appointed ambassador to France in 1920. He was a widower and the twenty-year-old Diamond, a lively, humorous girl given to daring practical jokes,
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was his only daughter. She invited Elizabeth to go to Paris with her at the end of May 1921. Prince Paul had also written to Elizabeth from Belgrade to say that he was visiting the French capital too and hoped they would meet: he was ‘simply longing’ to see her again, ‘& also we might have some of our fast parties in the gay French Metropolis.’
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She loved this, her first visit to Paris. She and Diamond escaped from the Embassy and dined with Prince Paul and Lord and Lady Dalkeith – Walter Dalkeith had married Mollie Lascelles in April. ‘It was such fun,’ she wrote to Prince Albert, ‘and delicious seeing Mollie again – also it felt very odd being chaperoned by her!’
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Afterwards they danced at Ciro’s club. Then, as she told Beryl, but not the Prince, they went on to ‘a low place, full of the most astounding people!… We threw balls at each other, and danced, and at 1.30 Maurice and Leonora Hughes danced divinely.
*
At 2 we staggered out – me exchanging a rapid fire of little pink balls with a sinister gentleman in a black beard! It
was
such fun, & so indescribably Parisien as to atmosphere!’ Another night they dined at the Café de Madrid:
One ate and danced out of doors, under trees lit up with little pink lights. I do wish you could see them dancing the shimmy here!! It’s too disgusting! And at the place we finished up at last night, honestly none of the women wore any clothes under their frocks! Too odd it is! The food is so good here – alpine strawberries, huge asparagus & horse shoe rolls are the things I like!
There was serious sightseeing too: the two girls went to the Louvre, and Lord Hardinge drove them to Malmaison and Chartres.
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Elizabeth wrote to the Prince that she had decided to stay on for at least a week, ‘as London is so dull now, and this is amusing. Are you going to Ascot? I know you
love
it!!’
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On 9 June she wrote again. She had been to a ball the night before ‘and I am in the last stages of exhaustion! They dance the Tango a great deal out here – rather an amusing dance I think. I danced it with a Russian called Constantine Somebody the other evening – I never found out his other name! It was so funny, one is suddenly hurled into the air, and then bounced on the floor till one is gaga, ou la la! Very painful.’
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Back in England she continued to correspond with the Prince, to meet him at dances and to play tennis with him. They were not well matched on the court – he had won the RAF Doubles Competition in 1920, playing with Louis Greig, whereas she was ‘getting worse & worse!’ as she told him.
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There was more tennis, without the Prince, at a lively house party at Welbeck Abbey, home of Elizabeth’s relations the Duke and Duchess of Portland.
*
‘We played tennis violently all day, & danced violently all night, so I’m now even more of a wreck than I was!’ she reported to the Prince in a letter thanking him for a book he had sent for her birthday.
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She was expecting him at Glamis at the end of September 1921, just as the year before. She was happy to be friends with him, she said in her letters. This must have encouraged his ambitions.
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Queen Mary came to see for herself. On 5 September she arrived at Airlie Castle to stay with Lady Airlie, and Lord Strathmore and Elizabeth were invited for tea; Lady Strathmore was unwell and could not come. Four days later the Queen lunched at Glamis. ‘Went over the Castle which is most interesting,’ she recorded, with characteristic brevity.
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According to Mabell Airlie, ‘Lady Elizabeth filled her mother’s place as hostess so charmingly that the Queen was more than ever convinced that this was “the one girl who could make Bertie happy”.’ But Queen Mary was determined not to interfere. ‘I shall say nothing to either of them. Mothers should never meddle in their children’s love affairs.’
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On 24 September Prince Albert duly arrived at Glamis. While he was there his mother wrote, sending ‘many messages to the Strathmores and E’ and hoping he was enjoying himself.
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He replied, ‘It is
delightful here and Elizabeth is very kind to me. The more I see her the more I like her.’
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With her mother still in bed, Elizabeth continued to play hostess. Her father, Michael and David were there; so were Rose and Wisp, together with Mida Scott,
*
Katie Hamilton, Doris Gordon-Lennox and James Stuart. After three days of partridge driving, which the Prince enjoyed, although he felt he had not shot as well as he could, he joined his brother David on the London train at Glamis. James Stuart, alone of the party, stayed on at Glamis for three more days.
Back at Buckingham Palace the Prince wrote to his father that his week at Glamis had been ‘delightful’ and ‘they were all so kind to me’.
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To Elizabeth he wrote:
My dear Elizabeth, Thank you ever so very much for all your kindness to me last week at Glamis. I did so love my time there, & hated having to leave you all on Friday night to come South … It is very sad to think that we shall not meet now for some time, but do please write to me & let me know when you are coming back to London … Thanking you again ever so much for asking me up to Glamis, & being so kind to me in every way.
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On 2 October Lady Strathmore had an operation; a tumour had been feared but fortunately the surgeon found and removed only a large gallstone.
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Nonetheless, she suffered shock and the doctors feared for her life, Elizabeth told Beryl. ‘I can’t tell you how awful it is – this is the 6th day of suspense, but I believe she will recover somehow.’
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She began to do so.
To the Prince Elizabeth wrote, ‘I’m afraid this is a very depressed letter, but you know, it is such a relief to write about it, & does one so much good, that I hope you don’t mind. I’m afraid I must have made a lugubrious hostess last week, but I enjoyed having everybody here, and I only hope that it wasn’t too depressing for you … Shall I write a little later on, & let you know how my mother is? You are very sympathetic about it all – worry
is
awful, isn’t it? … Thank you again for your letter, it is
such
a help to have the sympathy of one’s
friends on these occasions.’
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She had found that she could rely on him in times of stress; she welcomed that at difficult moments, an important element of their developing relationship.
