The Queen Mother (31 page)

That evening Elizabeth went home to St Paul’s Walden and spent Sunday morning resting in bed. After lunch she went for short walks in between writing letters and noted in her diary, ‘Feel very odd & sad at leaving home.’
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On Monday 23 April, back in London, she went to the Abbey with the Duke and all the bridesmaids for the wedding rehearsal. She was tired when she got home at 7 p.m., but after dinner, wearing her ‘new pink’, she set off for Buckingham Palace with her parents to attend the first of the pre-wedding receptions given by the King and Queen. There were about 800 guests – members of the two families, their friends, members of the diplomatic corps and donors of wedding presents, which were on display in large glass cases. H. H. Asquith, the former Prime Minister, described the evening to a friend: ‘I went in my knee-breeches and medals after dinner to Buckingham Palace, where the rooms, big as they are, were very nearly crowded … The bride, everyone says, is full of charm and stood in a row with the King and Queen. We all shook hands with her as we passed … The whole of what is called the “world” was there in its best frocks.’
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In the course of the evening Asquith inadvertently stood on the train of a lady’s dress, anchoring her to the floor for two minutes, a mishap observed by another guest, Freddy Dalrymple Hamilton. He recorded in his diary that Elizabeth was ‘splendid & looked lovely & seemed to take everything very calmly as I never had any doubt she would … I didn’t manage to talk to Elizabeth but we had to content
ourselves with making ugly faces at each other across the room!’
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The King gave Elizabeth his personal Order;
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the Queen commented in her diary on how pretty she looked in pink.
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Her own diary entry ended, ‘Shook hands with hundreds & talked till 11.15. Home 11.30. All the family went. Bed 1.’
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On Tuesday Elizabeth worked for a time on letters with Miss Chard and then she and the Duke attended the afternoon party at the Palace for Royal Household and Strathmore staff – about a thousand in all – and took tea with the King and Queen. That evening came the unexpected announcement that James Stuart was betrothed to Lady Rachel Cavendish. Everyone seemed very happy. Elizabeth and the Duke dined at Claridge’s with the newly engaged couple and ten of their mutual friends and then went on to the Hippodrome and later to the Berkeley Hotel, fashionable then and later, dancing all the while. ‘I was in good form! Went home, & talked to Bertie. Then talked to Mike for ages. Bed 3.30.’
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Next morning, the eve of her wedding, she awoke at 10 o’clock ‘feeling very ill!’ Beryl Poignand and Betty Cator both came to give her last-minute cheer. ‘I talked on the telephone and did a million things before lunch.’ The Duke came to settle a few final details and afterwards they drove together through the usual crowds to the Palace. In the Duke’s room, Mrs Lindsay Carnegie presented the gift of the people of Forfarshire.
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Soon after their engagement, the County Clerk of Forfarshire had written to Lord Strathmore to seek his advice on a suitable present. Lord Strathmore had consulted his daughter, who had made it clear that she did not want the people of Forfar to go to any unnecessary expense. He had therefore replied ‘that she would infinitely prefer that no money was spent on a wedding gift for her when unemployment and distress are so prevalent, and when almost everyone is feeling the pinch of the bad times. I entirely agree with those sentiments, which Lady Elizabeth holds strongly, although she does not wish to tie the hands of those at the meeting unduly, and, above all, does not wish to appear ungrateful.’
¹⁰⁰
After this letter was read at a public meeting, the
Council decided to present her with an illuminated book, full of illustrations of her home county.
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At the third Palace party she had to shake hands with hundreds more people. It was very tiring, but at 6 p.m. she and her mother went home for a quiet family evening at Bruton Street, her last as a single woman. ‘Felt terribly moved when I said good-night to the darling boys & mother. I adore them. Bed 11.’
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*

O
N THE MORNING
of the wedding, crowds gathered early in Bruton Street and all along the route to the Abbey. Spring was only beginning to touch the trees of London. It was a cold, damp, blustery day, but, in the words of Queen Mary, ‘the sun came out between showers.’
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The King had commanded that flags be flown on government buildings on the day of the wedding. But there were no decorations in the Mall, for in the current economic climate he was mindful that extravagance might not be popular. There was nothing to discourage firms or private individuals from putting up bunting should they wish. Schoolchildren were given the day off school and the King requested that His Majesty’s ships be dressed overall and fire a salute at noon.
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As the bride prepared, her family left for Westminster Abbey as and when the meticulous schedule required. Just after 11 a.m., Queen Alexandra left Marlborough House. One minute later the King and Queen drove out of Buckingham Palace, accompanied by the sovereign’s escort of the Household Cavalry. At 11.13 the bridegroom, attended by the Prince of Wales, followed them. One minute before that, Elizabeth had set off from Bruton Street with her father. There is a famous photograph of her as she left the family home, glancing somewhat tentatively at the camera, about to step into the carriage and away from her family. She and her father drove in a state landau escorted by four mounted Metropolitan policemen. According to one of her biographers, she seemed to be both surprised and touched by the warmth of her welcome along the streets. But her father was
reported to be in low spirits at the prospect of giving away his daughter.
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This was the first marriage of a king’s son in the Abbey and only the third royal marriage to take place there since Richard II had married Anne of Bohemia in 1382. It had since become the custom for royal marriages to be celebrated privately, until Princess Patricia of Connaught’s marriage in Westminster Abbey in 1919, followed by that of Princess Mary in 1922.

Among the guests were three prime ministers, present and past – Bonar Law, Lloyd George and Asquith – the first two, according to the
Yorkshire Post
, not flattered by the gold lace and breeches they wore as Privy Counsellors. Asquith was ‘smiling and serene in his Trinity House uniform’, his wife swathed in an almond-green marocain wrap. Lord Curzon, ‘appearing very pleased with himself, slouched in wearing an overcoat, and with his hands in his pockets’, the
Post
’s reporter noted. Present also were Winston Churchill, looking ‘chubby and sleek’, Austen Chamberlain and his wife, she in a silver cloak and a gold turban decked with tall osprey feathers, while Mrs Neville Chamberlain wore an elegant gown by Worth. All parties in the House of Commons were ‘well represented’, as
The Times
pointed out – Labour leaders included Ramsay MacDonald, J. R. Clynes and Arthur Henderson.
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Another notable Labour MP, Will Thorne of the Gas Workers and General Union, had asked for and obtained seats for his wife and daughter.
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Asquith, writing next day about the ceremony, remarked that the crowds in the streets were enormous and must have been drenched to the skin by the persistent showers throughout the day. ‘As a pageant it was extremely well done. I sat in the stalls with a curious little knot of neighbours: Ramsay MacDonald and Clynes (who were in black frock-coats), Buckmaster,
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Simon
^†
and Winston Churchill! The ennui of the long waits was relieved for me by being next to Winston, who was in his best form and really amusing.’
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Duff Cooper, with his wife
Diana, was pleased to have good seats.
^*
‘The Mosleys
^†
were next to us and the Dudley Wards immediately behind. I enjoyed it.’
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Perhaps the best view of the ceremony was that enjoyed by fifty-two boys seated high up in the Triforium. They had been invited at the Duke’s special request to represent young industrial workers.
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There were considerably fewer guests than had been invited to Princess Mary’s wedding: in his anxiety to keep costs low the King had ruled out the construction of the special stands which were used to increase seating in the Abbey in 1922, thus reducing the places available from 2,680 to 1,780.
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Nevertheless, as the
Morning Post
reported, there was ‘a large and brilliant congregation which included many of the leading personages of the nation and Empire’,
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with an estimated million spectators lining the processional route. As well as the huge press coverage, the ceremony and its aftermath, up to the appearance of the couple on the balcony at Buckingham Palace, were filmed – the first time this had been done, and the films were ready to be shown the same evening.
^‡

The service began with the ecclesiastical procession into the Abbey. It was led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Randall Davidson, who had held the post for a quarter of a century; the Archbishop of York, the Most Rev. Cosmo Lang; then the Primus of
the Episcopal Church of Scotland, Elizabeth’s Church, the Most Rev. Walter Robberds.

The King was wearing the uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet; Queen Mary was striking in a dress and turban of aquamarine blue and silver. With the King and Queen were Queen Alexandra and her sister the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna, Prince George and Princess Mary, together with some fourteen other members of the Royal Family. On the other side of the nave was the bride’s family. According to the press accounts of the time, Lady Strath-more was wearing ‘a handsome gown of black marocain’ under a black cloak with a collar of blue roses. Her eldest daughter, May Elphinstone, was dressed in a spectacular embroidered outfit of dove-grey satin with jade and gold roses, a large plumed hat and a sable wrap. Dorothy Glamis, both beautiful and elegant, wore what was described as ‘one of the most successful costumes in the Abbey’ of soft silver.
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The Duke of York was the first member of the Royal Family to be married in the dress uniform of the Royal Air Force. He wore the Garter Riband and Star and the Star of the Order of the Thistle, which the King had bestowed upon him in honour of his Scottish bride. His row of medals included those he had earned by service in the war. He was supported by the Prince of Wales, wearing the uniform of the Grenadier Guards, and by Prince Henry, in the uniform of the 10th Hussars. Freddy Dalrymple Hamilton, seated with his wife Gwendolen close to the aisle, watched the Duke as he walked by. ‘We managed to catch his eye as he passed or thought we did as he ½ grinned at us.’
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Awaiting the bride were her eight bridesmaids – Queen Mary’s nieces, Lady Mary and Lady May Cambridge, and four of Elizabeth’s old friends, Lady Katharine Hamilton, Lady Mary Thynne, Betty Cator and Diamond Hardinge, and then her two nieces, Elizabeth Elphinstone and Cecilia Bowes Lyon. All wore ivory-coloured dresses of crêpe de Chine with bands of Nottingham lace, covered with white chiffon. Around their waists they had leaf-green tulle sashes held in place by a white rose and a silver thistle. In their hair they wore bandeaux of white roses and myrtle leaves. Each bridesmaid also wore her gift from the bridegroom – a carved crystal brooch in the form of the white rose of York with a diamond centre carrying the initials E and A. The older bridesmaids wore silver shoes, the two young ones,
who were carrying the train, white shoes. They all carried bouquets of white roses and white heather.

The bride arrived punctually, just as the sun came out from behind the clouds. She was wearing a dress of cream chiffon moiré with appliquéd bars of silver lamé, embroidered with gold thread and beads of paste and pearl. It had a deep square neckline and short sleeves, a straight-cut bodice and a slightly gathered skirt with a short train set into the waist seam at the back. Over the dress she wore a long train of silk net with a lace edging, and a
point de Flandres
lace veil, both of which Queen Mary had lent her. The veil was drawn down low over her forehead; a simple wreath of myrtle leaves, white roses and white heather held it in place. Her shoes were of ivory silk moiré embroidered with silver roses, and she carried a bouquet of roses and lily-of-the-valley.

When Elizabeth and her father entered the Abbey, one of the clergy preceding her fainted. As they waited for the procession to reform, she suddenly left her father’s side and went to lay her bouquet of white roses on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, placed at the west end of the nave in honour of the countless British dead of the Great War whose bodies had never been found and who had had no proper burial.
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This gesture was unexpected. People speculated afterwards that at the door of the Abbey she might have thought suddenly of her brother Fergus, killed in 1915 at the Battle of Loos.

On the arm of her father, Elizabeth then moved towards her future. Freddy Dalrymple Hamilton reflected the emotion of many of her friends and family in the account he wrote in his diary.

According to
The Times
, ‘The Duke of York faced with shining eyes and a look of happiness the girl who, hand in hand with her father, was advancing in her lovely old fashioned dress, gleaming with silver and veiled in old lace … they seemed to think of no one but each other.’