The Queen Mother (36 page)

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C
HRISTMAS
1923 was politically a difficult period. Stanley Baldwin was facing increasing problems at home and abroad. He wished to introduce Protection to defend British producers against cheap imports and on 12 November he asked the King for a dissolution of Parliament so as to seek a mandate from the nation. The King, who worried about the turmoil across Europe and believed that Baldwin would lose his gamble, attempted to dissuade him, but in vain.

Baldwin’s proposal to impose import taxes raised an outcry against the prospect of expensive food, and the election was fierce. The Liberals, split between Lloyd George and Asquith, reunited under the banner of Free Trade. Lloyd George, in typically spirited fashion, called the Tories ‘tinned crabs’ and ‘tinned salmon’, the sorts of foods on which people were warned they would have to subsist, if tariffs were introduced. The
Daily News
published electioneering songs which proved popular enough actually to be sung at political meetings. One, a parody of the popular American song ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas’, went:

The years of slump had given ex-servicemen, now on the electoral register, ample time to think. As Robert Graves pointed out, they might dislike ‘Socialist clap trap’ but they felt they had been let down by both the major, older parties. ‘ “Them Socialists can’t make no bigger box-up nor the old lot didn’t” was the mood on many mean streets.’
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When the results came in on 6 December, Baldwin and the
Conservative Party had lost eighty-eight seats; they now had only 258 Members of Parliament. The relatively new, completely untried Labour Party increased its representation from 144 seats to 191 and the number of Liberal MPs rose to 158. It was an unprecedented crisis. For the first time ever in British politics there was a three-way split; no one party could govern alone, but each of them could try to form a coalition with one of the others. In effect the Liberals held the balance of power between left and right. The King’s role became critical.

Baldwin wished to resign at once, but the King considered that this would not be proper – he reminded the Prime Minister that the Conservatives were still the single largest party and so it was Baldwin’s duty to confront the new House of Commons and thus determine whether or not he could actually form a government. The King insisted that the sovereign ‘ought not to accept the verdict of the Polls, except as expressed by the representatives of the Electorate across the floor of the House of Commons’.
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Baldwin agreed but he stressed that he was not prepared to form another coalition with the Liberals in order to keep Labour out. This caused further dismay among Conservatives, in and out of Parliament. Labour politicians were thought of by many traditionalists as ‘Wild Men’ who would destroy the established order, just as their comrades had in Russia. All sorts of schemes were proposed by which the monarch might use his prerogative to keep Labour out. These suggestions aroused Labour anger and one Labour leader, George Lansbury MP, warned at a meeting in Shoreditch, ‘Some centuries ago, a King stood against the common people and he lost his head.’
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In similar vein, the ‘Marseillaise’ and ‘The Red Flag’ were sung at a meeting at the Albert Hall over which the Labour leader, Ramsay MacDonald, presided. All this was alarming, but the King remained calm, saying that he must rely upon his own judgement.
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He knew that, if and when Baldwin was defeated in Parliament, he would have to send for Ramsay MacDonald as the leader of the next-largest party. He also made it clear that he would not hamper MacDonald by imposing conditions of any sort upon him.

The run-up to Christmas was thus a period of political uncertainty, if not fear, but that did not get in the way of traditional festivities. The Yorks were busy. On 11 December they attended a concert given by the Royal Amateur Orchestral Society at the Queen’s Hall in central
London, and the same evening went to a charity ball. They attended the Christmas Party of the ‘Not Forgotten’ Association and on 18 December the Duchess had a solo engagement to present the prizes at the Francis Holland School in Clarence Gate on the edge of Regent’s Park. Christmas itself was to be spent at Sandringham. The contrast between the stiff formality of the royal occasion and the happy hilarity of all her Christmases past was something to which the Duchess did not look forward.
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She and the Duke took the train to Norfolk with other members of the Royal Family on 22 December and, after arrival at York Cottage, called that afternoon at the big house to see ‘Granny, Aunt Toria & the Norways
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etc. Everybody looking even older!’
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On Christmas Eve they watched the distribution of Christmas food to the tenants of the estate and then returned for tea at Sandringham House, where all the presents were laid out on a long table. The King and Queen gave their daughter-in-law a pretty bracelet and a number of smaller presents. On Christmas Day itself they all walked to church and then had lunch at York Cottage. Afterwards the Duke and Duchess went for a long walk. Dinner that night, for which she dressed in red velvet, was at the big house. She sat between General Sir Dighton Probyn, Queen Alexandra’s ancient, eccentric, bewhiskered Comptroller, and Olav, the Crown Prince of Norway. It seems to have been a more relaxed evening than she had feared, for she recorded in her diary, ‘crackers and much laughter’.
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INETEEN
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TWENTY
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FOUR
opened with another attempt by the Duke to get them rehoused. It was not easy. First of all there were not many suitable houses easily available in London and, secondly, there was the problem of the public money already spent at White Lodge; they could not simply walk away. The Duchess’s diary recorded, ‘Greig telephoned after tea to say that edeh [sic] dah a klat tuoba etihw egdol, & taht ti dah deliaf. Cifirret tnemtnioppasid.’
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At the same time, she got into a rare scrape with the King. On Tuesday 8 January they had returned to London from Northampton. She went to the dentist who ‘froze my face’, then she drove on to
White Lodge. There was a busy evening ahead. They drove back into London and picked up the Prince of Wales at St James’s Palace; they dined with him, and Prince George, at Claridge’s and then went to the theatre. After a brief stop at St James’s Palace they went on to the Midnight Follies, a nightclub and cabaret in the Metropole Hotel. There they danced. They did not get home till 3 a.m.
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Dancing and jazz had become widespread passions since the end of the war. There were many new dance crazes – the Twinkle, the Jog Trot, the Vampire, the Shimmy and later the Charleston. Journalists wrote, with typical prurience, of shocking ‘Nights in the Jazz Jungle’. A
Daily Mail
article described ‘Jazzmania’ thus: ‘Women dressed as men, men as women; youths in bathing drawers and kimonos. Matrons moving about lumpily and breathing hard. Everybody terribly serious; not a single laugh, or the palest ghost of a smile. Frantic noises and occasional cries of ecstasy came from half a dozen negro players. Dim lights, drowsy odours and futurist paintings on the walls and ceiling.’
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With dancing came more drinking. The Licensing Act of 1921 allowed alcohol to be served with food (often just sandwiches) after 11 p.m. But physicians expressed great concern that the younger generation were drinking more. Cocktails were denounced as ‘the most reprehensible form of alcoholic abuse’.

The Metropole was the first hotel to offer dancers a large cabaret as well, and this attracted a certain notoriety. When the King heard of the Duke and Duchess’s visit to the Follies, he was not pleased, and told Louis Greig so. Greig passed on the reprimand and the Duchess noted in her diary, ‘Apparently na lufwa wor tuoba eht thgindim seillof.’ She wrote at once to her father-in-law. ‘I am
so
sorry about this, as I hate to think of you being annoyed with us, or worried in any way,’ she said; they had gone only to have supper there after the theatre, ‘and it really is a most respectable place. I promise you we would not go anywhere that we
ought not
to.’ She hoped he did not mind her writing, because she knew how busy he was. However, she could not resist adding a rather risky reference to fast behaviour: ‘I only hope I shall not be under the influence of a drug!! As whilst you are opening Parliament, I shall be opening my jaw to the dentist, and he told me he was going to inject some “dope” into my face.’
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If his daughter-in-law’s charm had its usual mollifying effect, no written response has survived; perhaps the King wrote none because he was indeed busy with matters of government. On 15 January 1924
he conducted the state opening of the new Parliament; afterwards, the Yorks had lunch with him at the Palace. The King advised the Duke to attend the House of Commons when he could – ‘there will be some very interesting debates which will become historical.’
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On 21 January Baldwin confronted the Commons. The Conservatives were defeated after the Liberals decided to side with Labour.

The next day Baldwin came to the Palace to tender his resignation. The King sent for Ramsay MacDonald. In his diary he noted, ‘I had an hour’s talk with him, he impressed me very much, he wishes to do [the] right thing.’ He added: ‘Today 23 years ago dear Grandmama died, I wonder what she would have thought of a Labour Govt.’
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In the event, MacDonald appointed a Cabinet with wise regard to the sensibilities of those who feared revolution. He and the King quickly established great confidence in each other. The King made a point of meeting each of his new ministers personally; he recorded in his diary that he had a very interesting conversation with the most left-wing minister of all, John Wheatley, now Minister of Health. He was impressed, writing to Queen Alexandra: ‘I must say they all seem to be very intelligent & they take things very seriously. They have different ideas to ours, as they are all socialists but they ought to be given a chance & ought to be treated fairly.’
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The new men thought well of their king. One of them, J. R. Clynes, Lord Privy Seal, a former mill-hand, wrote in his Memoirs, ‘I had expected to find him unbending; instead he was kindness and sympathy itself. Before he gave us leave to go, he made an appeal to us that I have never forgotten: “The immediate future of my people, and their whole happiness, is in your hands, gentlemen. They depend upon your prudence and sagacity.” ’
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On the day of Baldwin’s defeat, the Yorks had awoken at their rented house at Guilsborough; the Duke went hunting while the Duchess ventured on the train from Northampton – there was a train drivers strike that day and it was not clear she would get through. But a few trains were running and the station master at Northampton put on a saloon for her. She reached White Lodge at about 6.30, just after her husband had arrived by car. He left to dine with the Prince of Wales and then went to the House of Commons to witness the moment at which the Labour Party took power for the first time.
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The rest of that winter the Duke and Duchess spent many
weekends at Guilsborough. She liked him to hunt but she was aware of the dangers and got nervous – and sometimes cross – if he returned late from the field. Apart from hunting, their lives were busy – with official engagements, and an enormous amount of driving to and from White Lodge – not to mention late nights in plenty. Thus on Tuesday 26 February the Duchess went out to lunch at the Berkeley with her friend Dorothé Plunket ‘and I admired her baby’. (Patrick Plunket, who was born in September 1923, was to become an intimate friend of the family; his parents died in a plane crash in 1938.) This was followed by a long night out with the Prince of Wales, ending with another visit to the Metropole, despite the King’s opinion of the place. They got to bed at 3 a.m. and next day, although both felt tired and unwell, they drove to London, had tea with Lady Airlie at Bruton Street and then drove back to ‘Whiters’ to change for a great ball at the Londonderrys’.
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On 28 February, accompanied by Louis Greig, she opened the Ideal Home Exhibition at Olympia. This outing was almost the last duty that Louis Greig undertook as the Duke of York’s Comptroller. He and the Duke had agreed that he should retire, to be replaced by Captain Basil Brooke. It was a major break – Greig had served the Duke with sympathy, loyalty and inspiration since 1916, as his principal and essential bulwark and friend. His departure was perhaps inevitable once the Duke had a wife who was not only anxious but also well able to offer him even greater support and encouragement.

In October 1923 the Prince had written to reassure his parents that the decision was mutual and necessary. ‘I feel that now I am married it is better to have a change as things have not been working too smoothly and we both feel the time has come.’
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The King and Queen were nonetheless alarmed and told him so. The Prince replied to his father saying how sorry he was to have worried them and he now wished he had told them of his plan to relinquish Greig before he had done it. ‘I wish I had known what I do now about how much you liked him & all the different things he did for you.’
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Inevitably rumours circulated that the Duchess was responsible for Greig’s departure. She was dismayed by such talk and, in a letter to him the following month, she took care to express both her own and the Duke’s gratitude to him, adding that the Duke was troubled by these unfounded accusations. Greig replied: