The Queen Mother (37 page)

In a fond letter of 29 February 1924, the day after he left, the Prince himself assured Greig of his gratitude and affection. ‘A parting between two friends is always a painful ordeal, but a parting between us, I hope, is an impossibility, even an official one … I hope and trust we shall always be the best of friends and that we shall see something of each other in the days to come.’
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At the insistence of the King and Queen, Greig remained a member of the Household, even while he embarked on a new career in the City.
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That spring, the Duchess was again afflicted by bouts of flu and tonsillitis. On 7 March, after attending a party for Members of Parliament at Buckingham Palace, she ‘went straight back to White Lodge, & felt like death’.
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She had to spend ten days in bed. She wrote in pencil to D’Arcy Osborne, asking if he would come and see her. ‘I am bubbling with talk at the moment.’ She wanted to hear all about the new Labour regime at the Foreign Office. She was not, she wrote, enthusiastic about Labour, but she was very fond of her Scottish nurse from Dundee who was ‘deliciously enthusiastic’ about everything. ‘
How
I love the little things of life.’
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On 23 April the Duke and Duchess went with the King to the opening of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. The King was patron of the exhibition, the Prince of Wales president, and Queen Mary patron of the Women’s Section. The Duchess, unlike her husband, also had an important role – she was president of the Women’s Section. The exhibition was a major event in which sovereign and Empire were once again fused in the public imagination. In retrospect it is easy to say that by 1924 the days of empire were fading fast, but at the time it did not seem so. The Empire Collect, read at the opening ceremony by the Bishop of London, beseeched the Almighty to ‘raise up generations of public men who will have the
faith and daring of the Kingdom of God in them, and who will enlist for life in a holy warfare for the freedom and rights of all Thy children’. The exhibition was designed to celebrate the extraordinary achievements of Britain in the world and to draw the peoples of the Empire together.
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The Royal Family drove by car most of the way from Windsor to Wembley, and then, despite the cold, they transferred to horse-drawn carriages, in which they paraded around the packed and enthusiastic stadium. The Prince of Wales then formally invited his father to open the huge imperial collection gathered in his honour and in celebration of the Empire. The Duchess recorded it thus: ‘David asked the King to open it and he was broadcasted.’
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In fact it was a much more momentous occasion than her words suggest – this was the first time that the infant British Broadcasting Company had ever broadcast the words of the King live, the first time that millions of his subjects – perhaps ten million – had ever heard the King’s voice.
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Wireless was still a new phenomenon. In 1919 the Marconi Company had begun transmissions from Chelmsford and the following year Dame Nellie Melba was paid the fabulous sum of £1,000 by the
Daily Mail
to sing into the microphone. ‘Listening in’ became more and more popular and in 1922, when the Post Office agreed to allow the formation of a company just to transmit, the British Broadcasting Company was created. (It was elevated to the dignity of a Corporation four years later.) It was to be organized by wireless manufacturers, and from the start it was run with close supervision by the state. The medium boomed. Stations were set up all around the country. Enthusiasts created ‘crystal’ sets from odds and ends to pick up whatever transmissions they could. Tall poles were erected in gardens for aerials and young boys all over the country were seen hunched over sets, earphones clamped to their heads, fingers twisting dials.

Inevitably there were technical problems with the King’s broadcast. The BBC had set up large Marconi polarized moving-coil microphones on either side of the royal dais, and the sound was run through a nearby BBC booth down Post Office lines to Savoy Hill. The first few minutes of the broadcast were lost, but by the time the King rose the system had been repaired. At the end of his speech he said, ‘We believe that this Exhibition will bring the peoples of the Empire to a better knowledge of how to meet their reciprocal wants and aspirations … And we hope further that the success of the Exhibition will
bring lasting benefits not to the Empire only, but to mankind in general.’
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The Times
reported the moment with enthusiasm. ‘There were no chatterings nor scufflings among the children now. There was not a whisper, scarce even a stifled cough (and we are still in April and this is England) in all the great assembly. So great was the silence that a creaking door and an echo … were the only sounds that crossed in the smallest degree His Majesty’s clear, rich tones.’
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The broadcast was relayed around the world, marking the beginning of a revolution in communications which would transform society and, within Britain, have far-reaching repercussions on the role and image of the monarchy.

The Royal Family toured the exhibition, where visitors could watch a re-enactment of the Zulu wars and journey from pavilion to glamorous pavilion on the ‘Neverstop Train’, viewing the verities of Australia, the exoticism of Malaya, the glorious pagodas of Burma and, above all, the fabulous treasures of the Jewel in the Crown, India.
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Among the most popular exhibits – and certainly the longest lasting – was the intricate miniature mansion designed by Lutyens and known as Queen Mary’s Doll’s House, which is still viewed, at Windsor Castle, by hundreds of thousands of people every year. For the Duchess, there was probably more panoply than refreshment at Wembley that day. It was impressive, but cold, and by the time she arrived back in Windsor she had a chill and went to bed feeling ‘rotton’.
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She was advised to have a series of inoculations against tonsillitis; the injections were unpleasant and not obviously helpful.
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There were not, in those days, many female members of the Royal Family able to undertake public duties. If the Duchess wished to play a significant role in the public life of the monarchy, there was much she could do. Before her marriage she had already undertaken more public activities than many of her age; she had been a commissioner
in the local Girl Guides and she had often helped her mother in church and village functions. But she knew very little about life in the cities or about the industrial world.

During her long life she was to become patron of a large array of charities and organizations. But she began this part of her career in an almost haphazard manner. The first charities she took over were those which Princess Christian, Queen Victoria’s third daughter, who had been much interested in nursing and other charities, had patronized until her death in June 1923. These included the North Islington Welfare Centre and Wards, the Young Women’s Christian Association, the Mothercraft Training Society and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Another was the Royal Hospital and Home for Incurables at Putney. She took a keen interest in the work of the hospital over the decades that followed; at one stage she asked whether its name might not be changed, but the patients themselves wished it to continue as it was.
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As her gift for raising funds for charities was already clear, she was ideally suited to play a leading role in what later became known as the ‘welfare monarchy’.
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In early November 1923 she and the Duke visited Manchester to help one of its hospitals raise money to clear a £70,000 debt; on 23 November she opened the bazaar at the Working Men’s College in St Pancras.

On 29 November the Duke and Duchess visited the Queen’s Hospital for Children in Bethnal Green and that night they were the patrons of a ball at Claridge’s in aid of the hospital. The next day they visited the Royal Free Hospital in the Gray’s Inn Road on behalf of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals’ Association, of which the Duchess had recently become president. That same evening they attended the St Andrew’s Eve Ball (again at Claridge’s) in aid of the Royal Free Hospital’s Women’s and Babies’ Annexe. Writing to invite the Duchess to the ball, the Association’s secretary had been blunt about the ‘royal effect’ which helped charities so much: ‘The sale of tickets would be mere child’s play, if Her Royal Highness would graciously consent to this.’
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She already possessed an enduring and deeply felt interest in the armed forces. This grew naturally from her childhood, from her brothers’ service, the death of Fergus and her experiences in caring for sick and wounded servicemen at Glamis. The war-wounded became a particular focus for her. At the time of her marriage there were still almost 19,000 wounded soldiers in hospital. In July 1924 she and her husband attended a garden party for a thousand disabled soldiers, sailors, airmen and their nurses in the grounds of Hampton Court. She talked with many people. A letter of thanks afterwards said, ‘Her Royal Highness was absolutely wonderful, you cannot imagine it without seeing it, the way the unfortunate, disabled men crowded round her gave one a lump in the throat, no wonder she is so popular.’
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At the same time she became accustomed to the rituals of royal public life: laying foundation stones, opening new buildings, attending anniversaries – events by which the institutions involved set great store.

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S
ATURDAY
26 A
PRIL
was the Duke and Duchess’s first wedding anniversary, and the Duchess gave her husband a pair of cufflinks from Cartier. That afternoon they stood in for the King at the Cup Final at Wembley. Newcastle was playing Aston Villa before an enormous, enthusiastic crowd; the Duchess sat next to Ramsay MacDonald, who was very talkative, she recorded; and there was ‘terrific excitement’ when Newcastle won with two goals in the last five minutes.
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Summer gaiety was breaking out and they spent many evenings at dinners and balls in great London houses, or at one of the many thriving clubs and grand hotels. They frequently went out dining and dancing with the Prince of Wales, to whom they were both very close, and his friends.

By the beginning of June they had managed, to their relief, to move to Chesterfield House in Mayfair, loaned to them for the summer by Princess Mary and her husband Viscount Lascelles. On 3 June they gave a party for about seventy people and danced until the early hours. Among those who came were Fred Astaire and his sister Adèle, and sixty-five years later Queen Elizabeth could still recall the ‘thrill’ of dancing with Fred.
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There were several royal visits to occupy them as well. On 12 May they formally welcomed the King and Queen of Romania at Victoria
station at the start of their state visit, and attended the banquet in their honour that night. On 26 May it was King Victor Emmanuel III and Queen Elena of Italy who came; the Yorks went to the Guildhall lunch in their honour the following day and took their children, Princess Mafalda and Crown Prince Umberto (‘Beppo’), to a polo match at Ranelagh.
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In July they were on duty again for the visit of the heir to the throne of Ethiopia, Ras Taffari (later Emperor Haile Selassie).

More testing was their trip to the most difficult part of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, which was still riven with tensions between the Protestant Unionist majority and the Catholic nationalists. This was their most significant official visit to date, the first time any member of the Royal Family had been to Northern Ireland since the King had opened the new Ulster Parliament in June 1921.
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The formal invitation came in March 1924 from the Duke of Abercorn, the Governor of Northern Ireland, ‘on behalf of the people of Northern Ireland’.
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They spent a week in the province, from 19 to 26 July, and were welcomed everywhere with great enthusiasm by Ulstermen fiercely loyal to the United Kingdom. The Duchess’s diary gives the flavour of a remarkable week. To avoid civic ceremonies before reaching Northern Ireland, they sailed from the small port of Stranraer rather than Liverpool, on the morning of Saturday 19 July. Even at Stranraer, official presentations and crowds were inescapable. ‘At 9.30 the Provost appeared with an Address of welcome & a huge crowd. At 10 we went on board HMS Wryneck & sailed for Bangor.
Marvellous
day. We sat on the bridge & drank champagne & had great fun.’ They landed some three hours later, to a ‘great reception – thousands of people’.
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They then drove to the Governor’s official residence, Clandeboye,
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near Bangor, where the fun continued. The Duke of Abercorn’s wife was ill, so his daughter, the Duchess’s old friend Katie Hamilton, acted as hostess. She had invited their mutual friend Helen Hardinge to help. Having her friends there made the stay much more enjoyable for the Duchess, and Helen wrote a lively account of it all in her diary. The Duchess asked her to sing ‘The Bells of Hell’, they played poker until the early hours and constantly gossiped together. At one point she
recorded that the Duke, absorbed in looking at some jungle prints, did not come when his wife called him. ‘The corners of her mouth went down after the third attempt & putting both hands on his shoulders she said angelically: “Bertie do listen to me.” He kissed her and came at once. The wisdom of the serpent!’
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On Monday 21 July, they set off for Belfast. Messrs Armstrong Siddeley had lent them two Landaulette convertibles in which they could be better seen. They were given honorary degrees at Queen’s University and then the Duke unveiled the University’s war memorial. After a luncheon ‘with speeches and much noise’, they moved on to the Ulster Hall, where the Duke received addresses and made a speech which his wife judged to have gone very well. That evening they attended a dinner and a reception at Stormont Castle.
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After the reception there was a supper, but according to Helen Hardinge’s diary the Duchess complained that it went on too long, preventing her from shaking hands with enough of the guests. ‘When I do a thing I like to do it well and feel people are satisfied.’
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