The Queen Mother (41 page)
Authors: William Shawcross
They found that Keith Caldwell’s reliable open-topped Rolls-Royce was there to meet them and to carry them around, first to Government House to meet the Kabaka of Buganda
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and other African chiefs. The next day, Sunday, they drove to Kampala to attend a service at the Anglican Cathedral at Namirembe – ‘simply packed’, noted the Duchess – and afterwards they visited Roman Catholic missions. That evening their doctor advised them to take quinine against malaria – this had not been necessary in the high altitudes of Kenya. The drug was unkind to the Duke – he succumbed to quinine poisoning and had to cancel all his engagements next day as he lay abed, sick and perspiring, with swollen eyes.
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One day later he was well enough for them to resume their public engagements; they received addresses from the non-African communities in Kampala and then proceeded to the Bugandan parliament, the Lukiko, where they were welcomed by the Kabaka, whom the Duke invested as an honorary KCMG.
‡
They then watched a spectacular
omwoleko
, a parade of warriors accompanied by thunderous drumming.
Describing her first impressions of Uganda to her mother, the Duchess remarked that it was ‘more tropical’ and ‘softer’ than Kenya, and less developed in some ways – she was surprised to find that there was no running water or electric light at Government House – but ‘the cotton in this country is doing wonderfully well, and it is all native. They are fine big men, and apparently are successful because they are left under the Chiefs and not interfered with. Kenya, of course, is a white man’s country, and this is all black.’
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Broadly speaking, she was right – that was, in a nutshell, the difference between
Kenya as a British colony and Uganda as a protectorate. Uganda had no white settlers – tea and coffee planters were not allowed to own land, but only to lease it – and the country was governed under a system which maintained tribal hierarchies and encouraged the chiefs to practise their traditional forms of government at the local level, while the network of British provincial and district commissioners provided centralized control.
On 18 February they drove some 200 miles west to Fort Portal, where they met the Mukama (King) of Toro and his subordinate chiefs and exchanged gifts. The formalities over, they could begin their next safari. At Fort Portal a new team and a new adventure awaited them. There were two hunters, Captain Roy Salmon and Dr Duke, a safari manager, Brodrick Ashton Warner, and a new doctor, W. H. Keane. Salmon was an exuberant character who was known as Samaki, meaning ‘fish’; he had been recommended by the former Governor as ‘simply a magnificent hunter, fearing nothing & without a nerve in his body’.
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Both the Duke and the Duchess took to him at once, and often chose to go shooting with him alone.
‘The Duke & Duchess have started the trip I am doing with them,’ Salmon wrote home from their first camp, in the Semliki Valley. They had walked down the steep escarpment into the valley, a drop of over 2,000 feet in about six miles, to reach their
banda
camp of bamboo and elephant-grass huts in the early evening. Salmon liked his royal charges at once; they were not at all stiff, and immediately called him by his nickname. ‘She is awfully pleasant to look at & topping manners. He speaks very slowly but has practically no stammer as a rule though occasionally he does.’ He added – perhaps there were after all limits to his fearlessness – that the Governor had told him that their safety was his personal responsibility, ‘which is rather terrifying’.
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The party dined in traditional safari style, the Duchess seated between the two hunters. ‘She looked perfectly adorable in silk pyjamas & dressing gown with long mosquito boots,’ wrote Samaki. ‘The Duke wore a sort of Jaeger pyjama suit & Lady Annaly a wonderful pair of painted silk pyjamas. Great chatter all the time & a very good dinner.’ He was happy, noting with approval that the royal couple had left it entirely to him to decide at what time they would leave for the next camp in the morning. ‘So we get off at 5 a.m.’
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Their departure must have been a remarkable spectacle in the dawn light: the safari procession ‘seemed unending, as we have 600
porters’, the Duke of York recorded.
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The Duchess rode a monowheel – a kind of rickshaw consisting of a seat and canopy fixed to a bicycle wheel – for part of the sixteen-mile trek. But she abandoned it to go after a buffalo, to the alarm of her companions Dr Duke and Keith Caldwell, who had spotted another two buffaloes near by. She dispatched hers successfully. From Naindikwa, where they next camped, she went out with the Duke and Samaki and caught her first sight of elephants, feeding among palms about 200 yards away. ‘So off we went & crept right up to within about 20 or 30 yards, and watched them. It was very amusing – they poured sand over their backs, and then picked bunches of grass (about five foot high) and wiped it off and flapped their huge ears,’ she later reported to her mother.
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Next day the trio left the main camp and set out on a separate expedition, accompanied (no doubt mindful of the King’s strictures against travelling without a doctor) by Dr Keane and Ashton Warner. ‘It’s much nicer being a small safari,’ the Duchess noted in her diary.
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But now there was an unofficial addition to their reduced party in the shape of a hunter named Bezindenhout, whom the Duchess immediately nicknamed the Hoot. He was a well-meaning Dutchman who tried, not always successfully, to locate game for them. ‘We went on & walked for miles in the boiling sun without seeing anything but millions of Uganda kob,’ the Duchess recorded on a day when the Hoot had promised to find a leopard. ‘We walked & walked &
walked
, & got back to camp about 6.30 – very tired.’
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She was gratified, nevertheless, by the compliments her stamina – and her shooting – earned her. ‘You can’t imagine what a reputation I have acquired as to walking and shooting! I walk nearly twenty miles a day sometimes, & feel most frightfully well, and the hunters are all amazed. It’s too funny,’ she wrote to her mother. ‘I love this life.’
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Captain Salmon’s letters show that she was not quite as hardy as she wished her mother to believe. ‘They were both wonderful walkers which amazed [the Duke] as at home she is renowned for never walking a yard. She really was a funny little girl in her khaki shirt & slacks & red silk neckerchief. Not being used to walking her feet naturally blistered & she did seem a pathetic little person when in the middle of the day we rested for a couple of hours & we took her boots & socks off to cool her feet.’
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On 25 February they reached Lake Albert, the goal of their walking safari. They boarded the SS
Samuel Baker
, a flat-bottomed paddlesteamer,
which the Duchess described as a ‘very hot little boat’
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and which was to be their stuffy and uncomfortable base for the next week. First there was another unplanned excitement: with Samaki and Dr Keane, they were rowed across the lake in search of elephant. ‘We landed on a tiny bit of sand,’ the Duke recorded, ‘& at once struck off into very thick bush. In a small clearing we saw at least 30 crocodiles, great big ones basking in the sun. They all waddled off back into the reeds on the lake at our approach. We did not see any elephant as they had gone further inland as the waterholes had started to fill up. The thick bush was my idea of Africa & it felt very creepy & sinister.’
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The next day they arrived at the port of Butiaba on the eastern shore of the lake, to be welcomed by the Mukama of Bunyoro, who hoped that they would have a successful safari. ‘A large and very famous elephant called “Kakogi” lives in Bugungu, and we hope that Kakogi’s tusks will go back with you to England to remind you of your visit to Lake Albert and the Bunyoro country.’
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The Mukama’s good wishes bore fruit the very next day, though history does not relate whether it was in fact Kakogi whose tusks became Prince Albert’s trophy. The party had planned to settle in a
banda
camp built for them at Ndandimiri by the local tribal chief; but, hearing that there were no elephants within forty miles, they returned instead to the
Samuel Baker
, steaming across to the White Nile and down to Katengiri where they camped. The next morning Salmon set off with the Duke and a small safari, leaving the Duchess and the rest of the party behind, for, as the hunter wrote, ‘I was not sure of the country we would be shooting in. The Duke & I went off with one tent & bath between us & we shot a very big elephant the first evening out so we sent back for her to come out to breakfast with us.’
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The Duchess was thrilled. ‘I started at 6 with Mr Warner to join Bertie & Samaki. On the way, we heard a lion roaring quite close. Then we heard 3 shots, & we imagined Bertie had shot it. The shots frightened an elephant, & it came bearing down on us at full speed, so we slipped behind an ant hill & it flew past. We got to their camp in the middle of borassus palms at 7.30, & they weren’t in yet. We had breakfast, & then they arrived. Had raked the lion, but it got away. We started off at 8.30, looked at his elephant – HUGE!’
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Salmon’s comments on that morning give a glimpse both of the young couple together and of the real risks of safari life.
It really was pleasing to see them meeting again & left no doubt as to whether it was a love match. Before breakfast he & I went off to try for a lion & she coming along with Ashton-Warner heard us shooting & the lion grunting & was no end pleased to have her husband handed back safe & sound. He utterly adores her & could hardly bear it when I took her into thick country after heavy game. He used to say when we were alone that though he did not want any special care taken of himself he did want me to make her as safe as possible without spoiling her sport … Sometimes he said ‘You know you ought to be jolly flattered as I would not let her do this with another living man,’ & I certainly did especially when she said ‘But I would not do it with anyone else.’
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The Duchess expressed her delight at these excursions into the bush with Samaki in a letter to her sister: ‘One day I spent walking amongst elephants – It was simply wonderful, and made one feel such a worm looking at those
enormous
creatures. One could watch for
hours
– they are so amusing, and frightfully dangerous, but the man we were with is a great elephant hunter, and we walked about amongst the herds quite easily.’
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A few days later it was the Duke who ran into danger while out alone with Samaki in pursuit of an elephant. ‘I really did run too big a risk that time & was thoroughly scared at one time & tried to leave him behind,’ Samaki admitted. ‘But he kept on my back & when I had emptied my rifle calmly began firing & killed the bull.’
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In his diary the Duke reported, ‘Had he [the elephant] come down the donga towards us we should not have had much prospect of stopping him; as I don’t think we could have climbed up the sides as the banks were covered with thick reeds like bamboos.’
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That evening Samaki somewhat nervously admitted the incident to the Duchess. She replied, ‘I shall write & tell you what I really think of you but take this in the meantime’ – whereupon she picked up a menu card and wrote, ‘Dear Samaki, I think you charming & very brave. E.’
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By this time the Duke had accumulated a sizeable number of trophies, which was at the time the chief aim of an African safari. But he was reluctant to shoot one rare species and admitted in his diary, ‘The White Rhino is only found in this part and is looked upon as a great trophy. It is not at all difficult to shoot, but only three or four are allowed to be shot a year as they are becoming scarce. I did not
want to shoot one on hearing this, but they wanted me to get one.’ He did so.
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That same afternoon Roy Salmon took them on an escapade which earned him a rebuke from the acting Governor. He borrowed a car and drove them to Arua, a hill station forty miles from the Nile to the west, arriving unannounced at the house of a ‘jolly young couple’ he knew. The wife rushed to tell her husband that Samaki had brought the Duke and Duchess of York for tea. ‘ “Don’t you believe it old girl,” he retorted; “it’s one of his leg pulls.” To which the Duke said, laughing like a boy, “I am the D. of Y. you know, really I am & this lady is my wife.” ’
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That night they were unable to leave as planned for Nimule on the Sudan border, where the Uganda trip was to end; the rudder on their ‘horrid little boat’, the
Samuel Baker
, broke. Furthermore the Duchess fell ill with a stomach upset, which her husband blamed on the ship’s bad food. She had scarcely recovered two days later when they finally left Uganda on 5 March, feeling ‘all very sad & quite sentimental’ at saying goodbye to their companions of the last fortnight.
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Salmon, who was undoubtedly bewitched by the Duchess and flattered to have become a favourite, recorded that at their last dinner he sat between her and the Duke, which caused jealousy among other members of the party. He recorded several conversations about the Prince of Wales, of whom both the Duke and Duchess spoke with great affection. ‘She says David is a perfect dear & a great pal of hers & the strongest man in the way of endurance in England … He is apparently greatly beloved by them both & they are both scared of the King I imagine.’
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A final glimpse of the Duchess by Salmon is worth quoting in full:
Her complexion is the most perfect I ever saw. One day she was powdering it on the march & he [the Duke] said ‘come along, don’t bother about that now’ & I remarked that I had never seen anything more worth bothering about & then he said ‘As a matter of fact you are quite right & do you know she has never washed her face in her life? I did not believe it before I was married but I know it’s so. She puts some grease stuff on at night & it rubs off on the pillow by morning & that is all she ever does. I think it a very grubby way of living.’
She most indignantly denied the latter part of the description, said she used lots of water but no soap as the cream
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took its place & certainly the result was glorious to look upon. She has perfectly wonderful eyes & uses them at times in a thoroughly mischievous way. She used to say ‘Watch so & so while I catch his eye’ & proceed to startle some man with a glance & then laugh like a child.
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