The Queen Mother (46 page)

39.
The first photograph of the Duchess and the newborn Princess Elizabeth, April 1926.

40.
The Duchess with Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth, September 1930.

41.
The Duchess with the King and the Duke of York at a summer fête at Balmoral.

‘I
T
’
S AWFUL COMING
back to the social and unnatural atmosphere again!’ the Duchess confided to her diary soon after their return from Africa.
¹
London seemed drab after their months in the wild, the restrictions of life in the Royal Family and at Court more stifling than ever. In Britain the shadow of the war still hung over everything and everyone, and for many that shadow never fully passed. One distinguished lawyer, a boy during the war, remembered ever after those schoolfriends who had perished; he thought they showed ‘a certain uncomplainingness, an acceptance, without dramatics and without self pity, of their sad and untimely fortune. Those young men, who were only promoted boys, took their lot with a dignity that we now forget.’
²
War memorials were erected in villages and market towns across the land, and plaques listed the names of all those who had been sacrificed. Yet few of the new homes which Lloyd George had promised the heroes returning from war had been built.

Other homes were being constructed at speed. London was expanding outwards – ‘dormitory suburbs’ were being created by the extension of the Underground and Metropolitan railways. The first such extension was on the Northern Line, as it became known, to Golders Green and then Hendon in autumn 1923. The President of the Board of Trade, Sir Philip Lloyd-Graeme, switched on the current on the new line with a golden key and his ten-year-old son, wearing a bowler hat, drove the first train through to Hendon. Then came the turn of south London, with the Morden line extension.
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New necessities were purchased easily from the multiple stores which spread into the modern housing estates – W. H. Smith the newsagent, Sainsbury the grocer, Dewhurst the butcher, the Victoria Wine Company, MacFisheries, the tailor Montagu Burton,
Woolworths, British Home Stores, Marks and Spencer – all had more and more outlets as middle-class housing spread. Architects struggled on tight budgets to make the same red-brick houses, built a dozen times in one street, different from each other. One would have a round stair window, another an unexpected gable, a third an unusual porch or a wooden garage. They could cost about £1,000 each and they rejoiced in names like Rosslyn, The Elms, Mon Abri.
⁴

Hire purchase or ‘never-never’ schemes were becoming more and more popular, allowing people to acquire furniture, vacuum cleaners, gas ovens, wirelesses, even motor cars, as never before. The car greatly increased the emigration to suburbia. By 1924 the Baby Car, the Austin Seven, was on the market. It sold for £165 and was described as the Mighty Miniature but more widely as the Bed Pan. It was soon followed by the Morris Minor. The growth of the motoring population, together with the popularity of extended bus services, led to practical but ugly ribbon developments along main roads. Stanley Baldwin with reason declared, ‘It is no exaggeration to say that in fifty years at the rate so-called improvements are being made, the destruction of all the beauty and charm with which our ancestors enhanced their towns and villages will be complete.’
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At the same time as this erosion of the countryside was beginning, urban unemployment remained high and the problems of the working class were imperfectly addressed. This was true in all of Europe, not just in Britain. The crumbling of old economic patterns of exchange since 1914 made poverty and unemployment more intractable and created fertile soil for revolutionaries to till.

After the triumph of the Bolsheviks in Russia, it was inevitable that every European country would spawn its own revolutionary communist party. Leadership was provided by the Comintern, created by Moscow in 1919 to ensure that national communist parties followed the policies of the Soviet Union. The communists may have been more alarming than effective, and in Britain they never acquired large membership. But alarming they were nonetheless, particularly after they came to power in Hungary and then, for brief periods, in Germany. In almost every European country socialists were divided into two camps – those who were loyal to Moscow and called themselves communist and those who wished to remain loyal to their own nations and remained socialists. The two factions were bitter rivals for working-class support.

In 1925 the production of food and raw materials in Europe for the first time reached the levels of 1914 and manufacturing industry revived. There were grounds for confidence – it was still possible to hope for and even believe in the future of liberal democracies. But the rather efficient pre-1914 economic system had been fatally damaged and the new prosperity rested on shallow foundations. The crisis of employment for the growing working class was a constant concern. The spectre of violent revolution and totalitarianism was ever present in Europe – and it was to dominate the era.

*

I
T WAS A COLD
spring and the Duchess’s nostalgia for Africa’s warmth was intensified by the return, all too soon, of her tonsillitis.
⁶
An additional sadness for both the Yorks was that, the day after they returned, the Prince of Wales left for a long journey to West and South Africa and South America. The Duke wrote to his brother saying, ‘Between ourselves we were not very glad to get back from our travels … We miss you terribly, of course, & there is an awful blank in London of something missing, & that blank is you.’
⁷
They missed calling on him at lunchtime at St James’s Palace for a cocktail, they missed evenings out at slightly risqué clubs with him, and they missed being able to share complaints about life with him.

For the Duke there was one compensation for his brother’s absence: he replaced the Prince of Wales as president of the British Empire Exhibition. After the great success of the exhibition in 1924 it had been decided that there should be a new one in 1925, to be opened in May. Now that the Duke had experienced the Empire at first hand, he brought a personal enthusiasm, even a zest, to the task.
⁸

As president, the Duke had to make a speech at the opening ceremony on 9 May, inviting his father to open the exhibition. He was nervous at the prospect, above all because his speech would be broadcast by the new British Broadcasting Company. He practised it many times. The closer to the day of the opening the more nervous he became. Not only did he have to speak in front of the stadium, the nation and much of the world – he also had to perform in front of the sternest judge of all, his father. He wrote to the King, ‘I hope you will understand that I am bound to be more nervous than I usually am.’
⁹

He had several sleepless nights before the ordeal and on the day itself, Saturday 9 May, he set out for Wembley ‘very downhearted’,
according to his wife’s diary. When the moment finally came, his legs were trembling, but his voice was quite steady and although he had difficulty articulating some words, he persevered.
¹⁰
The Duchess had remained at White Lodge where she listened to the speech on the wireless. ‘It was marvellously clear & no hesitation. I was so relieved,’ she wrote.
¹¹
Afterwards the Duke said he thought that the speech was ‘easily the best I have ever done’. Perhaps even more important, ‘Papa seemed pleased which was kind of him.’
¹²
The King wrote to Prince George, ‘Bertie got through his speech all right, but there were some rather long pauses.’
¹³
The Duke’s speech defect remained a real tribulation and source of anxiety for him and his family for some time to come.

For the Whitsun weekend at the end of May the Duke and Duchess had a welcome short trip to Glamis, where they shot rabbits and took their dog Glen for walks with the Duchess’s father and brothers. It was much easier for them to relax there, but the Queen took to writing slightly querulous letters reproaching them if they spent weekends away.
¹⁴
They returned to London in time for Trooping the Colour – the Duchess rode in the same carriage as the Queen and Princess Mary and then watched the ceremony from a room over the Horse Guards Arch. The next day they went together to Dudley in support of the Duke’s interest in the Industrial Welfare Society and their now recognized sympathy for social and relief work. Their official files on the trip illustrate the local impact of royal visits, of which this was but one of many.

They visited T. W. Lench Ltd, manufacturers of nuts and bolts; Harry Lench, regarded as a pioneer in welfare work and one of the most progressive employers in the Black Country, wrote afterwards of their visit that it would ‘never be forgotten by my workpeople or by me’.
¹⁵
Another firm, Stevens and Williams Ltd, which had been suffering badly from foreign competition, received a similar boost from the royal visit to its Brierley Hill art glass works. The couple also went to the Guest Hospital, where the Duchess received cheques on behalf of the hospital – this was common practice in institutions supported by voluntary donations: the cheques or ‘purses’ tended to be more generous if a distinguished guest were on hand to accept them. On this occasion, apparently, the hospital’s debt was completely wiped out.
¹⁶

On 15 July the Duchess had to undertake a major engagement of
her own at the British Empire Exhibition – she opened the First International Conference of Women in Science, Industry and Commerce, of which she had agreed to be president. The conference was chaired by Lady Astor;
^*
also on the platform with the Duchess were three formidable older women: Ellen Wilkinson, the suffragette leader, trade unionist and Labour MP; Viscountess Rhondda, ‘the Welsh Boadicea’, another suffragette; and the distinguished physiologist Professor Winifred Cullis. Margaret Bondfield, a prominent trade unionist and Labour politician, spoke at the lunch afterwards.

The Duchess was in daunting company; she felt ‘very frightened’, but nevertheless delivered her short prepared speech with sufficient verve to attract effusive, if patronizing, praise from one of the men present. F. S. Dutton of the Industrial Court wrote afterwards: ‘Her Royal Highness’s speech was a real treat! It was very bravely and charmingly done & all the women folk were lyrical about it. We men will soon have to look to our laurels!’
¹⁷
She pointed out that this was the first conference of its kind for women, and also the first she had opened; referring to ‘the ever-increasing scope of women’s work’ and ‘the importance of women’s activities in so many spheres’, she hoped it would lead to many similar gatherings. Lady Astor, thanking her for coming, complimented the Duchess on her ‘very practical interest in industrial welfare’. For Caroline Haslett, who as secretary of the Women’s Engineering Society had organized the conference, the important thing was that the Duchess had allied herself publicly with women’s causes.
¹⁸

Emerging as a public figure, the Duchess was an increasing asset to the Royal Family. The press noticed, and commented. According to one article, ‘She has, in fact, the genius of friendship, and this is perhaps why she has the happy faculty, as Viscountess Astor MP said on one notable occasion, of “never being bored”.’
¹⁹
The Duke realized more and more how invaluable his wife’s assistance was. He wrote to the Prince of Wales, ‘She is marvellous the way she talks to old mayors & the like at shows, & she never looks tired even after the longest of days. She is a darling & I don’t know what I should do without her.’
²⁰

On 17 July they gave a reception at St James’s Palace for visitors
from the Empire and the press. According to her diary, ‘I put on white & a tiara. At 9.30 B & I went to St James’s Palace, & we gave an Evening Party to Overseas Visitors. About 600. Went quite well. Home 12 – Very tired & quite hoarse!’
²¹
Duties were mixed with pleasures, however – their friend Major Walsh, home on leave from the Sudan where they had hunted with him, came to town. They were always eager to see him; later that summer they invited him to lunch to see their African trophies, which had been mounted. ‘Having been entertained to a tête à tête breakfast with you, my dear white hunter on that wicked old Nile, I feel it would be proper & decent of you to partake of our hospitality, just by way of a change,’ the Duchess wrote to him. On his next leave there was another invitation: ‘Dear Walshie, Welcome home again to dear old England, the home of BEER … All white hunters should visit their charges on instant arrival in London, so I fear that you haven’t done too well. However, there is always a drink waiting here for you, or even two.’
²²