The Queen Mother (55 page)
Authors: William Shawcross
The Duke and Duchess had travelled 30,000 miles by sea and several thousand miles by land around the world. At Portsmouth they were greeted by the Duke’s three brothers and together they boarded
a special train to Victoria station where, on a platform bedecked with flowers, they met their families again. Cecilia Strathmore had requested ten platform tickets. Tortor Gilmour’s two children and their nanny were there to greet their mother. Despite the King’s strictures, the families all embraced warmly.
The Yorks drove in an open carriage through cheering crowds down Whitehall and up the Mall to the Palace, to be greeted again by their parents more privately and – most importantly – to be reunited with their daughter. The whole family, including Princess Elizabeth, then appeared on the Palace balcony. The crowds were ecstatic and the newspapers were generous in their praise of the ‘envoys’. They commented on the Duchess’s sense of duty in leaving her baby behind for so long; almost all of them remarked upon her obvious joy on her return. The
Daily Mirror
described ‘Britain’s affectionate welcome home for the Duke and ever smiling Duchess’ while
The Times
recorded, ‘Twice the Duchess, her face radiant with smiles, brought the Princess forward.’
The voyage had been of immense significance to them both. The exuberant loyalty of so many millions of people to Britain and to the Crown was impressive, as well as moving. It gave each of them a real feeling for the strength of the Empire – perhaps it seemed to them more resilient than it really could be. Above all the voyage gave the Duke new confidence in his ability to confront the world with his wife at his side. And it gave the Duchess the knowledge that, wherever she went, she was able to use her personality to win immense affection for herself and, more importantly, for her husband and her country. The experience and the lessons were not forgotten.
*
Field Marshal Frederick Rudolph Lambart, tenth Earl of Cavan (1865–1946).
*
The Hon. Mrs Little Gilmour (1901–91), née Cadogan, fifth daughter of Viscount Chelsea, and granddaughter of fifth Earl Cadogan; she married in 1922 John (‘Jock’) Little Gilmour, later second baronet; the marriage was dissolved in 1929. They were the parents of Sir Ian Gilmour MP, who became a minister in the Conservative governments of Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher.
†
Terence Edmund Gascoigne Nugent (1895–1973), Comptroller, Lord Chamberlain’s Department 1936–60, extra equerry to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II, created Baron Nugent of West Harling 1960; permanent lord in waiting to the Queen 1960–73.
‡
Harry Batterbee (1880–1976) was an assistant secretary in the Dominions Office. Created Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1927, he served as UK high commissioner in New Zealand from 1939 to 1945.
*
On 22 January 1927 the Prince of Wales attended the last performance
(Lady Be Good
) at the Empire Theatre, Leicester Square, before it was demolished and replaced by a cinema. The promenade was a broad corridor running behind the private boxes at the back of the Grand Circle.
†
Dr Still reported on 15 January on the Princess’s weight gain; her increased alertness (listening to his watch, holding out her arms to be picked up, beginning of teething); he said that Queen Mary had been very disappointed that he had advised against the baby yet going to Sandringham. ‘I hope Your Royal Highness will not be bored with all these details, but I expect you may not hear all you would like to hear in the cable.’ (RA QEQM/PRIV/PAL)
*
Truby King (1858–1938) was one of New Zealand’s foremost physicians and a prominent medical reformer. He received worldwide recognition for his pioneering work in the feeding and management of infants, but also made important contributions to knowledge in fields of psychological medicine, health education and plant acclimatization.
*
Australian military slang for Australian soldiers. The term originated in the Great War.
THE LONG WEEKEND
1927–1936
‘The world is in such a bad way’
I
N
THE
LATE
1920s the world was nearing the middle of what later came to be called ‘the long weekend’ between the two great wars.
*
Fear may not always have been present, but it was always in the background. The future seemed constantly under threat as traditional systems of government and long-standing social arrangements attempted to adapt to the vast changes imposed by the industrialization of the last century, the destruction of the war and the extension of the franchise.
At first the most obvious external danger came from the growth of the new empire of Soviet communism. Ever since the triumph of Bolshevism in Russia and the murder of the Tsar and his family, all European states had seemed at risk, if not living on borrowed time. Not for nothing did King George V and many around him worry constantly about the impact of communist ideology and subversion by communist agitators, particularly as millions of men were demobbed after the Great War and unemployment grew.
Perhaps almost as alarming, notions of republicanism if not outright revolution were attractive and fashionable among the intellectual elite of Britain. To many in the ‘smart set’, monarchy symbolized the failures of the past, and Bolshevism was the promise of the future. At the end of the 1920s, Joseph Stalin began the forced industrialization of Russia by herding the peasants into collectives. This meant in effect a new civil war, in which this time the party fought the peasantry and killed or transported millions of them.
1
Russia’s ‘success’ became an example to Western idealists and intellectuals who were ignorant of,
or chose to ignore, the appalling sacrifices by which industrialization was achieved.
To combat the siren song of revolution, the King and his advisers had, as we have seen, sought from the start of the long weekend to strengthen the engagement of the monarchy with working people. New relationships with trades union leaders and Labour politicians were forged. At the same time members of the Royal Family continued reaching out to people through the welfare monarchy, their network of philanthropic patronages.
On her return from her long voyage, the Duchess felt a conflict of emotions. There was, above all, the longed-for reunion with her daughter, Princess Elizabeth, which was not easy after such a long separation at the Princess’s age. With perception, the King wrote to the Duke soon after their return: ‘I trust yr sweet little baby begins to know her parents now & likes them.’
2
She did, and the Duchess rejoiced in that. As she wrote to Nannie B, her daughter was ‘too delicious, and was nice to me at once, which was a great relief!’
3
On the other hand, she now lost the intimate intensity which she and her husband had shared throughout their voyage. The tour had been gruelling, but it was their own tour; their days were often exhausting, but they and they alone were the principals, they were far from parental supervision, and everything they did was new, exciting and shared. Back in London they had to play their supporting roles in formal Court rituals in which they were only pieces of an elaborate jigsaw, presided over by the King, who could be kind but was often critical and irritable.
But the crucial point was that the Yorks’ success had impressed the King and Queen. This alone gave the Duke a new confidence in his own abilities and as a result his stammer had improved. He told his voice coach, Lionel Logue, ‘I have been talking a lot with the King, & I have had no trouble at all. Also I can make him listen, & I don’t have to repeat everything over again.’
4
His father was very happy. ‘Delighted to have Bertie with me,’ he wrote to Queen Mary from Balmoral; ‘he came yesterday evening, have had several talks with him & find him most sensible, very different to D[avid]’.
5
The King was still not prepared for the Prince of Wales to have access to confidential information.
6
The Prince was a charismatic and popular figure, but he seemed to the King, and to many of his own staff, to be increasingly careless of the duties of his office. There were
those who considered that adulation and a café-society lifestyle had warped him. Throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s these fears grew. By contrast, the stock of the Duke of York was rising and he had acquired a new sense of purpose. He was eager to acquire more understanding of Commonwealth affairs. The day after he and the Duchess returned, the Duke called on the Prime Minister and the Colonial Secretary, Leo Amery, and he gave Amery a longer report on the tour over lunch at 145 Piccadilly a few days later.
7
For her part, the Duchess had by now won herself a rather remarkable role within the family – everyone seemed to confide in her, especially her brothers-in-law. Her letters from the Prince of Wales were full of affection, gossip and sometimes mischievous comments on his parents and his duties. On a voyage to Canada with his younger brother Prince George in August 1927, the Prince of Wales wrote a birthday letter to his sister-in-law promising that ‘we will drink a toast to you. (We aren’t as tight as we seem altho it is cocktail time!)’ They were bored with the ‘bromidic’ first-class passengers – ‘We long to probe into the 2nd class where we have already had opportunity to mark down some choice pieces from the Middle West. Pity we can’t travel 2nd class – Yes a pity!’
8
Prince George, too, regarded her as an ally and, knowing how well she got on with the King, occasionally asked her to intervene with his father on his behalf.
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Meanwhile her own success on the tour meant that public demands on the Duchess were growing too – often indeed, she, rather than the Duke, was the focus of attention. That summer was marked by the first of many biographies to be written of the future Queen Elizabeth. The author was Lady Cynthia Asquith, whose most celebrated book was her wartime diary.
*
The Duchess agreed to assist her on condition she was allowed to see the manuscript before publication. Asquith asked for help from many of the Duchess’s relations and friends, including Beryl Poignand and Sergeant Ernest Pearce, the former patient at Glamis who had remained in touch with her. Asquith told Pearce that the Duchess had described him as ‘a very old friend’ and asked him ‘if you could tell me any little incidents or impressions of her in the old hospital days at Glamis’.
10
Pearce was flustered and flattered and wrote to the Duchess saying that Asquith’s request for an
interview put him ‘in a juice of a fix’.
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After receiving the Duchess’s approval he gave the author a vivid account of his time at Glamis and of his acquaintance with the young Elizabeth Bowes Lyon. The biography, later updated, was useful for such first-hand recollections.
The Duke and Duchess had a pleasant summer relaxing in Scotland with the eighteen-month-old Princess Elizabeth, who was now walking, which her mother at first found nerve-racking.
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In the third week of September she and the Duke left their daughter at Balmoral to undertake two days of public engagements in Glasgow. On this occasion she was very much the centre of attention, and he was her support. In pouring rain, she visited Ralston Hospital for paralysed ex-servicemen and the Elder Park Child Welfare Centre at Govan. She was made a guild sister of the Trades Guildry of Glasgow and she opened the Health and Housing Exhibition in the Kelvin Hall; the Girls Guildry provided a guard of honour. She was also given the freedom of the city and in the presentation speech she was praised for her interest in movements for social and educational advancement. Afterwards she sent a personal donation towards the fund being raised to establish a Scottish academy of music in Glasgow.
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The Duchess told the Queen that she had enjoyed the whole visit, despite the rain and the usual rush, and went on: ‘I visited a child welfare centre in Govan on Tuesday, & had a marvellous reception from every shade of socialist, crimson, red & pink! … I miss the baby horribly, but am so glad that you are enjoying her (how swelled headed I am about her).’
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The King sent congratulations on the success of the visit, adding, ‘Your sweet baby is very flourishing & more delightful than ever & walks about everywhere.’
15
Eventually, the sojourn in the Highlands came to an end and they returned south with the slightly heavier hearts that weigh on everyone at the end of a summer holiday as winter and work loom. At least they were no longer isolated in Richmond and had a home in central London which they enjoyed – and which, the King reminded them, Queen Mary had taken a lot of trouble to prepare for them.
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In early November they went to Woolwich and visited the Arsenal before the Duke opened the Woolwich Memorial Hospital. At the Imperial Institute a few days later they went to a sale of work for the benefit of war-disabled servicemen – a recurring theme of their philanthropic work. The Duchess bought some of the men’s handiwork, produced under the auspices of a charitable enterprise named
Painted Fabrics,
*
and subsequently gave permission for her name to be used on the firm’s writing paper. As with many charities, one favour led to requests for others, and she continued to support this cause in later years.
On 16 November the Duke and Duchess went together to Exeter to open a new orthopaedic hospital. A few weeks later, the opening of a new wing at Walthamstow General Hospital in east London became something of an event. Their route took in much of the East End and Stratford and Leyton, some of the poorest boroughs in London. They were given a warm reception throughout and their presence helped raise £3,190 for the hospital’s funds. The strongly socialist local council went so far as to present the Duchess with £100 to be spent on the hospital, a sum which impressed the local MP, Sir Hamar Greenwood. ‘Their Royal Highnesses, and they alone, have commanded the respect and won the allegiance of certain extremists who have hitherto worked against some of England’s cherished ideals,’ he wrote to the Duke’s Private Secretary. ‘Believe me, this is literally a Royal achievement; and those of us who know the difficulties and dangers are profoundly grateful to Their Royal Highnesses.’
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Both the language and the threat might appear exaggerated today, but in 1927, one year after the General Strike, perceptions were different.
