The Queen Mother (72 page)

The figurehead of the institution was very happy. Queen Mary wrote to her son and daughter-in-law after Easter to say, ‘what a joy it has been to me to feel that the beloved old Home is in such good hands & that you two dear beloved people will carry on the tradition which dear Papa & I tried to do, in memory of our ancestors & of the wonderful history of Windsor.’
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T
HROUGHOUT
ALL
THIS
time the King and Queen were having to prepare for the greatest event in their lives – the Coronation. When they came unexpectedly to the throne, it was not just the date of the ceremony that had been fixed. Much of the basic planning had already been done, but five months was not long to complete the preparations, particularly now that a queen was to be crowned, as well as a king.

First, and perhaps most important of all, the Queen’s crown had to be created. The crown jewellers, Garrard, were summoned to Sandringham in January to start to suggest designs. They produced sketches and those that the Queen and the King thought possible were mocked up in painted metal models. They found it difficult to decide whether to have one of eight arches or four. Eventually they chose a model with four arches.

The majority of the stones for the new crown came from the dismantled Regal Circlet made for Queen Victoria in 1853 and remounted for her in 1858. The band of the Circlet, which the new crown virtually replicated, but in platinum, had been set with sixteen large diamonds between sixteen crosses and surmounted by four – fleurs-de-lis alternating with Maltese crosses. One of these was designed to hold the huge Koh-i-nûr diamond, which could be detached and worn as a brooch.
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The Koh-i-nûr had subsequently been incorporated into Queen Alexandra’s crown of 1902 and Queen Mary’s of 1911. Now it became part of the new Queen’s crown.

Queen Mary entered into the planning, as her biographer put it, ‘with her characteristic vigour’.
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She was determined to break with tradition and attend the ceremony – the first time that the widow of a king would be present in Westminster Abbey to see his successor
crowned. She could not bear not to be present when her beloved second son went through the ritual which his brother had renounced. She accompanied the Queen to Garrard to examine the crown jewels, she went to the Abbey to see the preparations, in particular the creation of the Royal Box, she advised on the colour of the ribbon for the King’s Order (the family order given to royal ladies by the sovereign – she thought it should be pink), she worried about how the Princesses should travel to the service.
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The Queen realized, according to Elizabeth Longford, that her old dressmaker, Madame Handley Seymour, would be heartbroken if she were not allowed to make the Coronation robes, and so she gave her the commission. The robe was traditional, resembling that which Queen Mary had worn in 1911, which in turn reflected that of Queen Alexandra in 1902. It had a combined cape and train; the white ermine shoulder cape was fastened on the shoulders with white satin bows, and with gold cord and tassels. The train was of purple velvet, forty-four inches wide and eighteen feet long. Symbols of the British Empire – the rose, thistle, shamrock, leek, maple, acacia, fern and lotus – were embroidered on the velvet with gold thread. The dress itself was fashionably bias-cut white satin with square décolleté and slashed sleeves flounced with old lace. It was embroidered by members of the Royal School of Needlework with diamante emblems of the British Isles and Empire. Three rows of gold galloon lace ran around the edge of the train. The Queen’s shoes, made by Jack Jacobus of Shaftesbury Avenue, were white satin high heels, decorated with English oak leaves and Scottish thistles.
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The two Princesses were measured for their own robes of purple velvet lined and edged with ermine, with ermine capes tied, like their mother’s, with gold cords and tassels on the shoulder. For the maids of honour, Norman Hartnell created stiff white satin dresses with embroidered garlands in pearls, diamante and crystal incorporating a Victorian wheat-ear motif suggested by the Queen herself.

As the Coronation approached, the King became increasingly nervous about how he would deal with the strain of it, and in particular whether his stammer would cripple his public responses in the Abbey and the live broadcast he would have to make from Buckingham Palace in the evening after the service. Cosmo Lang had the temerity to suggest a new voice coach, but Lord Dawson rejected this idea at once, saying that the King had full confidence in Lionel Logue. In fact,
the King was also helped by a BBC sound engineer called Robert Wood, who spent many hours teaching him how best to use the microphone.
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At the end of April the King, Queen and Princess Elizabeth travelled by barge down the river to Greenwich to open the National Maritime Museum. This was the first royal progress along the Thames since 1919. The Queen unlocked the door of the newly restored Queen’s House with a gold key. They returned to central London by car and were mobbed by crowds almost all the way.

In the few days that were left before the Coronation, they spent as much time as possible at Royal Lodge and Windsor Castle. After a relaxed lunch on May Day they drove, again through cheering crowds, to Wembley Stadium for the FA Cup Final – Sunderland beat Preston North End by three goals to one. They listened, clearly touched, as more than 90,000 people sang ‘God Save the King’.
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The first Court of the new reign was held on 5 May. It was just as splendid and as formal as any that had been held by King George V and Queen Mary. In the Ball Room, the King and Queen sat on the dais before as many as 500 members of the Diplomatic Corps. Countess Spencer thought the Queen looked ‘
really
beautiful’ but she was not impressed by many of the ladies’ curtsies, and remarked on the behaviour of the emissaries of the European dictators. ‘The German ambassador, Herr von Ribbentrop, gave the King a Nazi salute & Signor Grandi [the Italian Ambassador] left the ball room as soon as possible, to avoid meeting any Abyssinians!’
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All of Britain was preparing for a greater celebration than the 1935 Jubilee. There were official street decorations in every town, and shops and home owners made their own happy contributions to the gaiety. The London stores competed to produce the most splendid displays of imperial loyalty, with immense plaster casts and portraits of the King and Queen, masses of red, white and blue bunting. Selfridges was
widely thought to have taken the prize and an Indian rajah was said to be so impressed by its decorations that he bought the whole lot, to be reinstalled in his palace.
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Huge crowds flocked towards London in special trains and charabancs. In almost every town and village Coronation committees were formed, May queens were chosen, fireworks were purchased, commemorative trees were planted. Maypoles were erected on village greens and children were taught how to dance around them, holding red, white and blue ribbons, bands practised, people of all ages trained for sports events, marquees were erected, bonfires built, veterans of the Great War polished their shoes and prepared to act as proud stewards throughout the country.
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On the evening of Sunday 9 May, congregations gathered in churches all over the country for special services at which prayers were offered for the King and Queen. As this worship was taking place, the Archbishop of Canterbury came to Buckingham Palace for a final talk and prayers with the King and Queen. Any unease about his reference to the King’s stammer was clearly forgotten. ‘They knelt with me,’ he wrote later. ‘I prayed for them and for their realm and Empire, and I gave them my personal blessing. I was much moved and so were they. Indeed there were tears in their eyes when we rose from our knees. From that moment I knew what would be in their minds and hearts when they came to their anointing and crowning.’
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There is no doubt that for both of them the Coronation was an act of great spiritual significance. Each of them was a devout Christian with a simple faith; each of them believed strongly in the sacred nature of monarchy and of the vows that they were about to take; they both believed that they were offering themselves before God and were being consecrated in the service of their people. The King himself, according to his biographer, was very grateful for the genuine affection that people had shown for him and the Queen since their unexpected accession.
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Crowds gathered all night, with many people sleeping on camp beds in the streets. The King and Queen were awoken at 3 a.m. by the testing of the loudspeakers on Constitution Hill – ‘one of them might have been in our room,’ wrote the King in his diary. From then on marching troops, bands and tension made sleep impossible. The King could eat no breakfast and had ‘a sinking feeling inside’.
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The invited congregation had to be in the Abbey by around seven in the morning. Crowds cheered them along the roads. A special underground train took several hundred peers and peeresses in their full robes and wearing their coronets, together with Members of the House of Commons, from Kensington High Street to Westminster. The fare was threepence.
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The Queen had her own box in the Abbey which she filled with members of the Bowes Lyon family and a few particular friends. They included the faithful Beryl Poignand, Osbert Sitwell
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and the Rev. Tubby Clayton. Owen Morshead, sitting with other members of the Household near by, left a touching account of the service in a long letter to his aunt. Peers, peeresses, bishops, judges, the Knights Grand Cross, in robes and regalia, the lustrous colours shining against the sober grey stone. Then the various processions began. The Princess Royal arrived ‘between the two darling little Princesses in their full kit, their embryo trains looking as if they would grow with their wearers … little Princess Margaret very sweetly lifted up the front of her dress in ascending the steps, looking across surreptitiously to observe how her bigger sister was tackling it.’

After the Kents and the Gloucesters and other members of the family came one of the principal moments for which people had been waiting. ‘As Queen Mary’s noble figure appeared against the sombre woodwork of the choir-entry the impression was such as to give me a catch in the throat at the memory. She was ablaze with large diamonds the size of beans, and she wore around her silvered head the circlet of her former crown with the 4 arches removed. But it was not alone the glory of her personal appointments, but the majesty and grace of her bearing that made everyone hold their breath.’
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The King and Queen drove to the Abbey in the beautifully archaic Gold State Coach first used by George III in 1762. At the annexe built on the west door their two processions formed up. The Queen was to lead, but she was delayed when a chaplain passed out, just as her procession into the Abbey for her wedding fourteen years before had
been held up by a fainting clergyman.
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She entered the Abbey preceded by her cousin the Duke of Portland, who carried her new crown on a red velvet cushion. She seemed to Morshead:

Alan Don, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s chaplain, was also watching her. ‘As the Queen crossed the Theatre on her way to her chair of State under the Royal box, I looked at Lord and Lady Strathmore … and wondered what were their emotions as they watched their youngest daughter coming to be crowned as Queen. The Queen did not glance up at them (I expect that she scarcely dared), but took her place, looking neither to the right hand or to the left, to await the arrival of the King.’
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For most of the long service the focus was upon the King; the Queen stood or knelt at her chair immediately in front of the Royal Box. There, her daughter Princess Elizabeth, now just eleven, sitting next to Queen Mary, was following it all closely. ‘I thought it all
very, very
wonderful and I expect the Abbey did, too. The arches and beams at the top were covered with a sort of haze of wonder as Papa was crowned, at least I thought so.’
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Once the King had been crowned and had taken the solemn oaths which were to dominate his life from now on, the Archbishop made his way towards the Queen. She knelt while he prayed, ‘Almighty God, the fountain of all goodness: give ear we beseech thee to our
prayers, and multiply thy blessing upon thy servant ELIZABETH, whom in thy Name, with all humble devotion, we consecrate our Queen; defend her evermore from all dangers, ghostly and bodily; make her a great example of virtue and piety, and a blessing to the kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, O Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, world without end. Amen.’

Four duchesses held over her head the same canopy as was used for the anointing of the King. The Queen was anointed on her head only, whereas the King had been anointed on the palms of both hands, on the breast and on the crown of his head. The Archbishop placed the Queen’s ring, rubies and brilliants, previously worn by Queen Adelaide, Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary, on the fourth finger of her right hand. And then Elizabeth Bowes Lyon was crowned queen. Lifting the crown above her head, the Archbishop said, ‘Receive the Crown of glory, honour and joy; and God, the crown of the Faithful, who by our Episcopal hands (though unworthy) doth this day set a crown of pure gold upon your head, enrich your royal heart with his abundant grace, and crown you with all princely virtues in this life, and with everlasting gladness in the life that is to come, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’