The Queen Mother (77 page)
Authors: William Shawcross
The British Ambassador in Washington, Sir Ronald Lindsay, happened to be on home leave at this time, and was summoned to Balmoral to discuss the matter with the King. He argued that the Duke should be offered the full courtesies of the Embassy. But the King, together with Alexander Hardinge and Alan Lascelles, his Private and Assistant Private Secretaries, all disagreed, arguing that the Duke was behaving abominably, embarrassing the King and trying to stage a comeback. Moreover, ‘his friends and advisers were semi-Nazis’.
‘But the Queen was quite different,’ Lindsay recorded.
While the men spoke in terms of indignation, she spoke in terms of acute pain and distress, ingenuously expressed and deeply felt. She too is not a great intellect but she has any amount of ‘intelligence du coeur’. Her reactions come straight from her heart and very strongly and a heart that is in the right place may be a very good guide. In all she said there was far more grief than indignation and it was all tempered by affection for ‘David’. ‘He’s so changed now, and he used to be so kind to us.’ She was backing up everything the men said, but protesting against anything that seemed vindictive. All her feelings were lacerated by what she and the King were being made to go through. And with all her charity she had not a word to say for ‘that woman’. I found myself being deeply moved by her.
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In the end, the agreed compromise was that in Washington the Windsors would not be invited to stay at the Embassy but would be given a dinner party there.
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When the Duke and Duchess arrived in Germany, they were escorted everywhere by Nazi officials, who made a point of calling the Duchess ‘Her Royal Highness’, and the Duke was granted an interview with Hitler at Berchtesgaden, the Führer’s Alpine retreat. As his biographer has pointed out, the trip was not a crime, but it was ill advised, and the most serious and damaging result was that it convinced the Nazis that he was sympathetic to their cause.
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Moreover, his apparent endorsement of National Socialism aroused widespread criticism in the United States, in the face of which he lost his nerve and cancelled his visit there.
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*
A
FTER
THEIR
Scottish holiday ended, the King and Queen continued their Coronation tour with visits to Hull, York, Saltaire, Bradford, Halifax, Batley, Leeds, Wakefield and Sheffield. This part of the tour was made easier because they could stay with the Princess Royal and the Earl of Harewood at Harewood House.
At the end of October the King had to preside over his first opening of Parliament. He was anxious about having to read the speech from the throne, setting out his government’s priorities, and so was the Queen, but she felt that it went off well. ‘I must admit that I was
very
very
nervous during the whole ceremonial!’ she told Queen Mary, but she appreciated the way in which the speech demonstrated the link between the Crown and Parliament.
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November and December brought the Queen more official engagements, a state visit by the King of the Belgians, the Armistice Day commemoration at the Cenotaph, and a few lighter entertainments, including a matinée at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the Marina Ice Ballet,
Macbeth
at the Old Vic, and a BBC Concert at the Queen’s Hall, after which the composer William Walton wrote and thanked her for coming. If she could attend concerts from time to time, ‘it would indeed make all the difference to music.’
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With Princess
Elizabeth she went to a performance of
Where the Rainbow Ends
. At Buckingham Palace, ‘Grey Owl’, a ‘Red Indian’ naturalist later revealed to be Archibald Belaney all the way from Hastings, gave a talk on Canadian animals to the Queens and the Princesses.
In early December the Queen had a rare treat: she went to a private lunch party with friends. ‘I enjoyed it enormously. My first luncheon party out since Dec 1936.’ Hannah Gubbay was the hostess and one of the other guests was Osbert Sitwell, who gave her a book on gardens. Thanking him, she told him how much she appreciated his ‘unfailing and loyal friendship’. Reflecting the widespread nervousness about the state of the world, she told him how much she loved his writing and asked him to ‘Write us something hopeful & courageous for next year. After all, this is a grand little country, & as we can never be warlike, let us at least have some pride in it – we must be serious about
something
.’
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Christmas 1937 at Sandringham was a relief – in 1935 the King had been dying, in 1936 the King had just gone over the water. Now, everyone – King, Queens, family, friends, Household, staff – could enjoy the end of the first year of a new and optimistic reign which they all hoped would prosper. In the party was Dick Molyneux, to whom the Queen had sent a characteristic invitation: ‘My dear Dick, Will you come to Sandringham for Xmas and help us with [three drawings of bottles, each larger than the last, labelled Claret, Burgundy and Champagne respectively] pull a few [drawing of a cracker] & help us with that [drawing of a Christmas tree]? I hope that you are free -(not too free of course). Yours sincerely, Elizabeth R.’
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After the King’s Christmas Day broadcast, which he did well in spite of his nervousness, both the King and the Queen could relax a little. There was only one slight family mishap. Before Christmas the Queen sent the Duke of Windsor a present, a set of antique dessert knives and forks with porcelain handles. In a letter to accompany them she wrote that she hoped that ‘perhaps they
might
appeal to you, who like old things … Anyway, they take best wishes for Xmas & the New Year, of health & happiness to both of you. With love, Yours Elizabeth.’
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Unfortunately this letter was not posted with the parcel, and the Duke, evidently puzzled by a set of cutlery with no note, wrote saying he assumed he must have been sent the present in error – he offered to return it.
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The Queen was embarrassed and responded at once: ‘Darling David, When I received your little note this morning,
I rushed to my writing table, and after hunting about amongst the letters on it, I
found
the lost letter. I am furious and disappointed, because I left it addressed & ready to post, and have no idea what can have happened … you must have thought it very odd.’
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The Duke replied that he was surprised to get any gift. ‘Since your note of November 23rd nineteen hundred and thirty six, in which you stated that “we both uphold you always”, so many things have happened to contradict this statement, things which I know from my own experience as King, lay in Bertie’s power to prevent, that it is not easy to believe that we are the recipients of so beautiful a gift. At the same time, we both appreciate and thank you for your thought of us.’
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*
E
ARLY
IN
THE
new year the Queen was yet again laid low by influenza. So was Princess Elizabeth, and they wrote to each other pencilled letters from their respective sickbeds.
Her Royal Highness
The Princess Elizabeth
In Bed
Sandringham.
My darling Angel, Thank you so very much for your dear little letter … I believe that I have got the same disease as you have, only I
was
sick, & you
felt
sick! I hope that your throat is better, and drink plenty of orange juice with plain water mixed.
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The next day, the Queen’s letter was addressed to her daughter at ‘Gettingupforlunch, The Nursery’. She was glad that the Princess was feeling better. ‘I am feeling much better too, but still a little achy and still living on tea! I hope by tomorrow that I shall be eating Irish stew, steak & kidney pudding, haricot mutton, roast beef, boiled beef, sausages & mutton pies, not to mention roast chicken, fried chicken, boiled chicken, scrambled chicken, scrunched up chicken, good chicken, nasty chicken, fat chicken, thin chicken,
any
sort of chicken.’
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While she was in bed she read Leo Rosten’s Hyman Kaplan stories, which D’Arcy Osborne had sent her. Once more, Osborne had judged his friend well. She found the New York Jewish humour of the stories ‘heavenly’. But her relationship with Osborne operated on many levels: as well as exchanging jokes they debated issues of
state and morality. He was one of the few people to whom she talked and wrote in absolute confidence. Now, she told him she was worried about the sort of leadership she and, more especially, the King should provide. The Queen feared that since young people had given up on religion,
they look more & more to individual leadership, or rather leadership by an individual, and that is going to be very difficult to find. It is almost impossible for the King to be that sort of leader. For many years there was a Prince of Wales, who did all the wise & silly & new things that kept people amused & interested, & yet, because he did not, or would not realize that they did not want that sort of thing from their King – well he had to go.
It seems impossible to mix King and ordinary vulgar leadership – so what can we do? We don’t want Mosleys, perhaps something will turn up. In the old days Religion must have given the people a great sense of security &
right
, and now there seems to be a vague sense of
fear
. Or am I sensing something that isn’t there at all. Perhaps it is me … What a sadness that things aren’t going any better in this troubled world.
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Osborne agreed with her.
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On 4 February 1938 Hitler made himself supreme commander of the Wehrmacht (the German armed forces) and later that month he demanded that the Austrian government ‘invite’ German troops into Austria. ‘It was nothing less than the end of Austria’s independence,’ wrote Duff Cooper in his diary. ‘A portentous development in European history about which nobody in England seems to give a damn.’
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After Austria, Czechoslovakia was the next country threatened by Hitler. Throughout the spring and early summer of 1938 the Sudeten Germans, who had been incorporated into the new Czechoslovak state after Austria-Hungary’s defeat in 1918, were instructed by Berlin to make more and more impossible demands upon the government in Prague, in order that Hitler could claim that they were being persecuted. Chamberlain made it clear in Parliament that Britain would not risk war with Germany to defend Czechoslovakia’s integrity and, in a vain effort to prise Mussolini away from Hitler, Britain signed the so-called Easter Accords with Italy. The main effect of these was to
recognize Italian conquests in Africa. Anthony Eden resigned as foreign secretary in protest and was replaced by Lord Halifax. The dictators marched on.
In these ominous circumstances the King and Queen were making plans for their first state visit. President Lebrun of France, which was Britain’s principal democratic ally in Europe, had invited them to Paris at the end of June. The purpose of the visit was both to demonstrate the strength of the renewed monarchy and to cement the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale in the face of German and Italian threats.
*
It would be the first British state visit to France since that of King George V and Queen Mary in April 1914, only a few weeks before both countries were at war with Germany. Many people believed that a similar disaster was inevitable once again. Others hoped that demonstrations of solidarity by the democracies could help to drive away the danger.
The Queen asked her new dressmaker Norman Hartnell to create a collection of dresses for Paris. In his memoirs, Hartnell recalled that the King showed him at Buckingham Palace portraits by Winterhalter of the Empresses Eugénie of France and Elisabeth of Austria, wearing crinolines. The King made it clear to him that this romantic, swaying style was favoured. And so that was what Hartnell fashioned.
While the preparations for Paris were gathering pace, the health of the Queen’s mother declined seriously. She had been ill for many months and for part of the time had to stay in a London nursing home, where the Queen visited her frequently. She was able to move back to the family home in Bruton Street but grew weaker through the early summer of 1938. On 22 June her condition worsened. The Queen, her father, the King and other members of the family gathered at Lady Strathmore’s bedside. At two o’clock in the morning of 23 June she died.
Her daughter Elizabeth had often said that she had been ‘dreading this moment’ since childhood; now that it had come, she found it hard to grasp.
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‘We are all feeling very unhappy,’ she wrote at once to the Archbishop of Canterbury; ‘my mother was so much the pivot
of the family, so vital and so loving and so marvellously loyal to those she loved, or the things she thought right – an Angel of goodness & fun.’
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Her mother had indeed been an extraordinary matriarch; she possessed a genius for family life, as
The Times
noted. The loss of four children, especially her firstborn, Violet, at the age of eleven, left wounds which never healed, but also gave her unusual understanding of others. She never felt self-pity; she was a person to whom everyone, within and without the family, turned for advice or consolation. The Queen received hundreds of letters of condolence from people all over the world who had been touched by her mother. The Duke of Windsor sent a telegram from Antibes: ‘Sincerest sympathy in your great loss. David’.
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It was just five days before the state visit to Paris. Both governments were anxious not to cancel the visit. There was some discussion about whether the Queen should stay at home and the King make the trip alone. But she was determined to accompany him as promised. President Lebrun suggested the visit be postponed for three weeks, which was agreed. Writing to thank Neville Chamberlain for his condolences, the Queen said she was sorry about the postponement ‘but as it was all Galas and Banquets and garden parties, it would have seemed rather a mockery to take part so soon, and the French have been very good about it, do you not think so?’
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