In Royal Service to the Queen
Page 33
But was Crawfie guilty of disloyalty or mere disobedience?
The letter that the queen wrote to Crawfie to “advise” her on how to proceed with the Goulds’ offer of “American dollars,” is quoted, in this account, from the actual letter Queen Elizabeth wrote in response to Marion Crawford’s request to write the Princess articles for Ladies’ Home Journal.
The queen’s letter came to light long after Crawfie died alone in a nursing home. It was among the many personal letters and mementos of her time as governess that she instructed her solicitor, Bruce Russell, to return to the Royal Family on her death. The letter is quite clear that the queen had no problem at all with articles about the princesses being flogged off to Ladies’ Home Journal—but what she hedges about is who should actually write them. She patronizingly suggests that if Crawfie is short of money she should maybe take a teaching job or help Mr. Morrah (a man who had worked with the king on his speeches and was an expert in royal heraldry, and a candidate selected by the queen) in his article for Ladies’ Home Journal.
If Crawfie was as disloyal as she was painted to be, wouldn’t she have released the queen’s letter to the press when the queen shunned her from any contact with her family and took away her rent-free cottage? Or was the compliant governess simply fed up with being used and decided to write her book? She certainly made a small fortune from both magazine articles and her book, enough to retire with her husband to Scotland in comfort for the rest of their years together.
In my opinion Crawfie did the Royal Family a colossal favor: her account of the little princesses—whom she presented as charming, unpretentious, and decent little girls—was hugely appreciated by the postwar reading public of the time. Exactly what the queen and the British Foreign Office had hoped for: a perfect exercise in public relations. But what irked the queen was that Crawfie was identified on the cover of the book: The Little Princesses: The Story of the Queen’s Childhood by Her Nanny, Marion Crawford. This clearly advertised to everyone in the royal household that the family was fair game for future small fortunes to be made in publishing by generations of loyal servants to come.
Since the letter from the queen to Crawfie was not made available until very recently, at the time, there was considerable speculation in the royal household as to where the true fault lay. Many believed that Marion’s husband, George Buthlay, exacted his revenge on a family that had deprived him of happy years he could have spent with Marion, since it was he who signed the contract with Ladies’ Home Journal on Marion’s behalf, leaving it wide open for the Goulds to publish under Crawfie’s name, revealing that she was the princesses’ governess and giving her articles verisimilitude.
Others thought that Crawfie had been treated poorly after years of selfless service. She was retired on a deplorably lean pension of three hundred pounds a year and awarded a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order—an honor bestowed on those with many years of royal service, rather than the queen’s much-hinted-at carrot: Dame Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. Her grace-and-favor cottage might be rent-free and picturesque, but it was desperately in need of renovation.
The queen’s reputation in the palace was that of a woman who had great charm and a will of iron who must not be crossed. It was also believed by the royal family that after all the sacrifices they made to serve their country, the very least their servants could do was work long hours for poor pay, and keep their silence. How dare a servant publish a book about the little girls who had been raised so carefully to erase the shame of the abdication!
Or was this entire episode one of misunderstanding between two women who, over the last years of Crawfie’s employment, had grown to mistrust each other? Perhaps the queen resented Crawfie’s close relationship with Princess Elizabeth, forged in the lonely war years at Windsor Castle—perhaps she resented the support the governess extended to her royal charge in pursuing her marriage to the man she loved.
I hope that in this recounting of Crawfie’s life as the royal governess I have managed to touch on what life was like in Britain during those not-so-long-ago years, particularly in royal service, and that Crawfie’s intentions, however misguided or misunderstood, were still honorable.
For Further Reading on the House of Windsor
George VI: The Dutiful King by Philip Ziegler
King Edward VIII by Philip Ziegler
Royal Sisters: Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret by Anne Edwards
The Queen Mother: The Official Biography by William Shawcross
Prince Philip: The Turbulent Early Life of the Man Who Married Queen Elizabeth II by Philip Eade
Alice: Princess Andrew of Greece by Hugo Vickers
Princess Margaret: A Biography by Theo Aronson
Matriarch: Queen Mary and the House of Windsor by Anne Edwards
Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch by Sally Bedell Smith
The Little Princesses: The Story of the Queen’s Childhood by Her Nanny, Marion Crawford by Marion Crawford
Our Hidden Lives: The Remarkable Diaries of Post-War Britain by Simon Garfield
Acknowledgments
My first thanks must go to my mother, who told me the story of “Princess Elizabeth’s governess scandal” in 1988. When Marion Crawford died alone in a nursing home in Scotland—still ostracized by the Royal Family—there was no talk of “the Royals” in those days!
Thank you always to my agent, Kevan Lyon. It was during a conversation with her in the spring of 2018 that she asked me if I was enjoying The Crown—and Marion Crawford popped into my head again. It was Kevan’s enthusiasm for this little-known story that sent me digging around old biographies of the Windsors for more clues as to what had really happened between Queen Elizabeth and her daughters’ governess of sixteen years.
Huge thanks to Michelle Vega at Berkley for her insights and encouragement in helping me to bring Marion Crawford’s story to fruition. And of course to the delightful team at Berkley: Brittanie Black, Elisha Katz, Jennifer Snyder, and Vi-An Nguyen, who designed the beautiful cover.
But most of all, thank you to my husband—for his patience and his generosity. For his belief that, once again, I will triumph despite my terror of plots that might sink in the middle.
READERS GUIDE
In ROYAL
SERVICE
to the
QUEEN
A Novel of the Queen’s Governess
TESSA ARLEN
Questions for Discussion
1. Had you heard of Marion Crawford before you read In Royal Service to the Queen and, if so, did you come to this book with any preconceptions about her relationship with the Windsor family? Or was Marion’s life as the royal governess to princesses Lilibet and Margaret Rose new to you?
2. As portrayed in the novel, contrast Marion’s relationship with her mother with the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret’s relationship with their mother. Was Marion as dutiful to her mother as Princess Elizabeth was to hers? How much have children’s relationships with their parents changed since the 1940s?
3. When Marion first meets the princesses, they are very young. How does this first meeting influence their relationship going forward?
4. In the late 1930s and throughout the war years, Marion sought to bring a sense of ordinariness to the princesses’ lives. As portrayed in the novel, what sorts of things did she do with and expect from the princesses to offset palace formality and sycophancy?
5. In contrast to today’s standards for female independence, do you consider Marion to be more independent than most women of her age and generation? What was Marion’s greatest fear that may have convinced her to pursue marriage with George?
6. Lilibet is a rather serious and dutiful young woman, whereas her sister, Margaret, is outgoing and often outspoken. Which sister do you identify with? Do you believe that Marion had a favorite princess, a
nd if she did, why?
7. As portrayed in the novel, Queen Elizabeth, as consort to King George VI, was described in her day as “a marshmallow made on a welding machine,” by Cecil Beaton. Do you think this is an apt description of the queen?
8. Marion comes from a very humble background. How much influence do you think she had on the future Queen of England? Did she believe that her role as governess was to influence her charges or protect them? How did her relationship with the princesses change as they grew from childhood into adolescence and adulthood?
9. Do you believe Marion deserved to be ostracized by the Windsor family for writing the articles about the little princesses for Ladies’ Home Journal?
10. Marion worked to help support her mother financially, and later, with her earnings from the princess articles, she provided for her and George’s retirement. How does that contrast with societal expectations of women in post-WWII Britain and the United States?
11. As portrayed in the novel, how much do you think George Buthlay influenced Marion’s decision to “go it alone” and write the articles about the princesses for Ladies’ Home Journal?
12. Marion is described as the first royal servant to “kiss and tell.” Did her book have any impact on the lives of royal servants in future years?
Photo by author
Tessa Arlen was born in Singapore, the daughter of a British diplomat; she has lived in Egypt, Germany, the Persian Gulf, China, and India. An Englishwoman married to an American, Tessa lives on the West Coast with her family and two corgis.
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