Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch

by Sally Bedell Smith

  Shortly before midnight, the baby was brought to the ballroom for viewing by the courtiers. Thomas Harvey described him as “just a plasticene head emerging from a cocoon, with Nurse Rowe proudly standing guard: a simple little cot, with white blankets.… Poor little chap, two-and-a-half hours after being born, he was being looked at by outsiders—but with great affection and good-will.” Well-wishers who had been given the news of the heir’s birth by a policeman were still cheering along the Buckingham Palace railing. Finally Richard Colville and Lieutenant Michael Parker, Prince Philip’s equerry, persuaded them to go home.

  Elizabeth and Philip named their son Charles Philip Arthur George. “I had no idea that one could be kept so busy in bed—there seems to be something happening all the time!” Elizabeth wrote to her cousin Lady Mary Cambridge two weeks after giving birth. “I still find it hard to believe that I really have a baby of my own!” The new mother was particularly taken with her son’s “fine, long fingers—quite unlike mine and certainly unlike his father’s,” as she described them in a letter to her former music teacher, Mabel Lander. For nearly two months, the princess breast-fed her son until she fell ill with measles—one of several childhood diseases she had missed by not attending a school—and Charles had to be sent away temporarily so he wouldn’t catch the illness at such a young age.

  IN ADDITION TO parenthood, Elizabeth and Philip were collaborating on the refurbishment of Clarence House. He took the lead on matters of design, orchestrating the placement of pictures on the walls, as he would do throughout their marriage, and indulging in his passion for technology by having a speaker system installed in their bedroom. She made practical suggestions, according to biographer Sarah Bradford, who recounted that “when someone complained about the smell of paint in the room, she said, ‘Put a bucket of hay in there and that’ll take it away.’ ” Elizabeth was sensitive about her husband’s need to assert himself in his domain. “Philip is terribly independent,” she had written to her mother during her honeymoon, adding that she wanted him to be “boss in his own home.”

  They moved early in the summer of 1949, delighted at last to be in their own home together. They had adjacent bedrooms, connected by a door, his with masculine paneling, hers a feminine pink and blue, with canopy hangings “suspended from a crown” over the double bed. “In England the upper class always have had separate bedrooms,” explained their cousin Lady Pamela Mountbatten (later Hicks). “You don’t want to be bothered with snoring, or someone flinging a leg around. Then when you are feeling cozy you share your room sometimes. It is lovely to be able to choose.”

  The couple had a full complement of household staff to serve them—Elizabeth’s private secretary Jock Colville; her ladies-in-waiting, including Lady Margaret Egerton (who would later marry Colville); equerry Michael Parker, a cheeky Australian who was a friend of Philip’s from the navy; General Sir Frederick “Boy” Browning, comptroller (treasurer) for the household; Philip’s valet John Dean; the dresser Bobo MacDonald; and several butlers, footmen, housemaids, chauffeurs, detectives, a chef, and culinary helpers. Continuing the family tradition, Prince Charles had two Scottish nurses, Helen Lightbody, who was the enforcer, and Mabel Anderson, the nurturer, as well as his own nursery footman, John Gibson, who served all meals and maintained the pram, much as a chauffeur would keep a car in good working order.

  It was understood that those employed by the royal family would regard their work as confidential, so Elizabeth and her parents were dismayed when they learned early in 1949 that Crawfie planned to publish a memoir of her years in royal service. However affectionate the portrayal—and it was as loving as it was acute in its recollections—she had betrayed their trust. They cut her off completely, forever branding any similar act of perceived disloyalty—of which there would be plenty more in the coming years—as “Doing a Crawfie.”

  Philip was determined to pursue a career in the navy, so for more than a year he had been taking courses at the Naval Staff College at Greenwich, where he had to spend many weeknights. As a new mother, Elizabeth kept a light schedule of royal duties, which included the occasional speech. One at a Mothers’ Union meeting in the autumn of 1949 drew unusual criticism from advocates for modernizing the marriage laws when she condemned divorce for creating “some of the darkest evils in our society today.” As usual, the words had been written by courtiers, but the sentiments reflected the prevailing view in the royal family about the need to keep families intact under any circumstance. Still, it was a rare moment of controversy for a young woman who otherwise kept her opinions private.

  In October 1949 Philip resumed active service when he was appointed second-in-command of the destroyer HMS Chequers, based on the small island nation of Malta in the Mediterranean, which had been part of the British Empire since 1814 and served as an important shipping center and outpost for the Mediterranean Fleet. For the wife of a naval officer, such a posting was expected. According to John Dean, the royal couple “were advised that conditions [in Malta] were not suitable for the infant prince.” Elizabeth could have stayed in London with her son, but she decided instead to spend as much time as possible with her husband. She had been accustomed to long parental absences while she was growing up, so her decision to leave Charles wouldn’t have raised eyebrows. She had expert nannies in charge, not to mention her own parents, who were eager to keep their grandson company. Elizabeth would visit Malta for long stretches of time, returning at intervals to Clarence House.

  She left six days after Charles’s first birthday, in time to join Philip for their second wedding anniversary. At the outset she fulfilled her role as heiress presumptive, visiting historic sites, touring an industrial exhibition and a hospital, inspecting ships, and dedicating a plaque to mark the heroism of the Maltese during World War II when they withstood a siege by Axis forces.

  Beyond minimal royal obligations, Elizabeth was given unaccustomed freedom and anonymity. “I think her happiest time was when she was a sailor’s wife in Malta,” said Margaret Rhodes. “It was as nearly an ordinary a life as she got.” She socialized with other officers’ wives, went to the hair salon, chatted over tea, carried and spent her own cash—although shopkeepers “noticed that she was slow in handling money.” The royal couple lived a significant cut above the ordinary, however, in the Earl Mountbatten’s Villa Guardamangia, a spacious sandstone house built into a hill at the top of a narrow road, with romantic terraces, orange trees, and gardens. Dickie Mountbatten was commanding the First Cruiser Squadron, and his wife, Edwina, accompanied Elizabeth on her first flight to Malta.

  Philip and Elizabeth spent the Christmas of 1949 on the island, while their son stayed with his grandparents at Sandringham. After Chequers sailed out for duty in the Red Sea at the end of December, the princess flew back to England. She stopped first for several days in London, with a detour to Hurst Park to see her steeplechaser Monaveen win a race before she was reunited with Charles in Norfolk after five weeks apart.

  When Philip returned from naval maneuvers, Elizabeth rejoined him in Malta at the end of March 1950 for an idyllic six weeks. Elizabeth dispensed with the chauffeur to drive her Daimler Saloon, a gift from her father on her eighteenth birthday. If the royal couple wanted to be less conspicuous, they zoomed around in Philip’s Hillman Minx.

  Much to Uncle Dickie’s delight, the two couples spent a lot of time together, exploring the island’s coves by boat, sunbathing and picnicking. They cheered the Mountbattens’ younger daughter, Pamela, when she won the ladies’ race at the riding club, and in the evenings they went to the Phoenicia Hotel for dinner and dancing.

  During these weeks, Elizabeth grew closer to the uncle who had taken such a prominent role in her husband’s life. He gave her a polo pony and went riding with her, encouraging her to perfect her skills at sidesaddle, which she “loathed,” recalled his daughter Pamela, “because she felt out of touch with the horse. She felt marooned up there and much preferred to ride astride.” But in part because of Uncl
e Dickie’s persistence, “she was a very good sidesaddle rider.”

  Also at Dickie’s urging, Philip took up polo—“a very fast, very dangerous, very exciting game” that he figured his nephew would enjoy. But it was Elizabeth who shrewdly advised how to persuade her husband: “Don’t say anything. Don’t push it. Don’t nag. Just leave it alone.” Once Philip made the transition from watching matches to participating, his wife caught the action on her new movie camera, the beginning of her lifelong photographic hobby.

  On May 9 she flew back to London, six months pregnant and ready to resume some of her royal duties. Jock Colville had left the household the previous autumn to return to the diplomatic corps, and his replacement was thirty-six-year-old Martin Charteris, who was enraptured by the princess on their first meeting.

  An Old Etonian who trained at Sandhurst and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the army, Charteris was the younger brother of the 12th Earl of Wemyss, one of Scotland’s most prominent titles. He had a refreshing unconventional streak, sculpting in his spare time and indulging in the retro habit of taking snuff, which he would offer to flagging ladies on arduous royal tours. Married to the daughter of Viscount Margesson, the former Conservative chief whip and war minister under Churchill, Charteris was intelligent, worldly, decent, and free of pomposity. For more than a quarter century he was a wise and steadying influence in Elizabeth’s life. When he was well into his eighties, his eyes still lit up when he spoke of her.

  Colville had never taken to Philip, writing that the duke could be “vulgar” in his comments and “off-hand” in his treatment of the princess. With his gentle wit and easy manner, Martin Charteris was a more emollient presence in the household. He also worked to expand Elizabeth’s knowledge of public affairs, arranging in June 1950 for her to receive memoranda and minutes of cabinet meetings, as well as daily reports on the proceedings in Parliament in addition to Foreign Office papers.

  ELIZABETH GAVE BIRTH at Clarence House on August 15, 1950, at 11:50 A.M. to her second child, Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise. Philip had returned to London more than two weeks earlier, which gave him time to get reacquainted with his twenty-one-month-old son after almost a year away. But his first command of the frigate HMS Magpie—and a promotion to lieutenant commander—sent him back to Malta in early September. As she had with Charles, Elizabeth breast-fed her daughter for several months. She celebrated Charles’s second birthday, and left shortly thereafter for Malta. Yet again the family was split at Christmas, with mother and father celebrating on their own while the children were at Sandringham with their grandparents, who unabashedly doted on them. Queen Elizabeth sent regular letters to her daughter, reporting Charles “giving himself an ecstatic hug” and Anne “so pretty & neat & very feminine.… Everybody loves them so, and they cheer us up more than I can say.”

  The following spring, Elizabeth made her first trips to Italy and Greece, where Philip showed her the Parthenon and other sights in his homeland. Always vigilant about his own weight, he helped his wife return to trim form by encouraging her to give up potatoes, wine, and sweets. But their time in the Mediterranean was coming to an end. King George VI had been in declining health since 1948, increasingly plagued by pain and numbness resulting from his arteriosclerosis. In March 1949 he had undergone surgery to improve circulation in his legs. He continued to carry out his duties but his appearance was gaunt, and by May 1951 he was seriously ill, this time with a fever and chronic cough that did not respond to treatment.

  Elizabeth came home to stand in for her father at a variety of events, most prominently the Trooping the Colour parade in June, when for the first time she took the salute on behalf of the King. The lone woman leading masses of straight-backed men, she rode sidesaddle on a chestnut police horse called Winston. She wore the scarlet and gold tunic of the Grenadier Guards—the regiment presenting its flag in an intricate hour-long ceremony—and a tricorn cap with white osprey plume, an exact replica of the hat worn by a Grenadier colonel in 1745. At age twenty-four, she projected an image of composure, her crop and reins held lightly in her left hand, her right hand in confident salute. Watching from a window above Horse Guards Parade was a large family contingent including Queen Elizabeth; Queen Mary; Prince Charles; his godfather, King Haakon of Norway; and Earl Mountbatten, who hoisted the little prince to a windowsill and taught him a proper salute. Prince Philip was back in Malta, and George VI was too weak to attend.

  Philip returned to London in July when it became clear that the royal couple would be needed full-time to represent the sovereign. He took an open-ended leave from the navy, but in effect the thirty-year-old duke was ending his military career after only eleven months of enjoying the satisfaction of his own command—“the happiest of my sailor life.” Much later Philip would say philosophically, “I thought I was going to have a career in the Navy but it became obvious there was no hope.… There was no choice. It just happened. You have to make compromises. That’s life. I accepted it. I tried to make the best of it.”

  * * *

  IN SEPTEMBER GEORGE VI had a biopsy that revealed a malignancy, and surgeons removed his left lung in a three-hour operation. The cancer diagnosis was not openly discussed and certainly not given out to the press, but the family understood the severity of the King’s condition. As a precaution, the Queen and the two princesses were named Counsellors of State to act on the King’s behalf, even as bulletins from the Palace indicated he was making good progress.

  Elizabeth and Philip had been scheduled to leave for a state visit to Canada and the United States, which they postponed by two weeks until they were reassured that her father was in no imminent danger. Instead of traveling on the ocean liner Empress of Britain, they decided to take a BOAC Stratocruiser on their first transatlantic flight. The double-decker plane was upholstered in royal blue in their honor, and they could sleep in pull-down berths made up in white linen. They left at midnight on October 8, 1951, after saying goodbye at the airport to Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret and arrived sixteen hours later in Montreal—the beginning of a thirty-five-day trek of more than ten thousand miles from the east coast to the Pacific and back. They traveled in a ten-coach royal train with a paneled sitting room and sleeping cars outfitted with floral fabrics for Elizabeth and tailored upholstery for Philip.

  Everywhere they went, from French-speaking Quebec (where she reviewed “one of the largest military parades in Quebec’s history”) to Vancouver Island (which they reached after an eighty-mile boat trip), they were greeted by enthusiastic crowds. In Toronto 38,000 schoolchildren serenaded them in a stadium, and 100,000 people filled the city’s Riverside Park. They tried to be as visible as possible, often riding in a convertible in cold and snowy weather with a traveler’s rug—a routine source of “comfort, softness, and discretion,” even in the tropics—tucked around them. In frigid Winnipeg, however, a transparent plastic bubble was fitted over the car. Their personal greetings were primarily limited to VIPs (including the famous seventeen-year-old Dionne quintuplets, five sisters who dressed in identical suits and matching hats), but they managed to talk to some ordinary people, mainly children, and also to former servicemen who had been wounded during the war.

  The essential public routine that the royal couple would use over the decades took shape in those long days: Elizabeth was the restrained presence, her smiles tentative and infrequent, which prompted criticism in some press accounts. “My face is aching with smiling,” she complained to Martin Charteris when she heard the reports on her dour demeanor. Philip, always at a discreet distance behind, was already providing comic relief, grinning and teasing onlookers. When the royal couple watched bronco bucking and chuck wagon races at a rodeo in Calgary, they sat under electric blankets, both looking uncomfortably cold. But Philip was in good spirits, sporting his new ten-gallon hat, which he waved during the races. Once he went over the line, committing the first of his legendary “gaffes” when he jokingly observed that Canada was “a good investment”—a r
emark that stuck in the Canadians’ craw for its neo-imperial implication.

  The scope and pace of the trip were punishing. They made more than seventy stops, and on a single day in Ontario they visited eight towns. Through it all, Elizabeth worried about the health of her father 3,400 miles away. Prepared for the worst, Martin Charteris carried the documents required for Elizabeth’s accession, and she had black mourning clothes as part of her traveling wardrobe. The princess was buoyed periodically by encouraging phone calls from her mother that made her feel “much refreshed and strengthened.”

  In private on the train Philip tried to keep the atmosphere light, but he clearly found the journey stressful. “He was impatient. He was restless,” recalled Martin Charteris. “He hadn’t yet defined his role.… He was certainly very impatient with the old style courtiers and sometimes, I think, felt that the Princess paid more attention to them than to him. He didn’t like that. If he called her a ‘bloody fool’ now and again, it was just his way. I think others would have found it more shocking than she did.”

  For much of the trip, Philip wore his naval uniform, and Elizabeth favored discreetly tailored suits and close-fitting hats, sometimes trimmed with veils, as well as fur coats and capes. During their visit to Niagara Falls, everyone donned oilskin suits on the spray-lashed observation deck. Pulling her hood tight, Elizabeth exclaimed, “This will ruin my hair!”

  While most of their time was devoted to sightseeing (which she filmed on her movie camera), they also visited steel and paper mills, and Elizabeth got a first glimpse of the United States from Windsor, Ontario, when she saw the skyline of the Motor City across the Detroit River. Several weeks later, the royal couple boarded a plane for Washington and set foot on American soil for the first time on October 31—the beginning of an important connection with the United States that would grow deeper in the years to come.