Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch

by Sally Bedell Smith

  Cecil Beaton called her “the great mother figure and nannie to us all.… The warmth of her sympathy bathes us and wraps us in a counterpane by the fireside.” She combined an ability to connect instantly with virtually anyone and a flair for high drama, “like a great musical comedy actress in the 1930s descending the stairs,” said Sir Roy Strong, the former director of the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum. No one looked askance when she wore pearls while fishing in Scottish rivers or arrived late for engagements in what Beaton once described as a “pink cushiony cloud.”

  Her destiny was to remain single, and to deny herself the love of another man, although few could have predicted that she would be a widow for fully half of her life. She needed to find compensations beyond her public duties, so the Queen permitted—in fact indulged with generous financial support—her mother to live a carefree and extravagant private life marked by nonstop entertaining and the stimulation of a lively group of friends.

  Mother and daughter spoke nearly every day on the telephone. When the Queen placed the call, the Palace operator said to her mother, “Good morning, Your Majesty, Her Majesty is on the line for Your Majesty,” which became a standing joke among friends and courtiers. They usually exchanged news about horses and racing, as well as gossip and family matters. “They were great confidantes,” recalled the Queen Mother’s long-serving lady-in-waiting, Dame Frances Campbell-Preston. “The Queen could talk to her about her troubles. Queen Elizabeth was aware of the tremendous responsibility the Queen had. She and the King had had it, so she knew the pressures.”

  The Queen Mother was in many ways “an Edwardian lady with rigid views,” recalled Campbell-Preston. “A lot of the importance the Queen attached to tradition and doing things the right way came from her mother,” said a former household official. As a consequence, the Queen Mother was a brake on changes to the status quo proposed by Prince Philip and senior advisers. “The Queen Mother was always in the equation,” said another former member of the household. “The Queen would ask, ‘Does Queen Elizabeth know about this?’ ”

  There were inevitable comparisons—not always flattering—between the staid young Queen, trapped within the restraints of neutrality and propriety, and the spirited dowager who had the freedom to display her enjoyment and the gaiety to light up a room. The two women deferred to each other in private, although only the Queen Mother was required to curtsy. Still, by June 1952, Richard Molyneux, a former equerry to Queen Mary, reported that during a visit to Windsor Castle, the Queen was “very much the Sovereign. She enters the room at least ten yards ahead of her husband or mother.”

  MUCH OF THE Queen’s first year on the throne was devoted to preparing for her coronation on Tuesday, June 2, 1953. The biggest question was whether to let the ceremony be televised, and her initial decision, supported by Churchill, was to keep the lights and cameras away, fearing an intrusion on the sanctity of the rituals. But after the ban on televising was announced in October, the Palace faced an outcry from broadcasters as well as the public over being excluded from such a significant ceremony.

  The Queen yielded after recognizing that her subjects wanted to see her crowned, so she agreed to a compromise permitting live coverage of everything except the most sacred moments, including her anointing and taking Communion, and excluding any close-ups as well. In her first Christmas radio broadcast she declared with evident satisfaction that during the coronation “millions outside Westminster Abbey will hear the promises and prayers being offered up within its walls, and see much of the ancient ceremony.… I want to ask you all, whatever your religion may be, to pray for me on that day—to pray that God may give me wisdom and strength to carry out the solemn promises I shall be making, and that I may faithfully serve Him and you, all the days of my life.”

  That autumn, Elizabeth II also made a conciliatory gesture toward her husband by announcing that during the State Opening of Parliament he should “henceforth have, hold and enjoy the Place, Pre-eminence and Precedence next to Her Majesty.” When she opened Parliament for the first time in November, the Duke of Edinburgh sat in the Chair of State to the left and several inches below her throne in the House of Lords, just as Prince Albert had done. Unlike her father’s hesitant delivery, Elizabeth II made a flawless seven-minute address, which was written by Churchill. Ever observant, Cecil Beaton noted that her eyes were “not those of a busy, harassed person.”

  The honor given Prince Philip in Parliament would not be repeated in Westminster Abbey the following June. At the Queen’s suggestion he was made chairman of the committee to oversee the coronation ceremony, but he would not walk by her side. “We took it for granted that she would be alone,” recalled Gay Charteris. “That must have been hard for him. It was how it was done. She is the monarch. Yet if she had been a man, the wife would have been there.” Such was the case in 1937 when Queen Elizabeth was first anointed on her uncovered head, and then crowned with her husband. But by tradition, the Queen’s consort is neither crowned nor anointed.

  Two months before the big celebration, on March 24, 1953, Queen Mary died in her sleep at age eighty-five. She received all the suitable honors at Westminster Hall followed by a funeral at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor. Her son the Duke of Windsor attended, but the Queen did not include him in a dinner that evening, nor did she invite him to the coronation. She agreed with Churchill’s advice that it would be “quite inappropriate for a King who had abdicated.” The embittered duke wrote to his wife, “What a smug stinking lot my relations are.”

  The buildup to the coronation pulled the British together in a burst of patriotism and great expectations, as the country began to emerge from postwar rationing and economic stagnation. Princess Margaret said it was “like a phoenix-time. Everything was being raised from the ashes. There was this gorgeous-looking lovely young lady, and nothing to stop anything getting better and better.” Churchill’s notion of a new Elizabethan Age may have been an illusion, but for a time it caught the imagination of the British public and emphasized the importance of the monarch, in the words of Rebecca West, as “the emblem of the state, the symbol of our national life, the guardian of our self-respect.”

  For weeks, the Queen applied herself to learning every nuance of the three-hour service. She met several times with Geoffrey Fisher, the ninety-ninth Archbishop of Canterbury, who instructed her in the spiritual significance of the various rites and gave her prayers to say. She practiced her lines and her steps every day in the ballroom at Buckingham Palace. Tied to her shoulders were sheets stitched together and augmented with weights to simulate her heavy robe and train. She sat at her desk wearing the five-pound St. Edward’s Crown dating from the coronation of Charles II, and listening to recordings of her father’s coronation.

  The 16th Duke of Norfolk, a small, ruddy, and highly efficient peer who carried the additional title of Earl Marshal, was responsible for choreographing the ceremony (an ironic coincidence, since he was a Roman Catholic supervising a deeply Protestant service). His wife, Lavinia, the Duchess of Norfolk, stood in for the Queen at numerous rehearsals in Westminster Abbey, several of which were watched intently by Elizabeth II. The Queen’s six maids of honor, unmarried daughters of the highest-ranking hereditary peers (dukes, earls, and marquesses) who were responsible for carrying the train, also rehearsed frequently in the Abbey and had one trial run at the Palace. When asked whether she would like to take a break midway through the service the Queen replied, “I’ll be all right. I’m as strong as a horse.”

  An estimated one million people streamed into London to witness the pageantry, including forty thousand Americans. The official delegation from the United States was led by General George Marshall and included Earl Warren, governor of California, and General Omar Bradley. Also in the crowd was twenty-four-year-old Jacqueline Bouvier—the future wife of President John F. Kennedy—then a reporter for the Washington Times Herald, who filed whimsical reports on the London scene. “All the deposed monarchs
are staying at Claridge’s,” she wrote, and ladies had to have their hair done at 3:30 A.M. on Coronation Day so they could be in their seats at 6:30 A.M. wearing their tiaras, “and that takes a bit of arranging.”

  The night before the coronation, hundreds of thousands of spectators endured unseasonably cold temperatures, lashing wind, and downpours to stake out positions along the route of the procession, which began at 9 A.M. The parade included twenty-nine bands and twenty-seven carriages, as well as thirteen thousand soldiers representing some fifty countries, among them Indians, Pakistanis, Malayans, Fijians, Australians, and Canadians. Queen Salote of Tonga, a British territory in the South Pacific, was the runaway crowd pleaser, oblivious to the weather in her open landau, “a great big, warm personality” who was “swathed in purple silk and with a magnificent plume waving in the wind from the crown.”

  Elizabeth II traveled to Westminster Abbey in the twenty-four-foot-long Gold State Coach, with gilded sculptures and door panels featuring classical scenes painted in the eighteenth century. Eight gray horses, one of which was named Eisenhower, pulled the fairytale carriage. The Queen wore her great-great-grandmother’s diadem and a coronation gown of white satin with short sleeves and a heart neckline, its bodice and bell-shaped skirt adorned with the symbols of Great Britain and its Commonwealth realms (among them a rose, thistle, shamrock, maple leaf, and fern), all extravagantly embroidered in pale colored silk, gold and silver threads, semiprecious stones, seed pearls, and shimmering crystals. She could be seen smiling at the thunderous cheering as she waved her white-gloved arm up and down. Prince Philip wore the full dress uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet, which he covered during the ceremony with his peer’s robes of scarlet topped by an ermine cape.

  Awaiting the Queen’s arrival at the Abbey door promptly at 11 A.M. were the maids of honor, dressed identically in white satin with pearl embroidery. “She was relaxed, and she looked so beautiful,” recalled Anne Glenconner (then Lady Anne Coke, daughter of the Earl of Leicester). “She had a wonderful little figure, with a tiny waist and wonderful complexion with great big eyes. Prince Philip looked after her, saying to us, ‘Do this and do that.’ ” One of the Queen’s attendants said, “You must be feeling nervous, Ma’am.” “Of course I am,” replied Elizabeth II, “but I really do think Aureole will win,” a reference to her horse running in the Derby four days later.

  The maids of honor, assisted by the Mistress of the Robes, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, arranged the monarch’s crimson velvet Robe of State edged with ermine and gold lace. As the maids grabbed the satin handles on the eighteen-foot train, the Queen looked over her shoulder and said, “Ready, girls?” They lifted the heavy velvet, and proceeded down the long aisle toward the gold-carpeted coronation “theater” in the center of the Abbey before the high altar gleaming with regalia of scepters, swords, and crowns and draped with gold, crimson, and blue tapestry, all illuminated by bright arc lights for television.

  The procession included heads of state, diplomats, an African chieftain in leopard skin and feather headdress, a Muslim in plain black robe, crown princes, and members of the royal family, including Philip’s mother wearing a dove gray nun’s habit and wimple, and the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret trailing twelve-foot trains. All the women wore ball gowns, and those men not in flowing robes or traditional costumes (“plucked indiscriminately out of the dead pages of British history,” wrote Russell Baker in the Baltimore Sun) wore white tie and tails, although Labour politician Aneurin Bevan defiantly appeared in a black business suit.

  When the Queen approached the high altar, her heavy skirt swinging “backwards and forwards in a beautiful rhythmic effect,” the Boys Choir of Westminster School sang out, “Vivat Regina Elizabetha! Vivat! Vivat! Vivat!,” the sole remnant of Latin in the entire service. During the ceremony, most of which dates from the first Abbey coronation of William the Conqueror on Christmas Day in 1066, she was seated in three different places. The Chair of Estate faced the center of the theater, in front of the royal gallery, which was behind a long table filled with silver gilt and solid gold pieces including giant platters, chalices, and salt cellars. The carved oak King Edward’s Chair, used for every coronation since 1308, faced the high altar. Behind it on an elevated platform, also facing the altar, was the Queen’s throne where she would sit after being anointed and crowned.

  Elizabeth II stood by King Edward’s Chair as the archbishop began the “recognition,” presenting her in turn to the 7,500 distinguished guests seated in the four sides of the Abbey. As the occupants of each quadrant cried “God Save Queen Elizabeth!” followed by a trumpet fanfare, she gave a slight neck bow and slow half curtsy, the only time she would ever make that dual gesture as Queen.

  After swearing the coronation oath in which she pledged to honor the laws of Great Britain, its realms, territories, and possessions, and “maintain the Laws of God,” the most spiritual part of the ceremony took place. She stood in front of the Chair of Estate as her maids of honor removed her crimson robe, her gloves, her jewelry and diadem. The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire and the Lord Great Chamberlain, the Marquess of Cholmondeley, then helped Elizabeth II put on her Colobium Sindonis, a simple scoop neck white linen dress with a full pleated skirt that fitted over her gown. “Lord Cholmondeley had to do up the shift in the back,” recalled Anne Glenconner. “He couldn’t do hooks and eyes, so they put on press fasteners so he just had to push them shut.”

  Four Knights of the Garter held silver poles supporting a canopy of woven silk and gold over King Edward’s Chair, where the Queen sat awaiting her anointing out of television camera range. “It was the most poignant moment,” Anne Glenconner continued. “She looked so young, with nothing on her head, wearing only the white shift over her dress.” The Archbishop of Canterbury poured holy oil from a 22-karat gold ampulla in the form of an eagle into a twelfth-century silver-gilt anointing spoon. He anointed Elizabeth II with oil, making a sign of the cross on the palms of each of her hands, her forehead, and exposed upper chest. “Some small interest was generated,” according to one account, “by the fact that Elizabeth unlike Victoria did not refuse to let the archbishop anoint her breast.”

  She was then invested with coronation robes weighing thirty-six pounds. They were made of stiff woven golden cloth—the long-sleeved Supertunica held by a wide belt, the embroidered Stole draped around her neck, and the Imperial Mantle, a large gleaming cloak fastened with a gold eagle clasp. Her garments, from the simple linen dress to the splendid vestments, along with the symbolism of her anointment, were designed to signify her priestlike status. British sovereigns long ago gave up the notion of a divine right, responsible to God alone, which allowed them to rule without necessarily listening to the advice of their merely mortal ministers or Parliament. But as a devout Christian, the Queen believed that the coronation sanctified her before God to serve her people, much as the Pope is blessed in his ordination.

  “The real significance of the coronation for her was the anointing, not the crowning,” said Canon John Andrew, a friend of the royal family and senior chaplain to the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury. “She was consecrated, and that makes her Queen. It is the most solemn thing that has ever happened in her life. She cannot abdicate. She is there until death.”

  In a further series of rituals, she was presented with her regalia, each “ornament” a symbol of royalty, starting with two armills, thick 22-karat gold bracelets that signified sincerity and wisdom. She received gold spurs, a thick white glove to encourage “gentleness in levying taxes,” and the Jewelled Sword of Offering to help her protect good and punish evil, which she carried to the altar, reverently balancing it between her hands. A ruby and sapphire coronation ring was placed on the fourth finger of her right hand to show her fidelity to her subjects, jeweled scepters represented queenly power, mercy, and leadership, and the orb topped by a cross of precious jewels displayed Christ’s power over mankind.

  Still seated in King Edward’s Chair, nearly
engulfed by her ponderous golden robes and holding a jeweled scepter upright in each hand, she looked with “intense expectancy” as the archbishop blessed the enormous St. Edward’s Crown of solid gold, set with 444 semiprecious stones. He held it aloft, then placed it firmly on her head, which momentarily dropped before rising again. Simultaneously, the scarlet and ermine robed peers in one section of the Abbey, and the bejeweled peeresses in another, also identically dressed in red velvet and fur-trimmed robes, crowned themselves with their gold, velvet, and ermine coronets. The congregation shouted “God Save the Queen,” and cannons boomed in Hyde Park and at the Tower of London. As the archbishop intoned, “God crown you with a crown of glory and righteousness,” Elizabeth II could literally feel the weight of duty—between her vestments, crown, and scepters, more than forty-five pounds’ worth—on her petite frame.

  Accompanied by the archbishop and Earl Marshal, the Queen held the scepters while ascending the platform to sit on her throne and receive the homage of her “princes and peers.” The first was the archbishop, followed by the Duke of Edinburgh, who approached the throne bareheaded in his long red robe, mounted the five steps, and knelt before his wife, placing his hands between hers and saying, “I, Philip, do become your liege man of life and limb, and of earthly worship; and faith and truth I will bear unto you, to live and die, against all manner of folks. So help me God.” When he stood up, he touched her crown and kissed her left cheek, prompting her to quickly adjust the crown as he walked backward and gave his wife a neck bow.

  In the royal gallery, tiny Prince Charles, wearing a white satin shirt and dark shorts, arrived through a rear entrance and sat between the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret to witness his mother’s anointing, investiture with regalia, crowning, and homage paid by his father. “Look, it’s Mummy!” he said to his grandmother, and the Queen flashed a faint smile. The four-and-a-half-year-old heir to the throne watched wide-eyed, variously excited and puzzled, while the Queen Mother leaned down to whisper explanations.