Counting One's Blessings

by William Shawcross

  Unlike Queen Victoria, she had beautiful clear handwriting from the age of ten to the age of a hundred. From childhood onwards, her words danced on the page, teeming with vitality, ebullience and optimism. Although by today’s standards her formal education was limited, her letters showed a relish for language, and sparkled with the sheer joy of living.

  I quoted from many such letters in the biography. But there were far more which I was not able to include even in part, let alone in whole, for simple reasons of space. And so I must repeat my gratitude to Her Majesty The Queen for granting me the huge pleasure, and responsibility, of delving again into Queen Elizabeth’s letters to make the selection in this book.

  The structure is simple. I have followed the path of her life and have written short passages and notes to provide context and information about those to whom she was writing and those whom she mentions. I have kept her childhood spelling but corrected her rare mistakes as an adult. In addition, I have included extracts from diaries that she kept in her early years and quotations from her remarkable recorded conversations in the 1990s with Eric Anderson, then Provost of Eton College, in which she recalled many incidents and relationships throughout her life.*

  The letters span the entire twentieth century, as did her life. They are drawn from the thousands that Queen Elizabeth wrote to family and friends. Naturally, not all of these have survived. In all families, letters are thrown away, letters are put somewhere safe and forgotten, letters are lost. Sometimes letters are deliberately destroyed.

  When I made my first trip to Glamis Castle I was astonished to be handed a box containing hundreds of letters written during the First World War by the adolescent Elizabeth to Beryl Poignand, her governess and friend. Many of these letters are ten or more pages long and some are filled with girlish enthusiasms, even nonsense, but almost all of them are fun – except, of course, those that deal with sombre matters of war and death. Many of them discuss the soldiers who came to convalesce at Glamis during the war, and with whom Elizabeth and Beryl made friends and played games. They show the spontaneous, joyous side of her character which she later had to control as the wife of a prince – in public at least.

  Prince Albert, the second son of King George V and Queen Mary, fell in love with her in 1920 and the letters between them during their courtship – he did most of the courting – are at times almost unbearably poignant, testament to his dedication and to her hesitancy. After their marriage in April 1923, letters between them are much rarer, probably because they spent very little time apart.

  There are almost no letters from Elizabeth to her father; sadder still, many of those to her mother are missing. They had an extraordinarily close, affectionate relationship, and as a child Elizabeth confided completely in her mother. The day after her wedding to the Prince, now Duke of York, Elizabeth wrote to her, ‘I could not say anything to you about how utterly miserable I was at leaving you and Mike & David & father. I could not ever have said it to you – but you know I love you more than anybody in the world mother, and you do know it, don’t you?’2 Lady Strathmore replied at once, ‘I won’t say what it means to me to give you up to Bertie – but I think you know that you are by far the most precious of all my children, & always will be.’3

  As soon as she entered the Royal Family, the Duchess of York made it a rule never to talk (let alone write) about her new relations, even to her Strathmore family. This discretion was wise and she maintained it for the rest of her life. Nevertheless, her letters to her mother would probably have included more accurate reflections of her thoughts and hopes and fears than any others. Unfortunately few of these letters have been found.

  It is important to remember that for the first twenty-two years of her life Elizabeth Bowes Lyon was a private individual with no expectation of becoming a public figure, let alone a prominent member of the Royal Family. And after she became Duchess of York and then Queen, she continued to write private letters to friends and family with little thought that they would one day be published. Indeed, one or two of the recipients of her letters said to me, quite understandably, that they regarded their missives from Queen Elizabeth as private and not for publication.

  Princess Margaret felt strongly about this; she made little secret of the fact that in the 1990s she ‘tidied’ her mother’s papers and consigned many of them to black bin-bags for burning. These bags, she said, included letters from the Princess of Wales to the Queen Mother. After the Princess’s death in 1997, her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, shredded the correspondence she found in her daughter’s home.

  Everyone is entitled to privacy, especially in a world where far too much becomes too public too fast. In letters, each of us sometimes writes things in haste which, on consideration, we might have phrased differently – and would not wish to see published. Sometimes letters are too long, or too repetitive. I have tried to edit these letters with these concerns in mind.

  The vagaries of life have already made their selection of Queen Elizabeth’s letters. Yet so many have survived that the hardest task has been to decide what to discard from the pen of this prolific and talented letter-writer. I can only hope that this book truly displays the great loves – for God, for family, for Britain and for life – which, from first to last, inspired Queen Elizabeth and her writing.

  * Conversations with Eric Anderson 1994–5 (RA QEQM/ADD/MISC) and throughout. Quotations from these conversations appear in italics.

  PART ONE

  ELIZABETH

  ‘A flashing smile of appreciative delight’

  LORD GORELL

  ELIZABETH ANGELA MARGUERITE BOWES LYON, born on 4 August 1900, was the ninth child of Lord and Lady Glamis, Claude and Cecilia. She was followed in 1902 by her brother David, to whom she became exceptionally close. Cecilia Glamis called these last two children ‘My two Benjamins’. They had eight siblings: Violet, born in 1882, was followed by Mary Frances (May), Patrick, John (Jock), Alexander (Alec), Fergus, Rose and Michael. (Violet died of diphtheria in 1893 at the age of eleven, just two weeks before the birth of Michael.) In 1904 Claude Glamis’s father, the thirteenth Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, died and he succeeded to the title.

  Life for these children was as contented and secure as any childhood could be. In the first decade of the twentieth century, visitors to St Paul’s Walden Bury, their handsome Queen Anne house of rose-red brick in the fields of Hertfordshire, found a bustling, happy household, full of laughter, kindness and a wish to do good in the community.

  Elizabeth’s first biographer, Cynthia Asquith, later wrote, ‘Its atmosphere of a happy English home recalls to one’s memory so many of the familiar delights of childhood – charades, schoolroom tea, homemade toffee, Christmas Eve, hide-and-seek. Nowhere in this well-worn house, one feels, can there ever have been very strict rules as to the shutting of doors, the wiping of boots, or the putting away of toys.’1

  Throughout Elizabeth’s childhood, country-house life continued with little change. White tablecloths were still spread for tea on spacious lawns; field sports, especially shooting, were immensely popular among the aristocracy and their friends.

  Years later, in conversation with Eric Anderson, Queen Elizabeth remembered her childhood years:

  We were a very big family, you see. I had six brothers. I was nearly the youngest. It’s so nice being brought up by elder brothers. They kept a good eye you know. I was the youngest practically except for one little brother and so we were cherished and also disciplined, which is a very good thing. We all liked each other tremendously, I think. My very elder sister was at the very beginning of the family. She was a long way up. My middle sister was an absolute angel. Everybody loved her. In a way, my generation was very lucky – you feel very safe in a big family. It was a great thing to be loved.2

  Cecilia Strathmore was the greatest influence on the household. She was a woman of both gaiety and religious conviction who brought up her children in love of God, love of family and love of country. ‘Noblesse oblige’ may
not have been a term she used, but Lady Strathmore certainly impressed on her children that they had been born very lucky and that their responsibility, indeed their duty (an important word to her), lay in being generous to others, especially those less fortunate. ‘Work is the rent you pay for life,’ she would tell her children.

  Elizabeth was from infancy vivacious, loving the company of adults as well as of her siblings. One of her governesses later recalled that she had ‘a small dainty figure, a narrow, finely shaped rather pale little face, dark hair and lovely violet-blue eyes’.3

  An admirer, Lord Gorell,* later recalled that she had even as a child ‘that blend of kindliness and dignity that is the peculiar characteristic of her family. She was small for her age, responsive as a harp, wistful and appealing one moment, bright eyed and eager the next, with a flashing smile of appreciative delight.’4

  Her brothers were all sent to Eton, but Elizabeth was educated at home by governesses. After lessons, she and David would play together in the outbuildings around the house, and explore the vegetable garden. One governess observed, ‘Lady Elizabeth was adept at crawling under the netting and filling herself with strawberries while lying on her stomach.’5 Elizabeth herself recalled the ‘absolute bliss’ of being in the stable surrounded by the smell of horses and leather, bits of which the groom allowed her to polish.

  Every August, the family travelled to the Strathmores’ Scottish home, Glamis Castle. They would go up by train, with some of their servants, for the opening of the grouse season on 12 August. It was a great adventure for a child – Glamis was a thrilling place, with its tower, its turrets, its history and its myths.

  The Castle was lit by hundreds of candles – electric light did not come until 1929 – and there were immense fires in many rooms. Two pipers marched around the table at the end of dinner, and then there were games or songs in the drawing room, led by Cecilia at the piano. Lord Gorell wrote later that the family was without any stiffness or formality. ‘It was all so friendly and kind … No wonder little Elizabeth came up to me once as my visit was nearing its end and demanded “But why don’t you beg to stay?” ’6

  Both houses employed many of the local people. At Glamis, the Castle provided employment for inhabitants of the village near by; in Elizabeth’s memory all those who worked there – housemaids, kitchen maids, grooms – were friends of the family.

  The new century into which Elizabeth was born was seen at the time as a moment of great optimism. Nineteenth-century industrialization had enriched Europe and North America as never before. Railways, steamships, motor cars and even bicycles had created an almost unprecedented revolution in transport. Aged ten, Elizabeth wrote an essay entitled ‘A recent invention, Aeroplanes’: ‘An aeroplane is usually shaped like a cigar, and has a propellor at one end, and on each side the great white wings, which makes it look like a bird […] They are not quite safe, yet, and many, many axidents have happened.’7

  Among her happiest childhood memories were the trips she made to Italy with her mother to visit her maternal grandmother in her various homes in Florence, San Remo and Bordighera.* Two affectionate letters to her father from Italy survive and one of them opens this collection.

  At Christmas 1909 she was given a diary and for a few weeks thereafter she kept it diligently – ‘Jan 1 1910 – I had my first nevew – great exitment.’8 This was John, Master of Glamis, first son of her eldest brother Patrick, Lord Glamis, who had married Lady Dorothy Osborne, daughter of the Duke of Leeds, in 1908.

  In July 1910, only weeks after the death of King Edward VII and the accession of his son, King George V, Elizabeth’s older sister May got married. By now Elizabeth had developed her happy letter-writing habit and wrote to May, ‘Darling May-Di-kin’, several times on her honeymoon. And whenever her mother was away, Elizabeth wrote her affectionate letters.

  Elizabeth was dismayed when David was sent to preparatory school and then to Eton, but she wrote to him constantly. She remained at home whether in the country or at their rented house in London, in St James’s Square, with a succession of governesses, while making short forays to small schools including that of the Misses Birtwhistle in Sloane Street. She said later that she did not think she learned anything there – ‘A little bit of poetry I certainly remember. So I’m afraid I’m uneducated on the whole.’9 In fact her school reports, preserved in the archive at Glamis, show her doing well in English, scripture and history, not so well in mathematics.

  Probably the most effective governess was a young German woman, Käthe Kübler, who arrived in 1913. She was struck by Elizabeth’s love of her mother and their shared devotion to the Bible, which they read together every day. But she was shocked by how disorganized Elizabeth’s education had been. ‘With true German thoroughness I drew up a timetable for her lessons and a plan of study, both of which were approved by Lady Strathmore.’10 Fräulein Kübler’s work was brought to an end by the outbreak of war on Elizabeth’s fourteenth birthday, 4 August 1914. On that day, everyone’s world changed for ever.

  Elizabeth’s brothers Patrick, Jock, Fergus and Michael all marched off at once to war, with hundreds of thousands of young men from all over Europe. Like many great country houses, Glamis and St Paul’s Walden Bury were converted into convalescent homes for wounded soldiers. Elizabeth was told by her mother that her task – her duty indeed – was to make the soldiers feel at home, visiting the wards, talking, running errands, playing cards with them. She did it all with grace and ease. One soldier said later, ‘She was always the same, asking, “How is your shoulder? Do you sleep well? Does it pain you? Why are you not smoking your pipe? Have you no tobacco? You must tell me if you haven’t and I’ll get some for you.” For her fifteen years she was very womanly, kind hearted and sympathetic.’ Everyone in the Castle ‘worshipped’ her.11

  Her closest companion throughout the war was Beryl Poignand, whom Lady Strathmore engaged as her governess and companion in November 1914. Thirteen years older than Elizabeth, Beryl became her best friend and co-conspirator, and Elizabeth’s extraordinary letters to her were full of the joy, excitement and fears of adolescence. Beryl ceased to be Elizabeth’s governess in 1917 but remained a close friend thereafter.

  Like so many families, the Strathmores tasted tragedy in the First World War. Fergus, serving as an officer with the Black Watch, was killed at the Battle of Loos in September 1915. Elizabeth and her family, particularly her mother, were devastated. When her brother Michael was reported missing in 1917, the family went through more agony until he was discovered to have been taken prisoner, at which moment she wrote one of her typically exuberant letters to Beryl to declare that she was ‘!!MAD WITH JOY!!’12

  Her share of wartime suffering did not end with the Armistice of November 1918. Nine months later, one of her closest friends was killed in August 1919, fighting for the White Russian cause. She was inconsolable.

  By this time Elizabeth was no longer a carefree girl but a mature young woman. She was beautiful, charming, even coquettish, and attracted the attention of many young men. But there was much more to her. She had always displayed great sensitivity, and as a result of the sufferings of her own family and of the wider circle in which she had moved during the war, she had acquired an understanding of human problems, strengths and frailties which was to stand her in good stead in later life.

  10 February 1909 to Lord Strathmore

  Poggio Ponente

  Bordighera

  Italy

  My darling Father, Thank you very much for the interesting letter you sent me. Yesterday I went down to the sea shore and enjoyed myself very much on the rocks. I could not go far because of the sea, it was lovly? Mother and Auntie Vava* went to Florance on Sunday evening at 7 oclock. There is a dear little donky here called Marguarita and we put it in a little carrage and I drive it is so quiet have got nothing more to say exept it is a lovly garden my best love to yourself good by from your very loving Elizabeth

  Xxxxxxxxxxxxx

  Ooo
ooooooo

  Cecilia Strathmore’s mother, Mrs Harry Scott, spent a good deal of time in Florence and in Bordighera, on the Italian Riviera. Elizabeth and her mother made several visits there. When in England, she lived at Forbes House, Ham.

  Diary: 1 January 1910

  I had my first nevew great exitment. Same day went to Lady Littens Fancy dress party and had great fun. Jan 2 Sunday – did nothing went to church. Jan 3 lessons in the morning – in the afternoon I went to a party at Kings Walden there was a Xmas tree. Jan 4 had lessons in the morning. At 7 in the evning May, Rosie, David and I went to Lady Verhner in Fancy dress it was great fun, there were proggrams too and supper at half past nine. We went away at ten. It was from 7 to 12.

  Elizabeth began her diary on 1 January 1910. Her handwriting was strong and even, but her interest in recording her life waned – as so often happens.

  16 July 1910 to May Elphinstone

  20 St James’s Square*

  S.W.1

  Darling May-Di-kin,

  This letter will reach you just after the one I wrote last night, perhaps you will think it funny me writing so soon, but I have got such a lot more to ask and tell you, that I am writing before I forget it. Aslin has been a donkey, she has been looking in all your draws (I don’t mean what you wear) and was going to send you those fans (you know the ones you told me you were going to leav behind) and all sorts of things, but Mama told her not to touch a thing, except the trousseau dresses and things.

  David and I are going down to Ham in an hour for Sunday and on Tuesday we go to P.W. [St Paul’s Walden].

  wasn’t it funny when they showered Sidney and you with rice,† how far did you go with the shoes fastened on the motor, the boys told Charles May to stand in front of them so you would not see.

  Good bye Darling May