Counting One's Blessings

by William Shawcross

  ‡ Jock’s early death was a great blow, particularly as the youngest two of his four surviving daughters needed special care. (His eldest daughter, Patricia, had died aged eleven months in 1917.) Nerissa (1919–86) and Katherine (born in 1926) inherited a mental condition from which three of their cousins, on their mother’s side, also suffered. All five of them were placed in a private care home in the late 1920s. Nerissa and Katherine’s mother visited them regularly, but after her death family visits were discouraged by their carers. Lady Mary Clayton, Queen Elizabeth’s niece, described the girls as ‘lovely children … like easily frightened does’.

  * In December 1929 D’Arcy Osborne had been transferred to Rome as Counsellor of Embassy, from Lisbon where he had been en poste since 1928.

  * Thornton Wilder (1897–1975), American writer. In 1927 The Bridge of San Luis Rey won the Pulitzer Prize and was subsequently named by the American Modern Library as one of the hundred best novels of the twentieth century.

  † Max Aitken, first Baron Beaverbrook PC ONB (1879–1964), controversial Canadian–British newspaper magnate and politician. A friend of Churchill, Beaverbrook was appointed Minister for Air Production and, later, Minister of Supply during the Second World War, roles in which he excelled.

  * John Robert Clynes (1869–1949), trade union leader; Home Secretary, 1929–31. There was a convention that the Home Secretary should be present at the birth of a child in the direct royal succession to see that no substitution took place. King George VI thought the practice archaic and subsequently abolished it.

  * One of the most famous of the annual Games in the Highlands. Queen Victoria became the first royal patron of the Gathering in 1849 and the Royal Family has attended regularly since then.

  * Arthur John Bigge, first Baron Stamfordham (1849–1931), Private Secretary to Queen Victoria and to King George V. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, he ‘showed persistent industry, tact, wisdom, sure grasp of affairs, and unswerving rectitude and impartiality, bearing delicate responsibilities with sagacity and resourcefulness’.

  * The Duchess had given Beryl Poignand permission to write a short book about Princess Elizabeth, to be published by John Murray. Beryl wrote under her pseudonym Anne Ring.

  * Sir John Weir (1879–1971), homeopathic doctor, physician to many members of the Royal Family. The Duchess later became convinced by homeopathy herself. After Sir John Weir’s death Dr Marjorie Blackie and then Dr Anita Davies treated her with homeopathic remedies.

  † The Duke of York had been kicked in the leg while out hunting.

  * The last of the houses the Duke and Duchess rented so that the Duke could hunt with the Pytchley. They took Thornby Grange from January to April 1931. In November that year the Duke sold his horses; the country was facing economic hardship, and the King had decided to reduce the Civil List by £50,000.

  † Margaret ‘Bobo’ McDonald (1904–93), long-time nurse to the children in the Royal Family, principally to Princess Elizabeth, whose dresser she later became and to whom she remained close all her life.

  ‡ In early 1931 Ramsay MacDonald was Labour Prime Minister, leading a minority government. By August 1931 it was clear that this administration could no longer deal with the financial crisis of the Great Depression which was engulfing the world. Encouraged by King George V, MacDonald formed a ‘National Government’ with the Liberals and Conservatives, but most of his Labour colleagues refused to serve. In October 1931 the National Government secured an overwhelming electoral victory. MacDonald remained Prime Minister till the election of 1935 when the Conservatives returned to power.

  * Alfred Duff Cooper, first Viscount Norwich GCMG DSO PC (1890–1954). Known as Duff Cooper, he was a British Conservative politician, diplomat and author. Secretary of State for War, 1935–7; First Lord of the Admiralty, 1937–8; British Ambassador to France, 1944–7; an exuberant connoisseur of fine words, wine and women. In a March 1931 by-election he stood against Sir Ernest Petter, the Empire Free Trade candidate who was supported by Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook. Duff Cooper’s wife, Lady Diana, was one of the most beautiful women of the time, an accomplished writer and a vivid personality.

  † Harold Harmsworth, first Viscount Rothermere (1868–1940), newspaper proprietor and founder, with his brother, Lord Northcliffe, of the Daily Mail.

  * Major Hon. Richard Molyneux (1873–1954), son of fourth Earl of Sefton, groom in waiting to King George V, c. 1919–36, and extra equerry to Queen Mary, 1936–53. He was appointed KCVO in 1935 and he became one of the Duchess of York’s closest friends.

  † A secret group created by the Duchess and a few like-minded friends at Court who enjoyed a glass of wine. ‘Aqua vitae, non aqua pura’ was their motto. She later said of the Wets, ‘the great thing was, that being a SECRET SOCIETY we had to have a secret sign, & this was, to raise the glass to other members without being seen by the dis-approvers! It was a silly, but most enjoyable underground movement, & we laughed a lot. The only lady members were myself (Founder) and Magdalen Eldon, who was not only beautiful, but witty and loved by everyone, & Mary Beaufort.’ (RA QEQM/OUT/MOLYNEUX/140)

  * D’Arcy Osborne had just been appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at Washington DC.

  * William George Tyrrell, first Baron Tyrrell GCB GCMG KCVO PC (1866–1947), diplomat, Ambassador in Paris 1928–34; he was a firm Francophile, spoke fluent German and distrusted the Nazis from the start.

  † Louis Hubert Gonzalve Lyautey (1854–1934), French army general and from 1921 Marshal of France. On the outbreak of the First World War he said, ‘a war among Europeans is a Civil War, it is the most monumental folly the world has ever committed.’

  ‡ The Duke and Duchess went to Paris 17–22 July to visit the Colonial Exhibition. The French saw in it a renewal of Edward VII’s Entente Cordiale.

  * The Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park had been the country home of King George IV. In 1931 the King offered it to the Yorks. Queen Elizabeth later recalled to Eric Anderson, ‘we borrowed the money to build our little bit on. I think King George V was very strict about those sort of things. He wouldn’t have thought it right to help.’ The house remained a much-loved family home. Queen Elizabeth died there on 30 March 2002.

  * The Lodore Falls are situated at the southern end of Derwentwater in Cumbria. The waterfall was popular with Victorian visitors staying in nearby Keswick. Robert Southey (1774–1843) wrote an onomatopoeic poem about it in 1820 called ‘The Cataract of Lodore’.

  † Cavalcade had opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in 1931. It was a magnificent variety show which evoked the patriotic and progressive values of the Victorian era. It was also a remarkable piece of stagecraft – a cast of 400 people was brought up on to the stage on six hydraulic lifts.

  * RA QEQM/PRIV/PAL/OSBORNE.

  † Toc H was founded in Belgium in 1915 by the Rev. Tubby Clayton as a place in which soldiers on the Ypres Front could find solace from battle and pray. After the war, Clayton expanded Toc H into an international movement of Christian fellowship; its aims were Friendship, Service, Fairmindedness and Love of God. The Duchess had become committed to Clayton and to Toc H, and she remained so all her life. On 18 February 1933 she made a speech about unemployment at the annual festival of the Toc H League of Women Helpers in the Kingsway Hall.

  * Royal cruising yacht, launched in 1901. Britannia was the King’s racing yacht. She was scuttled after his death in 1936 in accordance with his wishes.

  * Osborne House, Isle of Wight, designed by Prince Albert in the style of an Italian Renaissance palazzo as a summer retreat for his family, was completed in 1851. Queen Victoria loved the house and died there in 1901.

  † The Duchess was referring to Wallis Simpson, with whom the Prince of Wales had recently become infatuated. Queen Mary replied on 20 August: ‘Darling Elizabeth, I am so sorry I quite forgot to answer yr letter to me to Cowes. Of course Papa never said a word to D. about Belvedere so all is well for I agree with you t
hat it wld never do to start a quarrel, but I confess I hope it will not occur again for you ought not to meet D’s lady in his own house, that is too much of a bad thing!!!’ (RA QEQM/PRIV/RF)

  ‡ Fort Belvedere, a Georgian folly at the southern end of Windsor Great Park. It was the Prince of Wales’s favourite home.

  * Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (1872–1956), prolific English essayist, caricaturist and novelist. A man of extraordinary talent, Beerbohm is best remembered for his novel Zuleika Dobson (1911) and for his witty cartoons.

  † ‘The Embassy’, one of the smartest nightclubs in London. The popular band leader, Bert Ambrose, played there through much of the 1920s.

  * John Dillinger (1903–34), infamous American outlaw, shot in Chicago while trying to escape arrest on 22 July.

  * Engelbert Dollfuss (1892–1934), Austrian Federal Chancellor and opponent of Hitler who tried to keep Austria independent; he was assassinated by Austrian Nazis on 25 July.

  † Anna Pavlova (1881–1931), Russian ballerina, one of the greatest dancers of the time. She is best known for The Dying Swan, a solo created for her by Fokine.

  ‡ Tamara Karsavina (1885–1978), leading ballerina of Sergey Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. She came to London in 1918 and, in 1920, helped to found the Royal Academy of Dancing.

  * Philip Hunloke (1868–1947), British yachtsman who competed in the 1908 Summer Olympics, held in London. He was Sailing Master to King George V and was regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest helmsmen.

  * Shooting lodge owned by the Dalhousies. The Elphinstones ran it for the American banker J. P. Morgan, who was the shooting tenant for many years. In 1929, the year of the Wall Street Crash, the one telephone box in Edzell was said to have had a queue of his American guests trying to call their brokers to see if they had any money left.

  † Joseph Hilaire Belloc (1875–1953), yachtsman, prolific poet, satirist and author, whose devout Catholicism informed much of his work. He wrote this Ballade in indignation at a report that an Anglican bishop had ordered a priest in his diocese to remove from his church ‘all illegal ornaments, and especially a Female Figure with a Child’. The affecting poem ends:

  Prince Jesus in mine Agony,

  Permit me, broken and defiled,

  Through blurred and glazing eyes to see

  A female Figure with a Child.

  * Ernest Pearce, the wounded soldier from the Durham Light Infantry whom she had met at Glamis in 1915. Clare Vyner had created a scheme whereby families of unemployed people from Tyneside were given an acre and a half on which to build a bungalow and a smallholding. A new community quickly grew up of former industrial workers, shipyard craftsmen and clerks.

  * Japanese classic of the eleventh century, sometimes called the world’s first novel, by ‘Lady Murasaki’.

  * Duchess of Beaufort, née Lady Mary Cambridge, Queen Mary’s niece, married to tenth Duke of Beaufort.

  * Duff Cooper had just published the first volume of his biography of Field Marshal Douglas Haig, first Earl Haig, Commander of the British Expeditionary Force, 1915–18. This followed his life of the French statesman and diplomat Talleyrand (1754–1838), published in 1932.

  * The first in a long line of corgis cherished by the family.

  * King George V celebrated his Silver Jubilee in 1935. He and Queen Mary were greatly touched by the enthusiasm shown by the people of Britain. The King said, ‘I had no idea they felt like that about me … I am beginning to think they must really like me for myself.’ (Harold Nicolson, King George V: His Life and Reign, Pan Books, 1967, p. 669)

  * Sister Catherine Black, of the London Hospital, had looked after the King since 1928.

  * The Hoare–Laval Pact was a secret plan devised in December 1935 by the British Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare and the French Prime Minister Pierre Laval. It envisaged the partition of Abyssinia, making the major part of the country an Italian colony. The scheme was partly intended to conciliate Mussolini in the hope of persuading him not to ally Italy with Germany. But when news of it leaked, there was outrage and the British government dissociated itself from the Pact; both Hoare and Laval had to resign.

  * Sir Austen Chamberlain KG (1863–1937), British statesman, politician, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (1925). Having been in favour of appeasing Germany in the 1920s, in 1934 he joined Winston Churchill in calling for British rearmament.

  † Mrs Greville had been to Nuremberg in 1934 and met Hitler briefly at her own request.

  ‡ Albert LeBrun (1871–1950), President of the Third Republic, 1932–40.

  § François Pietri (1882–1966), French Naval Minister until 1936. He was later French Ambassador to Spain under the Vichy regime, 1940–4.

  ¶ Edouard Herriot (1872–1957), three times Prime Minister of France between 1924 and 1932. In the Second World War he refused to support Pétain; he was arrested and later deported to Germany. In 1945 he was elected President of the National Assembly, a post which he held until he retired in 1954.

  * D’Arcy Osborne had recently been appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Holy See, where he would remain throughout the Second World War.

  † The League of Nations was created after the First World War to try to ensure that future wars would be prevented by collective security. It proved incapable of averting aggression by the fascist dictators in the 1930s; the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 demonstrated the extent of its failure. It was replaced by the United Nations in 1945.

  * The closure of Palmer’s Shipyard in 1935 devastated the north-eastern town of Jarrow. In October 1936, some 200 Jarrow men marched 300 miles to London to bring their plight, and that of other industrial workers all across the north, to the attention of Parliament and people.

  In his response to the Duchess of 14 August 1936, Duff Cooper (who was now Secretary of State for War) wrote, ‘your suggestion that we should enlist recruits who are not quite fit with a view to improving them shall be acted on at once – and I will, if I may, keep you informed of the results. Do you remember what Maurepas used to say to Marie Antoinette? “Madam if what you desire is possible it is done – if it is impossible it shall be done.” ‘ He referred to a new scheme to give unemployed young people six months’ military training to see if army life suited them. ‘Myself I am convinced that no healthy young man who knew what life in the Army is like could possibly prefer the miserable existence on the dole.’ Duff Cooper’s views were close to those of the Duchess. She was increasingly worried about unemployment and since childhood she had admired the armed services. (RA QEQM/PRIV/PAL)

  * King Edward VIII was to have opened the new hospital. He then declined on grounds that he was still in official mourning for his father. However, on the day of the opening, he drove himself to Aberdeen to meet Mrs Simpson and other friends off the train from London. The Aberdeen Evening Express published a photograph of the King at the station with the headline ‘His Majesty in Aberdeen. Surprise visit in car to meet guests’. Next to it was a photograph of the Yorks opening the hospital. The press had not yet disclosed Mrs Simpson’s relationship with the King, but this incident was an indication of his priorities.

  † John Pierpont ‘Jack’ Morgan, Jr (1867–1943), American banker and philanthropist who became a friend of the Duke and Duchess of York. He helped finance the First World War and after the Treaty of Versailles his bank, Morgan Guaranty, managed Germany’s reparation payments.

  † Geldershiel, a small shooting lodge built by Queen Victoria in the shadow of Balmoral’s highest mountain, Lochnagar.

  * Rev. Dr John Stirton (1871–1944), Minister at Crathie, and his wife.

  ‡ The King had imposed sweeping and unpopular economies and staff changes at both Sandringham and Balmoral since the death of George V. He had never liked either property as much as his father or the Yorks did.

  * In reply to this letter, Queen Mary thanked the Duchess for writing so fully ‘on a subject which grieves me beyond words & which is
a great worry to me, as well as to us all’. She had gathered that the King did not wish to go to Sandringham for Christmas and she had asked him to let her and the Yorks have their family party there. (QEQM/PRIV/RF)

  * In this letter to her mother (and that of 27 August) the Duchess was typically discreet; she made no mention of her concerns about King Edward VIII, which she discussed freely with Queen Mary.

  * The King, who had been avoiding his family, had finally told his mother and brother that he planned to marry Mrs Simpson and that if his government could not accept this, he would abdicate. On 28 November, the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, sent telegrams to the Dominions – Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the Irish Free State – seeking their views on the possibility of the King marrying Mrs Simpson. Their answers varied in tone, but allowed the Prime Minister to conclude that no union, not even a morganatic one, would be acceptable.

  * Home of the Pembroke family.

  * The Duke of York wrote a letter to his brother on the same day saying, ‘I do so long for you to be happy with the one person you adore … I feel sure that whatever you decide to do will be in the best interest of this Country and Empire’ (Philip Ziegler, Edward VIII: The Official Biography, Collins, 1990, p. 324).

  † The Hon. Alexander Hardinge, later second Baron Hardinge of Penshurst PC GCB GCVO MC (1894–1960), Assistant Private Secretary to George V, Private Secretary to Edward VIII and George VI. His wife Helen (née Cecil) was one of the Duchess’s oldest friends.

  * Sir Oswald Hornby Joseph Birley (1880–1952), portrait painter ‘producing high-quality faithful likenesses with insight and sympathy’ (Dictionary of National Biography). In 1934 he painted a playful group portrait of the Windsor Wets which hung thereafter in Windsor Castle.

  † On 3 December 1936 the British press broke the self-imposed silence it had observed all year – unlike its foreign counterparts – on the King’s romantic affairs. When the Yorks stepped off the train from Scotland that morning they were greeted with newspaper placards: ‘The King’s Marriage’.