Counting One's Blessings

by William Shawcross

  I am glad beyond words that you will be at the side of our daughter.

  I am, Yours sincerely

  Elizabeth R

  PS The King was very fond of you.

  Friday 15 February 1952 to Sir Alan Lascelles

  Buckingham Palace

  My dear Tommy

  I am so very grateful to you for re-drafting my message. You have put in just what I wanted & I thank you so much. Today has been the most wonderful & the most agonizing day of my life. Wonderful because one felt the sincerity of the people’s feelings, & agonizing because gradually one becomes less numb, & the awfulness of everything becomes real.

  I am sure that the King would have been pleased, today. ER

  PS I did not tell Arthur that I had showed you my poor words, but tomorrow I shall tell him that you saw, & suggested alterations.

  18 February 1952 Queen Elizabeth’s message to the nation

  I want to send this message of thanks to a great multitude of people – to you who, from all parts of the world, have been giving me your sympathy and affection throughout these dark days. I want you to know how your concern for me has upheld me in my sorrow, and how proud you have made me by your wonderful tributes to my dear husband, a great and noble King.

  No man had a deeper sense than he of duty and of service, and no man was more full of compassion for his fellow men. He loved you all, every one of you, most truly. That, you know, was what he always tried to tell you in his yearly message at Christmas; that was the pledge that he took at the sacred moment of his Coronation fifteen years ago.

  Now I am left alone, to do what I can to honour that pledge without him. Throughout our married life we have tried, the King and I, to fulfil with all our hearts and all our strength the great task of service that was laid upon us. My only wish now is that I may be allowed to continue the work we sought to do together.

  I commend to you our dear Daughter: give her your loyalty and devotion: though blessed in her husband and children she will need your protection and your love in the great and lonely station to which she has been called. God bless you all: and may He in his wisdom guide us safely to our true destiny of Peace and Good Will.

  18 February 1952 to Winston Churchill

  Buckingham Palace

  My dear Mr Churchill

  I was deeply touched by your very kind letter, and want to thank you from my heart for the comforting and sympathetic things you wrote to me.

  It is very difficult to believe that the King has left us. He was so well, the day before he died, so gay, & full of plans & ideas for the future. I am sure that he was looking forward to some slightly less anguished years, with perhaps a little time to give to fairer things, such as making gardens which he loved, planning vistas and rehanging pictures at Windsor, and other very English things which he never had time for.

  One thing I am very thankful for, and that is that you returned as his Prime Minister before he died. I am sure that you must have realized his pleasure & delight in having you at the head of his government, and how much he looked forward to seeing you, & discussing affairs of state.

  It is very kind of you to say that you will come and see me at some later date. I shall look forward to your visit very much, & I adore talking about the King with someone who knew him well.

  With again my thanks for your unfailing sympathy & support, I am, Yours very sincerely,

  Elizabeth R

  * ‘Abercromby’, probably James Abercrombie Senr. (1865–1951), head stalker at Balmoral since 1924. His son James was also a stalker at Balmoral. Frank Gordon (1879–1954) had taken over as head stalker in January 1937.

  * Hon. Mrs Geoffrey Bowlby (1885–1988), née Annesley. Her husband, Captain Geoffrey Bowlby, was killed in the First World War. Lady in waiting to the Queen 1932–45.

  † Walter Turner Monckton, first Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, GCVO KCMG MC PC (1891–1965), distinguished lawyer, later politician and banker, whom Edward VIII had asked to negotiate with the Prime Minister on his behalf in the weeks before the abdication. Monckton was a man of intellect and discretion; after the abdication, he performed an invaluable service liaising with the increasingly angry Duke of Windsor. The Duke had issued a libel suit against the author of a book, Coronation Commentary. This alleged that Mrs Simpson had been his mistress and that he had been drinking too much before the abdication. The King and Queen were appalled by the idea of the Duke being cross-examined in court. In the end the libel case was settled with Monckton’s assistance in the Duke’s favour.

  * This was the first time the King had opened Parliament; he and the Queen had both been nervous. Lionel Logue’s help was still invaluable on such occasions.

  * Designs for the Pavilion at Brighton by Humphry Repton assisted by his sons John Ades Repton and G. S. Repton [1806]. It is inscribed by Osbert Sitwell to Queen Elizabeth on the flyleaf. (RCIN 1160542)

  † Hannah Gubbay (c. 1886–1968), née Rothschild, cousin of Sir Philip Sassoon and friend to both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. She entertained them at her house in Hertford Street.

  * Osbert Sitwell’s new novel.

  † H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N, the humorous creation of an American writer, Leo Rosten, whose stories of a Jewish immigrant to New York were collected into two books, The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N and The Return of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N. The Jewish humour appealed to the Queen.

  * Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley (1896–1980), English politician who founded the British Union of Fascists and, with his ‘Blackshirts’, tried to stir anti-semitic feeling in Britain. He and his wife, Diana Mitford, were interned as fascist sympathizers, 1940–3.

  * The Labour politicians Ramsay MacDonald, Philip Snowden and G. H. Thomas.

  † The Duke of Windsor had written on 12 January saying he had received a box of cutlery with no accompanying note. He assumed it was a present intended for someone else and offered to return it. (RA EDW/MAIN/B/127)

  * When Homer Nods, portrait of George Bernard Shaw by Augustus John OM RA (1878–1961) and Chepstow Castle, landscape by Philip Wilson Steer OM (1860–1942). Clark praised her decision to buy the work of living painters. ‘It is not too much to say that it will have an important effect on British art in general’ (quoted in Susan Owens, Watercolours and Drawings from the Collection of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, Royal Collection Publications, 2005, p. 13).

  * Lady Strathmore’s death delayed by three weeks a planned official visit by the King and Queen to Paris which was intended to show the unity of two of Europe’s most important democracies in face of the threat from the fascist dictators. In the interim, the Queen’s dressmaker, Norman Hartnell, remade her entire wardrobe in white, the colour of deepest mourning for medieval queens. The effect in Paris was sensational.

  * The Queen Mother later acknowledged to the historian D. R. Thorpe that this was an error, though she thought it a ‘venial’ one. She acknowledged ‘It was relief for ourselves, not for Czechoslovakia.’ (Author’s interview with D. R. Thorpe.) It soon became clear that appeasement had encouraged Hitler, rather than satisfying him. Queen Elizabeth later told Eric Anderson that she thought Chamberlain was ‘a good man. I think he really tried and, whatever people say, it gave us that year. Because, as usual, they had practically got rid of the army, stupid idiots. So that gave one year to re-arm and build a few aeroplanes.’

  * Sir Kenneth Clark remained en poste as Surveyor of the King’s Pictures until 1944.

  * In 1939 the Queen bought a landscape by the Impressionist painter Alfred Sisley (1839–99).

  † One Hundred Details in the National Gallery, published in 1938.

  ‡ Sir Stanley Spencer CBE (1891–1959), painter from Cookham-on-Thames, who studied at the Slade and served in the armed forces during the First World War; many of his strongest paintings adapted everyday scenes from Cookham to biblical stories.

  § Walter Sickert (1860–1942), leading British Impressionist painter who studied under J. A. M. Whistler and in Dieppe; moved from
painting interiors with figures to robust landscapes.

  * In early May 1939 the King and Queen were to set off for a six-week visit to Canada and the United States to strengthen Britain’s ties with both countries. War with Hitler was now seen as inevitable. Since Munich, anti-Jewish pogroms had grown ever more vicious in Germany and Austria and in March 1939 German troops occupied Prague. Chamberlain admitted that Hitler had misled him, and introduced compulsory military service for the first time ever in peacetime Britain.

  * Marion Crawford (1909–88), appointed governess to Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret in 1933 and known in the family as ‘Crawfie’. She retired in 1949, having married Major George Buthlay in 1947, but her previously affectionate relationship with the Royal Family broke down after the publication in the USA in 1950 of her unauthorized book The Little Princesses.

  † HMS Repulse, Renown-class battlecruiser launched in 1916, escorted the King and Queen thus far across the Atlantic. She was sunk in a Japanese air attack off Malaya in December 1941; 508 of her officers and men lost their lives.

  * The two volumes of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (My Struggle) were published in 1925 and 1926. The book expressed Hitler’s hatred of Judaism and communism and his conviction that Germany should abandon democracy, rearm and expand.

  † The Duke of Windsor broadcast an appeal for peace to the American people.

  * ‘The Umbrella Man’, popular American song by Kay Keyser and his Orchestra in 1938–9.

  † Daphne odora, tender evergreen, bearing sweet-scented flowers in spring.

  * Sir Henry Marten KCVO (1872–1948) was Vice-Provost of Eton and gave Princess Elizabeth regular history lessons. In March 1945 he was knighted by King George VI on the steps of Eton College Chapel.

  * The Princesses had just visited London Zoo.

  * The Queen meant ‘Grey Owl’, a ‘Red Indian’ naturalist, later revealed to be Archibald Belaney all the way from Hastings, who gave a ‘cinema-lecture show’ on Canadian animals to the Queens and the Princesses on Friday 10 December 1937. (Queen Elizabeth to her sister-in-law Fenella Bowes Lyon, 9 December 1937, RA QEQM/OUT/SHAKERLEY)

  * On 23 May 1939 a lorry ran into Queen Mary’s car in Wimbledon while she was returning from a visit to the Royal Horticultural Society’s gardens at Wisley. Her car was overturned and she was badly bruised and shocked.

  * Sir Alexander Hardinge; see footnote on p. 226.

  * Wife of the Governor General of Canada, the first Baron Tweedsmuir (1875–1940), better known as the author John Buchan. As she watched the King and Queen sail away from Canada, she wrote, ‘The line from Antony and Cleopatra came into my mind. I tried to push the thought away, but it kept coming back: “The bright day is gone and we are for the dark.” ‘ (Dorothy Laird, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, Coronet, 1985, p. 241)

  * Edward Wood, third Viscount Halifax, KG OM GCSI GCMG GCIE TD PC (1881–1959), Conservative statesman, Foreign Secretary, 1938–40. A supporter of the policy of appeasement before the Second World War, he was British Ambassador in Washington, 1940–6.

  * The 1844 Room was so named because it was occupied by Tsar Nicholas I of Russia during his visit to England in 1844.

  † RA QEQM/PRIV/BL

  ‡ In his letter the Archbishop had said he knew that the Queen would do everything to encourage the women of Britain, not least in ‘spreading the spirit of your own sympathy and understanding and calm fortitude. Indeed I feel inclined to say to your Majesty what was said in the Bible story to Queen Esther, “Who knoweth whether thou art come to the Kingdom for such a time as this.” ‘ (5 September 1939, RA QEQM/PRIV/PAL/LANG)

  * John Alexander Elphinstone, seventeenth Lord Elphinstone (1914–75), son of the Queen’s sister May and Sidney Elphinstone.

  † Edward (‘Fruity’) Metcalfe MVO MC (1887–1957), Indian Army officer, joined the Prince of Wales’s staff in 1922 and remained loyal thereafter; best man at his wedding to Mrs Simpson. Married 1925 Alexandra ‘Baba’ Curzon (1904–95), daughter of Lord Curzon.

  ‡ Cecil Beaton (1904–80), fashion and society photographer. His first series of portraits of the Queen was made in 1939. Thereafter he became one of the Royal Family’s most constant and successful portraitists.

  * The Queen had been urged to broadcast to the women of Britain and the Empire. She made the broadcast on Armistice Day, 11 November 1939.

  * The King had made a vist to the British Expeditionary Force in France where morale was not high among soldiers waiting for action in the cold. The trip was a great success in encouraging the troops. One member of the Force put it strongly, ‘We feel ready for any number of Hitlers now.’ (Extract from a letter to Molly Cazalet from a cousin in the BEF enclosed with a letter from Molly Cazalet to Queen Elizabeth, 16 December 1939, RA QEQM/PRIV/PAL)

  * Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946), leading Nazi and intimate of Hitler. German Ambassador to London, 1936–8; Foreign Minister, 1938–45. In London he was much disliked for his pomposity and bad manners. In 1945 he was put on trial at the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and other crimes; along with other defendants, he was hanged on 16 October 1946.

  † Maud ‘Emerald’ Cunard (1872–1948), famously lavish hostess. During the abdication crisis, she was a supporter of Mrs Simpson.

  ‡ Duncan Grant (1885–1978), landscape, still-life and portrait painter, forever associated with the Bloomsbury Set – Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Lytton Strachey. Lived in East Sussex where their vividly painted house, Charleston, became a popular attraction after Grant’s death.

  § Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll (1848–1939), sixth child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

  * Edith Sitwell (1887–1964), poet and critic, sister of Osbert and Sacheverell. She appeared deeply unconventional, often wearing a turban, brocade gowns and masses of jewellery. Both her poetry and her exotic sense of dress excited controversy and she made public enemies. But she enjoyed enduring friendships and was much admired by Queen Elizabeth. In 1940 she published two collections, Edith Sitwell’s Anthology and Poems New and Old.

  * Yorkshire fishermen were the first British civilians to be attacked. In January and February 1940 their trawlers were dive-bombed and and machine-gunned off the coast of Scarborough.

  * Hardinge had started work in the Royal Household as Assistant Private Secretary to King George V in 1920.

  † The Queen had been asked by the American YWCA to make a broadcast to the National Convention of the YWCA at Atlantic City, New Jersey, on the eighty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the YWCA in London. The Americans had been disappointed that, as Patron of the YWCA in Great Britain, she had not visited their headquarters in New York in 1939. The Queen did make the broadcast, on 13 April 1940.

  * After the failure of the Norwegian campaign, there had been a vote of no confidence in Prime Minister Chamberlain. He resigned and Winston Churchill became Prime Minister on 10 May 1940, the day the German army invaded France.

  * Three days after the Queen wrote this letter, German troops entered Paris and the Queen broadcast a message of encouragement to the women of France, praising the ardour with which the French army was fighting and the sacrifices which Frenchwomen were now prepared to make to save their country. On 22 June the French government surrendered and Hitler made a triumphal entry into Paris (see p. 608 footnote).

  * George, Duke of Kent, and his wife, Princess Marina.

  † As the German armies swept across Europe, the royal families almost all tried to flee. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was the first to arrive in London; the King met her at Liverpool Street station and brought her to stay at Buckingham Palace. Next were King Haakon VII of Norway (‘Uncle Charles’) and his son, Crown Prince Olav – they too came to stay in the Palace. The Queen later recalled, ‘I remember when all these poor Kings, who were harried by the Germans, arrived one by one, as did Queen Wilhelmina. In one air raid, I remember stepping over a recumbent King of Norway and his s
on, both snoring away on the floor. An extraordinary life. It really was. Too peculiar. And they made one go down to the shelter, but it was horrible. I hated going down there. In fact I didn’t in the end because you felt claustrophobic – very nasty.’ (Conversations with Eric Anderson 1994–5, RA QEQM/ADD/MISC)

  * Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught (1850–1942), third son of Queen Victoria, Colonel of the Grenadier Guards. He was succeeded as Colonel by Princess Elizabeth.

  * North America Sees our King and Queen, Keith Gordon, Hutchinson, London, 1939.

  † Major Thomas Williams held the post of Superintendent at Buckingham Palace, in the department of the Master of the Household, and was responsible for furnishings.

  ‡ Janet Ferguson, housekeeper at Buckingham Palace, 1936–54.

  * John Elphinstone had been serving in the 1st Battalion, the Black Watch. He was captured near Dunkirk in 1940 and spent the rest of the war in German prisoner-of-war camps, including Colditz. He was particularly close to his aunt, the Queen, and on his release in 1945 she was the first person he called. He settled in Scotland, and in 1951 he bought the Drumkilbo estate on the borders of Angus and Perthshire.

  * John Reith, first Baron Reith, PC KT GCVO GBE Kt CB TD (1889–1971), Minister of Works (1940–42), creator and first Director General of the BBC.

  * Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia (1875–1960), eldest daughter of Emperor Alexander III of Russia and sister of Emperor Nicholas II. She had lived in England since escaping the Russian Revolution. The King and Queen lent her Craigowan, the house on the Balmoral estate used by the monarch’s private secretaries, including Lord Wigram, and she lived there for the remainder of the war.

  † Prince Andrei Alexandrovich (1897–1981), son of Grand Duchess Xenia and her husband Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich. His wife Elisabetta died of cancer on 29 October 1940.

  * Sandringham House was closed for the duration of the war. Instead, the Royal Family used the much smaller Appleton House, on the estate. This had been the English home of Queen Maud of Norway, Edward VII’s youngest daughter, until her death in 1938. It was inconspicuous and easily managed. A large air-raid shelter was built on to one side of the house and this proved impossible to remove afterwards without causing damage. By the 1960s dry rot had spread through Appleton and it was demolished.