Counting One's Blessings
Page 64
It was a most happy visit, and with thanks to you both,
I am, ever yours
Elizabeth R
7 February 1999 to the Rev. Anthony Harbottle
Royal Lodge
Dear Mr Harbottle,
I was deeply touched to receive your very kind letter of remembrance on Feb. 6th.
You wrote such charming & beautiful words about the King, & they gave me such comfort.
I do hope that all goes well with the Harbottle family.
I am, ever yours sincerely & gratefully.
Elizabeth R
29 August 2000 to Lady Elizabeth Shakerley*
Birkhall
Dearest Liza
What a wonderful birthday present!
I have never seen such perfect garden furniture, lovely, handy and comfortable chairs, and tables that are exactly the right size and shape.
Thank you a thousand times for arranging such a delightful ‘family’ gift – I am truly very deeply touched by your tender thought.
The picnic baskets have already proved splendidly useful and a great addition to our outings.
With my love and endless thanks from your affect
GA Elizabeth
21 October 2000 to Susan Crawford
Birkhall
Dearest Sue
I wish that I could find the right words to tell you how much I love the wonderful triptych of my beloved grandson.† It is so brilliant, I can’t decide which I like best, the full-face or the profiles they are all so like him, and to have it to look at is one of the nicest things that have happened to me for a very long time.
Thank you a million times for such a heavenly present.
You have painted it with such love and understanding which makes it even more precious.
It was such a delight to have you and Jeremy here, much too short.
With my love, I am ever your affectionate
Elizabeth R
December 2000 to Sir Michael Peat*
Birkhall
Dear Sir Michael
I was so delighted and thrilled to receive such a wonderful birthday present from the members of the Queen’s Household.†
The pictures of the saloon at the Royal Lodge are very beautiful and are giving me the most enormous pleasure.
The painter is one of my favourites, and he has got the ‘feel’ of the room so perfectly, with the light pouring through the windows. I send you my deep gratitude, and I would be very grateful if you would convey my warmest thanks to all those who took part in this splendid gift, and
I am, ever yours sincerely,
Elizabeth R
4 June 2001 to Lady Katharine Farrell
Clarence House
Dearest Kitty,
I do love coming to lunch with you and Charles. It is always such fun, such charming people, such glorious grub, and the wonderful feeling of relaxation and laughter which makes one feel so happy.
It was sad that Mr Getty could not be there, but perhaps it was better that he was in his own bed, and not in yours!‡
The hedge is enormous and the arch much prettier than Marble Arch. I can’t believe that I saw its very beginning.
Dearest Kitty, it was a heavenly lunch party and I wish it was not over. Will you tell those dear ladies that their lovely bouquet is flourishing and a joy.
With my love and endless thanks, from your affec
Elizabeth R
5 July 2001 to Princess Alexandra
Clarence House
Darling Alexandra,
What a heavenly luncheon party that was!
I love coming to lunch with you and Angus* – you always have such charming people and it is all such fun and so cosy. It is the highlight of July and what a treat to have Andrew and Debo† who hardly ever appear in London.
They are very special.
With a thousand thanks for a lovely happy visit and much love from your devoted aunt
Elizabeth
August 2001 to the Prince of Wales
The Castle of Mey
My Darling Charles, Thanks to your marvellous birthday present I shall now be able to wrap myself from nose to toes in a huge and heavenly Bath Towel. Thank you a thousand times, they are just what I needed. […]
Here the sun is shining, the sea is shining, and lovely white clouds are floating about. Of course in five minutes the whole scene can change, angry waves, leaden sky and a howling wind, not to mention the crying of the sea birds and growling of seals.
I do hope that Birkhall is being its own dear self, and with endless gratitude for your wonderful present,
from your always loving Granny
Queen Elizabeth’s one hundredth birthday in 2000 had been celebrated with enthusiasm throughout Britain. Together with Prince Charles, she watched and waved (standing much of the time) in Horse Guards Parade as hundreds of the organizations, regiments and charities with which she was associated marched gaily past her. Her sight was so poor by then that she could see very little, but that did not spoil her obvious enjoyment.
In her one-hundred-and-first and one-hundred-and-second years, Queen Elizabeth became ever more frail – and ever more indomitable. She was determined to carry on counting her blessings and living every day as fully as possible, for according to one of her favourite maxims ‘tomorrow you might be run over by a big red bus!’
In November 2000 she tripped and broke her collar bone, but after six weeks in bed she was up again and in spring 2001 she fulfilled all her usual commitments. She went to lunch in June 2001 at All Souls, Oxford, with some of the cleverest people in the land, a regular occasion which she and they always enjoyed.
She attended Royal Ascot but then needed a stay in King Edward VII hospital to have a transfusion to make good a serious iron deficiency. She insisted that the necessary treatment be carried out overnight so that she could be back to greet the customary crowd of well-wishers at Clarence House for her one-hundred-and-first birthday. Prince Charles congratulated her on having her ‘iron constitution so comprehensively re-ironed’.*
There was an elegiac quality to her visits to the Castle of Mey and Birkhall in summer 2001. She gathered old friends around her, danced an eightsome reel and insisted on going to see her old ghillie, Charlie Wright, at his home on the Dee. To get to him she had to walk on her sticks across a hump-backed bridge – and back again.
She continued to show extraordinary courage. In November 2001 she flew by helicopter to Portsmouth, to take part in the rededication of one of her ships, the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, and she made a short speech to the 1,200 people on board to greet her. As usual, she went to dinner at the Middle Temple, took lunch with the Trustees of the Injured Jockeys Fund, attended a last race meeting at Sandown Park, where her horse First Love won, and then, despite another painful fall, joined her staff Christmas party at Clarence House, before spending Christmas 2001 with her family at Sandringham.
January 2002 brought the year of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee and growing public appreciation of all that Elizabeth II had achieved since the death of her father the King. But the family was pre-occupied by the worsening health of Princess Margaret. The Princess died on 9 February 2002. Queen Elizabeth was still at Sandringham and she flew by helicopter to her daughter’s funeral in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. She managed to stand as the Princess’s coffin was borne out of the Chapel at the end of a tranquil service.
She then went home to Royal Lodge and, though weaker than ever, held her annual lawn meet for the Eton beagles and her house party for the Grand Military Race Meeting at Sandown Park. Her horse First Love, her last ever runner, won again.
Easter fell early that year, on 31 March; in the week beforehand, Queen Elizabeth made many calls to friends who thought she was saying thank you and farewell. She was eating very little now, but would take a small glass of champagne with scrambled eggs in the evening – she said this reminded her of late night suppers with the Duke in the early years of her marriage.
O
n Good Friday, she declined further and on Easter Saturday, 30 March 2002, a contemplative day for Christians anticipating the resurrection, she died, with the Queen and her grandchildren Sarah and David at her bedside.
In the week before her funeral at Westminster Abbey, hundreds of thousands of people lined the cold March streets to pass by her coffin as it lay in state in Westminster Hall, as they had for the King half a century before. In that time the nation had changed almost beyond recognition, but at the beginning of the Golden Jubilee Year the British people showed their continuing support for the monarchy by honouring the Queen Mother and her daughter, the Queen. (Ten years later, in 2012, the Queen celebrated her Diamond Jubilee to even more gratitude, affection and applause.)
The Prince of Wales gave a heartfelt tribute to his grandmother in which he described her as ‘the original life enhancer […] wise, loving, with an utterly irresistible mischievousness of spirit.’ Above all, he said, ‘her heart belonged to this ancient old land and its equally indomitable and humorous inhabitants.’ In a television address on the night before the funeral the Queen also spoke from the heart. Thanking people for their ‘overwhelming’ tributes to her mother, she hoped that ‘sadness will blend with a wider sense of thanksgiving, not just for her life but for the times in which she lived – a century for this country and the Commonwealth not without its trials and sorrows, but also one of extraordinary progress, full of examples of courage and service as well as fun and laughter. This is what my mother would have understood, because it was the warmth and affection of people everywhere which inspired her resolve, dedication and enthusiasm for life.’
In his eulogy, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, said that the Queen Mother had about her, in George Eliot’s lovely phrase, ‘the sweet presence of a good diffused.’ He spoke of her sense of Christian duty and of her optimism, and he ended with words from the Book of Proverbs – ‘… many have done excellently, but you exceed them all.’
* John Campbell Davidson (1889–1970) had been MP for Hemel Hempstead and was created Viscount Davidson in 1937. In 1922, he had been introduced to Prince Albert by the Prince’s equerry Louis Greig, as a member of a Parliamentary delegation. According to his own account, he realized that the Prince was deeply unhappy, and the Prince then told him that he had lost the only woman he would ever marry. Davidson told him that he must never give up hope but must persevere – and that his own wife had refused him many times before she accepted him. Davidson’s advice seems to have encouraged the Prince to continue his suit and ‘play the long game’.
Davidson kept an account of the conversation and, soon after the death of the King, sent it to the Queen Mother. He wrote that he had kept this encounter ‘in the secret recesses of my memory ever since, and I am only releasing it now, because in Your Majesty’s terrible loneliness I believe it may bring one tiny grain of comfort.’ The Queen Mother’s reply suggests that he was correct. (Lord Davidson to Queen Elizabeth, 26 February 1952, RA GVI/ADD/MISC/COPY)
* Lord and Lady Cranborne had become fifth Marquess and Marchioness of Salisbury on the death of his father in 1947.
* This was Queen Elizabeth’s first foray into social life since the death of the King. The ‘beautiful Frasers’ were members of the family of Brigadier Simon (‘Shimi’) Christopher Joseph Fraser, seventeenth Lord Lovat DSO MC TD (1911–95), a courageous commando officer during the Second World War. He and his men helped to take Sword Beach on D Day.
The hostess of this dinner may have been Lord Lovat’s sister Magdalen Fraser, the Countess of Eldon, Queen Elizabeth’s friend and a member of the Windsor Wets. She was renowned for her beauty, as was her sister Veronica Fraser, wife of Sir Fitzroy Maclean. A third ‘beauty’ may well have been Rosie Lovat, the wife of Lord Lovat.
* Barrogill Castle, which Queen Elizabeth first visited when staying with Clare and Doris Vyner at their nearby home, The House of the Northern Gate. The Castle was cheap to buy but not to restore to habitable condition nor to maintain thereafter. Queen Elizabeth changed its name to the more romantic original name, The Castle of Mey, and it gave her, and many of her friends, immense pleasure for the rest of her life.
* Edith Sitwell had sent her a copy of her new literary anthology, A Book of Flowers.
† George Herbert (1593–1633), English poet, Parliamentarian and priest. Among his poems which became popular hymns are ‘King of Glory, King of Peace’, ‘Let all the world in every corner sing’ and ‘Teach me my God and King’. He described his poems as ‘a picture of spiritual conflicts between God and my soul’.
* The British government was attempting to forestall the growing demands of African nationalists for full independence from their colonial masters by creating a federation of Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
† Winston Churchill visited the Queen Mother at Birkhall while he was making the Prime Minister’s annual autumn visit to the sovereign at Balmoral. According to his daughter, Lady Soames, Churchill took it upon himself to tell the Queen Mother that she still had a vital role to play in public life. Her lady in waiting, Lady Jean Rankin, said, ‘I think he must have said things which made her realise how important it was for her to carry on, how much people wanted her to do things as she had before.’ (The Queen Mother Remembered, ed. James Hogg and Michael Mortimer, BBC Worldwide, 2002, p. 161)
‡ The Queen Mother was concerned to choose an appropriate official biographer for the King. Tommy Lascelles suggested John Wheeler-Bennett, a distinguished military historian, who had also been helped by Lionel Logue to overcome a stammer. After the Queen Mother and the Queen had invited Wheeler-Bennett to stay in Scotland, they agreed with the choice. His lucid biography, King George VI, His Life and Reign, was published in 1958.
* The east coast had been hit by the worst storms and flooding in decades. The Queen Mother visited some of those rendered homeless.
* Queen Mary died peacefully at Marlborough House on the evening of 24 March 1953. Her official biographer commented that ‘by undeviating service to her own highest ideals, she had ended by becoming, for millions, an ideal in herself’. (James Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, Allen & Unwin, 1959, p. 622) Following the death of Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth hoped to be able to move into Marlborough House. However, it was deemed too expensive and she and Princess Margaret moved into Clarence House nearby in May 1953, a few weeks before the Coronation. The Queen eventually gave Marlborough House to the Commonwealth Secretariat.
* Clare and Doris Vyner had erected a monument to their children, Elizabeth and Charles, at Fountains Abbey, one of the greatest medieval monasteries in Britain, of which they were the last private owners. The Queen Mother dedicated the memorial on 9 April 1953.
† From photographs of the Coronation, it seems that the Queen Mother wore three separate necklaces – probably her own Coronation necklace given her by the King in 1937, the Teck collet necklace, which first belonged to George III’s daughter Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester, and the necklace that Queen Alexandra was given as a wedding present by the City of London in 1863.
* Queen Elizabeth was referring to the romance between Princess Margaret and Group Captain Peter Townsend, of which she had been unaware until recently. Since the death of the King, which had devastated her, Princess Margaret had become ever closer to Townsend, wartime flying hero, equerry and now divorcé. At the end of 1952, Townsend told Tommy Lascelles that he and the Princess were in love and wished to marry. Lascelles was horrified, in particular because divorce was still widely frowned upon as contrary to the teaching of the Church. The two young people told the Queen Mother in February 1953 and she was distraught. The romance became public after the Coronation. Lascelles was concerned for the position of the Queen as head of Church and state. Under the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, no lineal descendant of King George II who was under twenty-five could marry without the Sovereign’s consent. After reaching twenty-five, such a marriage could take place unless Parliament objected. In this case, the Queen would
have to act on the advice of her ministers – and Lascelles felt certain that they would not advise her to allow her sister to marry a divorced man in a registry office. The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was at first seized with the romance but, on reflection, decided he would not recommend consent being given to the marriage unless Princess Margaret renounced all her royal rights.
* On 30 June 1953, the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret set off on a tour of Southern Rhodesia, now merged with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland into a federation. Queen Elizabeth had been asked by the British government to make the tour in the hope that it would help give credence to the new federal entity.
Peter Townsend had been due to accompany them, but that was deemed inappropriate following publicity about his romance with Princess Margaret.
† Michael Adeane, Baron Adeane PC GCB GCVO (1910–84), soldier and courtier, Assistant Private Secretary to King George VI 1945–52, Assistant Private Secretary and then Private Secretary to Queen Elizabeth II 1952–72. He guided the Queen on a path of constitutional rectitude.
* The statue of King George VI by William McMillan was erected just off the Mall in 1955. On 24 February 2009 a statue of Queen Elizabeth by the sculptor Philip Jackson was unveiled as a permanent memorial to her. In preparation for this, the statue of King George VI was moved slightly forward from its original position. The Prince of Wales said in his speech, ‘At long last my grandparents are reunited in this joint symbol, which in particular reminds us of all they stood for and meant to so many during the darkest days this country has ever faced …’
* The Queen Mother thought the day ‘ghastly’ for the Queen because she was leaving, without her children, for a five-month tour of the Commonwealth. As Duchess of York, she had had to embark on a similar tour in January 1927.
The Queen Mother enclosed a letter from Mrs Fisher, the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which the Prelate’s wife offered suggestions as to how to deal with the stress presented by the forthcoming tour. She thought one should begin every day with stillness, to stop one’s mind running. ‘ “Think of God”, “Know that I am God” and recall and realize some simple facts. “In whom we live and move and have our being”, “I cannot draw another breath except thou givest me power”, “The day is thine”. The whole process being simply one of letting go of oneself and all the duties into his Hands.’ On the envelope the Queen Mother wrote, ‘Read in aeroplane or ship. I think it is helpful.’