The Queen’s House

by Edna Healey

  There were last-minute panics. A lost bouquet was finally found in a cool cupboard. Colville had to rush over to St James’s Palace to collect a string of pearls that Princess Elizabeth wanted to wear and only with difficulty persuaded the police to give it to him. He was escorted back to the Palace with a policeman and a couple of detectives.

  Only Margaret MacDonald, ‘the staunch Bobo remained … calm and cool’. She dressed her Princess and then went over to the Abbey to be on hand when she arrived there. ‘Throughout the years,’ Crawfie wrote, ‘I had many reasons for admiring the Queen’s self-control but I have never admired her more. And I thought as I watched her enter the Abbey and kneel for a moment in prayer that the most she could ask for her child was the happiness she herself had found in her marriage.’

  From her privileged seat in Poet’s Corner, Crawfie watched. ‘First the Queen in apricot silk brocade’, more becoming Crawfie thought ‘than her usual pastel violet, blue or mauve’, then at last the bride. ‘Her veil was a white cloud about her and the light from the tall windows and from the candelabra caught and reflected the jewelled embroidery of her dress.’ She hoped that her younger sister walking alone was noticed too; she ‘moved with extraordinary dignity and grace, her head held high’. Crawfie loved and understood Princess Margaret and knew more than anyone else how lonely she would be from now on. The most touching moment of the service, Crawfie thought, was when the couple came out of the ‘vestry, paused for a moment before the King and Queen and Elizabeth swept them a beautiful curtsey’. Afterwards Crawfie

  was rushed through the crowds in a police car to take my place at the family luncheon party at Buckingham Palace. The tables were decorated with smilax and white carnations and at each of our places there was a little bunch of white heather sent down from Balmoral. The famous gold plate and the scarlet coated footmen gave a fairy-tale atmosphere to it all and I was in a veritable dream. The skirl of the bagpipes warmed the hearts of those of us who came from North of the Tweed. The French gentleman seated next to me, however, winced from time to time, but he bore it with fortitude.102

  At this royal wedding, unlike earlier ones, the accent was Scottish not German. Many of the Household were from ‘North of the Tweed’ – recruited in Aberdeen and Edinburgh. There were few of the old German families present – ‘the royal mob’, as Queen Victoria had called them. Even Prince Philip’s sisters, who had married into German families, were not present.

  For the devoted governess in her ‘cherry red velvet frock and a large black hat with black ostrich feathers held in place with ruby clips’, it was a magical day. For the King it had been a day of sadness and joy. As he wrote to Princess Elizabeth afterwards:

  I was so proud of you and thrilled to have you close on our long walk in Westminster Abbey, but when I handed your hand to the Archbishop, I felt I had lost something very precious … Our family, us Four, the Royal family must remain together, with suitable additions of course at suitable moments.

  I have watched you grow up all these years with pride under the skilful direction of Mummy who as you know is the most marvellous person in the world …

  Your leaving us has left a great blank in our lives but do remember that your old home is still yours and do come back to it as much and as often as possible.103

  There was some consolation for the King. Clarence House, which was to be the newly-weds’ new home, was not ready, so after their honeymoon at Broadlands, Hampshire, the home of Lord Mountbatten, and at Balmoral Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip returned to live in the Princess’s old rooms at Buckingham Palace and were to remain there for another year. While the Prince worked as a naval officer at the Admiralty, the King spent much time with Princess Elizabeth, guiding her in her path to the throne. He would not allow her to be unprepared, as he himself had been.

  In 1948 the King’s fears about the world seemed realized. Gandhi was assassinated in New Delhi in January, and India was torn by riots. In February came the Russian coup in Czechoslovakia. His spirits were lifted by the enthusiastic crowds that cheered him and the Queen on their Silver Wedding, when they drove through the streets of London and afterwards made the traditional balcony appearance.

  By the autumn, however, his doctors were worried. His left foot was numb all day. Nevertheless he soldiered on. There was a dinner for the Commonwealth Prime Ministers at Buckingham Palace on 13 October. On 26 October he opened Parliament for the first time since the war in full state.

  He was still hoping to undertake a tour of Australia and New Zealand in the New Year, but a specialist, Professor Learmonth, diagnosed arteriosclerosis. The King was ordered to rest and since he was warned that the blocked artery might cause gangrene and even result in the amputation of the leg, he agreed to do so. Reluctantly he cancelled the tour.

  There was one great joy that November. He and the Queen had concealed from Princess Elizabeth the gravity of his illness until after the birth of her first child. Prince Charles was born on 14 November 1948, in her old nursery at Buckingham Palace, as his mother had wished. He was the first baby to be born in the Palace since Queen Victoria had given birth to Princess Beatrice there.

  Soon afterwards Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip took their son to their new home, Clarence House, which after long delays was finally ready. Prince Philip took much pleasure in arranging and equipping his first real home. It was run on the same lines as Buckingham Palace. Prince Philip had his old friend and Navy colleague Michael Parker as his aide, and the staunch John Dean as his valet. Princess Elizabeth had two Scottish nurses, Helen Lightbody and Mabel Anderson, who were to be of immense importance in the lives of Prince Charles and his sister, Princess Anne, who was to be born at Clarence House on 15 August 1950. They were especially important when Prince Philip was allowed to return to active service in the Royal Navy, and Princess Elizabeth joined him in Malta.

  Slowly the King recovered and was able to carry out an investiture at the Palace in February 1949, though he remained seated. But his doctors realized that he could not recover fully without an operation. It was suggested that the King, as a Mason, should go into the Royal Masonic Hospital. ‘But’, said the King, ‘I have never heard of a King going into hospital.’104 So, on 12 February, a room in the Belgian Suite was again turned into an operating theatre. Professor Learmonth performed a lumbar sympathectomy, which cut the nerve to his leg. The Queen, who was his constant support, was deeply concerned and prayed to be ‘granted not a lighter load but a stronger back’.105

  The King’s load certainly did not lighten, nor did he have the Queen’s physical strength. He continued to watch closely events in India. Independence had come, but not without blood and tears. Mountbatten had retired as Governor General in 1948 but kept a close friendship with Nehru, which helped to create a new relationship between India and Great Britain. Nehru came to London and was received by the King at Buckingham Palace in October 1948. The newly elected Indian Constituent Assembly had voted to become a democratic republic, but both the King and Lord Mountbatten were anxious to keep India within the Commonwealth, even though it was a republic. This time the King was impressed with Nehru’s genuine desire to achieve this settlement.

  The Commonwealth premiers met in London on 21 April 1949 to discuss India’s relationship with the new Commonwealth. On Wednesday 27 April, still convalescent from his operation, the King received Attlee and seven other prime ministers and Lester Pearson, Canadian Minister for External Affairs, in the White Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace. In his speech he praised the ‘commonsense and good temper of their conference’.

  Their solution, expressed in the Declaration of 27 April 1949, stated that ‘the Governments of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan and Ceylon … have considered the impending constitutional changes in India’.106 Although India was to become a sovereign independent republic, she still wished to remain a member of the Commonwealth and wished to accept the King as the symbol of the free as
sociation of its independent member nations and as such as the Head of the Commonwealth. The King believed that the solution they had found to a ‘problem that has given us all very grave concern’ was a ‘striking example of the elasticity of our system … He believed that their association of nations had immense powers of good for humanity generally.’ Praising their ‘wisdom and tolerance’, he hoped the new arrangement would ‘redound to the greater happiness of all those millions whose well being is the responsibility of all of us in this room today’.107

  It was a trust he was to bequeath to his daughter and it has remained her greatest pride. There have been many assemblies in the White Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace but perhaps none more important. Just as his father, King George V, had done, King George VI had made the Palace the symbol of unity.

  The year 1950 was a difficult one, with political and economic crises at home and international tension caused by the Korean war.

  In the winter of 1950–51 two books were published which caused concern at the Palace. Marion Crawford published her memoirs, The Little Princesses, in breach of her solemn promise to the Queen. Poor Crawfie had been badgered by a difficult husband and seduced by her publisher’s offer of large sums of money. The Royal family was shocked: she had broken her word and betrayed their trust. She could not be forgiven. Yet in the words of Princess Margaret, ‘We loved her, and the irony was she made us loved.’108 Crawfie finally left her little grace-and-favour house at Kensington Palace, which she had been given for life instead of a pension. She died in 1988. There were no flowers from the Palace.

  In March 1951 the Duke of Windsor published his A King’s Story, which sold 80,000 copies in the first month. It was innocuous enough – in fact, the Duke wrote of Queen Mary with a warmth that is absent from the bitter letters he wrote to Wallis after her death. But such publicity in those days was distasteful – even vulgar.

  There was some cheer on 3 May 1951 when the King opened the Festival of Britain on a bomb site on the South Bank, near Waterloo. Masterminded by Herbert Morrison, it celebrated the centenary of the Great Exhibition of 1851 and did something to lighten the period of austerity. It was intended to be a symbol of renewal and hope. Queen Mary, however, considered the architecture ‘really extraordinary and very ugly’.109 Now in her old age she looked more to the past than the future.

  The Festival did not cheer the tired King, who wrote, The incessant worries and crises through which we have been have got me down properly.’110 During May his doctors were concerned: after an attack of influenza, an X-ray showed a shadow on his lung. In July 1951, concerned at the King’s increasing weakness, Prince Philip, now a Lieutenant-Commander, gave up the career he loved to support his wife in her increasingly heavy duties as heir to the throne.

  The King rested as much as he could during the summer but in September caught a chill at Balmoral and returned to Buckingham Palace for a bronchoscopy. Though he was not told, this revealed a cancerous growth. Once again a room in Buckingham Palace became an operating theatre and his left lung was removed on 23 September.

  From now on, in the words of Churchill, the King ‘walked with death’.111

  Even in this illness the ‘cares of state’ did not lighten. Attlee decided the government could carry on no longer and asked for a dissolution. On 5 October a Privy Council was held at Buckingham Palace in a room adjoining the King’s Bedroom to receive the King’s command for the dissolution of Parliament. The Councillors, the Queen and Princess Elizabeth stood in the doorway while the King struggled to sign the necessary documents.

  The Conservatives won the election on 25 October. In Attlee the King lost a Prime Minister whose total integrity he had learned to trust, but Churchill, who returned as Prime Minister, was a welcome and familiar figure, although at seventy-six he was no longer the vigorous war-leader. More and more the King relied on Princess Elizabeth, who in October, with Prince Philip, represented him on a highly successful tour of Canada and America.

  The King’s last Christmas at Sandringham was full of peace and happiness. Members of his Household noticed how relaxed and contented he seemed. He returned to Buckingham Palace at the end of January to see his doctors and to say goodbye to Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, who were leaving to undertake the tour of East Africa, New Zealand and Australia that he and the Queen had hoped to make.

  On the eve of their departure there was a happy family party at the musical South Pacific. Then came the leave-taking at London airport and the unforgettable picture of the King standing bareheaded in the chilly wind, his eyes fixed on the disappearing plane. Few who saw him doubted that this was a last farewell. He returned to Sandringham with Princess Margaret and the Queen.

  The King’s last days were peaceful and he seemed happier and more serene than he had been for a long time. The day of 5 February was the kind of country day he loved best – cold and bright; and he had a happy day shooting on the estate, wearing his electrically heated waistcoat.

  That evening he spent quietly with the Queen while Princess Margaret played the piano for him. ‘There were jolly jokes – and then he wasn’t there any more,’ she remembered.112 At 10.30 p.m. he retired to his room and his servant brought him a cup of cocoa. At midnight, the watchman in the garden saw him shut his bedroom window. It was not until 7.30 the following morning that it was discovered that the King had died in his sleep during the night.

  Meanwhile, unaware that she had become Queen, Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip were at Treetops in Kenya. That morning was etched indelibly on the memory of every member of the royal party. Mike Parker, Prince Philip’s friend and equerry, took the Princess to the observation platform at the top of the tree to watch the sunrise. ‘While they looked at the iridescent light that preceded the sunrise, they saw an eagle hovering just above their heads.’113 He guessed that it was at this time that the King died.

  Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip returned to Sagana Lodge, the house given to them as a wedding present, ten miles away. Martin Charteris (now Lord Charteris), who was later to become for many years Private Secretary to Queen Elizabeth II, remembers picking up the news from a reporter. He telephoned Mike Parker, who heard it confirmed on the BBC Overseas Service, and told the Duke of Edinburgh. It was 11.45 a.m. London time before Princess Elizabeth knew that she was now Queen. Parker watched the Duke of Edinburgh take his wife ‘up to the garden … and they walked slowly up and down the lawn while he talked and talked and talked to her’. 114 Martin Charteris remembers that day. Unashamedly he says, ‘I was in love with her.’ Now as he saw her at the Lodge, ‘sitting, erect, no tears, colour up a little, fully accepting her destiny’, his admiration was profound.115

  The radiant girl in blue jeans was now a sad young Queen in mourning. She sat, as Charteris remembers, still and grave. Below, the vast African landscape unfolded, here and there bush fires flared. She called Charteris to join her. ‘What happens next, Martin?’ she asked. She had not been unprepared: her father, the King, had been so clearly a sick man. But she had then, as now, the ability to take each time in its season. There had been a time for pleasure; now was the time for duty. When Charteris was asked how the Queen had taken her loss. ‘Bravely, like a Queen,’ he replied.116

  Churchill and Attlee were lined up on the tarmac at London airport: two old men who bowed to the slight young woman veiled in black.

  The King’s limousine took the Queen and the Duke not to Buckingham Palace but to Clarence House. Queen Mary came over from Marlborough House: she must be, she said, the first to offer her duty to the new Queen, and the old lady’s deep curtsy was the most moving moment of the homecoming. Queen Mary had lived through five reigns, and now she could go in peace, knowing that the monarchy to which she had dedicated her life was safe with Elizabeth.

  Later she joined the widowed Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and The Queen for the lying-in-state at Westminster Abbey. Immortalized in an unforgettable photograph, three Queens stood veiled and frozen in grief.
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  Queen Mary did not go to the burial at Windsor Castle. Instead she watched the funeral procession from her window in Marlborough House. She had sent for Mabell Airlie to be with her.

  As the entourage wound slowly along, the Queen whispered in a broken voice, ‘Here he is’, and I knew that her dry eyes were seeing beyond the coffin a little boy in a sailor suit. She was past weeping … My tears choked me. The words I wanted to say would not come. We held each other’s hands in silence.’117

  At Windsor, as the coffin was lowered into the tomb, the Lord Chamberlain broke in two his White Wand of Office as tradition demanded and dropped it into the grave. It was the last act of reverence for a King who against all odds had won the respect and admiration of all who knew him.

  The words Churchill inscribed on his wreath were rightly chosen: ‘FOR VALOUR’.

  On 11 February 1952 the House of Commons met to pay their tributes. Churchill had seen the death of Queen Victoria and had lived through the reigns of Edward VII, King George V, King Edward VIII and now that of King George VI. As he could witness,

  No British monarch in living memory had a harder time … Never in our long history were we exposed to greater perils of invasion and destruction than in that year when we stood alone and kept the flag of freedom flying … The late King lived through every minute of this struggle with a heart that never quavered and a spirit undaunted.118

  Attlee, for the Labour Party, spoke of the ‘noble example that both George V and King George VI had set to the world and showed what true Kingship meant in a democracy’.119 People had not realized the

  time and care the King gave to public affairs … with this close study went a good judgement and a sure instinct for what was really vital … No two people could have done more to strengthen the influence of the crown than King George and Queen Elizabeth. That throne is firmly established in the hearts and homes of the people.