The Queen’s House

by Edna Healey

  All spoke that day with genuine love and admiration for a man who was, in the words of Attlee, ‘a great King and a very good man’. 120

  * John Colville was bewitched by the owner of the lovely voice. He later married ‘Meg’ Egerton.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Queen Elizabeth II

  ‘The generations pass but the green shoots live.’1

  LADY AIRLIE

  The Age of Change

  The Queen and Prince Philip did not move immediately back into Buckingham Palace. Together they had turned the dilapidated Clarence House into a charming family home, which they had been able to enjoy for less than three years; it had been Prince Philip’s first real home and The Queen’s first symbol of independence; it was with real sadness that they exchanged it for the chilly grandeur of Buckingham Palace. But The Queen accepted the move as part of her royal duty. It was not a showcase, as it had been for George IV, nor a ‘mausoleum’, as Edward VII had called it, nor a prison, as it had been for King Edward VIII. It became her place of work, the headquarters of her establishment as Head of State and the backdrop for ceremonies.

  It would take some time for Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother to adjust to her new life: she had been in command at Buckingham Palace for fifteen years and now must leave. In May 1952, when the new Queen and consort moved into the Palace, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and Princess Margaret were installed in Clarence House. For both of them the death of the King had been unexpected and a profound shock. Princess Margaret, who adored her doting father, was numbed with grief. Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother was ‘engulfed by great black clouds of unhappiness and misery’,2 as she wrote to Edith Sitwell, thanking her for a consoling book of poetry.

  The Queen and Prince Philip moved into the apartments on the first and second floors of the north side of the central courtyard of the Palace. Their children, Prince Charles and Princess Anne, were in the care of their two Scottish nurses in The Queen’s old nursery on the second floor. Helen Lightbody was an old-fashioned martinet who ran the nursery like an empress dominating her empire. Mabel Anderson, warm and loving, was to become a major influence on Prince Charles: she made their nursery a bright, welcoming place to which even the grander courtiers came with pleasure, to sit by Mabel Anderson’s fire and chat.

  The importance of the nurses and governesses who have cared for royal children should not be underestimated. They were often closer to their charges than their parents, sometimes remaining with the family until death. They could do lasting damage – as in the case of the excessively cruel nurse of the Duke of Windsor; but the present royal family has been singularly fortunate in their children’s nurses and governesses. Alah Knight, Margaret and her sister Ruby MacDonald, Mabel Anderson, Marion Crawford and many others deserve their places in the history of Buckingham Palace, as do the German nurses and governesses of Queen Charlotte and Queen Victoria.

  Margaret MacDonald (‘Bobo’) was a classic example of the devoted personal servant, totally trusted, with whom kings and queens are perfectly at ease as with no one else. Like Queen Charlotte’s ferocious Mrs Schwellenberg or Queen Victoria’s Lehzen, Miss MacDonald became possessive and imperious, and in her last years a terror to the rest of the Household, but her complete dedication and love made her an invaluable comfort to The Queen in the inevitable loneliness of royal life. Daughter of a Scottish railway worker, she had come to 145 Piccadilly as a nursery maid, accompanied the Princesses to Windsor during the war, shared Princess Elizabeth’s bedroom in the early years and on her accession moved into the Palace as The Queen’s dresser and remained with her until death. On the morning of The Queen’s own Coronation, she was the one unflappable member of the Household.

  Miss MacDonald was in charge of The Queen’s clothes – and responsible for her hats and handbags. She attended The Queen at fittings with Sir Norman Hartnell, the royal dressmaker, insisting that while he designed the outfits, she was responsible for the accessories. In spite of her humble origins, like many royal servants of the past she was a firm champion of protocol, precedence and hierarchy, which, as Mrs Roosevelt had noted, was rigidly observed below stairs. Together with Ernest Bennett, The Queen’s Page of the Presence, she kept The Queen in touch with Palace news and gossip. Knowing that she had The Queen’s ear, even heads of departments were wary of crossing Miss MacDonald.

  Although The Queen was now surrounded by courtiers from ancient noble families, their influence was balanced by young Scots women from ordinary backgrounds. This has undoubtedly been an element in the making of Queen Elizabeth II. In the early days, however, it must have been comforting to be able to call on the experience and knowledge of tradition of the old guard. Her adoring courtiers were mostly elderly, and all of them were steeped in Palace tradition, with long years of experience. Her Prime Minister, Churchill, was now seventy-seven, had fought in the Boer War and had lived through the reigns of five monarchs. The Earl of Clarendon, her first Lord Chamberlain, was the son of a Lord-in-Waiting to Queen Victoria. He was seventy-four and had been a Lord-in-Waiting to King George V. He had broken his leg at Eton and was badly crippled all his life. He was too frail to take part in the Coronation and retired after six months.

  His successor as Lord Chamberlain, the 4th Earl of Scarbrough, was fifty-six and came from a similar background. His experience in foreign and Commonwealth affairs as a Conservative member of Parliament was useful to the new Queen. In 1952, after the resignation of Lord Clarendon, he worked with the Earl Marshal, the Duke of Norfolk, on the arrangements for the Coronation.

  The other key position in the Palace, that of The Queen’s Private Secretary, was filled by Sir Alan Lascelles, who, at sixty-five, could have retired, but stayed on until after the Coronation, when his extraordinary memory was of great service. However, his somewhat grim manner hardly endeared him to the Duke of Edinburgh, who now chaired the committee responsible for the arrangements for the Coronation, which was to take place in June 1953. There were long arguments about protocol and the wisdom of televising the proceedings; although The Queen subsequently allowed the ceremony to be shown on television she was unwilling to have the cameras focused on her at the most sacred moments in the ritual.

  Prince Philip and the Coronation Committee received valuable advice from Queen Mary, whose memory reached back to the Coronation of King Edward VII. However, in the New Year she had become very frail, and, knowing that she was nearly at the end of her road, she insisted that, should she die before the Coronation, they must carry on as planned.

  She died on 24 March 1953 at Marlborough House. The first Queen Consort to be born in England since Henry VIII’s wife, Catherine Parr, she had been on the throne for twenty-five years. Chosen by Queen Victoria, she had seen the deaths of four monarchs, and had lived to witness the accession of her granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, and the birth of her great-grandson, Prince Charles. In the last years of her life, in all the royal processions her upright and majestic figure had received the loudest cheers. Now crowds lined the streets to pay the last tribute to a unique figure who had become the symbol of the enduring values of the monarchy.

  On 25 March 1953 the House of Commons, led by Churchill, paid tribute to a Queen who, in the words of Attlee, ‘was so beloved by everybody for her wide sympathy and extraordinary kindness’.3 The importance of her work for Buckingham Palace and for the stability of the monarchy cannot be underestimated. In her last years she had taken comfort in the words of Lady Airlie: ‘The generations pass but the green shoots live’.

  It was sad that Queen Mary did not live to see the Coronation. She would have approved the traditional magnificence. The Coronation was a resounding success, watched on television by millions. It was a tribute to the committee’s ability to reconcile tradition and modernity. The television pictures, seen all over the world, awakened a new interest in and respect for the British monarchy. There were some who scathingly called it ‘tribal magic’. So, in a sense, it was; but to those of us, seated in the magn
ificence of the Abbey, who watched a dedicated young woman in a simple white shift bending under the weight of the glittering crown, it was deeply moving – almost a ritual sacrifice.

  Although the first years of The Queen’s reign were not easy, at least, unlike Prince Philip, she was on familiar ground surrounded by friendly faces. The Palace, which her predecessors had first entered with dislike and apprehension, had been her home since she was ten – with only a short period at Clarence House – and her first child had been born there in her old nursery. She took over her father’s familiar rooms, where she had so often watched him at work. Unlike King Edward VII, Princess Elizabeth had been prepared for the throne, had watched her father at work and could move smoothly into the rhythm of his life in Buckingham Palace. King George VI, remembering that neither he, nor his father, King George V, had originally expected to succeed to the throne, was determined that his beloved daughter should be well equipped for the hard road ahead. In their private rooms at the north side of the Palace her mother, when Queen, had brought light and flowers to Queen Alexandra’s cluttered rooms.

  In the years after the Coronation, The Queen has had the difficult task of combining her many different, and sometimes conflicting, roles. At Buckingham Palace she is not only Queen of Great Britain, she is also Head of the Commonwealth; and as Head of the Church of England she is the ‘Defender of the Faith’, with many duties involved. She is the ‘Fount of Honour’, conferring distinctions. She is hostess to the nation and the world, receiving ambassadors and heads of state of foreign countries, and thousands of the general public at garden parties and receptions. Above all, she is Head of State, and although her constitutional power is now minimal, the work involved in her duties is unremitting. She has, in trust, palaces and their contents, for which she is responsible. But she is also a wife and mother of four children: Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward. In the setting of Buckingham Palace The Queen has been able to combine all these roles not only because of her own natural ability and dedication, but because, unlike her father, she is not a ‘worrier’.

  Eleanor Roosevelt recalled in her autobiography, On My Own, how, when she came again to England after the death of President Roosevelt, The Queen invited her to the Palace ‘for a chat’. She and Lady Reading were met on the ground floor of the Palace by a Lady-in-Waiting and a secretary. We went up’, she remembered,

  in the old-style cage-type lift and to The Queen’s sitting-room overlooking a garden. She was at her desk with a fire crackling in the fireplace, and she greeted me graciously …

  We talked for a while about the troubles facing our two countries and the difficulties in the relations of the United States and Britain. After half an hour – since it is protocol to wait for The Queen to end a conversation – she smiled and remarked that she knew I had to have time to get dressed for a dinner engagement, and I departed.

  She reflected that The Queen’s ‘loveliness does not change but she seems to me still more serious, as one might expect her to be under the burden of her duties’.

  Mrs Roosevelt was escorted to her car by a young secretary and noticed

  that The Queen’s entourage seemed much younger than when I had previously visited the Palace …

  ‘It must be terribly hard,’ I said to him, Tor anyone as young as The Queen to have so many official responsibilities and also carry on as a wife and mother.’ He looked at me with what I thought was a surprised expression and said briskly: ‘Oh, no. Not at all. The Queen is very well departmentalized.’ How does one departmentalize one’s heart, I thought!4

  It is partly this ability to ‘departmentalize’ that has given The Queen her extraordinary balance and equanimity.

  She could not have succeeded without the help of devoted supporting assistants, headed by her husband and her family. Throughout her reign Prince Philip has been a pillar of strength. Although he has no official role in the running of the Palace, The Queen can rely on his advice, and he is beside her at ceremonies in the Palace and Westminster, and on tours at home and abroad.

  Throughout history the position of the consorts has never been easy, especially when they have had strong personalities. Queen Charlotte, Prince Albert, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip have, however, all given their sovereigns invaluable support. Prince Philip now had to accept the end of a career he loved and the beginning of a life hedged in by courtiers, who adored his wife but who regarded him with some suspicion. Mountbatten’s radical sympathies, it was feared, might influence his nephew: Prince Philip, with his fast cars, his casual clothes, his breezy bluntness and his unconventional schooling was disturbing. Understandably he was sometimes irascible: it must have been galling for a man of exceptional ability to have no official role.

  In the first years of her reign The Queen was too busy to spend time on the organization of the Palace. Prince Philip, however, saw how much needed to be done. In the post-war years King George VI had been too concerned with the state of the nation to deal with the state of the Palace, and for the last years he had been too ill.

  Prince Albert had faced a similar situation, but he did not have to deal with an experienced Secretariat and Household. In effect, he had acted as Queen Victoria’s Private Secretary himself and was strong enough to be able to overcome her Household’s reluctance to change; on the whole, Queen Victoria’s prime ministers had welcomed Prince Albert’s help and he had been able to use Stockmar to conduct a thorough survey of the Palace.

  Prince Philip, however, had no desire to be a second Prince Albert. He does not see official papers as Prince Albert and even Queen Mary did, and Mike Parker, his secretary and friend from Navy days, was certainly no Stockmar. Nevertheless, as this lively Australian told The Queen’s biographer, Ben Pimlott, they did make a private study of the whole organization and its methods, in which they included an exploration of the basements:

  we were fascinated by the wine cellar, which went on for miles and miles, and there were one or two very ancient wines indeed, plus some very old menus from the early Victorian period, which were utterly fascinating.5

  In the first year of The Queen’s reign, the Household discouraged Prince Philip’s involvement in the reorganization of the Palace. It was not until 1962, when he was Chairman of the National Productivity Year, that he was able to persuade the Treasury to send in a team to produce a survey.

  Lord Cobbold, later to be Lord Chamberlain, remembered:

  When I first came to the Household in 1963, I discovered that, at the instigation of Prince Philip, the Treasury had been asked to provide an Organisation and Methods Study, which, if I may say so, if that had not been so I should have tried to arrange myself, and they did come and have a very thorough examination of organisation and methods … Sir Basil Smallpiece was to come in full-time for a year and half time for another year, and he remains on in an honorary capacity available for consultation for exactly that purpose, to go through the thing with a toothcomb.

  Lord Cobbold also remembered that at that time ‘many of the staff worked for no salary but expenses only, it was considered that the prestige of work in the Palace compensated for inadequate financial reward’.6

  As a result of the survey and Lord Cobbold’s support, some improvements were made in the organization and salaries, but it was not for another eight years that a fuller investigation was held.

  Meanwhile Prince Philip immediately modernized his own department, in his office on the first floor of the Palace; this is a large, high-ceilinged room with a view through the tall windows of Constitution Hill. One of Prince Philip’s first innovations was to have a false ceiling made to conserve heat and a number of labour-saving gadgets installed so that, for example, the window curtains could be opened and closed at the touch of a button, and he could be linked by an intercom system to the rest of the Palace.

  Prince Philip’s remarkable energy has now been channelled into supervising the running of Balmoral, Sandringham and Windsor Great Park. I
n addition, over the years he has become actively involved in the work of hundreds of organizations. In 1956 he launched the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, encouraging thousands of young people to develop their talents.

  In many fields he has been able to give The Queen his own advice to supplement that of her officials. The media are more likely to pick up his more unconventional remarks than to highlight the hard and valuable work he does in support of The Queen and in the service of the country at home and abroad.

  The Royal Household

  A key figure at Buckingham Palace is the Lord Chamberlain, who is the head of the royal Household and responsible for all appointments of all offices and all ceremonial affairs. He is the permanent link between The Queen and the House of Lords. The Lord Chamberlain should not be confused with the Comptroller, Lord Chamberlain’s Office, who is responsible for the administration of state visits, ceremonial engagements, investitures and garden parties.

  It was not until 1963, when Lord Cobbold became Lord Chamberlain, that fundamental changes were made in the royal Household. He brought a new expertise to the Palace. He was Governor of the Bank of England from 1949 until two years before his appointment as Lord Chamberlain in 1963. His business experience was invaluable during his period of office and also after his retirement, when in 1971 he gave evidence to the Select Committee on the Civil List.

  By the time Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne, wars and successive economic crises had left the Palace in urgent need of repair and reorganization, but for the first decade little was done. Cautious by nature and with a deep respect for tradition, The Queen took time before making changes.

  In 1967, however, Lord Cobbold appointed a new Master of the Household, Brigadier Hardy-Roberts (later Sir Geoffrey Hardy-Roberts). A small man with tremendous drive and energy, he had a formidable military reputation. He undertook a major reorganization of the Household, giving greater responsibility to his three principal assistants. One was put in charge of the Palace Steward’s Department – the silver, china and glass sections, the Royal Cellars, pages and footmen. The Palace china and porcelain and silver gilt are in frequent use and demand expert care; so Brigadier Hardy-Roberts introduced a training scheme for footmen, just as he had introduced new training for nurses at the Middlesex Hospital. He insisted that the royal cooks should have the highest training; most now have a college background.