by Anne Edwards
Philip was not permitted to see them off at either Waterloo Station or quayside, Portsmouth, when the Royal Family and their suite boarded Britain’s newest battleship, Vanguard, the next morning. Lilibet had christened the vessel herself only a few months previously. The first days of the sea journey the boat “pitched and rolled through stormy, violent seas.” The Royal Family, although all good sailors, remained close to their quarters. Townsend saw little of either Lilibet or Margaret during the voyage “save at meals.” One night he sat next to Lilibet at dinner. “We talked at length about sleep, of which she said she had had far too little [on the journey].”
The tour had not progressed very far when the King and Queen had strong indications that the months before them would not be easy. Lilibet would be distracted by her thoughts of Philip, and for the first time resentful of her duty which presently separated her from him. Without Crawfie or Alah’s controlling hand, Margaret was going to be difficult to manage. As close as the family was, they had never spent such a long period (or even a fairly short span) so dependent on one another’s company. During the war years, the King and Queen were with their daughters only on weekends and holidays, and never without those two considerable ladies—Crawfie and Alah—to take charge of Margaret when she got out of hand, or they simply had lost patience.
The Queen, who always gave the impression of being unruffled, had much to cope with on her own. Lately, the King’s smoldering temper had more frequently flared, often at inconsequential matters. He had not been well, his weight was down, he was smoking far too much, and drinking more than he ought to be. Of course, he was nervous about the tour. He never had liked meeting new people and having to speak publicly; but recalling how well his earlier Australian and Canadian visits had gone, he had accepted this one with enthusiasm. Now he had reservations. The Queen had thought that Lilibet’s presence would relieve him of some of the more onerous tasks and cheer him up. But if Lilibet was to moon about, it would be counterproductive. The Queen now looked to Townsend for support, for he understood the King’s problem and could act as a buffer. The girls also had a good rapport with him, and most important, Margaret was “reined-in somewhat” in his company.
For years everyone had been overlooking Margaret’s startling precocity and rebellious nature. Once, when she was six, she had been sent to her room by herself for some mischief. Two hours later she was recalled to the Queen’s presence. “I’m sure you are good now, aren’t you?” her mother asked. “No, I’m naughty still. And I’m going to go on being naughty,” she insolently replied. At twelve, and a Girl Guide, she had rowed her instructor to the middle of the lake at Windsor and pulled the plug out of the bottom of the boat “to see what would happen.” They were in shallow water and so she was able to enjoy “the sight of the indignant guide mistress wading to the muddy shore, her skirts held high.”
Such behavior could have been a reflection of normal childish high spirits. But, in fact, it should have been obvious to anyone within the family circle that Margaret’s situation was not in any way normal. One observer wrote that not only did she enjoy exceptionally good spirits but “is likely to go on doing so ... and ... it is fair to say that she is the liveliest and most amusable person her family has produced in several centuries, if not for all time.” The problem was that all that energy had no escape valve. The Queen had insisted she stay under the tutelage of Crawfie and the care of Alah while she had outdistanced their resources years earlier.
Whereas Lilibet always had so little time of her own because of her position and her responsibilities, Margaret had nothing but time. Perhaps in a young woman of different character this would have been welcomed and her days could have been happily filled with inconsequentials. Such was not the case with Margaret. Her dilemma was that idleness bored her and that she was made to feel dispensable, her only capacity in life seeming to be to function as a spare—as in an heir and a spare. Once Lilibet was married and had a child—well, that was it. Resentment could not help but brew, especially since it was never allowed to surface.
The Royal tour had been prompted by South Africa’s Prime Minister, General Smuts, during his wartime visits to London. The invitation included a request for the King to formally open the Union Parliament in Cape Town on February 21. Prime Minister Attlee and the Ministry had considered this an opportune chance to bring the King in closer contact with his newest subjects, thereby strengthening the bonds of Empire, and to introduce the people to their future Queen. Lilibet was to make numerous speeches, including one on her twenty-first birthday, which would be broadcast worldwide. The opinion at home was that standing beside her father, a young Victoria, she would lend a promise of a grand continuum. Margaret was there to amuse her sister and to complete the tabloid picture of a happy Royal Family.
As embarkation time had approached, the King’s old self-doubts took hold, which is why he so strongly wanted Lilibet as well as the Queen to accompany him. Now, he realized his elder daughter wished to be elsewhere than by his side, and his disappointment in sensing this truth caused him much distress and made him even crosser than usual.
Not only were Lilibet and Margaret simmering with discontent—Townsend, who was now being given more responsibility than ever before, was struggling with a growing sense of dissatisfaction with his life and with the “system, the establishment, with its taboos, its shibboleths and its obsession with class status.” The wild beauty of South Africa would bring out his longing “for horizons beyond the narrow life at home” and the career he had hazarded into. To aid the King temporarily in wartime was one thing; to be a courtier for the rest of his life, quite another. Not long after he arrived in South Africa he wrote Rosemary of his need to employ himself more usefully, more creatively, that he was captivated by South Africa and believed, if she would be willing to return with him there, they could both lead “a new and more constructive life.” He entertained various ideas of somehow helping the black children of the nation, of flying supplies and medical help and equipment, and of farming in the Transvaal. Her reply came by cable, warning him not to do anything rash. Rosemary was caught in her own quandary: her ambitious nature delighted in the reflected glory of being a courtier’s wife while she found the actuality—the loneliness and lack of involvement—depressing.
Townsend regarded Margaret as a schoolgirl. If it ever crossed his mind that she might have a crush on him, he quickly dismissed it, and certainly never believed this could ever become a complication for him. He was fond of her, as was almost everyone close to the Royal Family; and his years as a squadron leader had sharpened his natural tendency to take younger people under his wing. Margaret’s joie de vivre was pleasurably catching, her intelligence refreshing in one so young, and she possessed a vulnerability that reflected an uncommon depth of emotion. At no point during the South African tour did he admit to himself (or even recognize) a growing response to Margaret’s appeal. Nor did he have any inkling of his impact on her. His concentration remained with his job and the problems and responsibilities of his marriage.
Possessing seductive charm, Townsend is a gentle man with a soothing, confidential voice. He has that quality that all truly winning people possess, of making those whom they are addressing feel singled out. When he is in conversation with someone, his eyes never shift to take in the peripheral scene. Yet, curiously, at that time, he did not seem aware of his own charm. He embarrassed easily; and for a man who was now a courtier, he did not fawn over the members of the Royal Family as did almost all others in his position (no matter what was said behind Royal backs). And as Lilibet could believe that Philip liked her for herself, so Margaret believed Townsend did likewise. And, indeed, this was the truth, but he did not yet think of her in a romantic light.
Sir Alan Lascelles, experienced courtier that he was, viewed his fellow travelers in the Royal Party with a knowing and decidedly edgy eye. Even at this early stage in the developing friendship between Townsend and Margaret, he sensed future trouble. He seem
s not to have confided this to the King or to the two major participants, but while on this tour he was conscious of an easiness between Townsend and the Royals that made him uncomfortable. Even Townsend recalled that he and the King would be talking very seriously in the car “and then, suddenly, he shut up completely.” It struck Townsend that the King “said to himself, ‘What am I doing talking like this—I’m the King, after all.’ ”
The sisters, hatless, dressed in white, came up on deck to watch Vanguard steam into Table Bay in the early sun-bright morning of February 17. In the distance was the city of Cape Town and beyond, Table Mountain, a dense white mist covering the flat top like a tablecloth. Thousands of schoolchildren formed with their white-clad bodies the word “Welcome.” At the reception ceremony on the quay the band played two national anthems: “God Save the King” and “Die Stem van Zuid Afrika,” the national anthem of Dutch-descended and Afrikaans-speaking South Africans, which makes no mention of a King.
The Royal Party had come to a divided land that had two capitals, two languages, and two traditions which seemed resigned not to blend. The Nationalist Party, which was agitating for apartheid, was at the time the opposition. Within a matter of months of the tour, the distinguished gray-haired, saber-thin General Smuts was to be rejected by the electorate, and even during the King’s visit, first-class coaches on the government-owned railroads were pasted with “Europeans only” signs and angry voices were raised in the South African Parliament calling for the abolishment of black members. Despite the beauty of the land, “the fine rolling country with its spectacular sky-line of mountains” and the fervor of the welcome, the journey would have political as well as personal difficulties for the King.
Four days after their arrival, they attended the opening of Parliament, where the King’s speech (although he had suffered “spasms of fear”) had gone well. The Queen, it was noted, “looked lovely despite a too-massive tiara of Queen Mary’s that she was obliged to wear because it was made of chips of the Cullinan diamond [originally mined in South Africa].” Directly following the ceremony, the Royal Party left Cape Town for the overland tour in The White Train, its gold and ivory finish and its brilliantly painted Royal crests making it easy to identify as it curved and streaked through the country, sending off shafts of light in the glaring sun. The train, a third of a mile long, with a pilot car and ‘ghost train’ for repairs, had been specially built and outfitted for their use, and contained a post office and telephone exchange which could be connected to the main exchange at stops. For the most part of the next six weeks, The White Train would be their home. Every small station where it stopped was crowded with Royal supporters or the simply curious; and “in the great empty spaces of the veldt there were often to be seen little groups of people, with their dusty horses tethered beside them, who had ridden perhaps fifty or a hundred miles merely to see The White Train go by.”
Four provinces of the Union of South Africa were to be visited, each with its distinct history and traditions. Planned also were trips to the three so-called High Commission Territories, governed from Whitehall, the quasi-dominion of Southern Rhodesia and the Colony of Northern Rhodesia. Margaret’s role appeared to be “a thankless task"; it was Lilibet whom the people wanted to see. But the young Princess found much to hold her interest. This was an entirely new and picturesque world, and Margaret became an active and wildly enthusiastic tourist, using her Royal privileges to their fullest.
In Zululand there were tribal dances by plumed warriors and their women; at Johannesburg both sisters donned white suits and helmets and were taken down seven thousand feet into one of the earth’s largest gold mines; at Pretoria there were banquets and garden parties; and at Kimberley they saw “such a display of diamonds, as could be produced nowhere else in the world.”
They stopped at the Matopo Hills and climbed to the top to see Cecil Rhodes’s lonely grave. The Queen had unfortunately worn high-heeled shoes (“So like Mummy to set off in those shoes,” Lilibet said in an unusual off-guard remark), and Lilibet gave her mother her sandals and walked up the steep rocky hillside in her stockinged feet. After that, the Queen would “walk off the train in one of her towering, sumptuous hats—but with sensible shoes on her feet.”
Theo Aronson, a South African writer, observed that “at times the heat and the worries irritated the King almost beyond endurance and he would have one of his ‘gnashes.’ It was embarrassing for the young Princesses, especially when he ‘gnashed’ at the household. But the Queen coped. A spectator noticed her stroking his arm to calm him during a tediously slow parade. He was justifiably infuriated by the Nationalists’ hostility to Smuts, once bursting out to the Queen, ’I’d like to shoot them all!’ To which she replied soothingly, ’But, Bertie, you can’t shoot them all....’ ”
With space limited and the distances between stops long, days and evenings on The White Train brought the Royal Party closer than most tours would have done. Going off by oneself was not an easy matter. The Royal Family members each had their own bedroom and bath; the King had a study and the Queen a separate sitting room; and they all shared a drawing room and a dining room. Card games were arranged and movies shown and the Household staff, rotating fairly, joined the family in these diversions.
Early mornings, the sun just rising, the air still cool from night, was the time most looked forward to by Lilibet, Margaret and Townsend. Horses were often waiting at stops, and whenever possible the three of them took a gallop before breakfast, speeding “along the sand or across the veldt. Those were the most glorious moments of the day,” commented Townsend. An expert horseman, Townsend cut a princely figure on these morning gallops and Margaret’s admiration was quite apparent.
Margaret and Lilibet were even closer on this long journey than ever before. Lilibet wrote Philip daily, but many days would pass before post could reach The White Train with his replies. Lilibet was deeply in love and the longing she felt to be near Philip created a moodiness not common in her nature. She also had fears that perhaps on their return her father might rescind his permission that they could marry. Margaret was her confidante and shared her sister’s anxieties; she was comforting, optimistic and always looking to the bright side. A reversal of roles had taken place. Margaret had become the supportive sister. “She had a profound loyalty to her sister,” Townsend contends. “She was complex, very much herself—and it was quite a sorry little self that was. Inside herself was a mass of dynamite. But she kept a façade [in public].”
She could not help but realize that when Lilibet married she would be alone, and her own importance in the Royal firmament—once Lilibet had a child—diminished. About midway through the tour the tragic news was received that Alah had died quite unexpectedly of a heart attack. Margaret was especially struck by the loss, for Alah had shared her room and her life for fifteen years and only two years had passed since she first had a room of her own. It seemed as though Alah, knowing her usefulness to the child she had raised had ended, had made a graceful exit. At such a distance, Margaret was helpless to do anything more then send flowers and a message of sympathy to Alah’s brother, Harold. Members of the Royal Party discerned “a certain wistfulness” in Margaret’s attitude at this juncture, and that the old post-nursery ambience the sisters’ presence together had always generated had “evaporated in a romantic haze.”
Other news from England was equally dispiriting. Coupled with the Government’s general policy of postwar austerity, the severe winter, with its “unabated frosts and blizzards, of curtailed coal output and dwindling stocks, of fuel, of coals hips storm-bound in port,” had thrust the country into a crisis with the same urgency “as a major military operation during the war.” Telegrams made their way back and forth between the King and the Prime Minister. Criticism of his being abroad at this difficult time having reached him, the King seriously considered the possibility of either interrupting the journey or cutting it short.
“This tour is being very strenuous as I feared it woul
d be,” the Queen wrote her mother-in-law, “& doubly hard for Bertie who feels he should be at home. But there is very little that he could do now, and even if he interrupted the tour & flew home, it would be very exhausting & possibly make it difficult to return here.”
“I hope that the King will not add to his burden by anxiety about his absence from [England] at this time,” Attlee telegraphed Sir Alan Lascelles. “Apart from other effects, the curtailment of the tour would magnify unduly the extent of the difficulties we are facing and surmounting at home, especially in the eyes of foreign observers. I hope, therefore, you will reassure the King on this account.”
But with all these unforeseen problems, the King was not often able to relax. When The White Train curved around the seacoast, the King occasionally commanded that it stop so that he could have a swim. James Cameron, one of the press people traveling with the Royal Party, recalled “that [once] it drew to a halt on the verge of a broad beach near Port Elizabeth. Police appeared on the sands and roped off the vast crowd of onlookers into two halves. Down the path from the Royal train walked a solitary figure in a blue bathrobe, carrying a towel. The sea was a long way off, but he went. And all alone, on the great empty beach, between the surging banks of people who might not approach, [he] stepped into the edge of the Indian Ocean and jumped up and down....”
In cities like Pretoria and Johannesburg he had a chance of a few sets of tennis, playing singles with Townsend, who closely matched his own skill at the game. Once, when the King had a “bad run,” Townsend recounted, “he picked up that damned, evasive ball and hit it miles out of court. I thought to myself, ’I’m not going to get that one—you are,’ and he did. He wandered off into the garden, beat about the flower beds and bushes and returned, rather shamefacedly, with the offending ball.”
Townsend was now fondly accepted by the family and had unusual access to the King’s ear, who confided once that he would “have liked a boy like Townsend.” Lascelles was a bit indignant about this and it might well have colored the veteran courtier’s future attitude against the Equerry.
