by Anne Edwards
The early part of 1951 was particularly taxing for the King and for Great Britain, dominated by a depression caused by the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the war in Korea and the uncertainty of Attlee’s Government. To counteract the resulting malaise, the Government organized a vast and complicated Festival of Britain, ostensibly to celebrate the centenary of the 1851 Great Exhibition but, in fact, “to show the world the degree to which Britain had achieved recuperation after the ordeal of war and the task of reconstruction.”
State visits and the strenuous ceremonial opening of the Festival on May 3 took most of the King’s energy. Photographs of him, hollow-cheeked and with sunken eyes, gave rise to public fears as to the true condition of his health.
In mid-May he traveled to Balmoral for a week’s vacation with the Queen and Margaret. Townsend and Jennifer Bevan accompanied them. The circumstances were emotional. Mother and daughter were concerned for the King. Townsend was in the throes of deciding if he should take action for divorce on the grounds of his wife’s adultery. His two sons were to be considered and he was in a quandary as to which path might ensure their well-being. Decisions were also pressing for Margaret, who was approaching twenty-one and soon must decide on her future.
Whenever the Royal Family travels, the press is right on their tire tracks, relentless in their pursuit of a story or photograph. When they are in residence at Balmoral the press corps station themselves in the nearby small stone village of Ballater hoping to get an exclusive. All visiting dignitaries must disembark from their train at Ballater, where a Royal limousine meets them, and several journalists always stand guard at the station. Others sit on the Dee-side near the Castle entrance for hours at a time; and the more adventurous ones climb Craigendarroch for a view of Balmoral’s vast valleys and fields and a possible glimpse of a Royal at leisure. At this time their attention was concentrated on the King, the likelihood of doctors arriving unexpectedly, and reports about his condition.
Balmoral was never more lovely than it was that spring. Looking south from the windows of the Castle one could see, beyond the formal gardens, the hills which became dense with pines as they rose to form the great Balmoral Forest and, “high-towering” above this vista, the sprawling snowcapped crest of Lochnager. Townsend shared the Royal Family’s love of the Scottish castle. Few guests were invited during this week of respite for the King; and while he rested, the Queen, Margaret and Townsend, along with some of the Ladies-in-Waiting, picnicked on the heathered hills. Townsend and Margaret also rode through the high meadows as twilight lowered. In both instances press photographers managed to get pictures of them together but discarded them with disappointment that the Princess was only in the company of her father’s Equerry.
Townsend had fallen under Margaret’s spell. “She was a girl of unusual, intense beauty,” he recalled of that time, sounding very much like a man in love, “confined as it was in her short, slender figure and centered about large, purple-blue eyes, generous, sensitive lips and a complexion as smooth as a peach. She was capable in her face and in her whole being of an astonishing power of expression. It could change in an instant from saintly, almost melancholic, composure to hilarious uncontrollable joy .... She was a comedienne at heart ... coquettish, sophisticated.
“But what ultimately made Princess Margaret so attractive and lovable was that behind the dazzling façade, the apparent self-assurance, you could find, if you looked for it, a rare softness and sincerity. She could make you bend double with laughing; she could also touch you deeply.”
If there was a time to turn back, this was it. Two years later Alan Lascelles was to tell him, “You are either mad or bad.” Townsend was neither. He was enchanted. He did not submit his resignation and leave the Court because anything more than romantic titillation between them seemed impossible. She called him “Peter.” In public he called her “Ma’am,” in private “Margaret,” a familiarity she allowed only close friends. He could not believe her feelings went beyond that.
But Margaret felt more herself with Townsend than with any other man she knew. He had experienced things that young men in her set had not. He had been close to death, struggled with the stiff demands of duty and been unhappily married—experiences that gave him an aura of worldliness. His gift for words was extraordinary. He possessed a poetic leaning, a great capacity to understand and a talent to listen with warmth and discretion. Also, he was married and a commoner, which seemed to exclude even a glimmer of hope for a romantic relationship. His duty was to look after her and he did so. She assumed he thought of her first as the daughter of the King and then as a youngster with whom a more mature person shares his wisdom and gives guidance. After all, fifteen years divided their ages.
All the other young men she knew paled in his image. And the fear lingered that they might be more interested in what was to be gained by an alliance with a Princess than they were in her. Because Townsend was not a suitor and had little to benefit by his friendship and attention to her, she was confident that they were genuine. She, too, could have withdrawn at this juncture simply by distancing herself. She did not because she believed her romantic feelings for him were one-sided and because he was the one person with whom she felt safe, protected and understood.
Early in August, with Townsend again in attendance, the King, Queen, Lilibet, Philip (on what would become a permanent leave from the Navy), the children and Margaret went north to Balmoral, the hope being that the bracing Highland air would restore the King’s health. By now, the public knew that he was seriously (and they thought mysteriously) ill. He suffered a persistent cough but insisted on going shooting for hare and grouse with his brother Harry, Philip, David Bowes-Lyon and John Elphinstone. His step was slow and labored and he leaned heavily on his shooting stick.
“One day, after a picnic lunch with the guns,” Townsend recalled, “I stretched out in the heather to doze. Then vaguely, I was aware that someone was covering me with a coat. I opened one eye—to see Princess Margaret’s lovely face, very close, looking into mine. Then, I opened the other eye, and saw, behind her, the King, leaning on his stick with a certain look—typical of him: kind, half-amused. I whispered, ‘You know your father is watching us?’ At which she laughed, straightened up and went to his side ... took his arm and walked him away, leaving me to my dreams.” The incident suggests that both the participants were aware, if not of their own depth of feeling, of the impression their tender concern for each other imparted.
If the King had any suspicions or reservations about their friendship, he said nothing. A group of Margaret’s friends—Johnny Dalkeith and Billy Wallace among them—were invited to Balmoral for the week to celebrate, on August 21, her twenty-first birthday. The weather was dismal and the young people spent most of their time indoors, singing, dancing and generally having a lively time. “Won’t those bloody people ever go to bed?” the King almost shouted at Townsend late one night after summoning him to his room.
Yet, despite the commotion they caused, the King seemed pleased to see Margaret with Dalkeith; and Alan Lascelles with a smile noted that Margaret and Dalkeith “were making sheep’s eyes at each other last night over dinner.” Townsend had sat at the far end of the table and retired shortly after the King, at which point another guest observed that Margaret suddenly became subdued.
The King ran a constant fever during his stay at Balmoral and almost immediately upon his return to London his doctors appeared to have found the cause. “. . . I have a condition on the left lung known as pneumonitis,” the King wrote Queen Mary. “It is not pneumonia though if left it might become it. I was X-rayed & the photographs showed a shadow....”
The shadow was a malignant growth. The King was not told that he was suffering from cancer, even when he was informed that it had been unanimously agreed by his doctors that the whole left lung must be surgically removed. The reason given him for the operation was that one of his bronchial tubes had a blockage which necessitated the procedure.
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Surgery was performed in the Buhl Room at Buckingham Palace on Sunday morning, September 23. The Queen and Lilibet and Philip waited in a nearby room, the children and Margaret having remained at Balmoral. Despite fears of a subsequent coronary thrombosis and the discovery during the operation that the cancer had spread close to the larynx, which necessitated deeper cutting and the possibility that the King “might not be able to speak again above a whisper,” the operation, which lasted three hours, seemed to have succeeded.
A handwritten bulletin, signed by eight doctors, was attached to the railings at Buckingham Palace, stating: “Whilst anxiety must remain for some days, His Majesty’s post operative condition is satisfactory.” Queen Mary, sitting vigil with her son Harry [Duke of Gloucester] at Marlborough House, was telephoned as soon as the operation was over. Her first rather surprising act was to telegraph David in France that his brother had survived.
Plans were now put into action for Lilibet and Philip to fly to Canada on October 7 for a five-week official tour that would entail crossing North America twice, visiting every province of the Dominion including Newfoundland and a two-day stop in Washington, D.C., to meet with President and Mrs. Truman. The Edinburghs had been scheduled to leave on the Empress of France, September 15, but their arrangements had been changed with the news of the King’s impending operation. By October 1, he had progressed to the satisfaction of his doctors (“Very thin but very plucky,” Queen Mary commented sadly) and the plans for the journey went forward. Traveling by air, they lost only one week from their original date of arrival.
The King had never forgotten the magnificent ovation he and the Queen had received in Canada in 1939, and how that tour “had steeled them to the part they must play as nothing before.” His hope was that his daughter’s experience would serve her as well. They had a quiet farewell in the King’s sickroom, where he was still confined to bed, his voice hoarse and barely audible. Lilibet “was only too well aware of the dangerous condition of the King,” his biographer, John Wheeler-Bennett, wrote. With her, she took a sealed envelope that contained the Draft Accession Declaration and a message to both Houses of Parliament, to be opened in the event of his death while she was abroad.
Charles and Anne were left in the care of their nursery staff, but Margaret and the Queen happily agreed to make daily visits to Clarence House to supervise and to spend time with both children. The Edinburghs landed at Dorval Airport, Montreal, October 8, seventeen hours after their departure from London Airport. From the moment their plane set down they were exposed to “a most exhaustive and exhausting” press coverage. They traveled through North America by a special Royal Train, fitted for the occasion, that also accommodated 125 correspondents. Receptions were so large (over 400 correspondents alone were present at one) that Lilibet had to confine herself to shaking hands. At another massive gathering, Philip angrily declared, “This is a waste of time!” But Lilibet rarely faltered.
Her good looks surprised people when they saw her in person, for her coloring—the Mediterranean blue eyes, the auburn glints in her hair and the rosy hue of her clear skin—was so spectacular that photographs did not do her justice. From her mother she had learned the art of the Royal Acknowledgment, however fleeting—eyes focused on the recipient’s face, the soft smile, the two or three words of greeting quietly spoken so as to seem more personal. She had brought with her thirty gowns designed by Hartnell—all gold and glitter—her best jewels and several changes in tiaras.
Canadians were ecstatic at “their princess.” She had renewed in them a sense of pride. “Here, at last,” wrote one of them, “is something that the Americans have not got. Almost universally Canadians feel that Americans are always one gadget ahead of them. Here the Canadians had royalty, and it was their own, and the Americans had not got it.”
Lilibet’s reception in the United States was, if possible, even more triumphant. President Truman, beaming and bandy-legged as he stood beside the bejeweled Princess, told reporters, “When I was a little boy, I read about a fairy-tale Princess—and here she is.” At a gala reception given for members of Congress, the U.S. Cabinet, the Supreme Court, the Diplomatic Corps and the press at the British Embassy in the capital, the Royal couple shook hands with sixteen hundred guests with charm and smiling patience even on the part of Philip. “Royalty would not fit into this country’s scheme of things,” one Washington columnist wrote, “but how glad you are for the British that they have a Princess so capable.”
And Sir Oliver Francis, the British Ambassador to the United States, wrote the King, ”... such occasions as last week’s visit prove that given the opportunity, the American people delight to show that there is a real and abiding bond between themselves and the British people.”
Lilibet kept abreast with home affairs by reading the airmail edition of The Times from cover to cover every day. (“No one dared touch the newspaper until she was through with it,” John Dean reported.) She also conscientiously went through the daily Hansard Parliamentary Reports. Every morning she spoke by telephone to the Queen. The King, she learned, “was sufficiently recovered to sit in his chair and receive a few family visitors,” and Princess Anne had taken her first steps. “This heartening news,” an insider confided, “resulted in high spirits as the royal train chuffed its whistle-stop progress across the prairies [of Canada].” John Dean had “patronized a shop in Toronto devoted to practical jokes.... Fiendish sets of joke false teeth flourished at breakfast, rubber snakes leapt from tins of nuts, rolls of bread squealed when touched, a mock bellpush gave an electric shock—and at every [small village that they passed through], at the cue of the train whistle, the Princess and [Prince Philip] hurried out to the rear observation platform [nighttime in full evening regalia] and waved to the good folk who had come to see them.”
On October 26, while Lilibet was touring North America, the General Election of 1951 was held. Attlee’s leadership was being challenged by the opposition led by Churchill. The King, “barely convalescent,” was much concerned. (“I must be ready for the result ... ” he had written Queen Mary ten days earlier.) Clement Attlee came to the Palace to concede defeat on the following afternoon. Forty-five minutes after his departure, the new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, arrived outside the Palace gates as crowds shouted, “There he is! There’s old Winnie!” He sat alone in the back of a big black limousine, “a top hat planted on his head and the ceiling light blazing down on him, so that the crowds and history could see.” The cheering continued as his stocky figure plodded up the red-carpeted stairs out of sight and entered the King’s study to receive from him for the third time, at the age of seventy-six, the mandate to form a Government.
This was the first time the King could not meet Churchill at the top of the stairs that led to his study. An effort had been made for him to be formally dressed and seated in a chair. Churchill bowed. Alan Lascelles beckoned him to move closer to the King’s chair so that the King did not have to strain his voice. Churchill himself had suffered a recent stroke and its effects still lingered in his slightly slurred speech. He had aged considerably, his step was slow and—as he received his papers from the King—a small tremble of his hand could be detected.
These two men had been through much together and both were now faced with a bitter and inescapable truth. As men of power their days were numbered. Churchill left the King’s presence fearing for the Monarch’s life and apprehensive about the extreme youth of the Heir to the Throne. And when Churchill departed, the King pondered the advisability of a Prime Minister so advanced in age. Only a short time later he was to discuss with Lascelles if Churchill should not be persuaded to make way for the more youthful Anthony Eden, who was his party’s designated successor.
The Edinburghs returned home on the liner Empress of Scotland, November 17, three days after their son’s third birthday, which was spent at Buckingham Palace with his grandparents and his Aunt Margaret, who took him (with Anne and her nanny, Mabel Anderson) to the airport to
greet his parents upon their return. The reunited family then drove down to Sandringham where Charles was given a miniature cowboy outfit and Anne a calico doll, both mementos from the tour, which had been a brilliant success.
Lilibet had emerged from the trip with a new, mature, gloriously regal image. “I cannot believe that such a little girl can possess such a quiet strength,” a Washingtonian wrote. “This cannot be all trained into her; there is something deeper, God-given....She will be great in the days to come.”
With an ailing Monarch and an elderly Prime Minister, the Heir to the Throne’s youth and vitality were most reassuring. Lilibet was now pushed to the front even more. Photographic sessions of the Edinburghs and their children were arranged with the Royal photographers, and the pictures appeared in a steady stream throughout the winter in newspapers and periodicals.
Philip had acquitted himself well enough on their tour, but it had been obvious that he had not had an easy time with its arduous demands. He did not appreciate being “on display,” and his strong ego made his position as a supporting player difficult for him to manage with grace. Once back in England, he nurtured a brief hope to return to active Naval duty on Magpie. This was crushed when it was decided that he and Lilibet would undertake another ambitious tour to East Africa, Australia and New Zealand shortly after the New Year.
The King celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday on December 14 at a family luncheon party at the Palace. Three days before Christmas the entire family assembled at Sandringham for the holiday. The King was in good spirits. His annual Christmas Day broadcast had been recorded bit by bit “as his strength allowed” and so he had no pressing official duties. The rest at “dear old Sandringham” did him a world of good and in the first weeks of January he was able to go shooting again with a special light gun. “This just shows that an operation is not an illness—I am now all right,” he told one member of his Household.
