Royal Sisters

by Anne Edwards

  Prince Philip had not been officially proclaimed Consort, as Prince Albert had been. The term “consort” is, in any case, not clearly defined. Albert saw the contents of the red despatch boxes, gave Victoria advice on policy, and drafted documents for her signature. When King Louis Philippe of France departed Windsor Castle in 1844 after a short visit, he told the Queen, “Le Prince Albert c’est pour moi le Roi” and Victoria had been delighted.

  But, unlike Elizabeth, her great-great-grandmother did not have the Private Secretary, assistants and office and clerical staff that now attended the Throne. Victoria’s ministers functioned in a limited way as her secretaries. Albert became her managing director, a situation she greatly enjoyed since she so prized her time with him.

  Elizabeth “was out on her own, at least in matters of State.” Philip was excluded “from the inner shrines of procedure,” and nothing he could do would change that. Everything fell on the Queen’s shoulders, and he wanted (and desperately needed) to ease the load. “He had no entitlement to do so, and the courtiers were far from keen that he should,” Basil Boothroyd, one of Philip’s biographers, wrote. He believed strongly in the man’s position as head of the family, and “he wanted to handle things [and] bear the weight of the decisions.”

  The intimacy they shared on the tour soon dissipated upon their return. Once again the Queen’s life was narrowed by the restrictive limitations of the Throne. “Good works apart,” Boothroyd explains, “she can’t be openly associated with other single elements in the nation’s life without seeming to lend them the invidious patronage of the Crown.” This left Elizabeth her dogs and horses, which were often the butt of jokes but were not in any way controversial, and encouraged the choice of a Court that was disparagingly named “the tweedy set,” and whom Philip found fusty and boring. He sought action, escape and a job in his own right.

  He looked to Michael Parker for a kind of locker-room masculine friendship. (“One thing you can say about Mike Parker,” he was quoted as commenting, “is that he always has a grin on his mug.”) Parker’s admiration for Philip, his belief (which originated with Philip) that Philip could “act as a kind of super Chief of Staff” to the Queen and give “her the complete lowdown on absolutely anything,” became Philip’s modus operandi. He channeled his energy into becoming Elizabeth’s eyes and ears, going where she could not, meeting people not available to her, hearing things that would not be told to her.

  His influence could be seen in the gradual inclusion of scientists and artists—people of accomplishment and not just rank and title—at Palace luncheons, dinners and garden parties, and in the move toward disbanding the archaic ritual of debutantes being presented at Court. Whether his influence carried over to constitutional matters, which the Queen was constitutionally disallowed to discuss with him, is difficult to know. As another of Philip’s biographers has written, “Anything can come up, after all when you get a couple of Privy Councillors together over the breakfast table.” That is, of course, assuming they shared the same bed the night before.

  Rumors have always abounded hinting at the possibility that Philip had extramarital affairs. They emanated partially from the very masculine aura of the man, the energy he exuded, his obvious savvy. His continuing “buddy” friendship with Michael Parker was a contributing factor since all the stories persisted of their early escapades as young bucks on leave from the Navy in Australia. Both Parker and Philip (despite his thinning hair) had maintained their youthful good looks and vigorous attitudes. As Philip’s Private Secretary, Parker necessarily accompanied him on most of his official trips and their long association gave them the ability to communicate in a kind of verbal shorthand.

  Every power center—London, Paris, Washington, New York, Hollywood—has its cognoscenti, that stratum of the city’s social, political and entertainment population who claim to know the unvarnished “truth” about all the powerful figures in their society. Much is fiction or heavily embellished fact, but once told, it is impossible to quash because of its invidious nature. He had sex appeal and was the most photographed man in Britain, and his identification factor in America was at about 75 percent, equal at the time to the young Marlon Brando. Prince Philip came in for his share of this kind of gossip. He was a great media personality and women were bound to fantasize about him as they might a film star.

  An American woman, after seeing Philip wave from a car during a visit to Chicago, told her husband, “He could put his shoes under my bed any time.”

  “Get that,” the husband had told an Englishman. “My own wife.”

  Despite his dogmatic personality and his penchant for cracking jokes in public, Philip maintained a sober and respected public profile. He was working hard to create a place for himself. During 1954 and 1955 he gave over eighty speeches and made over three hundred official appearances. And in everything he undertook he displayed a real interest. If Elizabeth had given the Monarchy a freshness of youth combined with the regal qualities of Queen Victoria, Philip had added a new and much welcomed vitality.

  “With the job itself, starting from the very beginning, when there was nothing at all,” Michael Parker was quoted as saying about Philip, “he had to build it up brick by brick. Apart from the King [George VI], I was surprised, to be perfectly honest, that he didn’t get a great deal of help—that there wasn’t a collection of great men in the Court who had suggestions to make. He had to think it out alone. I know that his prime object, from the word go, was to be of service, and to help the Queen ... and he pitched into it with a vigour that was absolutely staggering.... I’ve actually said to him ... ‘Hey—what about it? It’s time you eased up somewhat.’ And, you know, he grins a bit and he says, ‘Well, what would I do? Sit around and knit?’ ”

  The Queen could make no off-the-cuff public comments and so Philip’s were well covered by a press eager for Royal quotes. At a laundry exhibition he asked, “Which is the shrinking machine?”; at a luncheon of the National Union of Manufacturers he cracked, “We are certainly not a nation of nitwits. In fact, wits are our greatest single asset”; and at an English Speaking Union World Conference, he declared, “I include pidgin-English [as a Commonwealth language], even though I am referred to in that splendid language as ‘Fella belong Mrs. Queen.’ ”

  However irreverent that last remark might have sounded, it carried the ring of honesty. More and more Elizabeth was realizing the importance of Philip to her well-being, to her having a marital relationship that every married person but a Queen takes for granted. “She still brightened like a school girl with a crush when Prince Philip entered her presence,” one of “the tweedy set” confirmed. “She was too controlled to ever display real emotion when any one was present (although I have seen her give in to pique upon occasion). But her mood could change dramatically when Prince Philip was near.”

  20

  Sir Winston Churchill had been contemplating resigning as Prime Minister, for many months. His recovery from his stroke had been slow and far from complete and he was approaching his eightieth birthday. Reasons for him to delay doing so kept interfering. First there had been the Queen’s world tour, and he could not have resigned with the Monarch out of the country. Then Anthony Eden, his natural successor, was the central figure and could not be withdrawn from the long and tortuous negotiations in Geneva at the Conference of Five Powers, which met to discuss Korea and Vietnam and which lasted from April through July of 1954. And finally, “he brooded about the atomic and hydrogen bombs and the terrible destructive powers that seemed to menace the future of mankind,” and felt that the crowning achievement of his long career would be to play a decisive part in ending their production.

  He talked about going to Washington to see President Eisenhower, to persuade him “to agree to ‘high level’ discussions with the Soviet leaders.” With this in mind, he could not schedule his resignation for “how could he go to negotiate with the President with the sense of only having a few weeks more of power.”

  Me
anwhile, Anthony Eden stood by waiting for the day he would take over from Churchill. “First,” Harold Macmillan recorded, “he had told him [on] the Queen’s return, that [he would retire in] May; then he had said, July; finally, in a letter written on June 11th (which I had seen) he had categorically told Eden that he would resign the Premiership in September.” That month came and went. “Perhaps,” Macmillan wrote, “Churchill might decide to resign after his eightieth birthday celebrations on November 30th [which coincided with the Opening of Parliament].”

  The week preceding this auspicious date, Churchill received tribute upon tribute. The final one was to be given in Westminster following the Opening of Parliament.

  The day was divided into two neat halves. In the morning (“scuds of stormy rain and wind”) the Queen in the Irish State Coach, drawn by four gray horses, the coachman on the box and four liveried footmen on the step behind, drove “through the gateway of Buckingham Palace by way of the Mall and the Arch in the Royal Horseguards’ building to Whitehall, past the Cenotaph and through Parliament Square to the Royal Entrance beneath the Victoria Tower of the Palace of Westminster.... In front and behind the coach [rode] the Life Guards, who in their scarlet and their dark-blue tunics, respectively on their black horses, form the Sovereign’s escort,” described one observer.

  Characteristically loyal crowds defied the weather to catch a glimpse of the Queen in her Royal robes, ermine over her shoulders, wearing the breathtaking diamond and pearl King George IV State Diadem and a selection of her finest jewels. Once inside Westminster, she removed the diadem and the ermine stole and donned the magnificent but incredibly heavy Robe of State. On her head was placed the fabulous Imperial State Crown, which weighs nearly three pounds.

  The theatricality of the ritual ceremony that followed defies comparison with any other spectacle save the Coronation. The lights were lowered as the Queen entered the Chamber; and then, as she walked through the doorways flanked by tall uniformed Gentlemen-at-Arms, they blazed up again. Prince Philip stood beside her in full regalia; and with the tips of the fingers of her left hand held at shoulder height in his right hand, the two of them walked slowly up the three steps to the dais, where the Queen took her seat upon the spectacular gilded throne chair. “My Lords, pray be seated,” she intoned, at which command Prince Philip sat upon a chair to the left of, and one step lower than, the throne.

  The Queen was then given to read aloud a printed copy of a prepared speech already approved by the Cabinet, which contained the future program of the Government in office. Ten minutes later she left the Chamber, exchanged the State Robe and the Imperial State Crown for the diamond diadem and ermine stole and was driven back with Prince Philip in state to Buckingham Palace.

  The ancient pageantry was in direct contrast to the birthday salute to Sir Winston that followed at Westminster an hour later. For Churchill, sudden brilliant sunshine warmed the bystanders as they cheered the Prime Minister, who waved to them from his shiny black limousine, his wife, Lady Clementine Churchill, seated proudly beside him. Inside, “in the medieval chill of the vast stone-flagged [Hall], the band of the Grenadier Guards—a patch of brave scarlet, like a geranium bed, planted in one of the hall’s gray corners—tootled away at gay dance music [that ceased when Churchill] turned up, a spruce but slowly moving figure in the familiar sawed-off Gladstonian frock coat.”

  The peers and peeresses, still dressed in their morning splendor of bemedaled uniforms, evening dresses, tiaras and family jewels, expected him to give an emotional speech. After all, Churchill was a man who “found no unmanliness in confirming the full heart by the overflowing eye.” But his speech was cheerful, optimistic and at times wryly humorous. At the end of his address, he, with Lady Churchill at his side, walked the length of the Hall, between the cheering members of both Houses and their wives, “smiling vaguely and gently at the beaming faces clustered on either side of him, their owners’ hands stretching out toward him with an extraordinary urgency.”

  Resigning the Premiership was not, however, mentioned. Churchill at last chose April 5 as the day he would tender his resignation, the following day to be set aside to preserve the Royal prerogative—the Queen’s acceptance or refusal. (No one doubted that the former would be the case.) On April 4 Sir Winston gave a dinner party—“an historic occasion at which the Queen was present.” After dinner the Prime Minister “in defiance of all precedent” made a speech in proposing the health of the Queen.* Elizabeth then stood, and with honest emotion in her voice replied, “I too wish to do something which few of my predecessors have had an opportunity of doing, and that is to propose the health of the Prime Minister.”

  At 4:30 P.M. on the afternoon of April 5, Sir Winston Churchill arrived at Buckingham Palace for his last audience as Prime Minister with the Queen. He was ushered up the red-carpeted stairway, where, at the top, like her father before her, Elizabeth had come out on the landing to greet him. The two—the old man and the young Queen—went into her study. Churchill emerged teary-eyed a half hour later. On April 6, Sir Anthony Eden was sent for. He accepted the Queen’s Commission. The guard was to change quite smoothly in all areas except one: the Princess Margaret—Peter Townsend affair, which the new Prime Minister had always opposed.

  To occupy his free time in Brussels Townsend had become a dedicated horseman and race-rider, a hobby he found exhilarating. This meant keeping his weight at a constant and almost cadaverous 143 pounds (very little for his lanky build). At dawn every morning, he rode under the “eagle eye” of Alfred Hart, a well-known trainer of winning jockeys. “Physically and mentally,” Townsend said, “raceriding kept me in hard condition. I felt I should need to be to survive the future.” When he returned to Brussels after his brief London visit, Townsend went at riding with a vengeance, celebrating his first win only weeks later.

  During the months that followed he rode two or three times a week in dozens of gentlemen races (in which well-situated sportsmen, as opposed to professional jockeys, rode) all over Europe—Paris, Madrid, Frankfurt, Vienna, Oslo, Milan and Zurich, enjoying an enormously successful season despite the fact that he ended fifth to Ali Khan’s second place at Le Tremblay course near Paris. Obviously, the Royal Air Force did not object to his leaving Brussels, only to his traveling to England.

  He and Margaret were still corresponding on an almost daily basis and spoke by telephone at least once a week. Margaret had kept herself active, enjoying some amateur theatricals with her old friends Billy Wallace and Porchy Porchester. But during the early days of 1955, the weather cruelly damp and cold, Margaret had not been well, a bout of the flu settling in her chest and giving her a rattling cough.

  With the approval of Margaret’s doctor, the Queen agreed that her sister should spend February 1 to March 2 on an official overseas tour on the Britannia that would take Margaret westward into the sunnier climes of Trinidad, Grenada, St. Vincent, Barbados, Antigua, St. Kitts, Jamaica and the Bahamas. The press made a furor about the money this would cost the taxpayers. (About £30,000 a week was required to operate Britannia when it was in service.) It did not help Margaret’s image that Richard Colville issued the curious statement that “Her Royal Highness will, of course, shake hands with all of the considerable number of persons who are introduced to her,” making it appear that she was to take part in no other official duties.

  She flew from London to Trinidad, where Britannia was anchored, on the Stratocruiser Canopus. Welcomed by the Governor, Major-General Sir Hubert Ranee, “in white uniform and plumed helmet,” she was driven through blinding sunlight and intense heat in an open car to Government House where ten thousand people (thousands more having lined the twenty-five-mile drive) had gathered. By the next morning the crowds had grown tenfold to see her leave Government House for an official garden party with several hundred invited guests, at which the calypso singers greeted her in their spontaneous doggerel with:

  “Lovin’ sister of Queen Lil-i-bet

  Is Princess Mar-gar-et.


  She ent married, she ent tall,

  Like to dance, like to sing,

  Like to try any-thing;

  If she be a boy

  She be King!”

  The Queen’s Press Officer had done Margaret a great injustice. Margaret’s Caribbean tour created much goodwill, and she daily completed a six-hour program of official engagements. But there was no doubt that the warm weather had been recuperative. By February 19, when she reached Kingston, Jamaica, she had shaken her cough and appeared tanned and in good health.

  Noël Coward was in Jamaica for the winter; and before Margaret’s arrival he had visited the island’s Governor, Sir Hugh Foot, and his wife. Of that meeting he wrote in his diary: “[Foot] told me in detail the programme planned for [Princess Margaret]; fairly onerous ... Apparently it has been laid down that on no account is she to dance with a coloured person. This is, I think, a foolish edict. Jamaica is a coloured island and if members of the Royal Family visit it they should be told to overcome prejudice. I should think that any presentable young Jamaican would be a great deal more interesting to dance with than the shambling Billy Wallace [seen recently by Coward in Margaret’s amateur theatrical].”

  After the most relaxed week of the tour, Margaret departed Jamaica for her journey home. “Princess Margaret’s visit [Coward wrote on February 27, 1955] has been a very great success and everybody says she has done it exceedingly well. On her last evening [Friday, February 25], I drove over to Port Antonio for her private ‘beach’ party. The only other outsiders beyond her staff, the Manleys and the Foots, were Adlai Stevenson and myself. We [Stevenson and Coward] sat on each side of her at dinner, which did not take place on the beach on account of rain and wind.... She was sweet and gay and looked radiant.”