My Husband and I

by Ingrid Seward

  Eileen was right about Philip having, if not a sweetheart, then at least a girlfriend. Osla Benning was a beautiful Canadian-born debutante whom Philip first met in 1939, when she shared a flat with Sarah Baring, a god-daughter of Dickie Mountbatten, who asked her to introduce Philip to a nice girl. Osla and Philip became close friends and used to go dancing at the 400 Club, which was housed in a cellar in Leicester Square and was described by a newspaper as ‘the night-time headquarters of society’. It had an eighteen-piece orchestra, which always played softly to avoid drowning out conversation. There was a minute dancefloor and food, but no menu. If guests wanted to eat, they simply ordered whatever they wished and it was served promptly, which was no mean feat at that time. According to Sarah Baring, the couple kept in touch when Philip was at sea, as Osla showed Sarah letters from Philip saying how much he was looking forward to seeing her when he got back. Evidently Philip was a busy letter writer.

  ‘I do know that he was her first love,’ said Osla’s daughter Janie Spring years later. ‘She never told me about him for years. She just said: “I fell in love with a naval officer.” Then I found a wonderful picture of Philip, very young-looking, with his hair all tousled, quite curly . . . I could see why they got on. They were both very much outsiders with no roots in the English milieu in which they moved. Neither of them had experienced much emotional warmth or security as children. Probably unconsciously, they recognised this similarity in each other and this is what gave them a special bond.’

  Their relationship wasn’t to last, however, and once Philip had spent time at Windsor Castle and set his sights on the young Princess Elizabeth, Osla and he went their separate ways, although they remained friends and Philip later became a godfather to Osla’s son.

  It may well be that the thought of marriage to Princess Elizabeth did not enter Philip’s head at that time, but the subject was not far from other people’s thoughts. In London in March 1944, Princess Alexandra married King Peter of Yugoslavia and King George VI was Peter’s best man. King George II of Greece gave the bride away and took the opportunity to raise the subject of Philip and Lilibet with the King. George VI admitted he was not happy with the idea as she was far too young. She was not yet eighteen and Philip was only twenty-two. The King promised to consider the matter, but soon he advised George of Greece that ‘Philip had better not think any more about it for the present.’

  After another visit to Windsor in July, Philip wrote to the Queen of ‘the simple enjoyment of family pleasures and amusements and the feeling that I am welcome to share them. I am afraid I am not capable of putting all this into the right words and I am certainly incapable of showing you the gratitude that I feel.’

  Prince Philip became first lieutenant of a new destroyer HMS Whelp. While the construction of the new ship was being completed, Prince Philip was a frequent guest at Coppins, the home of his cousin Marina Duchess of Kent, whose husband had been tragically killed in a plane crash in Scotland in 1942. By the summer, tongues were wagging about a possible royal marriage. Socialite and Lord Lieutenant of Caernarvonshire Sir Michael Duff reported to his cousin Lady Desborough: ‘The Duchess of Kent came to dinner bringing Prince Philip of Greece who is charming and I consider just right to perform the role of Consort for Princess Elizabeth. He has everything in his favour, he is good looking, intelligent, a good sailor and he speaks only English . . . I gather he goes to Windsor quite a lot. He is 24 and ripe for the job.’

  By August 1944, Philip’s ship was fully commissioned and ready for service. Both Whelp and Mike Parker’s ship HMS Wessex were sent to join the Pacific fleet. Philip and Mike met up at the Australian base of the fleet. On shore leave, Mike organised society parties in both Sydney and Melbourne where every eligible young heiress wanted to meet the handsome prince. By then both Mike and Philip had grown luxuriant beards. They used to joke at parties that Mike was the prince and vice versa. Many girls flung themselves at Philip, but Mike claimed that nothing serious ever went on with the ‘armfuls of girls . . . we were young, we had fun, we had a few drinks, we might have gone dancing and that was it’.

  By then, not only were Philip and Princess Elizabeth corresponding regularly but they each had photographs of the other on display. The princess had a picture of Philip with his beard on her dressing table and for his part her photo was on display in his cabin aboard ship. His service in the Far East would keep him away from England for some time yet, however, delaying any further developments in their relationship and giving it its first test.

  Meanwhile, back in England, in February 1945 Princess Elizabeth joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service as a driver and car maintenance expert. She would proudly wear the ATS uniform of a junior commander on Remembrance Day 1945, the first to be observed for six years, when she placed her own wreath upon the Cenotaph.

  By that stage, people realised that the war in Europe was coming to an end. Elizabeth could move back into her old apartments in Buckingham Palace. Her bedroom was her favourite shade of pink, with chintz covers for the chairs (she still loves these) and although she had her own sitting room, she still had breakfast every morning in the old nursery with Margaret. Their childhood string of horses on wheels were still on the landing, almost as though the last six years had never happened.

  Her father was right to urge caution on the subject of marriage. Elizabeth was still partly a child as she had been shut away in Windsor Castle for much of the war. Although she had a deeply developed sense of duty, which made her appear more sophisticated than she really was, she was still very innocent and lacked experience of many normal events. Throughout the war, she hadn’t been able to see a play or one single concert that she so loved. All her music and entertainment came to her, as it did to many others, through the medium of the radio. The whole royal family sat together and listened to Tommy Handley, in the comedy show ITMA (‘It’s That Man Again’).

  Finally, on 8 May 1945, Victory in Europe day, the war in Europe was over. Princess Elizabeth and Margaret slipped out of the palace to join the crowds singing in the streets. ‘It was one of the most memorable nights of my life,’ Princess Elizabeth said later. ‘It was most exciting – we went everywhere,’ Princess Margaret recalled.

  Philip was not with them, as he was still at sea onboard Whelp steaming for Tokyo Bay. He witnessed the Japanese surrender in August aboard Missouri, the flagship of the US fleet, and did not return to England until January 1946. Whelp was decommissioned before being offered to South Africa, meanwhile Prince Philip was posted as a lecturer to the officers’ training school at Corsham near Bath.

  Whenever he had leave he would drive up to London in his MG sports car to stay at the Mountbattens’ house in Chester Street, Belgravia. John Dean, who later became Philip’s valet, wrote: ‘He was so considerate, so anxious to avoid giving trouble to people who, after all, were paid to look after the family, that we all thought the world of him and looked forward to his visits.’

  Dean remarked that Philip did not have much in the way of civilian clothing and often did not even have a clean shirt. ‘At night, after he had gone to bed, I washed his shorts and socks and had them ready for him in the morning. I also did his mending. He was very easy to look after, and never asked for things like that to be done for him, but I liked him so much I did it anyway. Whenever Prince Philip brought a weekend bag and I unpacked it, I always found a small photograph in a battered leather frame – a photograph of Princess Elizabeth.’

  Because of the rigid rules of court etiquette, apart from the odd occasion when Philip managed to synchronise his leave with invitations for the same parties as the princess, they had to be patient, which of course Philip wasn’t. He could hardly turn up at the palace without a personal invitation, and if Elizabeth invited him for a pre-dinner drink in her suite of rooms, there always had to be a chaperone in the room. Princess Margaret was often there, but demanded just as much attention from Philip as if he were her own admirer. If they got invited to the same parties, all they co
uld hope for were a couple of dances together. If there had been more, people would have started talking even more than they already were, as rumours of the royal romance began to appear in the press, after Prince Philip and Princess Elizabeth were seen together at the theatre and dancing at nightclubs.

  Whatever their feelings for one another, there were still some obstacles. The King was concerned that his daughter had not had a proper opportunity to meet other eligible young men, and therefore organised parties at Windsor to which suitably classy Guards officers were invited. He was anxious to ensure that she knew she was making the right decision. There was also the question of Philip’s nationality. Some courtiers were concerned that Philip might be compromised by his German relatives.

  Princess Elizabeth had no such doubts and in August 1946 Philip was invited to spend part of the summer holiday at Balmoral for grouse shooting and stalking. According to Prince Philip, it was not until then that things became serious. He said: ‘I suppose one thing led to another. I suppose I began to think about it seriously, oh, let me think now, when I got back in forty-six and went to Balmoral. It was probably then that we, that it became, you know, that we began to think about it seriously, and even talk about it.’

  At some point during the holiday at Balmoral, Prince Philip proposed to Elizabeth and was accepted. It was to be an unofficial engagement with no public announcement. There was to be a royal tour of South Africa early in 1947 and the King did not want public attention diverted from the tour by any announcement. Princess Elizabeth accepted that it was her duty to forget her personal wishes until after the tour had been completed. George VI later wrote to her: ‘I was rather afraid you had thought I was being very hardhearted about it.’

  In his thank-you letter to Queen Elizabeth dated 14 September 1946, Prince Philip wrote: ‘I am sure I do not deserve all the good things which have happened to me. To have been spared in the war and seen victory. To have fallen in love completely and unreservedly makes all one’s personal and even the world’s troubles seem small and petty. I only realise now what a difference those few weeks, which seem to flash past, have made to me. The generous hospitality and warm friendliness did much to restore my faith in permanent values and brighten up a rather warped view of life. Naturally there is one circumstance which has done more for me than anything else in my life.’

  Two days before the royal tour of South Africa was due to depart, Dickie Mountbatten gave a small dinner party at Chester Street. The King and Queen were present, though Princess Margaret was absent with a chill. The guests toasted Philip and Elizabeth with champagne, except for the King, who always drank whisky. John Dean says that the royal engagement was in the air that night. The royal family set sail on 1 February 1947 in a new battleship, HMS Vanguard, on a tour that was to last until the middle of May.

  The princess and Philip wrote to each other regularly and the enforced separation did nothing to dampen their love. On the contrary, it intensified it. Luckily for her, the trip was packed with engagements, and her days and evenings were filled with receptions, dinners, train journeys and welcomes, culminating in her twenty-first birthday speech in Cape Town, given in the gardens of Government House. It was crafted by leader writer and court correspondent of The Times, Dermot Morrah. The princess spoke from her heart to the youth of the whole Empire and her words had the impact they were intended to make: ‘I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong. I shall not have the strength to carry out this resolution alone unless you join with me, as now I invite you to do.’ Queen Mary was so moved by her granddaughter’s words she confessed she ‘wept’ when she heard it on the radio.

  After the family’s return, Prince Philip told the Queen that although he realised she had been right to persuade them to delay the announcement, now he and the princess wanted to start their new life together, and in their absence he had been doing all he could to ensure that all objections were removed. In February, he had become a naturalised British subject, thus Prince Philip of Greece became Lieutenant Mountbatten RN. The Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to the King suggesting that Philip, who had been baptised in the Greek Orthodox Church, be officially received into the Church of England, and by October that was concluded.

  Even so, the princess’s parents still admitted to their concerns, as is typical for anyone when the time comes to give away their daughter in marriage. ‘You can imagine what emotion this engagement has given me,’ the Queen wrote to Tommy Lascelles. ‘It is one of the things that has been in the forefront of all one’s hopes and plans for a daughter who has such a burden to carry, and one can only pray that she has made the right decision, I think she has – but he is untried yet.’

  In July, the Queen wrote to her sister, May (Lady Mary Elphinstone, mother of the Hon. Margaret Rhodes), to tell her very secretly that Lilibet had ‘made up her mind’ to become engaged to Philip Mountbatten. ‘As you know she has known him since she was 12 and I think she is really fond of him and I do pray she will be happy.’ They were keeping it ‘a deadly secret’ because she didn’t want the press finding out and ‘ruining everything’.

  The actual date was fixed when Philip heard from the jewellers Antrobus that the ring was ready. On Wednesday 9 July 1947, the day before a Buckingham Palace garden party, so the couple could make their first joint public appearance, there was an announcement from Buckingham Palace: ‘It is with the greatest pleasure that the King and Queen announce the betrothal of their dearly beloved daughter the Princess Elizabeth to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten RN son of the late Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Andrew [Princess Alice of Battenberg] to which union the King has gladly given his consent.’

  Queen Mary sent a message of congratulation to Philip’s mother Alice, who replied, ‘The young couple seem very devoted to each other. They have had time to think such a serious decision over and I pray they will find happiness and great friendship in their future married life. Lilibet has a wonderful character and I think Philip is very lucky to have won her love.’

  With their wedding scheduled for later in the year, Elizabeth and Philip were about to bring their relationship into the full glare of public attention as they began to plan for the rest of their lives together. It was a journey that would last for more than seventy years.

  Chapter 5

  CHANGES

  In the spring before the announcement of the royal engagement seventy years ago, Britain experienced its most catastrophic river flooding in recorded history. The country had already suffered a long, hard freeze in the snowiest winter of the twentieth century and by early March 1947 snowdrifts towered up to 16ft high in some places. The country was in chaos – rail and road transport came to a standstill, chronic shortages of coal led to nationwide power cuts and food rationing was worse than in the war. At Corsham Naval Training Base, Prince Philip had to lecture his students by candlelight and wearing his naval greatcoat. When the temperatures shot up, melting the snow onto the frozen ground, a ferocious wind whipped up the floodwater, especially through the dykes in East Anglia around Sandringham, and 100 square miles of fens were turned into an inland sea.

  The conditions created a brief spike in unemployment but, despite the return of thousands of ex-servicemen seeking work, this did not become a problem on anything like the scale of the interwar years, and by the autumn unemployment would be around 3 per cent of the work force. Although the war had ended almost two years previously, all basic foods were rationed, as were clothes, coal, furniture and petrol. London was scarred with bomb sites from the blitz. Between the announcement of the engagement in July 1947 and the wedding in November, things worsened for many people; the meat ration was reduced and potatoes became scarce as a result of the poor harvest. Austerity was the order of the day.

  Elizabeth had promised her parents that she would be patient and make certain she still felt the same about Philip on her return from
South Africa as she did before. Of course, their passion was intensified, but they still had to wait another two months before their betrothal was officially proclaimed in the court circular on 10 July. As if it were a taste of things to come, on the evening of the announcement the couple could not be together. Philip was on duty at Corsham and Elizabeth was a guest at a private dance at Apsley House, Hyde Park Corner, where successive Dukes of Wellington had lived since a grateful nation had presented the property to the victor of the Battle of Waterloo.

  Across the country and the world, thousands of newspapers and magazines published photographs of the smiling couple. Winston Churchill, the then leader of the opposition, having lost the election in 1945 to Clement Attlee’s Labour Party, said that the engagement was ‘a flash of colour on the hard road we have to travel’. There was some opposition to a lavish wedding in those austere times. In a letter addressed to King George VI, the Camden Town branch of the Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers wrote: ‘Any banqueting and display of wealth at your daughter’s wedding will be an insult to the British people at the present time. You would be well advised to order a very quiet wedding in keeping with the times.’

  But most others responded in a more positive way. Among the thousands of congratulatory messages sent to Prince Philip and Princess Elizabeth was one from Mike Parker, his close friend from his earlier naval days. To Mike’s surprise, in Prince Philip’s letter of thanks he wrote: ‘I would like to mention that I am considering getting some staff together and would like you to join this as general nanny and factotum.’ Philip’s new staff included a secretary, a private detective and a valet, John Dean. To this group was added Parker as equerry-in-waiting.