And then there was Johnnie Althorp. He had recently returned from Australia, having been aide-de-camp to the governor of South Australia. The moment he arrived at Holkham, at my father’s invitation, I fell madly in love with him. I thought he was wonderful: funny, handsome, and charming. We went out together in London, and one night he took me into the garden and asked me to marry him. A wave of euphoria swept over me and for days after I really did feel as though I was walking on air. We told both sets of parents but kept the news a secret from everybody else.
Everything went by in a daze. If I was dancing with some other (probably perfectly nice) young man, I was wholly uninterested. I had eyes only for Johnnie. By this time, I had left Ga’s house in London and become a paying guest to Lady Fermoy, a friend of Queen Elizabeth, whose family also lived in Norfolk and had a house on the Sandringham estate.
Lady Fermoy was extremely sociable. “If you have a young man taking you out,” she would say, “do bring him to the drawing room to have a drink first.”
So I did. And that was my mistake. When I introduced her to Johnnie, her eyes lit up, and the next time I brought him round, not only was she there but so was her daughter, whom she had deliberately called back from school. Her daughter, Frances, was only fifteen at the time, but after she met Johnnie, she sent him a letter with a pair of shooting stockings she had knitted.
Shortly after that he and I were due to meet at Ascot Racecourse. He was Equerry to the King and I had been invited to stay at Windsor Castle to go to Ascot with the Royal Family. I was, as ever, looking forward to seeing Johnnie and expected the weekend would be marvelous fun.
I had borrowed my mother’s lady’s maid, and when we arrived at Windsor Castle we climbed up and up to a room in the tower. Out of the window the view was of the Long Walk, with the copper horse in the distance. As we unpacked, we laid out my four dresses for each day at the races. They were beautiful. I should have been excited, but as I hadn’t heard from Johnnie, and there was no message from him, I couldn’t settle. All through that first night, I lay awake, listening to the soldiers stomping around under my window, going in and out of the pillboxes, presenting arms.
The next morning, as I had breakfast in bed—the tradition for all of the ladies in royal households—I wondered if Johnnie had arrived and not been able to get a message to me. During the tour of the gardens before lunchtime I was thinking up reasons as to why he hadn’t made contact. Even at lunch with Princess Margaret and the other guests, Johnnie was still nowhere to be seen.
After lunch we drove to the top of the racecourse and got into carriages. Riding in the carriages was wonderful. It was like being in a huge pram, fastened in with a cover. The crowds cheered as they set eyes on the Royal Family and the buzz of the excited crowd had a great impact on the rest of us. We arrived at the Royal Box and it was then I was told that Johnnie would not be joining us because apparently he was ill. I felt a pang of heartache and my mood flattened. Something was wrong.
I spent the day managing to pretend to be as happy as everybody else until we all went back to Windsor in cars for a rest, before going down for drinks and dinner. Queen Elizabeth was such a sparkly person and she really suited the crinoline evening dresses she always wore, and welcomed us in her usual charming way. If only I’d been able to enjoy it. I talked to the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, Billy Wallace, and my Uncle Joe, all of whom were there that evening. When someone happened to mention that they had recently seen Johnnie, who was apparently quite well, I realized that he must be avoiding me. I felt awful. I had to stop myself looking really glum. I did a lot of hard swallowing in a bid not to cry. It was difficult trying to be polite and jolly and enjoy it. I couldn’t. I couldn’t understand what I had done wrong and Johnnie never told me why he had broken off our engagement.
Later, however, I found out that his father, Jack, Earl Spencer, had told him not to marry me because I had Trefusis blood. Trefusis blood was labeled “mad blood” or “bad blood” because the Bowes-Lyon girls (Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret’s cousins), Nerissa and Katherine, had been put in a state asylum and were hardly visited by anyone in the Royal Family to whom they were related through Queen Elizabeth. Although the family connection was extremely convoluted, my maternal grandmother was Marion Trefusis and, however diluted, I suppose no earl or future earl would want to risk their earldom by contaminating it with “mad blood.”
Not only did Johnnie then marry Frances, but their youngest daughter was Lady Diana Spencer, who later became Diana, Princess of Wales.
Johnnie and Frances would famously divorce and, rather unusually, Lady Fermoy testified against her daughter in favor of Johnnie having custody of Diana. Johnnie went on to marry my friend Raine, Countess of Dartmouth, who before their engagement often rang me up asking for advice on how she could get him to commit. I wasn’t sure why she thought I was a good person to ask, considering I had never succeeded myself.
Whether Johnnie and I would have been happy together I don’t know, and will never know, but the whole thing really did affect me. I spent the rest of the summer in a very gloomy mood. I tried to distract myself with the pottery, and my father involved me in the running of the estate, taking me around the tenant farms, but Johnnie and our broken engagement lingered in the back of my mind.
As summer turned to autumn, my father’s friends descended once more on Holkham for the shooting season. Christmas came and went, and all through January my father and the King shot hare on both estates and were busy planning the last weekends of the season, the Tail Enders, when on February 6, 1952, the King died quite suddenly in his sleep at Sandringham. He had had an operation the year before, to remove part of a lung, which was reported at the time to have been a success, so his death was a shock. My father hadn’t realized how ill the King had been and was left devastated. We all were. I was so used to seeing him going off shooting with my father, and he was so young, at fifty-six, which made his death even sadder.
My mother wrote a letter of condolence as soon as she heard the news. Princess Margaret replied, admitting how desperately sad they all were but they took comfort in knowing he had spent the last days of his life doing what he loved best. She ended the letter by describing the February dawn on the day he died, and how she believed the King would have liked it.
Britain descended into mourning: people lined the railway tracks, standing silent and solemn as they watched the funeral train carrying the King’s coffin make its way from Sandringham to London. The mood in Norfolk stayed somber. A distinct silence gathered eerily inside the walls of Holkham. The King had been such a part of Holkham and of Norfolk: there was a feeling that the community had lost one of its own. Our gamekeepers were especially sorrowful.
King George VI lay in state at Westminster Hall. Three hundred thousand people queued to pay their respects to the Sovereign who had picked up the mantle after the abdication of his brother and subsequently led the country through a world war.
My mother, Carey, and I entered the hall to pay our own respects through a side door so we could see my father, who was one of the Scots Guards standing guard on the coffin. I vividly remember that moment: he stood there, head down in respect, holding his bearskin and sword.
On February 15 my parents went to the funeral. I watched it on television and was particularly moved by the sound of Big Ben, which tolled fifty-six times through the gray misty morning, once for each year of the King’s life.
The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II was deliberately delayed. Rationing was still in place and Winston Churchill feared that holding such an expensive spectacle in the midst of a low, post-war economy would threaten the popularity of the monarchy.
Life at Holkham slowly went back to normal but I carried on feeling sorry for myself. Several months went past and my mother got so fed up with me she decided to send me off to America to sell some of the pottery, hoping a change of scene would cheer me up. The idea alone made me feel happier and I was very excited, having been
abroad only once—to the South of France, which I’d loved. I was longing to go on more adventures.
Off I went over the Atlantic, in November 1952, on the Queen Mary with my suitcase of samples. I was traveling steerage because my family didn’t have a lot of money, especially after the war. My parents were not extravagant people and both had a practical approach to travel, so I shared the cabin with four other women. Once we had got onto the high seas, the waves hurled themselves against the ship, so all the others were terribly sick. I had a stronger stomach and, in the end, I went and slept outside in the corridor, which happened to have a sofa.
Luckily my godfather, John Marriott, a friend of my father from the Scots Guards, was traveling in first class and invited me to dine with him each evening. He had married someone extremely rich called Momo Kahn, and her Louis Vuitton luggage was stacked all along the corridor, which became her vast wardrobe. Each evening I would leave the poor vomiting girls and spend the evening with John and Momo, dining at the Veranda Grill, which served copious amounts of caviar—in huge silver buckets. And then back I would go, to third class, bunking in the corridor. It was a portent for my whole life—one minute involved in something very glamorous, the next doing something so far removed that I wondered whether I’d just dreamed about the glamorous moments.
Arriving in New York, I was met by Momo’s sister, Mrs. Ryan, who was friends with my mother and whose daughter Ginny ended up marrying David Airlie, my favorite Ogilvy cousin. Mrs. Ryan was the only person I knew in the whole of the United States, and she lived in a beautiful double penthouse in New York’s Upper East Side, opposite the River Club, in the same block as Greta Garbo, overlooking the Hudson River.
When I told Mrs. Ryan I was taking my samples to Saks, the famous department store, she politely refrained from saying anything. She wasn’t surprised when I came back looking defeated: Saks didn’t let anyone in without an appointment. Holkham and the pottery might have gained a reputation in England, but suddenly I was a little fish in a big pond and was being told by a stern receptionist that there were no appointments for six months. Mrs. Ryan, who was a frequent shopper at Saks, made a quick phone call and straightaway I had an appointment for the next day. To my delight, they bought some of the pottery and off I went to more places, helped by more phone calls from Mrs. Ryan. The most popular items turned out to be the Toby jugs of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh and the piggy banks. There’s no accounting for taste.
Mrs. Ryan introduced me to her whole circle and soon I was under the wing of her friend Mrs. Carlson. Before long I was being whirled up by American society and taken on the Super Chief train where at Albuquerque, Indians got on to sell their turquoise jewelry, and to Los Angeles, where I was met by C. J. Latta, the head of Warner Brothers in London, another Christian Scientist, who introduced me to film stars in Hollywood, including Bob Hope, David Niven, Bette Davis, and Danny Kaye. I went on to New Orleans, to Mardi Gras where I danced with the city fathers, enjoying myself. There was a real sense of discovery and adventure. I ended up going all over the States on cheap and efficient Greyhound buses—from Florida to Kentucky and back to New York. The experience made me want to travel more and opened up my naïve outlook on life.
One morning in February 1953, after another late night of dancing, I was sitting at the breakfast table, rather bleary-eyed, with Mrs. Ryan and some other guests when the maid came in and handed me a telegram. My first thought was that something bad had happened at home but to my astonishment the telegram read: ANNE YOU MUST COME HOME STOP YOU’VE BEEN ASKED TO BE A MAID OF HONOR AT THE QUEEN’S CORONATION STOP.
Everybody was so excited, and the telegram was handed around the table and read eagerly by all. I was delighted, although it soon became clear I would have to deal with the daunting consequence of being the center of attention. The news traveled fast—Mrs. Ryan was thrilled and showed me off. The American press soon got wind of it, triggering another wave of excitement. Suddenly I found everybody was treating me like royalty, asking me to show them how to curtsy and wave like the Queen. At one of the last few balls I went to, a makeshift throne was presented to me. It was very embarrassing, as were the articles in the local newspapers, accompanied by photographs of me looking like a deer in headlights—the Washington Post wrote an article with the headline “Girl With Pedigree Can Be Pretty Too.”
It was another irony: one minute I was crammed on to a Greyhound bus, the next I was being summoned home for months of rehearsals in preparation for taking part in Britain’s most significant ceremony for a generation.
Although I was sad my trip was being cut short, I was absolutely thrilled to be chosen. So many people in my family had been Equerries and Ladies in Waiting throughout the centuries, and now I had been given a role. I felt immeasurably lucky: there I was being selected, all because I just happened to be just the right height and size, as well as being an unmarried daughter of an earl, a duke, or a marquess—the criteria for being chosen. It’s funny how in the end I found the silver lining in not marrying Johnnie.
Poor Carey was desperately envious, as were many families we knew, especially considering my mother and I would both be part of the procession: my mother had been asked by the Queen to become a Lady of the Bedchamber—a high-ranking Lady in Waiting.
One consequence of the news was that suddenly I was selling a huge amount of pottery, especially the Toby jugs. Everyone went mad for them. When my mother met me off the Queen Mary at Southampton, I was greeted by a throng of journalists and photographers and there I was, waving my order book, far more excited about my pottery sales than my Maid of Honor status. Stepping off the ship into a frenzy of interviews, I was thrust into the limelight.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Coronation
IN MAY MY mother and I moved to London, staying with Ga, so we could attend the twelve rehearsals during the second half of May, held in Westminster Abbey. While Carey was rather glum, my father was extremely proud and waved us off with great enthusiasm.
I was to be one of six Maids of Honor and I knew a few of the others very well: Rosie Spencer-Churchill was engaged to my mother’s first cousin; Mary Baillie-Hamilton’s parents, the Earl and Countess of Haddington, were great friends of my parents; and Jane Vane-Tempest-Stewart, I knew best of all: not only was my Aunt Silvia married to her uncle, but Jane’s sister, Annabel, was Carey’s best friend. They were such good friends that when Jane and Annabel’s mother had become ill, my mother organized a joint coming-out dance for Carey and Annabel at Londonderry House in London. Not that Carey and Annabel were there for much of it themselves: when the Duke of Gloucester asked to be introduced to them at the dance, my mother realized to her horror that my wayward sister and her friend had sneaked off to a nightclub. I wouldn’t have dared even to contemplate doing that, but Carey was always rather naughty.
I had never met the remaining two Maids of Honor, Jane Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby and Moyra Hamilton, and it took some time to get to know them because the rehearsals, conducted by the Duke of Norfolk—to which we came dressed in black suits, hats, and gloves like our mothers—were formal affairs so there wasn’t time for chatting.
As hereditary Earl Marshal, the Duke of Norfolk had already been in charge of organizing the Coronation of King George VI, and while he was experienced, he left nothing to chance. He had ninety-four diagrams, each depicting different parts of the ceremony in which every minute was worked out, and every movement within each minute prescribed. He even had the foresight to work out that his bald head would need to be powdered a few times on the day itself, due to the aerial shots the television cameras would take. There were so many facets to arrange and get right that a great many people were involved in these rehearsals, including Richard Dimbleby, the BBC commentator who would be broadcasting live to the nation. He was so committed, in the direct run-up, that he moved out of his house and into his boat that he docked at Westminster Pier so he was as near to the Abbey as possible.
Our role as Maid
s of Honor was to carry the Queen’s twenty-one-foot purple velvet, ermine-trimmed train in the procession, during which the six of us would walk directly behind the Queen. The Mistress of the Robes, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, would come behind us, followed by the Groom of the Robes, then the two Ladies of the Bedchamber—my mother and the Countess of Euston—and behind them, the four Women in Waiting. My mother’s role was largely ceremonial but the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire had an active role because, as Mistress of the Robes, it was her job to assist the 5th Marquess of Cholmondeley, the Lord Great Chamberlain, who helped with the Queen’s costume changes.
The Marquess of Cholmondeley was the most handsome man and he seemed very proud of his looks—he always sat bolt upright with his head slightly to one side. The trouble was, he was simply terrible at doing up hooks and eyes, probably never having to dress himself, let alone anybody else. As the Duke of Norfolk repeatedly showed him what to do, the attempts only resulted in yet more fiddling, and the Duke becoming ever more exasperated. In the end, the Duke of Norfolk ordered the hooks and eyes to be changed to snaps.
After the Coronation, I asked the Queen whether he had done up the back of the dress all right, and she said it was tiresome because every time he did up a snap he pushed her rather violently.
It was as though my traveling-salesman days had never happened: instead of unwrapping pottery on the floor of shops all across America, I was being instructed on how to walk, how to stand, how to hold the train, and how to move with the Queen and lay it out behind her throughout the ceremony. The Queen took part in dozens of rehearsals but, needing to practice all sorts of different aspects of the day, she took part in only one of the final rehearsals with us. In her absence, we walked behind the Duchess of Norfolk. Prince Charles later told me how he had gone into her study and seen her at her desk, with the crown on her head. When he asked what she was doing, she explained that the crown was very heavy, and she wanted to get used to wearing it.
Lady in Waiting Page 5