The Queen Mother

by William Shawcross

  Dearest Bertie,

  I was delighted to get your letter this morning, & to know that you appreciate that I have given you that fine old title of Duke of York which I bore for more than 9 years & is the oldest Dukedom in this country. I know that you behaved very well, in a difficult situation for a young man & that you have done what I asked you to do. I feel that this splendid old title will be safe in your hands & that you will never do anything which could in any way tarnish it. I hope that you will always look upon me as yr. best friend & always tell me everything & you will find me ever ready to help you & give you good advice.

  Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.

  Ever my dear boy,

  Yr. very devoted Papa42

  The Prince had written to his father the day before, saying that he was proud to be duke of York and hoped that he would live up to the title. He added, ‘I can tell you that I fulfilled your conditions to the letter, and that nothing more will come of it.’43 However, Prince Albert was not entirely happy. He had not been looking forward to June and July, he wrote to his brother; he would be spied upon at dances by people longing to carry gossip back to his parents. He was not going to give them any chances; but ‘Oh! if only one could live one’s own life occasionally.’ He added incredulously, ‘You wouldn’t think it possible but Mama actually talked about marriage to me the other day!!!!!!!’44

  With the dukedom came an independent household for the Prince. Louis Greig became his comptroller; James Stuart, who had been with his army unit in Brussels in November 1918 when Prince Albert had been on an official visit there, and had helped entertain him, was appointed his equerry.

  *

  MEANWHILE, FOR Elizabeth the end of the war had brought more suitors. Among the proposals of marriage she received were yet more from Commonwealth soldiers who had stayed at Glamis. She sometimes found it hard to compose letters of rejection and asked Beryl for help with one which had to be sent ‘thousands of miles’.45 She had become friendly with a Captain Glass in 1918; in March 1920, however, to her consternation he asked her to marry him. ‘Awful thing happened on Thursday!’ she told Beryl. ‘C … n G … s proposed to me!! Oh Gosh, I couldn’t help it, wasn’t it awful?’46 He continued to write to her, but she was unmoved. ‘My dearest old egg,’ she remarked to Beryl, ‘it never had the slightest tinge of Romance about it at all, at any time, I hated it all!’47 She had to grow accustomed to deflecting suitors. ‘People were rather inclined to propose to you in those days,’ she recalled many years later. ‘You know, it was rather the sort of thing, I suppose. And you said “No thank you”, or whatever it was.’ As for the rejected suitor, she said, he would often reply, ‘Oh, I thought you wouldn’t,’ so she felt ‘it was all very nice and light-hearted.’48

  Among the young men who constantly sought her attention several stood out. One was Prince Paul of Serbia.* The Prince, born in St Petersburg in 1893, had had a rather miserable childhood, abandoned by his parents. His Oxford career, reading Greats at Christ Church, was happy but interrupted by the war. He became a popular member of young London society, and a close friend of Elizabeth’s brother Michael. He praised Elizabeth’s prettiness ‘with her shining, lively eyes and beautiful smile’.49 Many thought he was keen to marry her.

  Prince Paul and Michael Bowes Lyon shared a flat in London with Lord Gage,† whose family had long lived in a beautiful house, Firle Place, on the South Downs near Lewes in Sussex. A slightly dour man whose nickname was Grubby, George Gage had great hopes for his friendship with Elizabeth. Their mutual friend the diarist Chips Channon‡ later noted, ‘Poor Gage is desperately fond of her – in vain, for he is far too heavy, too Tudor and squirearchal for so rare and patrician a creature as Elizabeth.’50

  There was also Bruce Ogilvy, son of Lord and Lady Airlie and Elizabeth’s neighbour at Glamis. He was an amusing companion, ‘very “norty” ’, as she described him; but she dismissed him, along with Captain Glass, as ‘silly nice fools’, in comparison with real friends like Charles Settrington.51 A more dependable, older friend was Arthur Penn,* a charming, witty and kindly man who had been her brother Jock’s contemporary at Eton; Elizabeth had met him during the war and had found him entrancing. Penn had fought heroically, winning both the Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre.

  The suitor who came closest to winning her hand, however, was James Stuart. Born in Edinburgh in 1897, Stuart was still at Eton when war began; he immediately joined the Royal Scots, despite being under age. He trained with Michael Bowes Lyon and they became lifelong friends. Stuart fought with great courage during the war and was awarded the Military Cross and bar. His heroism added lustre to his enormous personal charm. There were those who said that the war had induced a depression in him, as in many other young men. But he was very attractive to women.

  James Stuart had been one of the guests at that first post-war house party at Glamis in September 1919, when Elizabeth had been grieving over the death of Charles Settrington. He was engaged to Evelyn Louise Finlayson but broke off the engagement in the second half of 1920, and around that time became romantically involved with one of Elizabeth’s friends, Mollie Lascelles.† It is not clear when Elizabeth was first drawn to him, or he to her, but her letters to Beryl Poignand contain only passing references to him until the end of 1920.

  The London season of 1920 was filled with events and dances galore. For Elizabeth, it was sadly interrupted when she and her family had to move out of their home in St James’s Square‡ in mid-June, into a rented house in Eaton Square, a neighbourhood she disliked.52 (Later the family moved permanently to Bruton Street in Mayfair.) Soon after the move to Eaton Square, she went to Ascot and Henley, and then to the RAF ball at which, it seems, Prince Albert lost his heart to her.

  Nine days later, on 17 July, the Prince went to Bisham, on the Thames near Henley, to spend the weekend in a house party given by Lady Nina Balfour.* It was probably there that he had his next meeting with Elizabeth. Her friend Helen Cecil later wrote, ‘Apparently when they were all at Lady Nina’s he held Elizabeth’s hand under Nina’s very nose in the famous electric launch. Elizabeth says it was quite worth it just to see Nina’s face.’53 For Elizabeth it was perhaps no more than an amusing game; for Prince Albert it probably meant more. However, three days afterwards he was still writing wistfully to the Prince of Wales about Sheila Loughborough, and reproaching his brother for advising him, as Queen Mary had, to marry and settle down. ‘I haven’t thought about that yet,’ he protested. But he seemed to view the prospect of Sheila’s coming departure for Australia with equanimity.54

  *

  AS USUAL, the Strathmores took the night train to Glamis in early August 1920, and soon guests began to arrive for a succession of house parties. In early September Elizabeth and her brothers Michael and David, the only unmarried members of the family, welcomed a particularly large group of their friends for the annual Forfar County Ball on the 8th. Her dance card for the ball is preserved in the Glamis Archives. She danced with many admirers, Prince Paul, Lord Gage, James Stuart and Victor Cochrane-Baillie. The ball was only half of the fun. A house party at Glamis was always exhilarating, an informal, ever moving tableau with a panoply of entertainments – tennis, cricket, shooting, walking and, in the evenings, dressing up, charades, dancing, cards and singing around the piano.

  In all this gaiety Elizabeth was the carefree and enchanting centre. One of her admirers, Lord Gorell, recalled to another biographer, Elizabeth Longford, ‘I was madly in love with her. Everything at Glamis was beautiful, perfect. Being there was like living in a Van Dyck picture. Time, and the gossiping, junketing world, stood still … But the magic gripped us all. I fell madly in love. They all did.’55

  At the end of the week Elizabeth reported to Beryl that she was completely exhausted by it all. ‘We dressed up & ragged about, & now that the hard tennis court is finished, we played all day.’ But at one point the fun and games had got a little out of hand. ‘The most awful thing happened. Victor propose
d to me the night we all dressed up! He looked too awful with great black smudges all over his face! I did hate it! Don’t tell anybody. Still a few people here, must fly and dress for dinner.’ As a PS, Elizabeth wrote across the top of the page: ‘Prince Albert is coming to stay here on Saturday. Ghastly!’56

  The Prince had invited himself, from Balmoral, where he and Princess Mary were staying with their parents in gloomy isolation, with none but elderly guests and familiar royal cousins for company. It is unlikely that he had yet confided in the King and Queen about his interest in Elizabeth; but the idea of going to Glamis may have occurred to him because Princess Mary had been invited by Mabell, Countess of Airlie, to stay with her at Airlie Castle, only a few miles away.*

  Elizabeth was nervous and asked as many friends and members of her family as possible for assistance. Helen Cecil wrote to her mother from Glamis, ‘Elizabeth is here & a perfect angel as usual … They have the Duke of York coming here & Elizabeth specially asked me to stay & help with him.’57 Helen was by this time engaged to Captain Alexander Hardinge, who had recently been appointed assistant private secretary to the King. He was at Balmoral, and exchanged frequent letters with his fiancée. Quite unaware of Prince Albert’s feelings, Hardinge was ‘green with envy’ that he was off to Glamis. ‘Oh the lucky brute – and it means so little to him – and all the world to me, and I cannot go.’ Worse still, James Stuart would be accompanying the Prince. ‘You won’t let James cut me out, will you, Helen!’ Hardinge wrote. ‘He is so attractive that there would be every justification for it.’58

  Other friends there to help Elizabeth included Katie Hamilton, Diamond Hardinge,* Doris Gordon-Lennox and James Stuart’s elder brother Lord Doune. Helen’s letters give a lively picture of the atmosphere at Glamis before the Prince arrived. ‘Elizabeth is playing “Oh Hell” on the piano on purpose for me & Diamond is singing it which is most distracting! … It is very nice being here & Elizabeth is the greatest darling.’59 The morning of the Prince’s arrival she wrote, ‘There is a fearful fuss over tonight & the weekend in general. We are to have reels & all sorts of strange wild things tonight which will be awful.’60

  The guests were a little on edge when the Prince arrived to stay and Princess Mary came with Lady Airlie for dinner. ‘Everybody made awful floaters that night, it became simply comic in the end,’ Helen wrote; but after dinner they danced reels boisterously, with the dowagers giving the lead: ‘Lady Airlie & Mrs James† having sliding races up and down the extremely slippery floor was quite a good sight too!’ Afterwards Doris and Katie courted disaster by doing ‘a marvellous imitation’ of the royal visitors ‘when P.A. came round the screen & nobody could warn them that they were rushing on their fate!’61

  At breakfast the next morning only Helen arrived on time; she did her part in helping entertain the Prince ‘mostly by singing hymn choruses in a high falsetto which made him laugh’.62 There was tennis, and in the afternoon a service in the family chapel for which Princess Mary came over again from Airlie. Here Elizabeth takes up the tale in a letter to Beryl: ‘Afterwards I showed her & the Duke [of York] the castle, & terrified them with ghost stories! We also played ridiculous games of hide & seek, they really are babies! She didn’t leave till 6.30, & then we all played General Post, & Flags etc till dinner time – I had played tennis all the morning, so you can imagine how tired I was!! … Poor P. Mary really did enjoy herself – she is most awfully nice.’63 At one point during the games Helen had hoped to slip away and write to Alec Hardinge, but ‘Elizabeth’s signals of distress’ at being left alone with her royal visitors were so obvious that she felt she had to stay.64

  After dinner they sang noisily all evening ‘& it was all quite fun’, Elizabeth recorded.65 According to Helen the repertoire included ‘the most appalling songs’ and Prince Albert joined in ‘with more gusto than any of them’. At midnight Elizabeth and her girl friends slipped upstairs and made apple-pie beds for her brother David and for James Stuart, to whom they had just said a mocking goodnight, dropping him ‘a deep curtsey, in a row like the chorus’. Helen teased her fiancé by writing to him that Stuart was indeed ‘quite delightful … I wonder he isn’t spoilt with all the women making such fools of themselves over his good looks.’66

  On the last day of Prince Albert’s stay the whole party went out for a walk after breakfast. ‘Elizabeth & Prince A. were allowed to go on miles ahead which agitated the former rather but we thought ourselves awfully tactful!’ Helen reported. The rest of the party chased each other about, the girls hiding and the men pelting them with mud to avenge the apple-pie beds.67 Later Helen wrote to Elizabeth, ‘Do tell me any particularly odious things that the Duke of Y. said about me when you betook yourselves to the garden. It would be such a waste if after my efforts to please him by leaving him in peace with you I didn’t hear his remarks!! I’m sure he’s grateful about that anyway tho’ I’m not so certain about you! I trust you will forgive me, sweet love, because you are such an angel.’68

  The Prince would have agreed with that. He was enchanted by it all. The contrast between the formality of his own family life and the relaxed joy of Glamis whirling around Elizabeth was intoxicating. The happy relationships between the Strathmores and their children and the affectionate teasing between Elizabeth and her brothers and sisters were pure delight. The weekend seems to have convinced him that Elizabeth Bowes Lyon was the woman for him.

  After her guests had left, Elizabeth wrote to Beryl that she was in bed with a cold and ‘utterly exhausted after 3 weeks of entertaining people!’ Prince Albert’s visit had ‘kept us pretty busy! He was very nice, tho’, & very much improved in every way.’69 The Prince wrote to thank Lady Strathmore for his stay at Glamis: ‘I did enjoy my time there so much, & I only wish I could have stayed there longer, I hope you will forgive me for the very abrupt way in which I proposed myself.’70 This was echoed by James Stuart, who wrote, ‘Prince Albert really did enjoy it, I know and in no other house in the United Kingdom could it have been done so well, or anywhere near it. It was perfect. Princess Mary also has talked of nothing else but her visit. I need hardly add how much I enjoyed myself also: one could not do otherwise at Glamis.’71 Elizabeth’s friends too wrote her letters overflowing with thanks and praise. ‘The moment I set foot in your house I feel a different person,’ wrote Doris; Helen told Elizabeth she was ‘just the most perfect person that ever was’; she and Diamond were driving the Hardinge family to distraction ‘both talking at once & all about Elizabeth & Glamis!’72 Women as much as men adored Elizabeth.

  She was by now, it seems from Helen’s comments, uncomfortably aware of the Prince’s interest in her, but she did not yet mention it to Beryl. Meanwhile her autumn continued much as before, with friends to stay at Glamis, and house parties elsewhere. And she was seeing more of James Stuart. He came back to Glamis on 2 October for a week to shoot, and a few days later she drove with him to Ballathie House on the River Tay near Perth, where Doris Gordon-Lennox was staying in a house party with her sister Amy’s parents-in-law, Sir Stuart and Lady Coats. Doris wrote to her afterwards that the whole family adored seeing her, and she tried to put her mind at rest about her arrival alone with James Stuart – a rather risqué thing for a young woman to do. ‘Of course we didn’t think anything of you & James coming! No one thought it a bit funny. I think everyone here now realises how fashionable it is to tour round Perthshire & Forfarshire with “Les frères Stuart” & I assure you it was quite alright. I do so understand it – it is such a joy to have real friends like that.’ She ended by saying, ‘I wish I could thank you for your saintliness to me – perhaps one day I’ll have an opportunity – until then I can only attempt to tell you how I’ve adored the last two months – thanks chiefly to you.’73

  In November, back in London, Elizabeth sent a cryptic note to Beryl which indicates that Prince Albert came to call on her when she had been expecting to see Beryl. She asked why Beryl had not come, adding: ‘As a matter of fact our Bert stayed till 7, tal
king 100 to 20, or even 200 to a dozen. I am just off to a smart dance, & I know I shan’t know a soul, & will be miserable. I must see you some time – when on earth can it be? I do wish he hadn’t come this evening, but I simply couldn’t stop him, & I am longing to see you.’74

  She and Beryl did get together, and had a long talk, catching up on all that had happened. Writing to her friend afterwards, she had an urgent request:

  Don’t say one word about what I told you please, as that sort of thing is too awful if it gets about, & would make things very uncomfortable – so do keep it strictly to yourself – it is very important. You are the only person I have told about it except Katie, so you will be discreet I know. I thank thee. Not even your Mother. Au revoir – are you jazzing this week?75

  One can but conclude that the Prince had begun to pay court to her in earnest, and that it worried her. At about this time she and the Prince began to correspond: her first surviving letter to him was written on 13 December 1920, in answer to one from him (which does not survive). She had been invited to a dinner which was to be given for him on 15 December, the day after his twenty-fifth birthday, by a well-known society hostess. She wrote:

  Dear Prince Albert,

  Thank you so much for your letter. I am looking forward very much to Mrs Ronnie Greville’s party – though the very thought of it terrifies me! I haven’t been to a proper dinner party for months and months, and have quite forgotten how to behave! I expect it will be great fun though. Have you been very gay? Dancing every night I expect. Only a short note, as Wednesday is so soon.

  I am, Sir, Yours sincerely

  Elizabeth Lyon76

  In the event she enjoyed Mrs Greville’s party,* as she told him in her next letter, written from St Paul’s Walden. Prince Albert sent her a a little box for Christmas, for which she thanked him ‘a thousand times’. Her mother was unwell and she did not expect to go to another dance for months – ‘I lead such a deadly existence here, that there is simply nothing to tell you – oh except that I have just fallen into a pond!’77