But over the next few days a brief escape into the company of her own family and friends brought relief. With ‘les ftères Stuart’, James and Francis, and her brother Mike, she drove to Oxford to see David, stopping in Henley for a cherry brandy. After lunch and a walk at Magdalen, she drove for some of the way home; they stopped at Maidenhead and took tea at Skindles Hotel on the Thames – ‘lovely day’. That evening, however, she wrote in her diary, ‘Leef rehtar desserped.’ It was, perhaps, the painful recognition that she would soon have to put such carefree days behind her.55 That weekend was easier, because she and her fiancé could be with her parents at St Paul’s Walden. They relaxed. After he left her to return to London alone on Sunday 11 February, the Prince wrote to say, ‘I loved the weekend with you & hated leaving you this evening, just a month tonight isn’t it darling when you told me you loved me. What a day that was for me!!! & for you too.’56
Her time was filled now. She sat for the portraitist John Singer Sargent so that he could sketch her in charcoal, for Prince Paul’s wedding present to them;* she was also sitting to L. F. Roslyn† for a bust. She visited White Lodge (or ‘Whiters’ as she called it) again, with ‘about twelve architects, plumbers etc’. She was taken to meet members of the wider Royal Family. On 17 February she and her mother went to ‘Buck House’ (another nickname she had begun to use) where, in a gesture symbolic of the importance of precedent in the world Elizabeth was about to enter, Queen Mary gave her ‘some wonderful lace, in the same room that Queen Victoria gave her presents in’. She went to Thomas Goode’s, one of London’s best glass and porcelain shops, with the Duke to choose glass, and to Zyrot, a fashionable milliner, to choose hats: ‘Such fun! Also country suits!’ She saw her doctor for further attention to her throat. Then there were constant visitors to be entertained – and all the time there was the problem of more photographers, more crowds. Thus on 23 February she recorded in her diary that ‘a horrible photographer’ had been lying in wait for her when she went for a sitting to Mabel Hankey, the miniaturist.‡ ‘So a crowd collected. Such a nuisance.’57
Everyone wanted to meet her, or to reaffirm acquaintanceship. But although she continued to see her friends, she was already expected to take part in some of the formal life of the Royal Family. On 21 February Elizabeth’s name appeared for the first time in the Court Circular as a member of the royal party at a public event, when the King and Queen took her and the Duke to the Shire Horse Society’s annual show at the Royal Agricultural Hall in Islington. On Monday 5 March, at Buckingham Palace, she had her first experience of a royal ritual, standing with the Duke beside the King and Queen while ‘privileged bodies’ read addresses of congratulation on their engagement. This was the custom by which certain institutions, for example Oxford and Cambridge Universities, the Corporations of London and Edinburgh, the Church of England and the Free Churches, traditionally present loyal addresses to the sovereign in person. ‘Some very funny,’ she remarked.58
A week later she and Lady Strathmore took the night train to Scotland. ‘I love Glamis,’ she wrote to the Duke. ‘When I arrived this morning the sun was just rising over the Sidlaw hills, and made the snow on the Grampians look pink & heavenly. It was wonderful to be able to see about twenty miles instead of down one London street! It would be more delicious if you were here too – I hate to think of you in horrible London all by yourself.’59 This letter caught the night mail and was with him the next morning at Buckingham Palace. He replied at once to say how much it had cheered him up. He hoped she was getting a rest – there would not be much chance before the wedding. ‘Why couldn’t we be married first and do all this work afterwards?’60
The difficulties they faced in arranging their future home to their own satisfaction preoccupied them both. The Duke was irked by Queen Mary’s insistence on keeping control of changes at White Lodge. He praised his fiancée’s constant cheerfulness and said his own patience had been ‘tried very high on one or two occasions don’t you think? All I want is that you should have what you want & that you should get the benefit & pleasure of going round & finding them for yourself & not having things thrust at you by other people.’61 Elizabeth tried to soothe and reassure him – as she would throughout their marriage. ‘Don’t worry about White Lodge and furniture. I am quite certain we shall make it enchanting – you and I; so please don’t fuss yourself, little darling. You are such an angel to me always, and I hate to think of you worrying about anything. “Keep calm and don’t be bullied – rest if you can” is my advice!!’62
Several busy days followed, looking for furniture, discussing the wedding cake, to be baked by McVitie and Price in Edinburgh, even attending a rugger match with the Duke. Everywhere, she made a good impression. The Duke’s papers include a letter from Jock Smith of the Scottish Football Union to Louis Greig in which he remarks that ‘HRH is d—d lucky in his choice & the couple have made a most astonishing impression on our hard-headed, hard-hearted people.’63
A crowd saw them off on the night train to London. Next day the Duke took her to both lunch and tea with his family. Everything was very formal – Elizabeth’s diary and, to a lesser extent, her letters suggest that she already well understood the constraints under which the Royal Family lived. Inevitably there were times when she found the new pomp and new circumstances of her life difficult and daunting. By 21 March she was feeling tired and depressed by the way in which her life was being circumscribed. The Duke came to dinner and she had a ‘long talk to him about interference etc’.64 In the morning she ‘dashed off’ to see Lady Airlie, lunched at the Palace and chose her bridesmaids’ dresses; she had decided on the design for her wedding dress at Madame Handley Seymour’s a few days earlier. Next day a series of rather formal presentations – ‘very pompous,’65 she declared in her diary – to the betrothed couple began at Buckingham Palace: silver dishes from the City of London, more from the Army Ordnance Corps. But there were moments alone with the Duke or members of her family that were fun, high spirited and to be treasured. One weekend at St Paul’s Walden Bury, ‘Mike, Bertie and I made a bonfire & baked potatoes. Marvellous day, sat & watched it.’66
More sittings, more fittings, more presents. On 28 March she and the Duke ‘ordered the wedding ring, bought a gramophone and a dressing table’. That evening Chips Channon came for cocktails and then she and the Duke and some of her siblings had a ‘very merry’ evening dancing at the Savoy.67 More humdrum matters brought them back to earth. They debated how much should be spent on their new linen. Mrs Greville had apparently offered to buy it, or at least to contribute towards it. They had been advised that it would cost £1,500, but Elizabeth thought this excessive. ‘Whoever is buying it for us must remember that we are not millionaires (what ho!) and don’t you think £1,000 ought to do it?’68
Meanwhile, the letters kept flooding in, among them another mournful missive from Archie Clark Kerr in Cairo,69 and more cheerful ones from many of the soldiers who had known her at Glamis. Gordon George wrote that as a New Zealander he rejoiced ‘that your charm and goodness and delightfulness are to shine where the whole Empire will get the good of you’. It was four years since he had been recuperating at Glamis ‘but I have always gratefully remembered how kind to me you were when I was often perplexed and disturbed: and how you won us all, as an angel that moved among us, to love you with an enthusiastic, distant, revering love’. He sent her as a present Spenser’s Wedding Songs.70
Easter was early that year and at the end of March they had to separate – the Duke to Windsor and she home to St Paul’s Walden. He wrote to her from the Castle: ‘How I hated leaving you today after lunch with the thought of not seeing you my darling till next Wednesday morning … Only 4 more weeks darling, & then we can take a rest away from everybody & everything. I wonder how you are looking forward to that time. I know I am very much indeed & I do hope you are too, I know it is all going to be so marvellous darling for us, don’t you think?’71 A letter came from her: ‘Bertie my darling, I haven’t
got anything special to say, but am just writing this note, in case nobody else writes to you!!’72 On Easter Saturday she wrote again and said she had read in the paper that he had walked from the Castle to Frogmore.* ‘Having never seen Frogmore, I imagine it as a large white Tomb full of frogs! I can’t think why, but that is the impression it gives me – isn’t it silly?’ She informed him that he had ‘a most changeable face. It is too odd. Sometimes you look a completely different person, always nice though, but I must not flatter you because then your head will swell, & you will have to buy new hats.’ She wished he had a small aeroplane so that he could fly over to see her for an hour or two.73
Instead the Duke spent the Easter weekend at Windsor, riding, playing squash with the Prince of Wales and golf with all three of his brothers, but always feeling constrained by the precise timetables laid down by his father. By Sunday he was keen to break away. He would rather they spent the next weekend at her home, ‘where there are no fusses or worries’, he told his fiancée, ‘as here there is no rest & the day is so marked out into minutes for this thing & the other, which is always such a bore, & we never get any real peace’. At Windsor everything was orders – ‘Life is not as easy as it should be but the change is coming & you my little darling I hope are going to help me with this change. You must take them in hand & teach them how they should do these things.’74 He knew how much the Royal Family would benefit from her gaiety and spontaneity.
On 4 April, at Buckingham Palace, she had to make her first speech in her new role. ‘The Pattenmakers presented me with a chest full of rubber footwear, & I read a speech back,’ she recorded in her diary.75 She worried about it for days and rehearsed it endlessly, telling the Duke that if she failed, he would have to step in. She did not fail, but it was perhaps a relief, after receiving this bounty of gumboots and galoshes, that she was able to escape to Pinet in Bond Street and buy shoes. That afternoon she and the Duke, along with Louis Greig, motored to Windsor, stopping for tea with Mrs Greig on the way. After dinner at the Castle, the Royal Family and Household crossed the river to Eton to listen to a gala performance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah.76
For the next two days Elizabeth had her first taste of the ordered life of the Royal Family at Windsor Castle. In fact her diary conveys a surprising informality, and none of the rigidity of which the Duke complained. She chatted with the Prince of Wales while the Duke went out riding; the King showed her his room and played gramophone records for her; the Queen gave her a tour of the Castle; Sir John Fortescue, the Librarian, took her and the Duke to see the treasures of the Royal Library. Queen Alexandra came to lunch and gave her a pearl and amethyst chain. And at dinner Elizabeth had an amusing neighbour: Dick Molyneux,* a member of the King’s Household with a distinguished military past and a lively sense of humour who was to become a particular friend to her at Court.
On Saturday, to the regret of the King and Queen, they left for London (where they opened more presents) and then drove on to the haven of St Paul’s Walden. There indeed they relaxed – after tea she and the Duke made a bonfire and then ‘sat & drank a cocktail & ragged about’; after dinner they played the ‘grammy’.77
The weeks and then the days before the wedding became more and more crowded. Elizabeth tried to find time for herself at home in Bruton Street in the afternoons. On Tuesday 10 April she dressed in one of her new Handley Seymour outfits: a loose-fitting brown coat edged with fur and an elaborately trimmed cloche hat, and went with the Duke to Goodwood for Doris’s wedding to Clare Vyner at Chichester Cathedral. Next day, at Buckingham Palace, she and the Duke received deputations bringing them loyal addresses and wedding presents, and she was created a Lady of Grace of the Order of St John of Jerusalem. That afternoon she went with her mother to Catchpole and Williams to have strung the two rows of pearls her father had given her. ‘Then to Handley S. to try on my wedding dress. Rather nice I hope.’78
Next day, after choosing chintzes for White Lodge with her mother and being photographed by Hoppe for the Graphic magazine,79 she wrote an affectionate letter to D’Arcy Osborne thanking him for the two ‘divinely bound’ books of poetry he had sent her; infinitely more pleasurable, she said, than ‘eight ropes of pearls from a new oil Lord … I wish you would come in one evening if you can, & drink a cocktail & exchange a few ideas on MAGIC and POLITICS and SPIRITUALISM and RELIGION, and GEORGE ROBEY and AMERICANS and all the terribly interesting things in this world.’80
After her marriage, when Osborne asked her how he should address her, she replied in a manner which typified her spirit: ‘I really don’t know! It might be anything – you might try “All Hail Duchess”, that is an Alice in Wonderland sort of Duchess, or just “Greetings” or “What Ho, Duchess” or “Say, Dutch” – in fact you can please yourself, as it will certainly please me.’81 In fact there had been much public speculation about what she would be called after her marriage. The Press Association reported that ‘The future style and title of the bride is a matter for the King’s decision. Recent times supply no precedent … but the Press Association believes that Lady Elizabeth will share her husband’s rank and precedence, but until the King’s wishes are known, no official information is available.’82
As to what the King’s decision should be, there was lively discussion between Lord Stamfordham, his Private Secretary, and the Home Office. Stamfordham asked if she would become ipso facto HRH the Duchess of York. And how should she sign her name? He presumed she would not be a princess. So she could not sign simply ‘Elizabeth’ as Princess Mary signed herself ‘Mary’. Presumably she should use ‘Elizabeth of York’. The Home Secretary disagreed with the Private Secretary and said that Lady Elizabeth would indeed acquire the status of princess on marriage, though she would style herself Duchess of York; she should certainly sign herself ‘Elizabeth’. Lord Stamfordham acquiesced.83 After the marriage an official announcement was issued that ‘in accordance with the settled general rule that a wife takes the status of her husband Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon on her marriage has become Her Royal Highness the Duchess of York with the status of a Princess.’
Stamfordham’s initial attitude amounted almost to treating the marriage as morganatic, which seems curious in a country where such an alliance was an alien concept.* But he, like everyone else, was feeling his way in a situation with few helpful precedents. As has already been mentioned, the King and Queen had decided as early as 1917 that their children should be allowed to marry into British families. Princess Mary’s marriage to Lord Lascelles had helped accustom the public to this idea, although it was nothing new as far as princesses were concerned: Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter and King Edward VII’s eldest daughter had both married compatriots and commoners.† But princes were different: no sovereign’s son had married – at least not publicly and with official sanction – into a non-royal family since an earlier Duke of York, the future King James II, had married Lady Anne Hyde in 1660.‡ Now the effect of King George V’s decision was to be demonstrated for the first time by one of his sons.
The novelty and the quandaries were not only on the bridegroom’s side. The Strathmores too were entering uncharted territory: there were no guidelines for marrying a daughter into the Royal Family, and they were soon to discover that the traditional roles of the respective parents in arranging a wedding would be reversed. At first Lord and Lady Strathmore evidently expected to play the part of the bride’s parents in entertaining the wedding guests. They assured Gunters, the bakers, that they would receive the order for the cake and refreshments if these were to be provided by Lord Strathmore.84 They told the Queen that they would rent a large house in London ‘in order to entertain and do the usual things inseparable from a wedding’. But, as the Lord Chamberlain recorded, ‘this idea was of course put aside, as The King and Queen decided that a Royal Wedding should follow its usual course.’85 This meant that the responsibility – and expense – of entertaining fell on the King and, perhaps to the relief of the bride’s parents, the Lord Chamberlai
n’s Office took control of all the arrangements, merely consulting Lady Strathmore on the guest lists and the seating plan in Westminster Abbey.
The numbers involved were so great that it was decided to hold parties at Buckingham Palace on the three days before the wedding for those who could not be fitted into the Abbey: an evening party on Monday 23 April, an afternoon party for servants the next day, and another afternoon party on the eve of the wedding. Lady Strath-more was in constant touch with the Palace about her guest list, at the last minute asking despairingly for more Lyon cousins to be invited. ‘Presents are pouring in, & I am at a loss what to do!’86 She was also concerned that the Strathmore servants and local farmers should not be overlooked, and asked for eighty tickets to the afternoon party. ‘People are coming all the way from Scotland to attend it, not to mention Yorkshire & Durham! … P.S. How many people may I ask to stand in the Fore Court to see the Bride & Bridegroom depart?’87
For Elizabeth, the fortnight before the wedding was an exhausting round of formal receptions at Buckingham Palace, last-minute shopping with friends, dodging photographers, and evenings filled with dining and dancing. She loved Paul Whiteman’s band, which played at a dance given by the Mountbattens and again at Audrey Coats’s dance on 18 April.* Among her many dance partners were Dickie Mountbatten, Prince Paul, Prince George and Fruity Metcalfe, amiable equerry and friend to the Prince of Wales. James Stuart called in one evening for cocktails and chatter.88
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