On 6 April they finally disembarked from the Nasir at Kosti, some 180 miles south of Khartoum, and boarded a train for Makwar where they were taken to see the new Sennar dam across the Blue Nile, which, as part of the great Gezira irrigation scheme, was expected to contribute to the prosperity of the Sudan by allowing the cultivation of cotton and other crops over a hugely expanded area. The Duke jotted down the statistics of the dam in his diary; his wife’s entry was equally characteristic: ‘Joined the train, & puffed off to Makwar, having bidden Capt. Flett [captain of the Nasir] a fond farewell. Very hot. Got to Makwar at 4, & went to see the Great Dam. Lots of engineers, & DCs [district commissioners] & Governors. Very interesting, but too long. Went back to the Chief Engineer’s house, & sat & drank lemonade. I was very tired & cross. Had a cocktail with Major Walsh. Bed 10.’89
The idyllic days in the wild were over – they had to yield their private lives to their public personae. At Khartoum next day they were met by the Governor General, Sir Geoffrey Archer. Also there to receive them was the Duchess’s old friend (and disappointed suitor) Archibald Clark Kerr. Now en poste in Cairo as acting counsellor, he had persuaded Lord Allenby to send him to greet the Duke and Duchess on his behalf, since the unsettled political situation in Egypt did not allow them to visit Cairo on their way home. He had written her a long, disillusioned letter about Egyptian affairs on 10 March, at the same time enjoining her ‘not to tell me Big Game stories. I do hope that you have adequately survived your appalling expedition. It was a splendidly courageous thing to do and I know that you did not rejoice over the inevitable killing of jolly animals.’90
After their weeks of safari, Khartoum did not impress. Although she found the Governor General ‘very nice, and everything is done so well here,’ the Duchess wrote dispiritedly to Queen Mary: ‘I have never seen a more horrible town, and what makes it worse, there is nothing to see!’91 No doubt for political reasons, they were advised against visiting the battlefield at Omdurman, the site of the British victory over the Khalifa in 1898. The ship in which they were to sail home from Port Sudan was delayed, but with their friends Captain Brocklehurst and Major Walsh they visited the zoo which the former had founded, and enjoyed an evening reception in the cool of the garden of the Governor General’s Palace, meeting ‘all the big Sheikhs and notables’; ‘very fine old men’, the Duchess remarked.92
On 9 April they left Khartoum by train, still accompanied by Brocklehurst and Walsh. The station was heavily guarded, since shots had been fired at the dining car of the train the previous evening when they should have been on board. Neither seemed perturbed; nor – perhaps deliberately – does either seem to have reported this incident in writing home. After a night and a day passing through desert and rocky hills (‘No shots at the train yet!’ observed the Duchess), they reached Port Sudan and boarded the SS Maloja, having said reluctant goodbyes to their two travelling companions. ‘We are all very sad it is all over – it has been marvellous,’ she lamented in her diary, adding next day, when woken at the by now accustomed early hour, ‘It is very sad having nothing to get up for now!’93
The voyage home, to judge from the Duchess’s letters, was the least enjoyable part of the trip; there was a sense of the real world and all its obligations closing back in on them; she and the Duke missed the thrill of safari, and she felt cold, ‘all shrunken & small & blue’; she had no appetite for the ship’s fancy-dress ball this time. The only compensation was that the English cricket team was on board the Maloja. She enjoyed talking to them – ‘The cricketers are very nice, and all excellent accents – not at all refined thank God.’94 They had a ‘real old Whitwell XI feel about them, ’Obbs, & ’Earns and ’Endren, & Woolley, & Sutcliffe & Douglas & Gilligan. It really makes one feel very pre-war to hear about l.b.w.’s etc. once again,’ she told her sister.95 (Whitwell is a Hertfordshire village close to St Paul’s Walden.)
They again shortened the journey by taking the train across France, but this time there were no delightful frivolities in Paris. On 19 April 1925 they crossed from Boulogne to Dover. As if to prove her husband’s point in removing her from the chilly English climate, the Duchess almost immediately fell ill with tonsillitis; but, as she wrote to her friend D’Arcy Osborne, ‘I am bubbling inside with Africa.’96 The affection continued all her life. The safari trip, she said many years later, had been ‘Wonderful. Best bit of one’s life.’97
* Edward Marsh had been Churchill’s private secretary at the Colonial Office in 1905 and had accompanied him on his African journey; he stayed with Churchill in subsequent ministerial appointments, including his period as colonial secretary in 1921–2, and remained a lifelong friend.
* Aden, a strategic port on the south-west corner of Yemen, dominated the entrance to the Red Sea. It had always been an important landfall for seamen and merchants, lying roughly equidistant between the Suez Canal, Bombay and Zanzibar, which were all important British possessions in the nineteenth century. It was controlled by Britain from 1839 to 1967.
* Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, his wife and their daughter Princess Patricia made a safari trip to Kenya (then known as the East Africa Protectorate) in 1910. (It became ‘The Kenya Colony and Protectorate’ by Order in Council in July 1920, the Protectorate consisting of the mainland dominions of the Sultan of Zanzibar.)
* He was Seyai, a Yao from Nyasaland, who worked for Major Anderson and his wife. Anderson recorded that the Duchess liked him so much that she kept him on for the entire trip. (G. H. Anderson, ms account of the Yorks’ trip, 1943, RA Lascelles Papers, Box A)
* J. H. Engelbrecht was another hunter who had joined the party.
* Lord Francis Scott was the uncle of the future Duchess of Gloucester, Lady Alice Montagu-Douglas-Scott, who lived at Deloraine for a time before her marriage to Prince Henry, third son of King George V, in 1935. Kenya and Deloraine would have been an added bond between the sisters-in-law, whose families knew each other in Scotland. Lady Alice’s elder sister Margaret Ida (‘Mida’) was a friend of Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon and a frequent guest at Glamis.
* Edward Blackwell Jarvis (1873–1950), Chief Secretary, Uganda, and acting Governor on various occasions.
† HH Daudi Chwa (1896–1939), King of Buganda 1897–1939.
‡ KCMG – Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George. This Order was founded by King George III in 1818 and is awarded to British subjects who have rendered extraordinary and important services abroad or in the Commonwealth.
* This was Cold Cream of Roses, a special formula made for the Duchess by Malcolm Macfarlane, a pharmacist in Forfar, who had sent her a jar of it as a wedding present. In her letter of thanks she said she would use it all her life. She did, receiving fresh supplies from the pharmacy until 1990, when Mr W. Main, the pharmacist who had taken over the business from Malcolm Macfarlane’s widow, retired.
† Published by Gurney & Jackson, Edinburgh, 1931. Brocklehurst served with the 10th Hussars in the First World War; he rejoined his regiment in the Second World War and was drowned in Burma in 1942 trying to save his porters’ lives when they got into difficulties while crossing a river in spate.
* After the assassination of Sir Lee Stack on 19 November, Lord Allenby delivered an ultimatum to Zaghlul Pasha, the Egyptian Premier, demanding, among other things, the immediate withdrawal from the Sudan of all Egyptian officers and the purely Egyptian units of the Egyptian army. At Talodi, where there was only one British officer, the Egyptian officers refused to obey orders to leave and were arrested. They broke out and caused ‘mutinous disorder’ in the battalion on 25 November, but after Sudanese troops had arrived three days later, they were evacuated without further trouble. (Sir Harold MacMichael, The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Faber & Faber, 1934, pp. 154–8)
1. Lord Strathmore.
2. Lady Strathmore.
3. Elizabeth Bowes Lyon in 1902.
4. The Strathmores at Glamis in 1907. Back row, left to right: Alec, Fergus, Jock, Patrick, May and Rose. Front
row, left to right: Michael, Elizabeth, Lord Strathmore, Lady Strathmore with David on her lap.
5. Elizabeth aged two, with her sister Rose at St Paul’s Walden Bury.
6. Elizabeth and David in the Italian Garden at Glamis.
7. Elizabeth, being held aloft by her elder brother Patrick, with her sister Rose on the far right.
8. Elizabeth with her father on the cricket pitch at Glamis.
9. Elizabeth in the gooseberry patch at St Paul’s Walden Bury.
10. Beryl Poignand in 1915.
11. Elizabeth with convalescent soldiers at Glamis in January 1915.
12. Elizabeth with convalescent soldiers at Glamis in 1916.
13. A house party for the Forfar Ball, 9 September 1920. Left to right: Katie Hamilton, Grisell Cochrane-Baillie, Lady Strathmore, Hilda Blackburn, Diamond Hardinge, Elizabeth, Lord Gage, Francis Doune (seated, front), James Stuart, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia.
14. Elizabeth with Arthur Penn (left) and Freddy Dalrymple Hamilton at a house party at Molecomb, January 1921.
15. Elizabeth, centre, with (clockwise) her sister Rose Leveson Gower and friends Katie Hamilton, Doris Gordon-Lennox and Mida Scott in 1921.
16. With the Duke of York in a photograph from Elizabeth’s own album, captioned by her, September 1920.
17. The Duke of York and Elizabeth at Glamis in 1921.
18. The Duke of York and Elizabeth at a shoot.
19. A cutting from the society pages showing the Duke of York as a guest at Glamis.
20. Elizabeth at her first royal engagement, as a bridesmaid at Princess Mary’s wedding, 28 February 1922.
21. The Duke of York and Elizabeth soon after their engagement.
22. Elizabeth leaving Bruton Street for the Abbey, 26 April 1923.
23. The bridal party immediately after the wedding. Left to right: Mary Cambridge, Katie Hamilton, Mary Thynne, Ronnie Stanniforth, Betty Cator, Cecilia Bowes Lyon, Michael Bowes Lyon.
24. The bride and groom’s carriage progressing along Constitution Hill.
25. The wedding party on the balcony at Buckingham Palace. Left to right: Queen Alexandra, Queen Mary, the Duchess of York, the Duke of York, King George V.
26. Honeymooning at Polesden Lacey.
27. Arthur Penn’s characteristic souvenir of the wedding.
28. On safari in Africa, February 1925, captioned by the Duchess.
29. On safari in Africa, February 1925, captioned by the Duchess.
30. The Duke and Duchess on safari, captioned by him.
31. The Duchess holding a monkey.
32. The Duchess with the Duke wearing, according to his own caption, ‘a tribal headdress given to me by the Mukama of Toro and made of beads and colobus monkey skin’.
33. Visiting the Makwar Dam near Khartoum on the way back from safari. Left to right: J. W. Gibson, the Duchess, G. L. Prouse and the Duke.
34. The Duke and Duchess driving through Belfast during their official visit in July 1924.
35. The Duchess fishing at Tokaanu while on tour in New Zealand.
36. With the Duke at the state opening of the Australian Parliament in Canberra, 9 May 1927.
37. Returning from the continent.
38. The Duke and Duchess at a hunt meet.
39. The first photograph of the Duchess and the newborn Princess Elizabeth, April 1926.
40. The Duchess with Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth, September 1930.
41. The Duchess with the King and the Duke of York at a summer fête at Balmoral.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BIRTH OF A PRINCESS
1925–1927
‘Elizabeth of York sounds so nice’
‘IT’S AWFUL COMING back to the social and unnatural atmosphere again!’ the Duchess confided to her diary soon after their return from Africa.1 London seemed drab after their months in the wild, the restrictions of life in the Royal Family and at Court more stifling than ever. In Britain the shadow of the war still hung over everything and everyone, and for many that shadow never fully passed. One distinguished lawyer, a boy during the war, remembered ever after those schoolfriends who had perished; he thought they showed ‘a certain uncomplainingness, an acceptance, without dramatics and without self pity, of their sad and untimely fortune. Those young men, who were only promoted boys, took their lot with a dignity that we now forget.’2 War memorials were erected in villages and market towns across the land, and plaques listed the names of all those who had been sacrificed. Yet few of the new homes which Lloyd George had promised the heroes returning from war had been built.
Other homes were being constructed at speed. London was expanding outwards – ‘dormitory suburbs’ were being created by the extension of the Underground and Metropolitan railways. The first such extension was on the Northern Line, as it became known, to Golders Green and then Hendon in autumn 1923. The President of the Board of Trade, Sir Philip Lloyd-Graeme, switched on the current on the new line with a golden key and his ten-year-old son, wearing a bowler hat, drove the first train through to Hendon. Then came the turn of south London, with the Morden line extension.3
New necessities were purchased easily from the multiple stores which spread into the modern housing estates – W. H. Smith the newsagent, Sainsbury the grocer, Dewhurst the butcher, the Victoria Wine Company, MacFisheries, the tailor Montagu Burton, Woolworths, British Home Stores, Marks and Spencer – all had more and more outlets as middle-class housing spread. Architects struggled on tight budgets to make the same red-brick houses, built a dozen times in one street, different from each other. One would have a round stair window, another an unexpected gable, a third an unusual porch or a wooden garage. They could cost about £1,000 each and they rejoiced in names like Rosslyn, The Elms, Mon Abri.4
Hire purchase or ‘never-never’ schemes were becoming more and more popular, allowing people to acquire furniture, vacuum cleaners, gas ovens, wirelesses, even motor cars, as never before. The car greatly increased the emigration to suburbia. By 1924 the Baby Car, the Austin Seven, was on the market. It sold for £165 and was described as the Mighty Miniature but more widely as the Bed Pan. It was soon followed by the Morris Minor. The growth of the motoring population, together with the popularity of extended bus services, led to practical but ugly ribbon developments along main roads. Stanley Baldwin with reason declared, ‘It is no exaggeration to say that in fifty years at the rate so-called improvements are being made, the destruction of all the beauty and charm with which our ancestors enhanced their towns and villages will be complete.’5
At the same time as this erosion of the countryside was beginning, urban unemployment remained high and the problems of the working class were imperfectly addressed. This was true in all of Europe, not just in Britain. The crumbling of old economic patterns of exchange since 1914 made poverty and unemployment more intractable and created fertile soil for revolutionaries to till.
After the triumph of the Bolsheviks in Russia, it was inevitable that every European country would spawn its own revolutionary communist party. Leadership was provided by the Comintern, created by Moscow in 1919 to ensure that national communist parties followed the policies of the Soviet Union. The communists may have been more alarming than effective, and in Britain they never acquired large membership. But alarming they were nonetheless, particularly after they came to power in Hungary and then, for brief periods, in Germany. In almost every European country socialists were divided into two camps – those who were loyal to Moscow and called themselves communist and those who wished to remain loyal to their own nations and remained socialists. The two factions were bitter rivals for working-class support.
In 1925 the production of food and raw materials in Europe for the first time reached the levels of 1914 and manufacturing industry revived. There were grounds for confidence – it was still possible to hope for and even believe in the future of liberal democracies. But the rather efficient pre-1914 economic system had been fatally damaged and the new prosperity rested on sh
allow foundations. The crisis of employment for the growing working class was a constant concern. The spectre of violent revolution and totalitarianism was ever present in Europe – and it was to dominate the era.
*
IT WAS A COLD spring and the Duchess’s nostalgia for Africa’s warmth was intensified by the return, all too soon, of her tonsillitis.6 An additional sadness for both the Yorks was that, the day after they returned, the Prince of Wales left for a long journey to West and South Africa and South America. The Duke wrote to his brother saying, ‘Between ourselves we were not very glad to get back from our travels … We miss you terribly, of course, & there is an awful blank in London of something missing, & that blank is you.’7 They missed calling on him at lunchtime at St James’s Palace for a cocktail, they missed evenings out at slightly risqué clubs with him, and they missed being able to share complaints about life with him.
The Queen Mother Page 33