The Queen Mother

by William Shawcross

  It quickly became clear that in Australia there was little concept of fatigue. One of the greatest problems for the couple’s staff was to ensure that their programme was not completely overloaded. Everyone was worried lest the Duchess fall ill again. That first weekend was already crowded. They attended a ball at the town hall, divine service in St Andrew’s Cathedral, and a garden party. They also undertook a tour of the Prince of Wales Repatriation Hospital for sick and disabled war veterans. The visit was more harrowing than might have been expected; by mistake they were led into a room where a woman was weeping beside her dying husband.76

  The weather did not favour the garden party – the royal visitors and their hosts took tea under cover – watched by about 2,000 people standing in the rain with, apparently, scarcely 200 umbrellas between them.77 Later, while the Duke of York received an honorary degree from Sydney University, the Duchess attended a large reception given in her honour by the National Women’s Council, whose members, according to a scandalized Lord Cavan, were the only people who behaved badly: ‘When the Duchess got there – they not only presented an address but called her “the Representative of the Queen”!! Luckily we just managed to stop the address going to the Press – but if it does leak out please explain to His Majesty that Batterbee and the Governor were both assured that there wd be no such thing.’78 The children of New South Wales presented her with a gold and silver tea-set for ‘Princess Betty’.

  The King was delighted with the enthusiastic reception reported in the British press. He wrote to his son: ‘I hope Elizabeth will not do too much & rest as soon as she feels she is getting tired … Your daughter is very flourishing & is more delightful every day & more pleased with herself.’79 Queen Mary was more forthcoming, writing to the Duke, ‘Baby is as sweet as ever, she is so lively always trying to jump & to stand up, & makes funny little noises & screams & shouts for fun, really too delightful, happy & carefree.’ A week later the King and Queen went to Windsor Castle ‘bringing with us in our car your adorable child who was awfully good, giving shrieks of delight at each dog she saw’.80

  By now Dr Still had sent the Duchess several more reports on the Princess’s progress. In early February she was trying to stand on her nurse’s lap. A month later she was sitting up, was above average weight and had discovered how to roll over and over and how to wave goodbye and say ‘Ta-Ta’. By the end of March she was growing fast, cutting more teeth and could now say ‘By-ee’. She enjoyed listening to the band outside the Palace.81

  So as not to detract in any way from the principal purpose of the royal couple’s presence in Australia – the opening of the new Federal Parliament – their engagements were carefully selected to serve a few chosen patronages. Much of their programme reflected Australian reverence for the Anzacs (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps – the soldiers who had fought in the Great War). They progressed northwards from Sydney towards Queensland and Brisbane, inspecting returned sailors, soldiers, nurses, Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. The schedule was punishing. They stopped at a bewildering array of places whose names were either curiously familiar or else phonetic aborigine: Newcastle, Wallangarra, Stanthorpe, Warwick, Clifton, Toowoomba, Gatton, Laidley, Ipswich. Near Blackheath the Duchess laid the foundation stone of the Anzac Memorial Hospital at Govett’s Leap.

  She had many communications from soldiers who had convalesced at Glamis and officers who had been entertained at St James’s Square during the war, and she made certain that as many as possible could get through the barriers of officialdom to speak to her.82 Expatriate Scots competed with old soldiers for her attention. A Mrs Leach, whose husband farmed at Borung in Victoria, wrote about her grandfather who had served his apprenticeship as a painter-decorator at Glamis. Mr and Mrs Leach had called their farm Glamis. Miss Vivian Eastland wrote from St Kilda, ‘It was very difficult seeing you on Thursday to realise that you were the little girl of 4 years I last saw in Glamis Castle nursery when I was maid to Lady Mary and Lady Rose, who I hope are both well; your nurse Clara [Alah] was very kind to me & I often amused you while she did your pretty hair, because it used to get in such tangles.’83

  The Duke and Duchess finally reached Brisbane on the afternoon of 6 April. They had been told to expect the capital of Queensland to be unsympathetic. In fact their reception could not have been more enthusiastic. Their progress through the streets was constantly delayed by the unexpectedly huge crowds and by people desperate to present the Duchess with bouquets and presents. Batterbee wrote in amazement to a colleague in the Colonial Office, ‘Anything like the enthusiasm of the welcome at Brisbane, which is supposed to be the home town of Bolshevism, I have never seen. The Labour Ministers there simply tumbled over themselves to get near the Duke and Duchess.’84 The Duchess genuinely liked Forgan Smith, the acting Premier of Queensland – they got on very well when she discovered he came from Longforgan. He later sent her some samples of Queensland timbers in which she had expressed an interest. ‘The people were so nice and friendly, even tho’ they are called the Bolshie State … The children are so healthy to look at, but very spoilt, and completely without discipline,’ she informed the Queen. ‘Please forgive me for setting out my opinions in this manner. They are probably completely wrong, but just what I think personally, and only after a glance really!’85

  By now they were aware that they had reached the middle of their tour and were looking forward to completing the second half. In Queensland they were able to rest a few days on a cattle station named Tamrookum; the weather was lovely – warm with cool breezes. The Duke enjoyed mustering cattle and the Duchess liked the grass, the trees and the hills – she thought it was the prettiest place they had been to. She told her mother, ‘The people are so nice and friendly, & the distances are so vast that it keeps them simple … all the Scotch people are very glad to see me!! They are so nice & sentimental about each other.’ All the governments were Labor, while that of New South Wales ‘is composed of very Red people’. But she got on well with them all; she thought the trip was a success. ‘One forgets that the people are terribly loyal, & never see anybody, so it is very hard work.’86

  But it was worth while; as the Duke told his father, ‘The people here have got a most wonderful spirit of loyalty to you & the Empire.’87 Patrick Hodgson wrote to Queen Mary, ‘Her Royal Highness has captivated everyone with her charm of manner.’88 Public perceptions of her seemed to verge on adoration. Schoolgirls travelled hundreds of miles from outback sheep stations to see her. A blind girl wrote in Braille: ‘Mother has described you to me, and I know just how sweet and dainty you are’; she received a reply saying that the Duchess was ‘greatly touched’ by her ‘kind message of welcome’. Another girl wrote, ‘I was so happy when Mummie told me she had seen you at the Royal Garden Party. She said you looked like a beautiful fairy Princess in your beautiful dress and diamonds. We are quite lonely now you are gone.’89 It may be hard to credit in a more blasé and cynical age, but the upward turning of her face and her constant smile fired the imaginations of many women and girls. An old widow saw her smile, and her ‘loneliness and weakness were forgotten’. A schoolgirl enlarged on the theme of ‘how pleased the poor wounded soldiers must have been to have you hovering near their bedside.’90

  From Brisbane they returned to Sydney and embarked again in Renown for Tasmania. They found the weather there chilly after the heat of Queensland. Their welcome in Hobart, the capital, was affectionate but quieter than in either Brisbane or Sydney. They visited Launceston as well, if only to slake the bitter rivalry between the two towns. ‘We are leading a strenuous life & opportunities for rest get fewer as time goes on,’ the Duke wrote to his father.91 The Duchess was beginning to feel the strain again; fortunately they were able to rest at the sheep station of the Cameron family at Mona Vale.

  From Tasmania Renown set course for Melbourne and, though the sea was rather rough, the Duchess had time to compose a letter to Queen Mary. ‘I am afraid I have not written for a long time, but we have been so
terribly busy, that letters are extremely difficult to write.’ She hated to admit physical weakness, but she did not conceal how hard she had found it all. ‘I think this sort of tour is far too strenuous for a woman, and I do get terribly tired.’ Suggesting discreetly that it was much harder than when Queen Mary had been in Australia as Duchess of York in 1901, she added, ‘Of course wireless, cars and the Press complicate things enormously, and one is expected to do the impossible, with never a moment’s rest.’ But she was conscious of the good the tour was doing her husband. After commenting on the unfortunate Australian political rivalries and jealousies, she said, ‘Bertie has been wonderful, and is far less shy & more sure of himself. I expect this Tour will mean a great deal to him. Do you remember you told me at Sandringham what a help such experience would be to him?’92

  As they approached Melbourne, the cruisers escorting Renown fired a twenty-one-gun salute to mark the first birthday of Princess Elizabeth. Missing her dreadfully, the Duke and Duchess sent their daughter a birthday telegram. At Windsor, Queen Mary wrote in her diary on 21 April, ‘Beautiful day. Darling baby’s first birthday. We gave her lots of presents after breakfast.’ The King recorded that they gave her a jewelled safety-pin brooch, frocks and toys. ‘She gazed on everything & beamed & I think rather liked it all.’93

  Next day the Duke and Duchess received a telegram: ‘I send you my best love on my first birthday and thank you for telegram. Wish you were here with me. I have lots of lovely presents. Hope to see you very soon. Little Elizabeth.’94 Subsequently more reports, including ‘a birthday review’, arrived from Dr Still. In one he informed the Duke and Duchess that the Princess now weighed twenty-three pounds and ‘You will be delighted with her, she is so sweet, and it is not merely sweet looks but a sweet nature that makes her such a darling.’ Nonetheless, ‘when Her Royal Highness decides that things are not just as she requires, she is becoming very emphatic in saying so, in fact proceeded to battery and assault upon Nurse once when not allowed to come to me today: you will have to come home and do the Stern Mother!’ Her vocabulary was growing – she had pointed to the electric light ‘and said distinctly: “Yight” ’.95

  Meanwhile, Melbourne was preparing itself. The Argus reported that day, ‘Everything possible has been done to make the programme worthy of the occasion. The city is bright with colour that will give it a carnival aspect by day, while by night the streets will be ablaze with illumination. All that remains now is for the army of the people, an army that will probably number 500,000, to do their part.’

  The royal couple stepped ashore to be welcomed by a large number of schoolchildren singing the National Anthem and waving. The Duchess seemed delighted and repeatedly waved at them, which pleased them. According to the Argus, she was wearing ‘a small blue hat with a large cluster of blue velvet forget-me-nots which drooped over the brim at one side, and these exactly matched her blue eyes’. The paper described her as petite and slender, with rose-petal skin and grace and charm. ‘Then there is the smile of which so much has been heard, and the strange thing is that everyone who has seen it feels it is for him or her alone. It seems to create an intimacy which, while purely imaginary, is nonetheless delightful.’

  They drove in a horse-drawn carriage down the fine processional route of St Kilda’s Avenue into the city, Sydney’s historic rival. Just as they entered the grounds of Federal Government House, a terrible thing happened. The wingtips of two of the planes in their Royal Australian Air Force escort touched and the planes crashed, killing the crews in front of their eyes. The Duchess, already under strain, was very upset and, although she continued with the programme for the next two days, Commander White decided she should spend the weekend resting at Government House. The Duke sent a message of heartfelt sympathy.96

  Three days later, on 25 April, came Anzac Day, perhaps the most emotional in the Australian and New Zealand calendar, evoking memories of sacrifice in Flanders, Palestine and above all Gallipoli. Thousands upon thousands of people from all over Victoria poured into Melbourne to see the salute taken by the son of the monarch in whose name those sacrifices had been made. After laying a wreath on the Cenotaph in front of Parliament House, the Duke joined the Governor General and the Governor on the saluting base. Renown’s Marine Band led the parade, followed by Australia’s most distinguished officer, General Sir John Monash, and his staff. Then 25,000 men from all over Australia and New Zealand marched past, almost all in plain clothes but wearing all their medals, including twenty-nine recipients of the Victoria Cross. According to Lord Cavan, they marched ‘with a glorious swing – pride in themselves, and first rate dressing’.97

  After the march-past the Duchess and her ladies in waiting set off for Government House but were prevented from leaving by ‘one of Australia’s really extraordinary outbursts’, as Lord Cavan described it. The crowds surged forward, with the police powerless to stop them. Dozens of people climbed on to the car. ‘However, with the curious instinct that just prevents an Australian undisciplined crowd from going too far, the situation was saved by a lot of Diggers* forming a voluntary ring round the Duchess’ car, and so allowing it to progress at a yard a minute to Government House.’98

  Commander White continued to keep a close eye on his charge, determined to restrict her programme whenever necessary to ensure she got through the remaining three weeks which were to culminate in the all-important ceremony in Canberra. From Melbourne they proceeded to Ballarat and Adelaide, where 12,000 people attended a public reception and 12,000 children then danced for them. En route to Canberra they rested privately with Mr and Mrs Macfarlane of Tailem Bend, where the Duke took part in the unusual sport of a kangaroo hunt and the Duchess joined the picnic party. And then it was on to Canberra.

  The new capital of the Commonwealth could not have been more different from the vibrant cities of Sydney and Melbourne – it was little more than a village set in fields filled with grazing cattle and sheep. When the Prince of Wales had visited it in 1920, he had called Canberra ‘a city of hope and foundation stones’. Now many of those foundations had grown buildings upon them but Canberra was still tiny and pastoral.99 The ceremony was imperial. On the warm, sunny morning of 9 May the Duke and Duchess travelled in a procession of carriages, with postilions dressed in scarlet and outriders in perukes and cockaded hats, to the new Parliament House. The Duke had slept badly and was nervous, because he understood only too well that this was a momentous occasion for Commonwealth, for Crown – and for himself.100

  He inspected the guard of honour and was then presented with a golden key by the Australian Prime Minister, Stanley Bruce, and invited to unlock the door of the new building. At his own insistence, he then spoke on the steps to the crowds outside; many thought it the most moving speech he made on the whole tour. On this day, he said, ‘one feels the stirrings of a new birth, of quickened national activity, of a fuller consciousness of your destiny as one of the great self-governing units of the British Empire.’ This was the beginning of a new epoch, a moment to dream ‘of better things’.101

  Dame Nellie Melba sang ‘God Save the King’ and the procession entered Parliament House. After formally unveiling the statue of King George V in the King’s Hall the Duke sat in the chair of the President of the Senate with the Duchess near by. Conditions were not ideal: the Senate Chamber was small and the lights of the film cameramen increased the temperature to 80 degrees within minutes. (The film of the event was distributed by Pathé News – the first time members of the Royal Family were seen around the Empire taking part in such a ceremony.) But the Duke spoke well, saying that the British Empire had advanced to a new concept of autonomy – ‘to the idea of a system of British nations, each freely ordering its own individual life, but bound together in unity by allegiance to one Crown and co-operating with one another in all that concerns the common weal’.102 After a fanfare of trumpets and a twenty-one-gun salute, the clock struck twelve and the Parliament of the Commonwealth was open. The only sadness in an otherwise
flawless event was the death of another pilot, Flying Officer F. E. Ewen, whose plane crashed in front of Parliament House during a review of troops that afternoon. The Duke and Duchess were shocked and sent a wreath; Ewen’s mother later wrote to thank them.

  Their journey was almost done. From Canberra they returned to Melbourne to rejoin Renown. They chose to make the last part of the journey in open cars and stopped at the town halls of South Melbourne to say goodbye. After sailing from Melbourne on 12 May, they had a rough crossing of the Great Australian Bight. The Duchess related to the King, ‘I got washed out of bed at 3 am by a huge sea which crashed suddenly over the ship, & I had to spend an hour drying my hair at the radiator! I could not help laughing, but it was very annoying too.’103

  They had one more Australian destination, Fremantle, the principal port in Western Australia, where they had to gird themselves one more time for the familiar programme of addresses, bouquets, speeches, openings and inspections. Their effect on the crowds and the press there was the same as in the rest of the continent. The Albany Dispatch recorded, in unusually purple prose, that the Duchess persuaded her husband, anxious to keep to the timetable, to make an impromptu stop at the Anzac Memorial Hospital at Albany.

  The Duke was obdurate … Then happened the little incident which is being repeated in the backblock homesteads to the mothers and the children there … it is with a tremble of the voice and a glistening of the eye that the little Royal Lady, having the true heart of a woman and the gracious grandeur of a queen, begs her lord to accede to the request, and he consents to do so … in the days that are yet to be, the most memorable spot along that road will be the Anzac Memorial Hospital, which his wife’s plea induced a prince to visit.