The Queen Mother

by William Shawcross

  This long period of recovery alternating with relapse inevitably threw more burdens – and also more limelight – on to the King’s children. Most of all, it was the Duke and Duchess of York who came into prominence this year. Were there presentiments of their future role in the minds of some around them? The rumour that the Duke was out to usurp the throne from his brother has already been mentioned; and in the Royal Household misgivings were growing about the prospect of the Prince of Wales’s succession. Those who worked with him and knew him best acknowledged his charm and his popular appeal, but privately they despaired of his lack of seriousness.

  Many years later Queen Elizabeth revealed that at this time the King himself had doubts that his eldest son would ever succeed him, and told her and her husband so. She recalled that while they were staying with the King during his convalescence he said to the Duke of York, ‘You’ll see, your brother will never become King.’ She remarked that her father-in-law was ‘extraordinary. He had such wisdom. He was a practical sort of man. He must have seen something we didn’t, because I remember we thought “how ridiculous”, because then everybody thought he was going to be a wonderful King. I remember that very very well. I remember we both looked at each other and thought “nonsense”.’58

  There is nothing to show that they gave any further thought to what was to them, evidently, a very remote possibility. They simply continued to play their supporting role to the King and the Prince of Wales. The 1929 summer season was both fun and hard work. They gave several dinner parties at 145 Piccadilly. Their guests were a mixture of their friends and people prominent in public life or literature; they included the Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, Sir Samuel and Lady Hoare,* Stanley Baldwin and his wife, the German and French Ambassadors, the writers John Buchan, Rudyard Kipling and J. M. Barrie (Barrie was born in Kirriemuir, five miles from Glamis). Both together and separately, they carried out busy programmes of functions and visits; they were now operating their public life in an increasingly professional manner.

  The Duchess was becoming ever more active in her charitable work. In July she opened a new block of flats for the Kensington Housing Trust and attended a garden party for the National Council for Maternity and Child Welfare; with the Duke she supported a gala in aid of the Save the Children Fund and visited the free hospital for animals run by Our Dumb Friends’ League of which she was already the patroness. Sometimes friends enlisted her support: one such was Lord Gorell, who had played cricket with her brothers at Glamis house parties in the early years of the century. He was chairman of King’s College Hospital, which she visited in July to present badges to the children who had subscribed to a cot to be called the Princess Elizabeth Cot. But she firmly declined to allow Princess Elizabeth to be patroness of the Jolly Juveniles.

  Such public engagements (like other members of the family she now called them ‘stunts’ in private) continued throughout the summer. But all too often she felt that the press undid her work. She wrote to D’Arcy Osborne, ‘I think that half the good of a long slaving day in Birmingham or Manchester is undone by a few paragraphs in the Daily Sketch or Mirror describing my very frequent new dresses and my alterations to this house. Already this year I have done up my sitting room five times, and the number of dresses trimmed with diamonds would keep ten families going for ten years. It is very annoying isn’t it? However, we must take the rough with the smooth & keep the old flag flying. Hooray. With kindly & Christian thoughts to ALL, I remain yours sincerely if a trifle sourly Elizabeth.’59

  They spent a few days at Glamis before going on to Deeside. The Duke had asked his parents if they could rent a house on the Balmoral estate. Eventually the Queen suggested Birkhall. This charming small house a few miles from Balmoral Castle had been acquired by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1849 for the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII), and it proved to be a godsend for the Duke and, even more so, for the Duchess of York. Thanking the King just a few days after they moved there, she wrote, ‘I am sure that we are going to love being here, in fact I already feel that I have lived here most of my life.’60 In the event, that was exactly what she did. Her delight in the place fills a letter she wrote about it to D’Arcy Osborne:

  I must tell you that Scotland just around this house is looking too lovely & beautiful for words of mine to describe. The birches are golden & silver, the river is an angry black & blue, every other tree is scarlet & yellow, & I feel very satisfied every time that I look out of my window. It really is delicious to be able to see so much beauty, & I find it most helpful and calming. This little house is enchanting. It is very small, & lined with caricatures of the 90s,* with extremely comfortable & ugly beds of the late Victorian era, & is badly lit with neo-Edwardian oil lamps, with an ever present smell.61

  The river was the Muick, which ran through the garden past the house to join the River Dee; she found the rushing sound of the waters very soothing at night.62 The windows looked on to the wild hillsides of Glen Muick. It was a small house by the standards of most of the places they lived in – certainly compared to Balmoral. There were few bedrooms, so they were unable to have many people to stay, but the Duchess saw this as an advantage. ‘It is a very nice feeling to know that one can’t have a lot of guests, & it is so much more peaceful.’63

  Milk, butter and eggs came from a farm near by. The Duchess rose most mornings at 8 o’clock and came home at sundown, weary and, in her phrase, ‘terribly contented’. The air was like wine. ‘I felt so well at the end of the Autumn that I kept on saying to myself, “My goodness, how well I feel.” ’64 She found time to read and that autumn finished A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes, Graham Greene’s The Man Within, which irritated her,* and a new book by Osbert Sitwell, The Man Who Lost Himself, which he had sent her.65 She had met Sitwell through the well-connected Mrs Ronnie Greville; she enjoyed his wit, his books and his company – over the years he became a good friend.

  A few guests did come – Clare and Doris Vyner, the Duke’s brother Prince Henry, and King George of Greece.† The pleasure of it all was complete when Lilibet joined them from Glamis; she was ‘in seventh heaven’ there, the Duchess told Queen Mary.66

  Before they ended their Scottish holiday they were faced with a major public duty: the first Assembly of the newly united Church of Scotland on 2 October. The Duke had to stand in for his father, who was to have come but was not yet well enough. Once more he and the Duchess stayed in state at Holyroodhouse, and they invited the elderly and frail Lord Davidson of Lambeth, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who was to speak at the ceremony, to stay with them. Despite gales, torrents of rain and the depressing surroundings of the only hall large enough for the 10,000 people present – ‘really a garage’, wrote the Duke – it went well. The King wrote a brief line of congratulation to his son on the two speeches he had been obliged to make.67

  The Duchess also had solo engagements. On 1 October she laid the foundation stone of the Edinburgh Hospital for Crippled Children. On 5 October it was the turn of the Scottish National Monument to David Livingstone at Blantyre. To a plea that Princess Elizabeth might attend the reply came: ‘it will be quite impossible for Princess Elizabeth to accompany Her Royal Highness on that occasion, as she is never allowed to take part in public ceremonies.’68

  Back in England, the autumn work began, with visits for both Duke and Duchess to different areas of London and to Birmingham. For 29 October a day of functions in Eastbourne was planned. They firmly pushed away any suggestions that were too elaborate: no Scottish pipers at luncheon in the Grand Hotel, no giant box of chocolates to be presented for Princess Elizabeth, street decorations provided only they did not put the people of Eastbourne to expense and certainly no mounted escort, because recently in Edinburgh a horse had been alarmed by the enthusiasm of the crowd, and a nasty accident had nearly occurred in front of the Duchess.69

  The public acquisition of the beautiful Downs and the Beachy Head area near Eastbourne was marked by a ceremony at which th
e Duke and Duchess unveiled commemorative stones. The afternoon was given over to the Princess Alice Memorial Hospital and the Conference of the British Commercial Gas Association. The Duke put personal emphasis on this because of the interest that he and the Duchess took in industrial questions and the significant part played in industrial life by the Association.

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  AFTER CHRISTMAS 1929 the Yorks left Princess Elizabeth with her grandparents at Sandringham, from where she wrote, ‘Darling Mummy, A hapy new year to you and Papa. Wet day. Grandpa cant shoot. I had lovely presents this morning. Will you come back to your darling E.’70

  In January 1930, the Duke had to go to Rome for the wedding of Crown Prince Umberto of Italy and Princess Marie José of Belgium. The Italians were disappointed that the Duchess did not come, but she was at home suffering from another attack of bronchitis. More importantly, she had discovered that she was pregnant, and had written to her monthly nurse Nannie B to say she would be needed in August. But she hoped to keep it a secret for some time.71 In the event it was just as well the Duchess stayed at home – the Duke did not enjoy the trip and was relieved his wife had not had to endure it.

  Italy was the first country in Europe to abandon liberal democracy. The Italian fascist movement had been founded by a journalist and ex-soldier, Benito Mussolini, in 1919. His Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (‘union for struggle’) grew through the 1920s. Initially its members were gangs of thugs who terrorized socialists and working-class organizations; the elected authorities were unable to stop their violence. In 1922 the King of Italy felt compelled to ask Mussolini to form a government. The violence ceased. Mussolini gradually created a dictatorship, and gave himself the title Il Duce.

  The Duke reported to the Duchess: ‘Every station in Italy was covered with the Fascisti & Italian detectives galore, looking for any signs of anti fascist people.’ He went on a shoot in which he was expected to kill fallow deer, which he refused to do; to please his chasseur he shot one buck. He saw the Sistine Chapel, which he thought was ‘marvellous’, but the wedding was the worst-organized ceremony he had ever attended. The delays were endless, there was no singing and the Cardinal seemed ‘gaga’. There were ‘literally millions’ of ‘Kings, Queens, ex Ks, ex Qs, ex enemies, ex allies, all mixed up together, to say nothing of ex neutrals’. The only people with whom he could have a decent conversation, he found, were their old friends Paul and Olga of Yugoslavia. Princess Olga – who had had to spend ‘goodness knows what’ on her clothes – was very envious of the Duchess for having been able to stay at home. ‘Thank God there is only one more day now before I start back. I have started to count the hours darling before I see you again … All my love to you darling angel.’72

  No sooner were the Duke and Duchess reunited than, on 7 February 1930, her brother Jock died of pneumonia at the age of forty-three. He was the fourth child that Lady Strathmore had lost and she was distraught; ‘He was so loving, so interesting & interested in everything – & this world will be much poorer without him,’ she wrote to Beryl Poignand. She worried about his wife Fenella and their four young daughters.73 Two of them had inherited a mental condition through Fenella’s family and needed special care.*

  The Duchess too was very distressed. ‘It was a terrible thing to happen, and even now I can hardly believe that it’s true,’ she wrote to Nannie B.74 To D’Arcy Osborne she observed that although Jock could be ‘sarcastic & a little difficult to please, he was intensely affectionate, and a really good friend. If I needed good advice I always asked Jock, because though it might not be as palatable as one could wish, it was always right.’ She concluded that none of her brothers should live in town – they all loved the countryside too much. ‘It kills people in the end if they are parted from the land. It’s too strong a thing to understand.’75 Queen Mary was sympathetic. ‘Your poor Mother, my heart aches for her, knowing her love for all her children, & what a devoted family you are, a rare occurrence in these days.’76

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  BY APRIL THE Duchess could no longer put off announcing that she would not be carrying out any more engagements that summer. Like most women of the time, pregnancy made her modest. ‘My instinct is to hide away in a corner when in this condition, which I know is silly, but I suppose it is a feeling handed down from many generations back,’ she told Queen Mary. ‘I should really like to live quietly in the country for the last few months, and then reappear afterwards as if nothing had happened!’77 The Queen agreed.78

  The Duchess had spent the first three months of the year quietly at Naseby, telling Nannie B in early April that she felt very well indeed, ‘touch wood. It is such a long time, nearly 4 years, since little Elizabeth arrived, that I have quite forgotten what it’s like!’79 She and the Duke decided that their second child should be born at Glamis and so, in mid-July, a few weeks before the baby was due, they repaired there. The weather was fine and at first the Duchess enjoyed sitting in the sun, awaiting her time. She seems to have suspected that the baby would be another girl, for she wrote to the Queen on 21 July, ‘I will write again soon, and only hope that our new daughter (?) will not delay too long after August 8th.’80

  By the end of July the weather had turned wet. The Duchess was, she said herself, getting ‘slightly irritable’ waiting, and longing for ‘the whole business’ to be over. By now Scotland’s remoteness seemed a disadvantage; she thought that the next time she had a baby, she would try to have it in London, in winter, ‘as it is much more agreeable for both of us I think, as when one is in the country one misses all the lovely flowers and cadeaux for the baby, & little excitements like that!!’ The royal gynaecologist, Sir Henry Simson, was now in attendance, ‘and the more he hovers the slower it all seems!’81

  Simson was assisted by Frank Neon Reynolds, a thirty-five-year-old obstetrician and gynaecologist. He was conscious of the honour of attending upon the Duchess, but, as the waiting extended, he became nervous about all his own patients in London. Invited to lunch at Glamis on Sunday the 27th, he sat next to Lady Strathmore, ‘a dear old thing with white hair who absolutely fitted into the picture, even to her Elizabethan collar standing up round the back of her neck’. He liked the Duchess and her ‘lovely expression’; she showed him around the Castle. The Duke he found rather shy, ‘and it makes one wonder if one is being backward and gauche, but it seems it is the same with everybody.’82 The following Sunday Sir Henry and Dr Reynolds moved into the Castle so as to be there when labour began. Princess Elizabeth showed Reynolds the stables and her pony, and asked about his own daughter, Petronelle, who was three. The days were long but the evenings were cheerier – they all dined together, talked and played bridge.

  The weather on the Duchess’s thirtieth birthday was wretched. Queen Mary sent her a clock. Princess Elizabeth gave her a large pot of white heather. The Duchess was sure that the baby would not arrive for another week. But Dr Simson thought it might be earlier and, on his advice, the Home Secretary, John Robert Clynes, former President of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers, was sent for and arrived in Scotland promptly on 5 August. The Strathmores gratefully accepted Lady Airlie’s offer to put him up at Airlie Castle, not far from Glamis.

  The Duchess was beginning to feel oppressed, writing to Queen Mary that she was sure that everyone had come ‘very previous’. She supposed that she would be given ‘all sorts of horrid drinks, so as not to keep these foolish people waiting … and here they all are waiting & hovering like vultures! I shall be glad when they are gone.’83 The Duke felt the same. ‘I shall be very thankful when this is all over, as I find I get very nervous & anxious about everything,’ he wrote to his mother. ‘I know it is unnecessary & silly but I can’t help it.’84 To add to the tension, the village was swarming with newspapermen all desperately speculating on what was happening, although they were being told absolutely nothing. Frank Reynolds described them as ‘sort of waiting with their mouths open for something to drop into them!’85 The Duke went shooting as much as he could
to kill time, his nerves and a few snipe, duck and rabbits. He celebrated the opening of the grouse-shooting season on 12 August by bagging enough for the Castle’s dinner that night.

  Finally, after about six hours’ labour on the night of 21 August, the Duchess was delivered of her second daughter. It was a far easier birth than that of Princess Elizabeth. Frank Reynolds wrote to his wife: ‘A very nice baby and everything went smoothly without any trouble.’86 Lady Strathmore was delighted to tell her son David that this time his sister felt ‘wonderfully well; in fact, she can hardly believe she is herself, she feels so different to last time … Now she is perky & well & interested in everything.’87

  The news was immediately telephoned to the King and Queen. The Queen’s immediate reaction was to be sorry it was not a boy, but the King said he was glad it was a girl; one could play with girls longer than with boys, and the parents were young and had plenty of time to have a son.88 Queen Mary was relieved by this response, and sent congratulations to her son.89 She wondered how Lilibet had taken the arrival of her sister; she need not have worried – the Princess was said to be ‘enchanted’.90 David Bowes Lyon’s father-in-law Colonel Spender-Clay, who was staying at Glamis, wrote, ‘That wonderful child Elizabeth is very excited & thought first of all that it was a wonderful Dolly & then discovered it was alive. She then took each of the three Doctors by the hand & said “I want to introduce you to my baby sister.” ’91

  The doctors in attendance issued an official bulletin stating that ‘The Infant Princess is doing fine’ – ‘doing fine’ was a Scottish colloquialism and was used to emphasize the fact that the Princess had been born north of the Tweed.92 In London the bells of St Paul’s pealed in salute and at the Tower of London forty-one guns were fired – twenty-one for the Royal Salute and another twenty on behalf of the Lord Mayor and Corporation. At Glamis itself, the arrival of ‘the lassie’s bairn’ was greeted by an enormous bonfire of larch, spruce and oak branches on Hunter’s Hill. It was lit by four small girls with the same torches as had been used to light the fire that had celebrated the wedding of the baby’s mother seven years before.93 According to Lady Strathmore, more than a thousand motor cars full of people came, and as many motorcycles, with people from Edinburgh, Glasgow and even further afield. ‘It was most extraordinary.’94