The Queen Mother

by William Shawcross

  At 11.15 that morning Neville Chamberlain announced to the nation that no such undertaking had been given and Britain was at war with Germany. France declared war a few hours later. Next day, the Queen sat down at her writing table in Buckingham Palace; her four-page note deserves to be quoted in its entirety:

  I wish to try & set down on paper some of the impressions that remain from that ghastly day – Sunday September 3rd 1939. And yet when one tries to find words, how impossible, & how inadequate they are to convey even an idea of the torture of mind that we went through.

  Having tried by every means in our power to turn Hitler from his purpose of wantonly attacking the Poles, and having warned him of the consequences if he did so, and having been practically ignored by the Nazis, we knew on the night of Sept 2nd, that our request for a withdrawal of German troops from Poland would be refused, so that we went to bed with sad hearts.

  I woke early the next morning – at about 5.30. I said to myself – we have only a few hours of Peace left, and from then until 11 o’clock, every moment was an agony.

  My last cup of tea in peace! My last bath at leisure; and all the time one’s mind working on many thoughts. Chiefly of the people of this Country – their courage, their sense of humour, their sense of right & wrong – how will they come through the wicked things that War lets loose. One thing is, that they are at their best when things are bad, and the spirit is wonderful.

  At 10.30 I went to the King’s sitting room, and we sat quietly talking, until at 11.15 the Prime Minister broadcast his message from Downing Street, that as the Germans had ignored our communications, we were at War. He spoke so quietly, so sincerely, & was evidently deeply moved & unhappy.

  I could not help tears running down my face, but we both realized that it was inevitable, if there was to be any freedom left in our world, that we must face the cruel Nazi creed, & rid ourselves of this continual nightmare of force & material standards. Hitler knew quite surely that when he invaded Poland, he started a terrible war. What kind of a mentality could he have?

  As we were thinking these things, suddenly from outside the window came the ghastly, horrible wailing of the air raid siren. The King & I looked at each other, and said ‘it can’t be’, but there it was, and with beating hearts we went down to our shelter in the basement. We felt stunned & horrified, and sat waiting for bombs to fall.

  After half an hour the all clear went, & we returned to our rooms, & then had prayers in the 44 room.* We prayed with all our hearts that Peace would come soon – real peace, not a Nazi peace.153

  * Adolf Hitler published the two volumes of Mein Kampf (My Struggle) in 1925 and 1926. The book, part autobiography and part political treatise, outlined his hatred of Judaism and communism and expressed his belief that Germany must abandon democracy, rearm and acquire new European territories to fulfil her destiny. An expurgated English-language edition, omitting much of the anti-Semitism, was published in 1933. An unexpurgated English version, translated by James Murphy, was published in London in 1939.

  † First Baron Tweedsmuir (1875–1940), Governor General of Canada 1935–40, and better known as the author John Buchan.

  * The most comprehensive account is that given in The Roosevelts and the Royals by Will Swift, John Wiley & Sons, 2004.

  * This was the EP Ranch in Alberta, which the Prince bought after visiting Canada for the first time in 1919, and in which he took great interest. He kept it until the early 1960s.

  * Alec Hardinge had been left behind to keep watch on the international situation, and it was Lascelles who had done the preparatory ‘recce’ for the tour earlier in the year.

  * The Black Watch (the Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada also provided streetliners: so long was the processional route that there were not enough men, and the streetliners had to ‘leapfrog’ along the route. (Information from Tom Bourne, son of Colonel John Bourne of the Black Watch of Canada)

  * Her triumph was only temporary, however. Camillien Houde was interned in 1940 for urging men to refuse conscription.

  * This dress she later presented to Canada and it was put on display in the Public Archives in Ottawa.

  * Georges Vanier (1888–1967). After a distinguished military and diplomatic career he became the first French Canadian governor general of Canada in 1959.

  * David Williamson, the shepherd’s son, told the press afterwards that she had recalled playing with him when they were children. Also there to meet the Queen was a former member of the Girl Guides troop which she had organized at Glamis, Mrs Francis MacAndrew French, whose father was a tenant farmer there. (Toronto press report, 23 May 1939, RA F&V/VISOV/CAN/1939/Press cuttings/Vol. I, p. 114)

  * Another unofficial but much publicized presentation took place in the Lieutenant Governor’s offices that day: that of the Dionne quintuplets from Callander. The little girls, aged not quite five, curtsied and presented bouquets to the Queen, putting their arms round her neck and kissing her when it was time to leave. Mackenzie King found this episode particularly heart warming, and reported that the Queen ‘was very nice about it, and seemed rather to enjoy it’.

  * It was probably Lieutenant Governor McNab of Saskatchewan. The Regina press reported that a gift box of prairie fowl had been sent to the royal train. (RA F&V/VISOV/CAN/1939/Press cuttings/Vol. I, p. 211)

  * The Work Projects Administration was an agency set up under Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1935, to provide jobs for the unemployed in public works projects.

  * Through Colonel Augustine Warner who settled in Virginia in the mid-seventeenth century, Queen Elizabeth shared a common ancestry with George Washington and General Robert E. Lee. Her paternal grandmother, Frances Dora Smith, was the great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Colonel Warner, while George Washington was his great-great-grandson. George Washington was therefore Queen Elizabeth’s second cousin six times removed. General Lee was descended from Colonel Warner’s daughter, Sarah.

  * The Queen had lent her Wilson Steer painting, Chepstow, to the British Pavilion’s exhibition of modern British painting. (Kenneth Clark to Queen Elizabeth, 17 December 1938; 2, 13 February 1939, n.d. [postmark 20 February 1939], RA QEQM/PRIV/HH; RA QEQM/PRIV/PIC)

  † At the lunch given for them in the Federal Buildings at the World’s Fair, according to the New York Times, among the waiters serving the King and Queen was a former steward to the Strathmore family, Joseph Lewis, who had worked at Glamis, St James’s Square and St Paul’s Walden and had served meals to Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon as a girl. He had subsequently worked for Henry Clay Frick (of the Frick Collection), and was now captain of waiters at the Waldorf Astoria.

  * The 1844 Room – a drawing room on the ground floor of Buckingham Palace, so named because it was occupied by Tsar Nicholas I of Russia in 1844.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE QUEEN AT WAR

  1939–1941

  ‘Dear old BP is still standing’

  IN THE DAPPLED end of a lovely summer, it was hard to understand what lay ahead. The Queen was outwardly calm but she found it difficult to adjust to the fact that she and her husband were now reigning over a country at war. It was true, as her friend Arthur Penn put it to her, that, unspeakable though war was, at least the long suspense was over. ‘Looking back on the past year or more,’ he wrote, ‘I realise that this shadow was behind one’s shoulder at every turn: pleasures had a bitter taste, laughter a hollow ring & nothing seemed quite in tune. Now it is as if one had at last braced oneself for a long deferred but inevitable operation, & we can only pray for an early & complete recovery.’1 But the Queen really had hoped that war could be avoided. She would have been appalled if she could have known that this looming struggle in Europe would spread throughout the world over the next six years and cause death and destruction on a terrible scale.

  At first, she felt ‘so miserable & disappointed & exhausted that life was almost horrible’.2 But she knew that she had to pull herself together, summon her faith and stand up for what was
right. She thought that ‘After the first ghastly shock’, the country ‘has settled down grimly, quietly, and with the utmost determination, to try and rid the world of this evil thing that has been let loose by those idiotic Germans’.3 In similar vein, she wrote to Queen Mary, ‘Oh the Germans! If only they would choose decent leaders, then perhaps we would not need to go through the agony of War every 20 years.’4 She had no more illusions about Hitler’s intentions; she sent a copy of Mein Kampf to Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, but advised him not to read it through ‘or you might go mad, and that would be a pity. Even a skip through gives one a good idea of his mentality, ignorance and obvious sincerity.’5

  She and the King took comfort in the fact that the Empire rallied to Britain at once. Australia was proud to declare war within seventy-five minutes of hearing the announcement that Britain was at war. New Zealand followed swiftly and in Canada the motion to declare war was approved without a division. Thanks to the passionate and cogent intervention of General Smuts, who subsequently became prime minister, the South African Parliament also voted for war. In the entire Commonwealth, only the Republic of Ireland insisted on being neutral.*

  The Queen quickly realized that her role now was to sustain morale, with the King, all around the country. The Crown was the centre which must hold and be seen to hold. On 5 September they visited the London Civil Defence Region Headquarters and inspected ARP (Air Raid Precautions) posts and shelters; another of their early trips was by launch down the Thames to the London Docks where they saw a merchant ship being painted naval grey and watched the unloading of 4,000 tons of grain from a cargo ship which had arrived from South America.6 On 6 September the Queen made the first of many wartime visits to her regiments with a surprise call at the headquarters of the London Scottish, the territorial regiment of which she was honorary colonel. As she left the canteen ‘the cheers made the roof ring,’ the regimental gazette reported.7 She also met women of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, whose London headquarters were in the same building. In August she had been appointed commandant-in-chief of all three women’s services: the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), the Women’s Royal Naval Service (the Wrens) and the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. She was already colonel-in-chief of three regiments in the regular army – the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, the Black Watch and the Queen’s Bays – and honorary colonel of another territorial regiment, the Hertfordshire Regiment.

  To rousing cheers everywhere, the Queen also visited civilian organizations, including the Red Cross, the ambulance services, hospitals and the YWCA. She was heartened by a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, telling her what an important part she had to play in the war, both as the Queen and as a woman. He was sure that the women of Britain, who had offered themselves for the war effort, would look to her for leadership and he knew that she would do everything to encourage them, not least in ‘spreading the spirit of your own sympathy and understanding and calm fortitude. Indeed I feel inclined to say to Your Majesty what was said in the Bible story to Queen Esther – “Who knoweth whether thou art come to the Kingdom for such a time as this.” ’8 Esther, portrayed in the Old Testament as a woman of faith and patriotism, whose piety and courage enabled her to save her people from destruction, was a challenging but apt role model for the Queen.

  Like Esther, the Queen was compelled by the terrible drama of the next five years to accept a role of immense importance. She would never have sought it but it was a part for which she was by nature well suited. It fell to her to support the King as leader of his people in a time of total war. She saw her duty plainly. Replying to the Archbishop she wrote,

  I know, as do all our people, that we are fighting evil things, and we must face the future bravely. I shall try with all my heart to help the people. If only one could do more for them – they are so wonderful.

  One thing I realise clearly, that if one did not love this country & this people with a deep love, then our job would be almost impossible.

  The only hope for this world is love. I wish in a way that we had another word for it – in the ordinary human mind love has so many meanings, other than the sense in which I use it.9

  For the next six years she would use her innate ability to convey hope and encouragement to all those engaged in the war, and her instinctive warmth and sympathy to comfort those in distress. All that had been instilled in her by her mother and other members of her family, all that she had learned in looking after soldiers at Glamis in the First World War, and all the public skills that she had acquired since entering the Royal Family, she put now to the service of the country.

  The country and its government began to adapt. Chamberlain brought two of his severest Conservative critics, Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden, into the Cabinet, at the Admiralty and the Dominions Office respectively. Air-raid sirens were sounded, London was blacked out at night and the sky above was filled with barrage balloons. Country houses were taken over for hospitals, schools or the military. Cinemas were closed (they soon reopened) and, as we have seen, hosts of children were rushed to safety in the country or overseas (many soon returned). Government expanded again, as it had after 1914 – there would be new Ministries of Information, Economic Warfare, Shipping, Food and Home Security, among others.10

  Many changes were required of the Royal Family and the Household. Queen Mary was at Sandringham when war began. On Sunday 3 September the rector set up his wireless in the nave of the church and, with the other worshippers, she listened in her pew to Neville Chamberlain’s announcement that the country was at war.11 That evening, in tears, she listened to the King’s broadcast; his voice reminded her of her husband’s.12

  The King feared that if she stayed in Norfolk, so close to the coast, Queen Mary could be bombed or even kidnapped by German raiders.13 (This was a sensible concern, as the German attempt to capture Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands a few months later showed.) Queen Mary thought leaving town was ‘not at all the thing’.14 But the King persuaded her that her presence in Marlborough House would cause everyone unnecessary anxiety; reluctantly she agreed to go to Badminton, the Gloucestershire home of her niece’s husband, the Duke of Beaufort. She proceeded, with her luggage and her servants, across the country from Norfolk in a long and stately convoy of vehicles. The Duchess watched their arrival ‘with a certain apprehension’.15 Queen Mary, now aged seventy-two, was not accustomed to country life and she found Badminton rather old fashioned. But she determined to adapt as necessary. Before long, she had found an outlet for her remarkable energy and passion for orderliness in constant expeditions to rid the estate of ivy and to clear brushwood.

  Among the members of the Royal Household who left for their regiments was the Queen’s Private Secretary, Captain Richard Streat-feild. Her Treasurer and friend Arthur Penn, who was now regimental adjutant in the Brigade of Guards, agreed to come in two or three times a week to help with her correspondence. He was to act as her private secretary throughout the war.

  The question of what war would mean for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor was still a concern. They were in Antibes when war was declared. His biographer states that, although the Duke felt the war could and should have been avoided, he knew he must now support the British cause. The King offered the Windsors a plane to fly them to Britain, but they asked for a destroyer instead – and made their way to Cherbourg to cross the Channel.16 If they had hoped for reconciliation with the family, they were disappointed. According to a letter the Queen wrote to her friend Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, she had sent a private message to the Duchess saying she was sorry she could not receive her. ‘I thought it more honest to make things quite clear.’17 To Queen Mary she wrote, ‘I haven’t heard a word about Mrs Simpson – I trust that she will soon return to France and STAY THERE. I am sure that she hates this dear country, & therefore she should not be here in war time.’18

  The King had agonized over what sort of war work to offer his brother. He had changed his mind about giv
ing him an administrative post in Wales, and now thought it would be best for the Duke to remain abroad. So a job with the new British Military Mission to France was devised. On 14 September he and the Duke met at Buckingham Palace – the Queen was out. The King told him of the post on offer; accounts differ as to the level of the Duke’s enthusiasm. The meeting passed without incident, though the King thought it ‘very unbrotherly’ and was struck that the Duke was ‘in a very good mood, his usual swaggering one, laying down the law about everything’.19 In his diary, and in a letter to the Prime Minister the same day, the King recorded that there were no recriminations on either side; nor, however, had his brother shown the slightest remorse. ‘He seemed to be thinking only of himself, & had quite forgotten what he had done to his country in 1936.’ On the contrary, ‘He looked very well & had lost the deep lines under his eyes.’20 The Queen had already expressed a view on that – who had those lines instead? she asked. Her husband.21

  Now she was irritated; she reported that the Duke had come to see his brother ‘just as if nothing had happened! Never asked after Mama or me (who he loathes) or the children or anything family, and never communicated with Bertie again!’ Her view of her brother-in-law had hardened; she had written affectionately to him at Christmas in 1937, but the Duke’s increasing hostility towards her and Queen Mary for refusing to receive his wife, his dishonesty over his wealth and his visit to Hitler could not but have roused her antipathy. Perhaps above all she resented his indifference to the harm he had done her husband and their country. ‘Odd creature, he is exactly like Hitler in thinking that anybody who doesn’t agree with him is automatically wrong.’22 By the end of the first month of the war, the Duke and Duchess were back in France to begin his attachment to the Military Mission.