The Queen Mother

by William Shawcross

  It was a busy time. The King and Queen were preparing for a visit to New Zealand and Australia, with Princess Margaret, in spring 1948, to complement that which they had just made to South Africa. The King and Queen of Denmark were about to arrive and on 26 October the King had to preside over a full state opening of Parliament for the first time since the war. The Queen was very concerned and that same day she told Tommy Lascelles she wanted to talk to him about ‘making a real break for the King’ for treatment for his legs. ‘I am not at all happy about it.’47 The King was examined by a team of doctors who agreed that his condition was so serious that he would have to cancel the proposed tour of Australia and New Zealand. The King and Queen were reluctant, but eventually, under pressure, they agreed. The King refused to cancel his current engagements, which included a review of the Territorial Army and the Remembrance Day service at the Cenotaph.

  On 12 November Professor James Learmonth, one of Britain’s leading cardiovascular specialists, examined the King and confirmed that he was suffering from the onset of arteriosclerosis; the doctors feared that his right leg might have to be amputated. The Queen explained to Queen Mary, ‘I have been terribly worried over his legs, and am sure that the only thing is to put everything off, and try & get better. I am afraid that Australia & NZ will be desperately disappointed – but what else could one do – I do hope they will understand that it is serious.’48

  The King insisted that Princess Elizabeth be told nothing of his condition until after the birth of her child, which was awaited with excitement around the nation. Then as now the first news of a royal birth was posted on the railings of the Palace. Queen Mary was rather surprised that scores of people were queuing all night for the news ‘with sandwiches, like a film queue!’ Prince Charles was born in the afternoon of Sunday 14 November. Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip were delighted to be parents. She wrote to her aunt, May Elphinstone, that her son was ‘too sweet for words’ and already had a very loud voice. ‘I can still hardly believe that I really have a son of my own – it seems quite incredible – and wonderful!’49 The Queen, who was to play a large part in her first grandson’s life, was very touched by the pleasure people felt at the arrival of ‘such a darling baby’.50 She wrote to Queen Mary, ‘One has lived through such a series of crises & shocks & blows these last years, that something as happy & simple & hopeful for the future as a little son is indeed a joy.’51

  Whether happy or anxious, the Queen continued her engagements. Queen Mary praised her for her calm and her courage in the face of the King’s illness.52 The King was now confined to bed, his legs clamped eight hours a day in a device called an occluder which was intended to improve his circulation. The treatment was successful and by early December the danger of amputation had passed. Nonetheless, the doctors felt that their patient should not be moved at least until the end of the month. This meant that the family would have to forgo their usual Christmas gathering at Sandringham.

  Churchill gave the Queen a copy of the fruit of his new leisure, his book Painting as a Pastime. Thanking him, she referred to the deep emotions of recent months, and added, ‘tho’ sometimes one feels that they have been almost too vampire & have drained away something of the joy of living, yet one also feels closer than before to the good beating heart of the British people. God bless the people – they are good people, and when one feels depressed or frustrated (this often) a little talk with a painter, or a plumber or a steel worker or a nice angry English gentleman soon puts one right!’53

  On 8 December she dined with Bobbety and Betty Salisbury* at their house in Swan Walk, Chelsea. Among the guests was Isaiah Berlin, whom Betty Salisbury described to her as ‘brilliantly clever, a Fellow of All Souls, very amusing when one can understand a word he says – which is seldom’.54 All his life Berlin spoke softly and with a lisp which meant one had to listen carefully to his words. The Queen was delighted – she found him ‘just as nice & amusing as I had hoped’,55 and the dinner began a long friendship between her and the philosopher which lasted until Berlin’s death in 1997.† One passion they shared was for England. Berlin had arrived with his family as a Jewish refugee from Petrograd in 1921 and since then had fallen in love with his new country. According to his biographer, he believed England to be the very wellspring of the liberalism which inspired his life: ‘that decent respect for others and the toleration of dissent are better than pride and a sense of national mission; that liberty may be incompatible with, and better than, too much efficiency; that pluralism and untidiness are, to those who value freedom, better than the rigorous imposition of all-embracing systems, no matter how rational and disinterested, better than the rule of majorities against which there is no appeal’. All of this Berlin believed to be ‘deeply and uniquely English’.56 These were sentiments with which the Queen agreed absolutely – and it was a joy for her to hear her own patriotism echoed so beautifully by so wise a man. In later years she came to enjoy annual lunches with Berlin and the other engaging Fellows of All Souls.

  In his Christmas broadcast that year, the King spoke of his Silver Wedding, of the birth of his first grandchild and of his illness. He had been much distressed to have ‘to postpone, on the advice of my doctors, the journey for which my peoples in Australia and New Zealand had been making such kindly preparations’. After Christmas his doctors decided that he was well enough to go to Sandringham, and there he was able to take short walks and even shoot a little. The Queen was relieved. She realized that she had been exhausted by the recent pleasures as well as the anxieties. ‘Daughters getting engaged, and daughters marrying, and daughters having babies, & the King getting ill, & preparing for a tour of Australia & New Zealand, & then having to put it off – all these things are very filling to one’s life.’57

  Back in London, the King resumed a restricted programme of work. But he was not yet well. In early March 1949 his team of doctors concluded that the main artery in his right leg was still obstructed and, in order to improve circulation, they recommended that he should have a right lumbar sympathectomy. He was upset – his first thought was that all the restrictions already imposed on him had been a waste of time. But the doctors persuaded him that he had in fact done himself a lot of good and had avoided amputation of the leg. They considered carrying out the procedure in the Royal Masonic Hospital, but then decided to install a complete operating theatre in rooms at the front of the Palace. Before the operation took place on the morning of Saturday 12 March the Queen went with her daughters to communion at the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace. The King was calm. ‘I am not in the least worried,’ he said.58 Crowds had gathered outside the railings and news placards soon carried the good news: ‘He’s all right.’

  He was, but Professor Learmonth told him that he must not risk a recurrence of thrombosis, and he could not lead such an energetic or full life as before. It was not easy for him, psychologically or practically, to accept this.59 As the Queen put it, it was hard for him to get any respite from ‘the enormous problems which seem to rise up so often and which loom so darkly over the world’.60 But, as a result of his incapacity, much of his work would have to be undertaken by his wife and daughters. The Queen was heard to speak of ‘the person who once prayed to be granted not a lighter load but a stronger back’.61

  She needed it not just to shoulder the burden of the King’s incapacity but also to deal with what she saw as hurtful disloyalty close to home.

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  EARLY IN 1949 MARION Crawford, the Princesses’ governess, retired at the age of forty. Then began the lamentable episode for which she was to be remembered far more than for her fifteen years of devoted service as teacher, companion and friend to the Princesses: the unauthorized publication of her memoirs entitled The Little Princesses. By the standards of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, Miss Crawford’s revelations might seem harmless, indeed charming. But at the time her conduct was seen as an unforgivable betrayal. Recent research by Hugo Vickers shows the chief villains of
the piece to be a pair of unscrupulous American journalists and Marion Crawford’s husband.* But Miss Crawford herself behaved in ways which bordered on blackmail and deliberately defied her trusting employer, the Queen.

  On 1 January 1949 the Queen wrote affectionately to ‘My dear Crawfie’, urging her not to think that her retirement would mean severing all connection with the Royal Family. Crawfie had shared their joys and sorrows for years, and they looked upon her ‘now & always as a true & trustworthy friend’. The letter continued: ‘I can never tell you how grateful I am for all your devotion & love for Lilibet & Margaret. It was such a great relief to me during the war, to know that you were by their side, through sirens, guns, bombs & pantomimes – keeping everything cool and balanced, & good humoured. Thank you with all my heart.’62 Now, the Queen wrote, Crawfie would be able to devote more time to ‘the hub of your universe’, Major George Buthlay, a retired army officer whom she had married in September 1947. He had been found a good job in a bank by members of the Household, the couple had been given a grace-and-favour house in Kensington Palace and Crawfie retired on a full-salary pension.

  But that was not enough. Marion Crawford was anxious to develop, if not at first to exploit, her royal connections. She wrote to the Queen saying she had had many requests from the American and British press to speak or write about the Royal Family, but claimed that she had no desire to do so and would rather continue in royal employment; she also hoped that her husband could be helped by being given royal bank accounts to administer.63

  The Queen, distracted by the King’s illness, did not immediately respond. Then Bruce and Beatrice Gould, the editors of the American magazine Ladies’ Home Journal, sent a writer, Dorothy Black, to see Marion Crawford in London to try and persuade her to write articles or a book about the Princesses. Crawfie put this suggestion to the Queen in February 1949.64 This time the Queen saw the former governess, and in early April she wrote that she she felt ‘most definitely’ that Crawfie should not write and sign articles about the Princesses. She knew that Crawfie understood the need for people in positions of confidence with the Royal Family to be ‘utterly oyster’ and urged her to say ‘No No No to offers of dollars for articles about something as private & as precious as our family’. The Queen was ready to help her find a new teaching post.65

  Although disappointed, Miss Crawford appeared to accept the Queen’s request.66 But in May 1949 the Goulds came to London and induced her to sign a contract under which she would write her story with the help of Dorothy Black. By August the manuscript was finished. Crawfie’s agreement with the Ladies’ Home Journal required the manuscript to be approved by the Queen before publication. In early October 1949 the Goulds sent it to her through Lady Astor, with whom they were on friendly terms. But the Queen was given only three weeks to respond – publication had been set for January 1950, and it was clear that the Goulds intended to go ahead with or without her approval.

  The Queen was appalled both by the manuscript and by what she saw as Marion Crawford’s breach of promise. She wrote a six-page letter telling Lady Astor of the shock and distress she and the King felt; they could only think that ‘our late & completely trusted governess has gone off her head, because she promised in writing that she would not publish any story about our daughters’.67 Her Private Secretary, Major Tom Harvey, reinforced the message, writing to Lady Astor that such a memoir was ‘utterly alien to the spirit and custom of Their Majesties’ households and staff’. He added: ‘Nevertheless, The Queen realises that nothing much can be done about it.’68 Perhaps unwisely, Harvey did not ask that publication be abandoned. Instead, he sent Lady Astor a list of ‘passages to be considered for amendment’. These included several inaccuracies pointed out by Princess Elizabeth, who was as horrified as her mother by her governess’s conduct.69 But Major Harvey added a robust rider, to the effect that even in amended form ‘the existence & publication of this article remain entirely repugnant to The King and Queen.’70

  The Goulds remained ruthlessly committed to their commercial project.71 On receiving Major Harvey’s list of requested omissions Gould cabled Nancy Astor: ‘WE WILL AGREE MOST MODIFICATIONS PARTLY NATURAL DESIRE UNOFFEND YOUR FRIENDS PARTLY WISH EASE GOVERNESS POSITION FOR HER SAKE ALSO BECAUSE ANY RETALIATION UPON HER WOULD INEVITABLY LEAK AMERICAN PRESS TRADITIONALLY LOVES DEFEND UNDERDOG’.72 ‘Slight blackmail,’ commented the Queen, to whom Lady Astor brought the cable; ‘but encouraging as to our suggested omissions.’73

  Publication went ahead, without the objectionable passages but with further adaptations and inventions made by the Goulds to create the effect they desired. The series boosted the circulation of the Ladies’ Home Journal by half a million.74 Later in 1950 The Little Princesses was serialized in Britain in Woman’s Own, and published in book form by Cassell & Co. The Palace insisted, however, that letters from the Princesses be removed from the British publications.75

  Marion Crawford was allowed to keep both her house and her pension, but her relationship with the Royal Family never recovered. In November 1950 she and her husband moved to Aberdeen. She continued to write – or to permit others to use her name in writing – about the Royal Family, until the unfortunate occasion in 1955 when she allowed an article about Trooping the Colour and Royal Ascot to be published under her name, despite the fact that both events had been cancelled.

  It was a painful and unpleasant episode in the Queen’s life, and it showed how vulnerable the Royal Family was to betrayal by those around them whom they trusted.

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  IN AUGUST 1950 THE Queen celebrated her fiftieth birthday. The Times marked the occasion with an enthusiastic leader:

  It would be impossible to over-estimate the reinforcement that the King has derived from the serene and steady support of the Queen. She has sustained him in sickness and in health, at all times taking her full share of the burdens of royal service and in the time of great anxiety that befell her during the King’s grave illness … She speaks to all men and women on the level of common experience … She is never afraid to challenge the oversophisticated of the age in which she lives; she ignores the cynics and the pessimists and holds up for admiration the things that are lovely and of good report.76

  After her birthday, the King was well enough to travel up to Balmoral but the Queen waited in London until, on 15 August, her second grandchild, Princess Anne, was born.

  That summer and early autumn the weather at Balmoral was cold with incessant gales. But the King was still able to get out walking most days and the Queen thought he was really better. He made a device whereby a pony could pull him up hills with the help of a long trace fastened around his waist. It had a quick-release mechanism, similar to that found on RAF parachutes, in case the pony bolted. All in all, the care he took of himself encouraged his doctors to agree that if he continued to make good progress he and the Queen might be able to make their delayed visit to Australia and New Zealand in 1952. It was a blessed relief, the Queen told Queen Mary.

  Princess Elizabeth and her ‘darling children’ came to stay, and when they left the Queen found the house ‘very empty & forlorn’. In another early indication of the growing affection between her and her grandson, she wrote to Queen Mary, ‘Charles is really too angelic, and is such a clever child. His memory is prodigeous, and he takes a deep interest in everything. He is such a friendly little boy, and everyone here loves him.’77

  At the end of 1950 Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip were in Malta, where he was now stationed. They had a pleasant time, living as normal a life as was ever to be possible for them, along with other young naval couples. But their children remained in Britain and spent Christmas 1950 with their grandparents at Sandringham. The Queen wrote to her daughter about Prince Charles, ‘I can’t tell you how sweet he was driving to the station before Xmas. He sat on my knee, occasionally turning to Papa & giving himself an estatic hug, as if to say, isn’t this fun. He sits bolt upright doesn’t he, just like you used to.’ He had also enjoyed
Christmas itself. ‘He was thrilled with the Tree, & after gazing at it, tried to pinch the silver balls, and then had great fun helping to unpack everybody else’s parcels!’78

  Prince Philip, in particular, was worried that the grandparents would spoil his children. The Queen assured her daughter that she was not doing so. But Charles often came to her bedroom in the morning ‘& likes to sit on the bed playing with my little box of rather old lip sticks! They are all colours, & they rattle & he loves taking the tops off’. Princess Margaret sometimes played ‘Blaydon Races’ to him on the piano after tea. ‘He likes that because it has a line “all with smiling faces”, so it’s called ’Miling faces … And as for Anne! Well, she is too delectable for words … I know that you will be enchanted with her when you see how she has developed. She is so pretty & neat & very feminine! Philip will see such a huge difference, I am sure she’ll give him a tremendous glad eye!’79

  The Queen’s letters to her elder daughter in Malta contained more and more references to horses and racing. This was an interest which she was developing at the beginning of the 1950s and which became a passion for life. But the greater passion now was for her grandchildren. ‘I can’t tell you what a difference it makes having those heavenly little creatures in the house,’ she told their mother, ‘everybody loves them so, and they cheer us up more than I can say.’80

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  IN MAY 1951 THE King and Queen opened the Festival of Britain which the government had decided to stage on the one hundredth anniversary of Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition of 1851. The Festival was both a prayer to the future and a tribute that the country paid herself for having defeated Nazism and for remaining a bastion of freedom. It extolled the virtues of Britishness and Britain’s contributions to civilization. The unapologetic patriotism echoed the Queen’s own fierce love of Britain.