Tributes came from America, too. General Eisenhower sent a three-page letter, expressing admiration for the King and devotion to Queen Elizabeth.4 Eleanor Roosevelt wrote with understanding: ‘There is nothing one can say to lighten the burden of your sorrow. Later you may be able to think with happiness of the life of service you & the King lived together & then you may be glad to feel how many, many of us appreciated the King’s great qualities & were grateful for what you both meant to the world, as well as to your own people. May God give you faith & strength & consolation.’5
When the Duke of Windsor heard the news of his brother’s death he immediately sailed from New York, where he was staying, to attend the funeral. His Duchess remained behind and advised him less than delicately, ‘Now that the door has opened a crack try and get your foot in, in the hope of making it open even wider in the future because that is the best hope for WE [Wallis and Edward] … Do not mention or ask for anything regarding recognition of me.’6 She urged him to see Queen Elizabeth and try to explain what he had felt at the time of the abdication. ‘After all there are two sides to every story.’7
Queen Mary added her own grieving voice on the Duke’s behalf. She wrote to Queen Elizabeth to ‘beg & beseech of you & the girls to see him & to bury the hatchet after 15 whole years … I gather D. is awfully upset as in old days the 2 brothers were devoted to each other before that dreadful rift came. I feel grieved to have to add this extra burden on you 3 just at this moment but what can I do & I feel that you are so kind hearted that you will help me over what is to me a most worrying moment in the midst of the misery & suffering we are going through just now.’8 Queen Elizabeth was not enthusiastic but, together with her daughters and Prince Philip, she did see the Duke, who came to tea at Buckingham Palace on 13 February, the day of his arrival. ‘So that feud is over I hope, a great relief to me,’ Queen Mary wrote to the Athlones.9
That was perhaps over-optimistic. But, before he left, the Duke wrote to Queen Elizabeth asking to see her again, this time alone. ‘I can well understand your not wanting to be bothered by people at this terribly sad moment in your life. But I would very much like to have a talk with you alone before I return to America … I feel for you so very deeply and would like to say so in person.’10 She reluctantly agreed, and he called on her at Buckingham Palace on 27 February.11
The Duke himself made notes of his meetings with his estranged family. ‘Mama as hard as nails but failing,’ he wrote. ‘When Queens fail they make less sense than others in the same state. Cookie [the Windsors’ unflattering nickname for Queen Elizabeth] listened without comment and closed on the note that it was nice to be able to talk about Bertie with somebody who had known him so well.’ Writing to his wife, he said, ‘Cookie was as sugar as I’ve told you,’ and went on to write in bitter and insulting terms of his family’s coldness to him, describing his mother and sister-in-law bitterly as ‘ice-veined bitches’.12 Notwithstanding such private thoughts, a few weeks later, in May, he sent Queen Elizabeth another apparently affectionate letter asking to see her on his next visit to London.13 She agreed and invited him to tea on 27 May, as she did once again in November that year.
Despite the depth of her grief, in outward matters Queen Elizabeth showed fortitude. Less than a fortnight after the death of the King, she announced that in future she wished to be known as ‘Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother’, although privately she disliked the title – ‘horrible name’, as she described it.14 With the help of Tommy Lascelles, she drafted an eloquent, personal message to the nation. The left-leaning News Chronicle called it ‘a statement without parallel in the history of kingship’.
I want to send this message of thanks to a great multitude of people – to you who, from all parts of the world, have been giving me your sympathy and affection throughout these dark days. I want you to know how your concern for me has upheld me in my sorrow, and how proud you have made me by your wonderful tributes to my dear husband, a great and noble King.
No man had a deeper sense than he of duty and of service, and no man was more full of compassion for his fellow men. He loved you all, every one of you, most truly. That, you know, was what he always tried to tell you in his yearly message at Christmas; that was the pledge that he took at the sacred moment of his Coronation fifteen years ago.
Now I am left alone, to do what I can to honour that pledge without him. Throughout our married life we have tried, the King and I, to fulfil with all our hearts and all our strength the great task of service that was laid upon us. My only wish now is that I may be allowed to continue the work we sought to do together.
I commend to you our dear Daughter: give her your loyalty and devotion: though blessed in her husband and children she will need your protection and your love in the great and lonely station to which she has been called. God bless you all: and may He in His wisdom guide us safely to our true destiny of Peace and Good Will.15
*
HEREDITARY MONARCHY can be both efficient and unkind, as the old phrase ‘The King is dead, long live the King’, suggests. The real national sorrow at the death of King George VI was immediately followed by happiness at the prospect of the young Queen coming to the throne. The torch had been passed to a new generation.
But this meant that the Queen Mother was now, in effect, the ancien regime. She suddenly found that she was no longer the mistress of any home. Buckingham Palace was a tied cottage – as well as a tied office – for the monarch, and the Queen and Prince Philip would need to move from Clarence House into the Palace where the King and Queen had lived since 1937. The Queen Mother would have to find another house in London and she could no longer consider Windsor Castle, Balmoral or Sandringham home.
The prospect of leaving the Palace distressed her. On at least one occasion she collapsed in tears on discussing her inevitable move with the Queen – and immediately wrote to apologize. She suggested to the Queen that she and Prince Philip should move into the Belgian Suite on the ground floor of the Palace – these were the rooms which the King and Queen had occupied during the war. That would give her time to move out of her own rooms on the first floor ‘without any ghastly hurry, and I could be quite self contained upstairs, meals etc, and you would hardly know I was there … It is so angelic of you both to tell me I can stay on for a bit at B.P., and I am most grateful for your thoughtfulness. I know that it took Granny some months to pack up everything, & I fear that I shall need some time too. But what is a few months in a lifetime anyway! Thank you darling for being such an angelic daughter.’16
Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary continued to sustain each other and, in Queen Mary’s eloquent words, they talked together ‘of much that was in our poor tattered hearts’.17 Queen Elizabeth’s doctor, Sir John Weir, sent her some homeopathic powders that he thought might relieve her suffering.18 Edward Woods, the Bishop of Lichfield, wrote to say, ‘I always knew that Your Majesty’s faith & encouragement would never fail in this supreme test; I have no doubt, Ma’am, that you yourself are the main human source of strength & comfort to the dear Princess Margaret & the others of the Family circle.’ He sent her a book, Why Do Men Suffer? by Leslie D. Weatherhead, and tried to console her with the thought that ‘suffering (“accepted” at God’s hands) is really a form of action.’19
She was concerned that she would now have nothing to do. At the age of only fifty-one, much younger than Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary when their husbands died, she did not feel ready for the relatively retired life they had led in widowhood. Although both had continued to carry out public engagements and to support their favourite charities, neither had sought any constitutional role.
Queen Elizabeth, however, was anxious at least to be able to act as a Counsellor of State when the Queen was away, as she had during the King’s reign. She told Lascelles, ‘Naturally I would like this, as it would give me an interest, & having been one, it seems so dull to be relegated to the “no earthly use” class.’20 But, under the existing legislation, after the death of her
husband she was no longer eligible to serve in this capacity.* Lascelles thought that it would be both right and popular to change the law in the Queen Mother’s favour and, with the agreement of the Queen, he immediately wrote to the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor to ask if it could be done.21 It could, and in April the Queen approved a submission from the Prime Minister proposing to amend the Regency Act to include the Queen Mother’s name following that of the Duke of Edinburgh and before the other Counsellors.22 It was a slow process, and the new Regency Act did not pass into law until November 1953. It contained another new departure: the Duke of Edinburgh was designated regent in case Prince Charles should succeed before the age of eighteen, instead of Princess Margaret, who under the 1937 Act would have become regent.†
The position of the Duke of Edinburgh was a matter about which the Queen Mother showed concern – she asked that he be able to play a part in the Coronation. Lascelles suggested that the Prince should be made chairman of the Coronation Commission, and this was done.23 But she found herself in conflict with her son-in-law over the name and style of the dynasty. The Prince’s destiny and his day-to-day existence had been changed massively by the accession of his wife. Her premature transformation from heir to reigning monarch made his life in every way more difficult. He had been head of his young family. Now his wife was taken over by the venerable Court of her father. The Private Secretary, the Lord Chamberlain, the Keeper of the Privy Purse and Treasurer, the Master of the Horse, the Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures – all of these and many more wanted to serve their new monarch and wanted her to see them do so. They wanted access to the Queen, not to her husband.
Prince Philip saw himself as a man first and a prince second, and as such he wanted recognition as head of his family. He thought that, in accordance with the normal practice, his children should take their father’s name. He had taken the family name, Mountbatten, when he became a naturalized British subject but he now proposed Edinburgh as an alternative. However, behind suggestions of any name change, some members of the Cabinet suspected the hand of Earl Mountbatten, who was reported to have said that since 7 February a Mountbatten had sat upon the throne. Queen Mary was dismayed – she believed that her husband had founded the house of Windsor for all time, and she was not prepared to see the name changed to Battenberg or Mountbatten.24 The Queen Mother seems to have agreed – Harold Macmillan, then the Conservative Minister for Housing, commented in his diary that she ‘of course favours the name of Windsor and all the emphasis on the truly British and native character of the Royal Family. It is also clear that the Duke has the normal attitude of many men towards a mother-in-law of strong character, accentuated by the peculiar circumstances of his position.’25 The Cabinet took the same view as the two dowager Queens and insisted to the new young Queen that her family must still be known as Windsor. It was not easy for Prince Philip. In the end, largely due to Dickie Mountbatten’s insistence, a compromise was agreed – the name Mountbatten-Windsor was adopted, to be used in future for those of the Queen’s descendants who were not entitled to be called Royal Highness. The name of the royal house remained Windsor.
The Queen Mother had to contemplate changing not only her residence but also her Household; as was customary, everyone formally resigned at the end of the reign. But she was anxious to keep many of the same people around her. She invited Lord Airlie to remain as her Lord Chamberlain – he accepted, ready to serve at her pleasure, but reminded her, ‘Your Majesty will not forget the telegram – “Be Off” – when Your Majesty has had enough of me.’26 Similarly, she wrote to her Treasurer Arthur Penn, ‘Please do continue, & I expect that there will be less to do in the future, or do you think that there will be much more, with less money & more to spend it on! I fully expect to be bankrupt, & would very much like to have you at my side when that happens!’27 There would indeed be much more for her to do, and money would always be a problem. On her widowhood, her Civil List allowance, for her official duties, was fixed at £70,000 a year; it remained at this level for the next twenty years.
Shock can dull grief and when the shock of the King’s death began to wear off, the Queen Mother felt increasingly wretched. To her brother David she wrote that she could not envisage life without the King – ‘he was so much, & such a big part of one’s own life, & things can never be the same again without his energy, & fun & goodness & kindness. He really was the kindest and most selfless person I have ever known … At the moment one simply cannot take any interest in anything.’28 Everything was painful; some of her letters echoed the sensibility which had led her to observe in 1944 that young soldiers contemplating the horrors of war found the beauty of the countryside hard to bear. To Lascelles she wrote that a beautiful day ‘is almost unbearable, & seems to make everything a thousand times worse. I suppose it will get better some day.’29
She appreciated the rallying of friends. Thanking Bobbety Salisbury for his comforting letter, she wrote,
tho’ sorrow is such an immensely personal thing that it is with one all the time, yet the feeling that other people understand what one is going through does give one courage.
The King was so wonderfully better, and for that I am very grateful, because he was so gay & so full of plans for the future, and I am quite sure did not contemplate death coming so soon.
I had so hoped that he might have had a few years when he could have eased up a little, & done some of the things he loved doing, such as planning gardens & vistas, & changing all the pictures round, and had perhaps some less violent & uneasy years in contrast to the last rather terrible twelve. But it was not to be.
At the moment everything seems very pointless, but I am sure that one must not be too sorry for oneself – it’s like looking in the glass when one is weeping, it makes everything much worse!30
Her friends did all they could. Doris Vyner was as important as any and the Queen continued to slip around to her flat secretly, as she had in the last months of the King’s illness, just to be alone with kindness and companionship she had known almost all her life. Doris understood how desperately she had needed the King and she commented that without him her ‘mainspring’ had gone. Indeed Doris pointed out to mutual friends whom she trusted that although everyone thought that the Queen had energized the King and kept him up to his work, in fact the opposite was true. The initiatives almost all came from the King – he had had to make the decisions. Now she was quite lost without him.31
D’Arcy Osborne understood some of this. He wrote to her from Rome late one night and said he would not read his letter through in case he then threw it away as he had already done other such letters to her. He wished he could help her in all the painful adjustments she was facing.32 Betty Bowes Lyon, the wife of her brother Mike, told her that she had a very rare gift with people, like the gift of healing, ‘and You MUST GO ON using it.’33 Understandably, she became more dependent upon her own family, in particular her brother David, who helped to put her life and finances into order and perspective. She told him, ‘now that Bertie has gone, you are the only person to whom I can turn … Thank you again darling for all your angelicness, Your very loving, Elizabeth.’34
She rarely let her grief show, and her ladies in waiting saw little of her anguish. Katie Seymour, who had known her since they were both in their teens, wrote: ‘She varies from day to day, never shows anything but supreme self control.’35 If she did break down, she was embarrassed. In April she wrote to Delia Peel to apologize for being ‘so silly’ and for being unable to tell her to her face how much she valued her help.36 She did express herself quite openly to Osbert Sitwell, saying that she felt it so hard to realize that the King had gone. ‘He was so young to die, and was becoming so wise in his Kingship. He was so kind too and had a sort of natural nobility of thought and life, which sometimes made me ashamed of my narrower & more feminine point of view.’37
One letter in particular nourished her. It was from Lord Davidson, who sent her his account of how he had encouraged t
he nervous Duke of York to pursue his quest for her in 1922. Davidson wrote, with great charm, that he had kept the story in the secret recesses of his memory and was only now releasing it ‘because in Your Majesty’s terrible loneliness I believe that it may bring one tiny grain of comfort’.38 She thanked him warmly: ‘As you told me your story so well, & so delicately, I must tell you that we were ideally happy, due to the King’s wonderful kindness & goodness and thought for others. I never wanted to be with anyone but him.’39
Her mood changed all the time, as might well have been expected. To Arthur Penn she wrote, ‘It is difficult to make any real plans as yet.’40 She confided to Lady Salisbury that sorrow was devastating. ‘I find everything a perpetual battle & struggle. But, as you know, the King never gave in, and I am determined to try & do what he would have wished.’41 She wrote in similar vein to Cecil Boyd-Rochfort, the royal racehorse trainer.42 At the end of April she went to a dinner with friends. According to Osbert Sitwell, ‘a sudden roar’ went up at the dining table which he took to be an indication of delight from everyone that the Queen Mother was among them once more.43 She thought that ‘the noise was so terrific and the plunge for me so sudden that I felt slightly bewildered’.44
Meanwhile she observed formalities. She received deputations from the Houses of Lords and Commons who presented addresses of condolence; she replied to each address. During the spring she fulfilled other commitments. Her first major official engagement after the death of the King took place on 13 May 1952. It was in fact an initiative of her own. She had always made a point of trying to see her regiments before they were sent off overseas, and when she heard that the 1st Battalion of her beloved Black Watch had been ordered to the war in Korea,* she asked if a visit to the battalion could be arranged for her.45 Despite a bad cold she flew to Scotland to inspect them at Crail Camp in Fife. Dressed in black, she wore the diamond regimental brooch that General Sir Archibald Cameron had presented to her when she became colonel-in-chief in 1937. Five hundred men paraded before her, each wearing a black armband. She praised the regiment ‘so dear to my heart and to many of my family’; then she met relatives and Old Comrades, visited the sergeants’ mess and lunched with the officers before flying back to London.46
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