The Queen Mother

by William Shawcross

  Lascelles may have understood the tragic side of the story, but he was not the most sympathetic interlocutor for the young couple. Understandably enough, he saw it as his duty above all to protect the Queen and her position as head of Church and state in what was still an overwhelmingly Christian country. He does not seem to have explained to Princess Margaret and Townsend themselves their full predicament. As Elizabeth Longford put it in her 1983 biography of the Queen, for which she received considerable assistance from Princess Margaret, ‘Lascelles was never to give the anxious lovers that clear-cut if bleak picture of their position, legal and otherwise, which they needed.’ The implications of the Royal Marriages Act were not explained to them. ‘Today Princess Margaret feels that if they had understood from the start the hopelessness of the situation, Peter would have departed and no major tragedy would have ensued.’118

  The affair became public as the Queen was crowned. On Coronation day, journalists outside the Abbey noticed the Princess pick a little piece of fluff off Townsend’s jacket. For the American reporters this was more than enough evidence of what had been rumoured for months. Nine days later Lascelles wrote to the Queen Mother warning her that the story could break any day in the American press and that the British papers would quickly follow suit.119

  Lascelles said that his only concern was ‘whether The Queen, Head of Church & State, & the high priestess, so to speak, of the ideal of family life – whether she should or should not be advised to allow her sister to marry a divorced man in a registry office’. He argued that he and the Queen’s ministers were bound to consider this, ‘for it is, after all (and especially since 1936), fundamentally a State matter.’120

  He sent Queen Elizabeth a summary of the key law in this matter, the Royal Marriages Act of 1772. This had been introduced by King George III, after one of his brothers contracted an unsuitable marriage, in order to prevent his children doing the same. The act made it illegal for any lineal descendant of George II to marry without the sovereign’s consent (other than the issue of princesses who married into foreign families). If the sovereign refused consent, a member of the Royal Family might, after reaching the age of twenty-five, marry legally without it, unless both Houses of Parliament expressly disapproved within twelve months of notice being given of the intention to marry.

  In such a matter the Queen had to act upon the advice of her ministers, whatever her personal sympathies for her sister. Lascelles was certain that, if the Queen asked her Privy Counsellors to approve the marriage, nine out of ten would refuse to do so, and that the attitude of the Commonwealth would be the same. He was convinced that the only way of avoiding trouble and protecting the Queen was for Townsend to go away for an indefinite period.121

  On 13 June Lascelles called Churchill’s Secretary, Jock Colville, on the scrambler phone and told him he wished to come and see the Prime Minister to talk about the crisis. Churchill was at Chartwell, his beloved country house in Kent. Lascelles drove there and warned the Prime Minister that the American press was about to carry detailed articles about the affair. Churchill’s initial reaction was typically romantic. In Colville’s account the Prime Minister exclaimed, ‘What a delightful match! A lovely young royal lady married to a gallant young airman, safe from the perils and horrors of war!’ Colville interrupted to point out that that was not how Lascelles saw the situation and Clementine Churchill broke in to say, ‘Winston, if you are going to begin the Abdication all over again, I’m going to leave! I shall take a flat and go and live in Brighton.’122

  The Prime Minister evidently reflected. Lascelles reported to the Queen Mother that Churchill felt he could not recommend consent being given to the marriage unless Princess Margaret first renounced all her royal rights, including her right of succession to the throne, her title of royal highness, and probably her share of the Civil List. If she did so, he saw no objection to the couple marrying in a registry office.123 Churchill did, however, insist that the Queen Mother must not take Townsend with her on her forthcoming trip to Southern Rhodesia and that he must be found another job elsewhere for at least a year.124 Two years later, commenting on a private account of the affair written by Lascelles, Jock Colville was anxious to set the record straight: Churchill, he said, ‘was in reality opposed to any attempt to prevent their marrying’. So long as Princess Margaret renounced her rights to the throne, he would even have argued strongly for a Parliamentary income for her. But shortly afterwards Churchill suffered a stroke which put paid to further intervention on his part, although, according to Colville, his views remained the same.125

  The day after this Chartwell meeting, 14 June, the People newspaper published an article demanding ‘They Must Deny It Now’ – the ‘scandalous rumours’ of the Princess being in love with a divorced man were, ‘of course, utterly untrue’. This public exposure forced a choice. Princess Margaret could either renounce Townsend now and for ever – or she could wait two years until she was twenty-five. Then, under the Royal Marriages Act, she could expect to be free to make her own decision. She and Townsend talked with anguish together. They decided not to renounce their love – they would wait out the next two years, after which they would be able to marry, subject to Parliamentary consent.

  Two days after the People article, Arthur Penn took Townsend out to dinner and advised him to make himself scarce for the time being. Reporting afterwards to the Queen Mother, Penn wrote that Townsend had a charming character but ‘it may perhaps lack a strength … Poor boy: what a grey picture for him, & poor dear little Princess Margaret whom I have known ever since she was born. I am so sorry for her.’126

  On 17 June Townsend himself wrote to the Queen Mother to say that he had had a long talk with Lascelles and that they were now on good terms again. He was bitterly disappointed not to be able to go with her and the Princess to Rhodesia but agreed to accept whatever was decided for the best – this turned out to be a post as air attaché at the British Embassy in Brussels. ‘I do hope however that Princess Margaret & I may see a little of each other before she goes away, as I want so much to take care of her over this difficult bit.’ He understood the problems that the romance had caused and concluded, ‘Your Majesty is going through so much for us and I can never thank you enough for your kindness and your help, and for the way you have stood by Princess Margaret. We will never forget how much you are thinking of the Queen too, and will always do everything we can to consider her.’127

  The ordeal, for suitor, daughter, mother and other members of the Royal Family, was far from over.

  *

  THE AGE OF empire was ending and, following India’s independence in 1947, decolonization was gathering force throughout Africa. All through the 1950s Britain came under increasing pressure, from her own financial limitations, from the United Nations and then from the Organization of African Unity, to hand over her colonial powers to African nationalists. But in 1953 the tide of anti-colonialism still seemed resistible and the British government attempted to find alternatives to full independence. That summer London created a federation out of the former colony of Southern Rhodesia and the protectorates of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Its status was complicated – it was a federal realm of the British Crown, not a colony; it was eventually intended to become a dominion within the British-led Commonwealth of Nations.*

  On 30 June 1953 the Queen Mother, accompanied by Princess Margaret, set off for the new Federation. She had been invited to Rhodesia, which she had much liked on the Royal Family’s 1947 tour of southern Africa, some months after the death of the King. She acknowledged in a letter to Lord Salisbury, ‘I must admit I had to screw myself up a good deal to finally say that I would go’; but because she admired the legacy of Cecil Rhodes, and because she hoped to contribute to the success of the Federation, she had now agreed to undertake the tour.128 This was to be the first of many official overseas visits that Queen Elizabeth carried out as a widow.† The revolution of jet travel was about to shrink the world as never before and her firs
t trip was made in the new British passenger jet, the Comet, in which she had enjoyed her trial flight in May 1952.

  For the Queen Mother, Rhodesia was absorbing and enjoyable; for Princess Margaret, inevitably, it was less of a pleasure. They journeyed through much of the country on the same White Train that they had taken in 1947; the stewards were all South African and one of them had been with them then. At their first dinner on board, they were served no fewer than eight courses – ‘I sent for the menus & pruned,’ Queen Elizabeth wrote home. Princess Margaret was made ill by the chilly air-conditioning, which added to her misery.129 It was not surprising that she was reported by the press to be unsmiling and sullen on the trip. It was indeed very hard for her to endure the public scrutiny on top of her personal sense of loss.

  In Bulawayo on 3 July the Queen Mother opened the Central African Cecil Rhodes Centenary Exhibition in front of a crowd of about 20,000, and two days later she and the Princess went to pay their respects at Rhodes’s grave in the Matopo Hills. It was intended to be a private visit, but a great crowd of people assembled around them at the service which was held there. According to the Governor, special care was taken to include in the programme ‘a considerable number of events for the Africans, in every town and district which was visited’.130 A crowd of 5,000 schoolchildren gathered in Gwelo on 7 July to see the Queen Mother open the Queen Elizabeth Memorial Gates at Chaplin School. After more engagements the train continued on its way, often stopping for her to greet local people. It brought back more memories of 1947: as she wrote to the Queen that evening, ‘it seems a very short time since we were all alighting at the same places, & being urged back into the train by Papa!’ She was impressed with the progress since then. ‘I am sure that this country has a great future, tho’ it will have to go through the teething troubles of Federation!’131

  After more visits in the Umtali area, she and Princess Margaret had two welcome nights off the train, but since the Princess still felt wretched she flew back to Salisbury, while Queen Elizabeth continued the trip on her own. She met the boys of Eagle School and the residents of Melsetter district and Cashel; at Nyanyadzi she drove through African irrigation farms, then met the residents at Birchenough Bridge and took tea in the Bikita Native Reserve. She visited the ancient ruins at Great Zimbabwe – according to legend the Queen of Sheba’s capital city – and the nearby Morgenster Mission Hospital. Back in Salisbury, she laid the foundation stone of the new University College on 13 July.

  The journey was strenuous – her host, Major General Sir John Kennedy, the Governor of Southern Rhodesia, apologized that the programme was so heavy and wished that there could have been more lions and picnics in game reserves. But he thought her trip had done untold good, ‘and it has, I believe, given everyone, of all races, a feeling of confidence about the future – which is just what was needed at this moment’.132

  Queen Elizabeth loved Rhodesia for its sheer physical beauty – ‘range after range of blue mysterious hills, fading into far far away. And a great plain stretching away for ever between the mountains. The light is exquisite, the sun bright & hot & the air cool. I love the immensity of Africa, one feels a great rhythm all the time.’133 She had a maternalistic view of the British Commonwealth and believed that the white settlers were doing good not only for themselves but also for the black African populations. She thought the country had a great future. She also loved the fact that there were ‘NO DEATH DUTIES!’134

  Despite her concern for Princess Margaret, the Queen Mother had recovered much of her joie de vivre. Those with her remembered much laughter and high spirits on the trip. Everywhere she went she seemed to enjoy herself, and thousands of people, white and black alike, were happy to see her doing so. The Governor’s wife, Lady Kennedy, wrote to thank her for all she had done for the country and ‘for so much kindness, for all the heavenly fun & gaiety & for so much laughter’.135 A guest at a reception in Salisbury at the end of her tour observed that she looked ‘as fresh as a daisy’ after gruelling days. ‘I have never seen a more serene person. One cannot describe her as beautiful and yet she is a beautiful woman.’136

  From Rhodesia, she and the Princess flew to Uganda and then back towards London. In Khartoum, where the plane refuelled, the two royal ladies were offered warm champagne, which they sipped sitting in garden chairs on the tarmac, after a ‘gloriously incoherent deaf conversation’ with some Sudanese religious leaders.137 The Queen and Prince Philip came to London airport to meet them.

  Three weeks later, after her fifty-third birthday, Queen Elizabeth travelled as usual to the Highlands. She stayed first at Balmoral with her children and grandchildren; it was ‘heaven’, she said, ‘laughing & talking & being a family’ which, she thought, ‘is the only thing worth living for’.138 Then she moved down the road to Birkhall, to which she had invited the Salisburys ‘to stay in extreme discomfort’ in her ‘TINY’ house for a week’s shooting.139 But her guests enjoyed it. Lady Salisbury wrote afterwards that Birkhall ‘was the “warmest and cosiest” place in Scotland, both inside and out’.140 Her husband thought the house delightful and to be back on the hill without the King was touching. ‘The King had been so much the guiding spirit of the place, one felt he was still there all the time, watching us and blessing us with his presence.’141

  Not long afterwards, the Queen Mother had new duties to fulfil when the Queen and Prince Philip departed for a five-month tour of the Commonwealth. For the first time in the new reign, she was required to exercise the powers conferred on her by the new Regency Act as Counsellor of State. The other Counsellors were Princess Margaret, the Duke of Gloucester, the Princess Royal and the Earl of Harewood. Over the ensuing months she and Princess Margaret held seven meetings of the Privy Council to carry out the Queen’s constitutional duties on her behalf; they also received numerous British ambassadors who kissed hands on appointment to their postings, and newly appointed foreign ambassadors presenting their letters of credence. She held six investitures at Buckingham Palace and one of those whom she knighted was the ‘dear’, ‘priceless’, ‘angelic’ George Robey of her teenage letters to Beryl Poignand. She invested John Christie, the creator of the Glyndebourne opera house in Sussex, as a Companion of Honour. She also gave audiences to ministers and on at least two occasions she received Winston Churchill. ‘I had a visit from Winston last week,’ she wrote to the Queen in March 1954. ‘What a privilege to have lived in his day – He is a truly great man.’142 Churchill’s health was failing but he resigned only in April 1955, making way for Anthony Eden.

  Her duties were familial as well as formal – while the Queen and Prince Philip were abroad, the Queen Mother was in loco parentis to Prince Charles and Princess Anne. She took great pleasure in this task. While the children were staying with her at Royal Lodge, she took them to Shaw Farm in Windsor Home Park. Afterwards she sent their mother a mock-dramatic account of their gleeful progress from one lethal farmyard hazard to the next, turning on taps, setting heavy metal objects swinging above their heads, climbing on tottering straw bales and rusty farm machinery bristling with sharp blades, and relishing a ‘dear little cat hunt’, during which the ‘quite nice’ corgis and Sealyhams turned into ravening wolves. The final delights were a cart full of manure – and a baby in a pram. ‘They cooed and patted its hands and leant lovingly & heavily over it! “Mummy has promised us a baby” I heard Charles saying proudly … Having leant over the pigs, & fed the cows etc etc etc, we came home – the children fresh as paint, & me? – well, perhaps well exercised is the word! But they have been so good, and talk about you and Philip a lot.’ She told the Queen how she missed her, and said she had not seen much of Princess Margaret. ‘This I am very glad of for her sake, as she has been lunching & dining out a good deal.’143

  That Christmas the Queen Mother presided at Sandringham and reported to the Queen that the children had enjoyed themselves ‘galloping down the passage’ to see the tree and gasping at it with ‘ “oh’s” & “ah’s” & isn’t it B
EAUTIFUL’. Earlier, at Windsor, she had enjoyed the Servants’ Ball where she waltzed with Lord Freyberg, the distinguished former Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of New Zealand who was now Governor of Windsor Castle. It was ‘very exciting as it was the dance when balloons descend from the roof, & Lord Freyberg went mad & banged housemaids out of his way, & pushed poor old ladies aside in a mad desire for balloons’.144 Perhaps this spectacle would have prompted Isaiah Berlin to revise his later assessment of Lord Freyberg as ‘boring’.*

  Prince Charles, she added, had started lessons with Miss Peebles.† But, characteristically insouciant about formal lessons, his grandmother was determined that he should have fun. She reported that the children were enjoying playing Dumb Crambo in the evenings. ‘It is a great success, & they adore acting, tho’ the rhyming is slightly vague. Something to rhyme with “stop” – “pheasant” said Charles triumphantly – that’s the way it was played at first, but now they are getting much better at rhyming.’145

  Apart from the children, the letters between mother and daughter dealt at length with their mutual interest in horses. With a light touch, the Queen Mother’s letters to her daughter at this time also sought to advise and encourage her in the public role she herself understood so well. ‘We follow your journeys very well by the papers, and some good newsreels,’ she wrote. ‘How well one knows the procedure, & how monotonous it becomes. But one simply can’t think of any other way of letting people see the Sovereign, than getting up on a dais & driving round town.’ She hoped Prince Philip was not tired – ‘It makes just the whole difference in the world doing things together … I find that doing things without Papa nearly kills one – he was so wonderful.’146 She remembered how tired they had both become during their own visit to New Zealand and Australia in 1927 – ‘and yet, thank goodness, one is uplifted & carried on by the wonderful loyalty & affection. And one feels again, how moving & humble-making, that one can be the vehicle through which this love for country can be expressed. Don’t you feel that?’147