A Brief History of the Private Life of Elizabeth II

by Michael Paterson

  If you look clearly at what the Queen does and how she does it, I defy you not to be impressed. You might subscribe to the disparagement of monarchy that is fashionable in some circles. You might have no interest in historic ceremony, nor see in it any worthwhile purpose. You might – if you have no views on racing or horse-breeding or the countryside – dread the thought of talking to her. But you will respect her. Because she deserves it.

  PRINCESS, 1926–1939

  ‘Isn’t it lucky that Lilibet’s the eldest?’

  Running westward from Bond Street to Berkeley Square, Bruton Street is in the midst of London’s Mayfair. Today it is largely associated with the galleries of clothing designers, whose names appear on their shopfronts. The buildings are unremarkable, the older ones consisting of five-storey dwellings whose ground floors have been, without exception, converted to commercial purposes. Not a single private house remains. These are not grand dwellings by the standards of Grosvenor Square or Belgravia. There is no parade of stuccoed pillars such as one would find in Eaton Square, nor the towering brick gables of Cadogan Place. There is a modest intimacy here.

  Number 17 is now a very modern office block. Eighty years ago, on this site, was the town house of the Earl of Strathmore. He was the maternal grandfather of Princess Elizabeth, and it was here that she was born. No plaque marks the spot, and the only visible link with royalty is that directly opposite are the former premises – this time there is a plaque – of Norman Hartnell, who was to design many of her clothes. Here were created the dresses she wore for both her wedding and her Coronation.

  But this is to anticipate. Princess Elizabeth came into the world by Caesarean section on 21 April 1926, at 2:40 a.m. Her father was Albert (‘Bertie’) Duke of York, second son of King George V and brother of David, the Prince of Wales. Her mother was the former Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, a member of an illustrious Scottish noble family. The Princess’s father did not possess the glamour of his brother, the Prince of Wales. He had little confidence, spoke with a stammer and would fly into frustrated rages. He was also kind and thoroughly decent, devoted to his family and dutiful to a fault. If he lacked his brother’s charisma he also lacked his self-centred hedonism. Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was born in 1900, growing up during the Great War and ‘coming out’ into the vacuous gaiety of the 1920s. As a debutante she was immensely popular. She was extremely good company, her gifts of conversation and humour honed by years of ministering to wounded soldiers at her parents’ home, and several young men were in love with her. Despite belonging to the ‘jazz age’, she had about her none of the frivolous, cocktails-and-laughter characteristics that caused the King to disapprove so completely of young women of the time. She won his entire approval – no mean feat, for his standards were exacting – and he advised his son that: ‘You’ll be a lucky fellow if she accepts you.’ Bertie, in fact, asked her twice before she did. It was not the Duke himself who made her hesitate, but the thought of marrying into his family. She was not, of course, to realise that the path she chose would take her to the throne and make her one of the most popular queens in history. Her mother had said of him that: ‘He is a man who will be made or marred by marriage.’ This proved to be true, and he was most fortunate in his choice.

  Princess Elizabeth was not heir to the throne – it was still thought likely at the time that her 32-year-old uncle would marry and produce his own offspring – but she was the first grandchild within the immediate Royal Family. Her presence also meant that there were three generations of Royals and this promise for the future, as it always does, provided the British public with a reassuring sense of continuity. She represented good news to a country in turmoil, for the General Strike began a week after her birth. While there was no reason to assume that the little girl would become queen, this possibility was not ignored. As one author, Dermot Morrah, has said: ‘The idea that Princess Elizabeth would one day become Queen Elizabeth II was never altogether remote from the thoughts of her future subjects. Imperceptibly as the years went by it changed from a conscious speculation to a possibility and then to a probability.’ It was also quite likely that, even if she did not inherit the British throne, she might become the queen of some other country through marriage. From the very beginning of her life she was therefore the subject of widespread public curiosity, speculation and affection. This would increase as she grew into an attractive and photogenic infant with curly fair hair, who smiled readily. It would be consolidated when she was joined, a few years later, by an equally attractive sister.

  She might have spent her infant years in Canada, for there was some notion in the mid-1920s of her father being appointed Governor-General there. The King, however, felt that this would be too great a trial for his diffident son, and the idea was not pursued.

  The Princess’s father may have been disappointed at not having had a boy. If so, he never gave any sign of it. On the contrary he was a model parent who, like his wife, was absolutely devoted to his daughters, and the Duchess had, in any case, wanted a girl. For a few years it remained a possibility that the birth of a brother would oust Elizabeth from her place in the succession, but when, in 1930, a second daughter, Margaret, was also born by Caesarean section, the matter ended. In those days it was considered dangerous to have more than two such operations, and the Duchess was warned by her doctors that there could be no more children. It was at that time that Elizabeth’s grandmother began to see her as a likely heir and to train her for a future on the throne.

  The Princess was christened, five weeks after birth, by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the chapel at Buckingham Palace, wrapped in the same Honiton lace garment as had been used for her father, grandfather and great-grandfather. The names chosen for her – Elizabeth Alexandra Mary – referred to her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother (who had just died), although curiously these were not in sequence, with Alexandra coming in the middle and not last.

  Very early in her life – she was not yet two – the Princess was left in the care of servants and grandparents while the Duke and Duchess went on an official tour to Australia. They missed her first birthday as a result (‘We are not supposed to be human,’ lamented her mother). Her time was divided between her Strathmore relations, at their Scottish and English homes, and the King and Queen. Neither King George nor Queen Mary had a natural flair for children. Both had been distant, formal and demanding parents. The King, notorious for his rages, had terrified his sons and grandsons, but took at once to this little girl, whom he spoiled. She was to visit him during his recovery from illness at Bognor, for she was unfailingly able to cheer him up. He liked to have breakfast with Elizabeth and, when at Sandringham, to take her on visits to his stud. She was thus aware from infancy of the atmosphere of stables and of their silent, dignified occupants. The seeds of a lifetime’s passion were sown here.

  When her parents returned from overseas the little Princess appeared with them on the Palace balcony as they acknowledged the cheers of the crowd. It was her first public appearance. She was so much the centre of attention that the Duke and Duchess had been presented on their travels with no less than three tons of toys for her. She received a few of them, but the great majority were given to children in hospital.

  Although she was always a Royal Highness, Elizabeth herself invented the name by which she has been known to intimates ever since. ‘Lilibet’ was her early attempt to enunciate her own name, and somehow it stuck. More than 80 years later, she still uses it when signing Christmas cards to relatives and old friends.

  At the age of three, she was featured on the cover of Time magazine – then, as now, a considerable accolade. She was dressed in yellow, and this started a trend throughout the world for children’s clothing in that colour. This was not all. She was also depicted on a stamp (six cents, Newfoundland) and appeared on several commercial products. A section of the Antarctic was even named in her honour. When she was four, the first biography of her was published – The Story of Princess Elizabeth by Anne Ri
ng.

  There was to be more in a similar vein throughout the years ahead – words and pictures that showed a happy family, with two bright and attractive daughters, surrounded by pets in agreeable garden settings. The Duchess, who allowed these intrusions, has been accused of ‘marketing’ her family by arranging access for photographers and writers, manipulating what would now be called ‘the media’ in order to present them as middle-class paragons.

  What was the point of such a public-relations exercise? The age into which the girls were born was not one of established order and social certainties but a time of extremes, both economic and political. The Great War had recently toppled the thrones of their family’s continental relatives, and no monarchy could afford complacency. The public’s loyalty could no longer be taken for granted. It must be earned – and kept – by constant effort. In Britain, industrial relations were bad, unemployment was widespread and envy of the rich was consequently rife. The House of Windsor must be seen to justify the goodwill and respect that its members still commanded. To live modestly and unostentatiously as the Yorks, by royal standards, did was in keeping with the spirit of the age, and increased the popularity of the monarchy. To feature in the press as a charming, pleasant and ordinary family, devoted to useful work and high domestic ideals, was to provide escapism for those whose lives were grimmer.

  The image that the Duchess enabled the public to see was in no sense a sham. She and her family really were as wholesome, unpretentious and devoted to each other as the images suggested. The family provided a welcome boost to national morale throughout the years of the Depression. By the time she came to the throne, Elizabeth’s popularity had been building for a quarter of a century.

  Her sister, Margaret, was four years her junior. They grew up to be extremely close, for their position made it difficult to befriend others, and they did not go to school. The girls looked very similar. Both had the same chin-length chestnut hair and blue eyes. The resemblance was increased by the things they wore: they were always dressed, if not the same, then at least similarly. Their clothes were plain and practical and, even for the time, often quaintly old-fashioned: dresses cut identically – although sometimes in different colours – sensible brown shoes and calf-length white socks. The only differences, and these were trivial, were that Elizabeth had her hair parted on the right and Margaret on the left, and that the older sister wore three strings of pearls while the younger had only two. She became resentful, however, if her sister had something she did not: ‘Margaret always wants what I have,’ Elizabeth complained. This was never more obvious than at their father’s Coronation. The elder daughter, as heir, was given a gown with a train and a scaled-down coronet. Margaret made sufficient fuss to be given these too, although she had to make do with a shorter train.

  Their closeness was in spite of having very different personalities. Elizabeth was earnest, conscientious, eager to please and to do what was expected of her. Margaret was comical, wilful, irreverent and mischievous, a gifted singer and mimic who loved performing and had a talent for wheedling her way out of tasks she disliked. Elizabeth had a temper inherited from her father and grandfather, but this was not often seen. She disliked confrontation, in fact, and would let her sister have her way to avoid it. Margaret was very aware of being the second child and thus of receiving less interest and less privilege, but for the same reason she was given more leeway by her parents and was more spoiled. The girls themselves were aware of the differences in temperament between them. Margaret, comfortable in the role of scamp and rebel, said to her mother: ‘Isn’t it lucky that Lilibet’s the eldest?’

  Elizabeth was obsessively tidy, saving – and neatly folding – the wrapping paper from presents. There would never be a time in her life when she would be guilty of sloppiness, either of mind or habit. Although in theory she had always had others to pick up after her, in practice she was never to need much running after.

  Yet she was a good deal more energetic, fun-loving and noisy than accounts of her childhood suggest. She was filled with curiosity, wanting to know about the things around her, asking questions of those she encountered and unafraid to talk to strangers because everyone she met treated her with respect. Like her sister, she could amuse grown-ups – as when she was once asked at Sandringham by the Archbishop of Canterbury if she would walk with him in the garden. She agreed, but with the stipulation: ‘Please do not tell me anything more about God. I know all about Him already.’ Such occasional off-handedness once caused her grandmother to introduce her as ‘Princess Elizabeth, who hopes one day to be a lady.’

  Her father had seen to it that, from the time she was first conscious of her surroundings, Elizabeth learned to obey her elders and to live up to their expectations, and to do so willingly, just as he had been advised by his own father to learn quickly the habits of obedience and conformity as a means of avoiding trouble. She inherited his personality – painstaking, methodical and dutiful – rather than the warm spontaneity that characterised her mother, but her own inclinations must have concurred with his advice. Years later, a former soldier recalled: ‘I was in the Household Cavalry; they have to salute any member of the Royal Family. Princess Elizabeth used to walk by and not take any notice, whereas Princess Margaret would sort of wave.’ This should not be seen as evidence of a certain hauteur. Rather, it suggests the seriousness with which she took her role. Elizabeth loved the trappings of ceremony that surrounded her family – she was quite capable of walking past the sentries just to see them present arms – and she was interested in those who performed these rituals. She would have been aware, however – even at an early age – that it was both wrong and undignified to distract them while they were going about their duty.

  The family had two homes. In London they lived at 145 Piccadilly, a five-storey mansion on the north side whose windows looked across Hyde Park Corner at St George’s Hospital and at the gardens of Buckingham Palace. A victim of wartime bombing, its remains were to be cleared away for the widening of Park Lane.

  The house would be considered grand enough by most people, although Marion Crawford, the Princesses’ governess, described it somewhat extraordinarily as: ‘Neither large nor splendid. It might have been the home of any moderately well-to-do young couple starting married life.’ It happened to have 25 bedrooms, and half-a-dozen staff. The girls lived on the top floor, where a large glass dome shed light on the stairwell. Beneath this, on the landing, they kept an extensive and neatly ordered collection of toy horses, all of which were groomed and exercised.

  The residence was situated on the crest of the low hill where Piccadilly sweeps westward up to Hyde Park Corner. To its right was Park Lane and the ornate entrance to the park as well as Apsley House, former home of the Iron Duke. Across from it was the huge memorial arch that commemorated his military career. A reminder of a more recent conflict – the Artillery Memorial – was also nearby. Opposite, behind a low wall and hidden by trees, were the gardens of Buckingham Palace. From their top-floor vantage point the Princesses could see not only noble architecture but the everyday life of London from which, by protocol and a protective barrier of servants, they were excluded. They watched the unending procession of pedestrians and vehicles that passed below. They had a particular fascination with the open-top double-decker buses, and longed to travel in one. They were to do so, but only once, for an IRA bombing campaign led to heightened security measures and ended such outings. They noticed the horses among the traffic, and developed a particular affection for a pair that passed at the same hour each evening, pulling a brewer’s dray. They were greatly disappointed if they missed them.

  At the back of 145 was a now-vanished green space called Hamilton Gardens. Enclosed by railings and filled with sooty shrubbery, it was linked, by a gate, with Hyde Park. It was the principal playground of the girls and their friends, who were largely cousins or the daughters of neighbours. From the park beyond this small enclosure the Princesses were watched at play by members of the publi
c. Elizabeth and Margaret took for granted the presence of inquisitive spectators. They even reciprocated their curiosity. They were intrigued by the children they saw on their walks in the park, and might smile shyly at them. They were, like closeted royal children everywhere, to develop a fascination with those beyond their own world.

  The other, weekend, home of the Yorks was White Lodge in Richmond Park. Both husband and wife disliked it intensely. It was very inconvenient, stuck in the midst of great swathes of parkland that were entirely accessible to the public, so that there was no privacy. Only in 1932 did they escape to a more secluded house – Royal Lodge at Windsor. This had begun as a shooting-box for George IV, and is a pleasantly rambling Regency building, but at that time it was much in need of repair. Plans had been made for extensive remodelling but, with the onset of the Depression in 1929, had had to be shelved. In response to the country’s economic woes, the King cut his own Civil List by half, and his sons had to reduce their expenditure accordingly. Royal Lodge therefore remained rather uncomfortable. Nevertheless it was made habitable and decorated in the Duchess’s favoured colours of fawn and pink. It had around it the seemingly limitless expanses of Windsor Great Park with its opportunities for walking and riding. It also had its own enclosed garden, long-since grown into a jungle. The taming of the garden became a passion for the Yorks, who devoted hours at weekends, in old tweeds and sweaters, to clearing and planting. The Princesses became involved in this, and would have known discomfort and blisters – and the fun of getting dirty in a good cause – just as the adults did.

  One thing the Yorks did not want to do was to travel abroad. The parents of many aristocratic children of that age would have gone to the Riviera and St Moritz as a matter of course. Elizabeth’s parents took their pleasures in Scotland, at Glamis and Balmoral. No doubt the King liked to have them on holiday with him in the Highlands, and his own views on foreign countries (‘Abroad is bloody’) were well known. Elizabeth might have grown up familiar with other lands, playing with cousins from other Royal Houses (more or less as her future husband was doing). Instead, she was to see nothing of the world until she went to South Africa at the age of 20.