by Kitty Kelley
The equerry backed out of the room to relay the awful news to the young woman, who had departed England a Princess and would be returning as Queen. Campbell did not reach the royal party because a tropical storm had knocked out the telephone lines in Kenya. So he contacted Reuters, which he deemed the most responsible news service, and asked that the message be conveyed to the royal party. Elizabeth and Philip had spent the night at Treetops, the remote observation post in the African jungle, where they watched animals gather at a salt lick in the shadow of Mount Kenya. At dawn the exhausted couple returned to the Sagana Royal Lodge to sleep for a few hours. A Reuters reporter received the news flash from London and located the Queen’s private secretary, Martin Charteris.
“I remember he reached for a cigarette with trembling hands before he could tell me the King was dead,” said Charteris, who relayed the news to Michael Parker, aide-de-camp to Prince Philip. “Mike,” he said, “our employer’s father is dead. I suggest you do not tell the lady at least until the news is confirmed.”
The British Broadcasting Corporation made a formal announcement at 10:45 A.M., February 6, 1952, and, in a gesture of respect, went silent for the rest of the day. Stunned crowds filled the rain-drenched streets of London, and motorists stood in the middle of the street by their cars, weeping. Church bells tolled fifty-six times, one for each year of the King’s short life. England’s sorrow echoed around the world. In Australia a member of Parliament said, “We have lost a great bloke.” In America the House of Representatives passed a resolution of sympathy and adjourned. President Truman wrote in his diary: “He was a grand man. Worth a pair of his brother Ed.”
That brother, the Duke of Windsor, received the news in New York City, where he and the Duchess were staying at the Waldorf-Astoria. Winston Churchill advised him to return to England at once but cautioned against bringing the Duchess, who would not be received with propriety. The Duke sailed for England by himself, looking like a forlorn little man who had fallen off a charm bracelet. He stayed with his mother at Marlborough House, although he resented Queen Mary’s hostility to his wife.
In Kenya Michael Parker hurried to Prince Philip’s room to wake him. “It was his job to tell the Queen,” said Parker. “Probably the worst moment of his life. All he could say was, ‘This will be a terrible blow.’ He took her out into the garden and they walked slowly up and down the lawn while he talked and talked and talked to her…. I’ve never felt so sorry for anyone in all my life. He’s not the sort of person to show his emotions, but you can tell from a man’s face—how he sets his features. I’ll never forget it. He looked as if you’d dropped half the world on him…. The rest of us flew into action and were out of that place in an hour.”
Elizabeth received the news without cracking. She walked slowly back to the lodge, where BoBo MacDonald was shining her shoes. Her personal dresser dropped to her knees in a deep curtsy. “Oh, no, BoBo,” she said. “You don’t have to do that.” Her lady-in-waiting, Pamela Mountbatten, rushed to give her a comforting hug.
“Oh, thank you,” said the new Queen. “But I am so sorry that it means we’ve got to go back to England and it’s upsetting everybody’s plans.”
Martin Charteris entered with the dreaded envelope containing the accession documents, which required the new sovereign’s name.
“I did what I had to do,” he recalled. “I addressed her: ‘The only question I have to ask you at this stage is, what do you wish to be called when you’re on the throne?’
“ ‘Oh, my own name, of course. Elizabeth. What else?’
“ ‘Right. Elizabeth. Elizabeth the Second.’ ”
Many years later Charteris characterized the new Queen’s reaction to her accession: “I remember seeing her moments after she became Queen—moments, not hours—and she seemed almost to reach out for it. There were no tears. She was just there, back braced, her color a little heightened. Just waiting for her destiny.
“It was quite different for Philip. He sat slumped behind a copy of the Times. He didn’t want it at all. It was going to change his whole life: take away the emotional stability he’d finally found.”
Charteris summoned the press to make the announcement about “the lady we must now call the Queen.” He asked photographers to respect her privacy by not taking her picture as she prepared to leave. The photographers complied and stood by the side of the road as she passed, holding their cameras limp in their left hands and their right hands held over their hearts. The people of Kenya lined the dirt road to the airport for a solid forty-mile line. Black Africans, brown Indians, and white Europeans, subjects all, bowed their heads in silent tribute.
“There was very little conversation on the flight back to London,” recalled John Dean. “BoBo and I sat together, with the royal couple immediately behind…. The Queen got up once or twice during the journey, and when she returned to her seat she looked as if she might have been crying.”
She was wearing the beige-and-white sundress she had on in Kenya and refused to put on mourning clothes until the very last minute. Upon landing, the Queen looked out the window and saw Prime Minister Churchill waiting with a clutch of elderly men in somber ration-book black suits and black armbands. She gasped when she saw the long line of black Daimler sedans.
“Oh, God,” she whispered to her lady-in-waiting. “They’ve brought the hearses.”
Composed, but unsure of what to do next, she turned to her husband.
“Shall I go down alone?”
“Yes,” he said, acknowledging her sudden preeminence. As his wife’s subject, he now was required to call her “ma’am” in public and walk four paces behind her.
Tears trickled down Churchill’s cheeks and he struggled for composure as he offered his condolences.
“A tragic homecoming,” said the Queen, “but a smooth flight.”
After shaking hands with the plane’s crew, and thanking each one, she stepped into the family Daimler and was driven to Clarence House, where Queen Mary, dressed in black, was waiting to pay her respects.
“Her old grannie and subject must be the first to kiss her hand,” said Queen Mary.
The eighty-five-year-old woman, who would die thirteen months later, set the royal standard for mourning. After burying her husband, King George V, and two of her five sons, she declared black to be the color of death and to be worn only for doing death’s duty. So the women of the House of Windsor never wore black except when grieving. “On royal trips, we always packed something black in the luggage in case news of any death reached us,” said John Dean. “That is how it happened that the new Queen returned from tropical Africa dressed appropriately in a plain black dress, coat, and hat.”
The Queen greeted her grandmother as always: by kissing her on both cheeks and curtsying. Queen Mary frowned and shook her head, insisting that she be the one to pay homage. Despite crippling arthritis, she dropped to the ground in a deep curtsy to her twenty-five-year-old granddaughter, who was now her sovereign. Then, standing upright, the elderly Queen chided the new Queen.
“Lilibet,” she said, “your skirts are much too short for mourning!”
After seeing her grandmother, the Queen was led to St. James’s Palace, where she made a poignant accession proclamation. “My heart is too full for me to say more to you today than that I shall always work as my father did,” she said.
At Sandringham her mother and sister waited for her, mired in their own grief. Princess Margaret had locked herself in her room, almost inconsolable. “It seems that life has stopped forever,” she told her mother. “I wonder how it can go on.” The fifty-one-year-old Queen, not yet in black, resisted wearing widow’s weeds. She returned to her room and began writing letters. She knew that she was now consigned to the role of Queen Dowager, a title that made her shudder. Ignoring protocol, she insisted on being called Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. Her biographer, Penelope Mortimer, suggested that she had devised the title because she could not cope with the sudden demotion she suf
fered from her husband’s death. “In this way,” wrote Mortimer, “she managed to be called ‘Queen’ twice over.”*
Almost forgotten inside the big, hushed house at Sandringham was the King’s three-year-old grandson, Charles, who was playing by himself, sliding a green toy crocodile up and down the great mahogany staircase.
“What happened, nanny? What happened?” he asked his nurse, Helen Lightbody.
“Grandpa’s gone to sleep forever,” she said, bowing to the bewildered little boy, who was now Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Great Steward of Scotland. As heir apparent, he now outranked his father. Nanny took her royal charge by the hand and led him to bed for his nap.
Upstairs, the King’s body was moved from his bedroom to the small family church of St. Mary Magdalene, where it was guarded around the clock by his estate workers, who wore the same green tweed knickerbocker suits they wore when hunting with their King. They laid his royal purple standard over the coffin they had built that morning from Sandringham oak. Next to it they placed a white wreath from Winston Churchill. In his own hand, the Prime Minister had written: “For Valour.” The Queen’s flowers for her father arrived soon after and were placed on top of the coffin with her card: “To darling Papa from your sorrowing Lilibet.” When she curtsied to her father’s body at the funeral, it was the last curtsy she ever made.
Historians assessed the King as an important symbolic leader for the British during World War II, but they noted that his reign marked the end of the British empire. No longer King and Emperor, George VI was reduced to head of the Commonwealth of Nations and sadly watched Great Britain evolve into a welfare state. But France’s Ambassador said the King had left his daughter “a throne more stable than England has known almost her entire history.” To his countrymen the King remained a hero worthy of homage, a sovereign deserving respect. Soldiers wore black armbands after his death, and people contributed money for a memorial fund. Parliament voted $168,000 to pay for an elaborate state funeral on February 16, 1952, which included spreading purple cloth on the pavements so the white nylon ropes binding the King’s coffin to the catafalque would not touch the ground.
On that day, two minutes of absolute silence were observed in memory of the monarch. A man, who defiantly slapped his feet on the street, was arrested for insulting behavior. Crowds of angry Britons mobbed him as he fled to safety in a policeman’s arms. In court that afternoon, he was fined $2.80 for breaking the King’s silence.
From the moment she stepped off the plane in London, the new Queen was engulfed by courtiers and advisers and equerries, all urgently directing her on her father’s formal lying-in-state at Westminster Hall, his burial in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, and the long period of national mourning. She was briefed on the protocol for entertaining prime ministers and high commissioners of Commonwealth countries attending the funeral and greeting the seven sovereigns from other countries, including her uncle David, the Duke of Windsor, who posed a ticklish problem. He wanted to discuss continuing the $70,000-a-year allowance he had been receiving from her father since 1936. Because those personal funds were now hers, she had to decide whether to keep paying him.
The Duke’s lawyer argued that the money was a lifetime pension and his brother’s compensation to the Duke for renouncing his inheritance. The Duke knew the new Queen would discuss the allowance with her mother and Queen Mary. “It’s hell to be even that much dependent on these ice-veined bitches,” he wrote to the Duchess from London. “I’m afraid they’ve got the fine excuse of national economy if they want to use it.”
They didn’t need it. The Queen Mother said the Duke already had millions of his own, which the Duchess simply squandered on fripperies like satin pillows for her dogs and Diorissimo perfume, which she sprayed on her flowers to give them added fragrance. Queen Mary, who collected antiques—frequently while visiting friends’ homes and then sending her servant to “inquire” (that is, collect) the pieces she admired—said the spendthrift Duchess would only waste the money on her addiction to shoes, pointing out that she had once bought fifty-six pairs during one shopping spree. The new Queen deferred to her mother and grandmother and decided not to pay the Duke.
Upon the King’s death, all royal possessions passed directly to the new sovereign, including the King’s palaces, his twenty mares, his courtiers, and his private secretary, Sir Alan (Tommy) Lascelles. So, technically, Elizabeth’s mother and sister no longer had homes or horses or courtiers. Worse, their eviction from Buckingham Palace would mean that Elizabeth and Philip would have to leave Clarence House, something neither wanted, and move into Buck House, as they called Buckingham Palace.
“Oh, God, now we’ve got to live behind railings,” she said.
“Bloody hell,” said her husband. He dreaded exchanging the modern comforts of Clarence House for the drafty caverns of Buckingham Palace, with its 10,000 windows, three miles of red-carpeted corridors, 1,000 clocks, 10,000 pieces of furniture, 690 rooms, 230 servants, and 45-acre backyard. King Edward VII had referred to it disparagingly as “the Sepulchre.” King Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor, complained of the “dank, musty smell,” and the Queen’s father, King George VI, called it “an icebox.” So Prince Philip, who said he “felt like a lodger,” proposed using the Palace as an office and place of official entertainment while maintaining Clarence House as their home. The Queen put the idea to Winston Churchill, who sputtered indignantly. He insisted that Buckingham Palace was the sovereign’s home as well as the sovereign’s workplace—a focal point for the nation, the locus of the monarchy.
Hesitant to argue with the venerable Prime Minister, the Queen acceded and dutifully scheduled the move. Her husband was so incensed that he had the white maple paneling stripped from his study at Clarence House and moved to his bedroom in Buckingham Palace. Churchill then recommended that the Queen consider exchanging residences with her mother and sister. The Prime Minister confided his concern over her mother’s mental state. He said he had heard that in her grief the distraught widow had turned to spiritualism and even participated in a séance to speak to her dead husband. Churchill was so disturbed by the notion of the Queen Mother spirit rapping with ghosts that he traveled to Sandringham to persuade her to come out of retirement. He said that the government needed her more now than when her husband was alive. He offered to ease her return to public life by making Clarence House her London home.
“The Queen Mother had always thought highly of the bright comfort in which her daughter and son-in-law lived at the modernized Clarence House,” said John Dean, “and even envied it. But when it was suggested that she should take over Clarence House, she seemed reluctant to leave the Palace. This was very understandable, for her large suite there was rich with memories of a beloved husband.”
The Queen Mother told Churchill that she did not like the color scheme at Clarence House. He offered to change it. Then she said she could not bear to leave her bedroom in Buckingham Palace because the marble fireplace there had been a personal gift from the King. Churchill offered to move the fireplace to Clarence House. Still, she resisted, saying she couldn’t afford to live in such luxury anymore. Churchill said that her presence was so vital to the monarchy that the government planned to allocate $220,000 to refurbish the mansion for her and to provide a yearly allowance of $360,000, plus a staff of fifteen. She also was given two other palaces: Royal Lodge, an elegant Gothic house in Windsor Great Park near Windsor Castle, and Birkall in Scotland. In addition she purchased the Castle of Mey, surrounded by twenty-five thousand acres of heather in Scotland. Still, she hesitated accepting Churchill’s offer. “I was going to throw in Big Ben,” he said later, “but she yielded—in time.”
And the new Queen agreed to everything. She sympathized with her mother’s sixteen years of royal prerogatives suddenly yanked—the crown jewels, the palaces, the servants, the title. What the Queen did not realize was how much her mother missed shari
ng the power of the throne. The Queen understood better as soon as she saw the letter the Queen Mother wrote to her friend Lady Airlie:
Oh, Mabel, if only you knew how hard it has been; how I have struggled with myself. All through the years the King always told me everything first. I do so miss that.
The Queen quickly ordered a new red leather dispatch box to be emblazoned in gold with the words “HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.”
But the Queen did not extend this extraordinary privilege to her husband. In fact, she denied Philip the honor of sharing the red dispatch boxes that contained the confidential documents of government sent for royal approval. In this she broke all precedents: Queen Victoria had shared her boxes with Prince Albert. And her son and heir, King Edward VII, even shared his boxes with his daughter-in-law because he was so impressed by her devotion to the monarchy that he wanted her to be prepared to play her part behind the scenes when her husband became King. When he did become King, George V continued “doing” his boxes with his wife, Queen Mary, and his successor, George VI, did the same with his wife. But Queen Elizabeth II declined to carry on the royal responsibility with her spouse. Her advisers were so startled by her refusal that they posed the question again of permitting Philip to have access. Her reply: “No to the boxes.” To her husband she blamed her advisers.
A few weeks later her friend Lord Kinross, third Baron of Glasclune, wrote a profile of Philip in The New York Times Magazine and quoted the Queen on how to manage husbands:
“What do you do when your husband wants something very badly and you don’t want him to have it?” Elizabeth asked a friend.
“Well, ma’am,” the friend replied, “I try to reason with him and dissuade him, and we sometimes reach a compromise.”
“Oh,” Elizabeth said reflectively, “that’s not my method. I tell Philip he shall have it and then make sure that he doesn’t get it.”