by Kitty Kelley
In St. Giles Cathedral, the Queen, who was surrounded by the Scottish peerage in their velvet cloaks and coronets, looked strangely out of place in black leather shoes, a gray blue felt hat, and a street-length coat, especially next to the Duke of Edinburgh, who was dressed magnificently in a plumed helmet and gold-braided uniform. The most jarring part of the Queen’s attire was the big black purse she was carrying in the crook of her arm. To the Scots she looked like a middle-class housewife on her way to the grocery.
At the altar she stepped forward while the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon knelt before her in his coronation robes to proffer the crown of Scotland on a velvet cushion with gold tassels. As she reached toward him, her leather handbag, which was as large as a breadbox, almost hit him in the face. He quickly moved his head to avoid getting smacked by the royal purse.
In the official painting commemorating the ceremony, the Queen is shown receiving the ancient crown of Scotland but without her handbag. The Scottish portrait artist deliberately left out the purse because he could not bear to render his sovereign looking like a commoner.
The atmosphere around the Queen was so reverential that no one dared utter a word of criticism about her attire, which was viewed by some in Scotland as insulting. She would falter a few more times in her new role, but each misstep would be carefully papered over by her courtiers, whose mission in life was to burnish the myth that the monarch was perfect.
These courtiers, whose families had been in royal service for hundreds of years, were either military men or from the landed gentry. “The circle around the throne is aristocratic,” editorialized the Daily Mirror, “as insular and—there is no other word for it—as toffee-nosed as it has ever been.” The courtiers felt that their positions were ordained in the Book of Proverbs: “A scribe skillful in his office, he shall find himself worthy of being a courtier…. Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings.” With a heightened sense of superiority, these courtiers did for the Queen what they had always done for her father: they determined what she would do and say publicly and whom she would see, from debutantes to diplomats. The courtiers also protected the Crown from stain, blemish, and disgrace. They did this by controlling the flow of information to the public.
In the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, the courtiers expected reporters to be deferential, and for the most part the press obliged. This fandango between press and palace enabled the courtiers to fabricate news, withhold information, and impose restrictions without question. The courtiers manipulated the press to mold public opinion, and some of their efforts to make the monarch appear worthy of respect seem ridiculous in retrospect, but their dedication was unquestionable and their loyalty unswerving. In the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, her courtiers sought to present her as grand yet genteel. They refused to admit that she enjoyed playing canasta or that for her first royal portrait sitting, she arrived carrying her tiara in an egg box. They reluctantly admitted that she loved horse races, a fact not worth denying because she was constantly at the track, but they claimed she never gambled.
“Her Majesty never bets, but she shows great delight when a royal horse wins,” the Queen’s press secretary told US News & World Report.
In fact, the Queen always bet on her horses and twice topped the list of money-winning owners on British tracks in 1954 and 1957. She even advised the Palace stewards when not to bet on her horses. Yet because gambling was illegal and something that the courtiers felt a revered monarch should not indulge in, they promoted the fairy tale that the Queen never wagered.
Within four years a critic denounced these courtiers as fusty, old-fashioned, and hidebound. The critic, Lord Altrincham, derided them as “a second-rate lot.” Altrincham later renounced his hereditary title and became known simply as John Grigg. An historian, he achieved recognition as the man who publicly criticized the Queen as “priggish” and “poorly educated” and lambasted all the Queen’s men as blinkered and inept.
At the time of the coronation, such criticism was so outrageous as to be blasphemous. The monarchy was still revered enough that even those who served it were considered untouchable. The only voice of dissent being heard came from within the Palace walls, and that was the irascible growl of the Queen’s husband, who was appalled by the inefficiency he found all around him.
Pronouncing his wife’s courtiers “creaky” and their administration of Buckingham Palace “medieval,” Prince Philip scorched most of the 230 servants as “goddamned idiots who wait on each other—not on us.” Insisting on naval efficiency, he regarded the 690-room Palace as a leaky old rust-bucket that he had to make seaworthy. Beginning with the footmen, he said the practice of “powdering” their hair with a messy mixture of soap, water, flour, and starch was “old-fashioned and unmanly.” He stopped it. He pronounced the Palace communications system “hopelessly antiquated” and instituted a system to get rid of the “bloody pages running all over the place.” He ordered a modern intercom installed so that with a flick of a switch the Queen could contact him, her secretaries, the children’s nannies, even her chef. Next, the gadget-minded Duke ordered intercoms put in every office and two-way radios put in all royal cars. He introduced Dictaphones, tape recorders, and automated filing systems. He had washing machines installed in the Palace basement to replace the platoon of laundresses scrubbing overtime on washboards. He ended the Palace system of running several dining rooms at full steam all day long just so the servants could eat. He commissioned small pantries with hot plates and refrigerators to be installed in the royal suites so servants would not have to walk three miles of corridors just to take the Queen her coffee every morning. He did away with placing a fresh bottle of Scotch by the monarch’s bed, a quaint practice that had been going on since 1910 when Edward VII asked for a whiskey to counteract a cold. No one had ever canceled the order.
He did allow the Queen to keep her bagpiper. In a tradition started by Queen Victoria, the Pipe Major of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders marches across the terrace of the Palace at nine o’clock every morning, playing the bagpipes.
For the hidebound courtiers, who preferred having young pages in silk breeches run messages by foot, as they had done in the days of Queen Victoria, Philip was radically disruptive. They protested his time-motion studies of the staff and objected to his heliport behind the Palace to save commuting time. They opposed his plan for marketing surplus peas from the farmlands at Sandringham and sneered when he installed bread slicers and carrot-washing machines. They objected when he ordered that Queen Victoria’s orangerie at Windsor Castle be converted into a heated swimming pool. They especially disapproved of his mingling with the masses and said he didn’t distinguish between commoners and aristocrats. They cringed when he entertained labor leaders and shuddered when he invited movie stars to lunch with the Queen. Allowing film stars into Buckingham Palace was worse than permitting untouchables into a shrine.
“Why, that German princeling,” snapped the Queen’s private secretary, Tommy Lascelles, who did not understand or appreciate Philip’s efforts to keep his wife attuned to the real world.
“That man is no gentleman,” said Commander Sir Richard Colville, the Queen’s press secretary, fuming. “And he has no friends who are gentlemen.” For a courtier whose honor was invested in being considered a gentleman,* this was a debasing insult, but the swipe was passed privately. As so-called gentlemen, the courtiers were careful to be correct in public because they could not afford to be openly hostile to the Queen’s husband. On the surface they acted civilized, and in his presence they addressed him respectfully. Behind his back they savaged him. Philip, who cared little about being defined as a gentleman, barged ahead with his sweeping innovations.
“It’s our job to make this monarchy business work,” he said. He functioned for the Queen in much the same way Eleanor Roosevelt had done for the President. She had been his eyes and ears, his emissary to the masses. Philip was determined to revitalize the Crown and make it
relevant to people’s lives. He accepted honorary positions with groups like the National Playing Fields Association and fought hard to establish the Duke of Edinburgh Awards Scheme, which rewards young people for outstanding achievements in sports, cultural activities, and voluntary service.
The Ministry of Education was highly suspicious of a scheme bearing the obvious imprint of Dr. Kurt Hahn, the German founder of Gordonstoun, which was Philip’s alma mater. The Minister of Education was more than a little dubious about the Duke of Edinburgh. “I had a rather difficult interview,” admitted Philip many years later. “As with all our organization, it worked on the ‘not invented here’ syndrome. Anything you haven’t thought of yourself is bound to be wrong…. But gradually, as they came to realize what the scheme was about, and that it wasn’t a new Hitler Youth movement, people began to realize that there was some merit in it.”*
With frenetic energy Philip toured plants and factories and schools, constantly asking questions: “How do you make that work? Can’t you find a better way? Faster? More efficient?” He fought the courtiers at every turn, refusing to let them write his speeches and, worse, refusing to follow their advice to say nothing. He insisted on being heard, and to their dismay, he was.
As President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, he hectored the members for being complacent.
“It’s no good shutting your eyes and saying, ‘British is best’ three times a day after meals and expecting it to be so,” he said. “I’m afraid our no-men are a thousand times more harmful than the American yes-men. If we are to recover prosperity, we shall have to find ways of emancipating energy and enterprise from the frustrating control of the constitutionally timid.”
The courtiers worried about negative press reaction to Philip’s outspokenness. Already overworked, they had been trying for months to squelch a potential scandal involving the Queen’s twenty-three-year-old sister, Princess Margaret, and Group Captain Peter Townsend, the thirty-eight-year-old equerry who had served her father since 1944 and was now working for her mother as Deputy Master of the Household. For months the courtiers had been denying rumors of a romance, but a newspaper photograph taken during the coronation showed the Princess flicking a piece of fluff from Townsend’s shoulder. The intimacy of that small passing gesture revealed the truth and threw the Palace into confusion.
A fighter pilot in World War II’s Battle of Britain, Peter Townsend had received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Distinguished Service Order for valor. He then became the King’s favorite equerry. With the same gentle appeal of Leslie Howard playing Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind, Townsend was a charming man with humor. He was not robust and swaggering like Prince Philip, but slightly fragile and emotional. He stammered, which was one reason the King, who also stammered, loved him. Townsend had suffered a nervous breakdown in the RAF and had been grounded occasionally because of his incurable nervous eczema. To everyone who met him, he appeared graceful and considerate, the paradigm of an officer and a gentleman. “We were all in love with him,” said British novelist Angela Lambert. “He was handsome, brave, romantic and discreet,” wrote Francois Nourissier in Le Figaro upon his death in 1995. “He was one of those men without whose heroism and sacrifice our lives would have been no doubt less free, less honourable. An England, which I hope still exists, invented a kind of complete man that was one of the successes of Europe. Peter Townsend was the last of this species, now threatened with extinction.”
Townsend had known Margaret since she was fourteen years old and, as a favor to her parents, had escorted her to dances and horse shows. He had served as her riding companion and flown her plane in the King’s Cup air races. By the time she was twenty-one she had fallen in love with him. She pursued him openly, and each time he resisted her advances, she resorted to her royal prerogatives.
Coming home from a dance one evening, she demanded that he carry her up the stairs. He demurred. She insisted. He still resisted.
“Peter, this is a royal order,” she said, stamping her foot.
The handsome equerry laughed and scooped her into his arms. “Ever your obedient servant, ma’am,” he said, sweeping her up the staircase of Clarence House.
“Margaret was quite blatant,” said her friend Evelyn Prebensen, whose father, the Norwegian Ambassador, was dean of the Diplomatic Corps in London. “I spent a lot of time with her in those days and remember one Christmas when the King had promised Peter time off to be with his family. Margaret got it into her head that she wanted to play cards, and she insisted Peter play with her. So he was forced to forgo the holiday with his family and dance attendance on Margaret. No wonder his wife wandered.”
In 1952 Townsend was granted a divorce on the grounds of his wife’s adultery and received custody of their two sons. Although he was the aggrieved party, his divorce traumatized the Queen’s courtiers, who still felt haunted by the 1936 divorce that had led to the only voluntary abdication in British history and resulted in exile for the disgraced King. Divorce was considered such an abomination that the Lord Chamberlain,* Head of the Queen’s Household in England, had to insure that no divorced person was ever allowed into the Queen’s presence.† He even excluded from the royal enclosure at Ascot such a distinguished figure as Laurence Olivier, considered England’s greatest actor, because of his divorce. In Scotland, Lyon King of Arms was the moral arbiter, and he, too, struck the names of all divorced persons from royal guest lists. One Scottish nobleman protested his exclusion from a royal visit to Edinburgh because he had been divorced.
“My marriage was annulled,” said the nobleman, “and I’ve been remarried in the church.”
“That may well allow you into the Kingdom of Heaven,” said the Lyon King of Arms, “but it will not get you into the Palace of Holyroodhouse.”
In 1953 Princess Margaret’s love affair with Townsend, a divorced man, shook the British establishment, and the government, the church, and the royal family became intensely embroiled in the romance. As a royal princess, Margaret Rose, who was third in line to the throne, was excused for falling in love, while Townsend, a commoner, was condemned for crossing class lines.
“What cheek!” said the Duke of Edinburgh. “Equerries should look after the horses!”
The Queen’s courtiers were equally outraged. They believed in the supremacy of the class system as defined by the doggerel they had learned as children:
God bless the squire and all his relations.
And keep us in our proper stations.
When Peter Townsend confided he had fallen in love with Princess Margaret, the Queen’s private secretary, Alan Lascelles, snapped, “You must be either mad or bad.” Lascelles quickly conferred with the Prime Minister.
“Captain Townsend must go,” declared Winston Churchill. “He simply must go.”
In desperation the courtiers decided to follow Churchill’s advice and banish Townsend from England. They foolishly believed his relationship with the Princess would founder under the separation, not realizing that distance might lend enchantment. They cared only about buying time until Margaret’s twenty-fifth birthday. Until then she was not allowed to marry without her sister’s permission, and as head of the Church of England, her sister could never allow her to marry a divorced man. By separating the couple, the courtiers also quashed the publicity that threatened to overshadow the Queen’s first royal tour of the Commonwealth.
Townsend, who was scheduled to accompany Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother on their 1953 tour of Rhodesia, was suddenly yanked out of royal service and dispatched to the embassy in Brussels as an air attaché. “I came here because the position was impossible for us both,” he told a reporter. “I cannot answer questions because I am not the prime mover in the situation. My loyalty to Princess Margaret is unquestionable. I would undergo any difficulties because of that loyalty.”
Townsend was banished so quickly that he did not have time to prepare his sons, boarding at a prep school in Kent, for the
news. Margaret pleaded frantically with her sister to reverse the decision, but the Princess was refused. The sisters had a terrible row.* Margaret took to her bed for three days and lived on sedatives. When she got up, she sat at her piano and poured her misery into her music. “I composed a lament, words as well as music,” she told biographer Christopher Warwick. “That was after Peter Townsend and I knew we couldn’t get married.” Townsend had left the country immediately upon his return from Northern Ireland with the royal couple and was last seen in England on the tarmac, shaking hands with the Queen and Prince Philip.† He returned quietly to visit the Princess twice before her twenty-fifth birthday, meeting her secretly at the homes of friends.
In October of 1955, a few weeks after her twenty-fifth birthday, Margaret went to Windsor Castle to talk to the Queen and Philip. In an emotional meeting they told her that the government of Sir Anthony Eden was implacably opposed to the marriage, as was the Archbishop of Canterbury.
“You are third in the line of succession,” said Philip.
“I can count,” Margaret snapped.
“You’ve caused a constitutional crisis,” continued Philip, pointing to the lead editorial in the Times, which stated that a sister to the Queen, Governor of the Church of England, Defender of the Faith, had to “be irrevocably disqualified from playing her part in the essential royal function” if she married a divorced man.
“If you persist in your plans to marry,” said the Queen, “you will not be allowed a church blessing.” She went on to say that the wedding could not take place in Britain, that the couple would have to live abroad, that Margaret would lose her title and her annual allowance and be forced to abandon her place within the royal family. The Princess left in tears.
To avoid an unpleasant scene, her mother had withdrawn to her Castle of Mey home in Scotland. As tough as she was, the Queen Mother shrank from direct confrontation. She could never abide personal collisions and avoided them by contracting bronchitis or taking to her bed with flu or a headache.