On May 12, 1937, George VI and Elizabeth were crowned in Westminster Abbey as their two daughters watched in awe. Queen Mary broke with the tradition of a surviving monarch not attending the coronation of a subsequent sovereign, to see her second son crowned. At the moment the consort’s crown was placed upon the head of the diminutive Elizabeth, swathed in the purple and ermine trappings of queenship, a misty-eyed Winston Churchill turned to his wife, Clementine, and, referring to Mrs. Simpson, admitted, “You were right. I see now the ‘other one’ wouldn’t have done.”
Bertie had been anxious for weeks about the impending coronation, fearful of stammering during his public responses in the Abbey and even more so during the live broadcast he would make from Buckingham Palace after the ceremony. But the queen and Lionel Logue were on hand to see him through, as well as a BBC sound engineer named Robert Wood, who coached the king on how to use the microphone to best advantage. “It is with a very full heart that I speak to you tonight. Never before has a newly crowned King been able to talk to all his peoples in their own homes on the day of his Coronation…the Queen and I will always keep in our hearts the inspiration of this day….”
Edward VIII had been a rock star to his subjects, and even though he had chosen to quit the throne (Wallis would have been perfectly happy to remain his mistress as long as he didn’t marry anyone else), he hated his new nonentity status. As a way of drawing attention to himself, he acted in ways that were not only dangerous to England’s foreign policy but, in the queen’s view, were deliberately calculated to steal her husband’s thunder. In 1937 the Duke and Duchess of Windsor announced a visit to Hitler’s Germany—for which Edward had received no permission from His Majesty’s government, and which ran counter to British interests. Bertie and Elizabeth supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement but privately had their misgivings about the fascist dictatorships of Germany and Italy. And in 1939, on the eve of Elizabeth and Bertie’s departure for Canada and America, marking the first visit ever of a reigning king and queen of England to the USA, the Duke of Windsor announced his arrangement with NBC to give a radio address to their primarily American audience.
Bert and Betty were a huge hit in Canada. The veterans exclaimed, “Ay, man, if Hitler could just see this,” when the queen insisted on mingling with them during the unveiling of the World War I War Memorial. The American journalists covering that event were duly impressed, hailing George VI as “a people’s king.” And in June 1939, when the monarchs visited Washington, D.C., to meet with President and Mrs. Roosevelt, a senator on Capitol Hill reached out and grabbed Bertie’s hand to tell him, “My, you’re a great Queen-picker.”
A local newspaper headline read, THE BRITISH RE-TAKE WASHINGTON, and called Elizabeth “the perfect Queen.” In New York City she was deemed “spell-binding.” Elizabeth was nominated “Woman of the Year” “because, arriving in an aloof, critical country, she completely conquered it and accomplished this conquest by being her natural self.” Decades later, people who had never seen Elizabeth in action would think that the magic of Diana, Princess of Wales, was unique to the House of Windsor.
The queen would later say, “That tour made us! I mean it made us, the King and I. It came at just the right time, particularly for us.” No longer were they the reluctant understudies of Edward VIII. And they were about to be sorely tested.
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany, because they had a treaty with Poland in which they agreed to aid her if her independence were threatened by force.
During the first four months of the war Elizabeth projected an aura of calm reassurance to her subjects. Bertie’s first Christmas radio broadcast (coauthored with the queen, as all of his Christmas broadcasts would be) was profoundly moving, reciting a stanza from Marie Louise Haskins’s poem “The Gate of the Year.”
“I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way.’”
Functioning as a team, the monarchs bolstered their subjects’ morale. In January 1940, they began hosting Monday-night dinners for the War Cabinet and other government ministers. During the early months of the year, Elizabeth spent a considerable amount of time at Bertie’s side as he perused the daily reports, telegrams, and assessments. Consequently, she acquired firsthand knowledge of the war effort and the ongoing affairs and daily activities of the government.
On May 10, Germany invaded Holland, Luxembourg, and Belgium, and began their final assault on France. That day, Winston Churchill succeeded the discredited Neville Chamberlain—he of the appalling appeasement policy—as prime minister.
Germany’s air force, the Luftwaffe, began systematic attacks over England on August 12, bombing airfields and aircraft factories. The Battle of Britain was under way. On the night of September 7–8 the Blitz began in London, with the release of more than two hundred bombs over the capital. Although the initial damage was in the poorer neighborhoods, such as the capital’s East End, no target was immune, including the monarchs’ old residence at 145 Piccadilly, Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace, which was struck nine times during the Blitz.
On September 13, the king and queen were nearly killed during an air raid. In a letter to Queen Mary, Elizabeth described the event. She had gone to find Bertie to see whether he was coming down to the palace’s bomb shelter when:
He asked me to take an eyelash out of his eye, and while I was battling with this task, Alec [Hardinge, the king’s private secretary] came into the room with a batch of papers in his hand. At this moment we heard the unmistakable whirr-whirr of a German plane. We said, “ah, a German,” and before anything else could be said, there was the noise of aircraft diving at great speed, and then the scream of a bomb. It all happened so quickly, that we had only time to look foolishly at each other, when the scream hurtled past us, and exploded with a tremendous crash in the quadrangle.
Churchill later wrote in his memoirs, “Had the windows been closed instead of open, the whole of the glass would have splintered into the faces of the King and Queen, causing terrible injuries. So little did they make of it that even I…never realised until long afterwards…what had actually happened.”
The following day the monarchs toured the bombed-out East End of London. Elizabeth wrote to Queen Mary:
I really felt as if I was walking in a dead city, when we walked down a little empty street…. It does affect me seeing this terrible and senseless destruction—I think that really I mind it much more than being bombed myself….
Elizabeth famously remarked that she was glad the palace had been bombed, because it enabled her to look the East End in the face. The disaster forged an even closer bond between the sovereigns and their subjects. In fact, the queen was so effective at boosting British morale that Hitler referred to her as the most dangerous woman in Europe.
When Bertie and Elizabeth toured the war-torn parts of the city, she would emerge from her car in muted pastels—dusky rose, lilac, and powder blue. She was always impeccably groomed and coiffed, with high heels and dyed-to-match feathers in her hats, looking every inch the queen, but tastefully so, inspiring the people with a dash of glamour and a glimmer of hope.
Many years later, Elizabeth was asked whether she had shared the war’s burdens with the king, and whether he had revealed much in the way of state affairs at the time. She replied, “Oh, yes, he told me everything. Well, one had to, you see, because you couldn’t not, in a way. There was only us there. So obviously he had to tell one things. But one was so dreadfully discreet, that even now I feel nervous sometimes, about talking about things….”
Yet even though the queen was Bertie’s ultimate partner, she saw her duty as being his protector and gatekeeper, managing his temper and making the burden of his immense responsibil
ities as bearable as possible under the circumstances, and not to initiate or suggest policy. She may have known about the political side of his affairs, but she did not interfere in them. Nor did she create or maintain her own coterie of courtiers with an alternate agenda from the king’s, or endeavor to corrupt the opinions of her husband’s servants and ministers to suit her own ends. Elizabeth’s ends were Bertie’s.
After the war ended, the monarchs tried to resume a normal family life around their two daughters. They undertook victory tours, including a visit to the Channel Islands, the only British Crown Dependency to be occupied by the Germans. In 1947, “Us Four” embarked on a state visit to South Africa. It would be the last time they would travel as a family unit, as Princess Elizabeth had fallen in love with—and hoped to marry—her fourth cousin Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, son of the late Prince Andrew of Greece and the former Princess Alice of Battenberg.
But the king was tired and testy throughout the trip, exhausted by the demands of travel and the incessant crowds. Aware that his visible irritation would not play well to their subjects, Elizabeth would stroke his arm to soothe him. The royal household’s Chief Clerk, Ted Grove, remarked that he didn’t think Bertie “could have got through it all without the love and devotion of the Queen. We admired the way she cared and watched over him during the tour when sometimes the continued heat and travel in the confined space of the Royal Train did nothing to improve his occasional bouts of temper.”
During the African tour Bertie lost seventeen pounds. He fought a persistent cough and suffered severe cramping in both legs. It heralded the beginning of a long, slow decline.
The royal family returned home, announcing the engagement of the Princess Elizabeth to Philip Mountbatten in July. The couple was married on November 20. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were conspicuously not invited to the wedding.
On April 26, 1948, George VI and Elizabeth rode in an open horse-drawn landau past throngs of cheering crowds to a service of Thanksgiving at St. Paul’s Cathedral, marking their silver wedding anniversary. Although their reign had begun with apprehension (including their own), the monarchs were now vastly popular. That night the king delivered a broadcast to the nation over the wireless, his speech faltering from time to time. He discussed the years “full of difficulty, of anxiety, and often of sorrow. On me, in my endeavor to fulfill my appointed task, they have laid a heavy burden. I make no secret of the fact that there have been times when it would have been almost too heavy but for the strength and comfort which I have always found in my home.”
That autumn, Bertie’s leg cramps grew progressively worse, and he was in discomfort most of the time. By October his left foot was numb all day, and the pain kept him awake all night. Sir James Learmonth, the chair of clinical surgery at Edinburgh, confirmed on November 12 that His Majesty was suffering from arteriosclerosis. He also risked gangrene and, as a result, might lose his right leg. Bertie refused to allow any word of the severity of his condition to be leaked to the extremely pregnant Princess Elizabeth, whose son, Prince Charles, was born two days later, on November 14.
An official bulletin, larded with understatement and euphemisms, was released on November 23. Omitted entirely were references to the king’s heavy smoking and alcohol consumption, which were assuredly contributing factors to his condition. There was, however, a thinly veiled accusation leveled at the Duke of Windsor. “There is no doubt that the strain of the last twelve years has appreciably affected his resistance to physical fatigue.” In other words, if Edward VIII had done his duty and remained on the throne, Bertie never would have become so stressed out.
Additional strains on Bertie’s health were to follow, for which Elizabeth would never forgive the perpetrators. The princesses’ former governess, Marion Crawford, received payment from an American publisher for a tell-all memoir about her life with the royal family, which was serialized in 1950, first in the Ladies’ Home Journal and later in a UK periodical. It was also published in book form on both sides of the Atlantic. Then the Duke of Windsor sold a series of autobiographical articles to Life magazine, his second such betrayal in three years.
The stress made Bertie even more haggard and strained. One spectator at the Epsom Derby in June 1950 noticed His Majesty heavily made up and rouged to give the appearance of health.
The Duke of Windsor’s autobiography, A King’s Story, was published in New York City in April 1951, earning Edward the equivalent of close to $1 million at the time. The British edition debuted later that year, coinciding with the final collapse of Bertie’s health. Lady Donaldson wrote, “Behind the scenes the book caused unrestrained anger and concern. Those who had taken part in the events the Duke described were often astonished to read a version of them which bore no relation to their own memories….”
While at Balmoral in August, Bertie developed a chill and a sore throat. His doctors insisted that he travel down to London for X-rays and further medical exams. On September 15, a bronchoscopy was performed to remove tissue from his lung for examination. After a biopsy, lung cancer was found, but the C-word was never used, either to the king or anyone else. Instead, the doctors referred to “structural changes” in the lung. The only remedy was to remove Bertie’s lung, an operation that the doctors warned Elizabeth was extremely dangerous, as there was a high risk of her husband’s suffering a fatal thrombosis, either during or after the procedure. A thrombosis is a clot in the blood that either fully or partially blocks a blood vessel; this leads to the destruction of tissue, owing to an insufficient supply of blood, and can cause a heart attack. But if the operation were not performed, the danger could be worse. So on September 23, the king’s lung was removed along with some of the nerves of his larynx. This meant that from then on his speech could be compromised as well, and he might not be able to talk above a whisper. To a man for whom public speaking already presented a monumental challenge, this was an added obstacle.
The doctors were not optimistic. After meeting with Bertie’s physician, Lord Moran, the editor of the Spectator asked the king’s official biographer, Harold Nicolson, to prepare an obituary. And the former royal radiologist Sir Harold Graham Hodgson confided in a friend, “The King is not likely to live more than eighteen months. The end will probably come suddenly. The operation was six months too late.”
Elizabeth knew the whole truth. But she went about her public duties stoically and calmly, performing her responsibilities as Senior Counsellor of State on Bertie’s behalf.
On October 7, after a six-day delay, the Princess Elizabeth departed for a prearranged state visit to Canada and the United States. She carried a sealed envelope to be opened in the event of her father’s death. Inside it were her accession documents. She and the Duke of Edinburgh were made members of the Privy Council on December 4. Six days later, His Majesty was deemed well enough to revoke the mandate of the Counsellors of State and resume the duties of sovereign.
A hatless Bertie stood on the tarmac at Heathrow and waved good-bye to his daughter and son-in-law on January 31, 1952, as they boarded their flight for the first leg of a state visit to Africa. News cameras zoomed in for a close-up of the king’s face. He was gaunt and frail, his cheeks sunken and hollow. The public was shocked when they saw the images on television. Only seven weeks earlier he had celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday. Bertie would never see the Princess Elizabeth again.
On February 5, the king went out shooting hare at Sandringham. He was in a good mood that day, looking in on his grandchildren, Charles and Anne, in their nursery, and enjoying Princess Margaret’s piano playing that evening. He completed a crossword puzzle and strode out to the royal kennels to check on the condition of his Golden Retriever, whose paw had been injured by a thorn. When he returned indoors, the family listened to the wireless reports of Princess Elizabeth and Philip’s safe arrival in Kenya.
At ten thirty p.m., Bertie picked up a magazine and announced to the queen, “I’ll see you in the morning.” He left her sitting by the firep
lace and returned to his ground-floor bedroom, where he had slept ever since his illness had precluded him from climbing stairs. After enjoying a cup of cocoa, he perused his periodical until about midnight. A night watchman in the garden observed the king fastening the latch of his bedroom window.
Bertie passed away in his sleep that night. At seven fifteen on the morning of February 6, 1952, his valet, James MacDonald, found him in his bed. The cause of death was coronary thrombosis.
Elizabeth’s maid brought her tea at around the same hour. Moments later she received a message from the equerry on duty, Commander Sir Harold Campbell, who had known the royal couple for thirty years. She read the hesitation in his face and knew it could not be good news. Saving him the pain of telling her, she guessed the purpose of his errand.
“I was sent a message that his servant couldn’t wake him. I flew to his room, & thought that he was in a deep sleep, he looked so peaceful—and then I realized what had happened,” Elizabeth wrote to Queen Mary, disclosing the sorrowful news. From his study she issued the orders of the day just as Bertie would have done, and requested that a vigil be kept outside her husband’s room, stating, “The King must not be left.”
Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe Page 47