by Anne Edwards
When, in early 1930, she was told her second child would be born sometime between the fifth and twelfth of August, she was determined to deliver the infant at Glamis. Permission had to be sought and granted by the King. The new royal baby would be, if a boy, third in line of succession, and if a girl, fourth, and if born at Glamis, Scottish by birth. After consultation with Queen Mary and his ministers, the King gave his approval of the plan.
Near to Glamis was Airlie Castle, the ancestral home of Mabell, Countess of Airlie, Queen Mary’s Lady-in-Waiting and lifelong friend. Lady Airlie offered to put up any necessary Royal emissaries at her home. “Finally it was decided that Mr. J. R. Clynes, the Home Secretary—whose presence was essential under the then existing law—and Mr. Harry Boyd, the Ceremonial Secretary at the Home Office, would stay with me for a few days,” Lady Airlie recalled.
“Before I left London Mr. Boyd came twice to see me. He was a small anxious-looking man, meticulously neat in his dress and movement ... the thought of his own responsibility for making the necessary arrangements overwhelmed him. He was obsessed with the fear that because the Duchess of York had decided to have her baby at Glamis there might be some impression that the affair was going to be conducted in ‘an irregular, hole and corner way,’ as he put it. He told me that it had been suggested that the Home Secretary and he might take rooms at an hotel in Perth ... but the mere possibilities horrified him.
“ ‘Just imagine if it [the birth] should occur in the early hours of the morning and the Home Secretary could not get to Glamis in time,’ “ Lady Airlie recounted. “In his agitation he sprang out of his chair and paced up and down my sitting room. ‘This child will be in direct succession to the throne and if its birth is not properly witnessed its legal right might be questioned,’ [he said].
“I told him that he need not worry as Airlie was quite near enough to Glamis to prevent such a calamity.”
Mr. Clynes, Mr. Boyd and a detective arrived at Airlie on August 5 in a car driven by a local policeman. A private telephone wire between the two castles was installed and a motorcycle and two dispatch riders were stationed at Glamis to be in readiness night and day in case the wire broke down. For the next fifteen days, a twenty-four-hour “watch” was set up, with Clynes, Boyd and the detective rotating shifts.
“On the morning of the 21st,” Lady Airlie records, “Mr. Boyd, wild-eyed and haggard after sitting up all night, telephoned to Glamis once again only to hear ... that there was still no news. He wandered dejectedly into the gardens—by then none of us dared to go further afield.
“That evening as I was dressing for dinner the telephone bell rang in my room. [An agitated voice] asked for Mr. Boyd. I ran in my dressing-gown to Mr. Boyd’s door and banged on it.... ‘A telephone call for you from Glamis.’
“I heard a tremendous opening and shutting of wardrobes and then a wail of anguish through the closed door.... ‘I can’t go downstairs, I’m not dressed and I can’t find my suit.’
“ ‘Then put on your dressing-gown and take the call in my room,’ [Lady Airlie] shouted back. ‘I’m not dressed either but it doesn’t matter.’
“Mr. Boyd dashed out of his bedroom in a dark blue kimono and into mine. I heard his sputtering on the telephone.... ‘What? In an hour? You haven’t given us much time....’
“Dinner being out of the question I sent down a message to the cook to cut sandwiches while Mr. Boyd scrambled into some clothes. Mr. Clynes was calmly waiting at the door in his big coat and Homburg hat.... He pointed to the sky ... ‘Just look at that, Boyd ...’ He was not allowed to finish ... for Mr. Boyd ... thrust him unceremoniously into the car [a black saloon Rolls-Royce].”
The men were driven at a precarious speed along the dark country roads through a violent storm, and drew up to the castle gates about twelve minutes after leaving Airlie (a distance of eight miles). They were escorted by the gatekeeper to the renovated part of the castle, where they were met by a butler who showed them to the central drawing room. The time was 9:00 P.M. Doors rattled. The wind howled down the chimneys of the great fireplaces. Port was served, a light supper offered—and refused—and the men informed that the Duchess was being readied for delivery in the master bedroom by her three Royal Family physicians, Sir Henry Simpson, Dr. Neon Reynolds and Dr. David Myles. The Duchess had been in labor for a protracted time and the possibility of a second Cesarean birth was considered, but at 9:22 the child was born naturally. To Mr. Boyd’s relief, he had not been requested to witness the actual birth. However, a few moments later, Mr. Clynes and he were led up the stone stairs to the “delivery room.”
“I found crowded round the baby’s cot,” Mr. Clynes recorded, “the Duke of York, Lord and Lady Strathmore and Lady Rose Leveson-Gower, the Duchess’s sister. They at once made way for me, and I went to the cot and peeping in saw a fine chubby-faced little girl lying wide awake.”
The storm had passed. A statement was read an hour later to the waiting reporters. When the announcement appeared in the morning papers that a Scottish princess had been born, the sound of bagpipes filled the village of Glamis and then echoed throughout the valley as the pipers led a crowd of celebrants to the top of nearby Hunter’s Hill where a great beacon erected years before to honor the York marriage, a blaze that could be seen in six counties, was lit.
When Lilibet awoke the morning following her sister’s birth, Alah told her a big surprise awaited her in her mother’s room. Her first reaction upon learning she had a sister was disappointment. She was allowed to touch the infant’s hand and was then “taken to a window set high in one of the castle’s towers to watch the beacon’s glow.”
No secret had been kept of the fact that the Yorks had hoped for a boy. Female names had not even been considered. The King and Queen interrupted their annual stay at Balmoral to visit Glamis on August. 30. They found, Queen Mary wrote, “E. looking very well and the baby a darling.” A name had not yet been chosen. On August 27, the Duchess wrote to Queen Mary: “I am very anxious to call her Ann Margaret as I think that Ann of York sounds pretty, & Elizabeth and Ann go so well together. I wonder what you think? Lots of people have suggested Margaret, but it has no family links really on either side.” (Although the Duchess of York’s sister Lady Elphinstone had named a daughter Margaret.)
The King did not like the name Ann and the Yorks “bowed to his wishes.” On September 6, the child still unnamed, the Duchess wrote “resignedly but with determination” to her mother-in-law: “Bertie and I have decided to call our little daughter ‘Margaret Rose,’ instead of M. Ann, as Papa does not like Ann—I hope that you like it. I think it is very pretty together.”
The King obviously raised no objection to this decision, for on October 3, the new Princess, wearing the dress previously worn by Lilibet, was christened Margaret Rose by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Buckingham Palace. Her five godparents were designated: Edward, Prince of Wales (her Uncle David); her great-aunt (sister of the King) Princess Victoria; the future Queen Ingrid of Sweden; and her mother’s sister and brother—Lady Rose Leveson-Gower (later the Countess Granville) and the Honorable (later Sir) David Bowes-Lyon.
“I shall call her Bud,” Lilibet is quoted as having commented.
“Why Bud?” Lady Cynthia Asquith asked.
“Well, she’s not a real rose yet, is she? She’s only a bud.”
Alah took over the new baby, assisted by Ruby. Mrs. MacDonald gave up her private room in the basement of 145 to share a bedroom with Lilibet (which she was to do until the young Princess reached thirteen). She made the sacrifice to give Lilibet a stronger sense of security now that Alah’s and Ruby’s time was filled with the more immediate needs of the new infant in the delicately refurbished pink and fawn nursery.
Margaret was “an enchanting doll-like child ... the baby everyone loves on sight.” She had an engaging smile, twinkling blue eyes, a bell-like laugh and, from the time she could reach for things, a mischievous nature. Her grasp was quick and her delight in toppling near
objects instantaneous. Corn-colored ringlets circled her cherubic face. Although Lilibet had greeted Margaret’s arrival with some understandable trepidation, she quickly came to tolerate the newcomer to the nursery, and within a short time to feel immensely protective of her.
Because the Duke of York was not then considered to be “a particularly important person in the family,” he had the luxury of time to spend with his wife and daughters. His only official position was that of royal prince and he took his turn with his two younger brothers, Harry and George, at opening bazaars and attending inspections. On the other hand, David, as England’s future King, was expected to be constantly in the public eye and to embark on one Royal Tour after another as his country’s representative abroad.
The Yorks welcomed the freer life they led. They were very much in love and they did not hide their affection for each other. They could often be seen walking hand and hand in the garden and the Duke looked at his wife with unconcealed admiration. He knew what trials he put her through and how much she had contributed to his welfare. They were young, still in their early thirties, and a larger family would not have been a burden. But childbirth had not been easy for the Duchess, and they were perfectly happy with the size of their family. Alah, perceptively, suspected that there might not ever be another infant in the York nursery and she “clung on to Margaret so that the long-suffering child was penned in a pram long after she pined to run about with [Lilibet] in the gardens, and was fed by hand when in reality she had done with such childish things.”
In September 1932, Marion Crawford was hired to undertake Lilibet’s and Margaret’s education and was given a surprisingly free hand. Lilibet was six and Margaret two when Crawfie joined the household. Lilibet was at the age when she needed a governess, not a nanny. Now, Alah had entire charge of the young princesses’ home life (with the continuing help of the MacDonald sisters)—their health, food, clothes, and general care. Crawfie had them from nine to six, concentrating on Lilibet’s lessons when Margaret took her morning and afternoon naps.
Crawfie was only twenty-two years old and took the post with the idea that it was temporary—her true dream was to study to become a child psychologist. To assist with the money needed for her further education, she had been employed as a governess to the children of the Duchess’s sister Lady Rose Leveson-Gower, at her home in Scotland, which the Yorks often visited. “I was quite enchanted, as people always were, by the little Duchess,” Crawfie later wrote of that first meeting. “She was petite ... had the nicest, easiest, most friendly of manners, and a merry laugh. It was impossible to feel shy in her presence. She was beautifully dressed in blue. There was nothing alarmingly fashionable about her.... She sat on the window ledge. The blue of her dress, I remember, exactly matched the sky behind her that morning and the blue of her eyes. I particularly noticed her lovely string of pearls.... Her hands and feet were tiny. My whole impression was of someone small and quite perfect.
“I recall thinking [the Duke] did not look very strong. He ... had a diffident manner and a slight impediment in his speech that was not so much of a stutter in the ordinary sense, as a slight nervous constriction of the throat, I thought.... The Duke and Duchess were anxious that the little girls should have someone with them young enough to enjoy playing games and running about with them. The Duke, I gathered, had throughout his own childhood been hampered by somewhat immobile pastors and masters. He wanted someone energetic with his children, and had been impressed by the amount of walking I did!’ ”
She arrived at Royal Lodge, where the Yorks were staying, in the evening when Margaret was already asleep and Lilibet in bed. Alah brought her straightaway to the room Lilibet shared with Mrs. MacDonald. Crawfie recalled that Alah said rather sternly, “This is Miss Crawford.” The child was sitting up in bed, dressed in a nightie with pink roses on it. She had tied the cords of her dressing gown to the knobs of the old-fashioned bed, like horse reins, and was busy driving her imaginary team. But she paused to say, “How-do-you-do.” Then she cocked her head. “Why have you no hair?” she asked.
Crawfie pulled off her hat and once her bobbed auburn tresses were revealed, Lilibet went on with her game.
The next morning Margaret met the new governess. She viewed her with some suspicion until she realized that Crawfie was able to liberate her from the confinement of the pram.
Footnote
*Act ii. Scene 2. Macbeth.
4
Crawfie reported that at some time during 1933 Lilibet imperiously informed Margaret, “I’m three and you’re four,” to which the younger girl, not understanding her sister’s reference to their position in the succession, proudly countered, “No, you’re not. I’m three, you’re seven.” Lilibet was fully aware that this meant her grandfather, her Uncle David and her father had to die before she would become Queen, and only then if her uncle had no children and her parents, no sons. A concept that involved the deaths of three close relatives would seem beyond the grasp of a seven-year-old child. But Lilibet gave every indication that, unlike her father and uncle who never wanted to be King, she relished the idea of one day mounting the Throne.
“If I am ever Queen,” she told Crawfie, “I shall make a law that there must be no riding on Sundays. Horses should have a rest, too. And I shan’t let anyone dock their pony’s tail.”
Horses were her greatest passion, perhaps because they bound her closer to her grandfather who shared her equine enthusiasm. Her collection of miniature horses, each about a foot high, had grown to over thirty, most of them given to her by the King. They were stabled on the glass-domed top landing at 145, each with its own saddle and bridle: and before she went to bed, each horse had its saddle removed, “a must-be-done chore,” no matter what else might be going on.
Until the age of ten her favorite outdoor game was to harness Crawfie with a pair of red reins that had bells on them. Off they would go, either around the gardens of 145 or at Royal Lodge. Crawfie would be “gentled, patted, given a nosebag and jerked to a standstill.
“Sometimes,” the governess remembered, “she would whisper to me, ‘Crawfie, you must pretend to be impatient. Paw the ground a bit.’ So, I would paw. Frosty mornings were wonderful, for then my breath came in clouds, ‘just like a proper horse,’ said Lilibet contentedly. Or she herself would be a horse, prancing around, sidling up to me, nosing in my pockets for sugar, making convincing little whinnying noises.”
From the top floor windows of 145, she never tired of watching riders on their mounts traversing Rotten Row. Horse stories like Black Beauty were among her favorites. She was a keen horsewoman from the time, at three, that she began riding lessons; and she always looked forward to weekends at Royal Lodge so that she could go riding with her father in Windsor Great Park, attired in proper equestrian habit and holding a crop she was not hesitant to use.
According to her governess she “never cared a fig for clothes. She wore what she was told without argument [and] ... was never happier than when she was thoroughly busy and rather grubby.” She dressed for public outings, particularly those on which she accompanied Queen Mary, as a child might do if performing in a school play. “Now I will be the little Princess,” she seemed to be professing, and in public she was gesture-perfect in the role. When she was out with the Queen, cockney curb admirers could be heard to comment, “She’s the spit of ’er granny!”
Queen Mary took an immense interest in the education of the sisters. She asked Crawfie for a schedule of their curriculum and her suggestions for alterations were observed without a second opinion from their mother. She insisted that history should be given greater emphasis than arithmetic. The Princesses, she reasoned, “would probably never have to do even their own household books,” but history would be especially important for Lilibet, along with “a rather detailed knowledge of physical geography [of Great Britain] ... and also of the Dominions and India.” Additionally, “genealogies, historical and dynastic,” should be included. And so they were.
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nbsp; Once free of the pram and infantine care, Margaret proved to be a prodigious student. Because Alah had set back her early development, a story had appeared in the tabloid press that she was deaf and dumb. Published photographs of her, once Crawfie had joined the household, quickly dispersed these rumors. Not only was Margaret an active child, she had an intelligent expression almost always in evidence. She exerted great effort in attempting to narrow the age gap between herself and her sister. At four, she exhibited a small temper tantrum when her father insisted he hold the reins of her pony when she rode with him and Lilibet. When Lilibet started French lessons with Madame de Bellaigue, Margaret would listen at the door. She was a natural mimic and her accent was invariably more authentic than Lilibet’s.
From the age of three, she displayed “a considerable talent for acting” and an uncanny musical ear that gave her almost perfect pitch. She was marvellous at charades, able to imitate anyone whom she chose as a subject. Her “very clever fun-poking” at the Queen (using a stick for an umbrella, she would prod a tree and say, “Get on with it, George”), at Alah, the various gardeners, her cousins, even Shirley Temple (whose films Bright Eyes and The Little Colonel the sisters had seen at a private screening) would bring gales of laughter from her audience. In a voice uncannily like little Shirley’s, she would say, “Oh, my goodness!” and with her fingers jabbed in her cheeks to simulate dimples she would execute a few exaggerated Temple-like dance steps. She could also sing in her sweet chirpy voice almost any song she heard once, and could hum all the Merry Widow tunes by the time she was four. When the sisters started piano lessons with Miss Mabel Lander, who came regularly to 145, it was no surprise that Margaret was the more curious and able student and displayed a true gift.