by Anne Edwards
The tour reached its most arduous peak when it arrived at Johannesburg—“the city of gold”—which had not existed until gold was discovered there in 1886. Built on a mile-high plateau, the city overlooked the many gold mines that fanned out below. The first day there the Royal Family drove over 120 miles “in torrid heat” as they inspected the mining towns in the area. All along the way “hundreds of thousands of sweating, screaming, frenzied blacks lined the route, pressed about the car, waved frantically and hollered their ecstatic joy at the sight of this little family of four, so fresh and white ... seated in the back of the open royal Daimler.”
Townsend sat up front with the chauffeur and the King and Queen sat in the rear with Lilibet and Margaret perched on jump seats facing them. “[The King] was by now,” Townsend remembered, “exhausted by his travels and the cares of state and that day his nerves were badly on edge.”
The road had been bumpy, the dust gagging, the heat unbearable, the hysterical crowds overenthusiastic. The King grew more irritable with each kilometer and began to blame the driver for the roughness of the ride, directing him as to what he should do and what he had done wrong in a tone that was sharp and biting. “While the incessant tirade from the back seat continued, I kept up a patter with the chauffeur,” Townsend explained, “trying to calm and encourage him. Behind, the Queen was doing her best to sooth the King and the Princesses were trying to make light of things, which became so bad that I felt there was only one thing for it. I turned around—and shouted angrily—and with a disrespect of which I was ashamed: ‘for Heaven’s sake, shut up, or there’s going to be an accident.’ ”
They had just entered the small village of Benoni where an unusually large throng was gathered, shouting their welcome, waving their arms, running alongside of the car, when Townsend saw a blue-uniformed policeman come bounding toward them “with a terrible, determined look in his eyes, which were fixed on something behind us. I turned, to see another man, black and wiry, sprinting, with terrifying speed and purpose, after the car. In one hand he clutched something, with the other he grabbed hold of the car, so tightly that the knuckles of his black hands showed white. The Queen, with her parasol, landed several deft blows on the assailant before he was knocked senseless by policemen. As they dragged away his limp body, I saw the Queen’s parasol, broken in two, disappear over the side of the car.”
A short time later they learned that the man had not been an assassin at all, but an enthusiastic and “most loyal subject” who had been crying, “My King! My King!,” clutching a ten-shilling note in his hand that he wanted to present to Lilibet as a present for her twenty-first birthday. At midnight that day, the King sent for Townsend. “I’m sorry about today,” he said simply. “I was very tired.”
“A sullen dawn and heavy rain clouds” hung low over Table Mountain the morning of Lilibet’s coming-of-age birthday, April 21. She spent the early hours of the day at Government House, receiving her birthday gifts and congratulatory messages from all over the world. After an interracial appeal, forty-two thousand Rhodesian school-children had contributed a week’s pocket money to present her with a platinum brooch in the shape of a flame lily (the national flower) set with three hundred diamonds. She also received a pair of diamond flower-petal earrings from the Diplomatic Corps, a diamond brooch from all the members of the Royal Household, the Grenadier Guards badge in diamonds, gift of the regiment of which she was the Colonel, and from her parents, a twin pair of Cartier ivy-leaf brooches, each covered with pavé-set diamonds and a large round brilliant in the center.
By afternoon the clouds had cleared and she stood in bright sunlight in the back of the open limousine reviewing ten thousand troops, taking the salute as they marched past.
At six that evening she sat alone, except for Margaret and an engineer, in a small room in Cape Town’s Government House broadcasting her birthday message to her father’s subjects, five hundred million of them across the world. “I should like,” she said, “to make ... a dedication.... It is very simple. I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great Imperial Commonwealth to which we all belong. But I shall not have strength to carry out this resolution unless you join in it with me, as I now invite you to do; I know that your support will be unfailingly given. God bless all of you who are willing to share it.”
The short speech, the clear voice “vibrant with emotion,” had a majestic ring to it that woke something dormant in Margaret. For the first time she had a sense of her sister’s place in history and she appeared moved and visibly shaken when the two of them emerged from the room and were motored to nearby Westbrooke for a birthday dinner given in Lilibet’s honor by the Governor General. A fireworks display followed with Cape Town “ablaze with light.” The long, eventful day of celebration ended back at Government House for a ball where—standing radiant “in her white tulle evening gown, sparkling with diamanté and sequin embroidery ... General Smuts presented her with South Africa’s glittering birthday gift of diamonds—twenty-one superb stones (varying in size up to ten carats) in a silver casket.” A live microphone had been set up on the balcony of the ballroom where the presentation was made, and Lilibet could be heard to gasp as she opened the casket. In the course of one day she had been given jewels whose combined value, at that time, was well over £200,000.
“We all knew she had received a cherished gift from Philip,” one member of the tour said, “but what it was none of us were certain. From the mailroom came the information that it was a small, heavy parcel, which was greeted with disappointment as we had hoped it might contain an engagement ring. I recall someone saying it was a small jeweled bible, probably once belonging to Prince Philip’s mother. Someone else claimed it was a gold Victorian hand-warmer. Whatever the contents she had been seen to have teary eyes upon the gift’s receipt.”
“The most satisfactory feature of the whole tour was the remarkable development of Princess Elizabeth,” commented another member of the Royal suite. “She had come on in the most surprising way and all in the right direction. She had got all of her Aunt Mary’s [the Princess Royal] solid and enduring qualities and a perfectly natural power of enjoying herself without any trace of shyness. She did not possess a great sense of humour, but she had a good, healthy sense of fun. Moreover, she could take on the old bores with much of her mother’s skill.
“She had an astonishing solicitude for other peoples’ comfort and had become extremely businesslike and understood what a burden it could be to the staff if some regard was not paid to the clock.
“She had developed an amazing technique of going up behind her mother and prodding her in the Achilles tendon at the point of her umbrella when time was being wasted in unnecessary conversation, and when necessary she told her father off to rights.
“Princess Margaret had also come on a lot. She was much more agreeable, less the Palace brat, and she was very good company. There must have been many moments in the tour that seemed intolerable to both of them, but they behaved admirably.”
They boarded Vanguard for the journey home three days later, on April 24, in the same glorious sunshine that had greeted them on their arrival. As the ship moved out of the harbor, Table Mountain gradually faded into the horizon. (The jewels they had received had been placed in the paymaster’s safe and were guarded around the clock.)
“Now that our visit is over,” the King wrote General Smuts as Vanguard neared British waters, “I don’t mind confessing to you alone that I was rather fearful about it, after reading various books & reports on South Africa, but my mind was completely set at rest the day we landed in Cape Town & ever after. The wonderfully friendly welcome given to us by all in South Africa made such a deep impression on us.... If, and I firmly believe it has, our visit has altered the conception of monarchy to some South Africans ... then our tour has been well worth while....”
No one in the Royal Party seemed to take special note of the
turbulence between South Africa’s two parties or between blacks and whites. Smuts’s more liberal views would be a matter of past history within six months of the tour and the new government would strengthen white control, segregating whites and nonwhites in almost all social relations, and placing curbs on free movement (partly through the use of passbooks, which most black Africans were soon required to carry).
The King’s reception had much to do with black Africans crying out for a hand to take their side, believing that the Monarchy and Great Britain were more powerful than South Africa’s white politicians. The King heard the cry, but he had not understood its meaning.
12
Vanguard docked at Southampton on May 12, 1947, the tenth anniversary of King George’s Coronation. The heat and the physical demands of the tour had been so difficult that the King, “never with a surplus ounce,” had lost seventeen pounds. The Queen was alarmed and glad to be home where he could rest and be attended by the best medical care. But, unquestionably, Lilibet—despite the fact that Philip had not been allowed to meet the boat—was the happiest member of the returning Royal Party. Alexandra claimed that she “danced for sheer joy on the deck.”
Two more days were to pass before Philip was to come up to London from Corsham, where he was attending Petty Officers’ School. He went directly to Buck House for an audience with the King. Once again he asked permission to make public his and Lilibet’s engagement. “Everything has been meandering along for ages,” Margaret commented when she heard that Philip had arrived; and Alexandra wrote: “Aunt Elizabeth reminded the King a trifle sternly that Lilibet was now over twenty-one. Uncle Bertie took this admonition well. I believe that after talking to Philip he made some excuse about fetching photographs of the South African trip and slipped out of the room. When the door gently reopened, however, it was Lilibet.”
The King might have given in to a momentary lapse of romanticism; but when the couple emerged from their reunion, he informed them that he was still not prepared for a public announcement to be made. Arbitrarily, he insisted they wait until July 15, another eight weeks, when—if nothing untoward should occur in the interim—their patience would be rewarded. What untoward occurrence the King might have been referring to was difficult to perceive.
While the Royal Family had been in South Africa, Philip had finally achieved British citizenship and renounced his Greek rights of succession. On March 18, the London Gazette listed Prince Philip (under the name on his Danish passport) among more than eight hundred new citizens, many of them German-Jewish refugees. Except for his Naval rank of lieutenant, he no longer possessed a title or a last name that could really be called his own. The King’s advisers now began a search for a suitable surname.
“Somewhere back up that knotted tree,” Basil Boothroyd wrote, “there had been German Dukes of Oldenburg. The College of Heralds, putting their best men on the job, plucked out this possibility and suggested its anglicization into Oldcastle.”
The Home Secretary, Chuter Ede, wrote the King that he felt “something grander and more glittering” could be found, and following discussions with Lord Mountbatten, suggested that Philip take his mother’s maiden name, Mountbatten. In fact, Princess Andrew had never anglicized her name from the original Battenberg. Somehow this was overlooked. Philip claimed he was “not madly in favour of the proposal [to bear the name Mountbatten]. But in the end—was persuaded and anyway I couldn’t think of a reasonable alternative.” He had come to Buck House to be reunited with Lilibet, newly christened Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, R.N., a British subject, and with the prospect now of a Naval career.
The King had been prepared to grant him the right and privilege of the title His Royal Highness Prince Philip; and this was agreed to by the Prime Minister and Lord Mountbatten. Unexpectedly, Philip himself “with some determination” announced that he preferred not to have this Royal privilege conferred upon him. This decision had less to do with British patriotism than his desire to sever his connection in the eyes of the public with the Greek Throne, and the move was extremely politic and prescient. Xenophobia still gripped England; an opinion poll taken about this time showed that 40 percent of the public did not want Princess Elizabeth to marry a foreign prince—whether he was Greek, Danish or German, and even if he had taken up British citizenship.
In March, with the Queen and a love-struck Lilibet adding pressure to his problems on the tour, the King had initiated discussions between his advisers and Lord Mountbatten. They decided that time was needed to reintroduce Philip to the public as Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, R.N. As a first step, Lord Mountbatten (about to leave for India) and Philip (in uniform, standing “quietly in his uncle’s shadow”) met with the chairman of Lord Beaverbrook’s newspapers and the editors of the Daily and Sunday Express. Mountbatten had never employed his charm and powers of persuasion to better advantage. The men agreed to play up Philip’s “evident Englishness.” (When Lord Beaverbrook, Mountbatten’s longtime adversary, learned of this pact, he expressed his disgust that the three men had been “taken in.”)
Articles about Philip’s naturalization appeared, stressing his English connections, his almost lifetime residency and his admirable war record. The naturalization was portrayed as, more or less, a technicality. Plans were now to include Philip in Royal Family occasions so that the public might become used to his name appearing in the Court Calendar.
Queen Mary was entertained a fortnight after the Vanguard’s return at a family luncheon party at Buck House in honor of her eightieth birthday, and Lieutenant Mountbatten was present. One week later, during Royal Ascot, he danced almost every dance with Lilibet at a ball given for about a hundred guests and held in the Red Drawing Room at Windsor Castle; the press was allowed to take pictures. He returned to Kensington Palace later since he was not a houseguest at the Castle, propriety being closely observed.
Lilibet was luminously in love and the change that came over her was instantly seen by her family, the Court, the press and the public. “She positively glowed,” one source said. “The smile that was once so diffident was now a declaration. Suddenly she was supremely feminine. I wouldn’t say she swung her hips, but she did become more appealing and somehow quite the young woman. Even her voice seemed to have lost its formerly adolescent timbre.”
She attended a performance of Oklahoma! at the Drury Lane Theatre with Philip and the family. The Rodgers and Hammerstein song “People Will Say We’re in Love” became their song and she played it on her gramophone ad nauseam. “One imagined that a starry-eyed Victoria, had she lived in this century, would have acted the same way about her beloved Albert. In Philip’s company she seemed to have become somehow smaller—more delicate, and yet, curiously, less shy,” an observer noted.
Whatever small inhibitions Philip might once have had he now lost. He came to the Palace in his “favourite kit”—unpressed flannel trousers, an open-necked tennis shirt, and “often rolled up sleeves.” Mountbatten had given him a two-seater sports car for his recent twenty-sixth birthday. An incautiously fast driver, he came in for press criticism when, driving well over the speed limit, he overturned his car into a ditch and emerged miraculously unscathed. A fortnight later, while driving one of the Royal cars and with Lilibet sitting beside him, he sideswiped a taxicab. Whenever he was to escort Lilibet officially, a limousine was scheduled, but he would move quickly into the driver’s seat, to the great despair of the Palace chauffeurs, who did not want their cars “returned to them with unsightly dents and buckled fenders.”
Philip was confident now that nothing would or could intervene and that he and Lilibet would soon be formally engaged. Alexandra professed that Philip began “to rearrange the Palace furniture [and that] the servants were a little uncertain how to treat this striding, energetic young man who had been a prince, was only now a naval Lieutenant but obviously would soon be very much more.” And Crawfie was surprised one day to find Philip directing the staff to move the furniture in Lilibet’s sitting room s
o that the large sofa was in front of the fire (“instead of being isolated in the window”) and a chair drawn up cosily on either side of it.
Crawfie had recently married her long time fiancé, the Scotsman George Buthlay, and had been given by the King “for her lifetime” a small red-brick house (Nottingham Cottage) attached to Kensington Palace, where, for the time being, she would spend only weekends. (As a bridal gift, Margaret had given Crawfie three lamps, “So I can continue to brighten your life,” she wrote on an accompanying card.)
“Sometimes I wondered what had really happened to Philip’s temper,” Alexandra commented. “The full strength of it flashed out one day on a friend who had genially tried to joke, ‘you’ve chosen the wrong girl. Margaret is much better-looking!’ Rage flared before Philip calmed himself to answer, ‘You wouldn’t say that if you knew them. Elizabeth is sweet and kind, just like her mother [implying, it would seem, that Margaret was not].’ ”
Whatever time he had on leave from the Navy he spent near Lilibet, and when she had any free moments they could be seen walking arm in arm in the Palace gardens, heads inclined toward each other. But her duties persisted and caused him to have a good many leisure hours to fill. “We quite often fought each other nearly to a standstill in the squash court at Buckingham Palace and on the badminton court at Windsor Castle,” Townsend reported. “These sporting affrays left me with the [indelible] impression of the Prince as a genial, intelligent and hard-hitting extrovert. However,” he added, commenting on Philip’s standoffish nature, “I never got to know [him] well.”
As the time drew close to July 15, Philip realized that he lacked funds for an engagement ring. Despite his mother’s vow of poverty, Princess Andrew had retained two diamond tiaras given to her by Prince Andrew in the early years of her marriage, which her mother had held in trust for her. After a family discussion, the decision was made that one tiara would be dismantled, the diamonds from it then used to form an engagement ring and a bracelet that would be Philip’s wedding present to his bride.