Royal Sisters

by Anne Edwards

  The second tiara, well known as Greece’s Meander Tiara (the word meander deriving from the ancient Greek River Maiandros, which inspired the famous key design), would be Princess Andrew’s bridal gift to her new daughter-in-law. The London firm of Philip Antrobus Ltd. was chosen to design the engagement ring and the bracelet. Several designs for the ring were submitted to Lilibet for her selection. (The bracelet was to remain a surprise.) She chose a platinum mounting set with a central solitaire stone of three carats with five smaller stones set in each shoulder. The design gave the center stone the illusion of being somewhat larger than it was. Another three-carat solitaire and two smaller solitaires became the focal point of the art-deco–styled, square-lined bracelet which contained over two hundred smaller diamonds.

  The ring was ready on July 8 and, wearing her distinctive nun’s attire, Princess Andrew carelessly went to collect it from the fourth floor Bond Street offices of the jeweler. A member of the press was alerted and the cat was out of the bag. Two afternoon papers published stories of the ring’s existence and its intended future owner.

  According to Alexandra, Philip immediately “rang up Lilibet and later spoke to Uncle Bertie.” And Crawfie added that on that afternoon Lilibet “poked her head into my room looking absolutely radiant.

  “ ‘Crawfie,’ she said, ‘Something is going to happen at last! ... he’s coming tonight.’ ”

  When he arrived at Buck House he was led directly to Lilibet’s sitting room and presented the ring to her. At dinner when they entered the dining room together, “her right hand covered the fingers of her left hand....

  “ ‘It’s too big,’ she laughed as she showed the ring to [the family]. ‘We don’t have to wait till it’s right, do we?’ she added anxiously.

  “The King smiled and shook his head.

  “Next morning was Wednesday, July the ninth,” Crawfie recorded. “Lilibet came to my room much earlier than usual. I have never seen her look lovelier.... She wore a deep yellow frock, a shade that has always suited her very well. She closed the door behind her and held out her left hand [where] her engagement ring sparkled.”

  The King had been outmaneuvered and on July 10, the following announcement was made from Buckingham Palace:

  “It is with the greatest pleasure that The King and Queen announce the betrothal of their dearly beloved daughter The Princess Elizabeth to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten R.N., son of the late Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Andrew (Princess Alice of Battenberg), to which union The King has gladly given his consent.”

  The last royal garden party of the summer was scheduled for the following day. Philip was at Lilibet’s side as her parents and sister walked among their guests on the Palace lawns. “She wore her happiness like a garment, plainly, for all to see,” one member of the press delightedly reported.

  “They’ve wasted no time,” ex-King Peter said. “It’s rather like throwing [Philip] to the lions.” And Sir Harold Nicolson wryly observed that everybody was “straining to see the bridal pair—irreverently and shamelessly straining.”

  “For the less experienced members of the Royal Family,” Alexandra adds, “these traditional garden parties turn out to be not at all the pleasant occasions they are painted. Bishops and civil servants, service men and their wives, municipal do-gooders of every kind, the guests tend to arrange themselves into narrow avenues of staring eyes.... Hands clasped behind his back, bending forward protectively over his fiancée, [Philip] acquitted himself so well that when the royal party reached their tea pavilion, the onlookers gave a cheer.”

  There remained a large, dissenting segment of the public who still did not consider Philip English despite his new status and who felt “the Orthodox robes and veil of his mother and his father’s cosmopolitan life and death in Monte Carlo were not conducive to a whole-some public image.” But the majority, after so many oppressive years of war, looked forward with much anticipation to the great splash and pageantry of a Royal Wedding. The King had wanted the ceremony to be put off until the following spring or early summer, when, he suggested, the reception could be held in the Palace gardens. Lilibet, showing her ability to stand up to her father, insisted that they had already waited too long and the King finally agreed to fix November 20 as the date.

  Norman Hartnell was chosen to design and make the bridal gown. He recalled that he “roamed the London art galleries in search of classic inspiration and, fortunately, found a Botticelli figure in clinging ivory silk, trailed with jasmine, smilax, syringa and small white rose-like blossoms.” His plan was to embroider similar flora on the modern dress in fine white crystals and pearls—“if only I had the pearls.” They were found in the United States and brought back to England by a private messenger, who, when asked by Customs if he had anything to declare, leaned forward mysteriously and whispered, “Ten thousand pearls for the wedding dress of Princess Elizabeth!”

  Somewhat startled, the Customs officer retained the pearls until the prescribed duty was paid.

  At the Queen’s request Hartnell ordered the satin for the gown from a Scottish firm. “Then the trouble started. I was told in confidence that certain circles were trying to stop the use of the Scottish satin on the grounds [that] the silk worms were Italian, and possibly even Japanese! Was I so guilty of treason that I would deliberately use enemy silk worms?”

  Hartnell rang the manufacturer to ascertain the true nationality of the silkworms. “Our worms,” came the proud reply, “are Chinese worms—from Nationalist China, of course.” Work on the dress and on that of the eight bridesmaids and the rest of the wedding party then proceeded.

  The design of the wedding gown immediately became the object of worldwide curiosity. All of Hartnell’s workers signed a pledge of secrecy, and the workroom windows were whitewashed and curtained with thick white muslin. The manager moved into the adjoining room to sleep until permission was finally given to release a rough sketch to the press.

  While plans for the wedding occupied much of the time of the female members of the Royal Family in the summer of 1947, the King was struggling with larger issues of Empire. Lord Mountbatten had assumed office as Viceroy of India in February 1947; his task was to effect the transfer of power into Indian hands by a date not later than June 1, 1948. The Mountbattens arrived in Delhi on March 22, 1947, accompanied by their daughter Pamela. Two days later, dressed in full Coronation regalia and in a ceremony of “majestic pomp,” Mountbatten was sworn in as Viceroy. Before he had accepted the job he had insisted and received plenipotentiary powers from the Prime Minister. (“No one in a century has had such powers,” Attlee commented when he finally had agreed. “But, all right, you have them.”)

  Fearing civil war in India if he did not move quickly, Mountbatten worked “round the clock using every ounce of tact he possessed.” Even his own staff was startled when he announced, in a memorable press conference on June 4, that August 15 would be the date for the actual transfer of power to take place. This was no easy task; for India’s 565 ruling princes, whose subjects totaled a quarter of the population, had to be individually persuaded to dissolve the treaties they had with the King-Emperor, King George VI. Mountbatten succeeded in this endeavor before his deadline by convincing the most powerful princes first and then having them talk to the smaller principalities. Indian Independence, therefore, came at the stroke of midnight on August 14, a day early since Indian astrologers had condemned the original date as ruinous.

  Mountbatten was offered, and accepted, the job of becoming India’s first Governor-General, returning for the wedding very much a world figure. But in the King’s eyes, “the glory that was the Indian Empire—that ‘bright jewel’ which Disraeli had presented to Queen Victoria not quite seventy years before,” was missing from Britain’s Crown of colonial possessions, and he acutely regretted that he had never set foot in his Indian Empire.

  On receiving Lord Listowel, his last Secretary of State for India, on August 15 at Balmoral, the King was noticeably saddened. He as
ked that the Union Jack “which had flown day and night [for ninety years] above the [British] Residency at Lucknow, be presented to him so that it might hang at Windsor with other historical flags already there, and this wish was fulfilled some six weeks later.” No sooner had India gained her independence than a treaty was signed in London making Burma an independent sovereign republic. The days of Empire were fast fading, and at home Britain was suffering from the economic woes caused by the war.

  The stress on Lilibet and Philip accelerated as their wedding day drew closer, Philip was living at Kensington Palace with his mother and grandmother. Mountbatten’s former butler, John Dean, was now his valet. (“The young Naval officer brought all his worldly belongings in two suitcases” and did not even possess “a pair of proper hair brushes.” Dean, who had also been valet to the sartorially elegant Duke of Windsor in Paris, would later reveal.) To assist with the mounting mail, he also had the use of Mountbatten’s secretary, Miss Lees. But he was not accustomed to having the press dog his every move. And he had to take a crash course in the proper protocol required by his new position in the pecking order of the Royal Family. Since at this time he had no title, there ensued a great deal of embarrassed confusion whenever he accompanied his fiancée and her sister, a situation that invariably brought amused laughter to Margaret. Curtsies were required for the sisters and when Philip was reached in a reception line, people did not know what to do—curtsy, salute or just shake hands.

  The members of the Royal Family and the Household now threw themselves into the festive preparations. “Margaret,” Crawfie noted, “was sweet, happy in her sister’s happiness.... She was growing out of her one-time objection to Lilibet’s doing anything she could not do, or having a train longer than hers.”

  Formal invitations went out at the end of August. The illustrious gathering of Royal relations was to equal the glittering list of those who had attended King George V’s funeral. Conspicuous by their absence would be Philip’s three sisters and their German husbands. The King’s advisers had feared that their presence would remind the public too blatantly of Philip’s German connections.

  The big question was, had the Duke and Duchess of Windsor been invited to the wedding? “The plain truth,” the Duchess wrote her Aunt Bessie, was that they had not. “The Duke has been told he should avoid answering [questions from the press]! Why should be go on protecting their rude attitude after ten and a half years?”

  The Royal guests had all their traveling, transport and hotel expenses paid for by the King. In addition to this they were entertained lavishly. With the invitation came detailed instructions informing the imperial guests “which boat train to catch from France, how and where we should be met, that we should be accommodated at Claridges, a car would be at our constant disposal, and that we should arrive three days before the wedding.” The Golden Arrow boat train that left France the evening of November 16 might well have been renamed for the journey The Royal Special. Everyone on it appeared to be related: King Paul and Queen Frederika of Greece; ex-King Peter and Queen Alexandra of Yugoslavia; Queen Helen of Rumania; the Duchess of Aosta; the Comte de Paris; the Spanish Pretender; Queen Ena of Spain (Queen Victoria’s granddaughter); and Michael of Rumania being the most prominent.

  They were met at Victoria Station by the Lord Chamberlain and were driven in a line of vast Daimlers to Claridge’s, where they were all to be guests.

  “At mealtimes we nearly filled the dining room,” Alexandra re-called. “And so constantly were we chopping and changing our tables to eat with this cousin or that uncle that in the end they furnished one huge table for us with waiters continually attending it, so that we could eat when we chose and sit next to whom we liked. It was a splendid arrangement.”

  In their apartments, which were filled with flowers and fruits, were instructions complete to the last detail of “what to wear, what to do, where to sit; and with little maps of the routes and the seating plans.”

  For the bridesmaids the last three days before the wedding were a rush of fittings and rehearsals and parties. Lady Pamela Mountbatten had returned with her parents from India just for the wedding. She was only eighteen at the time, and the year had been the most exciting in her life. On November 17, before submitting to even more fittings, she had lunched with her grandmother (also Philip’s grandmother), the Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven, the Crown Princess of Sweden (Mountbatten’s sister Louise, who would soon become Queen of Sweden), Princess Andrew and several other family members. “K.P.—Kensington Palace” was where Philip would leave for Westminster Abbey and the wedding ceremony.

  That evening there was a family dinner with all the foreign royalty at Buck House, followed by a dance. “I stood from 9:30 til 12:15 A.M.!!! Not bad for 80,” Queen Mary wrote in her diary; and Lady Pamela Mountbatten enthused: “Everyone was covered with jewelry, tiaras and gorgeous dresses.” The next day the wedding party had their final rehearsal. “We did love our dresses with the pearl-trimmed satin stars on the skirt. I think they were stars,” she mused.

  Two nights before the wedding a brilliant reception was given in the State Ballroom at the Palace (opened for the first time in eight years) for diplomats, foreign royalty and two thousand guests including Noël Coward and Beatrice Lillie. An Indian Rajah became uncontrollably drunk and assaulted the Duke of Devonshire, who was sober, but otherwise there were no untoward events. The King had requested the men wear all their decorations. The women wore “the most heavenly gowns and jewelry.” (“Queen Mary, scintillating as ever in a huge display of jewels,” Jock Colville noted, “although she was somewhat taken aback when Field Marshal Smuts said to her, ‘You are the big potato, the other queens are all small potatoes.’ ”) As the long formal dinner went on, Alexandra found that her “head ached and hurt unbearably under the weight of the heavy tiara of emeralds” which she wore. “Everywhere there were the same gracious or smiling expressions.” She had a difficult time maintaining hers as her tiara persisted in biting “viciously” into her head. Later that evening, after almost all the guests except the Mountbattens and a few other close family members had left, Lilibet sat down on the grand staircase and removed her tiara (borrowed from her mother since her new one was on display with the wedding gifts) and rubbed her head soothingly where the tiara had been.

  “Princess Elizabeth and I were never particular friends,” Lady Caroline Montagu-Douglas-Scott, another bridesmaid, admitted. “I knew Margaret best. We were in the same set with [Margaret’s cousin] Diana Bowes-Lyon [also a bridesmaid]. Our favourite haunt was Ciro’s where we used to dance to tunes from the latest shows. I believe Annie Get Your Gun and Oklahoma! were all the rage just before the wedding.”

  Margaret Elphinstone had, of course, been close to her cousin Lilibet since childhood. Slim, dark-haired Margaret had stalked deer with her at Balmoral and attended parties and first nights during Philip’s wartime service. “My parents lived in Scotland so my mother probably rang up her sister, the Queen, to see what could be done with me, little Margaret. I used to catch the bus from Windsor Castle to Englefield Green for my shorthand-typing course. My billet in London was great fun, Buckingham Palace, where I lived while working for MI5 at the end of the war. Oh, I was only a common-or-garden [variety] secretary, along with Diana Bowes-Lyon and Liz Lambart ... and of course, all three of us were bridesmaids.”

  Lady Mary Cambridge, eighteen months older than Lilibet, and Queen Mary’s great-grand-niece, recalled being a bridesmaid with Lilibet when Princess Marina had married the Duke of Kent. “We were both very small. I seem to recall we gave each other horrified looks as we climbed down the steps from the altar which were very steep, carrying that long heavy train.... King George V hated children in long skirts, he thought it all wrong, so we had to wear these short ballet-style ones, made of muslin which prickled our legs.”

  The dress she was now to wear at Lilibet’s wedding was in sharp contrast and it had been chosen and voted upon by all eight bridesmaids (Margaret’s
suggestion) from several sketches that had been submitted by Hartnell. But she remembered that “Queen Mary was furious ... because my hair looked such a mess as I walked up the aisle. She never missed a thing. I’d taken my dog out for a walk that morning in the rain and came back with very frizzy hair.”

  Wedding gifts arrived en masse and 2,583 of them were placed on show along with Royal Family presents, at St. James’s Palace. Chips Channon, miffed perhaps at not being “commanded” to attend the wedding, was “struck by how ghastly some of the presents were.” However, even the disgruntled Channon admitted, “Queen Mary’s was magnificent, as was the wreath of diamond roses given by the Nezam of Hyderabad, ... and,” he added, “my silver box (faux Fabergé) was in a conspicuous position.”

  Queen Mary’s gift—actually a cornucopia of gifts—was overwhelming even to those royalties much accustomed to extravagant displays. She had presented her granddaughter with a chest of jewels: a diamond tiara, a diamond bandeau, the famous diamond brooch given to her by Queen Victoria on the occasion of her own marriage, which contained three diamond sections with ten large diamond drops; a diamond bow brooch, the two diamond bangle bracelets, diamonds all round, that she had been given at her Durbar in India in 1911; a ruby and diamond bracelet, and a pair of pearl and diamond earrings. Added to these splendiferous presents were numerous pieces of exquisite Georgian silver, a fourfold antique Chinese screen, several rare mahogany tables, exquisite linen and three small table lamps and shades that had once belonged to Queen Alexandra.