by Anne Edwards
Days passed with Queen Mary’s condition unchanged. During one of the Queen’s visits, her grandmother repeated the same requests she had made to her son and daughter, and the Queen vowed to follow her instruction. “I had so wanted to see you crowned,” the old Queen sighed.
She slipped into a coma on the morning of March 24. Parliament was in a state of inaction all day while the men in Government waited, as Chips Channon phrases it, “for the glorious old girl to die.” At 11:00 P.M. Winston Churchill rose and, moving the adjournment of the House, “in sobs” announced the death of Queen Mary at 10:35. “There were cries of dismay from the Gallery,” Channon continues, “and indeed on all sides there seemed to be grief ... particularly from the Socialists. She had long captured their imagination, and they rightly thought her above politics, a kind of Olympian Goddess. I drove sadly home, passing Marlborough House ... plunged in darkness and there was a large crowd outside; women were weeping.”
“Well, thank God the nightmare of watching Mama die is over,” the Duke of Windsor wrote his wife. “I couldn’t have taken it much longer for her sake or for mine.... When I called M.[arlborough] H.[ouse] at ten [P.M. on March 24] for news was told to go there around eleven. Five minutes later I was called to hurry there urgently and Mama died five minutes before I arrived. Only [Princess] Mary was there and none of the rest of the family showed up that night. Not even brother Harry whom I found, glass of scotch in hand, and feeling no pain, when I went to York House [his brother’s official residence] for a few minutes afterwards.”
The next morning the entire Royal Family gathered at Marlborough House, each in turn entering the old Queen’s bedroom to say a private farewell. “My sadness was mixed with incredulity that any mother could have been so hard and cruel towards her eldest son for so many years and yet so demanding at the end without relenting a scrap,” the Duke wrote Wallis. “I’m afraid the fluids in her veins have always been icy cold as they now are in death.”
Queen Mary may indeed have been “cold and hard,” but with her death a civilization had ended, too; and others close to her—the Queen, the Queen Mother, Margaret, Churchill and Lady Airlie among them—recognized this. “She was magnificent, humourous, worldly, in fact nearly sublime ... what a grand Queen,” Channon recorded in his diary.
Another witness wrote that to the country “something familiar in the people’s lives—a dependable landmark that they had become immensely proud and fond of—had vanished, never to be replaced.” Queen Mary’s upright silhouette had become as instantly recognizable as Big Ben to millions of English everywhere, and they regarded her with extraordinarily intimate affection. The toque with its aigrettes; the supporting plateau of close Edwardian curls; the long tightly rolled parasol or umbrella; the sensibly strapped shoes in unsensible sweet-pea shades had become admired symbols of queenliness and “of old-fashioned, durable tightly rolled moral qualities to match.”
Queen Mary left her elder granddaughter the greatest part of her jewels, antiques and wealth, an estate almost impossible to measure because of her incredible jewel collection, which she wore, instead of being worn by it as most women would have seemed to be. She bequeathed Margaret one of her favorite necklaces, a simple chain set alternately with large pearls and diamonds. But to the Queen she gave her magnificent pearls, the matched emeralds, the magnificent Indian tiara and scores of other famous pieces. She had been the jewel collector of the family. Now the Queen owned the fabulous collection along with her own. Other families might regard this as inequitable. After all, Queen Mary had a daughter, two sons and numerous other grandchildren. But in the Royal Family the custom is that the reigning monarch is to receive the largest share of the estate of former sovereigns or consorts. To the Duke of Windsor’s surprise he was named in his mother’s will as well, and received three enameled and jeweled boxes.
A terrible wind scudded up the dark, gunmetal-colored Thames during the two days that Queen Mary’s coffin lay in state in the medieval coldness of Westminster Hall. The Queen, “inkily veiled,” led the mourners who had come to pay their last respects. After the funeral at Windsor, where Queen Mary was buried beside King George V in the family vault in St. George’s Chapel, twenty-eight members of the Royal Family met for dinner. Queen Mary’s eldest son, David, once Edward VIII of Great Britain, was not invited. “What a smug, stinking lot my relations are,” he wrote his wife. “You’ve never seen such a seedy worn out bunch of old hags most of them have become.... I’ve been boiling mad the whole time that you haven’t been here in your rightful place as a daughter-in-law at my side.”
With Queen Mary’s death, many English believed that her grand-daughter’s reign could conceivably mean a modernization and liberalizing of ideas and that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor might be allowed back into the depleted family circle. Photographs of the Duke entering and leaving Marlborough House and at the funeral, “in which he looked tragically like a man saying goodbye forever to more than the dead,” had shaken many of his former subjects. The Liberal New Chronicle ran an editorial saying, “It would be a national reconciliation, an emotional amnesty for those of us who felt it was right to support him all those long years ago against Stanley Baldwin, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the editor of The Times!”
But the young Queen had inherited from her grandmother, along with her treasure chest of diamonds, pearls and emeralds, the old Queen’s unflagging devotion to the Monarchy. Country must always come before self. And though people vowed there would never again be a Queen like Queen Mary, privately there were hopes that history would prove them wrong.
17
The Palace Diary records that on the morning following her grandmother’s death, “the Queen inspected the first of the specially designed Coronation straight-backed chairs with blue velour upholstery on which was embroidered in gold the cipher E II R.” Only six weeks remained until the Coronation and there was much to be done.
By Act of Parliament, whenever the King or Queen dies, the next person in the line of succession immediately becomes the Sovereign. The year’s delay (in Queen Elizabeth’s case, sixteen months) until the actual Coronation is, first, to allow a period of mourning and then to establish time for the elaborate plans that must be made. The Coronation does not give the Sovereign any further mandate than the one he or she has received at the time of the Declaration of Accession. In many ways it is a religious act, whereby the whole nation and its new Monarch can publicly recognize the tie between the Church of England and the Throne.
In Britain’s earliest history the Sovereign was part ruler and part priest. Divine Right no longer exists and the Coronation ceremony, which is religious in character, is an occasion when “Sovereign and people alike recognize that God is above all Sovereigns and nations, however mighty they may seem to be.” The Coronation is meant to consecrate the Monarch to the task.
But the ceremony is also an occasion “for celebration, for fun, for processions, pageants and fireworks and an event of which Britain can say to the world ... ‘We will show you something the like of which can be seen nowhere else in the universe.’ ” With Philip’s vision (expedited by the Duke of Norfolk) and the Queen’s complete cooperation, her Coronation was being planned as the most spectacular show Britain had ever produced. For the first time it would be televised, with cameras inside Westminster Abbey covering every minute detail, and immediately relayed to an audience of many, many millions. For this reason the Coronation had to be done “not just well but supremely well.”
“Our first main and continuing concern was to plot all the movements in the actual ceremony,” one of the members of the planning committee recalled. “To this end we had printed plans of the theatre [the interior of Westminster Abbey] on which every single move was plotted. In addition we had a huge master plan of the Abbey and pins inscribed on the top with the name of everyone taking part in the ceremony. Different coloured pins were used to denote the various categories of participants. We used to play with these pins and th
en, when we had worked out a movement which seemed proper and dignified we would transpose this onto one of our printed plans and then try the next movement.”
Norman Hartnell was to design the Coronation dress as well as all the other gowns that were to be worn by the women in the Royal Family and the peeresses in the ceremony. He brought eight designs for the Coronation dress to Windsor for the Queen and Philip’s approval. All were in lustrous white satin at the Queen’s request. Number one was lightly embroidered in a classic Greek key; two was trimmed in gold and bordered with black and white ermine tails; three was encrusted with silver lace and crystals and diamonds; four was emblazoned with arum lilies “tumbling with pendant pearls”; five was embroidered with violets of cabochon amethysts and red roses of rubies “that glittered and mingled in the waving design of wheat, picked out with opals and topaz”; six had golden branches of oak leaves sewn with acorns of silver thread; seven boasted bold Tudor roses surrounded by looped fringes of golden crystals. Number eight proved to be the Queen’s favorite. The gown, heavily embroidered in white and silver, contained all the emblems of Great Britain, which were encrusted with small diamonds and crystals.
But to the Queen, white and silver, which she had worn at her wedding, seemed inappropriate for a married woman. The Duke of Edinburgh suggested that the gown should bear colorful jeweled emblems not only of Great Britain but of all the Dominions, and Elizabeth agreed to this.
Once the design was accepted, dozens of fittings were required and made at Windsor. There were many more than the usual considerations for a gown. Movement during the long and involved ceremony had to be taken into account along with the necessity to keep to the minimum the weight of the dress. The lighting in the Abbey and the dominant colors of the ceremonial vestments that the Queen would have to take off and on during the ceremony presented other problems.
As Coronation Day drew near, the Queen spent most of her time at Windsor Castle while Buckingham Palace was being prepared for the gala occasion. The Ballroom, the famous Balcony Room, the balcony itself, the Bow and Throne Rooms were all given a coat of fresh paint. In the basements, the Royal Gold Plate was being unpacked; in the Royal Mews the State Coach (made entirely of carved wood and gilded with gold leaf, its panels painted by the Florentine artist Cipriani, its interior lined with quilted, tufted crimson satin), which had carried every Monarch since George III to his or her Coronation, was being refurbished.
At a run-through, the Queen and Philip sat in the gold coach “drawn by eight magnificent greys” (one named Eisenhower, and three others Montgomery, Tedder and Cunningham) and circled the courtyard, practicing their positions and the proper timing for their waves and getting accustomed to the slow, disquieting swell as the coach rolled along on its antique springs. Charles and Anne had been given permission to watch; and when the coach came to a halt, “Anne alarmed everyone by suddenly darting between the rear wheels to try to turn the huge brake wheel.” She was swiftly scooped up by a footman and carried away to safety.
On May 1, the Coronation just four weeks away, the Queen began a series of rehearsals in the White Drawing Room. Her father’s Coronation had been fully recorded. Aware of the many errors that had caused him such difficulty, she played the records several times over on a phonograph and went through each phase of the service. As the White Drawing Room had almost the same dimensions as the theater in the Abbey, she was able to measure and time the distances she must walk to take her from one phase of the ceremony to another. Then she and her attendants, white sheets attached to their shoulders substituting for the robes they would wear during the actual ceremony, continued rehearsals in the spectacular white and gold State Ballroom.
Three further rehearsals were now conducted at the Abbey with the Duchess of Norfolk acting as stand-in for the Queen, who took part, for the first time, in an Abbey rehearsal on May 22. No previous Coronation had been so well prepared. Everyone concerned realized that the television and film companies would pick up any slip, and the Coronation Committee was determined there would be none. Even the Act of Homage to the Queen by the peers of her realm, where they were to kneel to swear allegiance, was rehearsed, the Duke of Edinburgh, as the peer of highest precedence, at their head. He got down on his knees and then, “feeling a little foolish,” had “mumbled the words at high speed, jumped up ... pecked at the air a foot from the Queen’s cheek (which he was to kiss) and backed off rapidly.” The Queen smiled patiently and said, “Come back, Philip, and do it properly!” which, indeed, he did.
Philip’s position in the Coronation was, perhaps, difficult for him. When a King is crowned, his wife is automatically his Consort and is crowned with him, and becomes the Queen. With a Queen Regnant, her husband can become only Prince Consort. Since a King would be above a Queen, there can be no King Consort. Philip’s official role was one of total obeisance to the Queen. In his private life he struggled to maintain the position of an old-fashioned pater familias. This was not easy. In the earlier years of their marriage their staff came to him for decisions; now they were the Queen’s Household and answered to her. Nonetheless, the Queen’s love for Philip was obvious to all, and his respect for her equally visible. She believed strongly in his good taste and his ability to ring order out of chaos, and from the time of her Coronation she made an effort to show him that she welcomed his views and relied on his good judgment.
Despite its great weight, the Queen had decided to wear the large solid-gold, pearl- and ruby-studded St. Edward’s Crown worn at all the Coronations in the twentieth century. (Queen Victoria, at her Coronation, had worn the much lighter Imperial Crown of State, which the Queen could have chosen.)* Her first rehearsal with the crown, testing if she would be able to endure its weight and also to move gracefully while it sat upon her head, was held on May 27. Dress rehearsals were conducted later, but the Duchess of Norfolk again stood in for the Queen.
Not until three days before the ceremony was it discovered by Bobo that, despite new gilded furniture and plush carpets, the robing rooms had not been equipped with mirrors, which were hastily installed the following day.
During all these complicated preparations, “the problem of Margaret” had not disappeared. Although the British press had not broken a story about Townsend and Margaret, they had got wind of the romance and were marking time. Philip, dreading a scandal that might mar the impact of the Coronation, spoke to the Queen about having Townsend removed from Royal employ. She adamantly refused to take such a drastic move. Townsend was, after all, on her mother’s staff, not hers. She could also see how happy Margaret appeared.
Philip had always felt somewhat threatened by Townsend, never fully sharing the late King’s fondness for him. Philip was simply not comfortable with men who were able to spend long hours in the company of women or in spiritual or intellectual conversation. His associates were men’s men, drinking and carousing buddies, Naval officers, sportsmen, friends like Michael Parker. He was also rather sanctimoniously perturbed that Margaret would choose this, above all times, to become involved in what he suspected could become a potential scandal, strongly believing that her duty to the Queen should have taken precedence over her emotions.
Undaunted by rain, vast crowds had gathered at the gates of Buckingham Palace and along the route of the procession the evening before the Coronation. Inside the Palace the excitement ran high. Philip’s mother, Princess Andrew, was a houseguest along with several other Royalties. However, according to English protocol, no foreign monarchs or ex-monarchs could attend the Coronation, which, of course, excluded the Duke of Windsor from the proceedings.
Until the day before the Coronation a decision had not been made as to whether Prince Charles should attend or be left at home with Anne. But he begged to be allowed to go. A white satin suit had been made for him in the event that he was to attend. June 2, Coronation Day dawned cold but dry. By 8:00 A.M. rain began to fall, ushering in “the meanest June day anyone could remember,” with “skies cold, grey and threatenin
g.” Both children rose early and stared out from the nursery windows at the sight of crowds already gathered along the Mall. Anne declared, rather hysterically, that the Coronation had begun. Haughtily, her brother explained that it would not begin for hours.
Princess Anne was anything but happy when she discovered that her four-year-old brother was going to the Coronation and she was not. The nursery staff did not have an easy time stopping her tears or mollifying her very injured three-year-old feelings. Nonetheless, she watched from her window as the marvelous gold coach attended by scarlet-and-gold-coated Yeomen of the Guard and postillions pulled out of the Palace courtyard, at half past ten, with her parents inside.
The Queen and Prince Philip were to be the last to arrive at the Abbey. (There had been a rather unpleasant discussion beforehand as to whether the Duke of Edinburgh should ride in a secondary coach.) The procession had begun over two hours earlier, led by the Lord Mayor of London in a coach drawn by six grays, attended by his footmen and a guard of pikemen. His coach was followed by those of the various heads of state, the visiting celebrities, and the representatives of Her Majesty’s protectorates, including the colorful, enormously tall, powerfully built Queen Salote of Tonga, dressed in beet-red—with a long matching feather in her rather bizarre hat, and accompanied by “a frail little man in white,” the Sultan of Kelantan. (“Who can he be?” a companion of Noël Coward whispered. “Her lunch!” Coward snapped back.)