In August 1950 Townsend was promoted to Master of the Household, a permanent position requiring a one hundred percent commitment to King George. By then his marriage to Rosemary Pawle was headed for rocky shoals.
The infatuation between courtier and princess was mutual. In his memoirs Townsend recalled falling asleep in the heather one afternoon after a picnic and being gently awakened by someone protectively covering him with a coat. It was Margaret, her face almost close enough for a kiss. Townsend whispered to her, “You know your father is watching us.” Margaret laughed, and left to rejoin the king, who had been leaning on his walking stick, observing the socially mismatched couple from a distance. “Then she took his arm and walked away, leaving me to my dreams,” the equerry wrote.
Margaret was a real daddy’s girl. Perhaps unsurprisingly, her great loves—Peter Townsend; the man she would eventually wed, Antony Armstrong-Jones; and her future lover Roddy Llewellyn—bore more than a passing resemblance to George VI: handsome, slight, sensitive.
She was devastated by her father’s death on February 6, 1952. The ascension of Elizabeth to the throne also heralded Margaret’s eviction from Buckingham Palace, where the new sovereign would reside with her young family. Margaret and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, as George VI’s widow would now be styled, moved into Clarence House, adjacent to St. James’s Palace.
Peter Townsend was on hand to console Margaret during the mandated period of court mourning for the late king, claiming in his memoirs that “the King’s death had left a greater void than ever in Princess Margaret’s life.” The death of George VI also meant that Townsend was out of a job. Luckily, the queen mum liked him, and appointed him Comptroller of her Household.
But he had something to cry about as well. “. . . my own [life] was clouded by the failure of my marriage.” A couple of years earlier, his lonely wife, Rosemary, had taken a lover, John de László, the son of a prominent society portraitist. Rosemary’s infidelity may have triggered a switch in Townsend’s subconscious: the freedom to fantasize about a deeper relationship with Margaret.
On December 20, 1950, the thirty-eight-year-old Townsend was granted a divorce on the grounds of Rosemary’s “misconduct” with de László, making the courtier the “innocent party” in the proceedings. Two months after the decree was issued Rosemary and de László married.
In Time and Chance, Townsend’s memoirs, which were published in 1978, he wrote about the moment his relationship with Margaret changed forever. “It was then [February, 1953] that we made the mutual discovery [in an empty drawing room at Sandringham] of how much we meant to each other. She listened, without uttering a word, as I told her, very quietly, of my feelings. Then she simply said ‘That is how I feel, too.’ It was, to us, an immensely gladdening disclosure, but one which sorely troubled us.”
Interestingly, Margaret’s official biography places this “discovery” even later, in April 1953, and cites the location as the red drawing room in Windsor Castle.
Another of Margaret’s biographers, Theo Aronson, is fairly sure that Townsend was shading the truth about the event and that the pair had expressed their desire for each other long before then—likely when the courtier was still married. Aronson refers to the cairn (a heap of stones to mark a memorial of sorts) that the couple built together on a hilltop at Balmoral. Each excursion to the summit warranted the placing of a stone, until the cairn stood three feet high.
Peter Townsend’s memoir described their mutual passion in terms that might be familiar to romance readers: “Our love, for such it was, took no heed of wealth and rank and all the other worldly conventional barriers which separated us. We hardly noticed them; all we saw was one another, man and woman, and what we saw pleased us.”
According to the lovestruck equerry, “Marriage . . . seemed the least likely solution; and anyway, at the prospect of my becoming a member of the Royal Family, the imagination boggled, most of all my own. Neither the Princess nor I had the faintest idea how it might be possible to share our lives.”
And yet, Townsend insisted that they intended to become united in every way: “God alone knew how—and never be parted.” Queen Elizabeth was said to be sympathetic to their wishes; but the queen mother, despite liking Townsend personally, was very upset by the news. For her it was an echo of the 1936 trauma regarding Edward VIII’s insistence on wedding the American divorcée Wallis Simpson and the ensuing political mess it made for England and the entire Windsor family.
No one was particularly enthusiastic about Townsend as a viable beau for Margaret. The queen’s private secretary, Sir Alan (“Tommy”) Lascelles, exclaimed that Townsend “must be either mad or bad!” Corroborating this shocked reaction, Townsend characterized Lascelles as “visibly shaken” when he “very quietly” disclosed the facts of the relationship.
For one thing, the courtier’s romantic aspirations were far above his station; for another, his divorce, despite the fact that he had been the injured party, was a permanent blot on his social status. Although adulterers were welcomed, divorced persons were still not permitted to be presented at court or to enter the royal enclosure at Ascot! And a divorced person such as Peter Townsend (or as Wallis Simpson had been), whose former spouse(s) still lived, was marked as a religious pariah because at the time, the Church of England did not recognize divorce.
Although Margaret blamed Tommy Lascelles for not directly telling the couple that they couldn’t wed, as an amateur theologian she would have already known the arguments presented by the Church as impediments to a marriage with Peter Townsend. The stickiest wicket was that because Margaret was under twenty-five years old, she was still subject to George III’s Royal Marriages Act of 1772, which meant that she required the sovereign’s permission to wed. But the monarch is also the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and as much as the queen might have wished her sister to be happy, Elizabeth could not therefore condone or sanction her marriage to Townsend.
Yet the queen didn’t quash her younger sister’s expectations entirely. Instead, she advised Margaret to wait until she was twenty-five, when she could apply directly to Parliament for permission to wed Townsend and the decision would be in their hands. The princess wasn’t happy about it, but being told to sit tight and bide her time was preferable to an outright denial. There was still hope.
However, Margaret’s little romantic secret would reveal itself after Elizabeth’s coronation ceremony on June 2, 1953. As the royal family was processing out of Westminster Abbey, the Fleet Street press discovered that the princess had a tendre for Peter Townsend. She approached him outside the abbey, and in an affectionate, intimate gesture, delicately plucked a bit of fluff from his RAF tunic (in which she thought he looked especially sexy). Unlike today, where the news would be tweeted across the Internet within milliseconds, the British press maintained a discreet code of silence about the event—for a while, anyway. Twelve days after the coronation, on Sunday, June 14, The People broke the news by insisting that there was no truth at all to the “scandalous rumors” being spread about the affinity between Margaret and the queen mother’s Comptroller of her Household, asserting, “It is quite unthinkable that a Royal Princess, third in line of succession to the throne, should even contemplate a marriage with a man who has been through the divorce courts.”
It was time for the palace to step in and perform some damage control. After the queen’s private secretary, Tommy Lascelles, informed Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s private secretary, Jock Colville, about Margaret’s desire to marry Townsend, Colville hustled down to Chequers, Churchill’s country estate, to have a word with the PM.
But on hearing the news, Churchill dramatically exclaimed, “What a delightful match! A lovely young royal lady married to a gallant young airman, safe from the perils and horrors of war!” Colville had to point out to the PM that he wasn’t there to seek approval for the marriage, but to request that he find a way to refuse it.
Churchill’s patient wife, Clementin
e, set the old boy straight. For Clemmie, Margaret’s romance was an unpleasant déjà vu. Issuing her husband an ultimatum, Clementine declared, “Winston, if you are going to begin the Abdication all over again, I’m going to leave. I shall take a flat and go and live in Brighton.”
Churchill ultimately agreed that a scandal had to be avoided. He ordered the attorney general to review the government’s constitutional position on such a matter and to poll the various prime ministers of the dominions within the British Commonwealth for their opinions on a potential marriage between Margaret and Townsend.
Queen Elizabeth was pressured to send Townsend away on some distant diplomatic posting but was hesitant to do so, unwilling to destroy her sister’s happiness. Only after Her Majesty was assured that the commonwealth ministers as well as the British cabinet ministers opposed such a match did she banish Margaret’s beau. Given a choice of locales, Townsend chose Brussels, the geographically closest of his options, not merely because he might be able to visit the princess from time to time, but because it put him in proximity to his young sons. His Belgian assignment would keep him on the Continent for two years.
To slightly assuage Margaret’s inevitable grief, Elizabeth decided to delay Townsend’s departure until after the princess returned from a state visit to Rhodesia. But the Firm pulled a fast one on its thorniest member, moving the courtier’s exit to the day before Margaret was scheduled to return. After her mother broke the news to her, the princess disappeared for four days; the official version of events was that Margaret had become ill.
But the couple’s enforced separation didn’t make the thwarted royal love affair fade from the headlines. Journalists were quick to deride the palace’s outmoded mores and the cabinet’s cowardly and hypocritical stand, given that some of the ministers were themselves divorced. Their unanimity in favor of Margaret’s right to choose her own marital destiny was overwhelming.
Michael Foot, a future Labour Party leader, wrote in the Tribune, “This intolerable piece of interference with a girl’s private life is all part of the absurd myth about the Royal Family which has been so sedulously built up by interested parties in recent years. . . . The laws of England say that a man, whether he has divorced his wife or been divorced himself, is fully entitled to marry again. In some respects, those divorce laws are still too harsh. But no self-appointed busybody has the right to make them still harsher. If these laws are good, they are good enough for the Royal Family.”
In the annals of royal history, prudery was a relatively recent invention. Post-Albert Victorian priggishness was a temporary hiccup. Even Victoria’s son, Edward VII, had been a rake; his mistress was at his bedside until just before he breathed his last. Over ninety-five percent of Britons polled by the Daily Mirror were in favor of the Margaret/ Townsend match as well. But the issue wasn’t up for a democratic vote.
Queen Elizabeth’s heir, Prince Charles, was just a toddler in 1953. If she were to die while he was still underage, a regent would have to be appointed. A proposed amendment to the Regency Council Act of 1937 would drop Margaret (who was named regent in the 1937 act) in favor of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. It made sense because Philip was Charles’s father—but many people saw this potential “demotion” of Princess Margaret as the palace’s step toward sanctioning an eventual marriage with Peter Townsend. However, it was merely wishful thinking, because Margaret could never sit on the throne under any circumstances, even as a regent, if she were wed to a divorcé. The new regency bill (intended to be pro-daddy, as opposed to antiaunt) passed both houses of Parliament and became law on November 19, 1953.
In Townsend’s absence, Margaret kept up her usual schedule of appearances, duties, and obligations; but the couple communicated almost daily by letter or phone. Their close friends were certain that the pair were true soul mates and were deeply in love.
They arranged a secret rendezvous in July 1954, meeting at Clarence House for all of two delirious hours; but while there was a changing of the political guard at Number 10 Downing Street, most members of Parliament remained staunchly against the idea of Princess Margaret marrying a divorced commoner. Even Margaret’s family no longer had any sympathy for their lovestruck relative; her mismatched romance had become a major, and highly inconvenient, headache.
Margaret turned twenty-five on August 21, 1955, and reunited once again with her beau at Clarence House on October 13. As the queen’s permission was no longer a factor in their ability to wed, the kingdom held its collective breath to see what would happen. For the next nineteen days the couple endeavored to escape prying eyes and the pop of paparazzi flashbulbs, while behind closed doors the subject of their marriage was discussed by representatives of both Church and state. Clerics argued that it would be an affront to the Anglican religion, and the couple’s lay supporters insisted that the church doctrine was both outmoded and hypocritical. Why, even the current prime minister, Anthony Eden, had been divorced!
When Margaret had turned twenty-one in 1951 she became eligible for an allowance from the Civil List. The amount of the annuity would be increased with time as her responsibilities grew, but the starting figure was £600 (more than $23,000 today). The Civil List income is intended to reimburse a member of the royal family for expenses incurred in the performing of their official duties.
In the best of scenarios, a bill could be introduced into Parliament that would permit Margaret to marry Group Captain Townsend and permit her to retain her title and rank; additionally, her Civil List income would increase upon her marriage, as no doubt her husband would be expected to accompany her to state-related appearances. But Margaret would have to wed Townsend in a civil ceremony (as the Church would not recognize the divorced groom) and agree to a two-year banishment from the United Kingdom. She’d also have to renounce all rights to the throne, even though she was dropping farther and farther down the line of succession with each new niece or nephew. Townsend, who was a nice enough bloke, but had a tendency to waffle when the going got rough, wasn’t sure he wanted such a weighty responsibility; perhaps he was asking the princess to sacrifice too much. The lovers were being placed unceremoniously over a barrel.
For someone as literally entitled as Margaret, the dilemma was huge. And her own deeply held religious convictions were most likely a factor as well—or would be, in the long run. And—in the long run—once the first flush of newlywed-dom paled, would she regret her decision? She was a vivacious party girl of twenty-five; Townsend was a stay-at-home type of forty-one. What would happen if that sixteen-year age gap began to feel even wider as the years progressed and the still-vital Margaret felt yoked to a paunchy, balding couch potato?
Michael De-la-Noy, who wrote the chapter on Princess Margaret for the esteemed Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, disputes a claim asserted by other biographers of the princess: that if she were to wed Townsend she would be stripped of her rank and title, as well as her Civil List income, asserting that certain documents prove those allegations to be incorrect. De-la-Noy contends that Margaret’s religious convictions became the deciding factor, that ultimately she was unable to accept the idea of not being married in the eyes of the Church. Margaret’s friend Lady Glenconner arrived at the same conclusion, as did Kenneth Rose, royal biographer and founder of the Sunday Telegraph, citing the princess’s “faith . . . built on granite, but ringed by qualifications.”
Yet, as an avid theologian, Margaret would have been perfectly aware of the teachings of the Anglican Church and would have known all along that she and Townsend would be denied a church wedding—unless she expected that being a princess entitled her to an exemption from the canon law of her religion.
Her reasons may never fully be revealed or understood, but the result remains the same. Margaret issued a tidy statement of renunciation that reads like it came from the pen of a palace flack: I would like it to be known that I have decided not to marry Group Captain Peter Townsend. I have been aware that, subject to renouncing my rights of successi
on, it might have been possible for me to contract a civil marriage. But mindful of the Church’s teachings that Christian marriage is indissoluble, and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have resolved to put these considerations before others. I have reached this decision entirely alone and in doing so have been strengthened by the unfailing support and devotion of Group Captain Townsend. I am deeply grateful for the concern of all those who have constantly prayed for my happiness.
Resigned to the inevitable, on October 31, 1955, Townsend declared, “Without dishonour, we have played out our destiny.” Yet his memoirs contain the assertion that the Church of England had frequently married the innocent or wronged party in a divorce, quoting the Archbishop of Canterbury’s statement, “I do not feel able to forbid good people who come to me for advice to embark on a second marriage.”
Reaction to the renunciation was mixed. The inimitable wit Noël Coward, who must have numbered himself among those who “constantly prayed for [Margaret’s] happiness,” quipped, “I hope that they had the sense to hop into bed a couple of times at least, but this I doubt.” Coward also remarked wryly, “She can’t know, poor girl, being young and in love, that love dies soon and that a future with two strapping stepsons and a man years older than herself would not be very rosy. . . .”
Royal Pains: A Rogues' Gallery of Brats, Brutes, and Bad Seeds Page 32