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My Husband and I

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by Ingrid Seward


  After Philip had dressed and breakfasted on coffee and toast, the valet gingerly handed him his sword, realising they were ready far too soon. ‘How the Duke resisted the temptation to light a cigarette I do not know,’ Dean recalled. ‘He had given up the habit, as from the previous night, and did not complain.’ Despite the early hour, Philip and David Milford Haven, his best man, or supporter as they are called in royal circles, downed a gin and tonic to toast the last moments of Philip’s bachelorhood.

  On the eve of their wedding, the King had admitted Lieutenant Mountbatten RN to the royal family by making him a Knight Companion of the Order of the Garter and authorising him to use the appellation of ‘Royal Highness’ that he had surrendered on his naturalisation as a British subject. The King had also granted him the Dukedom of Edinburgh, which had originally been created by George II in 1727 for Prince Frederick, his son and heir.

  Back at Buckingham Palace, the princess’s maid Margaret ‘Bobo’ MacDonald had for once not had to wake ‘her little lady’ as she always called her. The princess was already up and sitting in her dressing gown by the window looking at the crowds. ‘I can’t believe it’s really happening, Crawfie,’ she said to Marion Crawford, her old governess, who joined her by the window. ‘I have to keep pinching myself.’

  By 11.25, Prince Philip and David Milford Haven had taken their places inside the abbey to await the arrival of the bride and the King.

  Eileen Parker was a guest with her slightly hungover husband Mike (he had been at Philip’s stag party the night before), and she recalls the moment: ‘As we sat down, the organ began to play Elgar’s Concerto in C Major. Suddenly, the vast congregation stood again and I wondered whom it could be for. Princess Elizabeth was timed to leave the palace at 11.03 precisely to reach the abbey by 11.28. Turning around slightly, I could glimpse Winston Churchill with his wife walking slowly down the aisle. It was a thrilling experience to see them so close.’

  Six kings and seven queens were among the 2500-strong congregation, the largest gathering of royalty, regnant and exiled, anyone could remember. As the sound of cheering outside the abbey rose from a rumble to a mighty roar, the rousing hymn, ‘Praise My Soul, The King Of Heaven’ provided the vocal backdrop to the entrance of the princess and the King. The young bride in her ivory satin Norman Hartnell gown held onto the arm of her father, who was dressed in the uniform of the Admiral of the Fleet. Directly behind them and three paces ahead of the other bridesmaids, in deference to her rank, Princess Margaret walked, alone.

  The Archbishop of York had the right idea, but it must have sounded improbable when he told so much assembled finery – tiaras, top hats, long dresses, uniforms and robes – that the marriage was ‘in all essentials the same as it would have been for any cottager who might be married this afternoon in some small country church in a remote village in the Dales’.

  After the service, the Duchess of Edinburgh laid her bridal bouquet – which had briefly gone missing at the palace while everyone was getting ready – at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. When the newly-wed couple returned to Buckingham Palace in the Glass Coach, the police temporarily lost control and a crowd burst through the cordon into the palace forecourt.

  The King, who had seemed on the verge of tears during the signing of the register, made no speech at the wedding breakfast, and simply raised his glass to ‘the bride’. He had confided to the archbishop that giving away his daughter was a more moving thing than getting married yourself.

  According to Crawfie’s more simplistic view, the wedding breakfast was a ‘merry lunch party’: ‘The tables were decorated with similax [a dark red berried green plant] and white carnations and at each of our places there was a little bunch of white heather, sent down from Balmoral. The famous gold plate and the scarlet-coated footmen gave a fairy-tale atmosphere to it all.’

  In fact, the footmen are always left outside the firmly closed Bow Room doors, only appearing when rung for. Inside the sanctuary, the royal family and their guests ate their cold buffet, made the congratulatory toasts and cut the cake – with a sword – which can often lead to a lot of good-natured giggles.

  A few days later, when she was back in Athens, Prince Philip’s mother Alice wrote to him: ‘How wonderfully everything went off and I was comforted to see the truly happy expression on your face and to feel your decision was right from every point of view.’ Alice also wrote a detailed twenty-page description of the wedding itself, which she sent on to Philip’s absent sisters.

  The princess’s father wrote a letter to his daughter, full of love and pride about how he contemplated his life without her:

  I was so proud of you and thrilled at having you so close to me on our long walk in Westminster Abbey, but when I handed your hand to the Archbishop I felt that I had lost something very precious. You were very calm and composed during the Service and said your words with such conviction that I knew everything was all right.

  I am so glad you wrote and told Mummy that you think the long wait before your engagement and the long time before the wedding was for the best. I was rather afraid you thought I was being hard-hearted about it. I was so anxious for you to come to South Africa, as you knew. Our family, us four, the Royal Family must remain together, with additions of course at suitable moments!! I have watched you grow up all these years with pride under the skilful direction of Mummy, who as you know is the most marvellous person in the world in my eyes, and I can, I know, always count on you, and now Philip, to help in our work.

  Your leaving us has left a great blank in our lives, but do remember that your old home is still yours and do come back to it as much and as often as possible. I can see that you are sublimely happy with Philip which is right, but don’t forget us is the wish of

  Your ever loving and devoted, Papa

  Although years later she remembers the grand ball most vividly, Pamela Mountbatten was also moved by the wedding ceremony. The day itself, she says, passed in a happy blur. Her impression of the royal couple – both related to her – was of two people caught in a fairy tale.

  ‘Philip was the fairy prince,’ she said. ‘Handsomer than a fairy prince because he was so masculine. And she, with that marvellous complexion, had absolute star quality. With the golden coach and beautiful horses, it was a kind of vision. It poured with rain but the crowd, in that very British way, ignored it and queued all night to get a place. Standing on the balcony afterwards, seeing the enormous crowd rush up to the gates of the palace, was an incredible feeling.’

  She recalls the youngest bridesmaid, Princess Alexandra (the bride’s cousin, aged twelve), running around boisterously while the older ones pretended to be appalled. Princess Margaret, being the chief bridesmaid, ‘bossed’ the others around and Queen Juliana of the Netherlands ‘chuntered at how dirty everyone’s jewellery was’.

  To mark the day, Prince Philip gave the bridesmaids a silver and rose-gold powder compact that he had designed himself. In one of the very few interviews she ever gave, Lady Elizabeth Longman recalled Prince Philip’s brusque way of giving the generous gift as if he was embarrassed, which he almost certainly was. Philip, she said, ‘dealt them out like playing cards. When we compared them, we were very chuffed to see that each one was slightly different but with the initials E and P.’

  Pamela Mountbatten added: ‘Mine has six little sapphires down the middle. I used to have it in my bag all the time, but suddenly it’s no longer safe when you’re going on the bus or Tube or walking the streets.’ However, she says the biggest let-down of the wedding day was when Prince Baudouin, heir to the Belgian throne, refused to join the bridesmaids at Ciro’s nightclub, which was where the party moved on to. ‘He was the only other young person around. We all thought: “Tall, dark and a future king.” But he played safe. We thought he was stuffy beyond words for not coming.’

  David Milford Haven, Philip’s socialite cousin and best man, had decided on Ciro’s because most of his friends wouldn’t have been seen dead there and he tho
ught the bridesmaids, being so young and unsophisticated, would feel more comfortable in its cosy interior.

  As the newly-weds came hand in hand down the great curved staircase of Buckingham Palace to head off for their honeymoon, they were showered with rose petals. Outside, an open landau with two horses waited to take them to Waterloo station to catch the train to Broadlands in Hampshire, the home of Earl Mountbatten. Tucked under the plaid rugs and a couple of hot-water bottles, was the furry form of the Queen’s pet corgi, Susan, who was to spend their honeymoon with them. The guests chased the carriage to the front gates of the palace quadrangle, and even the Queen picked up her skirts and ran to the railings to watch them disappear into the cheering crowds, who had waited so long.

  The start of the honeymoon was not an outstanding success. The press did everything in their considerable powers to snatch photographs of the newly-weds. When they arrived at Romsey station, they were followed all eleven miles to the gates of the Broadlands estate. The Mountbattens were away in India, having overseen Partition there, and in their absence things were not run entirely smoothly. On the Sunday morning, when the couple arrived for the service at Romsey Abbey, photographers were so anxious to get a picture they placed stepladders against the walls to look through the windows into the abbey. It was a baptism of fire for the royal couple, but once they were at Birkhall in Scotland, they were left on their own in the most romantic setting possible.

  The princess wrote to her mother telling her how happy she was, but also to say she realised how many changes marriage would bring to her life. She wanted to ask her mother’s advice on how to deal with her husband’s free spirit and the tradition of the old-fashioned formalities of the Court. ‘Philip is terribly independent,’ she wrote, ‘and I quite understand the poor darling wanting to start off properly without everything being done [underlined] for us.’ She knew it would be difficult for them both, with him so used to doing what he wanted, to be tied to a suite of rooms in a huge, old-fashioned palace where everything was subject to endless protocol. She already knew he found many of the courtiers pompous, ridiculously conservative and stuffy, while they in turn found him abrasive and rude. Clearly, it had to be looked at as a long-term strategy if he was to earn the respect his position demanded.

  ‘It is so lovely and peaceful just now,’ the princess continued with her letter. ‘Philip is reading full length on the sofa, Susan is stretched out before the fire, Rummy is fast asleep in his box beside the fire, and I am busy writing this in one of the armchairs near the fire (you see how important the fire is!). It’s heaven up here!’

  ‘It was bitterly cold with heavy snow, but big log fires kept the house cosy,’ Philip’s valet John Dean remembered. Dean and the princess’s maid, Bobo MacDonald, were thrown together by their position and Dean says he greatly enjoyed her company once she had ‘thawed’: ‘She was a lovely dancer and very good fun with a nice sense of humour. But even when we were staying in some village and were out socially in the local pub, she always addressed me as Mr Dean.’

  Bobo’s presence in Prince Philip’s life was much more of a problem. Philip and Lilibet were young lovers and wanted the privacy frequently denied them. The princess was used to being surrounded by staff and often ignored their presence, but Philip was not. He resented not being able to be alone with his wife when he wanted to be and did not expect to find Bobo at her mistress’s side at all times, even when she was in the bathroom.

  ‘Life at court was very frustrating for him at first,’ explained Patricia Mountbatten’s husband, Lord Brabourne. ‘It was very stuffy. [Tommy] Lascelles [private secretary to the King] was impossible. They were bloody to him. They patronised him. They treated him as an outsider. It wasn’t much fun. He laughed it off, of course, but it must have hurt. I’m not sure Princess Elizabeth noticed it. She probably didn’t see it. In a way marriage hardly changed her life at all. She was able to carry on much as before. In getting married she didn’t sacrifice anything. His life changed completely. He gave up everything.’

  The prince couldn’t escape from the royal protocol, as they even had to live with his in-laws at Buckingham Palace while Clarence House was being refurbished. The old guard at the palace found him difficult, but more than that, they worried he would not treat the princess with the sensitivity they felt she deserved and needed.

  According to Rabbi Arthur Herzberg, a distinguished American writer who has spoken at length to Philip: ‘He has lost his real identity. He once told me he thinks of himself as a cosmopolitan European.’ Pamela Mountbatten confirmed that it was a problem for him: ‘He knew he was going into the lions’ den. He was very conscious of the way he’d been treated and how hard he would have to fight for his position and his independence [against the establishment]. What he didn’t know was just how fearsome it was going to be.’

  To help, the couple picked a small but loyal team. Jock Colville, diplomat and former Downing Street assistant private secretary to Neville Chamberlain, Churchill and Clement Attlee between 1939 and 1945, was recommended by Lascelles and became private secretary to Princess Elizabeth until 1949. But Philip chose Australian Mike Parker as his private secretary and he also became an equerry to the couple. The comptroller and treasurer to the Edinburgh household was Sir Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning, who was married to the novelist Daphne du Maurier and was the former chief of staff to Louis Mountbatten.

  At that time, the establishment was certainly able to wield great personal influence, with problems often fixed over a few large whiskies or a rubber of bridge. Problems were seldom discussed openly, but solutions would be quietly found. Establishment figures were discreet, unruffled and unobtrusively powerful. They never admitted to mistakes, never complained of one another, never resigned and were never proved wrong. Prince Philip did not fit into this world one little bit. ‘If one of the establishment aristocrats had married the Queen,’ the former Bishop of London Richard Charteris observed, ‘it would have bored everybody out of their minds. Whatever Philip might be, he was never going to be boring.’

  Their first year of marriage, living at Buckingham Palace, was not easy, but eventually Clarence House became available. ‘It was a shambles,’ Mike Parker remembered. ‘But it was got together very quickly, and they furnished it with a lot of their wedding presents.’ After his turbulent childhood, it was the first proper home Prince Philip had ever had. He had finally found real happiness and stability with the woman he loved, but it was to be short-lived.

  Chapter 2

  CHILDHOOD CONTRASTS

  Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen of England, and Prince Philip of Greece were born in an age when it was almost unthinkable for a member of any of the royal families of Europe to marry a commoner. Princes married princesses, royal cousins married royal cousins. When Queen Victoria married her first cousin, twenty-year-old Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840, a dynasty came into being that linked the thrones of Britain, Denmark, Greece and Russia with the Grand Duchies of Prussia.

  Princess Elizabeth arrived in the world at 2.40am in 17 Bruton Street on 21 April 1926 in the heart of London’s Mayfair. At the time, London was the largest, most polluted and dirtiest city in the world with a population of nearly 8 million. Sheep were still allowed in Hyde Park, their fleeces covered with soot from the smoke-filled air, but they kept the grass under control and shepherds competed to be allowed to graze their woolly flocks in the London parks.

  The British aristocracy, with their fine, large houses and estates, enjoyed immense privilege, and although the First World War had altered the domestic class structure, their lives still revolved around the sporting calendar. In Mayfair, most of the five-storey houses were privately owned and boasted magnificent ballrooms. They usually stood empty during the shooting and hunting seasons – the furniture covered with dust sheets only to be brought to life again during the London season. The smartest department stores were Harrods, which boasted a magnificent food hall and whose present building was completed in
1905, and Selfridges, which opened in 1909. Despite this, there were very few grand hotels, such as the Savoy and the Ritz, with the Grosvenor House not opening until 1929. The little princess learnt to ice skate there aged seven as they had a skating rink in the Great Room, the mechanics of which are still in place below.

  The house where the princess was born was the London home of her grandparents, the Earl and Countess of Strathmore, who also owned a Scottish estate (Glamis Castle) and a country house in Walden Bury, Hertfordshire. The pillared, double-fronted house in Bruton Street no longer exists, but opposite, at number 10, the 1930s façade of Norman Hartnell’s showrooms bears testimony to the grandeur of the area.

  At the time, a pint of milk cost 3d and the average house cost just £619 as opposed to £290,000 today. In an era when most people smoked, a packet of twenty cigarettes cost less than a shilling. The big craze of the year was newspaper crosswords, as after the Sunday Express began to print them in 1924 the other papers soon caught on. ‘It would be a little unwise even for superior folks to affect any marked degree of scorn for the present crossword puzzle craze. After all, the vocabularies of most of us are rather uncomfortably limited,’ the Yorkshire Observer wrote.

  The British public were also hooked on reading exciting thrillers and detective stories, with Daily Express writer Edgar Wallace the most popular author of the time. No fewer than eighteen Wallace novels appeared that year, and in the second half of 1926 his sales topped an incredible 750,000. Among his devotees were King George V and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. Wallace was a celebrity of the age and his views were sought on a wide range of issues. ‘Simply monstrous’ was how he described in the Daily Express the government’s introduction of a betting tax in November.

  The year came to an end with the British Broadcasting Company becoming the British Broadcasting Corporation on 1 January 1927. The first broadcast was a Happy New Year Ball, beginning with the tune ‘The More We Are Together’. At the theatre, opening nights were strictly black-tie affairs, with ladies in evening gowns, and even in many middle-class homes, the family was expected to change for dinner into black tie and were waited upon.

 

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