Elizabeth the Queen (23 page)

The ceremony itself draws on centuries of tradition and ageless rituals. The setting is always the House of Lords chamber, with its richly ornamented high ceilings, stained glass windows, and elaborately carved wood.

The day before the ceremony, the Imperial State Crown and seventeenth-century Sword of State are brought from the Tower of London to Buckingham Palace, where the Queen has a chance to get reaccustomed to having nearly three pounds sitting on her head. In the evening she often works at her desk wearing the purple velvet crown glittering with three thousand diamonds; one year her butler noted that she was wearing pink mule slippers as well.

On the morning of the opening, a horse-drawn carriage carries the crown and Sword of State, along with the Cap of Maintenance, a crimson velvet hat trimmed with white ermine, down the Mall to the Houses of Parliament. A second coach transports the gold maces. The Queen calls these symbols of royal power “the working pieces of kit,” and she makes certain that the front of the crown, with its huge Black Prince’s Ruby and Cullinan II diamond, faces forward in the carriage. “There is one thing to remember,” she said with a twinkle to Crown Jeweler David Thomas before he made his first trip to the Palace of Westminster with the priceless cargo. “The horses are always in the front of the carriage.”

Wearing a long white gown, jeweled Garter collar, elbow-length gloves, and diamond tiara, she and Prince Philip, as always in the uniform of Admiral of the Fleet, travel in the horse-drawn Irish State Coach to the Palace of Westminster with her Household Cavalry escort. In the Robing Room, adorned with frescoes depicting the Arthurian legend, she puts on her eighteen-foot-long scarlet velvet robe of state and her crown.

The House of Lords chamber is invariably packed, a tableau vivant of peers in their red robes with white fur collars (including, for the first time in 1958, fifteen recently appointed life peers, four of them women), bewigged justices draped in black and clustered on the large red hassock called the Woolsack, military officers, ecclesiastics, and ambassadors in white tie.

The processional is led by men with quaint medieval titles such as Maltravers Herald Extraordinary, Clarenceaux King of Arms, and Rouge Dragon Pursuivant, all decked out in gold-encrusted scarlet tabards, knee breeches, and silk stockings. Lining the route are the Queen’s bodyguards, the Gentlemen at Arms in helmets waving swan plumes, and the Yeomen of the Guard (also known as Beefeaters), wearing crimson and gold knee-length tunics, crimson knee breeches, white neck ruffs, and black Tudor bonnets.

Elizabeth II, attended by four page boys and two of her ladies-in-waiting, with Prince Philip clasping her raised left hand, makes a stately progress along the Royal Gallery into the chamber. She is preceded by two dignitaries holding the sword and the cap, which dangles from a long stick, as well as two Great Officers of State, the Earl Marshal and Lord Great Chamberlain, walking backward. On the dot of 11:30
A.M.
, she arranges herself on her ornately gilded throne beneath a golden canopy, with Philip seated to her left, several inches lower.

Black Rod, an official representing the Queen, strides to the House of Commons, where the door is vigorously slammed in his face to show the independence of the lower house. (No monarch has been permitted in the House of Commons since 1642, when King Charles I barged in and tried to arrest five members.) After three loud knocks with his ebony staff, Black Rod is admitted to the chamber, where he commands the members to “attend Her Majesty immediately in the House of Peers.” Led by the prime minister, his cabinet, and the leader of the opposition, the members of Parliament crowd behind the Bar of the House of Lords, a wooden barrier near the entrance, where they are required to stand. Squeezed into a space roughly eighteen by twelve feet, the politicians bring an earthy and slightly raffish touch to the proceedings, “looking like culprits in a law court,” wrote American ambassador David Bruce.

The Lord Chancellor climbs the dais, reaches into a red silk bag, and hands the Queen the speech that has been prepared by the prime minister and his cabinet. Seldom taking more than fifteen minutes, she dutifully recites the government’s legislative program for the coming year. “I think I have made the dullest and most boring speech of my life,” she confided to Pietro Annigoni while sitting for him after the ceremony in 1969. “But it dealt with such dry material. One tries at least to put a little expression into one’s voice, but it’s not humanly possible to produce something even remotely lively.” Wearing the heavy crown is as tiring as it looks. Hours afterward, “my neck is still feeling the effects,” she once confessed.

At two minutes and ten seconds, her speech on October 28, 1958, was one of the shortest on record, with sentences she could actually read with conviction, mostly generalities about advancing the Commonwealth and supporting the United Nations and the Atlantic Alliance. She spoke of the historic significance of broadcasting the ceremony to enable “many millions of my subjects … to witness this renewal of the life of parliament.” She mentioned as well her planned visit “with my dear husband” to Canada the following summer and later in the year to Ghana, which had declared its independence from Britain in 1957.

B
UT BEFORE THEY
were to leave for Ghana, Philip set off again on another goodwill tour aboard
Britannia
, spending four months visiting India, Pakistan, Singapore, Brunei, Borneo, Hong Kong, the Solomon, Gilbert, and Ellice Islands in the Pacific, Panama, the Bahamas, and Bermuda. He returned at the end of April 1959, and soon afterward Elizabeth II got pregnant at last. Some years later the rumor arose that Prince Andrew, the child from this pregnancy, was fathered during her husband’s long absence by Henry Porchester, her good friend and fellow thoroughbred enthusiast. But given the timing of the baby’s arrival in mid-February 1960, the conception had to have occurred during the preceding May when the Queen and Philip “were scarcely separated,” according to subsequent research by gossip columnist Nigel Dempster, the repentant promoter of the original tale.

As soon as the Queen confirmed her condition, she sent Martin Charteris on a confidential mission. “I am going to have a baby, which I have been trying to do for some time,” she told her assistant private secretary, “and that means I won’t be able to go to Ghana as arranged. I want you to go and explain the situation to [President Kwame] Nkrumah and tell him to keep his mouth shut.”

She and Philip went ahead with their six-week trip across fifteen thousand miles of Canada, which included stops in every province and territory. As part of the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway with the United States, they invited the Eisenhowers to join them for luncheon aboard
Britannia
on June 26. Ten days later the royal couple touched down in Chicago for fourteen hours, and once again the president provided them with a limousine, this time a convertible. Mayor Richard Daley rolled the red carpet across Lake Shore Drive, introduced Elizabeth II to his seven children, and proclaimed, “Chicago is yours!” Eisenhower wrote the Queen that his chauffeur reported that “he had never witnessed greater enthusiasm among the crowds lining the streets.”

She was suffering from morning sickness that she managed to conceal, although during her journey through the Yukon Territory she took to her bed for several days. Her press office said she had a minor stomach ailment, and once she had rested, she resumed her travels. A week after her return to London on August 1, the Palace announced that she was expecting, and she headed to Balmoral for her annual holiday.

Harold Macmillan, who had delayed calling an election until the Queen’s return, used her as a lure to pressure Eisenhower to visit Britain as part of his planned world tour. The prime minister knew that a visit from the American president could help bolster his party’s prospects in the coming campaign. When Eisenhower wavered, Macmillan sent word that if he bypassed the United Kingdom, “this will be an insult to the Queen.” She had no intention of returning to London, so Eisenhower took up her invitation to spend two days at Balmoral.

Prince Philip met Ike, Mamie, and their son John at Aberdeen airport on August 28 and accompanied them to Balmoral. The presidential party quickly fell into the rhythms of the Highlands, socializing with the Queen’s family as well as friends including the Earl of Westmorland, Lord and Lady Porchester, and Dominic Elliot, son of the 5th Earl of Minto and a friend of Princess Margaret.

“The Queen and Eisenhower got on famously,” Elliot recalled. “The President was quite a character, a marvelous chap, and he fitted in very well.” While Ike didn’t join the men shooting out on the grouse moors, the Queen did treat him to a picnic luncheon near Loch Muick, including drop scones that she prepared on a griddle, drawing on the lessons she had learned from the cook at Windsor Castle during the war. He was so impressed that he asked for the recipe, and several months later she obliged, writing everything out in longhand and apologizing that the quantity was for sixteen people. “When there are fewer I generally put in less flour and milk,” she wrote helpfully, adding that “the mixture needs a great deal of beating.”

The Queen Mother gave the Eisenhowers a jolly cocktail party at Birkhall before they departed. The president declared the trip “perfect in every respect,” and thanked the Queen in particular for her parting gift of grouse from the day’s shoot. He and the prime minister had the birds for dinner the following evening at Chequers.

Macmillan and the Tories won a decisive victory six weeks later in the general election. The prime minister wrote the Queen, who was by then nearly five months pregnant, that there was no reason for her to return to London prematurely. Because of her condition, she missed the State Opening of Parliament, and the Lord Chancellor read the speech instead.

While her own trip to Ghana was necessarily postponed, Philip went as her representative in late November, in part to assuage Nkrumah, who was deeply disappointed by the loss of the sovereign’s visit. Philip gave eight speeches in six days, ranging across promoting academic freedom in universities, encouraging scientific research, and inspiring young people to become doctors and nurses. His praise for the country’s “great national awakening” went down well, and he promised to return with his wife in 1961.

Once the Queen hit the six-month mark in her pregnancy, she withdrew from her official duties. But one bit of unfinished business needed to be resolved. When Macmillan visited her at Sandringham in early January 1960, she told him that she needed to revisit the issue of her family name that had been irritating her husband since she decided in 1952 to use Windsor rather than her husband’s Mountbatten. “The Queen only wishes (properly enough) to do something to please her husband—with whom she is desperately in love,” the prime minister wrote in his diary. “What upsets me … is the Prince’s almost brutal attitude to the Queen over all this.” Somewhat cryptically he added, “I shall never forget what she said to me that Sunday night at Sandringham.”

Macmillan left shortly afterward for a trip to Africa, leaving the resolution of the Queen’s tricky family problem to Rab Butler, his deputy prime minister, and Lord Kilmuir, who served as the government’s legal arbiter as the Lord Chancellor. Butler sent a telegram to Macmillan in Johannesburg on January 27 saying that the Queen had “absolutely set her heart” on making a change for Philip’s sake. By one account, Butler confided to a friend that Elizabeth II had been “in tears.”

Following discussions among her private secretaries and government ministers, a formula emerged in which the royal family would continue to be called “The House and Family of Windsor,” but the Queen’s “de-royalised” descendants—starting with any grandchildren who lacked the designation of “royal highness”—would adopt the surname “Mountbatten-Windsor.” Those in the immediate line of succession, including all of the Queen’s children, would continue to be called “Windsor.” It seemed clear-cut, but thirteen years later Princess Anne, at the urging of Dickie and Prince Charles, would contravene the policy on her wedding day by signing the marriage register as “Mountbatten-Windsor.”

Elizabeth II told Macmillan that the compromise was “a great load off her mind.” She announced it in a statement on February 8 saying, “The Queen has had this in mind for a long time and it is close to her heart.” On February 19, 1960, she gave birth to her second son at Buckingham Palace, with the usual crowds along the railings to cheer the news. In a gesture of wifely devotion, Elizabeth II named the boy after the father Philip had lost fifteen years earlier.

Macmillan was enchanted
by “those brightly shining eyes
which are her chief beauty.”

Elizabeth II with Harold Macmillan, her third prime minister, at Oxford University, November 1960.
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