The Queen Mother (117 page)

At the end of 1950 Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip were in Malta, where he was now stationed. They had a pleasant time, living as normal a life as was ever to be possible for them, along with other young naval couples. But their children remained in Britain and spent Christmas 1950 with their grandparents at Sandringham. The Queen wrote to her daughter about Prince Charles, ‘I can’t tell you how sweet he was driving to the station before Xmas. He sat on my knee, occasionally turning to Papa & giving himself an estatic hug, as if to say, isn’t this fun. He sits bolt upright doesn’t he, just like you used to.’ He had also enjoyed Christmas itself. ‘He was thrilled with the Tree, & after gazing at it, tried to pinch the silver balls, and then had great fun helping to unpack everybody else’s parcels!’
⁷⁸

Prince Philip, in particular, was worried that the grandparents would spoil his children. The Queen assured her daughter that she was not doing so. But Charles often came to her bedroom in the morning ‘& likes to sit on the bed playing with my little box of rather old lip sticks! They are all colours, & they rattle & he loves taking the tops off’. Princess Margaret sometimes played ‘Blaydon Races’ to him on the piano after tea. ‘He likes that because it has a line “all with smiling faces”, so it’s called ’Miling faces … And as for Anne! Well, she is too delectable for words … I know that you will be enchanted with her when you see how she has developed. She is so pretty & neat
&
very
feminine! Philip will see such a huge difference, I am sure she’ll give him a tremendous glad eye!’
⁷⁹

The Queen’s letters to her elder daughter in Malta contained more and more references to horses and racing. This was an interest which she was developing at the beginning of the 1950s and which became a passion for life. But the greater passion now was for her grandchildren. ‘I can’t tell you what a difference it makes having those heavenly little creatures in the house,’ she told their mother, ‘everybody loves them so, and they cheer us up more than I can say.’
⁸⁰

*

I
N
M
AY
1951
THE
King and Queen opened the Festival of Britain which the government had decided to stage on the one hundredth anniversary of Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition of 1851. The Festival was both a prayer to the future and a tribute that the country paid herself for having defeated Nazism and for remaining a bastion of freedom. It extolled the virtues of Britishness and Britain’s contributions to civilization. The unapologetic patriotism echoed the Queen’s own fierce love of Britain.

Throughout the year the King’s health remained a subject of anxiety and speculation. At the end of May 1951, he looked quite unwell at a service in the Abbey at which he installed his brother the Duke of Gloucester as Grand Master of the Order of the Bath. He was compelled to retire to bed, apparently suffering from influenza. ‘The doctors can find nothing wrong with my chest so rest & quiet is the only thing for it,’ he wrote to Queen Mary.
⁸¹
But he did not make the recovery expected and X-rays showed a shadow on his left lung. He was told he had a condition known as pneumonitis, which was not as serious as pneumonia, and should be resolved with daily injections of penicillin. ‘Everyone is very relieved,’ he told Queen Mary.
⁸²

But for most of the summer of 1951 he had to rest at Royal Lodge and Sandringham, depressed by the fact that he could not ‘chuck out the bug’, as he put it.
⁸³
He was unable to undertake a planned visit to Northern Ireland and so Princess Margaret went with the Queen – it was a strenuous but successful visit, throughout which the Queen kept in touch with her husband by telephone.

When King Haakon of Norway (the King’s Uncle Charles) arrived for an official visit in early June, it was the Queen who had to meet
him and Princess Elizabeth who read the King’s speech at the state banquet in his honour. Princess Elizabeth also had to take her father’s place at the King’s official birthday parade, Trooping the Colour. Queen Mary praised her granddaughter to the King: ‘it must have been an ordeal for her, but she was so calm & collected all through the Ceremony, it was really a pleasure to watch her.’
⁸⁴

The King remained optimistic, writing to Queen Mary that since his official engagements were light, ‘I feel now that I have got the chance of a rest I had much better take it & get really well. I am sure the doctors, especially Weir, will want me to rebuild my strength. It is no use getting ill again.’
⁸⁵
He was not strong enough to attend a Buckingham Palace garden party in early July 1951 and the Queen pressed Queen Mary to come and join her. ‘I am rather horrified at the idea of being alone,’ she wrote.
⁸⁶

The day before the Queen’s fifty-first birthday they moved up to Balmoral where she hoped that the Scottish air would work its usual beneficial effect upon the King. He was weaker than the year before but she was relieved that at first he did seem to improve and was able to enjoy shooting and Princess Margaret’s twenty-first birthday celebrations. Singsongs were part of evenings at Balmoral and Princess Margaret could be counted upon to write the most witty lyrics. But on this occasion a song was written and sung to her – it was a reworking of ‘Clementine’:

Everyone enjoyed the party, but then the weather became cold and the King caught a chill and a sore throat.

The Queen insisted that his doctors come to Scotland to examine him, and they prevailed upon him to return for one day to London on 8 September for further examinations and X-rays. By this stage, they had begun to have their suspicions of what was really wrong with him. Clement Price Thomas, a specialist in malignant diseases of the chest, joined the list of consultants. After examining the new X-rays, the team decided the King must have a bronchoscopy of the left lung so that a biopsy could be carried out.
⁸⁸

The King reluctantly agreed to return once more to London but he insisted that the Queen remain at Balmoral to continue her holiday. ‘I am telling no one about this new development,’ he wrote to his mother.
⁸⁹
The Queen was miserable to be left in Scotland. ‘I do pray that the doctors will be able to find something to help the lung recover,’ she told Queen Mary.
⁹⁰

The biopsy, performed on 15 September, revealed a malignant growth in the lung. The doctors decided that the only solution was to remove his entire lung. But the first medical bulletin, published on 18 September, mentioned that ‘structural changes’ had developed in the lung and that the King had been advised to stay in London for further treatment. This news alone was shocking enough. A further bulletin on 21 September stated that the doctors ‘have advised His Majesty to undergo an operation in the near future. This advice the King has accepted.’ When Churchill asked his doctor Charles Moran why the doctors had spoken of ‘structural changes’, Moran replied, ‘Because they were anxious to avoid talking about cancer.’
⁹¹
The word was never used, either to the King or to anyone else, but he was suffering from lung cancer, almost certainly caused by his heavy smoking – though that link was not then widely understood.

The Queen flew down at once from Scotland. She sent a note to Queen Mary inviting her to tea the next day, 22 September. The King, she said, ‘is so wonderfully brave about it all, and it does seem hard that he should have to go through so much.’
⁹²
The King dreaded the thought of another operation. ‘If it’s going to help me to get well again I don’t mind but the very idea of the surgeon’s knife again is hell,’ he admitted to a friend.
⁹³

On the morning of the King’s operation, 23 September, the Queen left the Palace and went quietly with her daughters to take Holy Communion and pray for the King at Lambeth Palace with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher.
⁹⁴
By the time they returned to Buckingham Palace thousands of silent people were standing in drizzling weather around the Victoria Memorial, waiting for the bulletin to be posted on the railings; millions more listened to the radio. Messages of love and support came flooding in from all over the country and the world. Winston Churchill told Tommy Lascelles, ‘I did a thing this morning that I haven’t done for many years – I went down on my knees by my bedside & prayed.’ Lascelles told the Queen that everyone in the Palace felt the same.
⁹⁵
Lascelles was suffering his
own anguish – his beloved son John had just died. The Queen understood his grief and told him how grateful she was that he was nonetheless able to give her such unfailing support.
⁹⁶

The Queen had an agonizing wait of more than three hours while the surgeons carried out their work. Like them, she feared the risk of a sudden thrombosis as well as what they might discover. The King survived the operation and the Queen was reassured by the doctors. ‘What a long hell the morning has been! Endless waiting, & I thought of you so much darling Mama,’ the Queen reported to Queen Mary that afternoon. Clement Price Thomas, she said, was ‘very satisfied with the operation, which is a
marvellous
relief … He said that we must be anxious for 2 or 3 days, because of reaction & shock etc, but his blood pressure is steady, & his heart good. It does seem hard that he should have to go through so much, someone as good as darling Bertie who always thinks of others – but if this operation is successful, he may be much stronger in the future … Such moments are true torture. One must have real faith & trust in the goodness of God.’
⁹⁷
In similar vein she said to Tommy Lascelles, ‘I am sure that today the King was utterly surrounded by a great circle of prayer, and that he has been sustained by the faith of millions. There must be great strength in such an uprising of spiritual forces.’
⁹⁸

Outside the Palace, the crowds surged around the bulletin attached to the railings that afternoon. It stated that the King had undergone a lung resection and that, although anxiety must remain for some days, his post-operative condition was satisfactory. But the danger of thrombosis remained very real. Sometimes her worries became too much for the Queen; she would secretly slip out of the Palace and go to the flat of her oldest friend, Doris Vyner, for comfort.
⁹⁹

The leaders of all parties in the House of Commons signed a letter of good wishes and support. At the height of the crisis, the Duke of Windsor asked to see the Queen and she declined; she still thought of him as partly to blame for the King’s troubles.
¹⁰⁰
But when the Duke sent a kind note, she replied, thanking him: ‘It does seem hard that poor Bertie should have to go through so much, and ill-health is such a big extra burden on the top of all the other burdens, but you can imagine he has been very brave & most patient, and one can only pray that this operation will give him some health back … I am very touched that you should suggest coming here one day, I think that I had better wait & see how Bertie gets on before making any arrangements,
as all depends on that.’
¹⁰¹
A few weeks later, in November, the Duke was back and this time Queen Mary asked the King to persuade the Queen to see him – ‘to bury that hatchet at last, he seemed so anxious to see her again when he was here that awful week of yr illness, but E. could not face it, however perhaps now she might feel able to manage it.’
¹⁰²
With the King still frail, she did not feel she could.

The Queen agreed with Lascelles that to lift day-to-day business from the King a Council of State should be appointed, consisting of her and the Princesses. The King was able to sign the warrant authorizing the appointment of counsellors. Then, at the request of Clement Attlee, who could no longer sustain the narrow majority with which his government had been returned to office in the election of 1950, he signed the proclamation dissolving Parliament. An election was called for 25 October. It was a time of political turmoil – but all talk was of the King’s illness. Harold Nicolson was asked by the
Spectator
to prepare an obituary and noted in his diary on 24 September, ‘The King pretty bad. Nobody can talk about anything else – and the Election is forgotten. What a strange thing is Monarchy!’
¹⁰³

The King spent several weeks in bed, with the Queen much at his side, attempting to cheer him up, except when she had a cold and had to avoid the risk of infecting him. His condition improved. In early October the Queen was able to tell her sister May that his pain had lessened and he was now able to sit up in bed. ‘The doctors are amazed at the way things have gone (so far), and I do believe that he has been tremendously helped, & held up, by the great circle of prayer & affection which surrounded him.’
¹⁰⁴

He and the Queen were much cheered by the success of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip on a tour of Canada. The Canadian government had suggested that this be postponed in view of the King’s illness, but after a short delay they set off on 7 October. The Princess’s Private Secretary, Martin Charteris, carried with him sealed envelopes containing the draft Accession Declaration and a Message to both Houses of Parliament to be opened in the event of the King’s death.

Over nearly 10,000 miles, the Canadians gave the young couple a delirious reception which recalled the 1939 trip by the King and Queen. The Princess was struck that young women screamed when her husband waved and men shouted, ‘Good old Phil.’
¹⁰⁵
As the tour continued each of them became more confident – the Princess was
pleased at her husband’s ‘succès fou’ and the way his ‘legend’ got around.
¹⁰⁶