The Queen Mother (118 page)

At home, the Queen was delighted to receive many warm letters of congratulation from Canadians. She wrote the Princess a long letter telling her that her father was getting stronger. ‘His voice is still very hoarse, but he is beginning to take an interest in things again, and once he makes a start, he will, I am sure get on quicker. It must be slow I suppose, but the doctors are pleased, & he is a little more cheerful.’ She said she longed to hear her daughter’s impressions of everything, ‘the French, the Mounties, the delicious people at the little unexpected stops’. She and the King were ‘so proud of you & Philip, & so glad that it is all going so well. We think of you all the time, & with all the rush & tiredness, one stores up wonderful experiences, & perhaps a little more understanding & wisdom – doesn’t one?’
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The Queen managed to talk to the Princess a few times on the crackling transatlantic line; her daughter found that such calls made her feel ‘much refreshed and strengthened’. She was happy to hear her son, Prince Charles, ‘piping away’ and to hear her father sounding stronger.
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The King continued to improve and by mid-October he was able to tell Queen Mary that his doctors and nurses had looked after him ‘most beautifully’ and that ‘thank goodness there were no complications & everything has gone according to plan’.
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He was well enough to resume worrying about the country and the forthcoming election. The Queen shared his concerns. ‘Any government that comes in here next week is in for a mess,’ she wrote to Princess Elizabeth in Canada. But her faith in the ‘marvellous sense of balance’ of the British people was undiminished.
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On 25 October 1951 the Conservatives, led by Winston Churchill, were returned to office with an overall majority of seventeen. The King and Queen both revered Churchill. His arrival at the Palace at 5.45 on the evening of 26 October to accept, for the second time, the King’s invitation to form a government was a happy reunion. The King was not well enough to receive his new ministers individually and on 6 November his speech to the new Parliament had to be read by the Lord Chancellor. But he and the Queen were able to go to Royal Lodge for a weekend at the end of November for the first time since his operation. Sunday 2 December was declared a day of National Thanksgiving for the King’s recovery.

The family spent Christmas together at Sandringham and this year the King’s day was not dominated by anxiety over his live broadcast. The Queen had persuaded him that it must be recorded in advance. This was wise; the BBC engineer, Robert Wood, who had often helped him, brought his equipment to Buckingham Palace and he and the Queen helped the King through the recording. The King had to halt for a rest every few words and the whole session took more than two hours. It was harrowing for them all and Wood wrote later, ‘It was very, very distressing for him, and the Queen and for me, because I admired him so much and wished I could do more to help.’ In the event, the anguish of the recording was not evident to his world of listeners even if his voice did sound ‘husky, hoarse, a wheezing as if he had a heavy cold audible between phrases’.
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He made his gratitude clear. ‘For not only by the grace of God and through the faithful skills of my doctors, surgeons and nurses have I come through my illness, but I have learned once again that it is in bad times that we value most highly the support and sympathy of our friends. From my peoples in these islands and in the British Commonwealth and Empire – as well as from many other countries – this support and sympathy has reached me and I thank you now from my heart.’
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The King was able to go out into the Norfolk countryside over Christmas and to shoot with a light gun. Queen Mary was with them for the holiday and after she returned to Marlborough House in mid-January 1952 the King wrote to tell her how much they all missed her. He was seeing his doctors the following week ‘& I hope they will be pleased with my progress’. The letter ended: ‘Best love to you, I remain, Ever, Your very devoted son, Bertie’. On the back of the envelope Queen Mary later wrote, in a tiny hand, ‘Bertie’s last letter to me’.
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On 30 January the family was back in London together; they went to see the popular musical
South Pacific
at Drury Lane. This occasion was both to celebrate the King’s recovery and to mark the departure next day of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip to Kenya. After their success in Canada, they were embarking on the first leg of the long Australasian tour which the King and Queen had had to forgo. (Instead the King and Queen were planning to make a private trip, for convalescence and holiday, back to South Africa.)
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At London Airport next morning, the King stood, hatless and gaunt, in the cold wind, waving goodbye to his daughter and heir as
the British Overseas Airways’ Argonaut,
Atalanta
, sped down the runway and into the air. Those who had not seen him for some time were shocked by his appearance; those who had been closer to him over recent months were encouraged that he was well enough to be there. The Queen hated saying goodbye; two days later she wrote to the Princess: ‘I could
not
help one huge tear forcing its way out of my eye, & as we waited to wave goodbye, as you taxied off, it trembled on my eyelashes.’ She was sure that the young couple would give pleasure wherever they went. Expressing her own philosophy of life, she wrote, ‘People react to goodness & kindness in a wonderful way.’ She ended by referring to their proposed trip to South Africa: ‘Papa seems pretty well, & I do hope that a good soaking from the sun will do him good. But he does hate being away from all his responsibilities and interests – & I don’t expect we shall stay long!’
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On 1 February the Queen and the King took their grandchildren back to Sandringham. On the train, the three-year-old Prince Charles spent a good hour going up and down ‘to see if Anne is alright’, his grandmother wrote to his mother. And then he ‘made a wonderfully unwholesome tea of half a crumpet, 2 chicken sandwiches, one ham sandwich and the ice cream!’ That evening the Princess called her parents from Nairobi. Next day the Queen and Princess Margaret took the children to the beach at Brancaster; Prince Charles rushed to paddle in the cold sea.
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The King was in good spirits; he wrote cheerful letters to Sir John Weir to thank him for all the excellent medical care he had given him since 1934, and to Lord Halifax, Chancellor of the Order of the Garter, to whom he described a new form of Garter dress he had devised.
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On 5 February he went out shooting rabbits. It was Keepers’ Day, a relaxed informal shoot of the sort he enjoyed. James Macdonald, his servant for twenty years, said later that the King shot ‘superbly’ and was ‘as gay and happy’ as he had ever seen him. At the end of the afternoon the King thanked the keepers and that evening he said, ‘Well Macdonald, we’ll go after the hares again tomorrow.’
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While the King was at his sport, the Queen and Princess Margaret drove to the nearby village of Ludham to see one of her favourite painters, Edward Seago.
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He showed them his latest works and he
took them for a cruise on his boat, which was moored at the end of his garden. Warmed by a coal fire in the cabin, they made a happy call on Delia Peel at her house at Barton Turf, and Seago gave the Queen new paintings to show the King.

Back at Sandringham that evening, the Queen went at once to see the King ‘as I always do, & he was in tremendous form & looking so well and happy’.
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Seago’s paintings were laid out and they looked at them together; the King, she took the trouble to tell Seago a little later, ‘was enchanted with them all’.
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They had an enjoyable dinner with Princess Margaret; the King was cheerful and his wife was delighted. At around 10.30 p.m. they said good night and the King retired to the ground-floor room he was now using as a bedroom so as to avoid climbing the stairs. At around midnight a watchman in the garden saw him adjusting the new latch which had been fitted to his window to allow more air into the room.

At 7.30 the next morning Macdonald brought the King’s early-morning tea, opened the curtains and drew the bath. When the King did not stir, Macdonald went to his bedside. The King was lying peacefully; he had not moved from his usual position and there were no signs of any discomfort. Macdonald shook his shoulder gently. Getting no response he touched the King’s forehead, which was cold. He knew that the King was dead; he immediately sent word to the Queen’s dresser and went himself to report to Sir Harold Campbell, the King’s equerry.
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‘I was sent a message that his servant couldn’t wake him,’ the Queen wrote to Queen Mary a few hours later. ‘I flew to his room, & thought that he was in a deep sleep, he looked so peaceful – and then I realized what had happened.’
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The Household had devised a code word for this awful possibility. Lascelles called Edward Ford, the Assistant Private Secretary, in London, and said, ‘Hyde Park Corner.’ He told Ford to go and give the news at once to the Prime Minister and to Queen Mary. At 10 Downing Street, Ford found Churchill in bed, with papers scattered all over the blankets, a chewed cigar in his mouth. He said, ‘I’ve got bad news, Prime Minister. The King died last night. I know nothing else.’

‘Bad news? The worst,’ said Churchill.

The old statesman was devastated. He threw aside all the papers on his bed, exclaiming, ‘How unimportant these matters are.’
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A little later, his secretary, Jock Colville, found the Prime Minister sitting with tears in his eyes, staring straight ahead. He tried to cheer him up by
saying that he would get on well with the new Queen, ‘but all he could say was that he did not know her and that she was only a child’.
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Edward Ford next had to make his melancholy way to Marlborough House to inform Queen Mary. Jock Colville’s mother, Lady Cynthia, was in waiting and she went to Queen Mary’s room to give her the news. Queen Mary seemed to have a premonition: ‘Is it the King?’ she asked Lady Cynthia.
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Later that day she wrote in her diary, ‘I got a dreadful shock when Cynthia asked to see me at 9.30, after breakfast, to tell me that darling Bertie had died in his sleep early today … The news came out about
10.30.
Later letters kept arriving & flowers from kind friends.’
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At Sandringham Lascelles asked Queen Elizabeth, as she was now properly called since her daughter had become ‘The Queen’,
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to approve the announcement. He had made it as simple as possible: ‘The King, who retired to rest last night in his usual health, passed peacefully away in his sleep early this morning’. The King’s body was moved in its coffin on a cart to the little family church where his father had lain sixteen years before him. In the streets of London people stopped their cars and stood at attention in the streets to show their respect. Many wept openly. In America, the House of Representatives carried unanimously a resolution of sympathy and adjourned in respect for the King.

That same day, Queen Elizabeth wrote to Queen Mary:

Queen Mary thanked ‘Dear darling Elizabeth’ for her ‘wonderful letter to poor old me’. The old Queen was deeply touched by all that her daughter-in-law had said ‘about the great affection between our darling Bertie and us
all.
I cannot get over the fearful shock you must have had when you realised that he had died in his sleep. You have been such a wonderful wife to him in “weal & woe” & such a prop when things were a little difficult and he was upset, this must be a comfort to you in your great grief and I feel this very much indeed.’
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I
N
K
ENYA THE
new Queen and Prince Philip had spent the previous night in the countryside at Treetops, a simple treehouse overlooking a waterhole to which animals came at night. They were horrified, at every level. Grief mingled with the knowledge that this meant the end of their independent life together. Prince Philip, according to his Private Secretary, ‘looked as if you’d dropped half the world on him’.
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They began their journey home that night and on the plane Martin Charteris asked his employer what name she would take as monarch. ‘My own name of course – what else?’ she replied. She would be Queen Elizabeth II. Shortly before the plane arrived at London Airport she changed into the black mourning clothes which had travelled with her in case of just such an eventuality. ‘What happens when I get there?’ she asked. As the plane taxied to a halt, she saw the big black Palace cars – ‘Oh, they’ve sent the hearses,’ she said, using the name she and her sister had always used for the royal limousines.
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All in black, the new Queen walked down the steps of the plane to be met by Churchill, Attlee, Eden and other political leaders. She and Prince Philip managed a few smiles and then climbed into one of the ‘hearses’; a photographer caught a poignant image of the Queen in the corner of the back seat, her eyes cast down.

Churchill, in his own car, was in tears as he drove back to London, dictating a radio broadcast he was to make that night. He spoke of the King as ‘a devoted and tireless servant of his country’ and said that the announcement of his death ‘struck a deep and solemn note in our lives
which, as it resounded far and wide, stilled the clatter and traffic of twentieth century life in many lands and made countless millions of human beings pause and look around them’.