The Queen Mother (125 page)

That may be so, but she was very upset. She discussed the matter with the Queen and then she wrote to Lascelles. ‘I would like to talk to you, soon please. I have nobody I can talk to about such dreadful things.’
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‘The Queen Mother wept when I talked to her,’ Lascelles told Jock Colville, Churchill’s Private Secretary. ‘I have never seen her shed tears before.’
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She said that she was ‘quite shattered by the whole thing’. She felt that if the King had been still alive ‘it would never have happened’.
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In one sense that was incorrect, in that the Princess had fallen in love with Townsend well before her father died. But, had the relationship progressed so far while the King was living, he might have understood its dangers and intervened earlier than the Queen Mother had done.

One of the Queen Mother’s characteristics within the family was that she never looked for trouble. In fact she had a tendency to ignore difficult situations. She had been brought up to believe that duty defined almost everything. Her shock was genuine – it had probably just not occurred to her that her daughter could be in love with a married (or divorced) courtier. She did not feel herself equipped to deal with such crises. But she felt comforted by the fact that Lascelles could ‘understand the human side of such tragedies – for so they are to the young’.
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Lascelles may have understood the tragic side of the story, but he was not the most sympathetic interlocutor for the young couple. Understandably enough, he saw it as his duty above all to protect the Queen and her position as head of Church and state in what was still an overwhelmingly Christian country. He does not seem to have explained to Princess Margaret and Townsend themselves their full predicament. As Elizabeth Longford put it in her 1983 biography of the Queen, for which she received considerable assistance from Princess Margaret, ‘Lascelles was never to give the anxious lovers that clear-cut if bleak picture of their position, legal and otherwise, which they needed.’ The implications of the Royal Marriages Act were not explained to them. ‘Today Princess Margaret feels that if they had understood from the start the hopelessness of the situation, Peter would have departed and no major tragedy would have ensued.’
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The affair became public as the Queen was crowned. On Coronation day, journalists outside the Abbey noticed the Princess pick a little piece of fluff off Townsend’s jacket. For the American reporters this was more than enough evidence of what had been rumoured for months. Nine days later Lascelles wrote to the Queen Mother warning her that the story could break any day in the American press and that the British papers would quickly follow suit.
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Lascelles said that his only concern was ‘whether The Queen, Head of Church & State, & the high priestess, so to speak, of the ideal of family life – whether she should or should not be advised to allow her sister to marry a divorced man in a registry office’. He argued that he and the Queen’s ministers were bound to consider this, ‘for it is, after all (and especially since 1936), fundamentally a State matter.’
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He sent Queen Elizabeth a summary of the key law in this matter, the Royal Marriages Act of 1772. This had been introduced by King George III, after one of his brothers contracted an unsuitable marriage,
in order to prevent his children doing the same. The act made it illegal for any lineal descendant of George II to marry without the sovereign’s consent (other than the issue of princesses who married into foreign families). If the sovereign refused consent, a member of the Royal Family might, after reaching the age of twenty-five, marry legally without it, unless both Houses of Parliament expressly disapproved within twelve months of notice being given of the intention to marry.

In such a matter the Queen had to act upon the advice of her ministers, whatever her personal sympathies for her sister. Lascelles was certain that, if the Queen asked her Privy Counsellors to approve the marriage, nine out of ten would refuse to do so, and that the attitude of the Commonwealth would be the same. He was convinced that the only way of avoiding trouble and protecting the Queen was for Townsend to go away for an indefinite period.
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On 13 June Lascelles called Churchill’s Secretary, Jock Colville, on the scrambler phone and told him he wished to come and see the Prime Minister to talk about the crisis. Churchill was at Chartwell, his beloved country house in Kent. Lascelles drove there and warned the Prime Minister that the American press was about to carry detailed articles about the affair. Churchill’s initial reaction was typically romantic. In Colville’s account the Prime Minister 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 interrupted to point out that that was not how Lascelles saw the situation and Clementine Churchill broke in to say, ‘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.’
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The Prime Minister evidently reflected. Lascelles reported to the Queen Mother that Churchill felt he could not recommend consent being given to the marriage unless Princess Margaret first renounced all her royal rights, including her right of succession to the throne, her title of royal highness, and probably her share of the Civil List. If she did so, he saw no objection to the couple marrying in a registry office.
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Churchill did, however, insist that the Queen Mother must not take Townsend with her on her forthcoming trip to Southern Rhodesia and that he must be found another job elsewhere for at least a year.
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Two years later, commenting on a private account of the affair written by Lascelles, Jock Colville was anxious to set the record
straight: Churchill, he said, ‘was in reality opposed to any attempt to prevent their marrying’. So long as Princess Margaret renounced her rights to the throne, he would even have argued strongly for a Parliamentary income for her. But shortly afterwards Churchill suffered a stroke which put paid to further intervention on his part, although, according to Colville, his views remained the same.
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The day after this Chartwell meeting, 14 June, the
People
newspaper published an article demanding ‘They Must Deny It Now’ – the ‘scandalous rumours’ of the Princess being in love with a divorced man were, ‘of course, utterly untrue’. This public exposure forced a choice. Princess Margaret could either renounce Townsend now and for ever – or she could wait two years until she was twenty-five. Then, under the Royal Marriages Act, she could expect to be free to make her own decision. She and Townsend talked with anguish together. They decided not to renounce their love – they would wait out the next two years, after which they would be able to marry, subject to Parliamentary consent.

Two days after the
People
article, Arthur Penn took Townsend out to dinner and advised him to make himself scarce for the time being. Reporting afterwards to the Queen Mother, Penn wrote that Townsend had a charming character but ‘it may perhaps lack a strength … Poor boy: what a grey picture for him, & poor dear little Princess Margaret whom I have known ever since she was born. I
am
so sorry for her.’
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On 17 June Townsend himself wrote to the Queen Mother to say that he had had a long talk with Lascelles and that they were now on good terms again. He was bitterly disappointed not to be able to go with her and the Princess to Rhodesia but agreed to accept whatever was decided for the best – this turned out to be a post as air attaché at the British Embassy in Brussels. ‘I do hope however that Princess Margaret & I may see a little of each other before she goes away, as I want so much to take care of her over this difficult bit.’ He understood the problems that the romance had caused and concluded, ‘Your Majesty is going through so much for us and I can never thank you enough for your kindness and your help, and for the way you have stood by Princess Margaret. We will never forget how much you are thinking of the Queen too, and will always do everything we can to consider her.’
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The ordeal, for suitor, daughter, mother and other members of the Royal Family, was far from over.

*

T
HE AGE OF
empire was ending and, following India’s independence in 1947, decolonization was gathering force throughout Africa. All through the 1950s Britain came under increasing pressure, from her own financial limitations, from the United Nations and then from the Organization of African Unity, to hand over her colonial powers to African nationalists. But in 1953 the tide of anti-colonialism still seemed resistible and the British government attempted to find alternatives to full independence. That summer London created a federation out of the former colony of Southern Rhodesia and the protectorates of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Its status was complicated – it was a federal realm of the British Crown, not a colony; it was eventually intended to become a dominion within the British-led Commonwealth of Nations.
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On 30 June 1953 the Queen Mother, accompanied by Princess Margaret, set off for the new Federation. She had been invited to Rhodesia, which she had much liked on the Royal Family’s 1947 tour of southern Africa, some months after the death of the King. She acknowledged in a letter to Lord Salisbury, ‘I must admit I had to screw myself up a good deal to finally say that I would go’; but because she admired the legacy of Cecil Rhodes, and because she hoped to contribute to the success of the Federation, she had now agreed to undertake the tour.
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This was to be the first of many official overseas visits that Queen Elizabeth carried out as a widow.
^†
The revolution of jet travel was about to shrink the world as never before and her first trip was made in the new British passenger jet, the Comet, in which she had enjoyed her trial flight in May 1952.

For the Queen Mother, Rhodesia was absorbing and enjoyable; for Princess Margaret, inevitably, it was less of a pleasure. They journeyed through much of the country on the same White Train that they had taken in 1947; the stewards were all South African and one of them had been with them then. At their first dinner on board, they were served no fewer than eight courses – ‘I sent for the menus &
pruned
,’ Queen Elizabeth wrote home. Princess Margaret was made ill by the chilly air-conditioning, which added to her misery.
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It was not surprising that she was reported by the press to be unsmiling and sullen on the trip. It was indeed very hard for her to endure the public scrutiny on top of her personal sense of loss.

In Bulawayo on 3 July the Queen Mother opened the Central African Cecil Rhodes Centenary Exhibition in front of a crowd of about 20,000, and two days later she and the Princess went to pay their respects at Rhodes’s grave in the Matopo Hills. It was intended to be a private visit, but a great crowd of people assembled around them at the service which was held there. According to the Governor, special care was taken to include in the programme ‘a considerable number of events for the Africans, in every town and district which was visited’.
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A crowd of 5,000 schoolchildren gathered in Gwelo on 7 July to see the Queen Mother open the Queen Elizabeth Memorial Gates at Chaplin School. After more engagements the train continued on its way, often stopping for her to greet local people. It brought back more memories of 1947: as she wrote to the Queen that evening, ‘it seems a very short time since we were all alighting at the same places, & being urged back into the train by Papa!’ She was impressed with the progress since then. ‘I am sure that this country has a great future, tho’ it will have to go through the teething troubles of Federation!’
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After more visits in the Umtali area, she and Princess Margaret had two welcome nights off the train, but since the Princess still felt wretched she flew back to Salisbury, while Queen Elizabeth continued the trip on her own. She met the boys of Eagle School and the residents of Melsetter district and Cashel; at Nyanyadzi she drove
through African irrigation farms, then met the residents at Birchenough Bridge and took tea in the Bikita Native Reserve. She visited the ancient ruins at Great Zimbabwe – according to legend the Queen of Sheba’s capital city – and the nearby Morgenster Mission Hospital. Back in Salisbury, she laid the foundation stone of the new University College on 13 July.

The journey was strenuous – her host, Major General Sir John Kennedy, the Governor of Southern Rhodesia, apologized that the programme was so heavy and wished that there could have been more lions and picnics in game reserves. But he thought her trip had done untold good, ‘and it has, I believe, given everyone, of all races, a feeling of confidence about the future – which is just what was needed at this moment’.
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Queen Elizabeth loved Rhodesia for its sheer physical beauty – ‘range after range of blue mysterious hills, fading into far far away. And a great plain stretching away for ever between the mountains. The light is exquisite, the sun bright & hot & the air cool. I love the immensity of Africa, one feels a great rhythm all the time.’
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She had a maternalistic view of the British Commonwealth and believed that the white settlers were doing good not only for themselves but also for the black African populations. She thought the country had a great future. She also loved the fact that there were ‘NO DEATH DUTIES!’
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Despite her concern for Princess Margaret, the Queen Mother had recovered much of her
joie de vivre
. Those with her remembered much laughter and high spirits on the trip. Everywhere she went she seemed to enjoy herself, and thousands of people, white and black alike, were happy to see her doing so. The Governor’s wife, Lady Kennedy, wrote to thank her for all she had done for the country and ‘for so much kindness, for all the heavenly fun & gaiety & for so much laughter’.
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A guest at a reception in Salisbury at the end of her tour observed that she looked ‘as fresh as a daisy’ after gruelling days. ‘I have never seen a more serene person. One cannot describe her as beautiful and yet she is a beautiful woman.’
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