The Queen Mother (129 page)

When the Queen and Prince Philip set off on their long Commonwealth tour at the end of 1953, she and her mother resumed writing their equine epistles. In January 1954 the Queen Mother recounted a visit she and Princess Margaret had made to the Newmarket stables of Cecil Boyd-Rochfort, who had been the King’s trainer since 1942. She described the condition of each of their horses and ended by reverting to one of her favourites: ‘Dear Manicou looks such a picture … He has got something special, hasn’t he darling?’
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Over the next five decades, mother and daughter derived enormous pleasure from their shared passion for racing. Indeed the successes and failures of jockeys, trainers and mounts and the going at different racecourses featured large in many of their letters to each other. Wherever they were, they exchanged the news and the gossip of the turf. As always with racing there were more disappointments than triumphs, but it was all utterly absorbing. Racing was all the more enjoyable because, unlike the routines of royal life, it was so gamey, so full of bounders, such fun, so unpredictable, so exciting. Yet at the same time, the racetrack remained reassuringly constant.

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H
ER ENTHUSIASMS
defined the Queen Mother. When Major Tom Harvey retired as her Private Secretary in 1951, he gave her a crystal engagement-card holder designed by Laurence Whistler and engraved with verses which summed up well her different private and public enthusiasms:

Harvey remained a friend of Queen Elizabeth until he died. In reorganizing her life after the death of the King, Queen Elizabeth depended on family, friends and courtiers like him. Her most constant support and protector throughout these difficult years remained Arthur Penn, her friend since childhood and her Treasurer since 1946.

Penn was humorous and cultivated; an ardent monarchist, he was devoted to Queen Elizabeth. She relied not only upon his benevolent supervision of her Household, but on his good taste, scouring sale rooms and antique shops on her behalf to find mirrors, tables or pictures at reasonable prices with which to complete the furnishing of her homes. He did his best to impose some order on her finances, both public and private, and to discourage her from unlimited expansion of her overdraft at Coutts, a private bank whose management was understanding of royal debt.

Such indulgence was helpful. Queen Elizabeth did not spend conspicuously on her homes, but bouts of cautious parsimony alternated with a certain insouciance. Arthur Penn began one of his letters to her: ‘This is a boring letter, being about money, and if there is an odious subject that is it’
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– which matched her attitude perfectly. She found it difficult to control her outgoings, and her horses and the Castle of Mey, for which she paid out of her private funds, were a heavy burden.
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‘She certainly had a hazy idea of costs,’ wrote one of her ladies in waiting later, ‘but greedy she was not and her extravagances as measured by those of modern celebrities could be reckoned almost modest.’
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She was aware that royal expenses were under more and more Parliamentary scrutiny and at Sandringham over Christmas and New Year 1953–4, when the Queen and Prince Philip were on their Commonwealth tour, she made a point of telling the Queen that she had tried to keep costs down by having as few staff as possible.
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Nonetheless she felt then (and always) that she had to maintain ‘a certain standard, such as large motor cars & special trains, and all the things that are expected of the mother of the sovereign’.
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The letters between Queen Elizabeth and Arthur Penn are a poignant testimony to the affection between a queen and her friend and servant. By 1956, however, Penn was seventy and he told her he thought he should now bow out. Hating to lose someone so vital to her, she begged him to ‘continue the drudgery of battling with my horrid finances’ for some time yet. But, she added, when he really did
find the job too burdensome he must tell her, so he could resign as her Treasurer ‘& become Keeper of my Conscience & prod it when I am preparing to buy two Chippendale mirrors, instead of paying off the overdraft at Coutts’.
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On another occasion she sent him a teasing note saying, ‘I have lost all your money at Ascot – I do hope you don’t mind.’
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He stayed. But he felt weaker still and, two years later, he wrote another letter of charm and courtesy, reminding her that when he had last suggested retirement ‘you most generously asked me to tarry’. He was almost seventy-three and ‘my best service to you now is to slip unobtrusively away’.
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Still she would not have it. She told him she was ‘deeply distressed’ by his letter. ‘You do
more
for me than anyone else, so
there.
’ She repeated that she could never have continued her public work after the death of the King without his help, pointing out that ‘trying to start a completely new life by oneself is quite the most difficult and horrible thing that one could imagine, and I am deeply, deeply grateful for all you did then, & after’.
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Penn’s burden was lightened after Martin Gilliat became her Private Secretary in 1955. Like Penn and many others whom the Queen Mother favoured, Gilliat was a military man who had been schooled at Eton. During the war he was mentioned in dispatches before being captured at Dunkirk; after escaping from two other German prisoner-of-war camps, he was imprisoned at Colditz, whence he attempted constantly to escape. After the war he had served with Lord Mountbatten in India and most recently he had been military secretary to Field Marshal Slim as governor general of Australia.
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A tall, convivial and clubbable man who dabbled in financing theatre productions, he was an excellent planner and quickly mastered the range of the Queen Mother’s interests, concerns, duties and friendships. He shared her enthusiasm for the turf and played a large part in her racing life. She became both dependent on and fond of him. But it was characteristic of the informal way in which she oversaw Clarence House that he came to her on trial and thirty years later, according to Kenneth Rose, he joked that he was still waiting to hear if his appointment would be made permanent.
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O
NE OF
Martin Gilliat’s first duties for the Queen Mother was to accompany her on a visit to Paris in March 1956. She had been invited
to open the Franco-Scottish exhibition at the French National Archives in the Hôtel de Rohan. She flew to Le Bourget on 13 March. Sir Gladwyn Jebb, the British Ambassador, had not doubted that happy memories of her last visit, in 1938 with the King, would ensure the success of this one. But he was astonished at the warmth of her reception. ‘Although the visit was completely unofficial and had not received any very great advanced publicity in the press,’ he reported, ‘the streets from Le Bourget to the Embassy were completely lined, in places 10 or 20 deep.’
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Queen Elizabeth opened the exhibition that afternoon with an expertly delivered speech in French and, after dinner at the British Embassy, returned to the Hôtel de Rohan for a French government reception. Next day she lunched with the President, René Coty, at the Elysée Palace, and then drove out to Versailles. There she was entertained to tea by all the Commonwealth ambassadors at the Grand Trianon, which had been placed at their disposal by the French government ‘as an exceptional mark of friendship to Her Majesty’.
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In the evening the Jebbs held a reception for her at the Embassy at which, according to a report reaching Lady Salisbury, she was ‘dazzling’.
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There were more memories of the past. Queen Elizabeth’s first French governess, Madame Guérin, came to see her with her daughter Georgina, who had taught the Princesses before the war. This episode gave rise to critical comment by Lady Jebb about her royal guest: she noted in her diary that Queen Elizabeth delighted in mimicry, and mimicked the governess. ‘I find her a puzzling person,’ she wrote. ‘So sweet, so smiling, so soft, so charming, so winning, so easy and pleasant. And yet there is another side, which sometimes reveals itself, rather mocking, not very kind, not very loyal, almost unwise.’
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Nonetheless, the Ambassadress wrote to Queen Elizabeth afterwards complimenting her on the pleasure her visit had given. ‘The people of Paris, and indeed of France, have always held the late King and Your Majesty in a very special place in their hearts, and they were truly glad to welcome you again.’ She thought that the visit had helped convince the French that they still had British support.
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Sir Gladwyn Jebb went even further, writing to the Foreign Secretary: ‘There is no doubt at all to my mind that this kind of visit has a very profound and salutary political effect. Just when the French were feeling low about things in general, and more particularly about Algeria … it was heartening for them to have physical proof of
sympathy from their closest ally in the person of so charming and intelligent a member of the Royal Family.’
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Despite public successes, however, private loneliness was always with her. To recapture the sense of family life, her regular visits to Windsor for Easter and Sandringham for Christmas were vital. After her return to England and the disappointment of Devon Loch at the Grand National, Queen Elizabeth was grateful for her week at Windsor. Writing to the Queen afterwards she thanked her daughter for ‘so much sweetness & thought and care for your venerable parent’. Above all, she treasured the companionship of family. ‘You can’t imagine how deadly everything is when one is alone – When one is young one feels that life goes on for ever, & I was utterly happy with Papa & you & Margaret.’ She hoped that the Queen would have more children. ‘I longed for more children, but somehow everything seemed against us.’
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The family spent Christmas together at Sandringham. Through February and March 1957 the Queen Mother undertook official engagements almost every weekday. In April she went to the Castle of Mey, where she ‘got hold of’ a television and watched ‘some excellent tho’ rather foggy pictures’ of the Queen and Prince Philip on an official visit to Paris – she told the Queen that she thought her clothes looked ‘
perfect
’.
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On the anniversary of her Coronation, 12 May, the Worshipful Company of Gardeners presented her with a replica of her Coronation bouquet; this became a tradition which continued for the rest of her life. On 29 June she made a brief visit to France to unveil the Dunkirk Memorial commemorating the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force in 1940.

Then came the major event of the Queen Mother’s year. At the beginning of July 1957 she left for another official visit to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Her principal task was to open the new University College at Salisbury, the foundation stone of which she had laid in 1953, and to be installed as its president. Her role was especially significant because she was also Chancellor of the University of London, with which the new University College was linked. She was to tour all three countries of the Federation.

Prince Charles, together with Princess Margaret and Princess Anne, came to see her off at London Airport, and climbed aboard the Britannia aircraft to inspect the ingenious layout of the cabins for the Queen Mother and her ladies in waiting, with couches, tables and
chairs which converted into beds. Also on board was Queen Elizabeth’s wardrobe for the tour – some sixty items including twenty-nine outfits with matching hats, eleven extra day dresses and four extra evening dresses.

After a twenty-one-hour flight, they landed in Salisbury and over the next few days Queen Elizabeth went to a tobacco auction, visited a nursery school for African children and received several deputations. On 5 July, she was installed as president of the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Her speech emphasized the high academic standards and the multi-racial status of the new University.

They travelled on to Bulawayo for more engagements, and Queen Elizabeth attended an
indaba
, or tribal gathering, in the Matopos Hills. It was a ‘moving and memorable occasion’ as tribal sentinels stood with their spears and shields on the tops of surrounding hills. She was elaborately dressed for the occasion, in a white lace dress with her Garter ribbon and star and Family Orders, and wearing a white hat adorned with white feathers touched with Garter blue. There were ritual dances of welcome, gifts and acts of homage to Queen Elizabeth; her speech of thanks was translated into two languages and she invested four chiefs with the Queen’s medal.
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Afterwards the party flew to Northern Rhodesia, first to Lusaka and then to Ndola in the copper belt, where in fierce heat at Luanshya Queen Elizabeth, now dressed in miner’s kit of white protective coat, overshoes, helmet and lamp, was taken 1,500 feet down a copper mine. Conditions were said to be ideal – ‘a high, light, airy mine, where it is apparently quite safe to smoke. The press in full force!’ At another mine at Kitwe she was shown molten copper ore being poured from the furnace. ‘Unfortunately the wind changed at the crucial moment, and the whole party were nearly asphyxiated by sulphur fumes.’ She then drove through the African township and spent the night in the mining company’s guest house. Her lady in waiting, Olivia Mulholland, commented that it was an exhausting ‘but absorbingly interesting’ day.
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