The Queen Mother (146 page)

She returned home to Clarence House on 16 February. Her surgeons advised that she undertake no public engagements for two months. But a two-week convalescent cruise in the Caribbean on board
Britannia
proved therapeutic. She visited more than a dozen islands and the Queen commented that her programme looked ‘madly busy and not at all what I had envisaged as a rest cruise for you’.
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But she thoroughly enjoyed it all. Sometimes they anchored off secluded beaches, and while the rest of her party swam, Queen Elizabeth collected shells. They had an evening picnic on a beach in Montserrat. ‘One of the sailors played an accordion and we danced a reel by the light of the moon. As the beach sloped, we found ourselves dancing gradually down to the water, & the last grand chain was well into the sea.’
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In the Antipodes, however, disappointment over the cancelled tour was real and widespread. Allen Brown, the bard of her last tour and now Australian High Commissioner in London, sent a poem to Martin Gilliat:

She was willing to do that right away. Gilliat reported to Bernard Fergusson, now Governor General of New Zealand, that she was
‘quite open-minded’ about a visit in one or two years’ time.
²³
(The next Adelaide Festival would be in March 1966.) She herself wrote to Fergusson about how badly she felt about having let everyone down. After so many inoculations and so many dress fittings, ‘I should not be prone to typhoid or small pox or yellow fever for some years, & tho’ perhaps the chiffons will be a little old fashioned by the time I get out to you, I hope to be fairly healthy.’
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O
N
24 J
ANUARY
1965 the news reached Sandringham at breakfast time that Winston Churchill had died. It was a solemn moment for Britain. While Churchill lay in state in Westminster Hall, 300,000 people filed past his coffin. At St Paul’s Cathedral on 29 January he was given the first state funeral for a person not of royal rank since that of the Duke of Wellington in 1852. The ceremony was attended by 6,000 people and all senior members of the Royal Family, including the Queen and the Queen Mother. Fifteen heads of state were there and 112 countries were represented. The ceremony was sombre but stirring and, as Churchill promised, there were ‘lively hymns’. The historian Andrew Roberts later wrote that Churchill’s funeral ‘marked the end of a distinctive epoch in British history, one that had been as glorious as it was long’.
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Indeed, the era of British imperialism into which both Churchill and Queen Elizabeth had been born was gone. But over the years to come Queen Elizabeth remained true to the concept of British greatness which Churchill had defended, preserved and personified. In particular she did everything she could to sustain the Commonweath, Britain’s inspired attempt to come to terms with the end of, and the legacy of, Empire. Her daughter the Queen was, if anything, even more passionately committed to the ideals of the Commonwealth.

Three weeks after Churchill’s death, Queen Elizabeth set off for a visit to Jamaica, where she had been invited to receive the first honorary degree awarded by the University of the West Indies, of which Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, was chancellor. The journey out on 18 February involved an exhausting wait in a ‘super heated VIP lounge’ at Kennedy Airport, and two more flights before Queen Elizabeth and her party arrived at King’s House, Jamaica, at 5 a.m. London time.
²⁶

On the evening of 20 February her degree of Doctor of Letters
was conferred upon her by Princess Alice. She made a short speech of thanks, which was followed by an unexpectedly long peroration by Adlai Stevenson, the distinguished American statesman. As a result it was 10.30 p.m. before the reception for her could be held. By now she was tired, but when a steel band played, she asked to be shown the local Ska dance.

The next morning, Holy Communion at St Andrew’s Parish Church took some time – over 800 people had come to share the sacrament with her. Then she had a spectacular, twisting drive up into the hills above Kingston to lunch at the military camp of Newcastle. That evening at a special service at the University Chapel, the lights all failed and a torch had to be found so that Princess Alice could read the lesson. When power was restored a dog appeared and wandered up and down the aisle. ‘It was an unusual service!’ noted Queen Elizabeth’s lady in waiting.
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She was enjoying her trip, Queen Elizabeth wrote to Princess Margaret, but ‘I always have very bad luck with the drinks! Perhaps because I am considered a frail invalid, I am always given delicious fruit drinks with so little alcohol that one feels quite sick! Then I ask timidly if I might have just a
very
little gin in it, & then too much is put in, & I have to ask for a little more ice to stop my throat being burnt, & so it goes on! This is usually at Government Houses, I may say.’
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No such problem was likely to arise when she went to lunch with Noël Coward at his house, Firefly Hill. It was a small party and lunch was a delicious curry cooked in a coconut shell. She always enjoyed Coward’s wit and she invited him to stay at Sandringham for the King’s Lynn Festival that July to hear the Russian cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich.
^*
‘Should I brush up my Russian?’ Coward asked her. ‘It is limited at the moment to “How do you do?” “Shut up you pig” and “She has a white blouse”. But I am eager to improve.’
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On the afternoon of 26 February, after a drive through cheering crowds, Queen Elizabeth flew home via New York. On the last leg of the journey, overnight to London, her party let themselves go. ‘Dinner on board the aeroplane was very gay and lasted so long that
no one had more than an hour’s sleep.’
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The British High Commissioner in Jamaica reported to the Commonwealth Secretary that Queen Elizabeth impressed everyone with her charm and ‘zestful interest’ and that the visit ‘will have served to strengthen the attachment to the Throne of an already “loyalist” country’.
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A
NOTHER LOYALIST
country, another visit: in June 1965 Queen Elizabeth returned to Canada, this time in honour of the Toronto Scottish, whose fiftieth anniversary was to be celebrated. By now, however, the Canadian government’s expansive attitude towards royal visits – the more the merrier – had given way to an understandable reluctance to foot the bill for visits which were purely for the benefit of local organizations. This led to a testy correspondence between Canadian officials and Martin Gilliat. The Toronto Scottish, together with the Ontario Jockey Club, which had invited her to attend the running of the Queen’s Plate, agreed to pay the costs of the trip. But Queen Elizabeth was worried about her regiment taking on such an expense, and asked Gilliat to approach the British government to pay for her flights to and from Canada. This was agreed; but the Canadian government, which had not been consulted, was affronted, and finally a compromise was reached by which the regiment paid for her journey out on a commercial flight and the Canadian government provided a Royal Canadian Air Force Yukon to fly her home.
³²

She flew to Toronto on the afternoon of 23 June and stayed with her party at Windfields, the home of Mr and Mrs E. P. Taylor, who shared her enthusiasm for racehorses. The following day after several engagements in the city she was taken to see Taylor’s stud farm and some fifty-five thoroughbred yearlings. In the evening her regimental duties began with the presentation of former officers of the Toronto Scottish and of its precursor, the 75th Battalion. Then there was a dinner given by the Empire Club in honour of the regiment.

Over the next three days Queen Elizabeth presented colours to the regiment at a ceremony attended by some 22,000 people, and went to a service for the laying up of the old colours at the Knox Presbyterian Church. Among other engagements she lunched with Vincent Massey at Batterwood, and watched the Queen’s Plate Stakes at the Woodbine racetrack. When she left, she drove the ten miles to
the airport in an open car along a road lined by thousands of cheering people. She arrived back in London on 28 June.

Two weeks later she flew to Germany to visit British regiments and units in the British Army of the Rhine, accompanied by Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent. At Celle they watched an impressive parade by the 11th Hussars, in which the Duchess’s son Prince Michael was serving, on their 250th anniversary. Then Queen Elizabeth went to Minden to visit the 1st Battalion The Black Watch; she took the salute and inspected a guard of honour, but the Highland Gathering which had been planned was washed out by a thunderstorm. The last day was devoted to another of her regiments, the 9th/12th Royal Lancers at Osnabrück, where she watched a mounted parade and attended a regimental fête before flying back to London.

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I
N
M
ARCH
1966 she set off for the postponed tour of Australia and New Zealand, flying with Qantas via Ottawa, Vancouver and Fiji. In Adelaide the official and formal engagements included many drives through crowded streets, a civic welcome at the Town Hall, a reception for the media, luncheons and a tour of floral and handicraft exhibits put on by 600 members of the Country Women’s Association. There were more floral creations in the Victoria Parks: the
tour de force
was a carpet of flowers made in an aboriginal design. She attended a performance of the Australian Ballet, went to a reception for the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps, of which she was colonel-in-chief, mingled at a garden party with 6,000 guests, and opened the new Flinders University. She and her lady in waiting, Frances Campbell-Preston, drove there in an open car ‘in a gale, mostly crouched on the floor of the car & clutching their hats & arrived a little battered and blinded to be received by the Chancellor’.
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In her speech, the Queen Mother noted the remarkable development of Adelaide and praised universities as the centre of hope. ‘We live in an age in which higher education has become a matter of national concern,’ she said.
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Dinner at Government House was followed by a concert by the Australian Youth Orchestra. The music was rousing but even that ‘did not quite succeed in keeping all members of the party awake all the time’.
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Next day the Queen
Mother made an unscheduled visit to the National Gallery where Sir Hans Heysen, an endearing figure dressed in knickerbockers, showed her around an exhibition of his own paintings.
^*
She made a final speech praising the Festival and its ‘far-sighted’ organizers and then spent a pleasant afternoon at the races.
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On this as on other such trips, Queen Elizabeth was irritated only if there was too much formality or protocol. She was always looking for ways to make officials relax and, if engagements were going well, she stayed on, thus pleasing her interlocutors but upsetting the schedule. She enjoyed slip-ups. Frances Campbell-Preston recorded that ‘Martin assured me that nothing pleased “People” [as he called her to mislead any eavesdroppers] more’ than if the lady in waiting ‘did something wrong or arrived in the wrong place at the wrong time’.
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Across the country in Perth, ‘People’ had another five busy days. These included a visit to an Aquatic Carnival at the Beatty Park Aquatic Centre which was packed with 5,000 children for her visit. As she arrived, the announcer on the public address system declared ‘The Queen Mother is now in the Pool’ – this raised a storm of laughter and cheering which continued unceasing until she left, rather deafened, an hour and a half later. On returning to Government House she found the drive lined with members of the Boys’ and the Girls’ Brigades, and got out of her car to walk down the ranks and talk to as many of the young people as possible. From Perth she went to Fremantle where, among other engagements, she gave a speech to a room full of teenagers. Frances Campbell-Preston recorded that she had ‘rather dreaded’ this occasion, but that it went off very well in the event.
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It was then on to Canberra where she was overjoyed to have a rendezvous with Prince Charles. He had been released from Gordonstoun to be an exchange student for two terms at Timbertop, the rural outpost of Geelong Grammar school in Victoria. Princess Margaret wrote to her mother to say that she was so happy that she and
Prince Charles were together ‘for I have never known a grandson more devoted than Charles is to you.’ She said that she and her sister, the Queen, had had glowing accounts of their mother’s ‘usual smash-hit success. “Her Majesty, in powder blue, stepped from the plane, radiant”!’
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The most enjoyable part of the trip for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles was a visit to the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric project in New South Wales. Between visits to dams and power stations, they stayed in the delightful Queen Elizabeth Cottage at Island Bend where the Prince and other members of the party fished. He and his grandmother spent so much time joking together that they reduced the whole party to giggles, which proved hard to control when the Commissioner of the Snowy Mountains Authority and his wife came to dine, give a lecture and show a film. According to Frances Campbell-Preston, ‘suppressed – & not so suppressed – laughing went on to our guests’ bewilderment as they weren’t consciously adding to the fun’.
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The Australia tour ended on 7 April after a return visit to Canberra and a dinner party attended by the Prime Minister and Mrs Harold Holt. (Holt later disappeared off a beach in Victoria – his body was never found.) Prince Charles returned happily for his last few weeks at Timbertop and the Queen Mother and party flew to Fiji, where
Britannia
was waiting to take her on the next part of her tour.