The Queen Mother (19 page)
Authors: William Shawcross
Mike finally came home. In the first week of 1919, Elizabeth and her mother were at St Paul’s Walden when they received a telephone
call to say that he was on a train. They rushed up to London. At the station they had to wait as five trains unloaded wounded, sick and disoriented soldiers whose appearance shocked Elizabeth. Finally Mike’s train came in and they were able at last to embrace him. He seemed fairly well and cheerful, but he brought with him a friend called Lathom who looked very ill and was completely dazed. ‘He merely sat & looked at the fire,’ she told Beryl. ‘Poor boys, they must have had a
beastly
time, they hate talking about it.’
216
*
I
N EARLY
A
PRIL
1919 Elizabeth gave a play party. She and her sister-in-law, Jock’s wife Neva, Emma Thynne, Mike, Captain Keenan and Charlie Settrington dined at the Ritz and then went to see George Robey perform in
Joybells
– she thought he was ‘too priceless’.
217
Then she did something rather daring. Decades later she recalled ‘creeping out of the house in St James’s Square, round the corner into Duke Street and going off to lunch with a very nice young gentleman in one of those horrible little low cars’. They ‘whizzed off’ down the Portsmouth Road to a pub.
218
The young gentleman was Charlie Settrington. It appears that they motored to Walton for lunch and then took a long walk on Box Hill. They had tea ‘at an extraordinary place, where the waiter winked, & said he
also
came from London!’ Writing to Beryl about it, Elizabeth maintained firmly that Charles was a dear, but just a friend. ‘One’s family always thinks that a man must be violently in love with one, which is
so
annoying if one is friends.’
219
Although there was now a spate of engagements and weddings among her circle of friends, she seems to have had no desire to follow suit, and was sorry when Lavinia married Luke White in April.
*
‘It’s rather a sad thing a wedding, don’t you think?’ she wrote to Beryl before setting off for Althorp with Katie Hamilton for the ceremony. ‘Poor old Lavinia! Her last two days of spinsterhood.’ ‘I do hate weddings!’ she commented afterwards.
220
Later in the month she and David took her Canadian friend Lieutenant Reynolds to see a revue,
Buzz-Buzz
.
†
She was amused by
the officer’s wildness and his fondness for alcohol; he was perhaps an early example of the appeal that raffish but entertaining characters had for her throughout her life. Towards the end of May the Lieutenant left England; he came to say goodbye one morning, bearing roses; she was still in bed. ‘I was so sad at not seeing him … he is so nice and wild!!!’
221
On 28 June 1919 the Versailles Peace Treaty was signed. The King appeared again and again before ecstatic crowds on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. ‘Please God,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘please God the dear old Country will now settle down and work in unity.’
222
It later became conventional to decry the peace that was reached at Versailles. In truth it deserves a certain respect. The task facing its authors was almost impossible – it was to reconcile ideals and expectations with recalcitrant realities. This was the first great European peace treaty which had to be drawn up with the views of democratic electorates in mind. France needed to believe herself protected from a third dose of German aggression, the British and the Americans had to deal with the overriding problem of central European security. Poland was resurrected. Serbia was enlarged into Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia was created out of the ruins of Austria-Hungary.
*
All these countries survived for most of the rest of the century and Poland thrives still today.
The peace agreement had to be a world settlement – of the twenty-seven countries which signed the principal treaty, seventeen were outside Europe. The harshest parts of the treaty were the economic reparations which were imposed on Germany. The main intent was to recompense France and Belgium for the devastation they had suffered and to give both as much guarantee as possible that Germany could never rise to threaten them again.
When the treaty was signed at Versailles, smaller wars were still being fought. British troops were fighting alongside Generals Koltchak and Denikin and the White Russian forces still holding out against the new Soviet Union. They were there partly to secure British investments in Russia and partly to identify the British army with an antirevolutionary
cause. Their presence gave Elizabeth one of her greatest heartbreaks of those years.
August 1919 found her, as always, at Glamis. It was a parched summer – they had had no rain for three months. Plans to make a new tennis court had had to be postponed because the ground was so hard. There were still Canadian and Australian officers around for tea and she and her mother went to a sale of Friesian cattle, where her mother bought two bulls. Elizabeth had taken driving lessons and was now driving the family Wolseley all over the Glamis estate – which she found ‘great fun’.
223
But then came awful news – Charlie Settrington, fighting in the White Russian cause, had been badly wounded.
224
He died on 24 August. Elizabeth was inconsolable. ‘He is my only
real
friend, & one feels one can never have another like him. He was a
real
friend, I wasn’t shy of him, and he was so delightful. It’s a dreadful thing, and his family simply
adored
him … I think I must have been fonder of him than I realised, because now there seems a kind of blank – if you understand what I mean?’ He had been the only male friend she had to whom she could talk naturally. ‘I liked him specially because he
never
tried to flirt, or make love or anything like that – which always spoils friendships. Even that day spent down at Box Hill.’
225
Elizabeth had entered the war in 1914 as a carefree girl; she emerged from it as a young woman mature for her years. She was joyous, vivacious, and delightful company. But as a result of the war she had moved among, and learned about, a wider circle of people than she would otherwise ever have met. She had also acquired, through her experience of the suffering of family, friends and soldiers from all over the world, an understanding of pain, and of the difficulties of others, which served her and her country well in the years to come.
*
Lady Christian Dawson-Damer (1890–1959), daughter of fifth Earl of Portarlington. A daughter, Rosemary (1915–89; m. 1945 Edward Joicey-Cecil), was born of this marriage. Lady Christian married again in 1919 (Captain William Martin, d. 1947).
†
The Hon. Fenella Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis (1889–1966), known in the Strathmore family as Neva, younger daughter of twenty-first Baron Clinton. She and Jock had five daughters.
*
Dorothy Irene Beryl Poignand (1887–1965), daughter of Colonel George Poignand and his wife Catherine Maud. Governess to Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon 1914–17. Under the pseudonym Anne Ring, she wrote two books about Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret in the 1930s and several magazine articles about the Royal Family in the 1940s. During the Second World War she was temporarily employed by the Royal Household in the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood, and stayed on until 1949. In 1947 she helped organize the exhibition of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding presents and compiled the catalogue. Until her death in 1965 she remained in touch with Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, whose letters to Beryl were subsequently returned by her cousin, Mrs Leone Poignand Hall. These letters, together with Beryl’s letters to her mother, to which access has been generously given by Mrs Hall’s son Mr Richard Hall, have not been available to previous biographers.
*
Elizabeth did, however, have some lessons in Italian in 1917, as appears from a letter to her in the Glamis Archives, from Laura Baldi, her teacher, who regrets that the lessons have come to an end and hopes her pupil will not forget what she has learned. (Glamis Archives, Letters from friends)
*
The Visitors’ Books with the soldiers’ signatures are in the Glamis Archives.
*
Lavinia Emily (1899–1955), second daughter of sixth Earl Spencer; married, 1919, Hon. Luke White, later fourth Baron Annaly. Lady in waiting to the Duchess of York on East African tour 1924–5; extra lady in waiting thereafter. She was a great-aunt of Lady Diana Spencer.
†
Florodora
was one of the most successful musicals of the early twentieth century, both on Broadway and in London. Its famous song, ‘Tell Me Pretty Maiden’, was hugely popular and another attraction of the show was its sextet of beautiful singers, called ‘the English Girls’ in the score, but soon popularly dubbed ‘the Florodora girls’. These six roles were filled by identically sized women, all five foot four inches; they became popular fantasy figures and the turnover on stage was high as young male admirers persuaded many to leave the show to marry them.
*
Lydie Lachaise (1888/9–1982) was French governess to the children of Sir James Reid, Bt, Queen Victoria’s physician for many years. Sir James’s wife was Lavinia Spencer’s Aunt Susan (nee Baring; her sister Margaret had married the Hon. Robert Spencer, Lavinia’s father. Margaret had died in 1904 soon after the birth of her third daughter, also Margaret, and the motherless Spencer children grew up close to their Reid cousins). Mlle Lachaise was holiday governess to Lady Elizabeth and her brother again in August 1915. She stayed in England and married Raphael Aboav in 1920.
†
Horace Annesley Vachell (1861–1955), novelist and playwright.
Quinneys
, his most successful play, was adapted from his novel of the same name. It was made into a film in 1927.
‡
Henry Ainley (1879–1945) was a major classical actor who appeared in hundreds of productions over a forty-five-year career. He starred in many films, the last of which was
As You Like It
(1936) in which he played the exiled Duke while the young Laurence Olivier played Orlando. Ainley was known for his superb elocution and much loved for his rendering of great soliloquies.
*
Basil Hallam (1889–1916), actor and singer. His most famous role was as Gilbert the Filbert in the revue
The Passing Show
at the Palace Theatre in London in 1914–15. He joined up in 1915 but was killed in a parachute jump on the Western Front in 1916.
†
Lady Katharine Hamilton (1900 -85), daughter of third Duke of Abercorn. She married, in 1930, Lieutenant Colonel (later Sir) Reginald Seymour, equerry to King George V, and became a lady in waiting to Queen Mary for some time before transferring to Queen Elizabeth’s Household in 1937.
*
Ernest Pearce (1893–1969), served in 1/7th Durham Light Infantry, wounded at Ypres in May 1915; promoted lance sergeant December 1916. He worked in a shipyard in Sunderland after the war. His niece Mary Ann Whitfield Pearce also worked for Queen Elizabeth at Royal Lodge from 1946 to 1981, latterly as head cook.
*
Before the war the enormous, lighter-than-air machines had caused amazement as they flew over Europe. When war came, millions of people feared them as no other weapon. One of the Zeppelin’s historians wrote that it was ‘the H-bomb of its day, an awesome sword of Damocles to be held over the cowering heads of Germany’s enemies’. (Quoted in Martin Gilbert,
First World War
, p. 42)
*
In January 1923 Lord Strathmore was reported in the press as saying that it had been at a party given by Lady Leicester when the two were children (
Evening News
, 16 January 1923); King George VI’s official biographer John Wheeler-Bennett stated that it had happened at Montagu House (where their hostess would have been the Duchess of Buccleuch) in 1905.
*
Lady Dorothy Cavendish (1900–66), daughter of ninth Duke of Devonshire, married in 1920 Harold Macmillan MP.
*
Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) was prime minister 1957–63.
*
She wrote this poem in Sergeant Little’s autograph book; he responded with one in hers:
There is a young lady so charming and witty
(I’m really not
forced
to tell you she’s pretty)
But she is
She wrote some nice verses about where the sense ended
Of a Patient whom she thought would be rather offended
But he isn’t
(Sergeant J. Little, 8th East Yorkshire Regiment, poem in Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon’s autograph book, October 1916. RA QEQM/PRIV/PERS)
*
Rt Rev. Charles Edward Plumb, Bishop of St Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane.
*
The dance was for Margaret Sutton, the niece of the Hon. Edward Wood (1881–1959), later third Viscount Halifax, whom Elizabeth came to know very well as foreign secretary, and his wife Lady Dorothy, née Onslow, who became her lady in waiting. The young Elizabeth dined with the Woods before the dance.
*
Among Elizabeth’s dancing partners were the Hon. Michael Biddulph (1898–1972), later third Baron Biddulph, whose sister Adèle was a friend of Elizabeth; Archie Balfour (1896–1966), son of Captain Charles Balfour and Lady Nina Balfour, a friend of Lady Strathmore; the Hon. Bruce Ogilvy (1895–1976), son of the eighth Earl of Airlie and Mabell, Countess of Airlie, Queen Mary’s lady in waiting; and Captain Henry Courtney Brocklehurst (1888–1942), who was married to Lady Airlie’s daughter Helen and whom Elizabeth was to meet in very different circumstances in 1925.
†
Probably Stokeley Williams Morgan, Second Secretary at the American Embassy.
*
Thomas William, Viscount Coke, later fourth Earl of Leicester (1880–1949), and his wife Marion.
†
Robert (‘Bobbety’) Arthur James Gascoyne-Cecil, Viscount Cranborne (1893–1972). In 1947 he succeeded his father as fifth Marquess of Salisbury, and in the 1950s he served in the Churchill, Eden and Macmillan governments.
‡
Count Michael Torby (1898–1959), son of Grand Duke Michael Michailovich of Russia, and descendant of Tsar Nicholas I. Brother of Lady Zia Wernher and of Nadejda, Marchioness of Milford Haven.
§
Hon. Victor Cochrane Baillie (1896–1951), son of second Baron Lamington; succeeded 1940 as third baron; married 1922 Riette Neilson. He served in the Scots Guards 1914–17, and was mentioned in dispatches and awarded the MC.
*
He later married Angela Mackail, the writer Angela Thirkell.
†
The pieces of fabric are in the Royal Archives, still in the envelope in which they were sent, inscribed in King George VI’s hand with the statement that it contained a piece of von Richthofen’s plane.
‡
HMS
Scott
was torpedoed a few months later with the loss of twenty-six men. Wisp Leveson-Gower survived.
*
Luke Henry White (1885–1970) succeeded as fourth Baron Annaly in 1922.
†
Buzz-Buzz
, with music and lyrics by Herman Darewski, was on at the Vaudeville Theatre, starring Margaret Bannerman, Nelson Keys and Gertrude Lawrence, and included such numbers as ‘There Are So Many Girls’, ‘If I Went into Parliament’, ‘Winnie the Window Cleaner’ and ‘Everything is Buzz-Buzz Now’.
*
Versailles was followed by five separate treaties with the nations on the losing side, the last of which, the Treaty of Sèvres, was signed by Turkey and the Allies on 20 August 1920.
