The Queen Mother (30 page)

Meanwhile, the letters kept flooding in, among them another mournful missive from Archie Clark Kerr in Cairo,
⁶⁹
and more cheerful ones from many of the soldiers who had known her at Glamis. Gordon George wrote that as a New Zealander he rejoiced ‘that your charm and goodness and delightfulness are to shine where the whole Empire will get the good of you’. It was four years since he had been recuperating at Glamis ‘but I have always gratefully remembered how kind to me you were when I was often perplexed and disturbed: and how you won us all, as an angel that moved among us, to love you
with an enthusiastic, distant, revering love’. He sent her as a present Spenser’s
Wedding Songs
.
⁷⁰

Easter was early that year and at the end of March they had to separate – the Duke to Windsor and she home to St Paul’s Walden. He wrote to her from the Castle: ‘How I hated leaving you today after lunch with the thought of not seeing you my darling till next Wednesday morning … Only 4 more weeks darling, & then we can take a rest away from everybody & everything. I wonder how you are looking forward to that time. I know I am very much indeed & I do hope you are too, I know it is all going to be so marvellous darling for us, don’t you think?’
⁷¹
A letter came from her: ‘Bertie my darling, I haven’t got anything special to say, but am just writing this note, in case nobody else writes to you!!’
⁷²
On Easter Saturday she wrote again and said she had read in the paper that he had walked from the Castle to Frogmore.
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‘Having never seen Frogmore, I imagine it as a large white Tomb full of frogs! I can’t think why, but that is the impression it gives me – isn’t it silly?’ She informed him that he had ‘a most changeable face. It is too odd. Sometimes you look a completely different person, always nice though, but I must not flatter you because then your head will swell, & you will have to buy new hats.’ She wished he had a small aeroplane so that he could fly over to see her for an hour or two.
⁷³

Instead the Duke spent the Easter weekend at Windsor, riding, playing squash with the Prince of Wales and golf with all three of his brothers, but always feeling constrained by the precise timetables laid down by his father. By Sunday he was keen to break away. He would rather they spent the next weekend at her home, ‘where there are no fusses or worries’, he told his fiancée, ‘as here there is no rest & the day is so marked out into minutes for this thing & the other, which is always such a bore, & we never get any real peace’. At Windsor everything was orders – ‘Life is not as easy as it should be but the change is coming & you my little darling I hope are going to help me with this change. You must take them in hand & teach them how they should do these things.’
⁷⁴
He knew how much the Royal Family would benefit from her gaiety and spontaneity.

On 4 April, at Buckingham Palace, she had to make her first speech in her new role. ‘The Pattenmakers presented me with a chest full of rubber footwear, & I read a speech back,’ she recorded in her diary.
⁷⁵
She worried about it for days and rehearsed it endlessly, telling the Duke that if she failed, he would have to step in. She did not fail, but it was perhaps a relief, after receiving this bounty of gumboots and galoshes, that she was able to escape to Pinet in Bond Street and buy shoes. That afternoon she and the Duke, along with Louis Greig, motored to Windsor, stopping for tea with Mrs Greig on the way. After dinner at the Castle, the Royal Family and Household crossed the river to Eton to listen to a gala performance of Mendelssohn’s
Elijah.
⁷⁶

For the next two days Elizabeth had her first taste of the ordered life of the Royal Family at Windsor Castle. In fact her diary conveys a surprising informality, and none of the rigidity of which the Duke complained. She chatted with the Prince of Wales while the Duke went out riding; the King showed her his room and played gramophone records for her; the Queen gave her a tour of the Castle; Sir John Fortescue, the Librarian, took her and the Duke to see the treasures of the Royal Library. Queen Alexandra came to lunch and gave her a pearl and amethyst chain. And at dinner Elizabeth had an amusing neighbour: Dick Molyneux,
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a member of the King’s Household with a distinguished military past and a lively sense of humour who was to become a particular friend to her at Court.

On Saturday, to the regret of the King and Queen, they left for London (where they opened more presents) and then drove on to the haven of St Paul’s Walden. There indeed they relaxed – after tea she and the Duke made a bonfire and then ‘sat & drank a cocktail & ragged about’; after dinner they played the ‘grammy’.
⁷⁷

The weeks and then the days before the wedding became more and more crowded. Elizabeth tried to find time for herself at home in Bruton Street in the afternoons. On Tuesday 10 April she dressed in
one of her new Handley Seymour outfits: a loose-fitting brown coat edged with fur and an elaborately trimmed cloche hat, and went with the Duke to Goodwood for Doris’s wedding to Clare Vyner at Chichester Cathedral. Next day, at Buckingham Palace, she and the Duke received deputations bringing them loyal addresses and wedding presents, and she was created a Lady of Grace of the Order of St John of Jerusalem. That afternoon she went with her mother to Catchpole and Williams to have strung the two rows of pearls her father had given her. ‘Then to Handley S. to try on my wedding dress. Rather nice I hope.’
⁷⁸

Next day, after choosing chintzes for White Lodge with her mother and being photographed by Hoppe for the
Graphic
magazine,
⁷⁹
she wrote an affectionate letter to D’Arcy Osborne thanking him for the two ‘divinely bound’ books of poetry he had sent her; infinitely more pleasurable, she said, than ‘eight ropes of pearls from a new oil Lord … I wish you would come in one evening if you can, & drink a cocktail & exchange a few ideas on MAGIC and POLITICS and SPIRITUALISM and RELIGION, and GEORGE ROBEY and AMERICANS and all the terribly interesting things in this world.’
⁸⁰

After her marriage, when Osborne asked her how he should address her, she replied in a manner which typified her spirit: ‘I really don’t know! It might be
anything
– you might try “All Hail Duchess”, that is an Alice in Wonderland sort of Duchess, or just “Greetings” or “What Ho, Duchess” or “Say, Dutch” – in fact you can please yourself, as it will certainly please me.’
⁸¹
In fact there had been much public speculation about what she would be called after her marriage. The Press Association reported that ‘The future style and title of the bride is a matter for the King’s decision. Recent times supply no precedent … but the Press Association believes that Lady Elizabeth will share her husband’s rank and precedence, but until the King’s wishes are known, no official information is available.’
⁸²

As to what the King’s decision should be, there was lively discussion between Lord Stamfordham, his Private Secretary, and the Home Office. Stamfordham asked if she would become
ipso facto
HRH the Duchess of York. And how should she sign her name? He presumed she would not be a princess. So she could not sign simply ‘Elizabeth’ as Princess Mary signed herself ‘Mary’. Presumably she should use ‘Elizabeth of York’. The Home Secretary disagreed with the Private Secretary and said that Lady Elizabeth would indeed acquire the status
of princess on marriage, though she would style herself Duchess of York; she should certainly sign herself ‘Elizabeth’. Lord Stamfordham acquiesced.
⁸³
After the marriage an official announcement was issued that ‘in accordance with the settled general rule that a wife takes the status of her husband Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon on her marriage has become Her Royal Highness the Duchess of York with the status of a Princess.’

Stamfordham’s initial attitude amounted almost to treating the marriage as morganatic, which seems curious in a country where such an alliance was an alien concept.
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But he, like everyone else, was feeling his way in a situation with few helpful precedents. As has already been mentioned, the King and Queen had decided as early as 1917 that their children should be allowed to marry into British families. Princess Mary’s marriage to Lord Lascelles had helped accustom the public to this idea, although it was nothing new as far as princesses were concerned: Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter and King Edward VII’s eldest daughter had both married compatriots and commoners.
^†
But princes were different: no sovereign’s son had married – at least not publicly and with official sanction – into a non-royal family since an earlier Duke of York, the future King James II, had married Lady Anne Hyde in 1660.
^‡
Now the effect of King George V’s decision was to be demonstrated for the first time by one of his sons.

The novelty and the quandaries were not only on the bridegroom’s side. The Strathmores too were entering uncharted territory: there were no guidelines for marrying a daughter into the Royal Family, and
they were soon to discover that the traditional roles of the respective parents in arranging a wedding would be reversed. At first Lord and Lady Strathmore evidently expected to play the part of the bride’s parents in entertaining the wedding guests. They assured Gunters, the bakers, that they would receive the order for the cake and refreshments if these were to be provided by Lord Strathmore.
⁸⁴
They told the Queen that they would rent a large house in London ‘in order to entertain and do the usual things inseparable from a wedding’. But, as the Lord Chamberlain recorded, ‘this idea was of course put aside, as The King and Queen decided that a Royal Wedding should follow its usual course.’
⁸⁵
This meant that the responsibility – and expense – of entertaining fell on the King and, perhaps to the relief of the bride’s parents, the Lord Chamberlain’s Office took control of all the arrangements, merely consulting Lady Strathmore on the guest lists and the seating plan in Westminster Abbey.

The numbers involved were so great that it was decided to hold parties at Buckingham Palace on the three days before the wedding for those who could not be fitted into the Abbey: an evening party on Monday 23 April, an afternoon party for servants the next day, and another afternoon party on the eve of the wedding. Lady Strath-more was in constant touch with the Palace about her guest list, at the last minute asking despairingly for more Lyon cousins to be invited. ‘Presents are pouring in, & I am at a loss what to do!’
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She was also concerned that the Strathmore servants and local farmers should not be overlooked, and asked for eighty tickets to the afternoon party. ‘People are coming all the way from
Scotland
to attend it, not to mention Yorkshire & Durham! … P.S. How many people may I ask to stand in the Fore Court to see the Bride & Bridegroom depart?’
⁸⁷

For Elizabeth, the fortnight before the wedding was an exhausting round of formal receptions at Buckingham Palace, last-minute shopping with friends, dodging photographers, and evenings filled with dining and dancing. She loved Paul Whiteman’s band, which played at a dance given by the Mountbattens and again at Audrey Coats’s dance on 18 April.
^*
Among her many dance partners were Dickie
Mountbatten, Prince Paul, Prince George and Fruity Metcalfe, amiable equerry and friend to the Prince of Wales. James Stuart called in one evening for cocktails and chatter.
⁸⁸

For the Duke, work continued. He was determined to ensure that industrial welfare and the wellbeing of the young remained at the core of his public interests. On 18 April he made what appears to have been the first visit by a member of the Royal Family to a trades union: the Amalgamated Engineering Union, at its offices in Peckham Road in south-east London. He had met the President, James Brownlie, and other members of the union at the annual Duke of York’s Camp the previous year. According to
The Times
, Brownlie told him that the union had 320,000 members and 1,800 branches. ‘The Duke might suppose that in coming to the headquarters of a great trade union he was visiting some sort of Bolshevik organisation more concerned to promote strife than peace. But nothing could be further from the fact.’ After they had toured the building, Brownlie proposed a toast to the Duke’s marriage. ‘Take my assurance that you are perfectly safe in the hands of a Scots lassie,’ he said.
⁸⁹
A week later, at a reception at the Palace, the Duke introduced Brownlie to his bride with the words, ‘Here is the Scottish lassie, Mr Brownlie.’
⁹⁰

Elizabeth’s last weekend as an unmarried woman was that of 21–22 April. She went to the Palace again on Saturday for lunch with the King and Queen, who gave her their principal presents: a tiara and a complete suite of diamonds and turquoises from the King, a diamond and sapphire necklace from the Queen. From her father she received a diamond tiara and a rope necklace of pearls and diamonds, while her mother gave her a diamond and pearl necklace and bracelet. The bridegroom’s own present to her was a diamond and pearl necklace with a matching pendant. As the soldier at Glamis had hoped, Elizabeth was now hung with jewels. Her gift to her fiancé was a platinum and pearl watch-chain.
⁹¹

After lunch Queen Mary and Princess Mary motored over to Bruton Street to see the trousseau
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and presents there; other gifts
were displayed at Buckingham Palace. The Livery Company of Needle-makers had presented a thousand gold-eyed needles; South African ostrich farmers had sent an ostrich-feather mantlet, tied with ribbons; there was a gift of silver inkwells, stamp-boxes and candlesticks from the members of the Cabinet, a set of tea-trays, a hammock and a waste-paper basket made by blind ex-soldiers at St Dunstan’s, and dressing-cases from the Glamis tenantry, and much more.
⁹²
A present which gave the Duke of York particular pleasure was one of the battle ensigns worn by HMS
Collingwood
at Jutland.
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