The Queen Mother (38 page)
Authors: William Shawcross
The following day was filled with engagements. The Duke laid the foundation stone of the new City Art Gallery, and they visited the York Street Spinning Mills. At a lunchtime banquet in City Hall the Lord Mayor, seated next to the Duchess, seems to have set light to himself with his cigar. According to her diary, he ‘burst into flames! Very nice speeches & great excitement.’
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The Duke received the Freedom of the City, the Duchess a present of silver from the women of Belfast. Finally, in a last-minute addition to the schedule, they fitted in a crowded reception for about 2,000 people, before leaving on a special train. That night was spent with the Abercorns at their home, Barons Court; the Duchess was tired and went to bed at 10.30. A day of recuperation in the company of Katie and Helen followed; in her characteristic phrase, she ‘talked hard’ with Katie.
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The Duchess was surprised by how warm the welcome was even in Londonderry, the heart of republicanism, where they went on 24 July. ‘Up by 9.30 in my grey cloak and hat. Rainy morning … Arrived Derry at 11. Considering that more than half are Nationalists, we had a marvellous welcome. Drove to Town Hall, & got the Freedom.’ They toured the City and County Infirmary, attended yet another civic luncheon and reception, and left by train for Belfast, stopping at Coleraine, Ballymoney and Ballymena, where the Duke laid the foundation stone of the new town hall. Arriving in Belfast in the
evening, they were met by ‘more huge crowds, who shrieked & yelled’, before continuing on to Mount Stewart, the home of Lord and Lady Londonderry, where they were to spend the next two nights. It had been ‘a very long day!’ as the Duchess recorded; and the next day was spent quietly at Mount Stewart. On their last evening their hosts gave a dinner at which the Duchess sat between Lord Londonderry and the Primate of Ireland (the Most Rev. Charles D’Arcy, Archbishop of Armagh), and then ‘danced hard, until 2!’, with their host, her husband and others.
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On Saturday, a lovely day, the Duchess went for a walk along the seashore with Dorothé Plunket. After lunch she changed into a grey crêpe de Chine dress with a pink hat, and she and the Duke then made their way by car and train through cheering crowds, stopping to be presented with bouquets, and ending eventually at Belfast Harbour. At 6.15 they set sail in HMS
Wryneck
once more. ‘The visit was a great success I think. We sat on the bridge & talked & drank champagne. Very nice people.’
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The visit was indeed deemed a success. The Duke wrote afterwards to his father to say that their reception had been astounding. ‘Elizabeth has been marvellous as usual & the people simply love her already. I am very lucky indeed to have her to help me as she knows exactly what to do & say to all the people we meet.’
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*
O
N
11 A
UGUST
their happy time at Chesterfield House came to an end. Reluctantly they had to move back to White Lodge. First, though, there was the pleasure of late summer in Scotland. They went north, stopping at Studley Royal near Ripon to stay with the Vyners and then on up to Edinburgh, where they saw the Duchess’s sister May Elphinstone and her children, of whom the Duchess was very fond.
*
Then it was further north to Glamis and Balmoral for the rest of August and September. It is clear from correspondence and diaries that they both found Glamis the more congenial and more restful home.
The King’s regime at Balmoral had not relaxed. No cocktails were
allowed, no card games either. The guest lists rarely changed and included a succession of ministers invited more for business than for pleasure, and two old friends of the King, Canon Dalton and Sister Agnes. Dalton, a formidable autocrat, had been George V’s tutor and was a canon of Windsor.
*
Now in his eighties, he was tall and stooped and some thought he looked as if he had been quarried from the same stone as the Castle. He was arrogant with his peers in the Chapter and his humour, though boisterous, was not always well considered. According to George V’s biographer, Kenneth Rose, he took to reading the lessons in a dramatic manner – ‘he endowed the Almighty with a thundering bass and Isaiah with a piping falsetto.’
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Miss Agnes Keyser, known as Sister Agnes, was the founder and Matron of King Edward VII’s Hospital for Officers, which in those days was in Grosvenor Crescent off Hyde Park Corner. She had been a friend of King Edward and it was said that she had enabled him to meet his companion Mrs Keppel in her house. She liked to have patients from the Household Cavalry and the Brigade of Guards and she is reported to have been rather malicious. Harold Nicolson observed that she ‘enjoyed repeating to the King, not always with useful results, the talk of the town’.
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This talk often included the latest gossip about the adventures of the King’s sons, in particular the Prince of Wales. She was one of the few people privileged to have her own key to Buckingham Palace garden and so she had ample opportunity to repeat to the King whatever stories she had acquired about the Princes and ‘bad women’, a source of continual anxiety to the monarch. At Balmoral she cut a remarkable figure striding across the moors dressed in mauve and wearing an orange wig.
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But she and Canon Dalton were perhaps not ideal companions for young people who had driven many miles for dinner. When on one occasion the King asked the Labour minister J. H. Thomas, a former railwayman whose company he enjoyed, why his sons did not spend more time at Balmoral, Thomas was frank: ‘It’s a dull ’ouse, Sir, a bloody dull ’ouse.’
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In September 1924 the Duchess wrote to her mother from Balmoral, saying that she had been meaning to write every day ‘but
somehow it is so boring that I felt there was nothing to tell you!! However the King & Queen are in very good form, and we are both very popular!’ There were consolations. ‘There are one or two quite nice old men here, who only appear at meals.’ And there was about to be a ghillies’ ball – ‘the Queen is simply thrilled’, the Duchess commented – for Queen Mary loved dancing.
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The ‘old men’ were Lords Rawlinson and Revelstoke. Rawlinson was Commander-in-Chief of the Army in India and a much decorated First World War commander. John Baring, second Baron Revelstoke, was Receiver General of the Duchy of Cornwall and a director of the family bank. For all the boredom of Balmoral, both there and elsewhere it was part of her apprenticeship as the King’s daughter-in-law to meet men (and some women) of consequence, and such encounters no doubt helped form her abiding interest in the nation’s welfare, the Empire and the role of the monarchy.
They returned to the more convivial circumstances of Glamis in the second half of September. When the Duke drove back up to Balmoral at the end of the month for more stalking, they exchanged affectionate letters across the hills. In one he told the Duchess how much he missed her and was thinking of her. ‘Don’t get frightened at night sleeping all alone darling in that enormous bed,’ he wrote.
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She replied at once: ‘I miss you dreadfully and am longing for Monday, when I hope you will arrive here sunburnt, manly & bronzed, bearing in your arms a haunch of venaison rôti as a love offering to your spouse … Goodbye darling, it seems all wrong that we shouldn’t be together, doesn’t it – from your
very
,
very
loving Elizabeth.’ She added a PS asking if ‘Mama’, the Queen, might have any trifle for a bazaar in Dundee in aid of a charity she would cherish all her life. This was the Lord Roberts Workshops, which offered training and employment to disabled servicemen and became for many decades part of the fabric of British society.
*
They were raising funds to help some 300 disabled
men, she wrote. ‘It’s not so much a matter of money to keep them alive, it’s a matter of money to keep their self respect alive by giving them work & saving them from the street corners. I am very keen about it.’
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He responded with equal affection, saying that it was too cold to enjoy stalking and that he was bored at Balmoral. He was longing for Monday – and would be back at Glamis in time for lunch.
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On Thursday 9 October they went to the bazaar together, and were met by officials at the Dundee City Boundary. They drove in an open car to the Caird Hall, where the Duchess opened the bazaar with a short speech. Then she and the Duke fought their way through the crowd who had come to see them and spent some time selling goods at the Forfarshire stall. Afterwards, the Duke wrote to his mother that the items she had sent fetched £20 and altogether they made a good deal of money ‘as everybody wanted to buy things from Elizabeth’.
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The sale easily sped past its goal of £10,000, raising twice as much.
The Dundee bazaar coincided with another political crisis which had the King hurrying down by night train from Balmoral to London. Ramsay MacDonald had called a vote of confidence on his handling (or mishandling) of a charge of sedition first brought and then dropped against the acting editor of a communist paper which had incited troops to disobey orders to move against strikers. MacDonald lost the vote and went to the Palace on 9 October to ask the King to dissolve Parliament. King George V was reluctant, fearing the harmful impact of a third election within two years. But there was no alternative.
The resultant election in November 1924 was dominated by dubious allegations about the Labour government’s closeness to the Bolshevik government in Russia. MacDonald lost and the Conservatives were returned to power under Baldwin. The King showed no pleasure in Labour’s defeat and warned Baldwin against humiliating the socialists; he was concerned above all about the danger of class war. The Conservatives, he thought, should at once get to grips with the problems of housing, unemployment and the cost of food and education. The Duchess greeted the change of government with more enthusiasm. In her diary she exclaimed, ‘The election news wonderful,
already great Conservative majority. Everybody relieved – hopes for a year or two of comparative peace.’
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To her mother she wrote, ‘wasn’t the election
marvellous
especially in Scotland. One feels so much safer.’
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In the next few weeks the Duchess made her final preparations for what would be a defining experience. She and the Duke were to visit East Africa. King George VI’s official biographer, John Wheeler-Bennett, wrote of the origins of the tour only that the Duke had long wanted to ‘see something of the British Empire at first hand’ and that, an exhausting year and a half after their marriage, he and his wife badly needed a holiday. The Duchess’s biographer Dorothy Laird speculated that the Duke also hoped to help his wife avoid the winter bouts of tonsillitis with which she had been repeatedly afflicted. There is probably truth in both explanations. It was a joy for them to get away together and the four-and-a-half-month journey was unforgettable – both for the thrill of discovering Africa and for the freedom which they could never enjoy at home.
*
At this time Mrs Greville in fact intended to leave the house to the Duke of York. As a childless widow, she wrote to King George V in 1914 to say that, in recognition of King Edward VII’s kindness to her after her husband’s death in 1908, she wanted to leave Polesden Lacey to one of the King’s sons. The King accepted, because she had no near relations, and Queen Mary went to visit Mrs Greville at Polesden Lacey. (RA GV/PRIV/AA48/8–10) It was evidently decided between them that Prince Albert should be chosen (the Prince of Wales, as heir to the throne, enjoyed the income of the Duchy of Cornwall and had no need of such munificence), and thereafter Mrs Greville took a special interest in him, writing to Queen Mary about him and inviting him to parties in London and Surrey. His accession to the throne before Mrs Greville’s death meant that he had no need of Polesden Lacey, and Mrs Greville left it to the National Trust.
*
Lady Loughborough had just returned from Australia, as she recorded in her memoirs. Her friend ‘Ali’ Mackintosh gave a party at the Embassy Club that night – no doubt the occasion to which the Duchess’s diary refers. Lady Loughborough wrote: ‘The Prince of Wales was with us and Freda, of course, also the Duke and Duchess of York. (Prince Bertie, now the Duke of York, had married the little debutante we had seen in the doorway of Eresby House three years before, Elizabeth Bowes Lyon).’ (Princess Dimitri, ‘Waltzing Matilda’, p. 48)
†
Prince Serge Obolensky (1890–1978), a Russian emigre, with whom, according to her memoirs, Sheila Loughborough had been in love at the time of the Duke of York’s infatuation with her. Obolensky was formerly married to Princess Yurievsky, daughter of Tsar Alexander II. In 1924 he married Alice Astor (1902–56), daughter of John Jacob Astor IV; he was the first of her four husbands. She was a patron of the arts, especially the ballet.
‡
This was York Cottage at Sandringham. The Duke had chosen all the carpets, wallpapers and furniture with the help of his father, his sister and a man from Maples, a sadly frustrating experience for his wife, who loved arranging rooms. (James Pope-Hennessy,
Queen Mary
, pp. 275–8)
*
Lady Katharine Meade (1871–1954), daughter of fourth Earl of Clanwilliam. The Duchess of Albany, to whom she had been lady in waiting, was the widow of Queen Victoria’s youngest son Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany.
*
The fashion correspondents whose descriptions of the outfits worn by ladies attending the Yorks’ wedding appeared in the London press commented on the preponderance of these muted colours among the smartest ensembles.
†
Savely Sorine, Russian portrait painter (1887–1953). Sorine was a student of Repin at the Academy of Beaux Arts in Petrograd, where he won the Prix de Rome. He went into exile after the Russian Revolution and exhibited his work widely, including at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1922–3, and at the International Exposition of Pittsburgh in 1923–4. In 1948 he painted a portrait of Princess Elizabeth, intended as a companion piece to that of Queen Elizabeth: both are painted in watercolour on paper. The two portraits (RCIN 453400, 453399) today hang in Clarence House.
*
The other two royal weddings in 1923 were those of Lady Louise Mountbatten to the Crown Prince of Sweden on 4 November and of Princess Maud, daughter of Louise, Princess Royal, to Lord Carnegie on 12 November.
*
Waterhouse had been private secretary and equerry to the Duke of York in 1921, but had become principal private secretary to the Prime Minister a year later. He was seconded to act as equerry to the Duke for this trip.
*
Crown Prince Peter came to the throne only eleven years later when his father, King Alexander I, was assassinated while in Marseilles. The young King Peter II was forced into exile after the German invasion in 1941. He took refuge in Britain and later joined the RAF. He was deposed
in absentia
in 1945 and died in the United States in 1970.
†
This was the Anglo-Serbian Children’s Hospital. ‘It is the
only one
in all Serbia, and does marvellous work,’ the Duchess recorded. (RA QEQM/PRIV/DIARY/3)
*
Queen Alexandra, her daughter Princess Victoria, King Haakon VII of Norway, his wife Queen Maud (Queen Alexandra’s youngest daughter) and their son Crown Prince Olav.
*
Bertie Wooster, one of the Duchess’s literary heroes, went to the exhibition with his friend Biffy (in the 1924 short story ‘The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy’), and it is perhaps fair to say that his mind was on other things than the glory of empire: ‘By the time we had tottered out of the Gold Coast and were working towards the Palace of Machinery, everything pointed to shortly executing a quiet sneak in the direction of the rather jolly Planter’s Bar in the West Indian section … A planter, apparently, does not consider he has had a drink unless it contains at least seven ingredients, and I’m not saying, mind you, that he isn’t right.’
†
The spelling she invariably used, from childhood onwards.
*
The Royal Hospital’s name was changed to the Royal Hospital and Home, Putney, in 1988, and to the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability in 1995.
†
The term was coined by Frank Prochaska in his influential study,
Royal Bounty: The Making of a Welfare Monarchy
(1995).
*
Clandeboye was the family home of the Marquess of Dufferin but was used as an official residence by the Duke of Abercorn, whose own home, Barons Court in County Tyrone, was too far from Belfast.
*
Throughout their lives, the Elphinstone children called her Peter and she signed all her letters to them with that name. This tradition appears to have begun when, in her childhood, Elizabeth Elphinstone found the name Aunt Elizabeth difficult and called her Peter instead. And Peter it remained ever after.
*
Rev. John Neale Dalton (1839–1931), Canon of St George’s Chapel, Windsor 1884–1931, was the father of Hugh Dalton (1887–1962), Chancellor of the Exchequer in Attlee’s government 1945–7.
*
The charity, Lord Roberts Memorial Workshops, was inspired by Field Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar, known as Bobs, one of the most distinguished and popular military commanders of the Victorian era. He was dedicated to the cause of disabled ex-servicemen and, after his death in 1914 while visiting troops at the Front, workshops bearing his name were expanded around Britain in his memory. After both world wars they rescued thousands of severely wounded soldiers from destitution and taught them skills; for decades soldiers earned a living producing furniture, brushes, toys, baskets and other household goods.
The Duchess of York sustained her support and affection for this charity all her life. In 1938, as queen, she gave the Royal Warrant of Appointment to all eleven Lord Roberts Workshops. She made over sixty visits to the Dundee workshop, the last in 1994, following its merger with Blindcraft to create Dovetail Enterprises.
