The Queen Mother (54 page)

They drove in a horse-drawn carriage down the fine processional route of St Kilda’s Avenue into the city, Sydney’s historic rival. Just as
they entered the grounds of Federal Government House, a terrible thing happened. The wingtips of two of the planes in their Royal Australian Air Force escort touched and the planes crashed, killing the crews in front of their eyes. The Duchess, already under strain, was very upset and, although she continued with the programme for the next two days, Commander White decided she should spend the weekend resting at Government House. The Duke sent a message of heartfelt sympathy.
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Three days later, on 25 April, came Anzac Day, perhaps the most emotional in the Australian and New Zealand calendar, evoking memories of sacrifice in Flanders, Palestine and above all Gallipoli. Thousands upon thousands of people from all over Victoria poured into Melbourne to see the salute taken by the son of the monarch in whose name those sacrifices had been made. After laying a wreath on the Cenotaph in front of Parliament House, the Duke joined the Governor General and the Governor on the saluting base.
Renown
’s Marine Band led the parade, followed by Australia’s most distinguished officer, General Sir John Monash, and his staff. Then 25,000 men from all over Australia and New Zealand marched past, almost all in plain clothes but wearing all their medals, including twenty-nine recipients of the Victoria Cross. According to Lord Cavan, they marched ‘with a glorious swing – pride in themselves, and first rate dressing’.
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After the march-past the Duchess and her ladies in waiting set off for Government House but were prevented from leaving by ‘one of Australia’s really extraordinary outbursts’, as Lord Cavan described it. The crowds surged forward, with the police powerless to stop them. Dozens of people climbed on to the car. ‘However, with the curious instinct that just prevents an Australian undisciplined crowd from going too far, the situation was saved by a lot of Diggers
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forming a voluntary ring round the Duchess’ car, and so allowing it to progress at a yard a minute to Government House.’
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Commander White continued to keep a close eye on his charge, determined to restrict her programme whenever necessary to ensure she got through the remaining three weeks which were to culminate in the all-important ceremony in Canberra. From Melbourne they proceeded to Ballarat and Adelaide, where 12,000 people attended a public reception and 12,000 children then danced for them. En route
to Canberra they rested privately with Mr and Mrs Macfarlane of Tailem Bend, where the Duke took part in the unusual sport of a kangaroo hunt and the Duchess joined the picnic party. And then it was on to Canberra.

The new capital of the Commonwealth could not have been more different from the vibrant cities of Sydney and Melbourne – it was little more than a village set in fields filled with grazing cattle and sheep. When the Prince of Wales had visited it in 1920, he had called Canberra ‘a city of hope and foundation stones’. Now many of those foundations had grown buildings upon them but Canberra was still tiny and pastoral.
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The ceremony was imperial. On the warm, sunny morning of 9 May the Duke and Duchess travelled in a procession of carriages, with postilions dressed in scarlet and outriders in perukes and cockaded hats, to the new Parliament House. The Duke had slept badly and was nervous, because he understood only too well that this was a momentous occasion for Commonwealth, for Crown – and for himself.
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He inspected the guard of honour and was then presented with a golden key by the Australian Prime Minister, Stanley Bruce, and invited to unlock the door of the new building. At his own insistence, he then spoke on the steps to the crowds outside; many thought it the most moving speech he made on the whole tour. On this day, he said, ‘one feels the stirrings of a new birth, of quickened national activity, of a fuller consciousness of your destiny as one of the great self-governing units of the British Empire.’ This was the beginning of a new epoch, a moment to dream ‘of better things’.
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Dame Nellie Melba sang ‘God Save the King’ and the procession entered Parliament House. After formally unveiling the statue of King George V in the King’s Hall the Duke sat in the chair of the President of the Senate with the Duchess near by. Conditions were not ideal: the Senate Chamber was small and the lights of the film cameramen increased the temperature to 80 degrees within minutes. (The film of the event was distributed by Pathé News – the first time members of the Royal Family were seen around the Empire taking part in such a ceremony.) But the Duke spoke well, saying that the British Empire had advanced to a new concept of autonomy – ‘to the idea of a system of British nations, each freely ordering its own individual life, but bound together in unity by allegiance to one Crown and co-operating with one another in all that concerns the common weal’.
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After a
fanfare of trumpets and a twenty-one-gun salute, the clock struck twelve and the Parliament of the Commonwealth was open. The only sadness in an otherwise flawless event was the death of another pilot, Flying Officer F. E. Ewen, whose plane crashed in front of Parliament House during a review of troops that afternoon. The Duke and Duchess were shocked and sent a wreath; Ewen’s mother later wrote to thank them.

Their journey was almost done. From Canberra they returned to Melbourne to rejoin
Renown
. They chose to make the last part of the journey in open cars and stopped at the town halls of South Melbourne to say goodbye. After sailing from Melbourne on 12 May, they had a rough crossing of the Great Australian Bight. The Duchess related to the King, ‘I got washed out of bed at 3 am by a huge sea which crashed suddenly over the ship, & I had to spend an hour drying my hair at the radiator! I could not help laughing, but it was very annoying too.’
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They had one more Australian destination, Fremantle, the principal port in Western Australia, where they had to gird themselves one more time for the familiar programme of addresses, bouquets, speeches, openings and inspections. Their effect on the crowds and the press there was the same as in the rest of the continent. The Albany
Dispatch
recorded, in unusually purple prose, that the Duchess persuaded her husband, anxious to keep to the timetable, to make an impromptu stop at the Anzac Memorial Hospital at Albany.

After they had finally embarked in
Renown
for home, one man in the crowd in Perth wrote to the Duchess to say that he had heard the remark of a twelve-year-old schoolboy who had seen her pass: ‘ “She looked at me and I got a smile too” … I could judge by the tone of his voice you had won his little heart.’ He ended, ‘Hoping that if one day the people of the British Empire are fortunate enough to have you
as our Queen, you will not lose the power of your winning smile nor your happy service of kindly thought and deed.’
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appropriate tribute to the Duchess and to her husband. They had each discovered qualities and powers within themselves of which they had scarcely known. Sir Tom Bridges, Governor of South Australia, wrote to the King, ‘His Royal Highness has touched people profoundly by his youth, his simplicity and his natural bearing, while the Duchess has had a tremendous ovation and leaves us with the responsibility of having a continent in love with her.’
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Other reactions were similarly enthusiastic. Lady Strathmore told the Queen that she had received many letters from ex-soldiers who were veterans of Glamis showing the impact her son-in-law and daughter were having.
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Harry Batterbee wrote to Lord Stamfordham, ‘We are all feeling rather tired after our strenuous time, but I do not think that there can be any doubt whatever that the Australian Tour has been a great success and done a great deal of good. A nail has been driven into the coffin of Bolshevism, which will securely hold it down, I trust, for some time to come.’
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On board ship, the Duke had time to start a long letter to his father. It was with some pride, as well as relief, that he could tell the King that his Canberra speeches had gone off without a hitch. He paid credit again to Lionel Logue and added:

Both his parents wrote to the Duke in terms which must have pleased him. Queen Mary said, ‘We have had such delightful letters from various people about the Tour, telling us of your & E’s popularity & of the trouble you both gave yourselves to make the Tour the success it has been. You must both of you feel rewarded for all the trouble
you have taken & for the fatigue you have undergone. Of course the whole thing has been too strenuous & people have been too “exigeant” & wanted you to do too much, it is always difficult to make people realise that their “show” is not the only one!’
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They had hardly had time to start to relax in the heat of the Indian Ocean when, three days out from Fremantle, on Queen Mary’s birthday, a serious fire broke out in
Renown
’s engine room. It was caused by an overflow of fuel oil between tanks; the engine room soon became an inferno and four of the boiler-room staff were gassed and burned as they tried in vain to douse the blaze. There was a grave risk that the ship’s principal oil tanks could explode, in which case
Renown
would almost certainly have been totally destroyed. Plans to abandon ship were readied, but as a result of the storms through which she had passed on her journey many of her lifeboats were out of action. The firefighters continued to struggle and after about eight hours they finally managed to extinguish the flames. It was a near-disaster, but the Duke was laconic when he told the King about it: ‘Oil is a dangerous substance for a fire & it might have been serious.’
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Harry Batterbee was perhaps nearer the mark in observing, ‘It was really great luck that we didn’t go up sky high. What a sensation it would have caused if we had just disappeared.’
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Years later Queen Elizabeth recalled that ‘the nearest ship was a thousand miles away. Totally empty sea. So we had to prepare to leave. The deck got quite hot and I couldn’t think of anything to take in the boat except a bottle of Malvern water and my [book of] prayers. I couldn’t leave them behind.’
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They broke the journey home in Mauritius, where the Duke enjoyed a rather exotic
chasse
or gigantic deer drive with more than sixty beaters, and the next day they attended the races, which enabled a lot of islanders to see them.
Le Mauricien
declared that the people of the island had been simply swept off their feet by the royal visit. Two cases of dolls’ – house furniture were sent from the island as a gift for Princess Elizabeth. They had one more stop before the Suez Canal, at Great Hanish Island in the Red Sea, a strategic oiling station for the British navy. The Duke hunted and shot an Arabian gazelle, but Lord Cavan enjoyed it less, writing to Stamfordham: ‘if ever you have a public man to get rid of – send him to Great Hanish Island where we stopped for 24 hours to oil. I have never seen or smelt anything more awful! & temperature is never under 95° & no shade!’
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Now that they were finally nearing home, the Duchess wrote to the King to say how much they were looking forward to seeing him and the Queen again.

After they had passed through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean the weather grew much more agreeable, but their work was not yet finished. They stopped for a fairly formal three-day visit in Malta, to find that Lord Louis Mountbatten was also there in his yacht
Shrimp
. After a brief stop at Gibraltar they finally approached Portsmouth on 27 June 1927. The King was, as throughout their trip, meticulous in his instructions on the dress required. On their arrival, he told the Duke, he should wear ‘Frock coat & epaulettes with star’ and he added, ‘We will not embrace at the station before so many people. When you kiss Mama take yr. hat off.’
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Queen Mary had been busy at 145 Piccadilly, where the Duke and Duchess and their daughter were now to live. Together with Lady Strathmore she had been furnishing the Princess’s nursery and had provided the baby with a cupboard for her toys. The Princess and Alah moved into the house just before her parents returned and Queen Mary suggested to Lady Strathmore that they both go to the house ‘with some flowers to arrange the rooms & just put a few finishing touches to make the rooms look homely’.
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