The Queen Mother (80 page)

From D’Arcy Osborne in Rome came a letter praising her for having returned to London when so many people were fleeing the city. Osborne had arrived in Rome to take up his post as British ambassador to the Holy See in 1936; he was to remain
en poste
until 1947. Throughout the war, this cultured and sensitive man braved all dangers and difficulties, serving with great courage and distinction, and
helping both Jews and Allied soldiers to escape the fascists. For much of the time he was a virtual prisoner in Vatican City; he was able to maintain contact with the Foreign Office but his correspondence with the Queen inevitably became infrequent.

For now, however, Osborne applauded the Munich agreement and thought that the crisis had shown ‘the undoubted horror of war among all the peoples’.
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In similar vein the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to the Queen, ‘I am so thankful that the King was spared the ordeal which his good father had to face in 1914.’
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Queen Mary agreed; she told the Queen she had no time for those who carped about Munich. She wished that, instead of finding fault, people would back Chamberlain ‘& help him in finding a real solution of the world’s difficulties’.
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Eloquent among the critics was Winston Churchill. On 5 October in the Commons debate on Munich, he made one of his most powerful speeches. ‘All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness.’ He understood the rapture that had greeted Chamberlain on his return from Munich. But he was sure that Britain would soon face demands that she surrender territory or liberty; freedom of speech would be curtailed. He argued that massive rearmament, particularly of the air force, was now vital, for Britain’s defences had been grossly neglected. He warned, ‘This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless, by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.’
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Churchill was right. The euphoria was short lived. The Germans honoured almost none of the promises made at Munich. Within weeks, Hitler had reneged on his assurance that he had no more territorial ambitions and had begun to threaten the Lithuanian city of Memel and the Free City of Danzig. On the night of 9/10 November the Nazis anti-Jewish pogroms reached a new level of barbarity with the destruction of Jewish property throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland during what became known as Kristallnacht. Churchill described these attacks as ‘the deep repeated strokes of the alarm bell’ which should be a call to action.
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D
ESPITE
THE
darkening situation abroad, at home public life for the King and Queen continued. Among the Queen’s engagements that
autumn, she visited the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street, the War-Disabled ex-Servicemen’s Exhibition at the Imperial Institute and the Queen’s Hospital for Children in Bethnal Green, and she received members of the International Labour Organization of the League of Nations. There were moments of relaxation, doubly welcome because of the stress of recent events. After a stay with her brother David and his wife at St Paul’s Walden in late November, she wrote to Rachel, ‘It was all so perfect – the house looking so lovely, the colours and flowers so exquisite, and that heavenly feeling of ease and friendliness which did us both so much good.’
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At Christmas the Royal Family gathered as usual at Sandringham. But the Queen fell ill again – exhaustion had brought on influenza – and she took to her bed for a week after Christmas.

After she returned to London at the end of January 1939 the Queen conducted a normal mix of duties – among her engagements, she attended a congress for the leisure industry, an exhibition of Scottish art at the Royal Academy, the British Industries Fair at Earls Court, and a festival for the Women Helpers of one of her favourite charities, Toc H, at the Albert Hall. She continued to need the encouragement of her family and friends. Jasper Ridley wrote to praise her and the King: ‘the way in which you have seized hold of the situation and are running it for the good – altho’ it surprises me not at all – is so wholly admirable.’
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A less obvious force for good was still the Duke of Windsor. Since the summer of 1938 the patient Walter Monckton had been attempting to mediate between him and his family over his desire to return to England, with his wife, as early as that November. Monckton and the Prime Minister discussed the problem with the King and Queen at Balmoral. The Prime Minister was not averse to the Duke of Windsor’s return, and felt that he could even be given a public role similar to that of the King’s younger brothers. According to Monckton, the King was ‘not fundamentally’ against this. But, as he recorded later, ‘I think the Queen felt quite plainly that it was undesirable to give the Duke any effective sphere of work. I felt then, as always, that she naturally thought that she must be on her guard because the Duke of Windsor to whom the other brothers had always looked up, was an attractive, vital creature who might be the rallying point for any who might be critical of the new king who was less superficially endowed with the arts and graces that please.’
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As a result of these discussions the King
wrote to his brother to say that he should postpone his return until 1939.

Queen Mary and the Queen remained opposed to the Windsors’ return. The press had taken up the question, and letters from the public hostile to the very notion were being received at Buckingham Palace and Marlborough House. The Queen sent several of the letters she had received to Monckton, remarking, ‘I do hope that it will be possible to put people’s minds at rest
soon
, as such gossip reacts badly on the King & Queen.’
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Monckton continued to use his good offices to dissuade the Duke, but in February 1939 he asked to see Queen Mary in order to pass on a message enquiring whether she would receive both Duke and Duchess if they came to London. On the King’s advice his mother decided not to see Monckton, but sent him a message saying that she could not receive them.
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Monckton was in a difficult position and he asked the King to give the Duke some hope that he and the Duchess would eventually be received. ‘To put the matter at its lowest, I find it increasingly difficult to keep him quiet … I should hate to see any open controversy about it.’
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Shortly afterwards, the Duke vented his fury with his family over the dedication of his father King George V’s tomb in St George’s Chapel. He believed that his contribution to the cost of the tomb had not been adequately recognized, and that he had not been kept properly informed of the date of its dedication. In response to a kind letter from Queen Mary to him, the Duke wrote in evident anger that her letter was ‘extremely illuminating, altho’ I greatly regret that it shld have taken so sacred an occasion to disclose so much that is unpleasant, & to destroy the last vestige of feeling I had left for you all as a family’. He had by now turned totally against the sister-in-law he had loved, the new Queen, and he ended his letter, ‘You, by your final refusal to receive Walter Monckton last month, & BERTIE, BY HIS IGNOMINIOUS CAPITULATION TO THE WILES OF HIS AMBITIOUS WIFE, have made further normal correspondence between us impossible.’
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Queen Mary was distressed by this outburst and she at once sent a note to her daughter-in-law asking her to come and see her. The Queen did so and, though no record of the meeting exists, it can be assumed that she tried to comfort her mother-in-law.
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The Duke of Windsor was an unwelcome distraction. Over all hung the menace of fascism. Chamberlain had still not abandoned his
hopes of preserving some sort of peace. But at the same time he did allow rearmament to continue. Production of Hurricane and Spitfire planes increased and the Air Ministry was swiftly building its Home Chain network of early-warning radar stations. Not all politicians approved. Clement Attlee, the Labour leader, wrote to his brother Tom, ‘Neville annoys me by mouthing the arguments of complete pacifism while piling up armaments.’
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In fact such rearmament was the only possible justification for a period of appeasement – and arguments over the extent to which the government used the year’s grace after Munich to build up British military capabilities continue to rage today.
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In mid-February the King and Queen travelled to Tyneside where the King launched
King George V
, the first British battleship built in fourteen years. They inspected the Vickers Armstrong armament works at Elswick where tanks, tracked vehicles, bombs, guns and aircraft components were being manufactured, and also visited various hospitals, health clinics and training centres. A few days later at the British Industries Fair at Olympia, they were shown anti-aircraft guns. The Queen attended a House of Commons debate on a government bill to build fifty camps, to be used by schoolchildren if peace prevailed, or by refugees from the cities if war broke out.

It became more and more obvious that Munich had done nothing to diminish Hitler’s appetite. On 15 March 1939 German troops marched into Prague. From the balcony of Hradčany Castle, the seat of the kings of Bohemia, Hitler declared that Czechoslovakia no longer existed.

Three days later the King and Queen listened together to a broadcast speech in which Chamberlain had finally to admit that Hitler had lied to him. He warned the German dictator that sacrifices for peace were over and that Britain would never surrender ‘the liberty
that we have enjoyed for hundreds of years’. The King immediately wrote to Chamberlain to support him and to say that his efforts for peace would not have been wasted ‘for they can have left no doubt in the minds of ordinary people all over the world of our love of peace & of our readiness to discuss with any nation whatever grievances they think they have.’
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Across the Channel there were hopes that British inaction in the face of aggression was over. On 21 March the French President and Madame Lebrun arrived in London for a return state visit; the King and Queen entertained them to lunch at Windsor on 23 March. At the Guildhall banquet in the President’s honour the eminent French journalist Ludovic Naudeau, reporting on the visit for
L’lllustration
, noticed with satisfaction that, as the guests arrived, Winston Churchill received almost as much applause as Neville Chamberlain. Naudeau saw this as a sign that Britain was at last awake and undeceived, ready to heed Churchill’s perspicacious warnings and demands for rearmament.
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At the end of that month rumours of an impending German attack on Poland – even more of a ‘faraway country’ than Czechoslovakia – led Chamberlain to offer a guarantee of that country’s integrity. France joined Britain. On Good Friday Italy invaded Albania and London gave similar guarantees to Romania and Greece. Britain had now declared herself to be standing solidly against the dictators and their serial aggression.
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At the end of April 1939 Chamberlain announced that, for the first time ever in time of peace, the British government would introduce compulsory military service, despite opposition from the Labour and Liberal parties.

Such huge changes in British policy towards Europe and the dictators led, of course, to great debates, public and private. Within Buckingham Palace, as everywhere else, there were disagreements. Alec Hardinge, a consistent critic of Chamberlain and of Munich, was troubled to find himself disagreeing with the Queen, who still wished to give the Prime Minister’s policies the benefit of the doubt.
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After
a long conversation with her at the end of April 1939, Hardinge wrote that she found it hard to see what Britain had done wrong. She said that she did not like the idea of conscription, nor the creation of a large army to defend other people’s frontiers. ‘Her whole judgement is based on what is right or wrong to do, not on its consequences.’ She resented Britain being blamed over Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, she feared that in the end Britain would be left ‘holding the baby’. (‘How right she was we did not clearly see then,’ Hardinge added in 1941.)

Hardinge noted that the Queen was ‘angelic’ in her disagreement with him. But he was disturbed by the conversation ‘because HM’s judgement and common sense are so right always’. When the King joined them, he did not seem worried about the idea of conscription, even though the unions were much opposed to it. Hardinge said he thought that the unions could be talked round – ‘upon which the King said, “Who by?” and the Queen at once answered, “you’ll have to do it, of course – darling.” ’
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Hardinge clearly believed both that the Queen’s influence counted for a great deal with the King and that this was usually for the good – though not on the matter of appeasement. Many years later Hardinge told the King’s official biographer that early in his reign the King would refuse to discuss business with him but invariably went to talk to the Queen instead, returning with a decision which Hardinge attributed to her. And as Hardinge observed, her views were further to the right than those of her husband.
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Whether or not Hardinge’s retrospective analysis was correct, there is no doubt that the Queen knew far more about affairs of state than did either Queen Alexandra or Queen Mary. But it is difficult to gauge the extent of her influence. She was utterly discreet and never talked,
nor wrote even in letters to her family, about this aspect of her partnership with the King.

But it is clear that, although Hardinge had at first found the new King inarticulate and indecisive, his own guidance, together with the Queen’s constant support of her husband, had gradually increased the King’s self-confidence. George VI was quoted as saying that after he became King he discovered that he was for the first time in his life able to make up his own mind.
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It was a happy experience and it meant that his relationship with the Queen began to change; the couple became more interdependent and she began to rely also on him. Her sister Rose said, ‘In fundamental things she leant on him; I have always felt how much the Queen depended on the King.’
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