THE QUEEN MOTHER.
William Shawcross.
PREFACE.
HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN did me the signal honour, in July 2003, of inviting me to write the official biography of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. I was given unrestricted access both to Queen Elizabeth"s papers and to members of her family, Household and staff. I am deeply grateful to The Queen for the help I have received, and I thank The Duke of Edinburgh, The Prince of Wales, The Duke of York, The Earl of Wess.e.x, The Princess Royal, The Duke of Gloucester, The Duke of Kent, Princess Alexandra, The d.u.c.h.ess of Cornwall, Viscount Linley, Lady Sarah Chatto and The Earl of Snowdon for their invaluable a.s.sistance. I thank The Queen for permission to quote from material in the Royal Archives, as well as from letters in other collections subject to her copyright, and, above all, I thank Her Majesty for giving me absolute freedom to write as I wished.
The Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, where Queen Elizabeth"s private and official papers are housed, are at the top of a long steep staircase in the Round Tower. I have rarely worked in a more delightful place. During my numerous visits there I was treated with the greatest patience by the Registrar, Pam Clark, and her staff, including Jill Kelsey, Allison Derrett and Angie Barker, and by the former Curator of the Royal Photograph Collection, Frances Dimond. The present Curator, Sophie Gordon, and the a.s.sistant Curator, Lisa Heighway, with Paul Stonell and Alessandro Nasini have done sterling work providing ill.u.s.trations from Queen Elizabeth"s photograph collection.
Among the papers to which I was given access in the Royal Archives were the transcripts of conversations which Queen Elizabeth had in 1994 and 1995 with Eric Anderson, who had just retired as head master of Eton College. These, together with Queen Elizabeth"s letters to her family and friends,* were vitally important in providing her own commentary on her life.
At Glamis Castle, ancestral home of the Bowes Lyon family, by kindness of the eighteenth Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne I was able to read more of Queen Elizabeth"s letters among her parents" papers, as well as other family correspondence which shed light on her early life. I was greatly a.s.sisted in my research there by the Archivist, Jane Anderson, who also provided valuable help with picture research. My thanks are due to Lord Strathmore for permission to quote from papers at Glamis and to reproduce photographs from his family alb.u.ms. Many members of his family were very kind to me; they include his mother Mary, Dowager Countess of Strathmore, who answered my innumerable questions about the family, and his sister Lady Elizabeth Leeming, to whom I am deeply indebted. On my behalf she carried out superb research in the archives at Glamis and elsewhere, interviewed members of her family, and compiled a series of richly informative notes on the family and its homes. Her expertise as both a researcher and an editor was invaluable throughout.
At St Paul"s Walden Bury, the Queen Mother"s other childhood home, Sir Simon and Lady Bowes Lyon kindly allowed me access to yet more family letters and papers. Among other members of the Bowes Lyon family, I am grateful to Queen Elizabeth"s nieces Lady Mary Clayton, Lady Mary Colman and the Hon. Mrs Rhodes (nee Margaret Elphinstone), whose help I have greatly appreciated, and also to Queen Elizabeth"s nephew the Hon. Albemarle Bowes Lyon, to her cousin John Bowes Lyon, and to Rosie Stancer, her great-niece, and her husband William.
I thank Her Majesty Queen Fabiola of the Belgians for permission to quote a letter she wrote to Queen Elizabeth, Her Majesty The Queen of Denmark for permission to quote from a letter from the late Queen Ingrid, Her Majesty The Queen of the Netherlands for permission to quote from a letter from the late Princess Juliana, and His Majesty The King of Norway for permission to quote from a letter from the late Queen Maud.
I am indebted to all those who have allowed me to read, and to quote from, their family papers; some of them I have to thank also for permission to quote from letters in which they own the copyright among Queen Elizabeth"s papers at Windsor. They include: the Earl of Airlie, Anne, Countess Attlee, John Dalrymple Hamilton, Viscount Davidson, Eric and Sir Geoffrey de Bellaigue, Lady Katharine Farrell, George Fergusson, Sir Edmund Grove, the Earl of Halifax, Kate Hall, Richard Hall, Mrs David Hankinson and the Hon. Mrs David Erskine, Lord Hardinge of Penshurst and the Hon. Lady Murray, Mrs Sylvia Hudson, Carol Hughes, Lady May, David Micklethwait, Viscount Norwich, Wilfred Notley, Rev. Jonathan Peel, Lady Penn, the Earl of Rosslyn, the Marquess of Salisbury (whose archivist, Robin Harcourt-Smith, I wish also to thank for his help), Susannah Sitwell, Earl Spencer (whose archivist, Bruce Bailey, I thank likewise), Margaret Vyner and her daughter Violet, Robert Woods and the Earl of Woolton.
I wish also to express my thanks to those who have given me permission to quote from their letters, or letters from their forebears, among Queen Elizabeth"s papers or in other collections I have consulted. They include Lord Annaly, Sir Toby Anstruther, Bt, Bryan Ba.s.set, Winston Churchill, Mrs Alan Clark, the Duke of Devonshire, the Rev. Canon Dendle French, Lord Gage, Lord Gladwyn, Sir Carron Greig and Geordie Greig, James Joicey-Cecil, Candida Lycett Green, Sir Ian Rankin, Sir Adam Ridley, Lady Elizabeth Shakerley, the Earl of Stockton, Sir Tom Stoppard, Viscount Stuart of Findhorn and Baroness Thatcher.
My thanks are due for a.s.sistance with my research and, where appropriate, permission to publish material from the collections in their care, to Allen Packwood and Andrew Riley at the Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge (Churchill Papers, Lascelles Papers, Lloyd Papers, Norwich Papers), Helen Langley and her staff at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Attlee Papers, Beck Papers, Isaiah Berlin Papers, Monckton Papers, Bonham Carter Papers, Violet Milner Papers, Woolton Papers), Dr Frances Harris and William Frame at the British Library (Airlie Papers), the staff of The National Archives (Foreign Office Papers), the staff of the National Library of Scotland (Ballantrae Papers), Christine Penney and her staff at Birmingham University Archives (Chamberlain Papers), Michael Meredith at Eton College Library (Diana Cooper Papers), the staff of the Borthwick Inst.i.tute, University of York (Hickleton Papers), Dr Richard Palmer and his staff at Lambeth Palace Library (Lang Papers, Alan Don Papers), the staff of the Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone (Hardinge of Penshurst Papers), the staff of Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, in particular Denis Boule, Bill Russell, Paulette Dozois and Jennifer Mueller, and the staff of the Archives Nationales du Quebec, especially Louis Fournier, Pierre Rainville, Jacques Morin and Renald Lessard. I gratefully acknowledge the permission of Balliol College, Oxford to publish an extract from the Monckton Papers, and that of the Isaiah Berlin Literary Trust to quote from a letter from Sir Isaiah Berlin.
Many people in the Royal Household, past and present, have helped me in different ways. They include Sir Robin (now Lord) Janvrin, the Queen"s Private Secretary when I was invited to write this book, and his successor, Christopher Geidt. I have benefited greatly from their encouragement. I am also indebted to the Royal Librarian, the Hon. Lady Roberts, for her constant support, her invaluable knowledge and her eye for detail; she and her colleagues, Bridget Wright, Emma Stuart and Paul Carter, helped with enquiries about Queen Elizabeth"s extensive book collection. Sir Hugh Roberts, Director of the Royal Collection, provided much useful information and kind guidance throughout. Shruti Patel, Karen Lawson, Daniel Partridge and Eva Zielinska Millar of the Royal Collection Photographic Services a.s.sisted with ill.u.s.trations. In the office of The Duke of Edinburgh, Brigadier Sir Miles Hunt Davis, the Duke"s Private Secretary, and Dame Anne Griffiths were most helpful. At Clarence House I was greatly helped by Sir Stephen Lamport, Private Secretary to the Prince of Wales, and his successor Sir Michael Peat, as well as by David Hutson, Virginia Carington and Paddy Harverson.
I thank Penny Russell Smith, Press Secretary to the Queen when I began this book, for her help. In the later stages, her successor, Samantha Cohen, was impeccably wise and kind; I am very grateful to her. In her office several others, in particular Ailsa Anderson, were of great a.s.sistance. I am also grateful to others at Buckingham Palace, including Helen Cross, Doug King and Mrs Margaret Mattocks and her fine team on the Buckingham Palace switchboard.
Other members or former members of the Royal Household to whom I owe my thanks include the late Sir Richard Bayliss, Dr Ian Campbell, Lord Fellowes, the late Sir Edward Ford, Sister Gillian Frampton, Dr Jonathan Holliday, the late Lieutenant Colonel Sir John Johnston, the late Sir Oliver and Lady Millar, Peter Ord, Canon John Ovenden, Sir Richard Thompson and Mr Roger Vickers.
Among the members of The Queen Mother"s Household to whom I am greatly indebted are Sir Alastair Aird, her last Private Secretary, and Lady Aird, who were unfailingly helpful; I was also given much a.s.sistance by the Hon. Nicholas a.s.sheton, Dame Frances Campbell-Preston, the late Lady Margaret Colville, Fiona Fletcher, Mrs Michael Gordon-Lennox, the late Sir John and Lady Griffin, Elizabeth, Lady Grimthorpe, Martin and Catriona Leslie, Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, Jeremy Mainwaring Burton, Lucy Murphy and Major Raymond Seymour. Sir Michael and Lady Angela Oswald gave me enormous a.s.sistance, especially in regard to Queen Elizabeth"s pa.s.sion for steeplechasing. Ashe Windham, former equerry and friend of Queen Elizabeth, was my delightful guide to the Castle of Mey and much more. Lady Penn, former lady in waiting to Queen Elizabeth, has given me consistent and excellent advice.
Many former members of Queen Elizabeth"s staff helped me with obvious delight in the subject; they include Leslie Chappell, Sadie Ewen, Nancy McCarthy, Danny and Sandy McCarthy, Jacqui Meakin, Michael Sealey, the late Clifford Skeet, the late William Tallon, June Webster, Ron Wellbelove and the late Charlie Wright.
A mult.i.tude of other people, some of them friends of Queen Elizabeth, a.s.sisted me. They included the Countess of Airlie, Christiane Besse, Lord and Lady Brabourne, John Bridcut, Donald Cameron, George Carey, Lord and the late Lady Carrington, Sir Edward Cazalet and Mrs Peter Cazalet, Rev. Professor Dr Owen Chadwick, Lady Charteris, Rosemary Coleman, Sir Timothy Colman, Dr Anita Davies, Deborah, d.u.c.h.ess of Devonshire, Annabel Eliot, Alwyne Farqharson, Julian Fellowes, Andrew Festing, Lord and Lady Nicholas Gordon-Lennox, the Earl and Countess of Gowrie, the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Grafton, Dame Drue Heinz, Heather Henderson, Nigel Jaques, Lady Sarah Keswick, Sarah Key, Patricia, Countess Mountbatten of Burma, Mrs Timmy Munro, James Murray, Lady Rupert Nevill, Patty Palmer Tomkinson, Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles, Major Johnny Perkins, Johnny Robertson, Leo Rothschild, Clare and Oliver Russell, Lord and Lady Sainsbury, the late Bruce Shand, Christine Shearer, Anne Sloman, Lizzie Spender, Betty Berkeley Stafford, Margaret, Dowager Viscountess Thurso, the d.u.c.h.ess of Westminster, Galen and Hilary Weston, Lynne Wilson and the late Lord Wyatt and Lady Wyatt.
I benefited from valuable insights into Queen Elizabeth"s private visits to France and Italy provided by the Marquise de Ravenel, daughter of Prince Jean-Louis de Faucigny-Lucinge, the orchestrator of many of the tours, Bertrand du Vignaud de Villefort, the Prince"s successor as tour organizer, Laure, Princesse de Beauvau-Craon, Queen Elizabeth"s hostess in Lorraine, and Madame Servagnat, survivor of Ravensbruck, whom she met during her visit to Epernay in 1983. I thank them all for their kind help. In Australia, Sir James Scholtens reminisced with great charm about Queen Elizabeth"s tours there in which he was involved.
In Canada, where my research was conducted by Sheila de Bellaigue, I thank: at Rideau Hall, Ottawa, Rosemary Doyle-Morier for valuable contacts and information, and Patricia McRae for arranging access to Governor Generals" papers; also in Ottawa, Martin and Louise Tetreault and Roger and Huguette Potvin; in Montreal, Robin Quinlan, for kind hospitality and introductions to Mrs Tom Price, Colonel Bruce Bolton, Colonel Victor Chartier, Tom Bourne and Elspeth Straker, all of whom provided useful information about Queen Elizabeth"s links with The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada, and Mrs Alan Gordon, in whose house Queen Elizabeth stayed in 1987; in Toronto, Walter Borosa, former Chief of Protocol for Ontario, who was involved with many of her visits, Colonel Hugh Stewart, former Colonel of The Toronto Scottish (The Queen Mother"s Own) Regiment, and David Willmot, who supplied tales of Queen Elizabeth"s visits to the Woodbine races; also Harris Boyd, Federal Co-ordinator of Queen Elizabeth"s later tours, and Jean-Paul Roy, his deputy, both of whom provided further enlightenment about her visits and her occasionally wilful, but highly popular, deviations from the official programme; and Beverly McLaughlin, Chief Justice of Canada, who drew my attention to Queen Elizabeth"s speech on laying the foundation stone of the Supreme Court building in Ottawa in 1939.
Others to whom I owe warm thanks for advice, information or help in many different ways are Dr Joanna Marschner of Historic Royal Palaces and Joanna Has.h.a.gen of the Bowes Museum, for information on Queen Elizabeth"s clothes; Lucia van der Post, for an a.s.sessment of Queen Elizabeth"s style of dress; Wendy Moore, for information on Mary Eleanor Bowes; Donald Gillies, for information on Archie Clark Kerr; Clare Elmquist, for information on Lydie Lachaise; Dr Christina de Bellaigue, for information on private education for girls; Gladys n.o.ble, for information on Lord Roberts Memorial Workshops; Ian Shapiro, for kindly showing me a letter from King George VI in his collection; Bob Steward, for research on Catherine Maclean; Charles Sumner, for information regarding his aunt, Beryl Poignand.
All writers owe debts to other writers. As well as those already mentioned, many eminent historians a.s.sisted me with great kindness; they include my old friend Kenneth Rose, author of, inter alia, an authoritative biography of King George V, and Philip Ziegler, a particular source of wisdom on the role of the official biographer. I am grateful also for the most generous advice of Sir Martin Gilbert, official biographer of Winston Churchill, and I thank D. R. Thorpe, official biographer of Lord Home. Sir Eric Anderson and his wife Poppy gave me wonderful support. Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at Oxford University and author, among other distinguished works, of The British Const.i.tution, was a peerless guide to me throughout the writing of this book.
Much has already been written about Queen Elizabeth. The first biography of the then d.u.c.h.ess of York was written by Lady Cynthia Asquith with the d.u.c.h.ess"s a.s.sistance, and was published in 1927. In the 1960s Dorothy Laird was given official a.s.sistance to prepare what was called the "first authorised biographical study of Her Majesty". Queen Elizabeth was such a compelling subject that these books were followed by many more, including The Queen Mother (1981), by Elizabeth Longford, a great historian whom I was fortunate to know from my childhood, My Darling Buffy (1997) in which Grania Forbes explored Elizabeth Bowes Lyon"s youth and, especially, Queen Elizabeth, by Hugo Vickers (2005). In her George VI (1989) Sarah Bradford naturally wrote at length about Queen Elizabeth too. All of these books contain valuable original material which I have used and credited and I am grateful to the authors for their help.
I had an exceptional group of people helping me with my research Patricia Lennox-Boyd, Douglas Murray and Rachel Smith delved in various archives and libraries and on the internet; Julia Melvin and Gill Middleburgh chronicled particular areas of Queen Elizabeth"s life from the records in the Royal Archives and elsewhere, and helped in many other ways; Lucy Murphy, after serving for thirty-four years in Queen Elizabeth"s office, brought her invaluable knowledge to my aid. The person who helped me most throughout these six years was Sheila de Bellaigue, former Registrar of the Royal Archives. I am deeply indebted to her for her diligent research, her wit, her meticulous attention to detail and her scholarly advice. I could never have written this book without her.
My literary agents Carol Heaton in London and Lynn Nesbit in New York have both been, as usual, immensely supportive; and my publishers, Macmillan in London and Knopf in New York, have been most forbearing and helpful. In particular Georgina Morley, and her colleagues at Macmillan, guided me and the book to publication with skill and fort.i.tude. In New York, Sonny Mehta displayed his usual elan, kindness and judgement. In London I was given excellent advice by Charles Elliott and towards the end I was wonderfully a.s.sisted by Peter James, the doyen of copyeditors. I count myself very fortunate to have persuaded the legendary Douglas Matthews to compile the index.
My family has had to live with my work on this book for a long time and I thank especially my wife Olga for her understanding, and Conrad, Ellie, Alex and Charlie for their tolerance. My sister Joanna and my brother Hume have also helped me kindly. And I thank my late parents, Hartley and Joan, for years of encouragement. One of my earliest memories, from February 1952, is of my mother weeping in our garden; when I asked her why, she replied, "The King has died."
The nature of official biography inevitably changes over time. In his inaugural lecture as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Professor of British History at the University of London, David Cannadine remarked that until the end of the 1950s, royal biographers "were specifically instructed to write nothing that was embarra.s.sing to the inst.i.tution of monarchy, or critical of the particular individual who was being thus commemorated and memorialised". By Harold Nicolson"s account, such strictures were indeed placed upon him when he began work on King George V"s biography. John Wheeler-Bennett, official biographer of Queen Elizabeth"s husband, King George VI, thought that royal biography was almost a sacred enterprise which, like matrimony, ought "not to be entered into inadvisedly, or lightly; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly and in the fear of G.o.d".
No such instructions were issued and no such fears were instilled in me; on the contrary, I was encouraged to write what I wished. When I showed members of Queen Elizabeth"s family, Household and staff sections of the ma.n.u.script, they offered many helpful suggestions to ensure accuracy and completeness, but the decision on what to publish remained mine alone. I have been guided by the advice of Hamlet "Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor."
Any biography, even one as long as this, is selective; the writer has to choose which aspects of the subject to concentrate upon. I have quoted at length from Queen Elizabeth"s private letters because few of them have been seen before and because I found them remarkable from childhood to old age she wrote with a rare clarity and verve. Her letters illuminate sides of her character which were not always clear to people beyond her immediate family. Not all her letters, written or received, survive; sadly I was able to find few between her and her mother, Lady Strathmore. As happens in any family, other letters have been lost or thrown away over the years. Nevertheless, I have sought wherever possible to use the primary sources uniquely available to me when narrating the trajectory of Queen Elizabeth"s life.
The English philosopher Roger Scruton has, in a happy phrase, described the British monarchy as "the light above politics". It is the light that Queen Elizabeth cast over the life of the nation that I have tried to describe.
WILLIAM SHAWCROSS.
July 2009.
* In this book the misspellings of Queen Elizabeth"s childhood letters have been left as written, but her occasional mistakes as an adult have been corrected (as have those of a few other writers) on the grounds that they are an unnecessary distraction from the sense of the letters. She herself was well aware that spelling was not her strong point. "It all smacks to me of BUREAUCRACY!!!" she once wrote in a note inveighing against that particular bugbear. "How fortunate that I have just learnt to spell this valuable word!" (RA QEQM/PRIV/MISCOFF)
PROLOGUE.
WEDNESDAY 19 JULY 2000 was the day chosen for the pageant celebrating the hundredth birthday of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. In London, the day did not begin well. There were bomb scares, the controlled explosion of a suspicious bag, and many trains were cancelled. Senior police officers considered whether the whole event should be abandoned. It was not.
The celebration, on Horse Guards Parade in Whitehall, had been designed as a joyful tribute to Queen Elizabeth and the hundreds of organizations with which she was connected. In warm afternoon sunshine, as the National Anthem was performed by ma.s.sed military bands, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and a choir of a thousand singers, Queen Elizabeth, dressed in pink, arrived with her grandson the Prince of Wales in a landau escorted by the Household Cavalry.
After she had inspected the troops, she and the Prince sat on a flower-bedecked dais (though she stood much of the time) to watch the parade together. It began with a march-past of the regiments of which she was colonel-in-chief, followed by the King"s Troop of the Royal Horse Artillery and the Mounted Bands of the Household Cavalry. One hundred homing doves were released as a young boy sang "Oh for the Wings of a Dove".
Then came a cavalcade of the century, a light-hearted look at the hundred years she had lived through; more of a circus than a parade, it included 450 children and adults, with a variety of stars. Among the scenes and players who pa.s.sed in front of her were soldiers of the First World War, ballroom dancers from the 1920s, a Second World War fire engine and ambulance, Pearly Kings and Queens from the East End of London, and people in 1940s dress celebrating victory in 1945. Then came a series of post-war cars Enid Blyton"s Noddy in his yellow car, the first Mini Minor, James Bond"s Aston Martin, an E-type Jaguar. More recent and perhaps more surprising twentieth-century memories were recalled by h.e.l.l"s Angels on their bikes, punk-rock youths in black and the television characters, the Wombles.
After this eclectic depiction of the previous ten decades, representatives of 170 of the more than 300 civil organizations, charities and other groups with which Queen Elizabeth was a.s.sociated marched past her. This part of the parade began with Queen Elizabeth"s page leading two of her corgis, the breed of dog which had for so long shared her life. There were more animals: camels (ridden by members of the Worshipful Company of Grocers, whose emblem is a camel), horses, an Aberdeen Angus bull, North Country Cheviot sheep, chickens, racehorses. The groups waving gaily as they pa.s.sed included the Girls" Brigade, Queen Elizabeth"s Overseas Nursing Services a.s.sociation, the Cookery and Food a.s.sociation (a hundred chefs all in their whites), the Mothers" Union, the Poultry Club of Great Britain, the Royal National Lifeboat Inst.i.tution, the National Trust, the Royal College of Midwives, St John Ambulance Brigade, the Royal School of Needlework, the Colditz a.s.sociation, the Battle of Britain Fighter a.s.sociation, the Bomber Command a.s.sociation and, bringing up the rear, twenty-two holders of the Victoria and George Crosses, Britain"s highest awards for heroism, followed by the venerable Chelsea Pensioners marching stiffly but proudly in their bright red uniforms. Everyone in the stands stood up as these brave men and women pa.s.sed.
RAF planes from the Second World War a Spitfire, a Hurricane, a Lancaster bomber, a Bristol Blenheim flew overhead, followed by the Red Arrows trailing red, white and blue vapour trails. And all the while the bands and the orchestra played on and the choirs sang. Hubert Parry"s glorious anthem "I Was Glad", which had been sung at King George VI and Queen Elizabeth"s Coronation in 1937, was followed by First World War music-hall favourites such as "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag", "Keep the Home Fires Burning" and (nicely vulgar) "My Old Man Said Follow the Van". Three hundred children from the Chicken Shed Company danced. Altogether some 2,000 military personnel and more than 5,000 civilians celebrated on Horse Guards Parade.
The whole event lasted an hour and a half, and at the end the Queen Mother made a short speech of thanks saying it had been a wonderful afternoon and "a great joy to me". The crowd cheered, the National Anthem was sung again, and Queen Elizabeth got into her car to make a lap of honour past thousands of happy, cheering people before driving off to St James"s Palace, where she climbed the stairs to the State Rooms and spent the next hour and a half at a reception, sitting down only to talk to the singer Dame Vera Lynn.
Two weeks later, on the morning of her actual hundredth birthday, 4 August, a large crowd gathered outside her London home, Clarence House. The gates were opened and Queen Elizabeth came out to take the salute when the King"s Troop, the Royal Horse Artillery, marched past. In front of the crowd the royal postman, Tony Nicholls, delivered her the traditional message sent by the Queen to all her subjects who reach their hundredth birthday. The Queen Mother started to open it and then pa.s.sed it to her equerry. "Come on, use your sword," she said. Captain William de Rouet unsheathed his ceremonial blade and slit the envelope open. The message was written in the Queen"s own hand and read, "On your 100th birthday all the family join with me in sending you our loving best wishes for this special day. Lilibet".1 Then, with the Prince of Wales, Queen Elizabeth climbed into a landau decked with flowers in her racing colours of blue and gold, and was driven to Buckingham Palace past the large crowds lining the Mall. The Prince was deeply moved by the rapturous reception for his beloved grandmother. It was, he thought, "the British at their best and you always manage to bring the best out in people!"2 At the Palace, Queen Elizabeth appeared alone on the balcony. She waved to the crowds as she had first waved after her marriage in 1923 and, most famously, on Victory in Europe (VE) Day in May 1945. As the Band of the Coldstream Guards played Happy Birthday and the crowd roared its approval, she was joined by twenty-seven of her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nephews, nieces and many of their spouses.
In her long life the world had undergone technological change with unprecedented speed, and political transformations of exceptional violence. It had moved from the age of travel by horse to that of travel through s.p.a.ce. The First World War and the Russian Revolution had toppled the emperors of Austria, Germany and Russia. Many other European kings and queens had subsequently departed their thrones. The United Kingdom had suffered the trauma of the Great War and then faced almost continuous challenge from economic and political turmoil, from war and the threat of war through a world slump, the abdication of King Edward VIII, the Second World War, the Cold War. Queen Elizabeth had come to terms with ma.s.sive changes loss of empire, the growth of a modern multi-racial Commonwealth of newly independent states in Asia and Africa, and a social revolution in Britain itself which had begun with the first majority Labour government elected in 1945.
The British monarchy was not isolated from the political and social changes. Indeed the abdication in 1936 was a self-inflicted wound from which it might not have recovered. It had adapted itself, and it had survived; more than that, it had retained the consent of the people essential to const.i.tutional monarchy. This adaptation was largely due to the efforts of successive sovereigns and their advisers. But a key question, explored in this book, is the extent to which the consent necessary for its survival was generated by the woman who was for almost eighty years at its heart as d.u.c.h.ess of York, Queen and Queen Mother.
In any biography of a public person there is a danger of overemphasizing the role of the individual in shaping events. This is particularly true when the individual has, like Queen Elizabeth, great prestige but no real power. Nevertheless, it remains legitimate to ask how Queen Elizabeth responded to the great personal and public crises of her life and what wider effect this had.
How did she do it? What combination of qualities had enabled this young Scottish aristocrat to come into the Royal Family and play such a central role in the life of the nation for almost eighty years? What part did she play in her unique family, as a young married woman, as a mother, as grandmother and great-grandmother? And on the national stage, how did she earn and, more remarkably, how did she retain her popularity through all of the turbulent twentieth century? What were the drawbacks to her very particular style? What did she really contribute to the monarchy and to the nation in times of crisis and social revolution? Would the British monarchy have evolved in a very different way without her influence? And would that have helped or hindered the inst.i.tution and the country? All these questions can perhaps be examined in the context of a few words from Walter Bagehot, the mid-nineteenth-century writer who is often seen as the greatest interpreter of modern monarchy: "The nation is divided into parties, but the crown is of no party. Its apparent separation from business is that which removes it both from enmities and from desecration, which preserves its mystery, which enables it to combine the affection of conflicting parties to be a visible symbol of unity."
CHAPTER ONE.
AN EDWARDIAN CHILDHOOD.
19001914.
"The sun always seems to be shining"
ELIZABETH ANGELA Marguerite Bowes Lyon, the ninth child and the fourth daughter of Lord and Lady Glamis, was born at the end of the Victorian era, on 4 August 1900. Her family was of distinguished and colourful lineage in both England and Scotland.
Lord Glamis was the son and heir of the thirteenth Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. The Strathmores trace their ancestry back to the fourteenth century. John Lyon of Forteviot, the Chamberlain of Scotland from 1377 to 1382, married the daughter of King Robert II in 1376 and was knighted the following year. He was granted the thaneage of Glamis, a Crown possession in the Vale of Strathmore in eastern Scotland, some twelve miles north of Dundee, and this remained thereafter the princ.i.p.al seat of the family, although the transformation of a hunting lodge on the land into a castle did not begin until the early fifteenth century. Sir John Lyon"s grandson Patrick was created the first Lord of Glamis.
In 1537 Janet, Lady Glamis, a Douglas by birth, wife of the sixth Lord Glamis, was burned at the stake in Edinburgh on charges trumped up by James V of Scotland. Then, having disposed of Lady Glamis and imprisoned her two sons, the King seized the lands and Castle of Glamis. He occupied the Castle and held court there, on and off, between 1537 and 1542.
Their estates for the most part restored after James V"s death, the family continued to play a prominent role in Scottish royal history. The ninth Lord Glamis was created earl of Kinghorne by James VI of Scotland (James I of England) in 1606 and in 1677 Patrick, third Earl of Kinghorne, took the additional t.i.tle of Strathmore. He became known as Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, the t.i.tles held by his successors ever since. Earl Patrick"s Book of Record, a diary written between 1684 and 1689, is a treasured item in the family archives at the Castle. In it he wrote that he was four years old when his father died and "the debt which my father left behind him was, by inventories whereof some are yet extant, no less than four hundred thousand pounds."1 That this young man not only paid off such enormous sums but was also able to carry out extensive building works and improvements to the Castle says much for his qualities of character.
In 1767 John, the ninth Earl of Strathmore, married Mary Eleanor Bowes. She came from a well-established north of England family which owned the estates of Gibside and Streatlam Castle in County Durham.* As she was the only child and heiress of her parents, the family name was perpetuated through her marriage: the ninth Earl and his Countess by Act of Parliament took the surname of Bowes, to be used "next, before, and in addition to, their t.i.tles of honour".2 Under the eleventh Earl it became Lyon Bowes, and finally, with the accession of the thirteenth Earl in 1865, Bowes Lyon.
The Bowes family had acquired both power and wealth since Sir Adam Bowes, a fourteenth-century lawyer, was granted land at Streatlam, near Barnard Castle. And in 1691 Sir William Bowes married Elizabeth Blakiston, heiress of Gibside, thereby adding a large estate rich in coal to the Bowes possessions.
Mary Eleanor"s father, George Bowes, third son of Sir William, was both a considerable landowner and one of the first to make a fortune from coal. He was said by his daughter in her Confessions to have been "a great rake in his youth", but he was astute too, and "a great sportsman with a real appreciation of beauty in art, architecture and nature".3 The landscaped gardens at Gibside, created between 1729 and 1760, are testament to his energy and vision.
Mary Eleanor was born in 1749 to George and his second wife, Mary Gilbert, whose father Edward owned St Paul"s Walden Bury in Hertfordshire. She inherited her father"s charm, and he imbued her with his own enthusiasm for all kinds of knowledge.4 Her marriage to John Lyon, celebrated on her eighteenth birthday in 1767, produced five children, but it was unhappy. The ninth Earl of Strathmore was known as "the beautiful Lord Strathmore"; he was not uncultivated,* but his wife"s biographer, Jesse Foot, characterized him as a bluff, hearty man and "a good bottle companion", who was "not exactly calculated to make even a good learned woman a pleasing husband".5 He believed that Mary Eleanor"s intellect needed to be restrained. She had a serious interest in botany, and in 1769 she published a poetical drama called The Siege of Jerusalem. Her husband thought such pursuits frivolous.6 The Earl developed tuberculosis and he died at sea in March 1776 while on a voyage to Lisbon where he had hoped to recover his health. On board ship he wrote a kind last letter to his wife suggesting that she should protect her fortune by placing it in trust. He included another word of advice which perhaps ill.u.s.trates the differences between the couple. "I will say nothing of your extreme rage for literary fame. I think your own understanding, when matured, will convince you of the futility of the pursuit."7 After his death, Mary Eleanor was left "one of the richest widows in Britain".8 However, her personal life was tumultuous and in autumn 1776 she fell in love with Andrew Robinson Stoney, who became known as Stoney Bowes. One of the chroniclers of the Bowes Lyon family was frank in his description of Stoney Bowes: "This man was surely the lowest cad in history ... He was the type of seedy, gentlemanly bounder, calling himself "Captain", which has flourished in every era of society ... [He] was cunning, ruthless, s.a.d.i.s.tic with rat-like cleverness and a specious Irish charm. He was a fortune hunter of the worst type."9 He had driven his first wife to death; but he charmed and seduced Mary Eleanor and they married in January 1777.
Shortly afterwards Stoney Bowes discovered to his fury that his bride had taken her first husband"s advice and secured her fortune in trust. Four months after their marriage he managed to force Mary to sign a doc.u.ment revoking her prenuptial deed and he dissipated her wealth as swiftly as he could. When Mary Eleanor"s mother died in 1781 she left her daughter St Paul"s Walden Bury, which Stoney Bowes began to use as a safe house from his creditors in the north. Eventually Mary Eleanor managed to escape from him and file for divorce on grounds of his adultery and cruelty. In May 1786 this was granted, with Bowes being ordered to pay Mary 300 a year in alimony. However, he appealed, and began "a ferocious war of propaganda".10 He then had her abducted by force and taken north to Streatlam Castle, where he incarcerated her and tried to compel her at gunpoint both to sign doc.u.ments suspending the divorce and to cohabit with him again, which would have invalidated her case.11 She refused and he then dragged her around the north of England in appalling winter conditions while her solicitor searched for her in vain and had warrants issued for Stoney Bowes"s arrest. Eventually, after wild chases which excited wide public interest, she was rescued. Bowes and his accomplices were sentenced to three years in prison and fined 300. He continued a campaign of lawsuits and public vilification of his ex-wife until she died in 1800. Stoney Bowes himself died in 1810.12 Mary Eleanor"s son John had become the tenth Earl of Strathmore on his father"s death in 1776. Unlucky in love, he threw himself into the restoration and improvement of the estates at Streatlam and Gibside, and then fell for Mary Millner, the daughter of George and Ann Millner of Stainton, a village close to Streatlam Castle. She bore his son, John Bowes, on 19 June 1811, and he married her in July 1820, the day before he died.
The earldom of Strathmore and Kinghorne devolved on Mary Eleanor"s second surviving son, Thomas, who won the t.i.tles and estates after a lawsuit against his nephew John. He became the eleventh earl. But John Bowes inherited Gibside and Streatlam and, an accomplished man, he founded a great business empire. John Bowes and Partners operated twelve collieries and his income from coal alone was said to be immense. As MP for South Durham for fifteen years, he was a supporter of electoral reform, the anti-slavery movement and religious toleration. He bred four Derby winners at his Streatlam stud. In 1847 he went to live in Paris, where he met his first wife Josephine Benoite Coffin-Chevallier. Together they collected works of art and then built the Bowes Museum in the town of Barnard Castle, an imposing edifice in elaborate French Renaissance style, which is filled with fine paintings, tapestries, furniture and porcelain and thrives today, a striking monument to its founders.13*
By contrast, the eleventh Earl, although fortunate in his lawsuit against John Bowes, lacked financial ac.u.men and died in the debtors" sanctuary at Holyroodhouse in 1846. His son Thomas, Lord Glamis, had already died at Honfleur in 1834; he too was in debt and his wife, Lady Glamis, nee Charlotte Grinstead, was left with very little money to bring up four young children. Her son Thomas became the twelfth earl on the death of his grandfather. He too lived beyond his means and died, a ruined man, in 1865. However, he achieved the distinction of riding twice in the Grand National. Later, his great-niece Queen Elizabeth adopted his racing colours of buff and blue stripes, blue sleeves and a black cap.
Thomas was succeeded by his brother Claude, the thirteenth Earl, who finally brought the spendthrift era to an end. Life at Glamis under Earl Claude reflected all that was best in Victorian society, and his diaries show that it was neither stiff nor dull.14 In his book, The Days before Yesterday, published in 1920, Lord Frederick Hamilton looks back fondly on his stays with the thirteenth Earl of Strathmore and his family: "I like best, though, to think of the Glamis of my young days ... when the whole place was vibrant with joyous young life, and the stately, grey-bearded owner of the historic castle, and of many broad acres in Strathmore besides, found his greatest pleasure in seeing how happy his children and his guests could be under his roof."15 No more charming family could be imagined, according to Lord Frederick. Lord Strathmore"s seven sons and three daughters were all "born musicians", and they were always singing: "on the way to a cricket-match; on the road home from shooting; in the middle of dinner, even, this irrepressible family could not help bursting into harmony." They sang madrigals and part-songs after dinner, and at services in the family"s private chapel. They were equally good at acting and had a permanent stage at Glamis where they performed highlights from the latest Gilbert and Sullivan operas. All the sons were excellent shots and good at games; one brother was lawn tennis champion of Scotland, and another won the doubles championship of England.16 The thirteenth Earl"s life was a continual struggle to repair the damage done to the family by the reckless extravagance of his grandfather, father and brother. In 1853 he married Frances Dora Smith who shared his deep Christian faith. The first of their eleven children, Elizabeth Bowes Lyon"s father Claude George, was born in 1855. He held the courtesy t.i.tle of Lord Glamis, before succeeding as the fourteenth earl in 1904. Educated at Eton, he served in the Life Guards from 1876 to 1881, the year he married Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck.
Cecilia too came from a well-connected and devout family. She was the great-granddaughter of the third Duke of Portland, who was twice prime minister in George III"s reign. Had she been a boy, she would have succeeded her uncle, the fifth Duke. Cecilia"s father, Charles Cavendish-Bentinck, was a clergyman who died in 1865 aged only forty-seven, when Cecilia was just three. Her mother Caroline* married again in 1870, becoming Mrs Harry Scott of Ancrum; she was widowed again in 1889. In later years she spent a good deal of her time in Italy, first at the Villa Capponi in Florence, and then in San Remo and Bordighera, on the Italian Riviera west of Genoa.
Cecilia and Claude met in the 1870s. Some of the letters written during their courtship survive; they often corresponded more than once a day between Whitehall, where Claude was stationed with the Life Guards, and Forbes House, Ham, just west of London, where Cecilia lived with her mother. "Darling Claudie," Cecilia wrote from Ham not long before their marriage, "I wish you weren"t on guard & could come out for a ride with me do you remember our last ride? in the pelting rain? ... I think I will write to you again by the 3 o.c. post I"m longing for a letter from you dear Claudie it is the next thing to seeing you." "My darling Cecilia," he responded the same afternoon, "I have just received your sweet letter ... You ask me if I remember our last ride together? Of course I do, how awfully wet we got, but the ride before that I remember much better. I shall never forget that little corner, after pa.s.sing the park-keeper"s hut (where I once left my cover-coat) ... Hoping to get yr letter all right tomorrow morning and longing to see your sweet face again, I am, my darling Cecilia, Ever your most loving Claudie."17 Their wedding took place at Petersham Church on 16 July 1881. Cecilia was given away by her cousin, the sixth Duke of Portland. After "cake and lunch", as Lord Strathmore described it in his diary, Claude and Cecilia caught the 5.05 train to Hitchin en route to St Paul"s Walden Bury, the Hertfordshire house left to the groom by his paternal grandmother, Charlotte.18 Claude resigned his commission and they started their lives together as Lord and Lady Glamis.
Their first child, Violet Hyacinth, was born in April 1882 at St Paul"s Walden Bury, and the second, Mary Frances (May), born in August 1883, was followed by a line of sons Patrick (September 1884), John (Jock) (April 1886), Alexander (Alec) (April 1887), Fergus (April 1889). Next came another girl, Rose, born in May 1890, and then Michael (October 1893).
The family"s financial situation continued to improve as the new generation grew. John Bowes died in 1885 and, as he was childless, his houses returned to the main branch of the family. But in 1893 the family was struck by tragedy when Violet, Claude and Cecilia"s eldest child, contracted diphtheria. She died of heart failure on 17 October, just two weeks after the birth of her brother Michael. She was only eleven, and was always said in the family to have been a beautiful child there is a portrait of her at Glamis which would seem to bear this out. Lady Glamis bore her daughter"s loss with as much courage as she could muster.
After Michael"s birth in 1893 there was an interlude in the nursery at St Paul"s Walden Bury until Elizabeth was born seven years later in August 1900. Her mother was thirty-eight. There is a small mystery surrounding the actual place of her birth.
The birth certificate filed at the register office in Hitchin by her father, Lord Glamis, states that she was born at St Paul"s Walden Bury. The 1901 census return for the house, which Lord Glamis as head of the household was responsible for completing, also states that Elizabeth (by then eight months old) was born there.19 Her first biography, published in 1927, for which she gave the author Lady Cynthia Asquith some a.s.sistance, says the same. There is a plaque in the parish church of All Saints at St Paul"s Walden, unveiled by Queen Elizabeth herself in 1937, which commemorates her birth in the parish and baptism at the church.
She therefore caused some surprise when, close to her eightieth birthday, she said that she had been born in London.* In fact various records in her archives show that this was nothing new. The pa.s.sport issued to her in 1921, despite the evidence of her birth certificate, showed her place of birth as London.20 In the early 1950s the press office at Buckingham Palace repeatedly confirmed that the Queen had been born in London.21 In 1978 the President of the British Astrological and Psychic Society wrote to Queen Elizabeth in a quandary because he had just read that she had been born in Hertfordshire, whereas the astrological chart he had lately presented to her was calculated on Edinburgh as her place of birth. Which was correct? She wrote at the top of his letter: "I was born in London & christened in Hertfordshire."22 Unfortunately no comment by her seems to have survived as to why St Paul"s Walden was officially recorded as her birthplace, or why she willingly unveiled a plaque containing wrong information.
The birth of a ninth child is unlikely to attract as much attention as the first, and Elizabeth Bowes Lyon"s birth was no exception. Her grandfather"s diary does not even mention it, although he does record her father"s delayed arrival at Glamis on 22 August, causing him to miss the start of the grouse season by ten days.23 Nor has any correspondence about it come to light among the Strathmore papers. If the birth took place in London it was perhaps at the flat in Belgrave Mansions, Grosvenor Gardens, which Elizabeth"s paternal grandparents rented, and where Lord and Lady Glamis lived when they were in London.* Or it could have been at Mrs Scott"s home, Forbes House, where the couple"s third daughter, Rose, was born in 1890.
In her account of Queen Elizabeth"s early years, My Darling Buffy (1997), the writer Grania Forbes investigated the problem with diligence. She speculated that Elizabeth could have been born in a London hospital and then driven straight to Hertfordshire, or even that she was born en route between London and St Paul"s Walden. Either is no doubt possible, but the hospital hypothesis is unconvincing, because women of Lady Glamis"s station normally had their babies at home and also because it is likely that some record of a hospital birth would subsequently have emerged. Another possibility advanced by Forbes was that Elizabeth"s father, an absent-minded man, actually made a mistake when he registered his daughter"s birth, more than six weeks after the event.24 In his 2005 biography Hugo Vickers points out that Dorothy Laird who received authorization and help from the Queen Mother for her 1966 biography does not mention a place of birth.25 Vickers suggests that she might have wished to draw a veil over the whole subject.26 Perhaps she preferred not to discuss the matter both because she was uncertain of the truth and because she thought it of purely private interest. At least in her youth, details of births would have been considered too delicate an issue to be discussed even within the family.
The belief persists in some quarters, nevertheless, that her birth did indeed take place in Hertfordshire. Canon Dendle French, chaplain of Glamis Castle and formerly vicar at St Paul"s Walden, has done what he can to resolve the mystery.
Canon French traced Miss Margaret Valentine, daughter of the Rev. Henry Tristan Valentine, the vicar of St Paul"s Walden who baptized the baby Elizabeth in September 1900. Miss Valentine was "a very sprightly 91 year old, very lucid, and said she remembered very clearly August 4th 1900. "I was practising the piano at the Vicarage, and a maid came over from the Bury to say that Lady Glamis had given birth to a baby girl." I asked her if this had been at the Bury and she said that it was. She did not seem to have any doubt about this at all." Moreover, among the letters Canon French received was one from a man who said that his father-in-law, Dr Bernard Thomas, a GP in Welwyn, always insisted that he was present at the birth. He was the family doctor, but it seems unlikely that a Hertfordshire doctor would be called to attend a birth in London.
Canon French also discovered that there had been a certain amount of gossip in the village, including the rumour that Lady Glamis had actually been en route from London when the contractions began and that the birth took place in or near Welwyn. One story pa.s.sed down, but acknowledged as only hearsay, was that the baby started to arrive en route from London and that Lady Glamis was taken to Dr Thomas"s home, Bridge House, Welwyn, where the infant was delivered. At the same time, one of Canon French"s elderly parishioners told him that her aunt had been in charge of the laundry at the Bury and her work made her certain that the birth had taken place there. "So there you are!" concluded the Canon. "Conflicting stories and perhaps we shall never know but I have to say that London is the least likely place, given the evidence, and I still think it was in (or near) the Bury!"27 *
WHEREVER HER birth took place, the new century into which Elizabeth Bowes Lyon was born seemed to many to be a dawn of optimism. Europeans could look back on at least 200 years of growth and most of them would have a.s.sumed that it was progress. European industrialization in the nineteenth century had brought the greatest expansion of wealth the world had ever seen. There was no reason to expect this to end.
As John Roberts pointed out in his magisterial History of the World, the flow of commodities had increased exponentially: oil, gas and electricity had joined coal, wood, wind and water as sources of energy. Railways, electric trams, steamships, motor cars, even bicycles, brought remarkable changes to communications indeed it was the greatest revolution in transport since animals had been tied to carts thousands of years before. Industrialization at the end of the nineteenth century was more than enough to keep pace with population growth. Those Europeans who considered such matters had reason to believe that their history since the Middle Ages showed a continual advance towards goals which were so evidently worth while that few of them were ever questioned. Since European civilization had spread across the globe, the entire world seemed set fair on a progressive course.
There were of course pessimists; some of them felt that civilization was drifting away from its moorings in religion and absolute morality, "carried along by the tides of materialism and barbarity probably to complete disaster".28 Distribution of the newly created wealth was uneven and most Europeans were still poor. More and more of them lived in cities and towns, for the most part in wretched conditions which seemed to many to breed the inevitable conditions for revolution. Socialists stoked the rhetoric which sustained the notion of revolution in Britain socialism was a moral creed rather than a materialistic one. It meant not Marxism but trade unionism and parliamentary methods. Yet in 1896 the Second International, an organization of socialist parties, had confirmed the supremacy of Marxism and the dogma of the cla.s.s struggle.
This was frightening for the middle cla.s.ses throughout the continent, but Marxist rhetoric tended to ignore the reality that, although the majority was still poor, the capitalist system had improved the lives of huge numbers of people in recent decades. It had also, in many places, advanced democracy. The suffrage was spreading inexorably, at least among males, and the discussion of women"s rights had grown ever fiercer in the late nineteenth century. Henrik Ibsen had intended his play A Doll"s House to be a plea for the individual, but it was taken as a call for the liberation of women. The development of advanced capitalist economies created ma.s.sive opportunities for employment for women as typists, telephonists, shop a.s.sistants and factory workers. The accretion of such jobs changed domestic economics and family life for ever.
Another force was the ever faster march of technological progress. Together with piped water, clean sources of energy for both light and heat began to spread in the new century. These developments, and others such as electricity, preserved food, cookers, washing machines with mangles, helped to start the transformation of domestic life, at least for the middle cla.s.ses. Later, the gradual spread of knowledge about contraception began to enable women to think that they could try to control the demands of procreation in ways which had been unimaginable to their mothers and to all their ancestors before them.
As we look back over the horrors of the twentieth century it is easy to say that the pessimists won the argument. In fact neither optimists nor pessimists were wholly right.29 Hindsight can be a disadvantage sometimes today it is difficult to see how the optimists could have been so certain. But they included men and women of great intelligence and wisdom.
It is also true that, although the end of the nineteenth century really did have an ominously decadent fin de siecle feeling for some people, they were a minority, even among artists and intellectuals. Revolutionaries like to see history as a state in which, after long periods of nothing happening, cataclysm occurs. An alternative view is that progress (or any change) tends to be slow and is often almost unnoticed. Thus electric light is invented and is indeed revolutionary, but its adoption is gradual, spread over many decades. The changes, intellectual and technological, which were so much to affect the life of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon and all others born on the cusp of the century at first did little to disturb the traditional rhythms of her world.
ON 22 JANUARY 1901, almost six months after Elizabeth"s birth, Queen Victoria died at Osborne, her home in the Isle of Wight. It was a momentous event. Her funeral took place amid unprecedented pomp and ceremony and was attended by representatives of over forty nations. There are nineteen stout volumes in the Royal Archives containing the outpourings of the British press alone on the pa.s.sing of the Queen Empress, who had reigned for nearly sixty-four years.
She was succeeded by her son, King Edward VII. Although it is tempting to see a new reign and a new century as marking a distinct change, these were but artificial breaks in a continuous process. The new monarch differed in style but not much in substance from the old; the monarchy itself remained firmly grounded in a society in which aristocratic families like the Strathmores could still be confident of the privileges, but also conscious of the responsibilities, which their place in the social order brought them.
King Edward VII"s reign was to be short, less than ten years. He was seen much more in public than his revered mother and he mixed more freely with his subjects. Enthusiastic for lavish spending and for pageantry, he resumed the tradition, only occasionally followed by Queen Victoria in her widowhood, of attending the state opening of Parliament in person.
King Edward visited the watering places of Europe frequently, sometimes to the detriment of communications with his ministers. He was a genial extrovert who enjoyed meeting people and made them feel at ease. By his friendships he did a great deal to help secure the social acceptance of Jews. He sought, also, to achieve good relations with other countries, and his visit to France in 1904 created the atmosphere which helped to bring about the Entente Cordiale with Britain"s. .h.i.therto hereditary enemy. In his personal life, he enjoyed the company of attractive and amusing women and acquired the reputation of a philanderer. But he treated his wife Queen Alexandra with affection and respect, and loved his children, three daughters, Princesses Louise, Victoria and Maud, and two sons, Prince Albert Victor ("Eddy") who died in 1892, and Prince George (later King George V) on whom he lavished affection after his elder brother"s death.
The Edwardian years have been described as the Indian summer of the country-house way of life.30 Despite the agricultural depression which set in after 1875 and which to a great extent broke the old reliance of the landed cla.s.ses on land as a source of income, the mystique of ownership of a country property lived on. White tablecloths were still spread and the silver teapot still set out for tea on s.p.a.cious lawns. Much had changed, however, and the families who weathered the changes best were those with resources beyond their broad acres property in London, for example, or coalmining interests. Thanks to the arrival of the railways and then the motor car, travel to and between country properties was faster than ever before. Industrialization brought wealth and the newly rich wanted the highest status symbol of all a stake in the land, but for purposes of recreation and display rather than income. Field sports, especially shooting, were the great pastime of the aristocracy of the age. According to the official history of Purdey"s, the gun makers, the Edwardian years were some of the busiest and most profitable the firm has ever known. "Individual cartridge orders of 10,000 per season are commonplace in the books of the time, and the cartridge-loading shop was busy far into the night. The orders for guns never slackened and profits boomed."31 In the homes of great families, change was slow. Many country houses were still run on Victorian lines, so that family, guests, servants and children each had their separate areas. Country Life in 1911 commented approvingly of Crathorne Hall in Yorkshire: "The whole of the nursery quarters are isolated, as they should be, and served by a separate corridor."32 That was not the case at St Paul"s Walden Bury, a handsome Queen Anne house of rose-red brick, its walls covered with magnolia and honeysuckle, set in the green Hertfordshire countryside. The house was comfortable and slightly shabby; it had none of the imposing, slightly eerie romance of Glamis. It was large but not grand; the nursery wing was easily accessible from the rest of the house.33 Elizabeth"s childhood was not formal or restrictive indeed it was idyllic, all the more so after the birth in May 1902 of her brother David, the last of Cecilia and Claude"s children. He and Elizabeth became so close and there was such a gap between them and their elder siblings that their mother called them her "two Benjamins". Within the family Elizabeth was known as Buffy.
After their mother, the most important presence in the children"s lives was their nanny. Clara Cooper Knight, known as Alah, was the daughter of a tenant farmer on the Strathmores" Hertfordshire estate, and was taken on by Lady Strathmore when Elizabeth was only a month old. She later described Elizabeth as "an exceptionally happy, easy baby: crawling early, running at thirteen months and speaking very young".34 Kind but firm, devoted and utterly dependable, Alah remained in charge of the nursery until Elizabeth was eleven and stayed with the family thereafter. She went to work for Elizabeth"s elder sister May, and then took charge of Princess Elizabeth when she was born in 1926.