Power and Glory, page 15
With the personal encomium thus dispensed with, the queen was clear about what Philip’s responsibilities now were. ‘There is so much that can be done in this muddled & rather worried world by example & leadership & I am sure that Lilibet & you have a great part to play. It’s not always an easy part, for it often means remaining silent when one is bursting to reply, & sometimes a word of advice to restrain instead of to act.’ Although she placed ‘great confidence in your good judgement’, and suggested that ‘[I] am certain you will be a great help & comfort to our very beloved little daughter’, the letter made it plain that Philip was now part of the family, and that he had to defer to the king and queen at all times. Her closing statement that ‘you can come & talk to me about anything you feel like talking about, & I shall always be ready to help in any way possible’11 was more command than suggestion.
A less robust man than Philip might have found the expectations now placed upon him, of both public and private conduct, overwhelming and intrusive. ‘The Firm’ – a nickname coined by George VI, and one that has lasted to the present day – was a monolithic institution, and his potentially disruptive presence within it needed to be managed carefully: hence the queen’s coded warnings and injunctions. Yet he was a sufficiently outgoing character to take the inevitable rigmarole in his stride. It was suggested in the press that he was ‘shy’ – code for ‘he has little interest in making unguarded comments to journalists’ – but another expression of his feelings came in Crawfie’s observation that the ‘tall, rather unconventional young man … [who] had made many friends for himself’ was seen looking ‘very handsome and happy’. When she congratulated him on how everything had resolved itself, he smiled and said, ‘I’m so proud of her, Crawfie.’ As she wrote – sentimentally – the engagement meant that ‘the gloomy corridors seemed lighter’.12
* * *
It was not to be a long engagement. The wedding was fixed for 20 November, and the necessary practical arrangements had to be made swiftly. Overnight, Philip acquired a valet, a bodyguard and a level of public attention that his fiancée had been faced with all her life. He was fortunate in that reception to him, as stage-managed by Mountbatten and Driberg, had been warm and positive, but it was also clear that the royal wedding – the first one* since that of the then Duke of York to Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon on 26 April 1923 – would be an expensive undertaking that ran the risk of seeming extravagant. Britain was a near-bankrupt country, plunged into economic crisis by both the lingering effects of the war and the appalling weather earlier in the year, and it was feared that when the public realised that the much-anticipated event was going to cost a huge amount of money, goodwill would dissipate swiftly.
On 10 July, as Philip and Elizabeth made their first public appearance as an officially engaged couple, at a Buckingham Palace garden party – where, amid the general goodwill,† an unreconciled Queen Mary was heard to mutter, ‘Philip is very lucky to have won her love’13 – and, later, stepped onto the balcony, to be hailed by the excited masses, the Daily Express’s headline was ‘An Austerity Wedding for Elizabeth’. Although this was not overt criticism of the as yet undecided arrangements for the ceremony, there was a general feeling that at a time of national crisis, it would be both profligate and provocative to spend a vast amount on the event. On the other hand, the wedding offered an opportunity to indicate that Britain was still a world power, capable of spectacular displays of pageantry unmatched by any other nation.
As Mountbatten established himself in India, he remained keenly aware of events, thanks to Driberg’s informed commentary. He was pleased at the way in which only the Daily Worker offered any negative response to the announcement of the engagement, and stated that ‘I am an ardent believer in constitutional monarchy as a means of producing rapid evolution without actual revolution, but only if monarchy is wisely handled … I am sure Philip will not let the side down in this respect.’14 He, too, was aware of the potential backlash that could be caused by an expensive ceremony. On 3 August, he advised Driberg, ‘I am sure that [Philip] is entirely on the side of cutting down the display of the wedding, and his own personal feelings are against receiving any civil list for the very reasons which you give.’
Nonetheless, he felt that Philip had to be granted some public funds commensurate with his new status; he was living on his naval pay of just over £300 a year, and, as his uncle remarked to Driberg, ‘as a future Prince Consort … I think you will agree that Third-class travel would be regarded as a stunt and a sixpenny tip to a porter as stingy’. Mountbatten concluded that ‘you have either got to give up the monarchy or give the wretched people who have to carry out the functions of the Crown enough money to be able to do it with the same dignity at least as the Prime Minister or Lord Mayor of London is afforded … I simply cannot advise him to try and do the job on the pay of a Naval officer. He would be letting down his future wife and the whole institution of the monarchy.’15
As Attlee and the royal household debated a suitable venue for the ceremony – Westminster Abbey was eventually agreed upon, although St George’s Chapel at Windsor and St James’s Chapel, which had been used for previous royal weddings, were also considered – Philip headed to Balmoral, now a known and official quantity rather than a speculative prospect. The visit took on an oddly déjà vu quality. In the words of Lord Brabourne, ‘They were bloody to him … they didn’t like him, they didn’t trust him, and it showed. Not at all nice.’16 Tacitly licensed by Queen Mary, and even to an extent Queen Elizabeth, the vicious likes of David Bowes-Lyon and Lord Eldon, unable to be overtly offensive towards the man who was about to marry into the family, took delight in sneering at the bridegroom-to-be’s shabbiness and unvarnished manners. It gave particular pleasure to his detractors when Philip, wearing a kilt for the first time and feeling deeply self-conscious so doing, mock-curtseyed to the king; the display of irreverence did not go down well.
Likewise, Philip’s manner, a mixture of diffidence and wryness occasionally leavened with irritation, was rather different to the conventional reserve that most of the household displayed. Jock Colville, who was present at Balmoral at this time, commented that Philip appeared ‘dutiful’ rather than deeply in love, and despite the ‘most agreeable atmosphere’17 to be found in Scotland, he wondered whether the match was a truly equal one. After all, Philip had enjoyed the company of women such as Osla Benning before he had become engaged, and had seen the world; Elizabeth, meanwhile, had only been on one foreign trip, and that in the closely guarded company of her family. In a matter of a few months, she would be a married woman.
When the Balmoral sojourn was over, wedding preparations began in earnest. It was considered unthinkable, in the straitened economic climate, that the people should be expected to fund its cost, and so it was paid for by the king from the Privy Purse; the Chancellor, Hugh Dalton – no friend to the royal family, and vice versa* – took grim delight in declaring in the Commons on 28 October that the taxpayer’s sole contribution to the event would be to pay for the decorations outside Buckingham Palace and on Whitehall. Yet even as Churchill, in his capacity both as Leader of the Opposition and chief mischief-maker, agitated for ‘a flash of colour on the hard road we have to travel’,18 a balance had to be struck between pageantry and practicality. Princess Elizabeth’s dress was designed by the royal couturier, Norman Hartnell, inspired by Botticelli’s Primavera, but it had to be made with material purchased with three hundred clothing coupons: clothes rationing would continue until 1949. Although the major talking point of the dress would usually be its cost – £1,200, four times Prince Philip’s annual pay – and the effort that went into its manufacture, on this occasion Hartnell was asked with great agitation about the provenance of the silkworms. Were they Italian or Japanese? With memories of the recent conflict still fresh, Hartnell was able to reassure (or disappoint) journalists hoping for a scoop that the silk was all sourced from China.
Given the relatively short amount of time between engagement and ceremony, its organisation was a logistical triumph. It may have been an austerity wedding, but it was an austerity wedding on the grandest scale imaginable. Fifteen hundred wedding presents were put on public view at St James’s Palace,* one of which was a tray cloth from none other than Mahatma Gandhi. Mistaking it for the lawyer’s loincloth, Queen Mary loudly complained to her lady-in-waiting, Lady Airlie, that it was ‘such an indelicate gift’ and ‘what a horrible thing’. Philip, clearly no longer caring whether his grandmother-in-law held him in high estimation, upbraided her, saying, ‘I don’t think it’s horrible. Gandhi is a wonderful man; a very great man.’19 Thus admonished, Queen Mary departed in angry silence.
Such moments were not isolated ones. In the build-up to the wedding, Philip displayed several instances of the forthrightness – some may have called it tactlessness – that became a feature of his life and public standing. On a trip back from Clydebank, where Elizabeth had named a ship, Colville bemoaned Philip’s rougher aspects; he wrote in his diary that ‘he is a strong believer in the hail-fellow-well-met as opposed to the semi-divine interpretation of Monarchy’, and was unimpressed by his ‘vulgar’ character, as well as his ‘quite off-hand’20 treatment of Elizabeth. Because of his upbringing, Philip was never a demonstrative or tactile man; as one attendee of that summer at Balmoral put it, ‘He’s not a person who shows love. Given the sort of experience he’d had [when younger], you probably would shut yourself away a bit to avoid being hurt. Affection is not his natural currency.’21
Amid the excitement, there were also, inevitably, naysayers. Channon sneered on 25 October that despite the popularity of the engagement, ‘the wedding (not the marriage) is decried and criticised on all sides; its bogus austerity appeals to nobody; the seating arrangements and unnecessary limited accommodation at the Abbey infuriates all’.22 A fortnight later, he had not changed his attitude. Writing that even the Duchess of Kent was unhappy about the arrangements, he allowed that ‘there are many grumbles especially from the uninvited’, but complained, ‘little imagination has been shown … It is une occasion manquée; the whole affair should have been the most splendid ever known in the Empire!’23 That the Empire was rapidly ceasing to exist was not a matter that concerned him.
When 20 November finally came, there was a sense of barely controlled hysteria, after a build-up that at times seemed wildly disproportionate to the event itself. One American commentator described the jamboree as ‘a movie premiere, an election, a World Service and Guy Fawkes Night all rolled into one’.24 What foreign royals still existed in these post-war days gathered in London, pulling together what they could gather of their finery and jewellery,* and the imminent event dominated every newspaper and newsreel in the country. It was a thrilling and cathartic time for everyone, with one exception: the bridegroom. At a party a few days before the wedding, Philip, ‘white-faced’, remarked to another of the guests, the musician Larry Adler, ‘I suppose I won’t be having any fun any more.’25 On the morning of the wedding itself, his cousin, Patricia Mountbatten, blithely remarked what an exciting day lay ahead. Philip replied, ‘I’m either very brave or very stupid.’26 The previous day, he had received a suitably grand-sounding series of titles:† Baron Greenwich, Earl of Merioneth and Duke of Edinburgh. He was now very much part of the Firm, whether he liked it or not.
Some nerves in his situation were both inevitable and understandable, but this was far removed from Crawfie’s blithe comments, about the last night before the wedding, that ‘there was a lovely feeling in the Palace … we were all of us happy because she was happy’. Even allowing for the sentimental exaggeration inherent in her account, it is still both touching and faintly sad to read of how the princess remarked on her wedding day, ‘I can’t believe it’s really happening … I have to keep pinching myself.’ After what Crawfie described as ‘the usual last-minute crises, the tensions common to any home on a wedding morning’, it was time for the great event to take place. Thousands of people had queued on the streets, in a state of excitement that had not been seen since VE Day. The day would be a success; it had to be.
Channon, who was not given a ticket to the main event but instead inveigled his way into the parliamentary enclosure, decried the courtiers as ‘slow and narrow-minded’, saying they had ‘misjudged the temper of the nation and underestimated the enthusiasm of the people’. Sour grapes were responsible for his vitriol, but he was nonetheless pleased to have a prime position for people-watching. The bride-to-be was described as ‘shy and attractive’, and the bridegroom as ‘dazzling and evidently [enjoying] himself’. He was less complimentary about the king and queen; she was written off merely as looking well, and George VI was denigrated as ‘wooden and stiff’. He took delight in observing that ‘everybody in high society and socialist MPs were angry at being left out’,27 not least the politician Rab Butler, who Channon confidently – and inaccurately – predicted would be prime minister before too long.
One man who was not left outside in the enclosure – and who, whether through carelessness or entitlement, turned up late – was Churchill. The Leader of the Opposition, now seventy-two years old, may have been in the political wilderness, but his favour was still eagerly courted by all parties. He had received a hand-written letter of thanks from Princess Elizabeth for his good wishes when the engagement was announced, and he had remarked to the king that ‘the news has certainly given the keenest pleasure to all classes and the marriage will be an occasion of national rejoicing, standing out all the more against the sombre background of our lives’.28 He had even hosted Prince Philip for lunch shortly before the wedding, giving him an informal pep talk as to what his responsibilities were likely to be. If he expected deference, he would have argued that he had earned it. Channon – no partisan of the former prime minister – wrote that ‘the biggest, warmest reception was reserved for Winston; in the Abbey, although he arrived late, everyone stood up – even the Kings and Queens’.29
Yet even he could not steal the show. Crawfie, who was present for the ceremony, described it initially as ‘nerve-wracking’ and felt sick with anxiety, but as soon as Princess Elizabeth appeared on her father’s arm and walked down the aisle, she was confident; ‘more than once, the King and Queen exchanged a smile and a reassuring glance’.30 The service was determinedly traditional. Elizabeth promised to ‘love, cherish and obey’ her husband, hymns such as ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’ were sung, and the Archbishop of York, Cyril Garbett, stressed the relatively low-key and austere nature of the event, declaring that the ceremony ‘is in all essentials exactly the same as it would have been for any cottager who might be married this afternoon in some small country church in a remote village in the Dales’.31 Only the presence of two thousand guests at Westminster Abbey – and as many as two hundred million people watching or listening to the event worldwide – undermined his well-meant sentiments.
The wedding breakfast at Buckingham Palace afterwards was similarly low-key by royal standards – a mere three courses, as opposed to the ten-course banquets of previous days, and a comparatively trifling 150 guests lunched on partridge and ice cream, albeit laid out on gold plate and served by scarlet-coated footmen – while the speeches were terse at best. As Crawfie described it, ‘The King hates them and has always dreaded having to make one … he was brevity itself … The bridegroom, another sailor, had just as little to say.’32 There was a toast, and then the newly wed couple headed off on their honeymoon, the first part of which would be spent at Mountbatten’s home of Broadlands in the New Forest. Their departure was a predictably emotional moment; the king and queen joined other well-wishers in racing to the gates at Buckingham Palace, hand in hand, to throw rose petals at the couple’s car, and Crawfie noted, not without surprise, ‘the Queen picked up her silk skirts and came right up to the railings with us’.33
The day had been a triumph. Despite the cavilling of Channon and the excluded politicians and other public figures – Sir John Reith, former director general of the BBC, wrote in his diary of the ‘miserable royal wedding day’, on which he felt ‘completely out of phase with everything and everybody through not being asked to the Abbey’34 – it was not just the longed-for union of a glamorous young couple, but also a reminder, after the many disappointments of the previous two and a half years, that the royal family could still manage to pull off a grand set-piece occasion of this nature, albeit with austerity garb cloaking the pageantry. Crawfie confided emotionally to the king, ‘I feel as if I, too, have lost a daughter.’ He was superficially calm, replying, ‘they grow up and leave us, and we must make the best of it’, but he was concealing his own feelings of turmoil.
His relationship with his elder daughter was vitally important for him, both emotionally and practically. It is not overstating the case to argue that from VE Day onwards, she was the single most important figure in his life: steadier and more dutiful than her younger sister, and less capricious and partisan than her mother. The pictures that show the two of them together demonstrate an unusually close and warm relationship, devoid of the formality that members of the royal family usually demonstrated to one another in photographs or in public.
A hint at the depth of his emotion at her departure came when he remarked to the Archbishop of Canterbury, during the signing of the register at the service, that ‘it is a far more moving thing to give away your daughter than be married yourself’,35 and when Elizabeth and Philip had left, and the excitement of the day began to dissipate, he quietly headed back to the royal apartments and wrote a letter to the newly married princess.
