Power and Glory, page 20
The aggression and bravado could only barely conceal the fear both Buthlay and Crawfie now felt, and their concession that ‘the Queen will merely feel she should show a certain amount of disapproval’23 indicated their hope that the publication of The Little Princesses would be greeted with temporary froideur and then business as usual would resume. They were well recompensed for the book, to the tune of $80,000,and unsurprisingly, it was a bestseller in both Britain and the United States, with millions of copies of the Ladies’ Home Journal, which had excerpted The Little Princesses, sold; the book itself was the highest-selling title in the United States in 1950.
Not all the public were delighted by its existence. On 30 December, a Vera M. Brunt wrote to Lascelles to say, ‘Can nothing be done to suppress Miss Marion Crawford, the Evening Standard and The Ladies Home Journal of Philadelphia? That anyone who has been trusted as a Royal Governess for 17 years can so demean herself, and cheapen all that she should protect, has been a great shock to one of His Majesty’s most loyal servants.’24 Lascelles, who was privately as horrified and disgusted as his employers by what became known as ‘doing a Crawfie’,* responded with a sigh. ‘The Private secretary regrets that it is not possible to take any steps such as Miss Brunt proposes, and can only suggest that Miss Brunt, if she wishes to pursue the matter, should address herself to the authoress of the book in question.’25
Crawfie’s exclusion from the royal family’s wider circle was not immediate. She received a Christmas card from Princess Elizabeth at the end of 1949, was provided with central heating for her home by the royal household, and was invited to the royal garden party in the summer of 1950. Although she never heard from Queen Elizabeth directly again, it was not until the autumn of the following year that she appreciated the extent to which she and her husband ‘were shunned by colleagues from top to bottom’.26 Realising that she was never going to be welcomed back into the fold, she devoted herself to more of the same bland and often factually inaccurate writing, which led to a libel suit from the Duke of Windsor, offended by the description of his wife in the serialised version of The Little Princesses; he especially disliked Crawfie’s description of how Wallis ‘appeared to be entirely at her ease, but rather too much so … she had a distinctly proprietary way of speaking to the new King’.* The offending passages were subsequently withdrawn, but it was yet another black mark against her previously sinless name.
The end of her public career came swiftly and embarrassingly. She had become a regular journalist for Woman’s Own and was commissioned to write a piece on Trooping the Colour and Royal Ascot for the magazine in June 1955. She produced the usual anodyne gush – ‘the flashing of the swords in the sunlight’ and suchlike – but was undone by the fact that she wrote her copy long in advance, which was then exposed by the events being cancelled because of a rail strike. There had been widespread suspicion that much of The Little Princesses was exaggerated or fictionalised – an accurate assumption, given that the Goulds had rewritten it to make it more interesting, accuracy be damned – and this seemed to confirm it.
Crawfie was finished as a writer, and faced public mockery, a state of affairs the royal family did nothing to ameliorate. When the queen had remarked that the inevitable consequence of her publishing her book would be that ‘You would lose all your friends’, she was not exaggerating. Facing life as an unpopular outcast, Crawfie removed herself from London society, and she and Buthlay retired to Aberdeen, leaving their grace-and-favour home behind.
They remained an unlikely couple, unable to shake off the taint of notoriety; her doctor described the pair as ‘very, very presbyterian, [she] sitting with a blank face as her husband cracked barrackroom jokes’.27 Buthlay died in 1977, and Crawfie had a miserable widowhood, apparently beset by guilt over her actions. Before her eventual death in 1988, she had made at least one unsuccessful suicide attempt; the emergency services who saved her life found a note that said, ‘The world has passed me by and I cannot bear those I love to pass me by on the road.’ Although Balmoral was less than fifty miles away, she would never be visited by any of its residents again.
Both Crawfie and the duke had betrayed the royal family. The difference between the two of them was that as an employee – even, whisper it, a servant – she was ultimately dispensable, for all the queen’s talk of affection and loyalty. The duke, despite his far greater provocations, could not be cast out into outer darkness, much as his family might have wished for it. But as his brother’s health continued to hang in abeyance, he decided to return to a long-fought battle, and hoped that this time his wishes would finally prevail.
Chapter Thirteen
‘In My Faith and Loyalty I Never More Will Falter’
When Queen Elizabeth wrote to D’Arcy Osborne on 5 March 1949, it was with apologies for tardiness. She, at least, had good reason for it. ‘The last year has been rather like the war in a minor degree! Daughters getting engaged, and daughters marrying, and daughters having babies, & the King getting ill, & preparing for a tour of Australia & New Zealand, & then having to put it off – all these things are very filling to one’s life.’ She indicated her great love for the infant Charles – ‘very delicious, and [he] makes for a very nice soft innocent topic of conversation in a rather horrid, unkind world!’ – and suggested that her husband was, at last, on the mend. ‘The King is really getting on very well, though it will be fairly slow progress, and one good thing is that he is having the first rest since 1936.’ Signing herself ‘your sincere but totteringly aged friend’,1 the queen tacitly acknowledged that it was not just George who was feeling less than regal, as the most eventful of decades drew unceremoniously to its close.
Her allusion to the monarch’s health was not entirely candid. He had rallied very slightly at the beginning of 1949, and had been able to visit Sandringham to shoot, but he was now, reluctantly, coming to terms with the knowledge that he would be an invalid for the rest of his life. Lascelles commented to Lord Hardinge that ‘the [King] continues to please his doctors, but he won’t be out of the medical woods for many weeks yet’.2 Even if Harold Nicolson, who was engaged in writing a life of George V, heard his son described as being ‘as sweet and patient as can be’3 – a far cry from the often impatient and splenetic man he had been over the previous years* – it was still both a personal and a national humiliation for the king to be bedbound and immobile.
His mood was not helped by his being told by Professor Lear-mouth that he would require a right lumbar sympathectomy operation: a complex procedure that was intended to restore blood supply to his leg by cutting a nerve at the base of the spine, and therefore give him a degree of movement again. Get it wrong, and the risks could be paralysis, or death. The king was irritated by this, believing that it suggested the previous treatment had been a waste of time, but Learmouth assured him that the months of tedious bed rest had been necessary for him to gather his strength for the operation. He was more candid with a courtier who earnestly asked him how the monarch could become robust enough for such an operation. ‘With iron pills from Boots’4 was Learmouth’s pragmatic response.
On 12 March, after a bespoke operating theatre was constructed in the Buhl Room of Buckingham Palace, the procedure took place. The king had been forbidden cigarettes to keep him as healthy as possible, but even as he blithely announced his lack of concern as the anaesthetic took hold, it was yet another reminder that he was all too mortal. The monarch’s optimism was rewarded: the operation was a success, and his leg was saved, dispelling fears – or, in some treacherous quarters, hopes – that he would be perpetually disabled.
Nonetheless, he was instructed to take the next months as quietly as he could, avoiding both mental and physical stress and instead concentrating on domestic matters. Unfortunately for his equilibrium, he had a telephone call with the Duke of Windsor, who wrote to their mother to say, ‘it was a good conversation and he made light of having to submit to Professor Learmouth’s knife on Saturday’, but pronounced the situation ‘very disappointing’, and ‘tough luck on Bertie’.5 The queen, meanwhile, wrote to Princess Margaret on 8 May to say, ‘Papa is down at Royal Lodge this week, & I think that he is really better. He is taking an interest in his rhododendrons, & making plans for more planting, & altogether beginning to perk up.’ It was with determined optimism that she confided in her daughter that ‘if he can go on as he is doing, & not get exhausted in London, he will soon be back to his old form’.6
On 21 March, Nicolson had an interview with Queen Mary, ostensibly to discuss the life of George V for his biography, but he soon found that she was more interested in talking about her ailing son. She hinted that his decline was the result of his elder brother’s behaviour: ‘he was devoted to his brother, and the whole abdication crisis made him miserable. He sobbed on my shoulder for a whole hour … but he has made good. Even his stammer has been corrected.’ Maternal feelings overcame regal reserve, as, ‘in such a sad voice’, Queen Mary said, ‘and now he is so ill, poor boy, so ill’.7
At first, the indications were that Learmouth had performed a kind of miracle. By 17 June, the king was sufficiently recovered to be able to dance at a ball at Ascot, albeit with discreet breaks during which his leg was placed in a foot rest,* and in July, he performed investiture ceremonies, wearing black suede shoes; a necessary contrast to the formality of the evening dress he wore for the events. His recovery seemed a blessing, and an enduring one. On 21 July, the queen could write, with genuine rather than forced confidence, to Eleanor Roosevelt, responding to her enquiries about her husband’s health, that ‘I am glad to be able to tell you that [the king] is really better, and with care should be quite well in a year or so. It is always a slow business with a leg, and the great thing is not to get overtired during convalescence.’ Acknowledging the problems with this forced inertia – ‘you can imagine how difficult this is to achieve with the world in its present state, & worries & troubles piling up’ – she nevertheless stated, ‘he is making such good progress, & for that I am profoundly grateful’.8
While the king rested and rallied, his elder daughter and her husband, unencumbered by the responsibilities of looking after their infant son, began to establish themselves as society figures. They associated with the leading actors and comedians of the day, including Danny Kaye, Laurence Olivier and his wife Vivien Leigh, and generally provided a youth and glamour that the princess’s parents were no longer able to offer. Channon, who remained besotted by Philip, wrote on 17 June in his diary, with an atypical touch of sentiment, that ‘the two Edinburghs made a somewhat late appearance [at a ball] and they looked superb. They were like characters in a fairy tale.’9 A fortnight before, he had been wildly – perhaps characteristically – inaccurate. ‘Princess Elizabeth’s pregnancy is becoming more obvious but nobody yet knows officially* … I am told … that the Windsors are getting on very badly; but I don’t believe it.’10
In early July 1949, the family moved into Clarence House in St James’s. The building had been designed by John Nash in the mid 1820s for the former Duke of Clarence – and subsequent William IV – and was once regarded as one of London’s finest private houses. However, years of neglect and the bed-blocking antics of the Duke of Connaught, the last surviving son of Queen Victoria, had turned it into an unsanitary wreck; it had been bombed in the war and was in desperate need of refurbishment to make it habitable, let alone luxurious.
Philip, who had not had a permanent home of his own in decades, undertook the renovation with typical vigour. He was helped by a grant of £50,000 – around £2.2 million in today’s money – that the family had been given by Parliament to make the accommodation acceptable for the future queen, which did not include allowances for some of the extravagant gadgetry and luxuries that the Duke of Edinburgh desired. These included everything from a basement private cinema to an automated closet that would spit out a suit of its wearer’s choice at the touch of an electronic button; sophistication that was only rivalled by that most modernistic of inventions, the electric trouser press. The total cost, unsurprisingly, came in at £28,000 over budget, despite countless gifts provided from well-wishers. It became almost a badge of honour for Commonwealth countries to provide samples of everything from timber to indigenous art, leading to the logistical nightmare of where to place often incompatible or unwanted products so as not to cause offence to their eager donors.
Philip and Elizabeth had what most would recognise as a thoroughly modern marriage.* Although each retained their own bedroom, kept apart by a dressing room, valets and other members of staff were somewhat abashed to see the two of them together in bed on more than one occasion, and James MacDonald, Philip’s valet, reported that the Duke of Edinburgh was blithely naked in his wife’s presence. They had separate bathrooms – Philip’s, naturally enough, was painted blue and decorated with pictures of the ships he had served on – and at a time when virtually no home in the country had a television, Clarence House could boast several, including one installed in the servants’ hall: a wedding gift from Uncle Dickie.
By now, those who were living in close quarters with the couple could observe their characters. The nursery footman, John Gibson, who was responsible for the gleaming maintenance of Prince Charles’s pram, described them as ‘just ordinary people … a lot less formal than some people I came across’.11 Philip’s often brusque and straightforward manner did not obscure a genuine interest in and, when needed, compassion for those who were paid to look after him. He continued his work at the Admiralty, which bored him, and threw himself into other activities to compensate. As Mike Parker said to Brandreth, ‘He crackled with energy. He made things happen. He made things jump … He wanted to make a difference and, if necessary, he was ready to make a noise.’12
His wife, meanwhile, was not one of life’s natural noisemakers, being given to a public reserve that some could take for shyness, or simply a desire not to overshadow her husband. When it was announced in October 1949 that the duke was to be posted to Malta as first lieutenant and second in command of HMS Chequers, there was no hesitation on either Elizabeth or Philip’s part that she should accompany him. As Parker informed her biographer, Ben Pimlott, ‘this was a fabulous period when it was thought a good idea for her to become a naval officer’s wife’.13 Perhaps surprisingly, the ultimate approval came from the king himself. Two years earlier, he had been overcome by emotion at seeing his daughter marry, but now he was sanguine about the prospect of her leaving the country with her family. After all, he had other things on his mind.
Philip left for Malta on 16 October, delighted to return to naval life proper, and Elizabeth was due to follow on 20 November. Their son would, as was customary, be left behind in Britain, to be cared for by nannies. In the intervening month, however, she became embroiled in controversy for the first time in her life. On 18 October, she addressed a Mothers’ Union rally at Central Hall in London. Her theme was a deeply conservative one – the evils of divorce – and it was to tumultuous applause that she denounced ‘the current age of growing self-indulgence, of hardening materialism [and] of falling moral standards’, and declared that ‘we can have no doubt that divorce and separation are responsible for some of the darkest evils in our society today’.14
She was applauded warmly, with the assembled audience delighted at the strong moral line she took – in a speech presumably written by her private secretary, Jock Colville – but others were less enamoured by an attitude that might have struck the more progressive as Victorian. The 1923 Matrimonial Causes Act had given women more rights in divorce than before, but it was still a complicated and humiliatingly public business to obtain a legal separation from one’s spouse. The Marriage Law Reform Committee’s comment that ‘the harm to children can be greater in a home where both parents are at loggerheads than if divorce ensues’ might strike contemporary readers as nothing more than common sense, but it was the royal imprimatur that had been given to the subject that seemed both unnecessary and almost insulting.
It may have been the case that, as one courtier put it, ‘King George and Queen Elizabeth were completely satisfied that their daughter had been right, for their views on marriage and family life were the same’,15 but it is unlikely that her husband would have shared her scripted opinions. Not only had his own parents separated, but his liberal political outlook and generally progressive, even libertarian, stances were decidedly different to the rule-bound ones held by the family – and institution – he had married into. Should his personal views collide with shibboleths that were held virtually sacred, the results could only be dramatic.
* * *
The most recent member of the royal family to fall foul of divorce laws, meanwhile, paid a brief visit to the country in April 1949, shortly after his brother’s operation. Although the Duke of Windsor’s return did not attract any particular attention on this occasion – Channon remarked that ‘apart from a hideous photograph in a newspaper he has caused not a stir’16 – his increasingly frequent trips to Britain carried with them a purpose that bore the inevitability of death and taxes: the desire for his wife to be recognised with the title Her Royal Highness.
