Queen's House (44 page)

The Palace under Fire

On 11 December 1936 at 1.52 p.m., in the chamber of the House of Lords, Bertie, the Duke of York, became officially King George VI of Great Britain. Usually a monarch succeeds after the last breath of a dying King or Queen – The King is dead, long live the King.' But for the Duke of York the agony had been prolonged. His brother, King Edward VIII, had signed the instrument of abdication at 10.00 a.m. on Thursday 10 December in the Octagonal Drawing Room at Fort Belvedere with his brothers as witnesses. It was not until after Prime Minister Baldwin had presented the document to the House of Commons on the afternoon of the same day, and completion by the House of Lords of ‘His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Bill'. The next morning, that agony was over.

Only then did the new King, at luncheon at 145 Piccadilly with his wife and daughters, received a message brought to him by his secretary, Sir Eric Miéville: ‘Will you tell his majesty that he has just been proclaimed King.' According to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother's biographer, King George ‘looked round the luncheon table and said, “Now if someone comes through on the telephone,
who
shall I say I am?”'
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It was a characteristic remark of a shy and diffident man who had always been outshone by his older brother. It took some time before he became aware of his own strengths, and only gradually
did the public become aware that here was a King with the authority of a naval officer and the dedication and high seriousness of a deeply religious man.

From the time when, on 12 December, he took the oath of succession at St James's Palace to 12 May 1937, the day of his Coronation, he took charge of the preparations with a competence and foresight that King Edward VIII would never have shown. And at the same time he fought with determination to conquer the stammer that made every speech of his life a nightmare. That he did finally succeed was due partly to the skill of his Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue, but even more to the loving support of his wife, who, with the touch of a hand or an encouraging smile, gave him confidence.

His brother, King Edward VIII, may have been full of his admiration for his grandfather, the flamboyant Edward VII. The Duke of York, however, signalled by his adoption of his father's name, George, that it was in his footsteps he intended to walk. On the same day that he took the oath he created the former King, Edward VIII, HRH The Duke of Windsor. It was typical that King Edward VIII had not given a thought to his future title, and equally typical that King George VI carefully considered the question with its implications for the future. That morning, the Clerk of the Crown, Sir Claud Schuster, came to find out how King Edward VIII should be announced in the broadcast he was due to make that night. Crisply, the new King told him:

I suggest H.R.H. D[uke] of W[indsor]. He cannot be Mr. E. W. as he was born the son of a Duke. That makes him Ld E. W. anyhow. If he ever comes back to this country, he can stand &be elected to the H. of C. Would you like that? S. replied No. As D. of W. he can sit and vote in the H. of L. Would you like that? S. replied No. Well if he becomes a Royal Duke he cannot speak or vote in the H. of L. &he is not being deprived of his rank in the Navy, Army or R. Air Force. This gave Schuster a new lease of life &he went off quite happy.
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That same night the new King gave the old King a farewell dinner at Royal Lodge, Windsor, his country home. Queen Elizabeth was not there. Through all these difficult last days she was seriously ill with influenza and stayed at their Piccadilly home. ‘I kept right out of it all.'
she remembered.
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The Duke of Windsor later recalled, ‘The dinner passed pleasantly enough, I hope I was a good guest.'
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Afterwards the Duke of Windsor went across to Windsor Castle to make the broadcast with the memorable words: ‘I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.'
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Queen Mary, who had disliked the idea of so public a declaration, was somewhat relieved by the dignity of the broadcast. She bade her son ‘the dreadful goodbye as he was leaving that evening for Austria'.
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Throughout, she had behaved with magnificent control. There was an unforgettable moment when her four sons stood to see her leave for the drive back to London. She gave one last look from her big black Daimler, there was a final bow from the son who had rejected his kingdom, and Queen Mary swept off into the foggy night.

The brothers talked on until after midnight. When D & I said goodbye,' King George VI wrote with characteristic simplicity, ‘we kissed, parted as freemasons & he bowed to me as King.'
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Their old affectionate friendship would never be the same again.

‘There was', the Duke later wrote, ‘great sadness in my heart at leaving Great Britain and its people.'
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Yet all who observed him at this time noted his air of euphoria. He was like a prisoner released – Peter Pan did not have to grow up after all. As Queen Mary later wrote to him, he did not seem to comprehend the magnitude of his decision, nor the hurt and humiliation he had caused to those who loved him.

On the first night of his reign, King George VI was with his cousin Lord Louis Mountbatten at Fort Belvedere, while the Duke of Windsor prepared for his final departure. ‘Dickie, this is absolutely terrible,' the King said. ‘I never wanted this to happen; I'm quite unprepared for it. David has been trained for this all his life. I've never even seen a State Paper. I'm only a naval officer, it's the only thing I know about.'
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In just these words King George V had complained to Lord Louis' father. To which he had replied, ‘There is no more fitting preparation for a King than to have been trained for the Navy.'

King George VI had been too modest; in fact, he had not only learned in the Navy self-discipline, common sense and an ability to command: as a biographer wrote,

living as a member of a ship's company gave him an understanding of humanity…

He had learned too that in a ship you work together or sink. He had also qualities that his more charismatic brother had lacked – a determination to succeed, a sense of dedication that kept him going through periods of ill health. His father had understood him. ‘Bertie,' he had said, ‘has more guts than the rest of his brothers put together.'
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Above all, he had the unfailing support of the woman he loved. Queen Elizabeth had then, as now, unique charm and a friendly ease of manner that endeared her to all classes. But she has too a Scottish hardiness and strength of character that were to be proved in the fire of war.

No monarch has succeeded to the throne under such painful circumstances. The last months had been an intolerable strain on a man who had always shunned the limelight. On 12 December, King George VI faced his first ordeal, the first meeting of the Privy Council at St James's Palace, with courage; but his stammer, which he was beginning to overcome, was very pronounced that day. He spoke with obvious difficulty.

On 15 February King George VI and his Queen left 145 Piccadilly and moved into Buckingham Palace: the simplicity of their private life was gone for ever. The cosy house where they had entertained informally, and got their own supper when they came in late from a theatre, had to be exchanged for the cold magnificence of Buckingham Palace.

For the King the Palace was his place of work, his flagship – as it had been for King George V – and in wartime he was to make it the symbol of the unity of the nation, but he was determined that it should also be a home. For the Queen that was a challenge.

Buckingham Palace had chilled many a royal heart over the past years. Queen Elizabeth was the first to bring warmth and the happiness of a
young family there. ‘Elizabeth could make a home anywhere,' King George VI told Lady Airlie when she first had tea with them in the Queen's Sitting Room at Buckingham Palace a few weeks after his accession. ‘I saw that the room was already beginning to show the traces of her own personality – the little feminine touches which I had always associated with her. It looks homelike already.'
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For the first time in almost a century Buckingham Palace became alive. The two little girls ran down the long corridors, chased with their dogs around the gardens and rowed on the lake. ‘It was rather green and dirty,'
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Princess Margaret remembered, but the children found the big lake

enchanting … all kinds of amusing birds came there and it had its own population of ducks. One of them, for reasons best known to herself, always laid her eggs and hatched them out in the smaller lake outside the Palace grounds. She then walked her children back to the Palace, over the courtyard and into the gardens. The Police on duty stopped the traffic for her and opened the gates.
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Queen Elizabeth created their own microclimate within the chilly grandeur which gave the shy King the warmth and security he needed so desperately in the first difficult months of his reign.

He regretted most that now he had less time for his beloved daughters, but he made sure that they had bright, cheerful rooms in the north-east corner of the Palace on the second floor. The dark study above the Balcony Room was rejected; he had never forgotten the gloom of the lessons he and his brother had shared there. It became a room for the children's piano practice.

While they were still living at Piccadilly, the Princesses had been enjoying swimming lessons at the Bath Club and no one had taken much notice of the two little girls in their regulation swimming costumes; but now that Princess Elizabeth was heir to the throne they attracted too much attention. So in the summer of 1938 it was decided to build ‘a swimming bath and squash court' on the north side of the Palace, in one of Nash's conservatories. According to
The Times
‘the glass roof was left in position'.
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The King took a personal interest in every stage of its construction. On 29 August Sir Philip Sassoon wrote from the Ministry of Works asking the King's approval of their plans ‘for the lining of the bath and the walking ways around it'. He suggested vitreous mosaic rather than glazed tiles for the lining and walkways because ‘it is less harsh in appearance and less slippery'. He sent samples of the vitreous mosaic, ‘the black marking the edge of the bath', and suggested that ‘we introduce two bands of green, one to show immediately above the level of the water and the other near the bottom, with the idea that they will add a certain amount of sparkle and liveliness to the water'.
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They had consulted the Ministry of Health and the Bath Club, who both advised that they should alter their plans to give more room for walking round. The pool was finished in 1939 but only a year later one of the first bombs to fall on the Palace shattered the sparkling water.

Princess Elizabeth, who was nearly eleven when her father came to the throne, at first regretted leaving her home at 145 Piccadilly, asking if a tunnel could be built to the Palace so that she could still sleep in her own bedroom. She was a composed, orderly girl in whom Queen Mary saw the hope of the future. She and Lady Airlie agreed that there was something in the set of her head that reminded them of Queen Victoria. However, in the year of the Coronation, as the Queen's mother, Lady Strathmore, remembered, ‘the Princess, who had heard from her governess of her position as heir to the throne, was ardently praying for a baby brother'.
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Lady Airlie thought her

one of the most unselfish girls I had ever met … no two sisters could have been less alike … the elder with her quiet simplicity, the younger with her puckish expression and irrepressible high spirits – often liberated in mimicry. Queen Mary described her as ‘espiégle', which was precisely the right word although it has no equivalent in English – adding ‘All the same she is so outrageously amusing that one can't help encouraging her.'
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Lady Airlie was a wise observer who had known the royal family all her life. Her judgement of their characters is confirmed by the account given by Marion Crawford, the Princesses' governess, in her story of the early
years of the Princesses, written and published after she had left the royal service. Although it gives a flattering, even sycophantic, picture of the life of the royal family, she broke her sworn promise not to describe her time at the Palace.

Yet she was a much loved governess who brought her Scottish practical good sense and intelligence to the Palace. She came from a simple home and trained as a teacher at Moray House Training College in Edinburgh, where her studies took her ‘into the poorer parts of the city … I was at that time very young and I became fired with a crusading spirit.'
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She devoted many years of her life to the Princesses, and the future Queen's absence of prejudice owes much to the influence of ‘Crawfie'. Like many other devoted royal servants throughout history, she sacrificed her own happiness, finding it as difficult to leave as Fanny Burney had done in the time of Queen Charlotte. Like that of Queen Victoria's devoted governess, the sad end to her royal career has obscured the very real contribution she made to the present Queen's education.

Her book gives an excellent picture of Buckingham Palace at that time. ‘I still recall with a shudder', she wrote, ‘that first night spent in the Palace. The wind moaned in the chimneys like a thousand ghosts.' She describes the ‘interminable' corridors, the mice that scuttled through their rooms, her dusty curtains that fell, ‘pelmets, brass rod and all', at the first vigorous tug, the chairs that collapsed and the chill of their bedrooms, which all faced north. As Sir Lionel Cust had earlier noted, electric switches were in the most inconvenient places: Crawfie's bedroom light could be switched off only by going out and down the draughty corridor. Queen Mary had kept an eagle eye on the State Rooms and on their own apartments, but there were scores of rooms in the vast Palace that had been unvisited for years. ‘Life in a Palace', Crawfie reflected, ‘was like camping in a museum.'
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