Queen's House (48 page)

I am sure that she will be so pleased at being asked to visit you.

We are leaving for London this evening, and I must admit that I do not look forward to London life again.

It is
so
dreary at Buckingham Palace, so dirty & dark and draughty, & I long to see the old house tidy & clean once again, with carpets & curtains & no beastly air raids. I feel so sorry for poor Mrs Ferguson & the housemaids, for it is most depressing having to look after a house that is half ruined!

I am putting Mrs R in my own bedroom upstairs. I have had some small windows put in, and she can use Bertie's own sitting room as mine is dismantled & windowless. It is quite a problem to put up
one
guest nowadays! She is only bringing a Secretary with her, & travels very simply & quietly.
⁵⁷

The King intensely disliked going down to the basement air-raid shelter, but with the renewed and intensified bombing the Queen insisted ‘that the housemaids & all except the watchers should take shelter,
we shall have to as well, and I behave like a governess & drive Bertie down!'

Mrs Roosevelt came to London more concerned, it would seem, about staying in Buckingham Palace than at facing air raids. ‘But I finally told myself', she wrote in her autobiography,
This I Remember
, ‘that one can live through any strange experience for two days.'

I could not travel in such style but as I worried over the problem I realized that I did not have much experience to draw on in deciding what I would need. Clothes had been of very little importance when I visited England during the war. I was flying then and was permitted to take very little luggage. Furthermore, there was no elaborate entertaining during the war and I did not need many changes. Even so, I had been a bit taken aback when I arrived at Buckingham Palace on that trip and was shown my dressing-room with huge closets all around the walls. The maid who unpacked my luggage was well trained but I could see that she was surprised when all she could find to hang up in the enormous expanse of wardrobes was one evening dress, one afternoon dress, a few blouses and an extra skirt!
⁵⁸

Mrs Roosevelt remembered the darkness and freezing cold of her rooms at the Palace, and the shattered windows repaired with mica. These, though she did not realize it, were the Queen's own rooms, where the hardy Scot had endured the cold. ‘Everything in Great Britain', the President's wife recorded,

was done as one would expect it to be. The restrictions on heat and water and food were observed as carefully in the royal household as in any other home in England. There was a plainly marked black line in my bathtub above which I was not supposed to run the water. We were served on gold and silver plates, but our bread was the same kind of war bread that every other family had to eat, and, except for the fact that occasionally game from one of the royal preserves appeared on the table, nothing was served in the way of food that was not served in any of the war canteens.

The dinner given for her in the Palace was, in her favourite phrase, ‘not a hilarious meal'. Churchill was silent and preoccupied, as well he might have been. He was waiting anxiously for news of General Montgomery's progress at El Alamein. Finally he excused himself to
make a telephone call and came back singing lustily ‘Roll Out the Barrel'. He had good news to tell. Montgomery's victory at El Alamein was to be the turning point of the war.

After dinner they

saw the fine Noël Coward film ‘In Which We Serve', based on the story of Lord Mountbatten's ship and partly on the story of Dunkirk. It was a novel experience to watch a movie about a man who was himself present, and a very moving experience to see it in the company of people who must have been deeply stirred by it.

During that visit, as she later described, she drove with the King and Queen to St Paul's Cathedral ‘because they wanted to give the faithful watchers who had saved the Cathedral the satisfaction of a visit from them … and partly so that I could stand on the steps and see what modern warfare could do to a great city'.
⁵⁹
She never forgot

how people would gather … standing outside the ruins of their houses and waiting until their majesties had tramped through the rubble. Often the King and Queen spoke to them quietly and on other occasions the people would address their monarch, but these exchanges … were always in a tone of sympathetic understanding. The people suffered stoically and I never heard them complain or speak bitterly.
⁶⁰

Mrs Roosevelt was also able to experience royal protocol old-style when she stayed for a night with Queen Mary at Badminton.

Though it was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 that had finally brought America into the war, it was these personal ties of affection between the Roosevelts and the royal family that had encouraged the President in his efforts to help Britain during the period of the official neutrality of the USA. On this friendly basis, Churchill had been able to build.

As the war dragged on, Buckingham Palace had become increasingly dilapidated. ‘It is so cold now, with howling draughts through the cardboard windows,' Queen Elizabeth wrote to Queen Mary. She was beginning to think of taking refuge in a flat they owned in London ‘which we have lent to Harry & Alice [Duke & Duchess of Gloucester]'.
⁶¹

But, as the King realized, it was of great symbolic importance that they should be seen holding firm at Buckingham Palace.

So they continued to receive guests there: Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and King Peter of Yugoslavia came to stay. Haakon, King of Norway, had removed himself after the bombing of 1940, but still had his mail sent to the Palace.

Although the royal family, like everyone else, had their ration cards for food, furnishings and clothing, they had an extra allowance and in September 1943 the Queen was able to send 150 clothing coupons to Queen Mary; as she said, ‘there comes a moment, as I know only too well, when one simply
must
have some clothes for all the work that has to be done, and the coupons don't go very far'.
⁶²

Meanwhile Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret watched the progress of the war from the safety of Windsor Castle and Balmoral. When war broke out, the Princesses had been staying on the Balmoral estate and then had been sent to the Royal Lodge at Windsor with their Scottish nurse, Clara Knight (Alah), and Miss Crawford. But, as Crawfie remembered, on 12 May 1940 the Queen telephoned her with instructions to move into Windsor Castle ‘for the week at least'. In fact they were there for ‘five years until the war ended'.
⁶³

Although their rooms in the Lancaster Tower in Windsor Castle were familiar – Princess Elizabeth had always celebrated her birthday there – the blacked-out Castle was eerie and icy cold. In that enclosed world their household became doubly important. Alah slept in Princess Margaret's room, and Miss MacDonald – ‘Bobo' – in Princess Elizabeth's. Bobo was to be an important part of Princess Elizabeth's life. She was, as Crawfie remembered, ‘A sensible Scottish lass, who one felt would come calm and imperturbable through innumerable bombardments. She hails from a place in Invernesshire called the Black Isle.'
⁶⁴
Bobo was to become more than a maid. She was a friend, a companion, an adviser. It is important to remember that during the formative years of the life of Queen Elizabeth II, her most constant companions were sensible Scots young women from ordinary homes.

Crawfie followed a curriculum which Queen Mary had helped to plan, adding, at the old Queen's suggestion, more history and less
mathematics. The Princesses, she said, would never have to do their household books, but history was important for Princess Elizabeth's career; so she was given two lessons a week at Eton College with the Vice-Provost, Sir Henry Marten. She and Princess Margaret were exceptionally well tutored in French by Mrs Montaudon Smith and later by the Vicomtesse de Bellaigue – a training that has been of lasting value.

If the Princesses needed artistic encouragement they had the example of Sir Gerald Kelly, who was at this time at the Castle working happily and interminably on the Coronation portraits. So, in spite of the war and their isolation, the Princesses' education was not neglected.

It was during these years that Princess Elizabeth's love of horses became a passion and one of her main interests throughout her life. She and Princess Margaret groomed their horses and galloped in comparative safety round the Windsor estate. ‘We were in love with our horses,' Princess Margaret remembered.
⁶⁵

In 1942, when she was sixteen, Elizabeth insisted on registering for war service, and appeared at the Windsor office, looking young and vulnerable in her Girl Guide uniform. To her disappointment she was not allowed to join up until the war was nearly over.

To Queen Mary's delight, in 1944, Princess Elizabeth became a Councillor of State, signing her first Acts of Parliament when the King was visiting his forces in Italy, and again playing her part in the Council of State when he was visiting Montgomery's army at Eindhoven. Queen Elizabeth had written to Queen Mary on 25 September 1943: ‘I am so glad that you approve about Lilibet being made a councillor of state. When Bertie was away in Africa one felt how silly it would be if she could not take any part until the age of twenty-one.'
⁶⁶

Sheltered though she had been, Princess Elizabeth had more understanding of foreign affairs than most girls of her age, since she had family ties throughout Europe and in Russia. So she watched the progress of the war from the black days of the Blitz, to the fight back and the North African offensive with a personal interest.

When Germany overran Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece and Crete, her own family and friends were involved – for
instance, the young King Peter of Yugoslavia was the King's godson, and she herself had fallen in love with Prince Philip of Greece when she was still a girl of thirteen. She had met Prince Philip when she and Princess Margaret went with their parents for a weekend visit to Dartmouth College, where the King had spent uncomfortable years as a young man. Prince Philip was eighteen, and hardly noticed her then; but for Princess Elizabeth he was, and would always be, the chosen one. Marion Crawford went to Dartmouth with the family and remembered Prince Philip that, a

fair-haired boy, rather like a Viking, with a sharp face and piercing blue eyes, came in. He was good-looking, though rather off-hand in his manner. He said, ‘How do you do,' to Lilibet, and for a while they knelt side by side playing with the trains. He soon got bored with that. We had ginger crackers and lemonade, in which he joined, and then he said, ‘Let's go to the tennis courts and have some real fun jumping the nets.'

Off they went. At the tennis courts I thought he showed off a good deal, but the little girls were much impressed.

Lilibet said, ‘How good he is, Crawfie. How high he can jump.' She never took her eyes off him the whole time. He was quite polite to her, but did not pay her any special attention.

They met again during the weekend and Prince Philip impressed the little girls enormously with his appetite when, at tea with the Queen, he ‘ate several platefuls of shrimps and a banana split among other trifles'.

As they sailed away, Princess Elizabeth watched him through her glasses until he ‘became just a very small speck in the distance'.
⁶⁷

Prince Philip's uncle was King Constantine, who succeeded to the throne of Greece on his father's death in 1913. Prince Philip's mother, Princess Alice, was the daughter of Prince Louis of Battenberg and Princess Victoria, the eldest child of Queen Victoria's daughter, Princess Alice. In 1917 the Battenberg family name was changed to Mountbatten. The link with the Mountbatten family was to be of the greatest importance, not only to Prince Philip, but also in later years to his son, Prince Charles.

Prince Philip was brought up in Paris until the age of eight. When his
parents separated, his uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, became his guardian. After prep school at Cheam, Surrey, he was educated at the progressive school run by Dr Kurt Hahn, first in Germany, then at Gordonstoun. The regime at Gordonstoun was tough and demanding, both physically and mentally, but Prince Philip thrived on it. At Gordonstoun, Prince Philip was, as Dr Hahn wrote in December 1938, ‘universally trusted, liked and respected'. An experienced and discriminating judge of men, his assessment of Prince Philip's character is important.

He has the greatest sense of service of all the boys in the school. Prince Philip is a born leader, but will need the exacting demands of a great service to do justice to himself. His best is outstanding – his second best is not good enough. Prince Philip will make his mark in any profession where he will have to prove himself in a full trial of strength. His gifts would run to waste if he was soon condemned to lead a life where neither superior officers, nor the routine of the day forced him to tap his hidden resources.
⁶⁸

His hidden resources were in fact to be tested at the naval college at Dartmouth, which he entered in 1939 and where he was in his first year when he first met Princess Elizabeth. At this time neither Dr Hahn, nor his officers at Dartmouth, had any inkling that he would one day become the consort of the Queen, so their praise was untainted by sycophancy.

During the war Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip wrote to each other and the Prince came to stay at Windsor on his rare leaves. His photograph now appeared on Princess Elizabeth's bedside table, and she followed his progress with intense interest.

The war dragged on but on D-Day, 6 June 1944, the Allied invasion of France began and in August Paris was liberated after four years of Nazi occupation. By September the Germans were retreating throughout Europe, and the Allied advance across the Rhine on 22 March 1945 brought victory in Europe.