A Brief History of the House of Windsor (17 page)

It was an atmosphere of simple camaraderie that was suited to a less cynical generation than our own, and one whose opportunities for leisure were more limited. It marked an important new departure – the chance for representatives of the nation’s youth to meet and mingle with royalty in an atmosphere of informality; ‘no damned red carpet’ indeed. The gatherings continued once Bertie succeeded to the throne. He arrived off the coast aboard the royal yacht, to be rowed to shore by Suffolk fishermen. At ‘the King’s Camp’, it was the head of state who joined in the games and the sing-songs, the notion of ‘accessibility’ becoming even more pronounced. The camps ceased only because of the war. The king, of course, continued to reign after it had ended and, because the desire for social equality became even more intense in post-war Britain, one wonders why no attempt was made to revive the camps. There seems to be no evidence that they actually did ease relations between the classes, but they were an inspired and sincere attempt to do so, and might have
become a lasting memorial to the king whose idealism had made them possible.

Like politicians running for office, the monarchy was seeking to be all things to all people, but to a large extent succeeded. Whatever his drawbacks in terms of shyness, the Duke of York achieved and maintained an impressive level of personal contact with his father’s people. Yet it must not be assumed that he was met everywhere with deference or that the public as a whole found him charming. On a visit to London’s East End during the Depression, he was heckled with cries of: ‘Give us food! We don’t want royal parasites!’ In an era before the Welfare State and the social safety nets that seek to protect the least well off, it is worth remembering that the poor could face serious malnutrition and actual starvation. Their resentment of the ease and plenty in which others lived was thus more acute and desperate. Bertie’s encounters with his people were not, therefore, always a simple matter of smiling and waving. They might have more in common with a present-day visit to a poverty-stricken developing country, and engendered a similar sense of hopelessness and anger.

He entered the 1920s as a bachelor, but at once met Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, a debutante from an illustrious Scottish family, with whom he fell in love. She was twenty. He was five years older. She was outgoing, spirited and genuinely kind. He was awkward, shy and stammering. They had met once before, as children at a party, when she was five and he was ten. She had given him the cherries off her cake, a kindness he had not forgotten.

He proposed to her, but was unsuccessful. She was unwilling, as other young women have been since, to make the sacrifice of personal freedom that marrying royalty necessitates. It was certainly not a question of dislike on her part, for his shyness and modesty would doubtless have been endearing. He might have been shy, but he was also persistent. She had impressed both of his parents, which was no mean feat, and in
fact Queen Mary was as determined as her son was that Elizabeth should have him. The queen had spotted the younger woman’s potential and saw in her the best possible antidote to Bertie’s reserve and awkwardness. Even the king was said to be ‘half in love with her’. The young man was to try again twice more until, in 1923, she at last agreed. Parental endorsement was of crucial importance, for his parents could snuff out any romance of which they disapproved. He had previously set his cap at other women. In the case of one, Helen Baring, to whom he proposed, he received a brusque message from Queen Mary that read: ‘On no account will we permit the proposed marriage. Mama.’

Since childhood, Elizabeth had been deputizing for her mother as hostess in a large and hospitable household, and regarded meeting people as a pleasure rather than an ordeal. She was everything the duke was not: sociable, confident, at ease in any company. Beneath an exterior of gracious good manners, she also had a determination that was to stand both of them in good stead in the future. She had been the most popular debutante of the year in which she ‘came out’, and she had had at least two other serious admirers. Bertie was not an obvious companion for someone of such a sociable disposition, yet he had become passionately fond of her. Even though there was little likelihood, at that time, of the Duke of York inheriting the throne, the prospect of a lifetime of public service was something she had to consider very carefully. Her parents, and his, watched the romance develop with a combination of hope and anxiety. The couple were well suited for the precise reason that they were so different. Others could see that Elizabeth would compensate for his reserved nature and make them an effective team.

This time there could be no question that his mother, and he, had made the right choice. The engagement was immensely popular with the public. The Scots were naturally delighted that a compatriot had won the affection of a prince, and Elizabeth’s sunny, unspoiled nature was made much of by the
press, which saw her as bringing a new vivacity to the institution of royalty. Despite her aristocratic background the public were, for the first time, able to feel that the wife of a royal was one of their own, and this made a noticeable difference to their enthusiasm for the match. In an emphatically modern, post-war age, this marriage was seen as something new and welcome. Elizabeth would in time become the first native-born queen by marriage since Catherine Parr, who had been one of the wives of King Henry VIII. For the moment, Elizabeth simply offered beauty, refinement and a pleasing nature. As with the adoption of its new name, the royal family had clearly made a change that fitted precisely with the mood of its people.

One reason that family weddings had in the past been small-scale, semi-private affairs had been from the belief that the cost of public celebrations might foster resentment. To make this one a national occasion was an experiment, but one that proved so resoundingly successful it has been repeated at almost every opportunity since. It was decided that the couple would marry in Westminster Abbey. This was by no means the obvious setting that it seems to us now. There had at the time been no royal wedding there since that of Richard II more than five centuries earlier, and the choice of the Abbey was tantamount to issuing a general invitation to the public at large. A marriage in central London meant that many ordinary people would be able to see something of the event, and on the day – 26 April 1923 – over a million turned out. This was the first of the set-piece royal weddings, the great public occasions, that have since become the norm. There was even a request that matters go further by having the proceedings broadcast on wireless, though this was declined by the Chapter of Westminster Abbey.

As it travelled down Whitehall toward the Abbey, the bride’s carriage slowed and stopped by the Cenotaph, Britain’s national war memorial. Elizabeth, one of whose brothers had been killed in the Great War, leaned out on impulse
and placed her bouquet on the memorial, arriving at her wedding without one. It was a touching action, and the more so because it was spontaneous. It also revealed a gift for symbolic gestures that would help greatly to increase the popularity of the monarchy.

The Duke and Duchess of York would have just over thirteen years of semi-private life together before the crisis of December 1936 put Bertie on the throne. They lived in London (at a large town house in Piccadilly, a few minutes from Buckingham Palace) and at Windsor (where a Regency house in the grounds, Royal Lodge, was refurbished for them). Here the restoration and cultivation of the gardens became a passion, a hobby, and – amid the whirl of duty – a means of relaxation for them both. They had other concerns, however. Almost three years to the day after their wedding, on 21 April 1926, a daughter was born to them. She was christened Elizabeth Alexandra Mary. Though not directly in the line of succession, for it was still assumed that her uncle the Prince of Wales would marry and produce children of his own, she was the nearest thing to a royal heir. She delighted the king, who had been waiting impatiently for his eldest son to continue the family line, and she delighted the public for the same reason. General opinion might have preferred a boy, but she was so charming that she became at once a sort of national mascot, feted in the press and extensively photographed. Four years later she was joined by a sister, Margaret Rose, and the Yorks’ family was complete. Both girls had been born by Caesarean section, and two such births were the most that medical opinion would condone. There would be no son, and no further daughters.

Elizabeth and Bertie made a lengthy tour to Australia and New Zealand when Elizabeth was less than two years old, leaving her with her grandparents (she herself would leave her own children with the king and queen at a similar age when her husband was serving in Malta). There was also some suggestion that the family would move to Canada because the duke might be appointed Governor-General. This proposal,
however, was not acceptable to Canadians, and the position was not the king’s to give. The appointment would have had to be approved by the country’s government, and this was not done. It might be assumed that a Dominion would welcome the chance to have a member of Britain’s royal family resident in Ottawa as a gesture of imperial unity, but Canadians rejected the notion of a royal Governor-General and the man appointed was Lord Willingdon (1866–1941), a highly revered proconsul with extensive experience of India – a professional rather than a symbolic figure. King George was relieved that his son had not been invited. For one thing, he feared that Bertie’s shyness and his inability to speak in public without stammering would have made the position a terrible ordeal for him. For another, he did not wish to be separated from his granddaughter Elizabeth, of whom he was extremely fond. There would be enough for the Yorks to do in Britain, and this became even more the case when the king became ill in 1928 and they had to take over more of his duties.

As shown, the economic climate made the cost of royalty potentially controversial. The king reduced his own and his sons’ Civil List allowances. David, Prince of Wales, sulked. Bertie was resigned. He could suddenly no longer afford the extensive renovations he was having carried out at Royal Lodge, and had to accustom himself instead to living in a partially dilapidated residence. Worse than that, he was obliged to give up his major leisure interest by parting with his stable of hunters. Those who do not own horses will have difficulty in understanding the extent to which these animals can become friends. It was a terrible wrench for him to sell the horses that had been not only his companions but his hobby. Yet he did. ‘I am only doing this,’ he said, ‘after careful consideration of the facts (damned hard facts).’ These economies, in other words, were no mere token but a genuine sacrifice for him.

Despite this, the Yorks led a pleasant and largely untroubled existence. Bertie and Elizabeth were both proving to
be useful in the performance of public royal duties, and the attentions of a speech therapist, Lionel Logue, which began in 1926, had considerably lessened for Bertie the stress of his public appearances. He had his good causes, through which he made some impact, and he had a love of sports and outdoor life that brought him considerable pleasure – he shot and farmed at Sandringham, continued to play tennis (a left-hander, he remains the only member of his family to have reached Wimbledon), and played golf with modest ability. With no apparent desire to travel abroad on holiday, the family went to Balmoral each summer. The girls lived at home – there was no precedent for princesses going away to school – and the four members of the family therefore spent every day together unless official duties dictated otherwise. Bertie, who had fitted effortlessly into the role of family man, had an enviably happy existence.

All this was widely recorded in books and articles. In the absence of any domestic life around the Prince of Wales, the Yorks became by default the nation’s First Family. The public were very interested in their garden, their pets, the girls’ hobbies and accomplishments. The royal family had always been public property – photographs taken of its children at all ages, in both serious and playful moments, had been common in Bertie’s own youth. This time there was an added purpose to the exercise – to show their subjects that, in a time of economic hardship, the family lived a simple and rather ordinary life that was much like other people’s. Both before and after he came to the throne, pictures of Bertie showed him cycling, walking, gardening, taking tea with his wife and daughters. Dressed in a tweed suit and brogues, he looked like an agreeable country doctor. The duchess was always stylish. She might have helped her husband to clear the gardens, but she was never photographed in old clothes, and the notion of her being pictured in trousers would have been unthinkable. Similarly, the two princesses were always turned out with emphatic neatness, in sensible shoes and with dresses that
matched and looked like those worn by millions of middle-class girls.

The pleasant lives led by Bertie and his family were not interrupted until the death of his father. The jubilee of King George V was celebrated in May 1935, but he died the following January. David became king, as has always been the custom, the instant his father passed away. By this time, however, there were serious doubts about the coming reign. Not only was the new king at loggerheads with many of those around him – he despised the courtiers he had inherited from his father, and abruptly dismissed many of them – he was also preoccupied and agitated, and his relationship with the American divorcee, Mrs Wallis Simpson, was causing serious disquiet. Though the Yorks had met her – she had visited Royal Lodge with David – they had not realized that the king was so intent on marrying her, or that he was seriously considering abdication if he were not allowed to do so while retaining the throne. With typical selfishness, David had not confided his difficulties, or his intentions, to the brother who would have to take over the position he would abandon. The new king was not willing to see his brother or to discuss matters with him, and meanwhile anxiety continued to mount.