The most important royal visit of the decade took place in 1939. Following a brief and apparently successful trip to France in July 1938 to strengthen the Entente Cordiale, it was decided to send the royal couple to North America, to strengthen the special relationship. Before the journey, President Roosevelt invited ‘either or both’ the princesses, genially observing in his letter that ‘I shall try to have one or two Roosevelts of approximately the same age to play with them!’ It was an exciting offer, but the King declined it, on the grounds that they were too young for the rigours of the Canadian part of the tour.56
By the time of embarkation in May 1939, Franco had taken Madrid, Hitler had marched into Prague, and a full-scale European conflict seemed imminent. Interest in the tour on both sides of the Atlantic was intense. Perhaps the wild excitement that greeted the King and Queen from the moment they landed in Canada on 17 May would have been even greater if their daughters had been with them. As it was, the visitors had to content themselves with the first-ever royal transatlantic telephone call, taken by the princesses at the Bowes-Lyon house at St. Paul’s Walden Bury.57 The King and Queen spoke through hand microphones; the children finished their end of the conversation by holding the Queen’s corgi and making him bark by pinching him.58
After three weeks in Canada, the King and Queen were fêted in the United States by the President (‘He is so easy to get to know,’ wrote a grateful Monarch, ‘& never makes one feel shy’), before reembarking from Canada on 15 June. Deeply moved by his reception, and relieved that it was over, the King ‘nearly cried’ – as he later confessed – at the end of his final speech before departing. It was, wrote his biographer, ‘a climacture in the King’s life,’ while at the same time ‘an undeniable wrench to leave homeland and family under such uncertain conditions’.59
Presumably it was also a wrench for his children, despite the telephone call. In the press, the six-week parting was widely discussed as an example of the high level of sacrifice the royal couple were prepared to make for the public good. Some interest was also taken in the feelings of their daughters, and the leave-taking at Portsmouth at the beginning of the trip became a moment of sentimental drama.
Keen attention was paid to the princesses as they were taken aboard their parents’ ship before she sailed. Elizabeth at thirteen, it was observed, was nearly as tall as her mother. There was a change in the way she dressed – no longer in ‘babyish, bonnet-shaped hats,’ wearing instead a tilted cap, with the hem-line of her coat and dress lowered to below her knees.60 The faces of both girls were scrutinized for signs of emotion. According to one witness, ‘they looked somewhat forlorn when, at length, amid tremendous cheering, the hooting of sirens, and the God-speed of thousands of onlookers, the mighty liner, bearing their Majesties, slowly glided out of the harbour.’61 According to another, when the princesses returned to the jetty, ‘Margaret’s face puckered up, Elizabeth looked tearful . . . ,’ while the King and Queen could be seen gazing after them, ‘until the two little figures merged into the blue of thronged quays’.62
During the tour, Elizabeth sent her mother photographs, and made a film of Margaret and the pets with a cine-camera. Various diversions of an educational sort were arranged by Queen Mary. One was a visit to the Bank of England to see the gold in the vaults. Naturally, the Governor, Montagu Norman, accompanied them. The old Queen was sincere in her didactic aims. However, in the prevailing mood such excursions almost inevitably became public events as well as private ones, despite strenuous efforts by Buckingham Palace to prevent, or at any rate contain, publicity. ‘I think that the question of the press and press photographers in connection with the outings of T.R.H.s Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret will have to be seriously considered,’ Sir Eric Miéville, the courtier responsible for press relations, wrote to the King’s private secretary following a trip to London Zoo which was widely covered in the picture papers. ‘What happens now is that by some extraordinary means, unknown to me, whenever they are due to visit an institution, news always leaks out ahead to certain members of the press . . . One has to remember that in these days such information given to the newspapers is worth money.’63
The homecoming of the King and Queen was almost as dramatic as the departure. The princesses prepared for it by spring-cleaning the ‘Little House’.64 The press did so by sending every available reporter to Southampton, where a destroyer, the Kempenfelt, had been ordered to carry the children to the liner Empress of Britain for a family reunion. ‘Blue eyes sparkling, hair blowing,’ the girls were piped on board the Kempenfelt.65 Solemnly, they shook hands with each of the ship’s officers, before sailing out to meet their parents in the Solent. After they had been brought together and returned to shore, the whole royal party proceeded by train to Waterloo, whence they rode in state to Buckingham Palace, the two princesses beside the King and Queen in the leading carriage.
Chapter 4
‘WE NEVER SEEMED to get really settled again after the Canada-America visit of 1939,’ recalled Crawfie.1 The trip marked the end of the tight family life that had survived the move out of 145 Piccadilly, and the start of intermittent separations and comings-together that lasted until 1945. The Royal Family had a good war – by the standards of almost every other royal house a stupendous one, emerging with its reputation enhanced, and much of the damage done by the Abdication repaired. Yet the psychology of the achievement was complicated. Much depended on the passivity of the Symbol King, and the serenity of his family life. Loyalty to the Monarchy waxed as the nation’s fear grew, and acquired a character of hope and yearning – different from the sentimentalities and social conservatism of peacetime – which, as the end approached, turned to gratitude toward a King who had no way of affecting the outcome. Meanwhile, his children became representatives of what the fighting was about, their pre-war immaturity and innocence frozen in aspic. ‘One felt,’ in the words of a writer of the period, ‘that these engaging little people would never grow up’.2 The symbolism was heightened by a mystery. For security reasons, the whereabouts of the girls were kept secret, and the images of them that appeared in the press were set against an unknown, unidentifiable background, adding to a sense of them as magical princesses whose fate was linked to the national destiny.
The Royal Family was at Balmoral until just before the declaration of war on September 3rd. The King returned to London on August 23rd, his wife five days later. The children were despatched to Birkhall, the first of their mysterious locations, where they were cared for and guarded by a retinue headed by an equerry, and including a chauffeur, a police sergeant and several constables.3 Lessons of a sort continued, Crawfie reading newspapers out loud, ‘trying as far as possible to give them some idea of what was happening without too many horrible details.’4 Marten posted history papers, and Princess Elizabeth sent him essays for correction. Girl Guide meetings took place in the village hall. So did ‘war-work’, which consisted of a large sewing party mainly made up of women from the royal estate. At Christmas they went to Sandringham, and then to Royal Lodge until May, with the Queen in residence for much of the time. Here there was more Girl Guiding, with the unusual ingredient of evacuees from the East End, bringing the girls into fleeting contact with urban working-class children.
‘Thank you so very much for the books you and Mr Chamberlain sent me for my birthday,’ Princess Elizabeth wrote to the Prime Minister’s wife on 23 April 1940. ‘It was so kind of you and I have always wanted to read them. I hope you are both well and that Mr Chamberlain is not too tired. Thanking you again so much.’5 Mr Chamberlain was, however, shortly to be relieved of his responsibilities. On 8 May , following the debate on the Norway campaign, he was forced to resign. Two days later, Winston Churchill drove to Buckingham Palace to kiss hands as his successor. On 12 May, as Hitler invaded the Low Countries, the princesses were moved into the great fortress