That summer they moved into Clarence House, away from the direct surveillance of the King and Queen. For a few months, they were able to lead the semblance of a normal family life – husband, wife and infant son, a single, separate unit under the same roof. The arrangement, however, was soon upset by the resumption of Philip’s active naval career. In October 1949 – following a period at the Royal Naval Staff College at Greenwich – he was appointed First Lieutenant and second-in-command of HMS Chequers, leader of the First Destroyer Flotilla of the Mediterranean Fleet, based in Malta. During the next two years, the Princess’s existence became, in one respect, the most ‘normal’ of her entire life. Crawfie wrote later that when Elizabeth was in Malta with her husband, she ‘saw and experienced for the first time the life of an ordinary girl.’61 Mike Parker, who had become a private secretary to the Princess and the Duke jointly, agrees. ‘This was a fabulous period,’ he says, ‘when it was thought a good idea for her to become a naval officer’s wife. It seemed it was the King’s wish that she should do so.’62 The negative side of such normality, however, was that she saw her husband only on those occasions that his location and leaves made possible.
Philip flew out to Malta on October 16th. The Princess was due to join him a few weeks later. Meanwhile, her emblematic role as young mother continued to develop. It was an age of exhortation, and the Princess’s demeanour and speaking style equipped her well for the task of delivering homilies to others – especially women – whose experience seemed to relate to her own. A couple of days after her husband left, she returned to the theme of ‘materialism’ – already denounced in her Oxford University speech – when she addressed a Mothers’ Union rally of young wives at Central Hall, Westminster. ‘Materialism’ in 1949 meant wasteful and unnecessary consumption – and therefore was subject to Government as well as moral disapproval. At the same time, she was required to lend her own moral authority – as a royal newly-wed and home-maker – to the Mothers’ Union condemnation of divorce.
In her speech, she spoke scathingly of the ‘current age of growing self-indulgence, of hardening materialism, of falling moral standards’. She also praised her audience’s emphasis on the sanctity of marriage.63 The young wives applauded warmly when she declared that broken homes caused havoc among children, and that ‘we can have no doubt that divorce and separation are responsible for some of the darkest evils in our society today’. Children, she said, learnt by example, and would not be expected to do what parents were too lazy to do themselves. ‘I believe there is a great fear in our generation of being labelled priggish’, she added – indicating that the fear should not prevent responsible people from doing or saying what they believed to be right.64
The speech plunged her into unexpected controversy. Advocates of changing the divorce laws reacted strongly. The Mothers’ Union, they claimed, was notorious for its conservatism on the subject, and they complained that royal sanction should not have been given for a standpoint that was increasingly contested. ‘The harm to children can be greater in a home where both parents are at loggerheads than if divorce ensues’, protested the chairman of the Marriage Law Reform Committee. Of course, the Princess had not written the words she had spoken, but – having allowed her personal image and reputation to be used in order to bolster a contentious point of view – she could not entirely escape responsibility for the sentiment. However, according to one member of the Royal Household, writing a few years later, there was no reason for the Princess to distance herself from her script. ‘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.’65
Princess Elizabeth flew to Malta to join her husband on November 20th, accompanied by a party that included a lady-in-waiting, Lady Alice Egerton, Mike Parker, her maid Bobo, and Philip’s valet John Dean.66 Prince Charles was left in the charge of nursery staff, much as Princess Elizabeth herself had been left in 1927, when her own parents, as Duke and Duchess of York, had embarked on their antipodean tour.
According to Dean, the Princess’s life in Malta was not markedly different from that of anybody else similarly placed. However, normality and ordinariness were only relative. Most service wives did not have a retinue of devoted helpers. There was also something else that singled her out: the presence and hospitality of Uncle Dickie. It added greatly to the convenience and comfort of the Princess that the ever-solicitous Lord Mountbatten happened to be based at Malta in his current role in command of the 1st Cruiser Squadron of the Mediterranean Fleet, and that he was more than happy to make his house, Villa Guardamangia, available to the royal couple.
The Princess’s party stayed till the end of December, when Chequers was sent with six other warships to patrol the Red Sea, following disorders in Eritrea. Dean recalled later that Princess Elizabeth had been very excited about her first Malta trip, ‘although she was probably a little sad at leaving Prince Charles behind’.67 She did not, however, display any obvious consternation or – as some mothers might, after five weeks’ separation – find it necessary to rush back to him as soon as she returned to England. Instead, she spent four days at Clarence House attending to engagements and dealing (according to the press) with ‘a backlog of correspondence,’ before attending Hurst Park races, where she saw Monaveen, a horse she owned jointly with her mother, win at 10–1. Only then was she reunited with her son, who had been staying with her parents at Sandringham.
Yet the Princess could be forgiven for enjoying the novelty of her visits to Malta – a haven of comparative privacy, and freedom from official duties. ‘They were so relaxed and free, coming and going as they pleased . . .’ recalled Dean. ‘I think it was their happiest time.’68 Philip was delighted to have returned to the life he knew and loved, and which depended on his abilities, not on his marriage. What for him, however, was a restoration of the status quo ante was a revelation for her. Though she lived in greater luxury than others, she did many of the same things as them, and in a similar way. Parker recalls that she would go down to the ship at the bottom of the road which led from the villa and ‘generally mucked in with the other wives’. There was a lot of social visiting, having tea and dining with other couples. ‘She spent only ten per cent of the time being a Princess,’ he says. The ten per cent was mainly accounted for by Uncle Dickie who ‘tried to get her into the admirals’ strata’.69
There were some necessary courtesy calls. She was required to visit Archbishop Bonzi, and admire the views from his hilltop residence. Otherwise, to a degree that was barely imaginable in Britain, she was left alone. When Philip was busy, she drove her own Daimler, either solo or with a female companion, around the island. When he was free, she accompanied him on swimming expeditions with the Mountbattens, who would take a launch to the creeks and bays around Malta and Gozo, and they would sometimes sleep on board. She would watch her husband at some sporting event, or dine and dance with him at the local hotel – protected by the management and unharassed by the press. If she missed Charles, helping with a party given by Lady Mountbatten for a hundred children on board ship may have provided some consolation.70
In April, Princess Elizabeth’s second pregnancy was announced. She spent her twenty-fourth birthday on Malta, watching her husband and uncle playing polo. Then she returned to England. The baby was due to be born in August, this time at Clarence House. As her time approached, thousands of people gathered outside, many of them hoping for a glimpse of the heavily