The result was a collective self-deceit at Court, which made a realistic look into the future impossible to discuss. The King’s ill-health also had the effect of increasing his elder daughter’s sense of independent responsibility, as she assumed more and more of his functions. Outwardly, the Princess showed no sign of strain. Indeed, she and the Duke – with a male heir promptly provided, and efficiently nurtured by a retinue of helpers – embarked on a brief episode of social gaiety. As pre-war Society began to re-emerge from hibernation, the royal couple were to be seen at the houses and events frequented by others of their kind, or in the company of show business personalities, for whom both princesses had a particular penchant. Ordinary citizens bought photos of their favourite film stars. The King’s daughters invited them to dinner, or to stay. When Princess Elizabeth celebrated her twenty-third birthday in April 1949 at the Café de Paris, a fashionable restaurant in Coventry Street, following a visit to The School for Scandal at the New Theatre, the royal party was joined by Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, the leading actor and actress of the show. Together, the royal and theatrical party ‘tangoed and sambaed, waltzed and quick-stepped’ the night away, before going on to a nightclub for more of the same.57
For a time, both princesses took up with Danny Kaye, then at the height of his fame. John Dean recalled seeing the American comedian ‘capering round Princess Elizabeth’ on the lawn at Windlesham Moor.58 At grand social occasions, the Princess and the Duke were inevitably the main attraction, and they learned to play their parts. In June 1949, Chips Channon recorded his impression of the couple at a ball at Windsor Castle, mainly attended by the clever, artistic, smart members of the emerging ‘Princess Margaret set’. Elizabeth was wearing a very high tiara and the Garter, and Philip, also with the Garter, was in his naval uniform. ‘They looked like characters out of a fairy tale’, wrote Channon, ‘and quite eclipsed Princess Margaret, who was simply dressed.’59 This was one kind of fancy dress. There was also another. At a ball given by the American ambassador in July – in a curiously snobbish piece of royal whimsy – the Duke appeared as a waiter, wearing a white apron, and his wife as a maid.60
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