A Brief History of the Private Life of Elizabeth II (7 page)

The placid life led by the girls was to be shattered, suddenly, when their Uncle David abdicated the throne on 10 December 1936. They had learned very little of the unfolding crisis, and
discovered its full implications only on the day that their father succeeded his brother, for Elizabeth saw in the hall a letter left for ‘Her Majesty the Queen’ and asked:
‘That’s Mummy now, isn’t it?’. Margaret, now also aware of the implications, asked her sister if she would be the next queen. ‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth, ‘some
day.’ ‘Poor you!’ replied Margaret.

Elizabeth was aware of the concern of both her parents, and perhaps of her father’s outright horror at the prospect that was opening up before him. She heard her mother
say: ‘We must take what is coming to us and make the best of it. There are going to be great changes.’ One of these was the removal of the family to Buckingham Palace (‘You mean
for ever?’ asked Elizabeth when told), a home that no generation of Royals seems to like. It is vast, gloomy, uncomfortable and easy to get lost in. Although only across the road from their
old house, it seemed a world away.

Nevertheless, it cast a spell over the sisters. While their grandfather was alive it would have been an intimidating place. Now it belonged to their parents, and could be properly explored
without the need to be well behaved. No child could inherit such a kingdom and be unimpressed. There were lengthy corridors – on which they could ride their tricycles – mysterious
stairs, cellars and an entire inner quadrangle. The Throne Room, let alone the Ballroom, must have inspired awe. The gardens were vast, not overlooked, and entirely private – though they
offered glimpses of the passing world. Best of all, the Royal Mews with their stalls and placid, munching horses were only yards away. It really must have been a huge adventure. The girls lined up
their equine toys in the passageway outside their second-floor suite of rooms, although the King had their rocking horse put outside his study so that he could hear the sounds of his children
romping. This may have been some compensation for the fact that their parents, and particularly their father, could no longer give them the attention to which they had been accustomed.

Once the Duke became King, Elizabeth’s position naturally also changed. She was now second in line to the throne. It is said that from then on she prayed every night for a brother to
supersede her. The recent crisis was banished from conversation as if it had not happened. The Family was now fixed upon its new destiny. Elizabeth had undergone a basic education
in royal behaviour. Now she was to be schooled specifically for her future tasks. Her father, as a second son, had had no training to be anything but a naval officer. He had been
– and remained – terrified of the prospect of ruling. His father, George V, had also been a second son and had experienced a similar naval career. His grandfather, Edward VII, had been
deliberately kept from taking any part in affairs of state, and as a result had led a sybaritic, largely unproductive life until he succeeded at the age of 64. The new King was determined that his
own successor would not come to the throne with such a lack of relevant experience. There was no recent precedent for the education of a female heir to the throne. The boys of previous generations
had simply been packed off into the Navy or given vague courses of education with tutors and at universities. The King himself took on the task of instructing Elizabeth in the performance of a
monarch’s duties, and a famous photograph, taken when Elizabeth was aged 16, captures this passing on of experience. It shows the King at his desk with his daughter looking over his shoulder
as he explains a document from his dispatch box. This image perfectly captures the sense of close association between father and daughter, between the monarchs of the present and future.

She not only learned about administration but also about standing for long hours without getting tired, and never looking peevish, unhappy, tearful or bored. All her life she had seen her
relations going about their duty – waving to crowds, greeting, taking salutes, inspecting people or places. She absorbed this subconsciously and found that she could do it too.

Another point was perhaps unspoken but obvious: while her father and grandmother offered examples of how a monarch should behave, her Uncle David – by now in exile on the Continent –
showed how the job should not be done. As Prince of Wales he had been famous for a magnetic charm, and this had made many friends for the monarchy during his overseas tours. There had always,
however, been stories
of his petulance, self-indulgence and downright rudeness to mar the image that his subjects wished to have of him. As monarch for a few months in 1936 he
was too preoccupied with Mrs Simpson to give his full attention to matters of state. He proved an extremely half-hearted sovereign, brusquely impatient with the trappings – and obligations
– of his position and of the dedication and efforts of those who served him. When he decided to give up the throne, the disappointment with him felt by many in the Empire turned to resentment
and hostility. Elizabeth had always been fond of him. He had been a frequent visitor to the Yorks and an indulgent uncle to the girls, who had been gratified by his interest in them (every
Christmas he gave Elizabeth one of A. A. Milne’s books), although they had seen much less of him since he became King and his personal life grew more complicated. Now Elizabeth saw the effect
of his selfishness on her family, the monarchy and the public. Queen Mary never forgave him. Her parents’ lives seemed ruined. The Crown appeared to be at its most unpopular since the years
of Victoria’s seclusion. Perhaps some of the determination to be above reproach that has guided Queen Elizabeth has been the result of witnessing this upheaval.

Before the ink was even dry on the Instrument of Abdication, Queen Mary had begun to take a more detailed interest in the education of her eldest granddaughter. From now on, no child produced by
the Duke of Windsor – as he was now styled – would be of any importance. Elizabeth’s thoughts and energies, as well as those of the people around her, must be focused on preparing
her urgently for the future. Queen Mary sent for the girls’ curriculum, studied it and made important changes. There was to be much more history, and there was more learning and reciting of
poetry, since it encouraged a feel for the power and rhythm of words, and trained the memory. The lessons would now grow longer, which was appropriate anyway, since the girls were getting
older.

Elizabeth herself was naturally conscious of the new mood around her. She was galvanised to pay even greater attention in the classroom, to strain even harder to meet the
expectations of family and public. ‘I will be good,’ she vowed, repeating – consciously or otherwise – word-for-word a statement made 100 years earlier by Princess
Victoria.

An imaginative and curious child, she was captivated by the past (‘History is so
thrilling!
’ she once enthused). It is perhaps not difficult to see the relevance of the
subject when it deals so much with your own ancestors, when you are surrounded by their portraits and their possessions, and when you know that you yourself are likely to play some role in the
continuing story of the nation. Marion Crawford described looking with her at the portrait of Queen Elizabeth in the Royal Library at Windsor, which had once been the Queen’s bedchamber.
‘Sometimes,’ she recalled, ‘my stories were told on the very scene of the historic events I described.’ As her predecessor, Princess Victoria, had been in childhood,
Princess Elizabeth was fascinated by the figure of the great queen. She even learned by heart Elizabeth’s speech to her troops at Tilbury. The girls were also able to use the Royal
collections for their education. Every week Miss Crawford had some piece from the picture store sent up to the schoolroom for them to study.

Elizabeth loved the ceremonies, the costumes and the music that went with state occasions and which were the very embodiment of history. This was particularly noticeable in the months before her
father’s Coronation in the summer of 1937, for this event meant the assembling of all the splendidly costumed officials of which the United Kingdom has so many. Once again, she knew her place
in the hierarchy of the Court, and the functions that her parents and grandmother would fulfil. She knew the titles of office-holders and the names of foreign royalty who were coming to stay for
the occasion (she reprimanded Miss Crawford for failing to recognise, and curtsy to, King Haakon of Norway in the gardens of Buckingham
Palace). Once again, it was not difficult
to be enchanted by the glitter of ceremonial when you yourself were part of it, when you knew so many of those involved, and when any of them would answer your questions. It was also rather
head-turning to be able to command the resources of the monarchy. When Princess Elizabeth was 13 her favourite musical was
Rose Marie.
On her birthday she asked the band of the Scots Guards
to play tunes from it at Windsor.

The King, knowing that his eldest daughter might well have her own Coronation within a decade or two, used the occasion to teach her about the ceremony, its participants and its significance. He
had a picture book created that showed the event from beginning to end, and went through it with her. Queen Mary, too, found a guide to the Coronation procession, this time a relic from the reign
of Victoria, and similarly explained the names and functions of the people depicted. Their present-day counterparts could be introduced to the children as they came to the Palace to attend
rehearsals. The king was, in any case, given to discussing with her affairs of state, and it was observed that he spoke to her as to an equal.

Elizabeth had already, as a small girl, learned how to wave to crowds. She had understood all her life that people wanted to see her, and that it was a kindness to make herself visible.
Gradually, during the 1930s, she became more noticeable at Royal occasions. She was a bridesmaid at the wedding of her uncle, the Duke of Kent, in 1934. She participated in the celebrations for her
grandfather’s Silver Jubilee. In May 1937, she attended her father’s Coronation. She began accompanying her father to events, such as the opening of the National Maritime Museum, and
she made a speech in French to welcome the future French President René Coty, as well as greeting other Coronation guests.

Elizabeth took a sisterly interest in Margaret and hoped she would behave (‘she
is
rather young for a coronation’). She told her that, in the Abbey: ‘If you see someone
in a funny hat, you are
not
to point at it and laugh.’

The ceremony itself took place on 12 May 1937. Elizabeth was encouraged to write a journal of the event, and she did so with characteristic thoroughness. On lined paper she
wrote neatly in pencil: ‘The Coronation, 12 May 1937. To Mummy and Papa. From Lilibet By Herself.’ It is preserved in the Royal Archives. It describes the noise of the crowds outside
the Palace early that morning, and how the sisters – not yet dressed – watched them through the windows. She writes of the carriage-drive to the Abbey, and the splendour, colour and
monotony within. She watched, very solemnly (judging by photographs), the whole of the lengthy and complex ceremony, and appeared with her parents and sister afterward on the Palace balcony to
greet the crowds. She and Margaret seemed, in their velvet trains and coronets, straight out of a fairy tale.

Soon afterwards she reached the age at which her contemporaries were beginning secondary school, and her own education took a further step forward. It was arranged that she should take lessons
in constitutional history from the Vice Provost of Eton. Henry Marten was amiably professorial, charming and – after teaching generations of boys the complexities of Britain’s past and
present – extremely capable. The
History of England
, of which he was co-author, was a seminal textbook. The Princess visited him twice weekly in company with Miss Crawford, who had no
role in this process but that of observer. They sat in his untidy, book-filled study – where he kept a tame raven – while he expatiated on the mysteries of this subject. He had never
taught a girl pupil, and had a tendency based on long habit to address her as ‘Gentlemen’. Like her father and grandfather, she was taken exhaustively through that bible of monarchy,
Walter Bagehot’s
English Constitution.
Although published in 1867, it was as relevant as ever, and her son would one day study it in turn. Elizabeth, always diligent, took copious
notes on the green-covered exercise books that were used by the schoolboys while her governess was invited by the affable Marten to relax with a novel.

These sessions may not sound much like a formal education, but they were of immense value. The heir to the throne received, through them, one-to-one tuition specifically
tailored to her own circumstances and future from a man who was perhaps the most gifted history teacher of his generation. She studied Trevelyan’s
English Social History
and G. R.
Elton’s
Imperial
Commonwealth
. Her tutor discoursed on disparate aspects of law, on the role of Parliament and on economics. To teach her about international affairs he produced
an umbrella that opened into a map of the world. To deal with constitutional matters he invented a sort of jigsaw, each piece of which represented some office-holder or aspect of the state, and
made the whole subject comprehensible. He must have won her affection not only for his endearing battiness but because he was a great admirer of her heroine Queen Victoria. With her powerful
memory, the Princess retained a lot of what she was taught and she was set homework, which, if it was not good enough, might be marked ‘N’, for nonsense.

The lessons continued for years. When the Princess was at Birkhall on the Balmoral estate, he posted her lessons to her. Once she was at Windsor after the war had begun, he carried his books up
to the Castle and taught her there. Princess Margaret was not offered the opportunity to have tutorials with Marten. It was, she was told, ‘not necessary’. With the return of peace, he
was to be knighted for his services. The ceremony took place in School Yard, Eton’s imposing quadrangle, in front of the assembled boys. He deserved this accolade, for he had done his job
well. As Queen Elizabeth, his pupil has genuinely impressed advisors and politicians with her absolute command of constitutional matters. She was thoroughly grounded in the things she needed to
know.