Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe (57 page)

The Duchess of York became Bertie’s ultimate helpmeet. In 1926, she suggested that her husband schedule an appointment with an Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue, who might help the duke overcome his stammer. Logue and Bertie worked together for years at his Harley Street office in London; at first the duke attended sessions almost daily, where he learned a variety of techniques that would enable him to surmount his stuttering.

After Bertie ascended the throne in 1936, his ability to confidently speak in public became a matter of international importance, because the radio was a primary means of communication. Bertie’s speech therapy was arduous, and ultimately successful, although he was never entirely “cured” of his stammer.

His other physical issues resulted in problems in the boudoir. The Duchess of York conceived their daughters, Elizabeth (born in 1926) and Margaret Rose (born in 1930), by artificial insemination.

Nicknamed “Betty and Bert,” the close-knit Yorks, who called themselves “Us Four,” were viewed as the model modern royal family—the polar opposite of the Prince of Wales, with his wild house parties, his nightclubbing, and his married paramours. As the two brothers rarely socialized, especially after Edward VIII became king, Bertie was unaware of the possibility that his older sibling might abdicate the throne if he were unable to wed his girlfriend, the American Wallis Simpson, until just a few weeks before the event.

Back in 1934, when Edward was still Prince of Wales, he had fallen in love with Wallis Warfield Simpson, a divorced Baltimore native who was still married to her second husband, Ernest Simpson. The pair shamelessly paraded their romance, a rather tawdry and dysfunctional relationship, which I profiled fully in both
Royal Affairs
and
Notorious Royal Marriages
. After Edward became king upon the death of George V in January 1936, he made it quite clear that he intended to wed Wallis as soon as she divorced Simpson. The
royal family was appalled, and for numerous reasons, the British government was not about to let this happen. As Wallis’s morality was questionable, she was hardly queen material (it had nothing to do with her being an American). She had two husbands still living, and Britain’s monarch is also the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, which, like the Catholic Church, did not recognize divorce. The king could not wed a divorcée as long as her ex-husbands remained alive. Had she been a widow, things might have been different. Additionally, the British had amassed copious dossiers on both Wallis and Edward and had learned of their sympathies toward fascism and the Third Reich.

Edward compromised by suggesting a morganatic marriage in which Wallis would not be styled as queen of England; nor would any children of theirs have rights of succession. But the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, ultimately made it clear to Edward that he would have to choose between Wallis and his crown, as neither England’s Parliament nor the British Empire’s Dominion governments supported the morganatic option. They refused to consent to his marriage with Wallis and would not accept her as queen of England in any way, shape, or form. Apart from the fact that no one could stand her personality, it was her politics that caused the most concern. She was roundly believed to be a friend of the Nazis and fascists, and her power over the king was so influential—in part because he was so madly in love with her—that the dynamic of their relationship bordered on sadomasochism.

Baldwin informed Edward that if he insisted on wedding Wallis
and
remaining king, his government would resign en masse, a disaster for the nation. The prime minister offered Edward two clear choices: the lady or the crown. Edward chose Wallis.

So, on a technicality (which in fact was a big deal), by refusing to countenance Edward’s marriage with Wallis if he were to insist on defying both religious and civil law, Parliament was able to rid England of a monarch with problematic political views that could have proved disastrous for the country at a time when Hitler was on the rise.

On December 10, 1936, Edward VIII renounced his throne,
the only English sovereign to voluntarily abdicate. A reluctant monarch who stepped up to the plate to do his duty when his brother abrogated it, Bertie succeeded him. He reigned under the last of his four names, becoming George VI in order to give his subjects a sense of stability and continuity after the terrible flux of the Abdication Crisis.

George V had prepared both of his sons to become rulers by deputizing them to make appearances for him during his own reign. When Bertie ascended the throne he was able to ensure a smooth transition, as assiduous and diligent as Edward had been irresponsible.

During the Second World War, Bertie overcame his fear of public speaking, surmounting his stammer thanks to Lionel Logue’s tireless, if unorthodox, coaching; the king’s Sunday radio broadcasts became a source of comfort to his subjects. In the aftermath of the Blitz in 1940 the monarchs toured the areas ravaged by the bombing. Buckingham Palace itself was struck nine times by German bombs.

When George VI ascended the throne at the age of forty-one, the British Empire covered twenty-five percent of the globe. By the time World War II was over, the landscape had changed dramatically. On August 15, 1947, India declared her independence. On Easter Monday, 1949, thirty years after the famed Easter Uprising that began at the Dublin General Post Office, the Republic of Ireland was declared. That January, a new Indian Constitution no longer recognized the king of England as their sovereign, but agreed to acknowledge him as “Head of the Commonwealth.” Ceylon, Pakistan, and South Africa still recognized him as king, but no longer as “Defender of the Faith.” Only Canada, New Zealand, and Australia still acknowledged him as both their king and Defender of the Faith, yet all of these former “kingdoms” had become “realms.”

A heavy smoker throughout his life, George VI was operated on for arteriosclerosis in 1949 and for lung cancer two years later. His health remained fragile and he died on February 6, 1952, at the age of fifty-six. His eldest daughter, the twenty-five-year-old Princess Elizabeth, learned that she had become queen while on a state visit to Africa with her husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.

Elizabeth II celebrated her diamond jubilee—sixty years on the throne—in June 2012.

G
EORGE
VI
AND
E
LIZABETH
B
OWES
L
YON
(1900–2002)

Baptized Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes Lyon on September 23, 1900, the ninth child of Lord and Lady Glamis (later the 14th Earl and Countess of Strathmore), the future queen of England enjoyed an idyllic Edwardian childhood in England and Scotland. She divided her time between the stately (and purportedly haunted) Glamis Castle and the charming St. Paul’s Walden Bury in Hertfordshire.

In the summer of 1905, Lady Elizabeth met her future husband—although neither of them knew it—at a house party hosted by the Duchess of Buccleuch, the mistress of the robes to the queen. The royal children were present, and as usual, the king’s eleven-year-old grandson, Edward, was the life of the party. His next-youngest brother, nine-year-old Albert, known as Bertie, already self-consciously hampered by a stammer, was silent and withdrawn, standing off to one side, removed from the gaiety. For a long time, he found himself beside a tiny girl nearly dwarfed by the enormous blue bow in her hair. She plucked the crystallized cherries from her cake and solicitously transferred them to his plate.

The pair of them would not recall this first encounter, but when they finally fulfilled their destiny, the dynamic between them would always remain the same.

Five summers later, at a garden party at Glamis, the subject of young Elizabeth’s fate was literally at hand, when a palmist hired to entertain the guests made a startling prediction. Elizabeth’s French governess, Mademoiselle Lang, asked if she’d gotten her palm read. The little girl replied, “Yes, I did. But she was silly. She says I’m going to be a queen when I grow up.”

“That you can’t be, unless they change the laws of England for you,” said her French teacher.

Elizabeth tossed her straw hat on a chair. “Who wants to be a
queen anyway?” She never did aspire to the role that was marked out for her. But when called to fulfill it, she rose to the occasion and inspired her subjects during their darkest hours.

The First World War, which broke out on Elizabeth’s fourteenth birthday, delayed her entry into society, yet made her grow up fast. She saw her older brothers volunteer to fight, and pitched in herself on the home front when Glamis Castle was converted for five years into a convalescent hospital for wounded soldiers. She knitted her fingers to the bone making shirts for their local battalion, the Black Watch. She shredded paper to make the lining of sleeping bags, served tea to the men, and played secretary by writing letters home on behalf of those unable to do so on their own.

On April 2, 1916, at a tea party at Spencer House, Elizabeth and Bertie, who was then a twenty-year-old naval lieutenant home on sick leave, crossed paths once again. The event was so forgettable on both sides that four years later he would think they’d never met.

Elizabeth Bowes Lyon made her society debut in 1919, a year after the armistice. She was immediately popular, although she was the very antithesis of a flapper. Lady Airlie, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary, who was also a friend of the Strathmores, described her as “very unlike the cocktail-drinking, chain-smoking girls who came to be regarded as typical of the nineteen-twenties. Her radiant vitality and a blending of gaiety, kindness and sincerity made her irresistible to men.”

One of those men had no way of knowing she was already getting astral nudges toward Westminster Abbey.

At Ascot in June 1919, as Elizabeth was walking toward the royal enclosure, Mrs. Donald Forbes, a clairvoyant who went by the nom de guerre of Gypsy Lee, stopped her and echoed the prediction of the Glamis palmist a decade earlier: “One day you will be Queen—and the mother of a queen.”

That year, perhaps in an effort to emulate his brother, the Prince of Wales, Bertie became infatuated with a married woman, Lady Loughborough, née Sheila Chisholm, a gorgeous Australian unhappily wed to an alcoholic aristocrat. The monarchs were not amused, greatly displeased to now have
two
sons who were bounders and cads. In April 1920, the king cut a deal with Bertie: George V intended
to provide him with his own establishment and make him Duke of York, but if this was an example of how he intended to conduct himself, then all bets were off. If he wanted his independence and his dukedom, he would have to dump his married paramour. Bertie obliged and was created Duke of York, as well as Earl of Inverness and Baron Killarney, on June 5.

In awarding his son the venerated dukedom, George V wrote, “…I feel that this splendid old title will be safe in your hands & that you will never do anything which could in any way tarnish it….”

That year (historians can’t seem to agree as to whether the event was the May 20 or June 10 ball hosted by the king’s friend Lord Farquhar, or the July 8 Royal Air Force Ball), Bertie said to his equerry, the Honorable James Stuart, “That’s a lovely girl you’ve been dancing with. Who is she?”

Soon, Elizabeth Bowes Lyon was in the arms of the Duke of York. “I danced with Prince Albert who I hadn’t known before. He is quite a nice youth,” Elizabeth wrote to her friend Beryl Poignand. But Lady Airlie wrote, “The Duke told me long afterwards that he had fallen in love that evening, although he did not realize it until later.”

Bertie also didn’t realize that he had competition. James Stuart was a genuine contender for Elizabeth’s hand, and among her suitors was the only one she had feelings for.

In August, Bertie’s sister, Princess Mary, visited Glamis. She and Elizabeth formed a warm friendship, and it provided an excuse for the duke to come a-courting, inviting himself up from Balmoral to join a house party. Elizabeth was nervous about being left alone with him, especially when their friends contrived to allow them a long stroll
à deux
, taking a break from the noisy hijinks—practical jokes and parlor games, and the frenetic dancing and loud piano music.

By November, Bertie had begun to correspond with Elizabeth, and she always replied to his letters with charm and enthusiasm, yet kept him at arm’s length because she remained uncomfortable with his romantic interest in her. The duke sent her a box for Christmas in 1920, and by January he was cautiously courting her. Elizabeth invited him to lunch at St. Paul’s Walden Bury on January 17, but cautioned that her mother was very ill, and so the party would have
to be small. Her epistolary style is full of animated, winsome self-deprecation, even as she gives Bertie driving directions.

[K]eep to the right all the way, till you come to a tumbledown old white gate on the left. Then you go up a bumpy road full of holes, and eventually reach an even more tumbledown old house, and a tumbledown little person waiting on the doorstep—which will be
ME
!!!…I am Sir, Yours sincerely, Elizabeth Lyon.

Bertie informed his parents that he intended to ask Elizabeth to marry him. “You’ll be a lucky fellow if she accepts you,” said his blunt-spoken father.

Bertie proposed on February 27. And she didn’t accept him. “She was frankly doubtful, uncertain of her feelings, and afraid of the public life which would lie ahead of her as the King’s daughter-in-law,” recalled Lady Airlie.

The following day, Elizabeth wrote to her rejected suitor.

Dear Prince Bertie, I must write one line to say how
dreadfully
sorry I am about yesterday. It makes me miserable to think of it—you have been so
very
nice about it all—
please
do forgive me. Also please don’t worry about it—, I do understand so well what you feel, and sympathise so much, & I hate to think that I am the cause of it. I honestly can’t explain to you how terribly sorry I am—, it worries me
so
much to think you may be unhappy—I do hope you won’t be.
Anyway
we can be good friends can’t we? Please do look on me as one. I shall
never
say anything about our talks I promise you—and nobody need ever know…. Yours very sincerely, Elizabeth.