Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe (59 page)

Bertie apologized to his parents for having given them the impression that the courtship was over. “I know she would have said no, had I pressed her for an answer before now.”

On Saturday January 13, he drove alone to St. Paul’s Walden Bury and took a quiet stroll with Elizabeth. There, in the bucolic idyll where she had played as a child, enamored of fairies and owls, Bertie proposed marriage for a fourth time. Elizabeth hesitated yet again. The duke went off to saw wood with her father; then after tea, he and Elizabeth talked for hours. She asked if she could sleep on it, then wrote in her diary, “dediced ot tiaw a elttil—epoh I ma ton gnivaheb yldab”—“decided to wait a little—hope I am not behaving badly.”

After breakfast the following day, and another long walk, plus a second lengthy stroll after lunch, and a third one after supper, Elizabeth finally accepted Bertie’s marriage proposal late in the evening of Sunday, January 14. Historians disagree on whether the prearranged three-word coded telegram, “All Right. Bertie,” which signified a yes, was, in the excitement of the moment, ever dispatched to the monarchs. Everyone in the Strathmore household had been sworn to silence until Their Majesties received the magic words.

Lady Strathmore wrote, “He came down to St. P.W. suddenly on
Friday
, & proposed continuously until Sunday night, when she said yes at 11:30!! My head is completely bewildered, as all those days E was hesitating & miserable, but now she is absolutely happy—& he is
radiant
.”

Delighted that things were finally settled, and relieved that the duke had not only gotten the girl of his dreams, but that he could not have made a better choice, the king wrote to tell Elizabeth that “…I most gladly give my consent to your marriage with him. I know you will do all you can to help him in his many duties….” Her Majesty urged Elizabeth to look upon her as a “second mother.”

On Monday, January 15, the newly affianced couple took tea with the king and queen at Sandringham. The following day, the duke wrote to his mother, “I am very very happy and I can only hope that Elizabeth feels the same as I do. I know I am very lucky to have won her over at last.”

When the felicitous event was officially announced in the Court Circular on January 16, their friend Chips Channon observed, “…we had begun to despair that she would ever accept him…. He is the luckiest of men, and there’s not a man in England today that doesn’t envy him.”

That same day the
Dundee Advertiser
in Scotland proudly claimed inside knowledge of events.

Today’s announcement of the betrothal of the Duke of York and Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, youngest daughter of the Earl of Strathmore, will be received with great gratification throughout the Kingdom and with very special emotions of pleasure in Forfarshire. But, in Forfarshire, at any rate, the news will contain little of the element of surprise. Rumour, which does not always lie, has prepared the public to hear that a very charming romance was maturing which would link the Royal House with the ancient and historic family of romantic Glamis. It is just the kind of wedding which the British public would like—a wedding of free choice yet in every way charmingly right. The Duke, if nobody else, has reason to thank his stars that the war
has been fought. Otherwise a dread convention of pre-war Royalty might have sent him to meet his fate in Germany instead of Strathmore.

Elizabeth wrote to tell the king how much she was anticipating meeting him at Sandringham the following Saturday, adding, “…and I do hope you will think I shall make Bertie a good wife, we are both so happy, and it is all wonderful.”

At Buckingham Palace, a selection of engagement rings was presented to them by the jeweler Bert of Vigo Street. Elizabeth chose a large sapphire flanked by diamonds in a platinum setting, a description that sounds quite similar to the ring chosen by Lady Diana Spencer on her engagement to Prince Charles in 1981—and for which Diana was purportedly criticized by the royal family (what, not a diamond?!). How soon they forget!

After they became engaged, the couple’s letters took on a more affectionate and relaxed tone; neither was afraid of using endearments for the other. Elizabeth sent “Her dear Darling” a letter on January 25, just to say she was thinking of him, adding that “I
do
[underlined several times] love you Bertie & feel certain that I shall
more & more
.” She signed it, “From your always & forever loving E.”

The duke’s letter crossed with hers. He began:

My own little darling one,

How I hated leaving you this evening after our delightful little tete a tete dinner…. This is my first letter to you since you made me such a very happy person that Sunday at St. Paul’s Walden & you don’t know what a wonderful difference it has made to me darling, in all ways. I think I must always have loved you darling but could never make you realise it without telling you actually that I did & thank God I told you at the right moment.

Their clear affection for each other is quite different from the chilly and remote interpersonal relationships that come to mind when one thinks of the Windsors. It’s far closer to the rapture that
the young Victoria and Albert derived from each other’s company. Even Elizabeth’s initial reluctance to accept Bertie’s suit bears echoes of Victoria’s ambivalence about proposing to
her
Albert.

On February 11, 1923, the duke wrote to Elizabeth, “I loved the weekend with you & hated leaving you this evening, just a month tonight isn’t it darling when you told me you loved me. What a day that was for me!!! & for you too.”

Throughout the month of February, Elizabeth began the assimilation process into the royal family. Her name appeared in the Court Circular for the first time on February 21, when she and her fiancé accompanied the monarchs to a horse show in Islington. Photographers lay in wait when she made her excursions to select china, crystal, and millinery. All was pomp, circumstance, and tradition. Queen Mary presented her with a piece of antique lace in the same room at Buckingham Palace where Queen Victoria had given Mary a present before she wed
her
Duke of York.

The couple’s marital home was to be White Lodge within Windsor Great Park, but neither Bertie nor Elizabeth was too keen on the queen’s micromanaging of their future lifestyle. Her Majesty even insisted on choosing the furnishings. Elizabeth pronounced the decor in her bedroom “HIDEOUS.” Bertie was annoyed by his mother’s unwanted intrusion, telling Elizabeth, “All I want is that you should have what you want & that you should get the benefit & pleasure of going round & finding them for yourself & not having things thrust at you by other people.”

Ironically, it was Elizabeth who had to mollify the duke. She wrote reassuringly, “Don’t worry about White Lodge and furniture. I am quite certain we shall make it enchanting—you and I…. You are such an angel to me always, and I hate to think of you worrying about anything. ‘Keep calm and don’t be bullied….’”

Their wedding day, April 26, 1923, dawned chilly, damp, and blustery. As Queen Mary put it, “[T]he sun came out between showers.” Elizabeth’s wedding gift from the king was a tiara and a suite of diamonds and turquoises, and she received a sapphire necklace from Her Majesty. Lord Strathmore gave his daughter a diamond tiara and a rope necklace of diamonds and pearls. Elizabeth’s mother gave her a diamond-and-pearl necklace and bracelet with a matching
pendant. The bride’s gift to her groom was a platinum-and-pearl watch chain. The glamorous Prince of Wales presented the couple with a fur wrap and a luxurious motorcar.

The wedding of the Duke of York and Elizabeth Bowes Lyon was the first marriage of a king’s son in Westminster Abbey, and only the third royal marriage since the union of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia to be performed there. It was also the first time that a commoner had wed a sovereign’s son since Anne Hyde had wed the Duke of York in 1660—and theirs had been a clandestine ceremony.

Bertie was the first royal groom to wed in the dress uniform of the newest branch of the armed services, the Royal Air Force. He glittered with his war medals, and his tunic was also decorated with the gold ribbons and star of the Order of the Thistle, which his father had bestowed upon him in honor of his Scottish bride. The duke’s supporters (best men, in America) were his brothers, the Prince of Wales and Prince Henry.

Elizabeth’s eight bridesmaids wore ivory crepe de chine gowns embellished with Nottingham lace covered in white chiffon. Leaf-green tulle sashes accentuated their waists, the belts secured with a white rose (the emblem of York) and a silver thistle. A bandeau of myrtle leaves and white roses encircled their hair, and like the bride they wore long white veils. The attendants also sported their gift from the bridegroom: a carved crystal brooch in the shape of a Yorkist rose with the initials E and A in diamonds in the center.

Elizabeth was uncharacteristically punctual, arriving at the Abbey just as the sun fittingly broke through the clouds. Her bridal gown was constructed of cream chiffon moiré with appliquéd bars of silver lamé, embroidered with gold threads and pearls as well as paste beads. The dress had a slim silhouette with a deep square neckline, short sleeves, and a slightly gathered skirt with a modest train set into the waist seam. Her shoes were ivory silk moiré. Over the dress she wore a longer train made of silk net edged with lace and a
point de Flandres
lace veil, both of which were “something borrowed” from Queen Mary. With the veil drawn low over Elizabeth’s forehead and held in place by a wreath of white heather, white roses, and myrtle leaves—the floral symbol of love and constancy that had graced every royal bridal headdress since Victoria’s—the headdress lent her the appearance
of a twelfth-century Norman princess. The wedding gown, featured in magazines of the day, inspired popular fashion trends.

As Elizabeth entered the Abbey on her father’s arm and began her long processional toward the altar, she spontaneously halted to lay her bouquet of roses and lily-of-the-valley upon the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. Her gesture has since become a tradition. Catherine Middleton did the same at her April 29, 2011, wedding to Prince William of Wales.

As Elizabeth walked down the aisle, “The Duke of York faced with shining eyes and a look of happiness the girl who, hand in hand with her father, was advancing in her lovely old fashioned dress, gleaming with silver and veiled in old lace…they seemed to think of no one but each other,” reported the
Times
.

Approximately 1,780 people witnessed the service, conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury as well as the Archbishop of York, the Most Reverend Cosmo Lang (who as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1936 would weigh in heavily on the event that would come to be known as the Abdication Crisis). Elizabeth had asked Lang to deliver the address. One point in particular encapsulated the image that the Yorks would strive to project after the birth of their daughters, and later as king and queen of England: “…The nations and classes which make up our Commonwealth too often live their lives apart. It is…a great thing that there should be in our midst one family which, regarded by all as in a true sense their own, makes the whole Empire kin and helps to give it the spirit of family life.”

Elizabeth and Bertie were Victoria and Albert for the modern century, a postwar world in which too many British families had been torn asunder by the tragedy.

Although she had entered Westminster Abbey as a commoner, Elizabeth exited as Her Royal Highness The Duchess of York, a princess of the United Kingdom, and the fourth-highest-ranking woman in the realm. After the ceremony, their scarlet-and-gold coach took a circuitous route back to Buckingham Palace in order to allow the maximum number of spectators a chance to catch a glimpse of the newlyweds. By the evening, silent film clips of the processions to and from the Abbey could be viewed throughout the nation. And across the pond, the interest in the young royals was just as high. The following
morning, the headline of the
New York Times
proclaimed with a combination of wild understatement and pure invention, D
UKE
OF
Y
ORK
W
EDS
S
IMPLE
S
COTCH
M
AID
—L
ITTLE
B
RIDE
A
PPEARS
O
VERWHELMED
.

Although the wedding had been filmed, it was not broadcast, because the Archbishop of Canterbury feared that people would listen to it in public houses (which indeed would do a booming business on April 29, 2011, during the wedding of their great-grandson William). So the only people sitting down to a celebratory wedding breakfast were the royals and their guests, who dined on a menu of Frenchified courses for this most consummate of British occasions:
Consommé à la Windsor
,
Supreme de Saumon Reine Mary
,
Chapons à la
Strathmore
,
Côtelette d’Agneau Prince Albert
, and
Duchess Elizabeth Strawberries
. The nine-foot-tall wedding cake was donated by a friend of Bertie’s, Sir Alexander Grant.

The bridal couple had very practical wishes when it came to their wedding registry. They had asked for furniture.

The day after the wedding, as the newlyweds embarked upon their honeymoon in Surrey and Scotland, they telegrammed their parents to say how delighted they were with their new spouses. The king replied to Bertie, “…Elizabeth will be a splendid partner in your work & share with you & help you in all you have to do.”

Several years later, George VI’s biographer John Wheeler Bennett commented on George V’s prescience. “No prophecy could have been more completely fulfilled, no expression of confidence more entirely justified. The Duchess was not only to be the partner of his happiness but his inspiration of encouragement in the face of adversity, his enduring source of strength in joy and sadness.”

George V and Queen Mary were delighted with their son’s choice. A commoner modernized and humanized the monarchy. They hoped that Elizabeth’s levelheaded pragmatism, combined with her pluck and can-do attitude, would draw out Bertie and instill in him the confidence he so sorely needed. Indeed, as partners they were well suited; both were raised with a strong sense of duty. But Elizabeth soon discovered the restraints of life as a royal, which went far beyond her misgivings about the “HIDEOUS” boudoir at White Lodge, whose Windsor location was too suburban for a young couple who
spent most of their time in London. The new duchess had limitations placed on her freedom and couldn’t go out as she used to do, or do anything spontaneous, or even socialize with her friends in the manner she once had, a lament voiced by royal brides ever since. After she had enjoyed a relaxed upbringing, the rigidity of the court took a good deal of readjustment, beginning with the dress code. The royals at the top of the food chain changed clothes for dinner every night, no matter whether they had guests, and dressed formally at all times.