Authors: Margaret Rhodes
As her tenth decade progressed her family became increasingly worried about the infirmities associated with her great age, and particularly the risk of falling. The Queen sent her a special
walking stick, asking her to at least try it, saying that it would make the ‘two Margarets’ – that is Princess Margaret and myself, Jean, my sister, and not least herself
‘very happy and relieved’ if she would use it. She did, but under protest. I recall watching her, after one engagement, tossing it with a gesture of contempt into the back of her car.
The royal round continued, as did my stints ‘in-waiting’. They gave a recurring tempo to my life, broken by my much-anticipated visits to Scotland. Of all the royal homes, Birkhall, on
the edge of the Balmoral estate, was the one I most deeply loved. I had been going there since I was five years old. Before Queen Elizabeth enlarged it, Birkhall was little more than a small
eighteenth- century dower house. There were few rooms for visitors; the nursery and the sparse accommodation was filled whenever Queen Elizabeth held open house. There was one large room in the
tin-roofed annexe, where as a child I played with Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret.
The burn, the Muick, burbled away at the bottom of the steeply sloping garden and behind rose the fir clad heights of the Coils of Muick. In October the birches turned bright yellow and the
rowans scarlet and one could hear the stags roaring their autumnal defiance. At Birkhall lunch was never indoors, whatever the weather, except on Sunday, which had to be observed with some degree
of formality, after attending the Kirk. Queen Elizabeth’s friends and relations all contributed to the cost of building a charming little wooden cabin beside one of her favourite pools in the
River Dee. She called it the ‘Old Bull and Bush’ after a pub near Hampstead Heath, immortalised in the music hall song ‘Down at the Old Bull and Bush’ performed by Florrie
Forde in the 1920s, when Queen Elizabeth was a girl. She loved the old songs and knew all the words. In another life she might have been a star of the ‘Halls’. Dinner at Birkhall could
be an uproarious affair. At the end of the meal Queen Elizabeth would start a series of toasts. As well as ‘Hooray for . . .’ with glasses held high, there was even more of ‘Down
with . . .’ with glasses almost disappearing beneath the table. The toasts, combined with the simultaneous chiming of six grandfather clocks, and the community singing — ‘Lloyd
George knew my Father’ was a firm favourite — made for an unforgettable evening. So being ‘in-waiting’ was not all protocol and curtseying: it was, in fact, tremendous
fun.
CHAPTER NINE
I greatly enjoyed my eleven years ‘in-waiting’ and the memories are always with me. There are so many happy recollections and the faces of the people I met
sometimes pass by in a cavalcade. There were people like Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama, who was bursting with smiles, and so overjoyed and full of emotion at meeting Queen Elizabeth that he
virtually prostrated himself before her. I seem to remember that he set off his traditional dress with a very smart pair of Bond Street shoes. I like to reflect on the past. It’s so much
better than watching television.
Clarence House, where I spent so much of my time as a member of the Royal Household, is now the residence of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall when they are in London. He kindly
gave a small party for all of us in Queen Elizabeth’s Household soon after he took it over — a sort of private view with drinks — and I was delighted to see how beautifully he had
restored it. The alterations are designed to reflect the change of occupancy and the colour schemes have been adjusted, but the decoration of the rooms retains the ambience created by Queen
Elizabeth and much of her collection of works of art and furniture remain in the places she originally chose for them. However, if only walls could speak!
Birkhall gives the Prince and Duchess a measure of insulation from the pressure of their official lives, but when I was last there I got quite a jolt when I saw Queen Elizabeth’s blue
raincoats still hanging in the hall, and this prompted a flood of memories about our windy walks and rain-swept picnics. I particularly remember when we met a group of hikers on their way to the
Dubh Loch. Queen Elizabeth had a long conversation with them and up to her death she received an annual Christmas card from ‘the hikers of the Dubh Loch’. On another occasion she shared
our picnic with some walkers. And what has happened to the ‘Old Bull and Bush’?
After Queen Elizabeth died my life changed radically. I was eighty-one, soon to be eighty-two and my social life became minimal, although I have regular stays with my cousin the Queen at
Balmoral and Sandringham, which, as always, are hugely enjoyable. I know every inch of Balmoral but I am less familiar with Sandringham, which is seductive in an entirely different way. There is
not so much as a hill in sight, and Noel Coward was right when he wrote in ‘Private Lives’, ‘very flat, Norfolk’. But you get the huge clouds of the wonderful East Anglian
skies and can taste the salt on the wind blowing off the coast which is very close by. I allow myself to be spoilt at Sandringham. I have breakfast in bed, and don’t get up before ten in the
morning. I read the newspapers and go for long walks: it is all very undemanding. The Queen still rides,
sans
hard hat, but I don’t, and fishing and shooting have now become spectator
sports for me.
At home the Queen drops in on me sometimes on Sunday after Matins in our little chapel, and we exchange the latest news. I’m still active. No one has taken my driving licence away; woe
betide them if they try, and I still sometimes do the run to Scotland by car. I do rather a lot of gardening; chugging round the lawns on my tractor-mower and keeping the weeds at bay. My front
garden overlooks the Smith’s Lawn polo ground and white polo balls have a habit of finding their way into the flower beds.
I go for a walk every day with my West Highland terrier. She is a darling, who has no sense of obedience, never coming when she is called. I had never had a terrier before and have been told
that they have a mindset uniquely their own, especially when it comes to chasing rabbits, grey squirrels and pheasants. Living in Windsor Great Park feels like living in proper country, although
something of a manicured version. I expected something different when the Queen asked me, with a touch of humour, whether I, a country woman through and through, could tolerate living in
‘suburbia’. And, of course, I wouldn’t be here but for an accident of birth: that my mother’s youngest sister married the Duke of York, later King George VI — and
through the kindness of their elder daughter, our Queen.
I have kept the letter that my aunt wrote to my mother after the Duke of York, with his sister, Princess Mary, visited Glamis in the late summer of 1920 and took the first tentative steps
towards his courtship of the then Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. The future Queen Elizabeth, who, at the time had no idea that she was an object of interest to the twenty-four-year-old Duke, told my
mother: ‘The Duke of York was very pleasant, and has improved immensely in every way. James [Major James Stuart, later Viscount Stuart of Findhorn, and the Duke’s Equerry] has worked
wonders . . . I showed the Duke and Princess Mary round the castle; they are really babies and played ridiculous games of hide and seek . . . but I must say that the Duke was very nice, tho’
royalty staying is a nuisance.’ The Duke was a rather shy, sensitive young man, plagued by a severe stammer, but he had a streak of pure grit and a not to be beaten attitude to life. It took
him almost three years of determined courtship to persuade my aunt to marry him. How fortunate for me – and for him – that she did!
Most people would say, and I entirely agree with them, that I have been extraordinarily lucky in my life. I had thirty-one years of extremely happy marriage; four children to be proud of; seven
grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. I have travelled widely and enjoyed the surge of adrenalin in moments of danger. I have been entranced by the dry brown beauty of Africa as well as the
blue mistiness of Scotland’s Western Isles. I have heard the ugly squabbling laughter of hyenas, as well as the magnificent roaring of Highland stags. I have seen the shimmering beauty of the
Taj Mahal and the rawness of a yak herdsman’s shelter in the Himalayas.
There are a million things I still want to do and places I long to see, but meanwhile I am a happy and contented person. The children gather round at Christmas, filling my spare beds, with
mattresses for my grandchildren. It’s chaotic but great fun. My eldest son, Simon, has to my pride and joy become a member of the Royal Company of Archers, of which his Elphinstone
grandfather was Captain General. When he was at Harrow he was a Page of Honour to the Queen, having to turn out, dressed in a knee-length scarlet coat, a white lace jabot and waistcoat, white
breeches, white stockings, black buckled shoes and a small sword. He looked as if he had stepped out of an eighteenth-century painting. His most important duty was to hold up, with his three fellow
Pages, the Queen’s train at the State Opening of Parliament. The long heavy train of the Robe of State needs four pairs of hands, and if it were not carried, the Queen would not be able to
move forwards.
Simon was paid £200 a year for this and other ceremonial duties, like the service for the Order of the Garter at Windsor, where the train only needed two pairs of hands. More importantly,
as far as he was concerned, was the bonus of getting out of school. He has had his share of adventure. After Harrow we were steering him towards the army or a job in the City, but neither prospect
appealed to him and he took off for Africa where his cousin, Robin Plunket, the 8th Lord, had an estate near the Zimbabwe–Mozambique border. It was 1977 and as he made his way out, thousands
of expats were heading the other way. I believe it was called the ‘chicken run’. He joined the British South African Police. He had, however, no qualms about independence or the
inevitability of black rule.
Mugabe was espousing Marxist theory, but not really putting it into practice and so Simon stayed on and later tried his hand at managing a tobacco farm. Denys told everyone that he had become a
tobacconist. Then he changed tack and spent four years as a chemical salesman; switching course yet again and going into tourism with Abercrombie & Kent, offering bespoke holidays to wealthy
types who wanted to experience the real Africa. But Zimbabwe’s internal strife knocked the stuffing out of the holiday trade, and Zimbabwe was lurching towards crisis as Mugabe started his
campaign of threats towards white farmers. Things went from bad to worse, and Simon, having been swept up by accident in a Movement for Democratic Change march in Harare, was picked up by the
police, badly beaten and charged with incitement to riot. He talked himself out of it and was released, but the experience left him shaken. I was horrified, and told the Queen, who was concerned.
And so eventually and reluctantly he returned to Scotland, with his wife Susie, and their two daughters. They were invited to Balmoral by Queen Elizabeth and have now settled in Scotland for good.
Simon is now a property developer, based in Perth.
My eldest child, Annabel, emigrated to Australia with her first husband and farmed with him in New South Wales. They divorced and she returned home with her baby son. She worked as a secretary
in St George’s House, Windsor, the residential conference centre close to the castle, in which Prince Philip takes a keen interest, until her remarriage, in 1986, to Charles Cope. They now
live in Bideford in Devon, the county in which Denys and I lived so happily for many years.
Victoria, my younger daughter, was child-orientated from an early age and did a course of Montessori teaching, subsequently working in a Montessori school in London. She married a very distant
cousin from New Zealand — sharing a common great-grandfather — called Nick Deans who was a sculptor. Soon afterwards Nick had to have a kidney transplant, gallantly donated by his
mother. It worked and he was well and healthy for sixteen years, when his kidney failed again. A second implant was unsuccessful and Nick sadly died. Sometime afterwards Victoria married John Pryor
and together they now run a rather chic delicatessen at Cley on the north Norfolk coast.
Michael, my youngest child, like Simon went to Harrow, and like me, and his Elphinstone grandfather, has itchy feet, travelling extensively. He read law at West of England University in Bristol,
but his gardening genes, probably inherited from my mother, took over, and quite simply he is very happy earning his living by looking after people’s gardens. He too lives in Norfolk.
Among my grandchildren I have an artist, a writer, a practitioner of Japanese medical science and a photographer. I also have three great-grandchildren. Life is never dull, but when they were
growing up I kept on pushing the idea that they should acquire some practical skills, so as to have something to fall back on, like plumbing. Plumbers, I protested, were always in demand.
Queen Elizabeth would sometimes remark that my attendance at church was tardy — she never missed — but I actually have a firm faith, and am convinced that I shall be reunited with
Denys. My belief in the afterlife has been confirmed by the experience of my daughter Victoria who, after Nick died, felt compelled one day to visit the woman doctor who treated him in hospital.
The doctor told my daughter about an extraordinary dream she had had the night before, in which a youthful and fit Nick appeared, telling her: ‘Look, I know that Vic is taking it very badly,
but you must tell her that all is well with me, and not to be sad.’ Perhaps it is my Strathmore heritage but that story confirmed my own belief in something better ‘upstairs’ as
Queen Elizabeth described the exit lounge of mortality.
I have now been to the funerals of all my brothers and sisters. It makes me feel rather like a species of dinosaur left behind by evolution. There are no close Elphinstone family members of my
generation left to ask: ‘Do you remember?’ or ‘What happened then?’ On the other hand there is a great sense of relief that I can be just myself; get up when I like; go to
bed when I like and have my meals when I like. I no longer really mind what other people think, and so there is much to be said for antediluvian freedom.