Part 2 (1/2)

Within those doc.u.ments were notes of a plan to return the Duke of Windsor to the throne after Germany's conquest of Europe. In July of 1940, as he was considering the invasion of Britain, Hitler decided to kidnap the Windsors and hold them in Berlin, from where the Duke would appeal to the British people to change governments and seek peace with Germany. Once the treaty was signed, the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess would be restored to the throne as puppet monarchs. Although the plan was never enacted, the Windsors' possible complicity with the Third Reich continued to taint the royal family.

The Queen Mother sailed into old age, smiling and undaunted. When she was ninety-six years old, she had hip replacement surgery. A few weeks after her hospitalization, she put on her blue silk hat, grabbed a walking stick, and visited an old age home. ”I'm the oldest one here,” she told the enfeebled pensioners. She bestowed smiles and sweet words and then departed, leaving the elderly residents feeling almost blessed.

”She has tremendous charm,” said one woman. ”All she says is 'I know, I know' and you feel rewarded. What a marvelous phrase. She changes inflection for every occasion: if she approves, she smiles and says, 'I know. I know.' If she's consoling someone in grief, she pats the person's arm and whispers, 'I know. I know.' ”

Few people-only her household staff and her immediate family-ever see the iron frame under the marshmallow.

”A steel hand within a velvet glove,” was how her husband's Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, described her.

”She was tough and ruthless,” said historian John Grigg.

She herself agreed. ”You think I am a nice person,” she once confided to a friend to whom she was speaking about the Windsors. ”I'm not really a nice person.”

She had become the Crown's most ferocious custodian, and having invested her life in the monarchy, she would protect it until her death. She became more royal than royalty in guarding their mystique. Over the years she became the keeper of the secrets. She had learned early from her father.

For years she had shrouded the details surrounding her own birth. She airily dismissed questions about why her father, after eight children, missed the six-week deadline for registering her birth. He then put his historic name as fourteenth heir of the Earl of Strathmore to a lie. In doing so, he risked life imprisonment, which in 1900 was the extreme penalty for falsifying an official doc.u.ment. Instead he paid a fine of seven s.h.i.+llings and sixpence and stated that his daughter was born at St. Paul's Walden Bury, the family home in Hertfords.h.i.+re. The Queen Mother maintained she was born in London.

This conflict gave rise to rumors over the years that after producing eight children, her thirty-nine-year-old mother finally had had enough. Some people have suggested that her father may have had an affair with a Welsh maid who worked at Glamis Castle in Scotland, and that this union produced the baby known as Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. No evidence has been found to verify the suspicion, which may have arisen because of the unorthodox way her father filed her birth certificate.

”It really doesn't matter where she was born or if there were inaccuracies,” said a Clarence House spokesman. ”Strathmore did the evil deed and he is dead. If he did wrong, it didn't show.”

The Queen Mother deflected scrutiny of her lineage to hide her family's hereditary defects. For generations the Strathmores had been haunted by the Monster of Glamis, which according to legend was the misshapen creature born to her great-grandfather. Shaped like an egg with twisted spindly legs, this baby boy supposedly grew into a grotesque monster covered with long black hair. He was locked away in the castle for decades, his existence known only to his brother and three other people. The family covered their shame with secrecy. ”We were never allowed to talk about it,” said Elizabeth's older sister, Rose. ”Our parents forbade us ever to discuss the matter or ask any questions.”

This att.i.tude toward physical deformities and mental illness was prevalent around 1920 when Elizabeth's young nieces were born. Katherine and Nerissa Bowes-Lyon, both r.e.t.a.r.ded at birth, were secretly locked away in the mental hospital in Redhill, Surrey, where they lived for decades. So great was the disgrace felt by the family that they recorded the two women as dead in 1941 in Burke's Peerage, Burke's Peerage, the bible of British n.o.bility. the bible of British n.o.bility.

”If this is what the family of the Bowes-Lyon told us, then we would have included it in the book,” said Harold Brooks-Baker, editor of Burke's Peerage. Burke's Peerage. ”It is not normal to doubt the word of members of the royal family. Any information given to us by the royal family is accepted, even if we had evidence to the contrary....” ”It is not normal to doubt the word of members of the royal family. Any information given to us by the royal family is accepted, even if we had evidence to the contrary....”

Such deference to the Crown helped the Queen Mother conceal any secrets that might have shamed the royal family. She hid the alcoholism of her husband and the h.o.m.os.e.xuality and drug addiction of his brother, Prince George, who eventually married and became the Duke of Kent. After the war she buried an explosive military report to King George VI from Field Marshal Montgomery and two confidential reports from Lord Mountbatten, which he described in a television interview as ”too hot and uninhibited” to publish. She knew that these three doc.u.ments, if ever made public after her husband's death, would reflect unfavorably on his stewards.h.i.+p during the war.

”The King was told everything,” she admitted to Theo Aronson in 1993, ”so, of course, I knew about everything as well. That is when I learned to keep things to myself. One heard so many stories, I became very cagey. And I have been very cagey ever since....”

FOUR.

The Yorks, now the King and Queen of England, cultivated important American friends.h.i.+ps in hopes of influencing public opinion in the United States. They wanted America to enter the war before it was too late for Great Britain.

In the summer of 1939 the King and Queen had invited Joseph P. Kennedy, the U.S. Amba.s.sador to the Court of St. James's, and his wife, Rose, to spend a weekend at Windsor Castle. Over dinner in the Garter Throne Room, the Queen seated herself between the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and Amba.s.sador Kennedy. She had told the Amba.s.sador how much she and the King had enjoyed their recent trip to the United States and how charmed they were by President and Mrs. Roosevelt, who entertained them at Hyde Park with hot dogs and beer.

That royal visit had caused a political ruckus in America, especially among upper-crust Republicans, who venerated Great Britain as ”the mother country.” One grande dame became so upset by the prospect of the monarchs' being subjected to the President's informal hospitality at Hyde Park that she appealed to the British Foreign Office to cancel that part of the visit.

”There is no proper arrangement for Secret Service men and police even in ordinary times,” she wrote. ”The house has no proper suites and rooms, etc., and the service represents a scratch lot of negroes and white, English and Irish. The Footman is a lout of a red-haired Irishman, and should only be carrying wood and coals and polis.h.i.+ng shoes....”

The President, who was widely suspected-correctly-of trying to take America into a European war, was facing a tough reelection campaign in 1940. The Neutrality Act, then being debated in Congress, would limit America's ability to supply Britain with arms in case of war as well as limit Roosevelt's powers as President under the Const.i.tution. Roosevelt hoped the act would be revised.

Roosevelt wanted the royal visit to be a public relations success so that Americans would be positively disposed to Great Britain and see the wisdom of giving military aid. But the President was almost stymied by the sn.o.bbery of Britain's cla.s.s system, even among servants. He had tried to help the Hyde Park staff prepare for the royal visit by dispatching two black ushers from the White House. This incensed his mother's English butler, James, who refused to work with men of color in serving the monarchs. He insisted on taking his annual leave during the royal visit.

”Oh, but James,” said Sara Roosevelt, ”that's just when Their Majesties are going to be here.”

”Madam,” replied the butler, ”I cannot be a party to the degradation of the British monarchy.”

The King and Queen had requested that eiderdown comforters and hot-water bottles be provided for their ladies-in-waiting, which amused the President: the monarchs were visiting in June, when the weather was usually hot, even unbearably humid. He was also surprised by the att.i.tude of his mother's butler, but then he did not understand that British servants could be as haughty as those they served. The President laughed aloud when he heard that the footman to King Edward VIII had walked off his job three years before when he encountered his master behaving in what he called ”a most unbecoming manner.” The footman explained: ”Well, the butler, Mr. Osborne, sent me down to the swimming pool with two drinks. When I got there, what did I see but His Majesty painting Mrs. Simpson's toenails. My sovereign painting a woman's toenails! It was a bit much, I'm afraid, and I gave notice at once.”

Showing the same hauteur, the Roosevelts' English butler left for vacation the day before the King and Queen arrived at Hyde Park. When Their Majesties were en route, the U.S. Amba.s.sador to France, William C. Bullitt, sent a confidential memo to the President: The little Queen is now on her way to you together with the little King. She is a nice girl-eiderdown or no eiderdown-and you will like her, in spite of the fact that her sister-in-law, the Princess Royal, goes around England talking about ”her cheap public smile.” She resembles so much the female caddies who used to carry my clubs at Pitlochry in Scotland many years ago that I find her pleasant.... The little King is beginning to feel his oats, but still remains a rather frightened boy. The little Queen is now on her way to you together with the little King. She is a nice girl-eiderdown or no eiderdown-and you will like her, in spite of the fact that her sister-in-law, the Princess Royal, goes around England talking about ”her cheap public smile.” She resembles so much the female caddies who used to carry my clubs at Pitlochry in Scotland many years ago that I find her pleasant.... The little King is beginning to feel his oats, but still remains a rather frightened boy.

The King and Queen had made a royal visit to Paris the year before that was a public relations success with everyone except the French Premier, edouard Daladier. He privately denounced the King as ”a moron” and said the Queen was ”an excessively ambitious young woman who would be ready to sacrifice every other country in the world so that she might remain Queen.”

Amba.s.sador Bullitt's 1939 memo to the President advised Roosevelt not to mention the Windsors to the King and Queen because ”about a month ago the Duke of Windsor wrote to Queen Mary [his mother] that Bertie [his brother, the King] had behaved toward him in such an ungentlemanly way because of 'the influence of that common little woman,' the Queen, that he could have no further relations with Bertie. Brotherly love, therefore, not at fever heat.”

The King and Queen arrived with their valets, maids, dressers, and ladies-in-waiting, and the British servants immediately started squabbling with their American counterparts.

The King's valet complained about the food and drink, saying it was far below what he was accustomed to in Buckingham Palace, which supposedly was getting by on war rations. Although the public was led to believe that the King and Queen and the two little Princesses were depriving themselves of meat, bread, and b.u.t.ter like everyone else in the country and sharing England's bleak fare of boiled potatoes, gray Brussels sprouts, and powdered eggs, those behind the Palace gates knew differently. The King and Queen sidestepped the country's strict food rationing and regularly ate roast beef and drank Champagne. b.u.t.ter pats were monogrammed with the royal coat of arms, and dinners were served on gold plates.

”During the war, when the King and Queen were in London and their daughters at Windsor, the Princesses used to order their own meals,” recalled Rene Roussin, the French chef who worked for the royal family from 1937 to 1946. ”A typical day's menu for them began with b.u.t.tered eggs for breakfast; boiled chicken with sieved vegetables-even when they were both in their teens, they still liked their vegetables sieved-potato crisps, and hot baked custard for lunch; bread and b.u.t.ter, cake, jelly, and toast for tea; and just some kind of broth followed by compote of pear with whipped cream for supper.”

In London, no restaurant was allowed to charge more than five s.h.i.+llings for a meal. But at the Palace, the King ordered two eggs and six rashers of grilled bacon for breakfast every day and grouse in season for dinner every night. The Queen, accustomed to a full meal at teatime, continued having her daily oatcakes, a rich dessert prepared by the Palace chef, which caused her to gain twelve pounds in one year.

”Her Majesty will not give up oatcakes,” said her maid, who admitted having to let out the seams of the Queen's gowns.

The Queen insisted her tea be a special blend of China and Ceylon, brewed with London water that she had s.h.i.+pped to the United States with her luggage in heavy casks.

The vast amount of royal luggage-bulky wardrobes, numerous suitcases, crates of hatboxes, bins of shoes-surprised the President's domestic staff. The British servants reacted defensively. They knew what the public did not know-that the King was dazzled by gold-braided military uniforms and spent hours with his personal tailor being fitted every day. This obsession with fas.h.i.+on had started early.

”Unfortunately, Bertie takes no interest in anything but clothes, and again clothes,” his father had complained. ”Even when out shooting, he is more occupied with his trousers than his game!”

Equally concerned about his wife's appearance, the King winced when he heard her described as ”dowdy.” So he summoned couturier Norman Hartnell to the Palace to design a flattering wardrobe for her. Although silk was banned from sale to the public and used only to make parachutes, exceptions were made for the Queen, and by the time she left for America, she was changing her outfits as least four times a day.

During one photography session with Cecil Beaton, she posed in a pale gray dress with long fur-trimmed sleeves and a gray fox fur collar. She changed into a ruby-encrusted gown of gold and silver with ostrich feathers, then appeared in a spangled tulle hyacinth blue dress with two rows of diamonds as big as walnuts. For the last pose, she appeared in a champagne lace garden party dress that had been hand sewn with pearls to match the pearls that she had strewn through her hair.

The Queen's dresser had a full-time job just laying out the Queen's various outfits for the day and coordinating the morning and evening jewels she wanted to wear with each ensemble. The royal dresser felt insulted when she was interrupted by a White House usher to relay a message from the Queen to a lady-in-waiting.

”I am Her Majesty's maid,” snapped the woman, ”not a messenger girl.” The White House usher did not understand the difference. Britain's rigid cla.s.s system extended from the top of society to the bottom, or ”the lower orders,” as they were commonly called. In the hierarchy of royal service, household servants came first. They even had their own sitting room and dining room in the Palace. From their lofty perch, they looked down upon the stewards, clerks, and stenographers and refused to perform duties they deemed beneath them.

The King and Queen seemed unruffled by the fuss among their underlings. They felt at home in the country atmosphere of Hyde Park, especially when they found a tray of c.o.c.ktails awaiting their arrival.

”My mother thinks you should have a cup of tea,” said the President. ”She doesn't approve of c.o.c.ktails.”

”Neither does my mother,” said the King, gratefully reaching for a drink.

When the King and Queen returned to London, they dined with the U.S. Amba.s.sador, and the Queen related this and other homey details of the Roosevelts' picnic for them at Hyde Park. She mentioned the emotional farewell she and the King received when hundreds of people gathered at the train station and spontaneously started singing ”Auld Lang Syne.”

Amba.s.sador Kennedy had read the glowing press accounts of the royal visit to America in 1939. ”The British sovereigns have conquered Was.h.i.+ngton, where they have not put a foot wrong,” wrote Arthur Krock in The New York Times, The New York Times, ”and where they have left a better impression than even their most optimistic advisers could have expected.” ”and where they have left a better impression than even their most optimistic advisers could have expected.”

”They have a way of making friends, these young people,” said Eleanor Roosevelt.

Even Kennedy, an isolationist, was impressed. But over dinner, as the Queen inched the conversation toward American foreign policy, he flared.

”What the American people fear more than anything else is being involved in a war,” he told her. ”They say to themselves, 'Never again!' and I can't say I blame them. I feel the same way.”