A Brief History of the Private Life of Elizabeth II (6 page)

The family had two homes. In London they lived at 145 Piccadilly, a five-storey mansion on the north side whose windows looked across Hyde Park Corner at St George’s Hospital and at the
gardens of Buckingham Palace. A victim of wartime bombing, its remains were to be cleared away for the widening of Park Lane.

The house would be considered grand enough by most people, although Marion Crawford, the Princesses’ governess, described it somewhat extraordinarily as: ‘Neither large nor splendid.
It might have been the home of any moderately well-to-do young couple starting married life.’ It happened to have 25 bedrooms, and half-a-dozen staff. The girls lived on the top floor, where
a large glass dome shed light on the stairwell. Beneath this, on the landing, they kept an extensive and neatly ordered collection of toy horses, all of which were groomed and exercised.

The residence was situated on the crest of the low hill where Piccadilly sweeps westward up to Hyde Park Corner. To its right was Park Lane and the ornate entrance to the park
as well as Apsley House, former home of the Iron Duke. Across from it was the huge memorial arch that commemorated his military career. A reminder of a more recent conflict – the Artillery
Memorial – was also nearby. Opposite, behind a low wall and hidden by trees, were the gardens of Buckingham Palace. From their top-floor vantage point the Princesses could see not only noble
architecture but the everyday life of London from which, by protocol and a protective barrier of servants, they were excluded. They watched the unending procession of pedestrians and vehicles that
passed below. They had a particular fascination with the open-top double-decker buses, and longed to travel in one. They were to do so, but only once, for an IRA bombing campaign led to heightened
security measures and ended such outings. They noticed the horses among the traffic, and developed a particular affection for a pair that passed at the same hour each evening, pulling a
brewer’s dray. They were greatly disappointed if they missed them.

At the back of 145 was a now-vanished green space called Hamilton Gardens. Enclosed by railings and filled with sooty shrubbery, it was linked, by a gate, with Hyde Park. It was the principal
playground of the girls and their friends, who were largely cousins or the daughters of neighbours. From the park beyond this small enclosure the Princesses were watched at play by members of the
public. Elizabeth and Margaret took for granted the presence of inquisitive spectators. They even reciprocated their curiosity. They were intrigued by the children they saw on their walks in the
park, and might smile shyly at them. They were, like closeted royal children everywhere, to develop a fascination with those beyond their own world.

The other, weekend, home of the Yorks was White Lodge in Richmond Park. Both husband and wife disliked it intensely.
It was very inconvenient, stuck in the midst of great
swathes of parkland that were entirely accessible to the public, so that there was no privacy. Only in 1932 did they escape to a more secluded house – Royal Lodge at Windsor. This had begun
as a shooting-box for George IV, and is a pleasantly rambling Regency building, but at that time it was much in need of repair. Plans had been made for extensive remodelling but, with the onset of
the Depression in 1929, had had to be shelved. In response to the country’s economic woes, the King cut his own Civil List by half, and his sons had to reduce their expenditure accordingly.
Royal Lodge therefore remained rather uncomfortable. Nevertheless it was made habitable and decorated in the Duchess’s favoured colours of fawn and pink. It had around it the seemingly
limitless expanses of Windsor Great Park with its opportunities for walking and riding. It also had its own enclosed garden, long-since grown into a jungle. The taming of the garden became a
passion for the Yorks, who devoted hours at weekends, in old tweeds and sweaters, to clearing and planting. The Princesses became involved in this, and would have known discomfort and blisters
– and the fun of getting dirty in a good cause – just as the adults did.

One thing the Yorks did not want to do was to travel abroad. The parents of many aristocratic children of that age would have gone to the Riviera and St Moritz as a matter of course.
Elizabeth’s parents took their pleasures in Scotland, at Glamis and Balmoral. No doubt the King liked to have them on holiday with him in the Highlands, and his own views on foreign countries
(‘Abroad is bloody’) were well known. Elizabeth might have grown up familiar with other lands, playing with cousins from other Royal Houses (more or less as her future husband was
doing). Instead, she was to see nothing of the world until she went to South Africa at the age of 20.

Within a short distance of Royal Lodge was built the Wendy house of every small girl’s dreams. ‘Y Bwthyn Bach’ (‘the little house’ in Welsh) was a gift from the
people of the Principality
on her sixth birthday. There was about it nothing of the stage-set, and there was no need for its occupants to make believe, for everything was in
working order. The roof of this two-storey building was thatched (it still has to be renewed periodically), and the rooms (which are too small for adults to stand up in) were fully equipped with
working lights, running water and miniature versions of household products and implements – from a dustpan to a vacuum cleaner and a radio – for its maintenance. The girls, needless to
say, loved it, not only for its scale and detail but also because it represented an ‘ordinary’ home. Elizabeth could be as fastidious in her sweeping and cleaning as her tidy nature
desired.

As regards other toys, there were constant gifts. Those from members of the public could not, according to protocol, be accepted and so were returned. Those from other sources –
organisations, communities and other nations – were kept. Elizabeth had both a baker’s van and a grocer’s cart, with which she could make deliveries using her governess as the
horse. A number of the dolls owned by the Princesses can still be seen at Windsor. They include two Japanese ladies in kimonos and two dolls given to the girls by the President of France.
‘France’ and ‘Marianne’ came with beautifully designed clothes, and one of them had no less than 10 pairs of gloves. As well as these toys, which were highly expensive and
perhaps unique, they had more mundane playthings – they outfitted a miniature farm with lead livestock bought at Woolworth’s with their pocket money.

Whatever the girls played with, there were usually just the two of them, and, in fact, they were so much separated from others of their age that they caught no childhood diseases. This
comparative isolation also explains the closeness they felt to animals. For Elizabeth, at least, these were to be a lifelong passion and, surrounded as she would always be by subservient humans, it
is easy to understand the attraction of species that could offer recreation and a sense of friendship without
the tiresome complications of deference and protocol. From the age
of three she had her own dog, and acquired a pony soon after. She was famously to say that, when she grew up, she wanted to marry a farmer so that she could ‘live in the country and have lots
of horses and dogs’. She first met a corgi when, at the age of seven, she coveted one owned by Viscount Weymouth. Her family soon had one of its own – Dookie. He was not to remain a
bachelor for long, and the addition of Jane would create a canine dynasty that would parallel that of the dogs’ owners.

The duke and duchess, who seldom entertained and preferred their own company to that of others, were indulgent with their daughters. They were not noticeably strict and, despite the presence of
nannies and governesses, there was about Elizabeth’s childhood nothing of the Victorian nursery. Their parents saw them for at least an hour, twice a day, and they took their meals together.
The Princesses had the run of the whole house rather than being confined to the top floor. Their parents took a close interest in everything they did.

Their desire was to give their daughters a happy childhood, one that – in the duchesses words – ‘they can always look back on’. The Duke, cowed by a boisterous father and
a more extrovert elder brother, had endured a painful childhood and wanted his own offspring to be much happier. The duchess came from a close, affectionate family and had grown up to be dutiful
without the need for strict discipline. She saw to it that the lives of her daughters, as far as was possible, mirrored her own, with the same books and games and interests. Once they were old
enough for school, there was no discussion of sending them to one. It was not only that there were no family precedents for such a move, but also that their parents were simply not willing to part
with them.

Queen Mary devised a curriculum. She considered it unnecessary for them to learn much about arithmetic, since there would be little need for that. They must, of course, have a
great deal of history, as well as knowing something of current affairs. In addition to
The Children’s Newspaper
, they therefore read
Punch
, whose beautifully drawn
cartoons in those days were a joy to look at – and
The Times
. They had lessons in the Bible and poetry to learn. She chose for them a number of suitable books, children’s
classics with which they should be acquainted. Elizabeth’s favourite, understandably, was
Black Beauty
. There was singing, drawing and painting, and needlework – although
Elizabeth made little progress with this. As with Victorian princesses half a century earlier, there was no need to take formal education too seriously. So long as they had good manners, and were
armed with a few ‘accomplishments’, there was no requirement for much further general education.

It was not an onerous system. There was no question of intensive learning, nor of exams looming at any time in the future. Each lesson lasted only half an hour, and every afternoon was free for
playing or walks or some educational outing. The girls were taught six days a week, however, so on Saturdays they used an improvised schoolroom at Royal Lodge. In London their classes took place in
a small chamber off their parents’ sitting room.

Their governess, appointed in 1933, was Miss Marion Crawford. A Scot, she had been recruited from an aristocratic family, and one of her qualifications was that she liked to walk long distances.
Nicknamed ‘Crawfie’ by Elizabeth, she was to stay with the girls throughout their upbringing and to spend the war years with them at Windsor. She became greatly attached to her charges,
and the Family in turn treated her as a confidante, but after she left their employ to marry she was to commit the terrible sin of writing about her experiences. She published two books, in 1950
and 1953. The first,
The Little Princesses
, was an anecdotal account of the girls’ childhood. The second,
Happy and Glorious
, describe Elizabeth’s life before coming to
the throne. Although the subject is clearly
treated from her particular perspective, the picture she gives of the whole family is an affectionate one. They are largely
sympathetic portrayals of the Yorks both before and after the Duke became King, and they provide a wealth of information on the domestic lives of the girls. The books outraged the Family but did
more than a little to increase its popularity. They have been extensively mined by historians – they are the only detailed record available of the Princesses’ girlhood – but the
Family never forgave the author for this breach of privacy.

Riding continued to be the girls’ passion. Not only did the Princesses increase their collection of toy horses, but they also learned to handle real ones. Elizabeth, at the age of four,
had been taught to ride on the orders of King George by his stud-groom. The child was a very willing pupil and regarded her teacher, Owen, with respectful awe. She rapidly gained from him a
detailed knowledge of tack and saddlery and feed, and these things became her chief topic of conversation. The Princesses were also given the use of a pony cart that had belonged to Queen
Alexandra. Even when they were in London, they had the opportunity to see horses at close quarters, for the Royal Mews was a short walk away. They would often ask the grooms: ‘Please may we
go and talk to the horses?’

As can be seen, Elizabeth was the product of an extremely happy and close-knit background. She and Margaret grew up in a sheltered environment, surrounded by deference and
overwhelming parental love, able to indulge to the full their passion for pets and countryside, able to avoid school subjects that did not interest them, and unquestioning of their position or the
peculiar circumstances that went with it. Their parents deliberately sought to give them an idyllic childhood, rather than one that would fit them for life through rigorous training, discipline and
competition, as tended to be the practice with princes.

To further their education, the girls went on a series of expeditions by their grandmother and others. To let them experience the everyday life of the capital they were taken
by Miss Crawford on the Underground to Tottenham Court Road, where they had tea at the YWCA – though they were recognised and had to be rescued from a curious crowd by their detective.
Although this sounds a mundane enough interlude, it had needed to be planned far ahead, like everything they did, and it would have been for them a considerable expedition. They enjoyed the novelty
of handling money, a thing they almost never did, and of figuring out what the different coins were worth.

They went to see the Royal Mint, and visited the great repositories of culture – Hampton Court, the British Museum, Madame Tussaud’s (where Elizabeth’s wax effigy sat on a
pony) and the Victoria and Albert. In this latter they would have seen the gallery of plaster casts of statues and monuments. The striking full-sized naked figure of Michelangelo’s David is
among them. To this day, visitors who go round to the back of its plinth will see, in a frame, an appropriately sized plaster fig-leaf that was always put on the statue when it was known that Queen
Mary was going to visit. The princesses’ upbringing was sheltered indeed. Their memories of these trips were dominated by the upright figure of their grandmother, sailing ahead of them to
point things out while they attempted to keep up.