The Women of Windsor

Their Power, Privilege, and Passions

Catherine Whitney

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780060765859
• eBook ISBN: 9780061914096
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

A sympathetic yet honest and nonjudgmental account that goes behind the palace doors and into the private lives of these iconic public figures

Their images have been captured on film and in print for more than a century. They are the faces of the British Empire: Elizabeth, the Queen; Elizabeth, the Queen Mother; Princess Margaret; Anne, the Princess Royal. But who are these women of Windsor? In The Women of Windsor, Catherine Whitney tells the story of the past century of British history through the lives of four women whose influence has by both design and fate, shaped it. Offering a unique outsider perspective, she delves beneath the surface to reveal the flesh-and-blood people and their hopes, dreams, disappointments, and joys. Compulsively readable, thoroughly researched, The Women of Windsor tells the fascinating stories of four women who have shaped the world, each in her own way.

CHAPTER 1

MERRY MISCHIEF

I pity the man you marry because you are so determined.

LADY STRATHMORE TO HER DAUGHTER ELIZABETH

Spring 1921

ST. PAUL’S WALDEN BURY, SCOTLAND

ELIZABETH’S BLUE EYES sparkled playfully as she regarded Bertie. “You spoil me,” she teased. “You must know how I love proposals!” They were standing together under the giant oak at the bottom of her mother’s garden, the fragrance of early-spring blossoms rising up around them.

Elizabeth’s hapless suitor blushed furiously and stared at the ground. Prince Albert—Bertie—was slender bordering on frail, impeccable as always in his walking clothes. He was handsome in his own way, with a thin, kind face, and blond hair swept back to reveal a high forehead. He was sick with love for this wonderful girl, and while the warmth in her voice was unmistakable, he steeled himself for rejection.

He raised his eyes to Elizabeth’s, and her face softened with regret. “I’m afraid not, Bertie,” she said solemnly. “It just wouldn’t do.”

He couldn’t ask—didn’t dare ask—why it wouldn’t do. In his mind it would do very well. In all of his twenty-five years on this earth, Bertie had never been conscious of wanting anything as much as he wanted Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon to be his wife.¹

The second son of the King of England had been raised on a steady diet of protocol and duty, and his upbringing had never taught him to seek happiness. In his world the threads of obligation and joy were incompatible, with the former woven into his lineage. Yet here was a woman who seemed to embody both strength and cheer.

Love gave Bertie courage. This was his second proposal; Elizabeth had turned down his first. Still, he was not ready to admit defeat. To do so would be to extinguish the light from his life.

Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon, who would one day become queen, was the ninth of ten children, and her older siblings often had occasion to complain that she was spoiled. Even her most outrageous antics provoked benevolent smiles rather than frowns of disapproval from their parents. In the age-old assertion of older children, they remarked that they could never have gotten away with such wildness when they were young. But even her competitive siblings had to admit that Elizabeth was a very easy child to spoil. Elizabeth was a natural charmer, with a sunny disposition, wide, antic eyes, and a dimpled smile. It was a quality that would earn her the fond nickname “Merry Mischief,” given her by her mother, and win her the devotion of her people for nearly a century. As one family friend gushed, “To every lover of children she had about her that indefinable charm that bears elders into fairyland.”²

Even so, the circumstances that led this high-spirited Scottish girl to England’s throne could not have been imagined at the time of her birth, on August 4, 1900. With five brothers and three sisters ahead of her to claim her parents’ attention, she might easily have had her light dimmed by the defining hierarchy of birth order. But some children are just special, and Elizabeth was one of these. Instantly becoming the household favorite, she was coddled and encouraged. She was affectionately called Princess, and friends who visited the family would curtsy to her as she held out her hand to be kissed.

While Elizabeth wasn’t royalty, she wasn’t exactly a commoner either—at least, not in the usual understanding of the term. Her family was one of old, aristocratic Scottish lineage—not filthy rich but rich enough, especially in land.

When Elizabeth was four, her paternal grandfather died and her father became the fourteenth Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, inheriting Glamis Castle with its thousands of acres in the glens of Angus. Glamis Castle had been the family home of the Earls of Strathmore and Kinghorne since 1372, when Sir John Lyon was granted the thaneage of Glamis by King Robert II, and it was said to be the setting for Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Like any self-respecting medieval castle, Glamis was rife with turrets, spires, secret staircases, hidden passages, and ghosts. Tales abounded of the origins of these ghosts. The most famous was the Lady Glamis, whose sorry fate at the hands of the evil monarch James V was the stuff of legends. Lady Glamis was a woman of great beauty, much beloved by the people, but the king invented a charge of witchcraft and she was imprisoned and ultimately burned at the stake. Her ghost, known as the Gray Lady, was said to wander the castle corridors, never at rest.

The castle held many mysteries. For example, there was said to be a hidden room that no one had ever been able to find but that everyone believed existed deep inside a tower. Servants through the centuries claimed to have heard thuds and cries emanating through the walls, and there were rumors that the cries belonged to the “Glamis monster,” a grossly deformed child born in 1700 and secreted away in the tower.

Elizabeth and her younger brother, David, her closest companion, found a magical aura along the shadowy cool passages of Glamis. Inveterate mischief makers, they were known to collaborate on horrific pranks; their favorite was to climb the stairs to the ramparts above the castle’s entryway and douse arriving guests with “boiling oil” (actually, water), then race away laughing as the drenched visitors shrieked with alarm.

The Bowes-Lyon family was boisterous and happy, thanks to its matriarch. Cecilia Strathmore, thirty-eight when Elizabeth was born, was ebullient and high-spirited. Unusual in aristocratic circles, she was a doting mother who nursed her own children and encouraged a raucous, creative atmosphere. She loved culture, art, and music and was a brilliant gardener; the Italian Garden, which she designed, still blooms at the castle today. (This love of gardening was shared by her two youngest children throughout their lives; David would go on to study at Kew Gardens.)

In spite of the tragedies of losing two of her children at young ages—her eldest daughter to diphtheria and a son to a brain injury—she wasn’t an overly cautious mother. Elizabeth always remembered her early years as filled with great laughter and fun.

Lady Strathmore’s large brood was a handful, however, and after Elizabeth was born she hired Clara Cooper Knight, the daughter of a tenant farmer at Glamis, to help care for the children. They called her “Allah,” as they were unable to pronounce her name, and she would be a central figure in Elizabeth’s life for many decades.

Lord Strathmore was a less vivid personality than his wife. A quiet, thoughtful man, he instilled in his children a sense of duty and religious rigor. He taught them an appreciation for the edict that to whom much is given much is expected.

The Bowes-Lyon family socialized in royal circles, but Elizabeth’s mother was not a snob. Cecilia Strathmore once said, laughing, “Some hostesses feed royalty to their guests as zookeepers feed fish to seals.” This fundamental lesson was well learned by Elizabeth; decades later, when Lady Strathmore died, she would recall her mother’s great decency and what a significant model she had been. “She had a good perspective of life,” she said. “Everything was given its true importance.”³

At young ages Elizabeth and David were sent for dancing lessons with Mr. Neill, a village entertainer whose long white beard gave him the appearance of a castle ghost. Under Mr. Neill’s tutelage they learned the minuet, and dressed in medieval costumes created by their mother, the children would perform for guests. While they suffered through the awkward curtsies, bows, and twirls, Mr. Neill would skip in front of them playing the fiddle. The adults were charmed, and laughed and clapped indulgently. However, Elizabeth and David found the performances, and their odd teacher, embarrassing.

When the Bowes-Lyons weren’t at Glamis Castle, they resided at their Hertfordshire home, St. Paul’s Walden Bury. The vast, stately home, on the southern edge of the village, had been in the Bowes-Lyon family since 1725. It was surrounded by beautiful gardens and miles of countryside, and there were so many animals it might have been mistaken for a farm. These included an assortment of dogs, cats, goats, and, of course, Elizabeth’s beloved miniature Shetland pony, Bobs.

Scotland ruled their hearts. Decades later, when Elizabeth as queen was touring South Africa, a veteran of the Boer Wars told her honestly, “We still feel sometimes that we cannot forgive the English.” The queen replied, “I understand perfectly. We feel very much the same in Scotland.”⁴

At the turn of a bright new century, the life of an aristocratic young lady was heavily influenced by Victorian ideals. Still, there was a sense that the twentieth century heralded a new era of possibility for women. Lady Strathmore wasn’t a modernist. She was more in tune with traditional values than with the women’s movement that was gaining steam at that time, or with the increasingly radical suffragettes. Yet in her quiet, forceful way she ruled the family realm, making certain that her daughters and sons alike were schooled in history, language, art, and literature. French governesses were brought in while Elizabeth was still very young. Bright and curious, Elizabeth was a good student, and by the age of ten she was fluent in French and excelled in history. When David was sent off to school at age ten, Elizabeth was taught at home by a German-born tutor named Kathie Kuebler.

It was an idyllic, protected life, but harsher realities would soon come calling at the castle gate. On Elizabeth’s fourteenth birthday, as she was enjoying a performance at a London music hall, Britain declared war on Germany.

Four of Elizabeth’s brothers—all but twelve-year-old David—enlisted. “I’ll be home for Christmas,” Fergus, twenty-six, promised his little sister. She gazed into his handsome face and believed him completely. Fergus wasn’t just trying to soften the blow. The common wisdom of the time was that this would be a brief combat; few could have anticipated the excruciating four-year war with its toll of four million dead.

The men fought and bled and died on the fields of France, and the women picked up the pieces. Many of the aristocracy opened their homes as hospitals and convalescent centers. One day in 1914 Lady Strathmore announced that they were turning the huge banqueting hall at Glamis Castle into a convalescent center for wounded officers. Everyone was expected to pitch in. Kathie Kuebler was sent packing; war trumped lessons, and Elizabeth’s formal schooling came to an end. Elizabeth’s older sister Rose left to take nurse’s training, and although Elizabeth was too young to be a nurse, she was completely involved in the life of the hospice. Often her face was the first one seen by the arriving strangers with their haunted eyes and injured bodies.

They began to come in December, staring in silent discomfort as their carts traversed the mile-long driveway that led to the castle. What must they have thought, these hollow-cheeked men, when the immense castle came into view? Many lowered their gazes and tightened their jaws, probably wondering what in hell they were doing staying in a castle and being cared for by nobility. For those who only days earlier had been mired in mud, there was a surreal quality to the experience.

The sight of the kindly woman in her fifties and her smiling young daughter might have relaxed them somewhat. Cecilia Strathmore had a gift for putting people at ease. As soon as the soldiers crossed her doorstep, they became treasured guests who were never made to feel like a burden.

Cots were arranged around the perimeters of the dining hall, but Lady Strathmore gave orders that the rooms be changed as little as possible, in order to preserve their home’s warm, inviting style. Easy chairs and sofas were set near the massive fireplace, where the men could relax in a homey atmosphere.

The First World War saw the advent of trench warfare, and many of the men were damaged not only by the shellfire but by the experience of living for long months in the claustrophobic gullies. Millions of rats infested the trenches, feeding off human remains and bringing disease to the living. This horror, along with the bitter cold and scarce rations, made the trenches a desperate place to be. Elizabeth tried not to imagine her own brothers suffering so, as she concocted ways to bring the light back to the soldiers’ eyes. She was such a sweet and cheerful girl, in her plain white nursing shift and peaked bonnet, that even the most miserable could not suppress a smile in her presence. “My three weeks at Glamis have been the happiest I ever struck,” one Scottish sergeant said, crediting Elizabeth. “She and my fiancay are as alike as two peas.”⁵

For Elizabeth, the men’s presence partially compensated for the absence of her brothers. She missed them all so much—missed, too, the way things used to be in their happy home.

There was great joy at Glamis when, almost a year after his departure, Fergus was allowed home on a short leave, following the July birth of his first child, a daughter. Elizabeth had never seen her brother look so handsome, but she secretly searched his face for traces of the haunted look she had seen in so many soldiers. If Fergus was burdened by what he had seen and experienced, he didn’t show it, saving all the room in his heart and mind for his family, his young wife, and his beautiful baby.

Ten days after he returned to the front, Fergus was dead.

It was September, warm with a touch of bracing cool. Elizabeth noticed a telegram messenger cycling up the driveway to Glamis Castle. She ran to meet him, and when he handed her the telegram, she saw the pity in his eyes and was filled with dread. She raced to find her mother, who ripped open the message, read it, and collapsed onto a chair, sobbing. Her beautiful boy Fergus was dead, killed at the Battle of Loos in some godforsaken corner of France.

For the British, the Battle of Loos was a particularly devastating fight—what amounted to a suicide mission. Fought from September 25 to 28, 1915, it led to the butchery of fifty thousand British soldiers, who lacked sufficient artillery to stand against the German barrage. Captain Fergus Bowes-Lyon was one of the first casualties, and his body remained in France at the site where he had fallen. It pained the Strathmores deeply that their son would never return to Scotland for burial.

Lady Strathmore was so distraught by Fergus’s death that she could not work for some time. Elizabeth picked up the slack and tried to run things as best she could. From then on, she kept a watchful eye out for telegram messengers. One more brother, Michael, would be wounded in the war and posted as missing in action. He was feared dead until 1918, when he was released from a German prisoner-of-war camp after a year and a half of captivity.

As the long years of the war dragged on, Elizabeth worked hard to keep her charges occupied and their thoughts away from the grim experiences of the battlefront. She organized cricket matches, picnics, and sing-alongs, helped them write letters home, fetched cigarettes from the village. She left an indelible impression. When Rose was married in 1916, Elizabeth took on even more responsibilities.

Everyone said that the lovely young girl with the winning smile and quick wit had a poise well beyond her years. As she swept along the drafty corridors ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Cast of Characters
• Introduction
• Prologue
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Epilogue
• The Windsors
• The Windsor Line of Succession
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Searchable Terms
• About the Author
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher