On February 6, 1952, King George VI died in Sandringham, at the age of 56. Nearly 7,000 km away, not far from Nairobi in Kenya, his 25-year-old eldest daughter, the princess he nicknamed Lilibet, became Queen Elizabeth II, sovereign of the United Kingdom. In two issues, including a special, Match had delivered the river story of these pathetic hours for His young Majesty, for his family, for his subjects...
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What follows after this advertisementParis Match n°152, February 16, 1952
The king is dead
King George VI died silently. He had none of those agonies which keep people gasping for weeks. George VI died at night, during his sleep, in the castle of Sandringham which he loved among all and where he was born. He showed in death the same reserve he had shown in life. There is, even in the press release published by Buckingham Palace, a singular simplicity: "King George VI, after going to bed last night in good health as usual, passed away in the early hours of the day, peacefully, without having awakened. The king was fifty six years old.
It was 136 days since he had lung surgery. The embolism that took him away is not directly related to this intervention. He was to leave in the spring for South Africa. The day after his death, from the balcony of the Palais Saint-James, the King of Arms of the Garter, flanked by heralds preceded by four trumpets, stiffened in doublets of gold thread, will proclaim in French, according to tradition: " Elizabeth the second, by the grace of God, our lawful and just sovereign. The publisher then shouted with all his might, “God save the queen!” »
The continuation after this advertisementThe continuation after this advertisementHis cry repeated by the Duke of Norfolk, constable and first peer of the Kingdom, was then taken up by all the assistance. He touched superstitious England to the heart. She saw in it the sign of one of those reigns which, from Elizabeth to Victoria, bear the names of women.
Elizabeth was off on another honeymoon...
Fate only gave Elizabeth three days of vacation. Almost immediately he came to surprise her. In the early morning, in an isolated house in the African forest, she received the terrible sentence in her face: “The king is dead. She staggered under the double weight of the veils of mourning and the heavy crown. Black doesn't suit Elizabeth. She sobbed without saying anything. She is twenty-six, the young mother and the young wife in a light dress! They had been happy since the previous Sunday, when she and Philip had entered the little wooden house with the white windows. The key had gone wrong in the lock; it had been necessary to force but nobody had concluded for that that the fate was hostile.
On the contrary. Beings and things had become accomplices. We were in Africa and it was summer. In the air there were ballets of pink flies and around the house trees that one would have taken for apple trees if they had not had blue-green leaves as big as sun hats. They were alone in this domain of perfumes and colors. Or at least as much as princes can be. Their solitude was a few hundred meters long. She was this fragrant garden surrounded by high palisades: behind them, there was the forest, its dark depths and its wild beasts. There were also a hundred armed men who watched night and day and who were both their defenders and their jailers.
"Royal Lodge", the royal cottage, 160 kilometers from Nairobi, capital of Kenya, was only the first stage of a gigantic honeymoon of five and a half months. The flying spouses had given themselves half the Earth as a sentimental walk: 48,270 kilometers from Europe to Asia crossing Africa. From London to London, via Nairobi, Colombo, Melbourne, Sydney and New Zealand. Their youth and their happiness designated them to be the traveling salesmen of the crown. With their smiles, their rosy cheeks and their united hands, they came to remind the Commonwealth that England is doing well and that its future is assured. England never took their eyes off them. Each of Philip's gestures, each of Elizabeth's dresses fascinated her. Three BBC reporters, in liaison with Australian and New Zealand radio, told English listeners hour by hour how their princess was serving the cause of the Empire by taking a vacation. It was a national honeymoon.
Elizabeth remembered on the plane that brought her back to London her departure from the aerodrome on Thursday, January 31. The whole royal family was there to say goodbye. The king had come aboard. He stayed for ten minutes. Then the engines began to roar; he had come down. As the plane took off to take to the runway, George VI raised his hand as the Queen blew a kiss. The frail figure of her father, his arm raised, the pallor of his face and his hair disheveled in the wind of the propellers, that was the last image that Elizabeth took away from him. Then the royal family had climbed onto a terrace to see the plane longer until it was just a black speck in the mist. Mr. Churchill remained on the ground floor watching the takeoff, his nose glued to the window like a penitent schoolboy.
She knew very well, Elizabeth, that this trip was for the king to make! But he hadn't had the strength. For it is a grueling undertaking to cross an empire where the sun does not set. Since the terrible operation of September 1951, George VI had been less a convalescent than a dying person on borrowed time. He never went out without a jacket and shoes heated by an electric battery. His voice had been altered by illness. Indeed, by proceeding to the total ablation of his left lung, the surgeon, Sir Thomas Price, had been forced to cut a pulmonary nerve influencing the vocal cords at the risk of seeing him completely and permanently lose his speech. The seven doctors present then took on this responsibility by signing a joint declaration. They had been somewhat relieved to hear the king say to them as he opened his eyes twenty-four hours after the operation: “Good morning, gentlemen. However, when the sovereign recorded, for Christmas, his first speech, the English had noticed that George VI spoke in a hoarse tone, like his father, George V. Every day, he did exercises to restore flexibility to his cords voice.
Getting on the plane, Elizabeth had no idea that the journey she had traveled laughing and chatting, she would, six days later, do it again with tears in her eyes.
It was a happy departure. Elizabeth had taken the turtle soup 6,000 meters above Paris, the grilled steak while flying over Dijon and the cate while crossing the Alps.
After an hour-long stop in Libya, the night-flying plane arrived safely in Nairobi on Friday, February 1. Four hundred chiefs of the Turkana and Suk tribes, in native costumes wearing ostrich feathers and draped in leopard skins, were waiting for him lined up in single file. They were stamping in place, rattling the copper and silver rings they wore on their wrists and ankles. Elizabeth laughed in the light. She had not suffered from these 30 degrees of heat and this relentless sun almost vertically. A yard away, Philip, in gala navy uniform, starred with the Order of the Garter, was his shadow.
She had easily played her role as sovereign. She grew up in official ceremonies, to the sound of hymns and cannon shots. A quarter of an hour after setting foot on African soil, she was visiting a maternity ward. A little boy was waiting for him there who was called “Prince” because he was born on the same day as Prince Charles. He had black skin and white eyes that rolled in terror. He was so scared that he turned his back when he saw Elizabeth. She had to take the bouquet from him and spin it around. She was still smiling, but without that slightly bewildered air that sovereigns must put on to appear to be addressing everyone. This barefoot black child was like the negative of a fair-haired child playing at that hour in a London palace watching the rain pour down the high windows of his palace. Elizabeth remembered the last image of her son through the rear window of the car leaving Clarence House: a serious, straight, sad little boy on the pavement in his pale blue coat, mechanically waving an Australian flag, shouting: " Goodbye Mammy. She then thought she was leaving him for six months. It was for six days.
The trip had become pleasant on Saturday morning, when the princely couple had passed through the thatched gate of Nairobi National Park, an African wildlife reserve. To face the lions, gazelles, ostriches, giraffes, zebras frolicking freely, the princess had armed herself with a camera and color films. It was a real walk in a Walt Disney movie. Elizabeth had the happiness of suddenly finding herself 10 meters from a lioness surrounded by her four cubs. She was delighted: “They look like,” she said, “like a row of bears in a toy store. Returning, the princess had been acclaimed by thirty convicts in striped suits authorized by exception to remain on the road. Then, on Sunday February 3, they left for Nyeri, in the house offered to them by the government of Kenya. They had traveled three hours in a "dustproof" car. They were covered in it when they arrived. "It's incredible, had launched Elizabeth that the pleasure made each day more talkative, to think that eighteen months ago there was only the forest"
The following days flew by at breakneck speed. On Monday, Philip and Elizabeth got up at dawn? It is the quietest time of the day. Together they had seen the sun rise behind Mount Kenya, in an apotheosis of pink and purple. For them, this Monday was the first day of a weekend when they would have no more speeches to make, except to each other, or other hands to shake than their own. At 6 o'clock in the morning, they had left on horseback and only returned for breakfast.
As they were having tea on the terrace, they were informed that a herd of elephants had been reported. They jumped into their car. After traveling about ten kilometers, they saw, about 50 meters away, a herd of thirty pink elephants.
The pink elephants are actually elephants similar to those that can be seen in all the jungles of the world, but the ground in Kenya is so red, that it somehow ends up rubbing off on the elephants; they like to suck the red dust into their trunk and spray it on their backs, which gives them that very special pink color.
The princess had aimed at the elephants with her camera and took new images intended to join, in the album of memories, that is to say the film library of Clarence House, those taken the day before with the lions. During the shooting, armed guards were ready to intervene.
The day before King George VI died, Elizabeth and Philip decided to spend the day and night in the rainforest. She had put on brown pants and a khaki military jacket. She was bareheaded. They drove 15 kilometers, then set off on foot along a path. They were preceded by a guard armed with a rifle in case a rhinoceros or an elephant showed a bad mood. The princess had been warned that at the sound of an alarm horn, she must immediately climb one of the rope ladders which, every 30 meters, had been hung from the trees like so many rescue beacons. She was followed by porters armed with knives and spears and carrying crates of supplies for the night. Hundreds of Ascari soldiers had been posted around, to ward off the curious who might have bothered the hosts.
They had set themselves the goal of an observatory perched at the top of a tree. This observatory is actually a real bungalow. We can live there. It has several rooms including a bedroom and a veranda. It is located 12 meters above the ground overlooking a water point where wild animals come to drink at night: rhinos, elephants, leopards, wild pigs, baboons, etc.
The baboons had come the day before, they had entered the royal bedroom and devoured the lampshades that had been replaced at the last moment.
It was in this strange place, in this giant fig tree, that Elizabeth and Philip spent their last night in Africa. They kept watch to glimpse the wild animals. They thought they were living a nightmare, because with the darkness begins a terrible concert. The stridulations of insects are so powerful that they sometimes drown out the human voice. On this crackling background burst, like jazz solos, strange calls launched from the bottom of the throat by distant beasts and which speak of love, fear and hunger.
Sometimes a bird lets out a malicious laugh. When the night is very clear, and the pink elephants prowl in the clearings, we hear their trumpeting similar to the shrill howl of a trumpet. Silence only returns with dawn. When Philip and Elizabeth dozed off in their aerial home, 6,000 kilometers away, King George VI, on his gilded bed at Sandringham Castle, was sleeping his last sleep. It was in a tree that the new Queen of England was to see the sun rise over her empire.
It was still dark when the teletype of the East African Standard, the Nairobi newspaper, had a flash: “The King is dead. The newspaper's staff immediately met and asked London for confirmation. Half an hour later, the phone rang. The news was confirmed. London was directly plugged into the “Royal Dodge”. Prince Philip's orderly immediately understood what news he had to convey. London had asked him to notify "Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth".
She collapsed in her husband's arms.
For the new queen and for Philip the journey is over. (The steamer Gothic, which was to take her to Colombo, lowered her flag and lowered her lights. Elizabeth II is, for the moment, only a child on her knees crying for a missing father.
But England watches with pride, through her tears, this sacred couple who come back to her from the end of the world. Until now she has only wanted to see in these lovers Philemon and Baucis, and now she discovers — between the lines of so much youth and so much majesty — the two names which always make her heart beat: Victoria and Albert . Already the God save the King has returned to what it was a century ago. A word has been changed. Since February 6, England has been asking God to “save the Queen”.
Paris Match n°153, February 23, 1952
How through her tears a princess becomes queen
By Jean Farran
The great mourning of England. For Lilibet, George VI was always “Daddy darling”.
For a week, England did not take their eyes off Elizabeth. She looked at her as one fixes those tightrope walkers crossing rivers on a tightrope. Because for a young woman of twenty-six, it is a terrible journey that leads to the throne, behind the coffin of her father. But Elizabeth did not stumble under the weight of misfortune. She did not miss her first steps as a queen.
History predicted it would be at 4 p.m. 30, Thursday, February 7, at London Airport. The sky was gray, a strong breeze was blowing. In this twilight atmosphere, the only note of color was given by the small blue lights marking the airstrip. There were few people on the ground, the terraces of the buildings were deserted. Mr Churchill had radioed Londoners not to come to the airfield. He still didn't know who would win, in Elizabeth, the impassive queen or the grieving child. A group of men in black, top hats on their heads, waited in the enclosure reserved for officials. Suddenly the plane emerged from the low ceiling of the clouds. At 16 o'clock. 19 he was landing. An escort of motorcyclists surrounded him like a swarm of flies and led him in front of the central building of the aerodrome. The escalator was pushed against the plane. Meanwhile, seventeen persons advanced, led by the Duke of Gloucester, the king's brother. The door opened. The duke climbed up and went to the rear where the queen's special compartment was. The curtains were closed.
— Majesty! he said immediately.
And he kissed the queen, then handed her a large packet of personal letters. Sir Alan Lascelles, George VI's personal secretary, had also gone up to greet his sovereign. Philip of Edinburgh, a little behind, watched, his face still.
Then the two visitors came downstairs. The men in black had lined up in front of the stairs, as if for a first review. These old gentlemen were bareheaded and the wind was blowing their gray hair. The first was Mr. Winston Churchill, a silk scarf around his neck. clutching his cane in his left hand. Beside him Mr. Clement Attlee, Leader of the Labor Opposition, leaning on his umbrella, then Mr. Anthony Eden and Mr. Clement Davies, Leader of the Liberal Party. Everyone looked at this open door.
Suddenly, after endless seconds. Elizabeth II appeared and the reporters' magnesium lamps burst. She was dressed in a dress and a black coat, she had a hat decorated with feathers. A single jewel on the facing of his coat: a clip of white diamonds, the only ones compatible with mourning. It was a surprise for all those who lived this historic moment. Elizabeth had left Entebbe airfield (Uganda), in a light beige dress and it was in this outfit that we expected to find her. Because if the princess had taken two dresses, a coat and two black hats, they were in her trunks which were on board the yacht Gothic, which was to take them from the port of Mombasa (Kenya) to Pile de Ceylon. A special plane picked them up and transported them to Entebbe airfield. The queen changed on the plane, helped by Miss McDonald, her maid.
Elizabeth slowly descended the stairs. She was very pale. Witnesses agree that she shivered distinctly. His ministers had bowed deeply. Elizabeth smiled sadly as she extended her hand to Mr Churchill. The First was on the verge of tears. He could only say in a throaty voice a banal word of welcome. Elizabeth gave all her ministers a forced smile. His first sentence was to Lord Woolton, Lord President of the Council: “It is a tragic return, but the flight was extremely good. (“This is a very tragic homecoming, but the flight was extremely good.”) Then she kissed Lady Mountbatten, her aunt by marriage. Philip, who had let her down alone, had joined her. As she got into the green Daimler waiting for her, she turned and gave a slight nod to MM. Churchill and Attlee and the ministers alongside them.
For the 25 kilometers that separate the airfield from her home to Clarence House, women were on their doorsteps, hugging the children in their skirts as the procession passed. The men took off their hats. Elizabeth was waving her hand. She was rediscovering England. This time she looked with different eyes at these men and women whose tutor she had become.
Corner of Stable Yard Board; she smiled: she had arrived home.
Nothing had apparently changed at Clarence House. With its three floors, its columned portico and its white walls, the old house, built under George IV at the beginning of the 19th century, always had the same cheerful appearance. It was a lover's house. There were only Aubusson rugs and precious furniture. As Elizabeth entered, the royal standard was rising along the mast on the terrace. It was 5 p.m. 5. In the grand salon, someone was waiting for the queen. A very old lady in black. She wept for a son, if Elizabeth wept for a Father: it was Queen Mary. She was extremely pale.
“The indomitable old lady”, with a stern gaze, standing in a black dress in the large and bright living room with gray and ivory walls, a square ceiling, was the very image of despair. Yet death was not unknown to him. She had seen three sovereigns die: Victoria in 1901, Edward VII in 1910, her husband George V in 1936: she lost two of her sons, John in 1919 and the Duke of Kent in 1942, an officer whose bomber crashed in Scotland. And here is "Bertie" in turn... But she is one of those women for whom misfortune is a sin and pain an illness. She was queen and she remembers it. She worked hard to teach Elizabeth, her granddaughter, that her every move was history. She did not think that for the profession of sovereign there was a better teacher than herself. The manner in which she received the news of the king's death the day before might be one of those examples which she intends to give as a lesson. Queen Mary makes it a rule never to personally answer the phone.
"It's not, she says, a queen's business. His secretary had the communications intended for him brought to him on a silver platter. When, Wednesday, February 6, at 10 a.m. 30, the phone rang in the large red brick mansion of Marlborough House, she remained motionless. His secretary picked up the phone, remained silent, then asked, "Is it safe?" He hung up, took out a sheet of paper on which he wrote only: “H.M. the King died this morning. Queen Mary rose without saying a word and went into her room. His face was so upset that his daughter, Princess Mary, sister of the king. was immediately notified. For an hour the rumor ran through London that the old lady had been carried away like her son by an embolism. This noise had been reinforced by the unexpected summons of Sir John Weir. private physician to the king.
The Princess Royal, having arrived in haste, went to her mother's room. She was in such a hurry that she had a lock of hair falling over her cheek. "When you enter the queen's," her mother said to her before she could speak, "it would be nice if you had your hair done." The princess withdrew, and did not return until half an hour later, just as Sir John came smiling out of the room, saying laconically, "Nothing to worry about." »
Elizabeth II and Queen Mary spent half an hour together. When she left, Elizabeth went to the window, lifted the curtain and looked for a long time at the yard where a big, old-fashioned Daimler was maneuvering out with, inside, standing straight on the bench, an old lady in black in front of whom the passers-by uncovered each other.
Queen Elizabeth sent for the king's secretary, Sir Alan Lascelles. As he entered, she called Philip who was in the next room.
— This conversation is of a strictly private nature, she said, I don't think there are any obstacles to the duke attending it.
Sir Alan then informed him of the conditions in which the king had died.
"His Majesty," he said, "had hare-hunting on Tuesday, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., going from place to place in his little country car. He had killed nine. He had made an appointment with Lord Sermoy. his neighbour, and a few friends to start over the next day. The butler of the castle had received specific orders: "Be ready at 7 o'clock. And the king had added: “In winter it is a fine sight to see the Norfolk countryside on a sunny day. In the evening, before going to bed, he had listened to Princess Margaret at the piano for an hour. Yesterday morning the butler waited at 6 o'clock. 30, in the pantry, let the light come on on the board, let the little bell in the king's chamber ring. 7 a.m., nothing: 7 a.m. 30, still nothing. 8 am: His Majesty still did not call.
At 8 a.m. 30, the butler sent for news the king's valet, Jimmy McDonald. This one knocked. Silence. He started again. No noise in the room. He slowly opened the door and walked over to the bed. He put the cup of tea he was holding on the bedside table and went to draw the curtains. The king didn't blink as light flooded the room. He was resting with his eyes closed, his face relaxed but of an abnormal whiteness. The butler, the chambermaids, the queen's lady-in-waiting were alerted. The chateau was in turmoil. Finally, the queen entered the room. She leaned over the bed. kissed her husband on the forehead, repeating twice in an anguished voice: “We must warn Elizabeth. Then she ushered everyone out and summoned Princess Margaret: 'The king your Father is dead. »
Mr. Ansell, local doctor, arrived in pajamas under his overcoat, pronounced the death. Orders were given to keep the king's death still secret. At the castle, before the news was known, a sign had been hung on a railing bearing only these words: "The hunt is cancelled."
Elizabeth II listened silently, leaning on Philip's arm. All these royal agonies, all these solemn burials which for the world are not history, for Elizabeth were family dramas. The tales told to him of it went back to his memory: Victoria dying in her neo-Renaissance castle on the Isle of Wight battered by the sea and the storm, passing away one evening in January with, at her bedside, the the gentleman silhouette of the Prince of Wales and the rougher one of the German Emperor, murmuring his last word between two prayers from a bishop. his son's name. "Berti". Edward VII making a scene on the morning of his death to his valet de chambre who had not given him the requested trousers, then going to bed never to get up again, reacting only when someone whispered in his ear: "Witch of the air , your mare, has won”. and muttering a mysterious last sentence "I won't back down." The Duke of Windsor had described George V's Sandringham end to his niece at length, eerily similar to George VI's. "Dressed in an old Tibetan dressing gown, a faded relic of his visits to India," he says. he was sitting in his favorite chair in front of a crackling fire. He seemed half asleep. Although he heard the little noise I made as I entered and a gleam in his eyes "indicated that he recognized me." He didn't seem entirely aware of my presence. Through a large window he could see, beyond the hollow garden and the bare trees, the square steeple of the church where the royal flag floated. In a corner of the room was the simple copper bed where my grandfather had slept before him... He died five minutes before midnight. My mother suddenly made an unexpected gesture. She took my hand and kissed it. Before I could stop her, my brother George, who was standing beside her, stepped forward and followed her example.
However, there is a secret in the last months of George VI. That of the operation he underwent in September. He suffered from left lung cancer. Three opposing theories: This lung was removed completely, partially and the last theory: it was not removed at all, because the other lung would have been affected and any ablation useless. Neither theory has been officially endorsed.
Be that as it may, the sovereign was warned of the seriousness of his illness. He knew he was doomed. “The king walked with death as if she were a companion. A companion he recognized and did not fear,” Churchill said. George VI, to whom everything had been forbidden when there was hope of saving him, allowed himself everything since he knew he was lost. He smoked, he went out, he hunted. Despite his physical weakness, he had made a point of radioing the Commonwealth at Christmas.
—Princess Elizabeth could speak for Your Majesty, it had been suggested.
—Elizabeth will one day have the opportunity to speak her own addresses, he replied dryly.
He felt that this speech would be a farewell.
At the end of the afternoon. Elizabeth took care of the funeral formalities with the Duke of Norfolk, Grand Marshal of the Court, the Earl of Clarendon, Lord Chamberlain. For the first time she signed "Elizabeth Regina" a deed, the one authorizing the exhibition, at Westminster Abbey of the royal coffin. She, usually attentive and demanding, did not change anything about what was offered to her. She listened silently to the long exposition of funeral details. Only then did she call Sandringham on the phone. She spoke at length with her mother, then with Princess Margaret. She asked for Prince Charles, some of whose exclamations compelled her to slightly remove the receiver from her ear. He knew the drama without understanding it. He had been told that his grandfather had gone for a long sleep. It seemed like a strange trip to him. His grandfather had promised to build him a house and he had not built it, he who kept all his commitments. Charlie was surprised at this change in the house. Low-voiced conversations, red eyes, tight smiles and everyone in black clothes. He asked his mother to come see him.
—I'll be there tomorrow, she promised.
Elizabeth couldn't leave that very evening. She had to appear before the Privy Council to be proclaimed queen and to sign the parchment that a medieval cavalcade would take to the four corners of the capital.
Friday at 9 a.m. 40, dressed in an astrakhan coat and a black velvet cap, she passed the door of Clarence House. The grenadiers of the guard presented arms, sounding their bayonets. She walked towards Saint-James. This uninhabited palace, which was built by Henry VIII for Anne Boleyn. is the oldest residence of the kings of England. Clarence House is a kind of outbuilding, dating much later (1826). The queen walked alone. The Duke of Edinburgh followed her a few yards away.
When she entered the throne room, the one hundred and seventy-five members of the Privy Council bowed in unison. "The king is dead, long live the queen!" shouted an official voice. On a table were the parchments. She signed them. Then with a silver hammer, she made the gesture of disfiguring the bronze imprint that was no longer valid. The act was read. Melted wax for a new stamp. The Queen spoke: “Your Royal Highnesses, my Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. My heart is too heavy to speak at length. I ask God to help me to carry out with dignity the task entrusted to me so early in my life. »
It was a singular confrontation between this young woman and her legendary audience: Anglican and Presbyterian bishops, representatives of the London corporation in scarlet coats embroidered with furs and wearing cocked hats, "Misters Justice" in wigs, ministers in top form, king's advisers in court dress and even two elderly advisers to Queen Victoria, one of them ninety-eight. the other eighty-two. It was the future coming face to face with the past.
Elizabeth, without attending the public proclamation which was to take place on the balcony of St. James, returned to Clarence House. To tell the truth, she was going to be able to attend this extraordinary spectacle without leaving her armchair thanks to the television set which had been specially installed. Along with Philip, she saw on the screen the proclamation in two places: St. James and Charing Cross.
The television lens was pointed at the balcony of the palace draped in a dark sheet. An almost religious silence weighed on the immense crowd which had gathered and which, moreover, half an hour earlier, had been so nervous that it had been necessary to deploy an additional battalion of grenadiers. In London, eighty-five bus lines had been diverted or canceled because of the ceremonies. Suddenly, Big Ben, the clock of Parliament, struck 11 o'clock. The trumpets sounded as the window opened. Elizabeth saw the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the Realm, flanked by the King-at-Arms of the Garter and the Heralds, proclaim her "Queen of this Kingdom and of the other realms and territories belonging to her, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith ". This was the first time this formula had been used. George VI had been proclaimed "King of Great Britain." of Ireland and of the dominions beyond the seas, emperor of India, defender of the faith”. He had been the last English sovereign to reign over India. The difference between the two little sentences summed up the drama of England: the continuous erosion of its empire. The transmission lasted fifty minutes.
After the orchestra had played God save the Queen and the crowd had shouted, "Long live the Queen, long live the Queen". a singular incident took place.
— Garter, said a mysterious voice, put your hat back on.
And we saw Sir George Bellew, King of Arms of the Order of the Garter, imperturbable in his magnificent 15th century gold-embroidered robe, estimated at more than 1 million francs, slowly combing his hair .
"The voice," said the Duke of Edinburgh soon, "which had asked that the queen be informed was that of the Duke of Norfolk who, as an aside, advised his neighbor not to remain alone bareheaded when everyone was combed. Two spectators watched the proclamation unnoticed: Mr. Churchill, from a window in St. James's Palace, and Queen Mary, from a third-floor window in Marlborough House.
It was 1 p.m. 50 when the Queen's dark green Rolls rolled out of Clarence House. The curtains of the car were drawn. But soon Elizabeth ordered them to be opened. When the car was out of London itself, she stopped. The driver and the detective who was at his side came and sat behind. The Duke of Edinburgh took the wheel and Elizabeth came to his right. He put on dark glasses and she tied a scarf around her head. When Elizabeth and Philip cease to be the center of public interest, they take advantage of every opportunity given to them to step out of the imposed persona. When the plane that brought her back from Kenya to England flew over the Alps, the queen went into the cockpit where she filmed for a quarter of an hour Mont Blanc and the chains that paraded 1,000 meters below.
As we approached Sandringham, the car stopped again. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh resumed their places. One hundred and fifty journalists and photographers awaited their arrival at the entrance to Norwich, where the main gates of the estate are. They entered through the little gate of the Jubilee. To the East. There were only a few people. It was 4 p.m. 32. The duke had taken 2 hours. 42 to cover 180 kilometers. It's a fast pace, considering how difficult it is to get out of the endless London conurbation.
The Rolls slowly followed the long driveway that led to the castle. She was getting closer to misfortune with every turn of the wheel. Elizabeth felt it. She was at her father's house. The oaks, the yews, the pines were like signs of the past. Sandringham was George VI's favorite home. He came there four months a year. not to mention the weekends. We did not say the castle, but the “big house”. Made of red bricks, covered with slates, it was cheerful despite the north winds that swept this plain, Nelson's homeland. His birth certificate is engraved on the pediment: “The house was built by Albert Edward and Alexandra, his wife, in the year of Our Lord 1870.” Victoria hardly came there, if her son was there often. The most striking passage she made there was to see Les Cloches, a melodrama performed by sixty actors, with an orchestra of as many musicians.
It was more of a men's house. We admired Persimmon, with whom Edouard Vil won the derby.
Elizabeth's memory was filled with stories of the feasts held there under Edward VII. Every November 9, on the king's birthday, the castle on the hill came back to life in a blaze of light. Then every day, for a week, the fields resounded with the salvoes of the king and the guests, who decimated the pheasants raised last year. George VI was born at Sandringham, not at the castle, but in a house called "the Bachelor's Cottage," later renamed York Cottage, because Edward VII had given it to his son, then Duke of York. These future kings George VI and Edward VIII had learned to read and count there. They often raised their heads to look at the pond through the glass and, beyond, the park where they sought to distinguish the small stags with tangled antlers which wandered peacefully. In the living room, the lady-in-waiting sat down at the piano and the two royal children learned Old Negro Joe, O my dear Clementine and Funiculi, Funicula. In the evening, they bathed side by side in zinc tubs.
When the car pulled up under the ivy-covered porch of the castle, Elizabeth fainted. She dreaded this meeting with her mother. She feared that the sight of her grief would prevent her from restraining hers. This is what happened when they found themselves face to face. For a few seconds, they remained masters of themselves, motionless, staring into each other's eyes. Then something clicked inside them, which made everything crack, and they threw themselves into each other's arms. Princess Margaret bowed as her sister entered and made a low bow. The queen mother was the first to regain her composure: turning around, she waved her hand rather vaguely to a few people who were present, as if to say: “Here is your new queen. ". Then she took her daughter by the arm and led her to the stairs. The Queen Mother, dressed in a black dress, clutched a fine white lace handkerchief in her right hand.
The king had died in a room on the ground floor, where the poor condition of his legs forced him to reside. But he had been taken to the second floor, to the room where George V had died. A light was burning there. On the bed, the sovereign, dressed in the uniform of Admiral de la Hotte, had the most beautiful cover: the flag. The Queen Mother withdrew, leaving her daughter kneeling in prayer. When Elizabeth II came downstairs, her husband, who was waiting at the foot of the stairs, took her arm tenderly on seeing her upset face and led her into a nearby drawing room.
Half an hour later, heavy footsteps were heard on the stairs. Four men came down, carrying the coffin on their shoulders. The royal remains had been placed in a triple coffin of oak, lead, carved wood, on which was attached a plaque: "Albert-Frédéric-Arthur-George Windsor, born in 1895, died in 1952." The coffin was placed on a cart on wheels, waiting at the door.
Then formed the most extraordinary procession perhaps of all those who followed the sovereign to Westminster. We were at that hour which is neither day nor night and which we call between dog and wolf. A crescent moon was rising behind the castle. In front of the coffin was a bagpiper, Major Alec MacDonald, then twenty farmers from the estate, each carrying a torch. Behind, eight rangers pulled the cart carrying the coffin covered with the royal standard. Elizabeth and her mother — side by side — in deep mourning, their heads hidden under long black veils, followed a few yards, preceding Princess Margaret and the Duke of Edinburgh.
The procession, which one would have thought had been ordered by Shakespeare, moved slowly between the fir trees, in the path of the king. The bagpipes played Flowers of the Forest, the most lamentable of Scottish laments. A rather strong wind knocked down the flame of the torches. In the narrow path, as the coffin passed, the wet branches let large drops fall on the flag. The shrill notes of the bagpipes endlessly repeating the same motif, the silence of the queens, the sobs of Margaret, the night, the torches, the repeated cries of the owls in the shade of the pines, the coffin of this king, everything made this last walk was perhaps the most tragic moment that Elizabeth and her family experienced during this long week. Suddenly the procession stopped. Fate would have it in an open spot where the sea king's coffin faced a distant, silvery line that shimmered on the horizon: the sea.
A canvas screen had been erected in the ferns, completely hiding the path. They are shadows, which the curious have seen pass in the solitary park.
The Sainte-Marie-Madeleine chapel, where the body was laid, is small and medieval. On its summit flew the flag of Saint-Georges: a white flag cut in four by a muge cross, the only flag which was not at half-mast in the whole of the United Kingdom. Without looking at this chapel that she knew so well.
Elizabeth fell to her knees beside her mother, sister, and husband. After a few moments, they rose, following the queen mother, and left her alone. After a few minutes, Philip, who had been standing near the door, approached Elizabeth. He put his hand on her arm, not saying a word. She raised her head, looked at him dumbfounded, then, understanding, got up in turn.
And Queen Elizabeth, leaning on her husband's arm, made her way back to the castle.
She immediately retreated to her room. It was there that the nurse, Miss Helen Lightboy, brought her Prince Charles and Princess Anne. The nurse had taught the little boy to bow, kiss your hand, and say Your Majesty. He did so, then threw himself into his mother's arms where he listened to the stories of tigers and gazelles his father had brought him from Kenya.
It is remarkable how much Philip has shown himself to be both precious and discreet with his wife. Often she was alone, because she was the queen, but she knew, without having to turn around, that he was standing attentive, a few yards from her; Philip and Elizabeth are a happy couple. No union is more difficult than theirs. Because it is a thankless condition that of "husband of the queen". The Duke of Edinburgh seems to follow a policy of tact which satisfies both Elizabeth and England. He has the best asset for him: the love that his wife has for him. For him, she took the risk, for example, of joining him in Malta four times, of staying with him for several weeks, a privilege that some officers' wives still hold against her. She went on diets and lost weight; she has, on Margaret's advice, changed her way of dressing. No doubt she did not want to justify, even on a distant day, Lord Melbourne's reply to Victoria, who assured her that her Albert never looked at any woman: "No madam, that sort of thing happens later, in general." " As a matter of fact. Philip, whom English political circles consider intelligent, opened the window of the closed rooms where Elizabeth lived, he made her breathe a new air. He is the opposite of the court dandies she met in the “parties”. He had a difficult existence. He was even poor.
It is a title that is not commonly encountered at Buckingham Palace. His father, Prince André, commander of the right wing of the Greek Army destroyed in 1922 by Atatürk, saw himself stripped of his property and banished from Greece by a revolutionary faction. An English warship, the Calypso, took him and his wife Alice to exile. That is to say towards Paris. Philip was a baby. He had been born in Corfu the previous year.
Princess Alice, her mother, now back in a convent, unsuccessfully opened rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré a shop selling embroidery and Greek crafts. His brother-in-law, Prince Nicolas, became a portrait painter. Philip was put into boarding school. He made all the schools of Europe. Saint Cloud. London. baden. Scotland. He entered the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth in 1939. He was serving on board the English battleship Vailant as an officer in charge of searchlights when he took part in the famous night battle at Cape Matapan in 1941 where three Italian cruisers were sunk in three minutes. “It was an action as close to murder as it can be in wartime,” he said later.
Several times in his childhood he met Princess Elizabeth in a short dress and white socks, but it was during the war that they met again. He was invited several times to Windsor, then a month to Balmoral, which in the eyes of the royal family was a test. He emerged victorious.
In December 1946, he applied for English naturalization; six months later the engagement was announced by a court circular. The next day, at a garden party in Buckingham, for the first time Elizabeth appeared in public on the arm of her fiancé.
Philip does not have the encyclopaedic culture of Prince Albert who, while waiting for Victoria, spent hours playing Mendelssohn sonatas on the organ, working on land-spreading plans for agriculture, studying the lithography, drawing coats of arms. Nor does he think, like Oscar Wilde, that “if a man is a gentleman he always knows enough and if he is not a gentleman everything he knows can be bad for him”. "My generation," he said. is probably, because of the war, the least cultured of this period. And he regrets it.
Elizabeth likes this sincerity. It is customary for him; he refuses to wear the conventional mask of princes, sometimes bursting with condescension, sometimes stiff with boredom. A servant heard him say one day to his wife, who was reluctant to accompany him on a walk in a light Scottish rain: “Good. Well, stay there, dear little simpleton. »
England is happy to find this tall, slender shadow next to its sovereign. A crown has become so heavy that it is not too many to wear it. Her Majesty Elizabeth II, waving her scepter over eight different countries, obliges herself to work fourteen hours a day, seven times a week. It must each year:
— Appear five hundred times in public:
— Grant a thousand audiences to statesmen, diplomats and various foreign personalities;
— Complete a complete social "tour" during the season:
— Traveling 100,000 kilometers;
— Signing one hundred and fifty documents every day.
This forced labor regime demands iron health. However, after her trip to Canada Elizabeth was so exhausted that the doctors ordered her three weeks of severe rest. This risk, the British prime minister and the ministers of the main dominions do not want to assume. It is relatively easy to book part of the vacation on official trips or to reduce the number of documents to be initialed. The most difficult point is to relieve the Queen of three hundred ceremonies a year by having her represented by the Queen Mother, the Duke of Edinburgh or Princess Margaret. The latter takes the third place in the order of succession to the throne, which increases her importance as a representative figure. It is now up to Elizabeth to delimit her activity as well as that of the Queen Mother. For Philip, already a privy councilor since the king's illness, the queen can affix her great seal to the letter of patent which would give her royal rank. “She would thus surpass her grandmother Queen Victoria who, by making her husband a prince consort, had joined: a secretary, a companion and a source of advice for his wife. »
A final question arises in the reports of Philip and Elizabeth. At the time of her marriage, King George VI wanted her to keep the name Windsor. But Philip didn't agree, so it ended there. Today she is queen. Elizabeth is faced with the alternative: to be for history one of the sovereigns of the house of Windsor, or the first queen of the house of Mountbatten.
It was in London on Monday that Elizabeth began to walk away from the coffin of the king her father. She hadn't stopped accompanying him for three days. But this time the time had come for George VI to leave his family and review his people one last time. Elizabeth left the funeral train at King's Cross station and went straight to Westminster. When she entered followed by the Queen Mother and the Princess, two guards fell unconscious. Elizabeth did not turn away. A queen is not entitled to outward signs of emotion.
In the icy silence of the room built eight hundred and fifty-five years ago by Rufus, son of William the Conqueror. Then sounded the four strokes of Big Ben, the Westminster clock. The oak doors opened and the coffin of George VI appeared, carried by guards in gray jerkins.
Elizabeth led the mourning. She stood very straight. All the audience was staring at her: her parents as well as the six hundred and twenty-five members of the House of Commons and the eight hundred and fifty-six peers of the House of Lords. It was, since the proclamation, his first appearance in public, it was undoubtedly the most heartbreaking.
When she finally retired, she was not to return to this coffin until the funeral, four days later. The king belonged to his people. Elizabeth, who had shown for almost a week that she was the size of a queen, could mourn in silence in the depths of her palaces this father and this king, whose death Churchill said silenced the din of the XXth century ".
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