anything. Don’t push it. Don’t nag. Just leave it alone.” Once Philip made the transition from watching matches to participating, his wife caught the action on her new movie camera, the beginning of her lifelong photographic hobby.
On May 9 she flew back to London, six months pregnant and ready to resume some of her royal duties. Jock Colville had left the household the previous autumn to return to the diplomatic corps, and his replacement was thirty-six-year-old Martin Charteris, who was enraptured by the princess on their first meeting.
An Old Etonian who trained at Sandhurst and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the army, Charteris was the younger brother of the 12th Earl of Wemyss, one of Scotland’s most prominent titles. He had a refreshing unconventional streak, sculpting in his spare time and indulging in the retro habit of taking snuff, which he would offer to flagging ladies on arduous royal tours. Married to the daughter of Viscount Margesson, the former Conservative chief whip and war minister under Churchill, Charteris was intelligent, worldly, decent, and free of pomposity. For more than a quarter century he was a wise and steadying influence in Elizabeth’s life. When he was well into his eighties, his eyes still lit up when he spoke of her.
Colville had never taken to Philip, writing that the duke could be “vulgar” in his comments and “off-hand” in his treatment of the princess. With his gentle wit and easy manner, Martin Charteris was a more emollient presence in the household. He also worked to expand Elizabeth’s knowledge of public affairs, arranging in June 1950 for her to receive memoranda and minutes of cabinet meetings, as well as daily reports on the proceedings in Parliament in addition to Foreign Office papers.
ELIZABETH GAVE BIRTH at Clarence House on August 15, 1950, at 11:50 A.M. to her second child, Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise. Philip had returned to London more than two weeks earlier, which gave him time to get reacquainted with his twenty-one-month-old son after almost a year away. But his first command of the frigate HMS
The following spring, Elizabeth made her first trips to Italy and Greece, where Philip showed her the Parthenon and other sights in his homeland. Always vigilant about his own weight, he helped his wife return to trim form by encouraging her to give up potatoes, wine, and sweets. But their time in the Mediterranean was coming to an end. King George VI had been in declining health since 1948, increasingly plagued by pain and numbness resulting from his arteriosclerosis. In March 1949 he had undergone surgery to improve circulation in his legs. He continued to carry out his duties but his appearance was gaunt, and by May 1951 he was seriously ill, this time with a fever and chronic cough that did not respond to treatment.
Elizabeth came home to stand in for her father at a variety of events, most prominently the Trooping the Colour parade in June, when for the first time she took the salute on behalf of the King. The lone woman leading masses of straight-backed men, she rode sidesaddle on a chestnut police horse called Winston. She wore the scarlet and gold tunic of the Grenadier Guards—the regiment presenting its flag in an intricate hour-long ceremony—and a tricorn cap with white osprey plume, an exact replica of the hat worn by a Grenadier colonel in 1745. At age twenty-four, she projected an image of composure, her crop and reins held lightly in her left hand, her right hand in confident salute. Watching from a window above Horse Guards Parade was a large family contingent including Queen Elizabeth; Queen Mary; Prince Charles; his godfather, King Haakon of Norway; and Earl Mountbatten, who hoisted the little prince to a windowsill and taught him a proper salute. Prince Philip was back in Malta, and George VI was too weak to attend.
Philip returned to London in July when it became clear that the royal couple would be needed full-time to represent the sovereign. He took an open-ended leave from the navy, but in effect the thirty-year-old duke was ending his military career after only eleven months of enjoying the satisfaction of his own command—“the happiest of my sailor life.” Much later Philip would say philosophically, “I thought I was going to have a career in the Navy but it became obvious there was no hope.… There was no choice. It just happened. You have to make compromises. That’s life. I accepted it. I tried to make the best of it.”
* * *
IN SEPTEMBER GEORGE VI had a biopsy that revealed a malignancy, and surgeons removed his left lung in a three-hour operation. The cancer diagnosis was not openly discussed and certainly not given out to the press, but the family understood the severity of the King’s condition. As a precaution, the Queen and the two princesses were named Counsellors of State to act on the King’s behalf, even as bulletins from the Palace indicated he was making good progress.
Elizabeth and Philip had been scheduled to leave for a state visit to Canada and the United States, which they postponed by two weeks until they were reassured that her father was in no imminent danger. Instead of traveling on the ocean liner
Everywhere they went, from French-speaking Quebec (where she reviewed “one of the largest military parades in Quebec’s history”) to Vancouver Island (which they reached after an eighty-mile boat trip), they were greeted by enthusiastic crowds. In Toronto 38,000 schoolchildren serenaded them in a stadium, and 100,000 people filled the city’s Riverside Park. They tried to be as visible as possible, often riding in a convertible in cold and snowy weather with a traveler’s rug—a routine source of “comfort, softness, and discretion,” even in the tropics—tucked around them. In frigid Winnipeg, however, a transparent plastic bubble was fitted over the car. Their personal greetings were primarily limited to VIPs (including the famous seventeen-year-old Dionne quintuplets, five sisters who dressed in identical suits and matching hats), but they managed to talk to some ordinary people, mainly children, and also to former servicemen who had been wounded during the war.
The essential public routine that the royal couple would use over the decades took shape in those long days: Elizabeth was the restrained presence, her smiles tentative and infrequent, which prompted criticism in some press accounts. “My face is aching with smiling,” she complained to Martin Charteris when she heard the reports on her dour demeanor. Philip, always at a discreet distance behind, was already providing comic relief, grinning and teasing onlookers. When the royal couple watched bronco bucking and chuck wagon races at a rodeo in Calgary, they sat under electric blankets, both looking uncomfortably cold. But Philip was in good spirits, sporting his new ten-gallon hat, which he waved during the races. Once he went over the line, committing the first of his legendary “gaffes” when he jokingly observed that Canada was “a good investment”—a remark that stuck in the Canadians’ craw for its neo-imperial implication.
The scope and pace of the trip were punishing. They made more than seventy stops, and on a single day in Ontario they visited eight towns. Through it all, Elizabeth worried about the health of her father 3,400 miles away. Prepared for the worst, Martin Charteris carried the documents required for Elizabeth’s accession, and she had black mourning clothes as part of her traveling wardrobe. The princess was buoyed periodically by encouraging phone calls from her mother that made her feel “much refreshed and strengthened.”
In private on the train Philip tried to keep the atmosphere light, but he clearly found the journey stressful. “He was impatient. He was restless,” recalled Martin Charteris. “He hadn’t yet defined his role.… He was certainly very impatient with the old style courtiers and sometimes, I think, felt that the Princess paid more attention to them than to him. He didn’t like that. If he called her a ‘bloody fool’ now and again, it was just his way. I think others would have found it more shocking than she did.”
For much of the trip, Philip wore his naval uniform, and Elizabeth favored discreetly tailored suits and close- fitting hats, sometimes trimmed with veils, as well as fur coats and capes. During their visit to Niagara Falls, everyone donned oilskin suits on the spray-lashed observation deck. Pulling her hood tight, Elizabeth exclaimed, “This will ruin my hair!”
While most of their time was devoted to sightseeing (which she filmed on her movie camera), they also
