His words drew a torrent of indignant criticism in the press and within the Establishment. The tabloids ran banner headlines about the “attack” on the Queen.
Inside the Palace, the essay was taken as constructive criticism. Martin Charteris privately described it as a “real watershed for the post-war monarchy” and said the author had performed a “terrific service.” By some accounts, Prince Philip—no fan of crusty courtiers—felt the same way. With help from her husband and various professionals such as the BBC’s David Attenborough and Antony Craxton, a friend of Philip’s from Gordonstoun days, the Queen improved her delivery of speeches, mainly by lowering her voice and smoothing out her clipped accent. But she continued to read her prepared scripts rather than risk violating her neutral position as monarch with a misspoken word. Contrary to Altrincham’s prediction, even after she had lost her youthful bloom, the public respected her stolid style, along with her self-effacing refusal to “make people sit up and take notice.”
Charteris’s gratitude for Altrincham’s wake-up call reflected other ways the Queen adapted to the times, democratizing some of her activities and eventually diversifying her staff. The following year marked the last of the elitist “presentation parties” for debutantes at Buckingham Palace, an antiquated upper-class ritual dating back to the court of George III, to be replaced by additional royal garden parties open to a wider spectrum of people.
While these changes were beginning to take shape behind the scenes, Malcolm Muggeridge added to the imbroglio in October 1957 by writing an essay titled “Does England Really Need a Queen?” in the American weekly magazine
He reported that “those who mix socially with the royal family” are the most “contemptuously facetious” about the Queen. “It is the duchesses, not shop assistants,” he wrote, “who find the Queen dowdy, frumpish and banal.” He said the Queen fulfilled her duties with “a certain sleep-walking quality about the gestures, movements and ceremonial.” Worse still, she was “a generator of snobbishness and a focus of sycophancy.”
Muggeridge got an even more vehement pummeling in the press than Altrincham. He was harassed on the street, his house was vandalized, and he received vitriolic hate mail, some of which contained excrement and razor blades. The BBC even temporarily banned him from its airwaves. When he returned, he became one of the network’s preeminent broadcasters.
ONE REASON FOR the intensity of the reaction was the article’s intentional timing to coincide with the Queen’s much anticipated visit to North America. Arriving in Canada on October 12 for a five-day visit, she made her first live television broadcast, speaking alternately in English and French to an audience of fourteen million out of Canada’s 16.5 million population. She used a TelePrompTer for the first time, which enabled her to look straight into the camera. She came across as “shy, a bit bashful and sometimes awkward,” but endearing because her performance “was so human,” according to
Perhaps the criticisms of Altrincham and Muggeridge had already sunk in, because she uncharacteristically began her seven-minute speech by telling her viewers, “I want to talk to you more personally.” She went on to say, in almost confidential fashion, “There are long periods when life seems a small dull round, a petty business with no point, and then suddenly we are caught up in some great event which gives us a glimpse of the solid and durable foundations of our existence.”
The following day she was the first sovereign to open the Canadian parliament. So Canadians could feel they were “taking part in a piece of Canada’s history,” she also agreed to television coverage of her speech from the throne in Ottawa’s Senate chamber.
The Queen was especially looking forward to her second trip to America. Writing to Anthony Eden, she said, “there does seem to be a much closer feeling between the U.S. and ourselves, especially since the Russian satellite [Sputnik] has come to shake everyone about their views on Russian scientific progress!” Unlike her lightning visit in 1951, this would be a full-dress affair: six days in Washington, New York, and Jamestown, Virginia, where she would celebrate the 350th anniversary of the founding of the first British colony in America.
She had an affectionate relationship with the sixty-seven-year-old American president that dated back to World War II when Eisenhower was in London as Supreme Allied Commander. He had enjoyed a “devoted friendship” with her parents, and he liked to recount how they had once arranged for him to have a special tour of the private areas of Windsor Castle. To ensure the general’s privacy, they had decided to remain in their apartments. But on the appointed day George VI had forgotten, and he and his family were on a terrace above the rose garden having tea with Margaret Rhodes at a table covered to the ground with a white tablecloth. As Eisenhower and his group approached, the King knew that their presence would stop the tour. “We all dived under the table and hid,” the Queen said years later. “If [Eisenhower] and his party had looked up … they would have seen a table shaking from the effect of the concerted and uncontrollable giggles of those sheltering beneath it,” recalled Margaret Rhodes. When George VI later recounted the story to Eisenhower, the general “was so staggered by the King of England hiding,” said Elizabeth II.
A crowd of ten thousand greeted the Queen and duke on their arrival in Virginia on October 16 for a day-long celebration in Jamestown and Williamsburg. They were accompanied by an entourage of sixty-six, including the British foreign secretary, Selwyn Lloyd. In Williamsburg the Queen gave a brief speech from a balcony at the College of William and Mary, praising the “enlightened and skilled statesmen” who founded the American republic. “Lord what’s-his-name was way off base,” wrote
The following morning they flew to Washington on Eisenhower’s aircraft, the
Riding into the capital with the president and his wife, Mamie, in a bubble-top limousine accompanied by sixteen bands, they were cheered along the route by more than a million people who were undaunted by intermittent rain showers. The royal couple spent their four nights in the most elegant guest quarters in the recently renovated White House—the Rose Suite furnished in Federal style for the Queen (later the Queens’ Bedroom and Sitting Room, named in honor of all its royal guests) and the Lincoln Bedroom, with its eight-foot-long carved rosewood bed, for the Duke of Edinburgh.
Much of the visit was given over to the usual receptions, formal dinners at the White House and British embassy (complete with gold plates flown over from Buckingham Palace), and tours of local sights, several of which offered unguarded glimpses of the Queen, described in news accounts as “the little British sovereign” or “the little monarch.”
It was evident to Ruth Buchanan that the Queen was “very certain, and very comfortable in her role. But she didn’t let the barrier down. She would maintain a stance, and she was very much in control of what she did, although she did laugh at my husband’s jokes.” Once when Buchanan was waiting for her husband to escort the royal couple to their limousine, “I could hear her guffawing. You didn’t realize she had that hearty laugh. But the minute she rounded the corner and saw us, she just straightened up.”
British ambassador Harold Caccia threw a garden party for two thousand under five tents lined with fiberglass that shimmered like silk, preceded by a more exclusive meeting with eighty diplomats and their wives. During a tour of the National Gallery, the Queen confessed to its director, John Walker, that she had recently longed to buy a Monet at a London auction, but couldn’t afford the “staggering amount.”
