Articles and books about royal caninism became a genre. ‘. . . [F]ew people realise the marked similarity between the unaffected sincerity that so delightfully characterizes these royal but very human children, and the cheerful contentment of their dogs,’ reflected an especially liquid work called Our Princesses and their Dogs in 1936. ‘I doubt if I have ever encountered dogs who shared with their owners a quieter or serener companionship.’27 Photographs of the children mercilessly mothering plump corgis – the family’s favourite breed – filled the picture papers.
But it was the horse world that always took precedence. With Princess Elizabeth, horses were more than an interest: they became a passion, even an obsession. Rooms and corridors, first at 145 Piccadilly, then at Buckingham Palace, were filled with an expanding collection of toy and ornamental horses, of every material and size. Not just the indulgent old King but the governess as well were cajoled into the performance of equine role-play. A favourite game was to harness Crawfie with reins, as if she were pulling a grocery cart. Then she would be patted, given a nosebag, jerked to a standstill, or instructed to paw the ground. If the weather was cold enough for her nostrils to steam, so much the better. Sometimes, however, Elizabeth would weary of this ritual. She herself would become the horse, and make ‘convincing little whinnying noises’. At other times, she and her sister would sit for hours at the window at 145 Piccadilly, watching for horses in the street.28
Were animals a substitute for other children? Her governess, in describing such pursuits, clearly implied that they were – indeed the idea of a ‘poor little rich girl’ who lived a well-ordered, comfortable, but isolated life is central to her account. The two images of simplicity and loneliness are juxtaposed. On the one hand, there is a stress on the gap between the luxury people imagined royalty to enjoy, and their disciplined real lives; on the other, Crawfie often describes the yearning of the girls to be just like other children, with the same kind of fun. In her version of the princesses’ childhood, bedtimes were early, treats were few, seaside holidays rare, pantomimes visited only once a year. Other children seldom came to tea. For a time, Elizabeth made ‘rather special friends’ with the daughter of an eminent radiologist who happened to be a neighbour, but this unusual relationship ended when the child was sent away to school. It was, according to Crawfie, difficult for the children to gain other companions. The Duke of York was a private and unassuming man who, although he did not shun social life, did not seek it either. He and his wife rarely dined out or went to the cinema or theatre, and he was perfectly content to spend the evening at the family hearth, with his wife and daughters, indulging his hobby of needlework, pursued with such diligence that, during one burst of embroidering activity, he made a dozen chair covers in petit point for Royal Lodge. The impression is of cosiness, but also of domestic claustrophobia.
Perhaps such a picture of seclusion was exaggerated, and related as much to Miss Crawford’s home-sickness for Scotland as to the actual feelings of her charges. Meetings with the offspring of suitable parents, mostly relatives and courtiers, did occur. Elizabeth seemed to mix with them happily and naturally. Yet there seems always to have been a gulf, unavoidably imposed by convention, which stood in the way of equality. Patricia Mountbatten remembers Elizabeth coming to tea as a little girl of five or six with curly blonde hair, at her parents’ London home. She recalls a child like any other – except that she attracted special interest among the adults. There was a buzz of excitement among the nannies and governesses. ‘She wasn’t just another child of friends of my parents. She created a little flutter.’29 An aristocratic contemporary remembers meeting Elizabeth for the first time at his birthday party when they were both three. He had received a pedal car as a present, and his father insisted that he should let her ride in it. ‘She was a princess,’ he says. ‘You knew she was different.’30
AS ELIZABETH grew, interest in her increased. Visitors inspected her closely and seldom failed to remark afterwards on her beauty and poise, and on a precocious maturity achieved (so it was said) without loss of childish innocence. At the same time, a constitutionally convenient contrast was drawn between her own character, and that of her younger sister. Crawfie was later blamed for inventing this distinction, but that is unfair. Long before the publication of her book, it had been firmly implanted in the public mind. The roguishness of Elizabeth faded, especially as her destiny became apparent, and weightier qualities took over. Early in the reign of George VI, one writer compared the artistic and musical leanings of Margaret with the ‘serious turn of mind’ of Elizabeth, who also had an aptitude for languages. In disposition, it was noted, the elder Princess was ‘quiet, unassuming and friendly, yet she has inherited a dignity which properly becomes her position.’31 In a book published in 1939, the journalist Beverley Baxter wrote of Margaret’s talents as a mimic, and Elizabeth’s tendency to frown on ‘her sister’s instinct to burlesque, while secretly enjoying it’.32 Margaret was presented as impish and whimsical, Elizabeth as dutiful and responsible. ‘Margaret’s capacity for mischief, practical joking and mimicry,’ maintained a typical account in 1940, produced an elder-sister sense in Elizabeth.33
On one point there was unanimity: individually and together, roguish and responsible, the princesses were a credit to their parents and the nation. ‘A perfectly delicious pair,’ wrote the diplomat Miles Lampson in his diary in 1934 after seeing the two girls at Birkhall, the Georgian house above the river Muick on the Balmoral Estate, lent by the King to the Duke and Duchess of York four years earlier. ‘I have seldom seen such an enchanting child as Princess Elizabeth.’34 Their ageing royal grandfather felt the same. ‘All the children looked so nice,’ he wrote after the celebration of his Silver Jubilee in July 1935, ‘but none prettier than Lilibet and Margaret.’35
The prettiness of the royal little girls – much more than the handsomeness of the Lascelles little boys – represented youth and renewal, and became one of the symbols of the Jubilee. It was a carnival time, but also a display of recovered national confidence, after the worst of the economic crisis. At the heart of the festivities was the King who – in his proud virtue, sound political judgement, unrelenting philistinism and limited intelligence – stood for so much in an Empire that stretched around the globe: country, deity, family and social order. The crowds were hard to contain.
The nine-year-old Princess Elizabeth was photographed in a carriage with the rheumy-eyed Monarch, grandfather to his peoples as well as to the child beside him. Not since the reign of Queen Victoria, and seldom even then, had a sovereign been so revered (and never, a sceptic might have remarked, on the basis of so modest an achievement). Yet the reverence pointed backwards: Elizabeth stood for the future beyond the present reign. Her portrait appeared on Jubilee stamps, and her personality and looks were compared with those of the erect, austere figure of the Queen. Her appearance, and character, were moulded in the press accounts to fit the requirements of the hour. ‘Fair-skinned, blue-eyed, with regular features,’ was an appropriate assessment, ‘happy-natured but serious and quietly dignified.’36
Observing the enthusiasm of the massed well-wishers, the King was reported to be deeply moved. An uplifting year, however, had also worn him out. On Christmas Day he delivered his crackling wireless message to subjects all over the world, but with a noticeably weak voice. Over the next few days, he walked painfully in the estate at Sandringham, stopping every hundred yards to catch his breath. In the evenings, he had just enough energy left to play with his granddaughters.37 Elizabeth had brought cheer to George V during his illness seven years earlier: once again, she appears in the stories told about him. Lord Dawson, the King’s physician, later recounted how, as the end approached, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, asked the Princess if she would like to walk with him in the garden at Sandringham. ‘Yes, very much,’ she supposedly replied, ‘but please do not tell me anything more about God. I know all about him already.’38 F. J. Corbett, formerly Deputy Comptroller of Supply at Buckingham Palace, wrote that the last time he saw George V was on the private golf course at Sandringham, a few days after Christmas. ‘Out of the mist came the King, mounted on his white pony, Jock,’ he recalled. ‘Walking by the head of the pony, as if leading it along, was the little figure of Princess Elizabeth. She was taking her grandfather back to the house.’39
On 17 January the princesses returned to Royal Lodge. The Duke of York had his