the Duke should visit Paris to help strengthen ties with an ally that was beginning to recover its economy and self-confidence after the war. The proposal was accepted by the Foreign Secretary and the King, but at first it encountered difficulties with the royal couple. Elizabeth was enthusiastic about the prospect of a trip that would take her to a city and country she had never visited, and which would be a good deal more exciting than speaking to women’s organizations in the provinces, or sitting on sofas with middle-aged politicians. Philip, on the other hand, who had spent most of his childhood in or around Paris, was less thrilled. He also resented the way Colville did things that affected him without getting his opinion first. There was a row, but eventually he agreed.
The notional purpose of the visit was the opening of the Exhibition of Eight Centuries of British Life at the Musée Galliera in Paris, in a ceremony to take place in the presence of President Auriol on May 14th. The real aim, however, was to give the Anglophile section of the French public a chance to show its sympathies, after a decade of confusion. It was the first official visit by British royalty since the King and Queen had been sent on a similar mission of bridge-building in 1939. The precedent was not entirely propitious: though British royalty had been welcomed on that occasion, the visit had failed in its purpose of helping to create an unbreakable bond between the two peoples. Since 1940, French attitudes towards Britain had contained a complex mixture of emotions, including those of comradeship and suspicion in equal measure.
So it was a gamble – but it worked. The French government did everything in its power to build up the diplomatic importance of the visit, and the French public – mystified and fascinated by the royal wedding – seemed delighted at the opportunity to see and cheer a newly married Princess. The royal party was escorted to Versailles and given lunch at the Grand Trianon, where the tablecloths and napkins had been embroidered with ‘E’s and ‘P’s in their honour. A triumphal progress down the Seine was followed by a dinner and reception at the British embassy, where the Princess glistened with the Nizam of Hyderabad’s jewels; and there were visits, through thick crowds, to Fontainebleau, Barbizon, Vaux-le-Vicomte. It was, said the papers, the Norman Conquest in reverse: Elizabeth had conquered Paris. It helped that the Vicomtesse de Bellaigue had done her work well, and that the Princess spoke almost faultless French. Even the Communist press abandoned its normal silence on such occasions, and paid the Princess the indirect compliment of complaining that the police arrangements for her security made it impossible for ordinary Parisians to get a close enough look.19
The British Foreign Office privately expressed its satisfaction. ‘The latent enthusiasm of the French people for the pomp and pageantry of monarchy was clearly revealed,’ the British ambassador, Sir Oliver Harvey, wrote to Ernest Bevin. ‘It was an unusual experience to see the townsfolk of Paris cheer an English Princess from the Place de la Bastille.’ Yet the visit caused offence to some. General de Gaulle – opposed both to the current French government and to the Fourth Republic Constitution – was left off the Embassy invitation list, for fear of offending the President, and they had to do make do with the General’s brother, who was President of the Municipal Council of Paris, instead.20 At home, some Scottish church organizations criticized the couple for visiting a racecourse and a Paris nightclub on a Sunday, and hence setting a most regrettable example to the Empire’s youth, ‘who look to their Royal Highnesses for guidance and inspiration’.21 The Princess used the trip as an opportunity to stock up with goods not available in Britain. When she got the HM Customs bill, she startled her private secretary by asking him crossly why he had made a full declaration.22
The appeal of the Princess to the French lay partly in her international celebrity following the Wedding; partly in her appearance, especially what Colville, a keen connoisseur, described as her ‘beautiful blue eyes and superb natural complexion’;23 and partly in a feeling that she stood for those who had grown up in the war, and could look hopefully ahead. In Britain too, the vision of the Princess as the ambassador, not just of her country, but of her generation, seemed to justify hopes for a freer, more fulfilling future for the war’s young inheritors. Invitations to speak to, and on behalf of, younger people proliferated. At the end of May, she attended a parade of youth organizations in Coventry; later she delighted dons and undergraduates in Oxford with a speech in the Sheldonian in which she declared that the universities were ‘a powerful fortress against the tide of sloth, ignorance and materialism.’24
Meanwhile, the idea of the Princess as standing for the future was enhanced on June 4th, Derby Day, by the announcement of her pregnancy. The Princess broke precedent by appearing the same afternoon, ‘smiling and unabashed,’ at the Epsom Downs racecourse.25 No child in utero arouses more interest than a royal one in the direct line. As Crawfie later pointed out, the only truly private period in the existence of a member of the Royal Family is between conception and the moment when the coming event is publicly known.26 For Prince Charles, that period was now over. The world’s most famous foetus became the hapless recipient of baby clothes from all over the world, together with matinée coats, bootees and pictures of storks.
PRECEDENT was about to be broken in another way: the custom that had got ‘Jix’ Joynson-Hicks out of bed in the middle of the night in 1926 was discontinued. Royal propaganda presented the decision as an independent initiative by the King and Queen, and further evidence of their modernity. In fact, it only came about after a fight, and the forces of reaction nearly won the day.
Lascelles later claimed to have been the instigator of change. ‘I had long thought that the practice of summoning the Home Secretary to attend, like a sort of supernumerary midwife, at the birth of a royal baby was out-of-date and ridiculous’, he wrote in 1969, after his retirement. ‘The Home Office made exhaustive researches and assured me that it had no constitutional significance whatever, and was merely a survival of the practice of ministers and courtiers, who would flock to the sick-bed, whenever any member of the Royal Family was ill.’27 The Home Office assurance was indeed categorical. ‘The custom is only a custom,’ Chuter Ede, the Home Secretary, wrote in June. ‘It has no statutory authority behind it and there is no legal requirement for its continuance.’28
It was an opportunity to do away with a time-wasting and embarrassing distraction. The matter was one for the King, but the King demurred. According to Lascelles’s later account, when he put the proposition to him in the autumn of 1948, George VI agreed at once, ‘but the Queen thought differently, seeing in this innovation a threat to the dignity of the Throne. So I was told to hold my hand.’29 However, Lascelles’s memory of what happened was not exact. Contemporary records suggest that a period of indecision preceded the royal negative. Correspondence in the Royal Archives includes a letter from Lascelles himself to the Home Secretary, written at the end of July, putting off an answer. In it he explained that the King had been particularly busy lately, ‘but hopes to give his full consideration to the question of your attendance at Princess Elizabeth’s accouchement when he gets to Balmoral next week.’ It was another month before the period of full consideration was complete, and the verdict communicated. ‘It is His Majesty’s wish’, wrote Lascelles on August 21st, ‘that you, as Home Secretary, should be in attendance when Princess Elizabeth’s baby is born.’30 There the matter rested until November when, a few weeks before the birth, the King changed his mind. The clinching factor was not a sudden progressive impulse, or a newly acquired desire to dispense with a meaningless ritual – but a shocked discovery of the constitutional implications of hanging on to it.
What turned the tables was a visit to the Palace, on other business, by the Canadian High Commissioner. In the course of the conversation with the King’s private secretary, the envoy happened to speak of the Princess’s condition. Since the Dominion governments had as much stake in the birth of a future heir as the British one, he remarked, he supposed that when the baby arrived, he and the representatives of the other Dominions would be asked to attend, along with the British Home Secretary. It was a eureka moment. The point had never occurred to Lascelles, to the Home Office, to the Dominion Governments or – apparently – to anybody at all in 1926, at the time of the Princess’s birth. However, constitutionally it was indisputable – and, at a time of Commonwealth transition, politically it was unavoidable.
When Lascelles spoke to the King later that