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as a wedding present), went to Fontainebleau, lunched at Barbizon and visited Vaux-le-
Vicomte. Their last night was spent at the Opera, where Elizabeth’s mother had scored
her triumph in Hartnell’s white crinoline in the summer of 1938, and they were
enthusiastically cheered as they stood floodlit at the top of the steps waving to the
crowds. ‘In four hectic days,’ Colville wrote, ‘Princess Elizabeth had conquered Paris.’
Behind the glittering façade, however, concealed from the public, neither Elizabeth
nor Philip was feeling well. She was several months pregnant and the heat, the constant
standing and being on parade had had their effect on her. Philip had a bad stomach
upset, so much so that Elizabeth tried to persuade him to cancel his engagements, but he
insisted on going on, looking green and not in the best of tempers. There was one
particularly distressing evening which had been designed as a private treat for the
young couple. As Colville told Elizabeth Longford:
We went to a most select three-star restaurant [the Tour d’Argent], the French had been turned out, so we
found a table, just a party of us all alone in this vast restaurant. Prince Philip spotted a round hole in a table
just opposite us, through which the lens of a camera was poking. He was naturally in a frightful rage. We
went on to a night-club, again the French all turned out. One of the most appalling evenings I have ever
spent. Everybody dressed up to the nines – nobody in either place – except the lens. 7
Philip’s dislike of media intrusion was growing; his reaction to it was one aspect of his
temperament which his wife found uncomfortable.
According to Colville, public enthusiasm for Elizabeth was just as high in Britain as it
had been in Paris as she travelled through the United Kingdom, sometimes with Philip
but often without him as he was still a serving naval officer. (It was now agreed that the
Edinburghs should take on as many as possible of the King and Queen’s engagements.)
Even Colville, often acerbic in his comments on contemporaries, dipped his pen in sugar
when describing her effect on the public: ‘Quite mysteriously, a visit by a young princess
with beautiful blue eyes and a superb natural complexion brought gleams of radiant
sunshine into the dingiest streets of the dreariest cities. Princes who do their duty are
respected; beautiful Princesses have an in-built advantage over their male
counterparts.’ 8
The imminent birth of Elizabeth’s first child was preceded by a flurry of questions as
to protocol and precedent. In August Lascelles wrote to the Home Secretary, James
Chuter Ede, confirming that the King wanted him to be in attendance at the birth, but
by 4 November George VI had changed his mind because of suggestions from the
Dominions that their representatives also should be invited, which, in his view, would
give the custom a constitutional significance which it never had. Ede and Attlee then
told the King on 5 November ‘that it would be advisable for Your Majesty to put an end
to the practice now’, and an announcement was made that day. 9 There was considerable
fuss over both the name and title of the soon-to-be-born child. Under the terms of
George V’s Letters Patent of 30 November 1917, only the children of the sovereign, the
children of the sons of the sovereign, and the eldest living son of the eldest son of the
Prince of Wales were to be styled Royal Highnesses. No provision had been made for the