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under the anaesthetic, but his family were. ‘He is so ill, poor boy, so ill,’ Queen Mary
told Harold Nicolson on the day of the operation ‘in such a sad voice’. The Queen,
usually calm in the face of illness, was reported to be ‘frantic’, but the operation was a
success and seemed to give the King a new lease of life. He was in noticeably good form
during Ascot week that summer and even danced at the ball given in honour of
Waterloo Day, 18 June, at which the Queen looked magnificent in a white satin semicrinoline
and the splendid rubies left her by her friend the famous hostess Mrs Ronnie
Greville, while the glamour of the Edinburghs, according to Chips Channon, eclipsed
them all.
The Edinburghs were indeed radiantly happy. They had a baby son and now, with the
move to Clarence House in June 1949, a home of their own. For Philip, it was the first
real home he had had since the departure from St Cloud when he was ten years old. He
and Elizabeth had taken a good deal of care over the planning and decoration of
Clarence House and the arranging of their wedding presents, which had been stored in
the Orangery at Windsor. They consulted their staff about the design of their workplaces
and the staff quarters were, in John Dean’s opinion, ‘as near ideal as could possibly be
imagined’.
Elizabeth and Philip had separate but communicating bedrooms in the manner of all
upper-class couples at the time. Elizabeth’s was pink and blue with a draped canopy
hanging from a crown. Philip’s room was panelled in light wood with red furnishings
and an adjoining bathroom lined with photographs of the ships he had served in. Their
dressing-tables were placed a few feet from the communicating door so that they could
talk to each other as they dressed. Elizabeth’s sitting-room was painted aquamarine
blue, a colour fancifully described by the editor of Country Life as ‘catching the sensation
of an early morning in September, when the sky is of a pale cloudless blue but the sun is
still veiled by a thin haze and the lawn is silvered with dew’. 11 No less than three
photographs of Philip stood on her Chippendale working desk. Philip’s study, panelled
in white Canadian maple, another wedding present, featured three large portraits by
Laszlo of his parents and his grandfather, Prince Louis of Battenberg. The general
impression of the main reception rooms with their Nash ceilings and eighteenth-century
furniture was light, pleasant and conventional. The pictures throughout the house were
chosen by Philip. Elizabeth had taken part in all the discussions and even helped mix the
soft green paint for the dining-room walls. She was extremely practical by nature and
when someone complained about the smell of paint in the room she said, ‘Put a bucket
of hay in there and that’ll take it away.’ But Philip was the dominant influence here and
at Windlesham Moor. He was mad on gadgets and had installed every kind of modern
machinery in the kitchens and laundry-rooms. According to Dean, he loved ‘homemaking’
and often brought back from Ideal Home Exhibitions newly invented objects
like electric mixers which had been designed as labour-saving devices for servantless
couples.
Prince Charles’s nursery had white walls with a pale blue line on the ceiling
mouldings, and white chintz curtains and covers with black line-drawings of nursery-