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Etched into the public consciousness was the photograph of three queens, Queen
Mary, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and the new sovereign, three grieving blackveiled
figures waiting for the arrival of the late King’s coffin from Sandringham on 11
February 1952. It had travelled the same route as his father’s had in 1936: from the little
church at Sandringham to Wolferton station, then by train to London and on the same
gun carriage through the streets to the lying-in-state at Westminster Hall, where 300,000
people filed by in respect during the three days before the funeral on 16 February.
On the morning of the funeral at Windsor, Elizabeth walked immediately behind her
father’s coffin, causing a certain amount of disappointment to Mountbatten, who,
having ascertained that his father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, had walked immediately
behind the coffin of Edward VII, had applied for the position himself and had to be
dissuaded by the Earl Marshal, the Duke of Norfolk. Elizabeth had been expected to ride
in a carriage in the funeral procession, but, in view of her decision, the Earl Marshal
told Mountbatten, ‘I am sure that on reflection you will not press for what you have
asked, namely, that you should walk, and be in fact the only individual, apart from the
Sovereign’s Standard [bearer], to be between the Queen and her father.’ 5 Behind her
walked the King’s surviving brothers, the Dukes of Windsor and Gloucester, the former
looking, according to one observer, ‘positively jaunty’ as he followed his younger
brother’s body.
There had been a faint gesture of reconciliation. The Duke of Windsor, who had been
in New York at the time of his brother’s death and had humiliatingly learned of it from
news reporters, had travelled in the Queen Mary to attend the funeral, leaving his wife
behind. On his arrival on 13 February he had been entertained at tea by Elizabeth,
Philip and the Queen Mother. This surprised him, as he told the Duchess: ‘Officially and
on the surface my treatment within the family has been entirely correct and dignified.
But gosh they move slowly within these Palace confines & the intrigues and
manoeuvrings backstage must be filling books…’ 6 ‘Now that the door has been opened a
crack try and get your foot in, in the hope of making it even wider in the future,’ the
Duchess instructed him. He was to try and make his peace with the Queen Mother. ‘I am
sure you can win her over to a more friendly attitude,’ she continued with unwarranted
optimism. 7 The Queen Mother had no illusions about the Windsors’ feelings towards her;
she now had an additional reason for her unforgiving stance: she blamed them as the
principal cause of her husband’s early death. Had he not been forced by the Abdication
to take up the burden of kingship under such exceptionally difficult circumstances, she
felt, he would still be alive. Queen Mary, gliding over the emotional surface as was her
wont, took it that there had been a reconciliation. ‘Of course, David rushed over at once,
nice of him but a bit disturbing,’ she wrote to her brother and sister-in-law, the Athlones.
‘However he saw E [the Queen Mother] and the girls. He had not seen them since 1936,
so that feud is over, a great relief to me.’ 8
The thaw, however, was more apparent than real, much of it due to the tactful
behaviour of the Duke, who, on his wife’s strict instructions, never mentioned her. He
did succeed in obtaining a private interview with the Queen Mother, who was pleasant