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futilely, in their forecasts of the one whom she would marry. Yet I dare say that there was not one among
them more touched by the Princess’s joie de vivre than I, for in my present marital predicament, it gave me
what I most lacked – joy. More, it created a sympathy between us and I began to sense that, in her life too,
there was something lacking.
Their feelings for each other were strengthened after the King’s death. In her
loneliness and grief, Margaret leant even more on him. ‘Peter was always there for her,
he was incredibly kind, sensitive, gentle and understanding,’ a friend said. Other
courtiers, however, took a dim view of the relationship, which Townsend always denied
when tackled about it. Efforts were made to remove him from court: Boy Browning tried
to get him a job at the Air Ministry, but Townsend refused to go. Rather than leave, he
went to the Queen on her accession and begged her to give him another job on the
grounds that his marriage was breaking down. He did not, at that time, tell her that he
was in love with Margaret and wanted to marry her. He was made Comptroller of the
Queen Mother’s Household, a position which ensured his continuing proximity to
Margaret. He had refused to be reconciled with Rosemary because of her adultery.
Rejected, Rosemary had embarked on another affair, a serious one, with John de Laszlo,
son of Philip de Laszlo whose portraits of royalty and grandees were to be found on the
walls of every palace in Europe. When the new Queen, Philip and Margaret lunched
with the Townsends at Adelaide Cottage in June 1952, divorce proceedings had already
begun. Six months later Townsend won a decree nisi against his wife on the grounds of
her adultery with de Laszlo. Two months later Rosemary married de Laszlo and dropped
out of royal but not society circles; the de Laszlo marriage did not last and she
subsequently married the Marquess Camden. To her credit, she maintained a rigorous
silence over her first marriage. The divorce made a vital difference to the Townsend-
Margaret romance; he was now legally free, the innocent party. In their new-found
happiness, the pair seem to have been oblivious of the public sensation the news of their
plans to marry would cause. Both of them afterwards claimed naïveté; it seems difficult
in retrospect to accept this at face value. Townsend was, indeed, somewhat unworldly.
Margaret was an intelligent twenty-three-year-old, but he was thirty-eight and should
have known better than to embark on a serious romance with the young Princess
without any apparent consideration for the consequences both for her and for her family
in the circumstances of the time. Margaret was well-versed in her religion and aware of
its attitude towards divorce. As a member of her family she knew all about the
Abdication and the reasons behind it. The only reasonable interpretation of her
behaviour is that, solipsistically, she regarded her love for Townsend and her desire to
marry him as of overwhelming importance.
The timing was particularly unfortunate coming as it did in the run-up to the
Coronation. None the less, Elizabeth’s immediate reaction was sisterly when Margaret
told her and her mother that she and Townsend were in love and planned to marry. ‘If
they were disconcerted as they had every reason to be,’ Townsend later wrote, ‘they did
not flinch, but faced it with perfect calm and, it must be said, considerable charity.’ The
Queen Mother resorted to her usual behaviour in the face of something disagreeable,