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occasion of Margaret’s twenty-fourth birthday. The newspaper headlines were full of
rumours of Colin Tennant’s engagement to the Princess (she says that he proposed to
her and she turned him down; he denies any proposal was ever made) and the estate
was besieged by newsmen. As a result both Tennant and Margaret were in a state of
nervous tension. The Queen Mother wanted the party to dress up and sing a specially
composed song for Margaret’s birthday as they had always done when the King was
alive. ‘The Queen thought it might end in trouble but she didn’t like to spoil her mother’s
enjoyment’, so they all dressed up as druids in sheets and sang this song. The result was
just as Elizabeth had feared: the evening was a disaster. A friend recalled: ‘The Queen
Mother couldn’t see what had upset Princess Margaret, the Queen knowing this would
happen and unable to stop it, and Princess Margaret in tears, partly because it
reminded her of the times when the King and Peter were there and partly because she
had caught some of Colin Tennant’s nervous tension…’
It was to be another year before the saga reached its climax. In February and March
1955 Margaret undertook a triumphant tour of the West Indies. ‘She seemed inspired,’ a
friend said. Calypsos were composed in her honour and her welcome eclipsed even
Elizabeth’s on her Coronation tour the previous year. Then the day after she returned
Townsend revived all the speculation by giving an interview to the Daily Sketch in
Brussels. When asked whether he would marry Princess Margaret, he replied, ‘Wait and
see.’ There was an absolute furore and Townsend claimed he had been misquoted. The
newspaper’s proprietor, however, was adamant that the initiative for the interview had
come from the Group Captain. Friends of Margaret surmised that, in the wake of her
sensational West Indian tour, he was staking his claim. August 21 would be Margaret’s
twenty-fifth birthday, when she would be free to marry without the consent of her sister
(although the parliamentary hurdle remained).
At Sandringham, where the Queen Mother was hostess to Margaret and her friends
early in August, there was great tension. Cecil Beaton had taken a series of birthday
photographs of the Princess and much time was spent in choosing one to be sent to
Peter. Margaret, a friend said, ‘was very moody, sad and difficult’, refusing to go to bed
at night and doing the opposite of what her mother said. ‘We felt sorry for Queen
Elizabeth, she knew what was the matter and she didn’t know how to cope with the
situation and she was much too reserved to talk about it to anyone.’ Margaret knew that
the time for a decision would be approaching. In her view it had to be marriage or
nothing; the family could not afford a scandal. ‘So she rationalized her behaviour and
said it would do no harm if she did marry him.’ When friends warned her that marrying
Townsend could harm the Queen’s position, she replied that that was nonsense and any
comparison with the Windsors made her furious. ‘She has always despised them as
completely beyond the pale,’ a friend said.
The royal family, with Dominic Elliot as Margaret’s ostensible escort, travelled north
for their annual holiday, pursued by newsmen, an estimated three hundred of whom
were around Balmoral on Sunday, 21 August, which they hoped might be a day of
decision. Nothing happened either in public or in private. In September the action