38656356325923

discussions with her sister about it, nor had she come to a final decision. Eden later told
friends that he was relieved that the Queen had not asked him for his opinion. He was in
an embarrassing position since he too had been the innocent party in a divorce and in
1952 had been remarried, to Clarissa Churchill, Winston’s niece. Even after Eden left,
there were no family discussions about the affair, although everyone knew that
Townsend would be returning to London on 12 October for three weeks and, with
Elizabeth’s approval, would be seeing as much as possible of Margaret in social
situations with mutual friends before they came to a decision. Elizabeth, according to
Margaret, was ‘very nice but refused to mention “it” at all’ and after a last picnic on the
day Margaret was to leave Balmoral, she deliberately took the dogs out for a walk in
order to avoid the discussion which she knew Margaret wanted, arriving back just in
time to say goodbye.
Margaret at any rate seems to have had no inkling of any difficulty with the
Government as she took the night train south on 11 October. On the train she was
chatting happily and showing her companions the huge photographs of Townsend which
were featured on the front pages of every newspaper. ‘Isn’t he handsome?’ she asked
proudly and was quite put out when Princess Alexandra tactlessly said she thought he
looked rather lined. They breakfasted at Clarence House and Towns-end came round for
tea that afternoon from the Abergavennys’ flat in Lowndes Square, where he was
staying, arriving just before the Queen Mother came down from the Castle of Mey. That
evening they began a series of dinner-parties with friends. ‘It was the oddest sensation
going there [Clarence House] then,’ a friend said. ‘Outside there were crowds of people
and nothing else was discussed anywhere, nothing else to read about in the newspapers,
but inside there were no papers in evidence. One couldn’t believe the peace and calm of
that house where the tremendous drama was taking place.’ Elizabeth remained at
Balmoral. Hard though it may seem to believe, until that moment the royal family had
not mentioned the situation to anyone, until Lord Salisbury advised Clarence House that
some public statement must be made as the speculation was doing the royal family
much harm. Queen Elizabeth and her Private Secretary, Oliver Dawnay, spent hours on
the scrambler telephone between Clarence House and Buckingham Palace discussing the
wording of a statement to be issued on 14 October by the Press Secretary, Commander
Colville. The statement made a vain appeal to the press to leave the Princess alone and
declared that ‘no announcement concerning Princess Margaret’s personal future was at
present contemplated’. It was not enough to satisfy the press, who that day, Friday, 18
October, pursued the couple down to Allanbay, a handsome, late-Georgian house
overlooking a lake near Binfield in Berkshire, which belonged to Margaret’s first cousin,
the Hon. Mrs John Wills. The Clarence House household complained that Townsend
seemed to court the press rather than trying to avoid them as they advised him to. ‘We
were all amazed that the newspapers seemed to know where he was going to be before
we did,’ said one. Townsend simply refused to hide or to sneak out of side entrances as
the courtiers would have preferred him to do.
While the couple spent a romantic weekend at Allanbay with policemen fending off