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In the spring of 1921 Prince Albert proposed to her, but Elizabeth turned him down.
Both Mabell Airlie, who had been backing the match and acting as confidante to both
sides, and Lady Strathmore were upset on seeing him ‘so disconsolate’. ‘I like him so
much,’ Cecilia Strathmore told Mabell, adding percipiently, ‘and he is a man who will be
made or marred by his wife.’ But, having set his heart on marrying Elizabeth, Prince
Albert pursued her with dogged determination. Like his daughter Elizabeth just under
twenty years later, he had fallen in love at once and for ever. He was at Glamis again in
the autumn of 1921; in 1922 Elizabeth was among his sister’s bridesmaids when she
married Viscount Lascelles and that autumn he returned to Glamis. A fellow guest, the
rich American socialite and diarist Henry ‘Chips’ Channon, later recalled the atmosphere
there:
The then Duke of York, afterwards King, used to come into my bedroom in the evening, and we would talk of
the Glamis monster and the admittedly sinister atmosphere in the castle and of the other ghosts… One rainy
afternoon, we were sitting about and I pretended that I could read cards, and I told Elizabeth Lyon’s fortune
and predicted a great and glamorous royal future. She laughed, for it was obvious that the Duke of York was
much in love with her… I remember the pipers playing in the candlelit dining-room, and the whole castle
heavy with atmosphere, sinister, lugubrious, in spite of the gay young party… 14
Elizabeth, even if she laughed it off, was beginning to feel the strain. Her mother
noticed that she was ‘really worried… I think she was torn between her longing to make
Bertie happy and her reluctance to take on the responsibilities which this marriage must
bring.’ A false rumour that she was about to become engaged to the Prince of Wales,
published in the Daily News on 5 January 1923, seems to have brought matters to a
head, at least as far as Prince Albert was concerned. He told his parents that he intended
to renew his proposal to Elizabeth for the last time. ‘You’ll be a lucky fellow if she
accepts you,’ his father replied, already captivated by Elizabeth’s charm. Walking in the
woods with Elizabeth at St Paul’s Walden Bury on the weekend of 13 January, he
proposed to her and this time she accepted him. A telegram was immediately despatched
to Sandringham with the cryptic message, ‘All Right. Bertie.’ To Mabell Airlie, Prince
Albert wrote thanking her for her help in persuading Elizabeth to give up her freedom,
calling their engagement ‘the wonderful happening in my life’ and ‘my dream which has
at last been realized’.
People were surprised that the radiant, popular Lady Elizabeth had accepted the shy
distinctly unglamorous Duke of York. There were malicious rumours that she would have
preferred his brother, the Prince of Wales, who could have made her Queen, but there
had never been any sign that he was interested in her; he was still in love with Freda
Dudley Ward and, indeed, extremely keen that Elizabeth should marry Bertie. In fact,
Elizabeth confided to Lady Airlie that the reason she hesitated in accepting his proposal
was her reluctance to become a member of the royal family and step into the gilded
cage. For someone who moved in Elizabeth’s circles, a royal marriage was not
necessarily a glittering prospect. The Bowes-Lyons were never courtiers; royalty held no
special fascination for them and they tended to despise royal toadies. ‘As far as I can