At the age of twenty-four, a shy young woman from Kilmarnock became governess to Princesses Elizabeth – known as Lilibet – and Margaret Rose at their home at 145 Piccadilly. Marion Crawford was a much loved member of the family until, after her retirement, she published a memoir of her young charges. The Royal Family was outraged, and severed all contact with her. From her house on the road between Aberdeen and Balmoral the disconsolate Crawford would watch the royal cars pass without a head turning in her direction. Some believe she had been persuaded into publishing this anodyne and affectionate biography by her husband, who had resented being kept waiting for several years to marry because the timing of his fiance´e’s engagement did not suit the Royal Family’s requirements. After his death, Crawford attempted to commit suicide. Some years later she died, still unforgiven by her employers.
It was a homelike and unpretentious household I found myself in. It was a home the centre of which was undoubtedly the nurseries. They were on the top floor, comfortable, sunny rooms that opened on to a landing beneath a big glass dome. Round the dome stood some thirty-odd toy horses about a foot high on wheels.
‘That’s where we stable them,’ Lilibet explained, and she showed me that each horse there had its own saddle and bridle, which were kept immaculate and polished by the little girls themselves.… Stable routine was strictly observed. Each horse had its saddle removed nightly and was duly fed and watered. No matter what else might be going on, this was a must-be-done chore. The obsession for toy horses lasted unbroken until real horses became important some years later, and even then the old friends were not forgotten. They stood in a row along one of the corridors at Buckingham Palace, their grooming basket at the end of the row, for many a year.
One of Lilibet’s favourite games that went on for years was to harness me with a pair of red reins that had bells on them, and off we would go, delivering groceries. I would be gentled, patted, given my nosebag, and jerked to a standstill, while Lilibet, at imaginary houses, delivered imaginary groceries and held long and intimate conversations with her make-believe customers.
Sometimes she would whisper to me, ‘Crawfie, you must pretend to be impatient. Paw the ground a bit.’ So I would paw.
Frosty mornings were wonderful, for then my breath came in clouds, ‘just like a proper horse,’ said Lilibet contentedly. Or she herself would be the horse, prancing around, sidling up to me, nosing in my pockets for sugar, making convincing little whinnying noises.
Besides the toy horses there were other four-legged friends in the world outside. A brewer’s dray with a fine pair often pulled up in Piccadilly just below, stopped by the traffic lights. There they would stand, steaming, on winter nights. The little girls, their faces pressed to the nursery window, would watch for them fondly, anxious if they were late. On wet streets anything might happen to big dray horses. And many a weary little pony trotting home at the end of the day in its coster’s cart little dreamed of the wealth of royal sympathy it roused, from that upper window.