Washington
Washington was ready to celebrate. At the Capitol, the Union Station and along Pennsylvania Avenue, some six hundred Union Jacks and Stars and Stripes were flown from trees and lamp posts. Arranged in groups of three, surmounting respectively the shields of Great Britain and the United States, the flags lined the route along which the royal couple would pass on their way to the White House. Along Connecticut Avenue and Dupont Circle, through which the couple were to travel to and from the British embassy, more flags and banners waved from the windows of shops and over the porticos of private houses.
Life, meanwhile, ground to a halt in anticipation of the visit: all government employees were to be free from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the large department stores were not to open until after noon and other businesses were to close from 11 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. The crowd was estimated at five hundred thousand. “Not since they burned the White House in 1814 have the British caused such a stir in the nation’s capital as they are causing in connection with the visit of King George and Queen Elizabeth,” commented one reporter.1
In the White House, Eleanor Roosevelt too was making last-minute preparations for the royal visit – which she continued to detail in her column. The evening before, three of her sons and their wives had arrived for dinner, but with the guest accommodation at the White House spoken for, they went to stay elsewhere – although Franklin Jr, their second-youngest, brought his Great Dane, which he left to stay at the White House until they all continued on to Hyde Park.
“I have just made the rounds of every room in the White House with Mrs Nesbitt, the housekeeper,” Eleanor wrote on Thursday, 8th June, hours before the royal couple were due to arrive.
We even inspected the third floor, which, this time, instead of housing grandchildren, will have our royal visitors’ personal servants. Ordinarily, when the house is going to be filled, I tell Mrs Nesbitt to get in touch with the nurses to find out what food should be ordered for the various children, but on this occasion I have no babies to worry about! I have to explain, however, with extreme care certain English customs, such as early-morning tea and bread and butter and water which must be cooled but must not have ice in it. Only in our own country is water with ice floating in it considered a necessity.
Reeves, the head gardener, meanwhile, had been working on the various floral displays, with the help of gifts received from around the country: a friend of Eleanor’s in New Jersey sent roses, pink gladioli were dispatched from Alabama, while the orchids that were to be the centrepiece of the table for that evening’s dinner came from another friend in New York City. The railings of the steps leading down to the garden were covered with honeysuckle in bloom, and the big magnolia tree planted by Andrew Jackson had opened wide its blossoms. “England is a land of beautiful gardens and flowers, but I do not think the magnolia will be duplicated there,” she wrote.
Unlike her husband, who loved to put on a show, Eleanor admitted she had been dreading the prospect of all the pageantry Yet even she was becoming more enthusiastic: “After all these preparations, it is exciting to reach the actual day of arrival and I am looking forward with keen pleasure to meeting two people who have impressed their sympathetic personalities upon a continent.”
The Roosevelts, accompanied by other government officials, were at Union Station in the presidential reception room to greet the royal guests when their train arrived at eleven o’clock. The royal couple was escorted through the double line of marines by Cordell Hull, his wife and Ronald Lindsay.
Once the presentation was over, the President and his wife accompanied the King and Queen through the guard of honour, which was drawn up in front of the station. The band played the British national anthem and the Star-Spangled Banner, and there was a twenty-one-gun salute. Then, after all the photographs were taken, the royal and the presidential couples climbed aboard their respective open cars and, with a military escort, set off at 11.45 a.m. along Delaware Avenue to the Capitol, and thence along Constitution Avenue to Pennsylvania Avenue, through Treasury Place and across East Executive Avenue to the south-east gate of the grounds of the White House.
The procession, which included detachments of cavalry and tanks, proceeded at walking pace; aircraft flew over-head. The sun was shining and the heat, way above ninety degrees Fahrenheit (more than thirty degrees Celsius), stifling. “Wearing Windsor uniform, gold braid with sun on it, in an open car, was almost like the top of a stove,” noted Mackenzie King.2 The King turned pale and was later to confide to Roosevelt that he had been worried several times during the journey that he might pass out.3
The crowds, both outside Union Station and lining the route, were massive, and their response extraordinarily enthusiastic. General Edwin “Pa” Watson, the President’s senior military aide, told Lindsay he had seldom witnessed such a large turnout or seen visitors be given such a warm reception. Eleanor Roosevelt, meanwhile, was fascinated by the Queen’s response. “She had the most gracious manner and bowed right and left with interest, actually looking at people in the crowd so that I am sure many of them felt that her bow was really for them personally,” she recalled.4 Despite the heat, a light cover had been placed by a footman over the Queen’s knees when she got into the car; she and the King both sat on special cushions that Eleanor Roosevelt was amused to discover had springs in them to make all the waving easier.
Once inside the grounds of the White House, the royal couple entered the building through the south entrance. Immediately they arrived, what was known as a Diplomatic Circle was held for the heads of the diplomatic missions and their wives. When it was over, they went to rest for a few minutes before they assembled in the East Room. That afternoon, they drove into Washington, visiting the Lincoln Memorial, the Cathedral Church of St Peter and St Paul, Rock Creek Park and other places of interest. When they got back, the King and Queen changed and at 4.45 p.m. they left the White House through a line of Boy and Girl Scouts drawn up on South Executive Place for a garden party at the British embassy.
While the royal couple were out, Eleanor Roosevelt was amused to note that something of a rerun of the War of American Independence was being waged between the White House staff and those members of the royal entourage who were quartered in the servants’ rooms. The host servants were initially fascinated by the visitors – “even in this country where people had shed their blood to be independent of a king, there is still an awe of and an interest in royalty and the panoply that surrounds it,” as the First Lady put it.5 Problems began, however, when Nesbitt complained that the King’s valet was making what she considered unreasonable demands and daring to complain about the food and drink on offer.
The White House ushers were also struck by quite how caught up with protocol their British counterparts were. When one of them saw the Queen’s maid walking through the second-floor hall she asked her if she would tell the lady-in-waiting that the Queen wanted her to come to her room. Drawing herself up to her full height, the maid declared “I am the Queen’s maid” and swept off down the hall. The usher, exhausted with the extra work and the heat, resorted to some old-fashioned American slang, saying: “Oh, you’re a big shot, hey?”
Eleanor Roosevelt also recounted an awkward incident when one of the messengers who fancied himself as an artist made a bad, almost life-size portrait of the Queen and asked one of the maids to leave it on her dressing table with a note requesting both her autograph and her opinion of it. When the Queen saw it, she had it removed. The artist was tracked down and given a telling off by an usher. “If that man ever again utters the word autograph, it will curdle in his throat,” the usher said.
To call it the social event of the season would have been an understatement. The garden party held that afternoon in the grounds behind the British embassy, a recently built brick mansion two miles from the White House, had been the talk of the town – and a matter of some contention for those who thought they should have been included among the 1,350 invited guests but were inexplicably left out.
The bulk of the list was dictated by protocol: high-ranking administration officials, members of the diplomatic corps and senior members of the Congress and the Supreme Court had to receive their invitations. So, too, did leading members of the British community. It was over the few remaining places that the dispute was fiercest: Ambassador Lindsay and his wife, who were charged with drawing up the list, were accused of being snobs and blunderers by some of those excluded.
The New York Times captured the mood in an article on 21st May entitled ‘A Tempest in a Teapot over Royal Garden Fete’. The ambassador, the newspaper claimed, had been “burdened with the toughest and most trivial task in his long and distinguished diplomatic service – the choice of 1,350 among many thousands who feel that when a king and queen have a party they should be there”. The loudest protests, it claimed, came from newspaper managers annoyed that their special writers “who see a good piece behind the embassy garden wall are not on the list” and also from the wives of men “tufted with some prominence or another, who feel that to be left out of a group of 1,350 is a slight too public and too pointed to be borne”.
“Do the American people as a whole care who is asked to the party and who isn’t?” the newspaper concluded. “This correspondent does not think the American people care a hoot but may rather be noting with democratic regret that so many republican guests want to look closely at a queen.” In the event, the guest list, which closed on 6th June, numbered 1,400 and, thanks to a few last-minute cancellations, managed to include all the members of the Senate and their wives.
Guests began pouring into the garden at the back of the embassy from about four o’clock under the watchful eye of plain-clothes detectives, who, according to one British observer, were all too conspicuous in their panama hats. The royal couple appeared on the portico at the rear at 4.40 p.m.: the King wearing a grey morning coat and top hat despite the heat, the Queen “looking for all the world like a Watteau painting, with her white lace picture gown, large white hat, long white gloves and ruffled organza parasol”.6 They were greeted by the ambassador and his wife, and then all four stood together as a British naval band struck up ‘God Save the King’.
The royal couple were introduced to a select group of guests, among them Vice President John “Cactus Jack” Garner, known for his informal manner and wisecracks, who broke all rules of protocol by giving the King a big friendly slap on the back. And then the King and Queen separated and, accompanied by the ambassador and his wife respectively, made their way through the throng, stopping to talk to those who had been specially picked out for them. Among them were Admiral Richard E. Byrd, the Polar explorer, Hugh Wilson, who had served briefly as US ambassador to Berlin before being withdrawn the previous November, and J.P Morgan, the banker, with whom the King took tea. Then, as the skies darkened in anticipation of a threatened storm, the royal couple returned to the portico and made their farewells. The guests began to drift away, slowly at first, but then more quickly as streaks of lightning lit up the sky and torrents of rain began to stream down.
After the garden party the royal couple returned to the White House. To Eleanor’s amazement, the Queen did not seem to have a hair out of place or a single crease in her dress. The First Lady could not understand how it was possible to remain so perfectly in character all the time, and her admiration for her guest only grew. That being said, she confided in Elliott that she found the Queen a “little self-consciously regal”7 – but wisely kept that opinion out of her column.
That evening’s dinner was a formal affair – though following American, rather than British, protocol: so the Queen, glittering in her diamonds, sat on the President’s right, while the King was next to Eleanor. As for the food, it “lived down” to the usual appalling standards set by Nesbitt, who ran the White House household. Despite the importance of the occasion, Roosevelt, according to Elliott, had lacked “either time or inclination to prepare a formal speech”.8 When he stood – as ever, with the help of an aide, to toast the King, he did so on the basis of little more than a few scribbled notes that read: “Life of nation... Give thanks – bonds friendship. Greatest contrib., civiliz. example conduct relations. Because each lack fear – unfortif. neither aggress. No race episode... May understanding grow closer-friendship closer – Drink to health.”
That unpromising raw material was transformed into the following, which was subsequently reproduced for the newspapers:
In the life of a nation, as in that of an individual, there are occasions that stand out in high relief. Such an occasion is the present one, when the entire United States is welcoming on its soil the King and Queen of Great Britain, of our neighbour Canada, and of all the far-flung British Commonwealth of Nations. It is an occasion for festivities, but it is also fitting that we give thanks for the bonds of friendship that link our two peoples.
I am persuaded that the greatest single contribution our two countries have been enabled to make to civilization, and to the welfare of peoples throughout the world, is the example we have jointly set by our manner of conducting relations between our two nations.
It is because each nation is lacking in fear of the other that we have unfortified borders between us. It is because neither of us fears aggression on the part of the other that we have entered no race of armaments, the one against the other.
The King and I are aware of a recent episode. Two small uninhabited islands in the centre of the Pacific became of sudden interest to the British Empire and to the United States as stepping stones for commercial airplanes between America and Australasia. Both nations claimed sovereignty. Both nations had good cases.
To have entered into a long-drawn-out argument could have meant ill will between us and delay in the use of the islands by either nation. It was suggested that the problem be solved by the joint use of both islands by both nations, and, by a gentleman’s agreement, to defer the question of ultimate sovereignty until the year 1989. The passage of fifty years will solve many problems.
If this illustration of the use of methods of peace, divorced from aggression, could only be universally followed, relations between all countries would rest upon a sure foundation, and men and women everywhere could once more look upon a happy, prosperous and a peaceful world.
May this kind of understanding between our countries grow ever closer, and may our friendship prosper. Ladies and gentlemen, we drink to the health of His Majesty, King George VI.9
While the President’s speech was largely impromptu, the King’s response had been carefully scripted by Lindsay; stripped of all “regal phrases” and polysyllables and expressed in the simplest of language, it was intended to express his own feelings and at the same time to “please the average friendly American to know what he feels”. “The American people will always respect him as The King, but I want them also to acquire affection for him as the human being, just such an affection as they had for his father,” the ambassador wrote in a note accompanying one of the drafts.10
At just over two hundred words, the speech was blissfully short: the King thanked his hosts for “the kind invitation” and “still kinder welcome”, brought good wishes from Britain and Canada and ended: “And I pray that our two great nations may ever in the future walk together along the path of friendship in a world at peace.”
Despite his stammer, the King managed to get through it well, scarcely without a hesitation. Mackenzie King was nevertheless struck, not for the last time during the trip, by how both King and President were linked by their respective disabilities. “I shall never forget that evening and seeing these two men, each of whom have achieved greatness through physical infirmity,” he wrote. “The King having mastered himself completely by overcoming his stammering, and the President by overcoming infantile paralysis.”11
It was a thought that appeared to have been shared by the Queen, who had had a pained expression as the President struggled to get up. Amid the formality, Garner continued to show his disdain for protocol by putting his arm around the King’s back. In his diary, Harold Ickes, the US secretary of the interior, complained that the Vice President had “no breeding or natural dignity” and was treating the monarch as if he were his “poker crony”.12
The dinner did not pass without incident, at least as far as the performers were concerned: Marian Anderson had been loath to sing Negro spirituals and only agreed to do so after she was persuaded that the royal party should be able to hear music that really was native to America. One of the folk singers, meanwhile, had been reported to the FBI as a communist likely to do something dangerous. After being frisked by both the American Secret Service men and those from Scotland Yard, he was apparently so frightened he could hardly sing. Watching the performance, Eleanor hoped that, despite the heat, he wouldn’t reach for his handkerchief, since she was sure any sudden movement would cause members of both services to jump on him.
If the King had any doubts about the success of the visit, he needed to look no further than the newspapers, which the next day, 9th June, were almost universal in their praise of a couple described by the New York Times as “the living symbols of the world’s greatest empire”. For the Washington Post, the royal presence in the capital symbolized “the dawning of a new era in world history” in which Britain had come to accept that its former colony had “come of age and has great maturity before it”. “The American people have now come to realize that they are inevitably a tremendous factor in the modern world,” the newspaper commented. “With that realization comes a growing determination to have the United States play a truly constructive role in this difficult era.” At the same time, the article stressed, the visit had helped to underline “how much British tradition means in a period when there is a serious threat to the ideals which the two countries hold in common”.
For the popular papers, inevitably, it was more about the pair’s personalities. “King George VI Captures Washington”, screamed a headline in the tabloid New York Daily Mirror. George Dixon, a star writer for its rival the New York Daily News, who had followed the royal couple on the Canadian leg of their journey, declared: “There’s no use in fighting any longer, folks. We may as well throw in the sponge and admit we’re licked. Royalty throws us all.”
As with other royal visits, both before and afterwards, however, it was the Queen who seemed to have made the biggest impression on a personal level. In a front-page story on 9th June headlined “Queen Captivates Capital Throngs”, the normally staid New York Times heaped praise on Elizabeth. “The King’s tour is the Queen’s triumph,” it declared, praising her dress sense, gardenia-white skin, unruffled nature and the charm with which she handled the crowds – and all despite temperatures “almost unendurable to natives of this city”. The paper was also impressed by the way the King had “gratitude rather than pique for the skill and success with which England’s Queen subtly attracts the spotlight which her diffident husband will not shun but does not relish”. As one correspondent commented as the motorcade swept up Pennsylvania Avenue amid thunderous cheers: “That’s the Queen. Give her a crowd and she mows ’em down.”
The royal couple had no time to rest on their laurels; the second day of their visit to Washington brought another charged programme – and began with a surprise when the King made an unscheduled appearance at a press conference for the capital’s “eighty leading women journalists”, at which the Queen had been due to appear alongside Eleanor. Before the royal couple arrived, Eleanor had praised the Queen. “It is unusual to find in one so young and so compassionate an understanding of the conditions which push people to desperation,” she told them. “Her Majesty seems to me to be particularly interested in social conditions and seems to have a keen sense of the difficulties under which many people live and work.”13
At his own early-morning conference, meanwhile, the President was describing his royal visitors as “very, very delightful people”. Just after ten o’clock, it was on to a reception at the British embassy for 1,500 members of the British colony, where the King was dressed in a morning coat and striped trousers. With the temperature already in the nineties, he did, however, allow himself to go without the silk hat normally worn with them.
Next was probably the most important event of the day: a visit to Congress. Although the King had successfully resisted the suggestion that he make a formal address, a reception was held to allow him to meet its members in the rotunda. Before sunrise crowds had begun to gather along the route the pair would take; they burst into spontaneous applause as they caught sight of the car with the royal couple, which was escorted by motorcycle police and followed by another carload of Secret Service men.
Some ten thousand of the lucky ones, mostly wives of cabinet officers, high government officials and newspaper correspondents, were seated in camp chairs on a reserved space in front of the East Portico, where American presidents traditionally take their oath of office. Rather than drive straight past, though, the King and Queen got out and spent a few minutes strolling up and down so that everyone in the camp chairs could get a good view of them.
By then running five minutes late, the royal couple were met at the entrance by a silk-hatted delegation dressed in morning coats, led by Senator Key Pittman, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations. They made their way into the building, preceded by two sergeants-at-arms, who led the way with bowed heads and hats in hand.
The mood among the congressmen waiting behind a velvet rope was a mixed one; many seemed nervous and self-conscious at the prospect of meeting royalty A reporter from the New York Times described the atmosphere: “The House members were cutting up and making raucous noises, but as the funereal vanguard of the King and Queen appeared there were reproving ‘sh’s’ from the more dignified Senate group, nearly all of whom are older than the British sovereigns.”14 Silence followed, although when the Queen appeared reporters heard murmurs of “She’s lovely” and “She’s just as sweet as she can be” coming from the ranks of the senators.
The chamber was full of reminders of the two countries’ complicated past relations. The King and Queen stood on a strip of blue carpet next to a life-size statue of Thomas Jefferson holding in his hand the Declaration of Independence and two statues of George Washington. Facing them across the rotunda was a huge painting of the surrender of the redcoat army of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781 that ended the last major land battle of the War of Independence. One by one, seventy-four senators and then 357 of the 435 members of the House filed past, shaking the King’s hand. They were led by William Borah, the isolationist senator from Idaho, dressed up for the occasion in a morning suit that he told friends had “been in mothballs for thirty-five years”.15
“Cousin George, I bring you greetin’s from the far-flung regions of the Empire State of Texas,” said Representative Net Patton, shaking the King’s hand.16 Turning to the Queen, he said: “How do you do, Cousin Elizabeth? Why, you are much prettier than your picture. You are almost as pretty as the girls of Texas.”
“What a charming thing to say,” the Queen replied.17
Another representative, Robert Mouton of Louisiana, addressed the couple in French and kissed the Queen’s hand – getting a warm smile in response.
The King gave as good as he got, however, greeting Senator Ellison D. Smith of South Carolina, whom he had met at the garden party the previous day, by his nickname “Cotton Ed”. He also gave Senator Key Pittman a taste of his dry humour.
“You have some beautiful pictures,” the King said, surveying canvases depicting early American history.
“Yes,” replied Pittman. “Here, for instance, Your Majesty, is one depicting the baptism of Pocahontas.”
At that point, the King’s eye surveyed other paintings, including the one of Cornwallis, and he added, with a twinkle in his eye: “I see you have some pictures of a later period, too.”18
The King managed to shake hands with all 431 present in twenty-five minutes flat. Later they broke up into small groups, and the King was seen walking arm-in-arm with Senator Sol Bloom and exchanging jokes with Vice President Garner.
As the royal couple turned to go, those present broke into applause. “Her Majesty and I are unable to express our appreciation of the universal courtesy and friendship we have received,” the King told Pittman. It was mutual: Patton had been especially taken by the Queen. “If America can keep Queen Elizabeth, Congress will regard Britain’s war debt as settled,” he quipped later. As Gordon put it: “It was with mutual regret that the function, which had begun in a serious fashion and had ended like party of old friends, came to a conclusion.”19
Time was pressing, however. From Congress, the King and Queen drove to the presidential yacht, the USS Potomac, where Roosevelt and his wife were waiting for them.
“Well, how did you make out?” the President was heard asking after a twenty-one-gun salute announced their arrival.
With the Royal Standard and the President’s personal flag flying fore and aft, they sailed down the Potomac, past wooded shores, to Washington’s tomb. There, like his grandfather and brother before him, the King laid a wreath of lilies and irises, tied with a ribbon of the royal colours of red, white and blue, on a plain sarcophagus marked “Washington”. Such a tribute – this time from a reigning British monarch – to the man who had wrested independence from George III seemed to commemorate the fact that, once and for all, differences of opinion between the United Kingdom and America had been settled. It was then on to Arlington National Cemetery, where the King laid wreaths at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Canadian Cross of Sacrifice in commemoration of the first war in which the United States and the British Empire had made common cause.
That evening the two couples, Mackenzie King and various other dignitaries dined informally at the British embassy, and then it was off to Union Station, where the Royal Blue train was waiting to take them on to Red Bank, New Jersey, and their next day in New York. Although it was nearly midnight, the station was teeming with press photographers and sightseers keen to catch a glimpse of the couple. With a hiss of steam and a piercing whistle that cut through the roar of the crowd, the train edged out of the station. At last, the royal couple had a few hours of peace.