Fifty Years the Queen. Arthur Bousfield
old, was held up under an umbrella for the first time to the cheering crowds below. Family life was resumed. The Yorks now had a house of their own: 145 Piccadilly, a tall, narrow, austere looking building topped with a dome and not far from the Palace. Princess Elizabeth's nursery was at the top of the house. It was presided over by her nanny Clara Knight who had been nanny to the Duchess when she was a baby. Unable to say Clara, the Princess called her Ah-lah. She also invented a name for herself. Trying to pronounce Elizabeth, she came out with Lilibet. When she went to stay with George V at Bognor, where he was convalescing in the wake of a serious illness in 1929, her grandfather began calling her Lilibet. The name was adopted by the rest of the Royal Family.
Joined with Mrs Knight in the care of the Princess were Margaret—called Bobo—and Ruby, the MacDonald sisters, daughters of a Scottish railway worker. Bobo was first nursemaid then dresser to Princess Elizabeth while Ruby was subsequently attached in the same capacity to Princess Margaret, Elizabeth's sister. For Bobo it was to be a lifetime of service and friendship with Elizabeth II.
Princess Elizabeth also acquired two other homes. Birkhall on the Balmoral estate was assigned to the Yorks as a holiday residence. More important for her was Royal Lodge, a somewhat derelict hunting lodge that had belonged to George IV in Windsor Great Park, near enough to the Castle for convenience but sufficiently secluded to ensure complete privacy. The Yorks altered the Gothic style structure, added new wings and together created a beautiful garden in the grounds. The family moved there in 1932 using Royal Lodge as their weekend country house. It was painted pink to recall the rose colour brick of the Duchess' childhood home St Paul's Walden Bury. They made it a charming residence and today it is still the home of Elizabeth II's mother Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother at age 101.
1933 Newfoundland stamp showing Princess Elizabeth at 5.
The Hungarian Philip de Laszlo, one of the 20th century's great portrait painters, captured Princess Elizabeth at 7 with his customary style and elegance.
The Princess grew rapidly. Winston Churchill met her in 1928 when she was two and a half and found her “a character”. “She has” he wrote his wife “an air of authority and reflectiveness astonishing in an infant”. The Princess was a good child: quiet, obedient, kind and unselfish, though she did not and would never possess the spontaneous charm her mother had at a similar age, the charm that with a glance captures the devotion of an individual or a crowd for life. Princess Elizabeth was also affectionate and good natured.
Y Bwthyn Bach or The Little House, a miniature thatched cottage eleven feet high in the garden of Royal Lodge, was given to Princess Elizabeth by the people of Wales on her sixth birthday in 1931. The Little Houses fully equipped and in it Her Royal Highness learned me rudiments of housework.
The year of her fourth birthday—1930—was a milestone. For her birthday she received her first pony—Peggy—from King George V. He was the person who awakened in her a passionate love of horses. The same year her sister Margaret was born. “I've got a baby sister, Margaret Rose, and I'm going to call her Bud” Elizabeth confided to a friend of her Mother. “Why Bud?” asked the friend. “Well, she's not a real Rose yet, is she? She's only a Bud” replied the logical Princess. There was surprise and disappointment that the new child was a daughter not a son. Princess Elizabeth's place in the succession was not only unshaken, the continued bachelorhood of the Prince of Wales focused public attention more and more on her. For the first time the Duke of York, discussing how his daughter resembled the young Queen Victoria with his friend Osbert Sitwell, expressed the thought that Elizabeth might become Queen.
She was in fact the most famous child in the world. At three she appeared on the cover of Time—as a fashion trendsetter. People had found she wore yellow dresses and so all over the world little girls were dressed in yellow. When she was four a wax figure of her mounted on a pony was added to the famous Madam Tussaud's Museum. Her precocious personality began to be known throughout her grandfather's far flung realms. Looking back from the world of instant communications it is hard to imagine just how the character of a four-year-old communicated itself to people so far away. But in addition to the general interest aroused by royalty Princess Elizabeth fulfilled a yearning the public felt for the wholesomeness of children and family, a need born of the horrors of the First World War and the perceived disintegration of society in the wake of the conflict.
In some respects Princess Elizabeth became better known than her parents. At least for the peoples and parts of the Empire where the Yorks had not been seen. Her small person interested adults as well as the children who were in age her peers. Pictures were taken of her by the London children's photographer Marcus Adams, who had a rapidly growing reputation in the field, so her parents could keep up with her growth when they were in Australia and New Zealand. Once released to the public the photos became incredibly popular and found their way everywhere.
A small provincial newspaper, The Evening Examiner in Peterborough, Ontario, for example, published a picture of Princess Elizabeth in its 31 March 1930 issue, a month prior to her fourth birthday. The accompanying story told how the Photographers' Association of America decided to hold contests to discover the most attractive child “in America and Ontario, respectively”. To arouse interest in the contests, Charles Ashley, President of the Ontario Photographers' Association, telephoned Marcus Adams to ask for the loan of some portraits of royal children, Ashley knew his fellow Canadians' interest in the Royal Family and how fascinated Americans also found them. Marcus Adams sent Ashley his latest studies of Princess Elizabeth.
As she grew, the Princess developed a dose relationship with her father. Here is her father's delightful snapshot of the happy Princess at 4 among the lilies of Royal Lodge.
THE HOUSES OF WINDSOR
As the Queen of 16 realms, Elizabeth II has official residences throughout the world, where she stays when carrying out her duties in person. Unlike her representatives, who occupy them for only a few years, Her Majesty has made them her homes for more than fifty years, and her ancestors and relatives called them home decades and centuries earlier. They are truly the Houses of Windsor.
Windsor Castle, just outside of London, is the weekend home of the Royal Family, and gave the family its name.
The Royal Yacht BRITANNIA was the home shared by the whole Commonwealth, as it travelled to many lands to provide a residence for the Queen and the Royal Family. Here it is seen in the Bahamas.
Buckingham Palace, the Queen's London residence.
In Scotland the Queen's home is Holyroodhouse Palace in Edinburgh.
When in Canadian waters the BRITANNIA flew the Queen's Canadian Banner and the Canadian National Flag.
Yarralumla, in Canberra, Australia has welcomed the Queen several times.
In Quebec City, the ancient capital of Canada, the